Eynka, the UK-based trio (Chris, Hall, Dave Hall, and Joshua Field) has carved out a distinct sound that fuses UK Garage, melodic techno, and trance, all delivered with an undeniable sense of soul. Since we featured their 2021 single "Ascendance" - one of my favorite tracks of all time - their popularity within the realm of electronica has rightfully catapulted. In just two years, Eynka has gone on to release with some of the biggest labels in the world of electronic music, most notably Afterlife, Diynamic, and Cercle. Furthermore, their cinematic sound has been co-signed by Adriatique and Camel Phat through collaborations, thus opening the gateway to bigger shows at clubs like Hi and Ushuaia Ibiza.
The trio has been on quite an impressive release run this year, and in this interview, we spoke to Eynka about their latest release "Symphony," and they gave us more insight into their sensational rise.
For those who don't know your story, how would you describe your journey with music thus far?
We all grew up together in North London and first started djing UK Garage and D&B together at under-18 events in our teens. We went our own way musically when we went to uni, but all threw ourselves into music individually. We spent our time going out raving and discovering a lot of the music that would define our formative years - Moby, Chemical Brothers, Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, Underworld, Plump DJs, Hybrid, The Prodigy, Sasha, Digweed, BT, DJ Shadow, UNKLE, Roni Size, Goldie, Leftfield, 2 Many DJs, Massive Attack, Mylo, Pendulum, Calibre to name a few, as well as falling in love with composers such as Hans Zimmer, Ludvico Einaudi and Philip Glass and bands like Radiohead, New Order and Pink Floyd.
Over the next years, Chris and Dave threw themselves into producing, releasing electronic music, and DJing, and Josh scored movies and was part of an indie band. After a long time, we were all feeling a bit uninspired with what we were doing individually, and after catching up at a BBQ we decided to all get in the studio together for the first time. The chemistry was there immediately, so we wrote for a few years to see what came out. Around the same time, we were being hugely influenced by what we were hearing Tale of Us, Maceo Plex, Adriatique, and Solomun playing. Their fusion of techno and house with gritty emotion really captured our imaginations about what was possible with modern emotive dance music.
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You've mentioned before that on the first few studio dates you had, everything clicked so well. Which areas do the three of you specialize in, respectively, that make your production process as a team work so well?
We’ve all got things we individually specialize in, but we all overlap a lot with each other too - everyone gets stuck into the writing, production, and mix processes in different ways. Josh is a fantastic composer and multi-instrumentalist so melodies and songwriting are his real specialty. Chris' specialty is production, so building, flipping, and twisting sounds, melodies, grooves, and general ideas in new and interesting ways. As well as production, Dave is an incredible mix engineer. He’s got an amazing ear for what sounds great and can make a track really come alive. But when it comes to the track-making process, we’re all getting stuck in and taking turns the whole time, either on the hardware or the laptop, chipping away at an idea from different angles until it’s fully formed.
Can you pinpoint a specific moment in your career when you and those around you realized that you were on the verge of 'blowing up'?
2023 was probably our first significant moment when we realised momentum was really picking up. Our Adriatique collab had come out, we’d done "The Sign" and "Save Me" with Anyma and Camelphat, and we’d started to get booked for some really high-profile shows like Afterlife. We started working with a great team too (shout out to our management and agent), which was a real game changer and helped really catalyse things to the next level.
Your early sound seemed a lot more mixed between UKG, Breakbeat, and Melodic House. However, there came a period when you veered a lot more into the direction of melodic techno. What inspired this decision?
Rather than being genre-specific, Eynka has already been more about emotive electronic music, and as we’ve evolved, we’ve experimented within that. We’ve always been inspired by melodic techno ever since the beginning of the project. Tale of Us, Adriatique, Kolsch, Stephan Bodzin, Solomun, were all huge influences on us, and our first track was released on Diynamic.
"Shadow Dance" is a breakbeat track, but it’s got melodic techno (or at least our take on it) imprinted in its DNA.
Definitely playing certain shows like Afterlife influenced certain productions of ours, as we wanted to create unique tracks especially for those shows. The current body of unreleased work that we’ve been honing over the last year experiments with pushing our boundaries a bit more, with more cross-genre pollination and an evolution of our style.
A signature trait of Eynka production is these epic and emotive build-ups - you guys are amazing at creating anticipation! Where does this stem from, and why is it such an important part of your production process?
Thank you! We love creating moments, and breakdowns and builds are such a great place to really let rip with the emotion and let all the elements of the track really sing together. When you take the drums out, there’s just so much sonic space to play with. There's something about the anticipation of a build too, that’s just so magical and a real crowd unifier. Also, a lot of our biggest musical influences are well known for their killer build-ups (Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy, Robert Miles, Energy 52, Faithless, Deadmau5, Plump DJs), and that’s rubbed off on our productions for sure.
What were some of the challenges you encountered during the creation of your latest track, "Symphony"? And what about it makes it one of your favorite releases thus far?
The main challenge was finding the right vocal. The instrumental itself came together really naturally after we wrote the initial string line, but we knew it needed a vocal hook to be the icing on the cake. For ages we were using a CamelPhat and London Grammar acapella to do the job for our shows (it works a treat). We tried a few original vocals and nothing worked, until we had a great session with a fantastic singer named Sur back who absolutely smashed it and laid down the beautiful hook that stuck.
It’s one of our favourite releases as it’s really authentically our sound. It’s really melodic - it started off with a string harmony that we instantly fell in love with, and that harmony is the bedrock of the track and the seed from which everything else grew. It’s got a crazy amount of layers, sonic twists and intersecting parts, and we had so much fun letting the track take us on a journey as we recorded it. And it’s so much fun to play live too.
How do you navigate the balance between creating music purely for enjoyment and making strategic choices for your music that align with your brand and career growth?
It’s a real challenge and always a juggling act. Particularly given that we’re crazy perfectionists! The main technique we use to keep things as fun as possible is having a big conveyor belt of ideas. At any one time, we’ll have at least 5 priority tracks on the go, which we can oscillate between and keep ourselves interested, and give us perspective.
Deadlines and finishing tracks to schedule can be stressful / feel like a bit of a job, so it’s good to have other less urgent tracks that we’re really excited to work on to juggle them with.
We’ve got well over 100 unfinished tracks in our vault, so never a shortage of new shiny things to work on.
How does having three members influence the energy and flow of a show when you're performing?
We love it, particularly when we’re playing with our hybrid live setup. One of us will be djing and controlling the main mixer. One of us will be playing an 88 key synthesiser. And one of us will be playing along with a boutique synth, sampler and drum machine. It’s inspiring as the possibilities are endless and we can create bespoke versions of our music on the fly. No 2 performances of our tracks are ever the same
We’re currently working on ways to evolve to a fully live performance and are aiming to transition to a full live show in the next year.
When everything clicks creatively in the studio and you're in the "zone", what does that look and feel like for Eynka?
It’s the best feeling, and it’s something that really drives us. It can take many forms but the place where it really starts to happen is combining a great vocal or synth hook with goosebump chords. At that point, normally the creative process takes on a life of its own and we record from our synths for ages, harvesting a lot of material which we’ll sift through and process / build afterwards. But yeah normally that initial part of getting in the zone is all about mining for melodic material as much as possible, taking advantage of that moment of inspiration. That process can help the direction of a track, as writing in that flow state can result in some unexpected ideas. And allowing a good amount of time for this is super important too. It’s a bit like fishing- the longer you’re out on the lake waiting, the more chance you have of getting that big catch.
Have you ever reached a milestone in the industry that you thought would be fulfilling, but in reality, it didn’t have the impact you expected? And how did you guys deal with that?
There have been a good few moments like this, it’s just par for the course. The first big one was when we released our track "Wildfire". We’re still super proud of it, and whenever we’ve played it, it’s always got an incredible reaction live, but we and our label thought it would connect more than it did.
There have also been a lot of moments where the opposite has happened. Literally, the next release after "Wildfire" was "Beyond Us". We were super proud of the track but didn’t have any big expectations. That track ended up having the most incredible amount of momentum that really changed things for us.
"Ascendance" is one of my all-time favorite tracks and the song that first introduced me to your music. Can you share the story behind its creation and what it means to you personally?
Thank you, and that means a lot that you love it that much. "Ascendance" was made in the summer of 2021. At the time, the U.K. was preparing to emerge from lockdown, and we’d been booked to play at a couple of parties, the first one being a rooftop in East London. We wanted to create something for that party, and the musical DNA of "Ascendance" really encapsulates what we were feeling in that moment- visualising that feeling of dancing together with your friends after a long period of absence.
When we played it for the first time, the response was incredible. It took the roof off. And the rest was history.
It went on to do really well for us too. It got absolutely hammered on BBC Radio 1 and opened up a lot of doors for us. And the cross-genre diversity of the artists who supported the record was amazing too. Kolsch, Sub Focus, Ben Hemsley and U.K. garage legend DJ Ez all played it.
Creating the initial idea for it in the studio was really effortless - the first half of the track really came together so quickly. Getting the second build and drop right was the thing that took the most time actually. We really wanted it to get the feeling of the track constantly ascending, and we feel like we achieved it in the end!
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