Effin on the Declaration of Love that is His New Album, ‘Heartbeats’

2 weeks ago 4

**Before Effin released his third album, Heartbeats, he gave EDM Identity a deeper look into the creative process behind it.**

It was only 20 minutes before Effin’s mainstage debut at Lost Lands when the festival had to evacuate due to severe weather. He’d prepared to announce his third album, Heartbeats, during his set. Now, uncertainty hung thick in the air. His plans were entirely at mother nature’s mercy.

After a two-hour delay, Effin’s set proceeded as planned. His announcement was met with an uproar of cheer from a large crowd gathered at the Prehistoric Stage.

All roads lead to Lost Lands for dubstep DJs and ravers alike. And Effin told EDM Identity that he’s met so many fans around the country who’ve discovered him at “Dubstep Disneyland.”

“At every show I’ve ever played, if I go out and get to meet people, at least one person is gonna come up and be like, ‘I saw you for the first time at Lost Lands’,” Effin explained. “I meet so many people who either discovered me there or a friend bought them there, and now they’re at a show of mine. So it just felt like the perfect place to bring it all home.”

His love for that growing fanbase is the backbone of Heartbeats. Despite the precarious weather conditions, there was no other place more fitting to announce an album that serves as a love letter to all forms of love — for his girlfriend, his fans, his hometown, and himself.

I got to come home week after week from shows, meeting people and hearing about their experience with my music, especially Daydreams, and try to convert the love they showed me into the music for this new album.

Effin

That positive response to Daydreams inspired Effin to channel that love into Heartbeats. He started the effort shortly after the former album was released, and he was just submitting the final mixes the day of our conversation on September 24. From initial idea to final execution, the whole creative process took a little over a year.

Heart imagery is the life force of the album. It appears in many titles and is woven through the songs like veins. It’s not subtle or tucked away; Effin blatantly wears his heart on his sleeve.

Effin said there are tiny love letters woven throughout. The lyrics, intros and outros, all capture the range of emotions you get from any love story, including the “honeymoon highs and downtrodden lows.” He described Heartbeats as an emotional rollercoaster, with lots of ups and downs.

One standout characteristic of the album is the use of samples to convey the album’s central themes. Sometimes he goes looking for them; other times they fall into his lap. But he said that inspiration always strikes him in the most random of places, and it only takes something as simple as a single word or phrase to sprout an idea that grows into a whole song.

The samples across Heartbeats are drawn from vintage records and films, or YouTube videos found during deep rabbit holes. The album has an old school feel to it, as Effin drew inspiration from Johnny Mathis’ 1959 album, Heavenly, 1990s NYC hip-hop, the 1956 French short film The Red Balloon, and vintage American advertising and design.

As listeners traverse the album’s sonic landscape, they will hear people’s love stories in every era from the ’50s to the ’90s and through the 2000s. It’s as much a mosaic of love as it is a declaration of it.

“I try to convey that in a story that makes sense with my own vision for what a song could be,” Effin said, “collaging all these different ideas of heartbreak, heartache, heart strings, and heartbeats, really going all in on the theme and letting other people’s voices shine.”

When asked if he had a favorite track on the album, Effin mentioned “heartaches” and “sweetheart.” While they signal departures from his typical sound, he said he thinks they’ll be unexpected fan favorites because his emotions flowed so naturally during the creative process that he expects them to shine through to fans.

“They’re not necessarily crazy sound design bangers, but there’s a lot of emotion tied into them, and I think a lot of people will relate to that,” he explained.

Effin is celebrating the album release at Seven Stars this Saturday. He shared that he has a lot of special things planned for the set beyond just playing most of Heartbeats. “It is going to be a moment of catharsis because the album will finally be out. I want to provide that to the fans and just give them a super fun experience with a lot of the new stuff woven in.”

As he grew up only 30 minutes away from the festival grounds, returning to Seven Stars is a homecoming of sorts for Effin. “That festival just feels completely different than anything else I get to play. It feels like such a hometown. It feels like such a beautiful moment, and I definitely want to make that set extremely special,” he said.

Although Effin couldn’t share more details at the time of the interview, fans not going to Seven Stars should keep their eyes peeled online for a tour announcement soon!