[Interview] Enamour Talks Inspiration and His Journey

Washington D.C. based producer Enamour has been on our radar of up-and-coming producers to keep an eye on. And it’s easy to see why with his unique and enrapturing blend of deep, progressive and tech house.

He’s already seen releases on mau5trap and Lane 8‘s This Never Happened label. And he’s only going to be growing from here. We recently had the opportunity to sit down and chat with him about a variety of topics before one of his shows. Take a look at what he had to say.

So Enamour is defined as that feeling of love or admiration. How did you decide on that name? 

I think it’s not even as much love and admiration as it is a deep longing for something. Almost like a more formal word for a crush in a way where you don’t even know why you love it yet. Or it’s like that the initial feeling of what you think is a complete infatuation with something. I think being enamoured with something is a much stronger and almost less mature form of love. Its a little rawer, almost to an obsession point of view.

And I think that is what I want all of my music to come across as. So when someone hears my music, whether they’re in a club or listening to it in their bed on their headphones, it’s going to course through their veins and they’re going to feel something that they don’t know what it is. Or if they are really educated, they’re going to feel something different. It’s that really strong emotion that I really want to drive people to. I did also pick the name when I was making more dreamy, melodic stuff.

Lane 8 has been a pretty big influence on you. How did you start working with him?

It’s a funny story actually. So in December 2016 he played in a club in D.C. that I had opened at once or twice before. So after his set when he was packing up and everyone was filing, out I went up to the security guard who guards the booth and said ‘Hey i’m gonna pretend to talk to you so I can ambush him when he comes down’. And he agreed because he knew me. You could tell Lane 8 was taking his time up there as I’m pretending to talk to this guy. When he finally came down I beelined to him and gave him the whole elevator pitch. At that time I had one song that had been on Anjunadeep’s Spotify playlist. So I said ‘there has to be something you’ll like, let me just get your email’.  He was like ‘yeah ill talk to you upstairs’. I said ‘no ill walk you upstairs, let me get your email’ and shoved my phone in his face. So I was pretty pushy about.

And I sent him tracks for like nine months and back and he’d give me advice, telling me to try this or try that. Around September I sent him ‘Still Life’, and he said yes, this is the one and put it in his mix. And it got a really good reaction. I then sent him 2 more tracks after that, which he really liked. And in that same email I suggested that I open for him when he comes to D.C.. Five minutes later his manager emailed me saying yeah that’d be a great idea. Then Lane 8 sent an email asking me if I wanted to remix a new song off the album. And then another 5 minutes after that his manager sent another email telling me to hold four dates. So in the span of like 20 minutes I went from the support of one song to remixing a track and supporting him on multiple tour dates.

And he was really happy with the remix. I turned it around in two days and I think he was real happy about that. I guess it’s that saying that luck is the combination of preparation and opportunity.

Speaking of unreleased tracks, you had eleven ID’s in that recent Dancing Astronaut mix. What are the plans for those?

Some are completely unsigned. I very much have the mentality of only signing with labels that will change your career. So I’m holding onto them for the right labels. I think three or four might go to Lane 8’s label. Two of them plus another one that wasn’t in the mix are coming out on Sasha Braemer’s label, What I Play, I think in July. So half of them should be out by the end of the year.

Do you have any plans for a body of work anytime soon?

So the three track EP should come out in July and that’ll be my first one. I’d say I definitely want to do an album but I don’t want to rush it. I’m not the kind of person who would just put out ten club tracks and call it an album. I would want it to start and end in the same spot; for it to come full circle. Every song has to mix into each other.

I have a lot of demos and I could feasibly form the shell of an album now. But I’d also want vocalists and that’s always a tough effort to nail them down and make sure they’re the right ones. Especially with lane 8 as a mentor, who’s kind of nailed the album down pretty hard. He’s guiding me in a way where its like you don’t just take the first couple vocalists who offer you their work. You need to make sure they’re absolutely perfect. So I’m in no rush to do the album. But I would absolutely want to do one.

You still work full time doing management consulting. How do you balance the the traveling of a consulting job with producing and DJ’ing?

So luckily I’m on a local project, which is very rare. All of my coworkers are travelling. And luckily my project isn’t super crazy twelve hour days. So I get home after work and get on the computer until my upstairs neighbor tells me it’s time to stop everyday.

When will you know you can take that step from your full-time job to doing music full-time, if you even want to?

So I definitely want to. Last month I said ‘this time next year I want to be full-time’. And while I can quit now and survive off of money I’ve saved up, everyone I talked to, bigger DJ’s and a lot of my mentors, have all said work as long as you can until you’re basically at the point where you’re about to be fired. Because if you’re putting out a song a week, and I am basically finishing a song a week at this point, you don’t need to go any faster than that. So you might as well be making a steady paycheck and saving that up.

And I really love synths and hardware. So just knowing I have the money to spend on that while still affording to eat and pay rent makes it a little easier. A lot of my friends have gone full-time, and even buying a plugin for them is a big burden for them. I rather not have my art restricted by the money. 

So where do your draw your creative inspiration from?

I actually think about this a lot because whenever I write a really good song that I like, I’m curious about where did it come from. I’d say half the time it’s from a lot of experimentation with my hardware because I have a modular synth, which is pretty conducive to pure experimentation. I’d get this one sound and sequence it and suddenly I hear the rest of the song. I know exactly how the entire song is going to be.

And I’d say the other half the time I think the emotion that drives a lot of my music is the drive to become successful. I think you can hear that in a lot the progressive stuff. Like ‘Soul Release’ for example, where it’s this little sound that’s bubbling around for awhile really trying to escape and get bigger. And it builds for a minute before exploding in this huge climax. And that’s almost a musical metaphor for me trying to break through and create something that has this climax, which for me would be becoming this successful act that can tour around the world.