Apashe is a Belgian-born electronica artist – now a resident of Montreal, Canada. He’s seen his tracks feature in trailers for some of the biggest franchises in Hollywood, including Fast & Furious and John Wick, not to mention a substantial number of commercials for top brands, including Adidas, GoPro & Netflix.
We spoke to him about his musical influences, hometown hangouts, his trip to Russia and more.
Check out Apashe ‘Uebok (Gotta Run) ft. Instasamka’ below.
Where are you from?
I was born in Brussels, Belgium but I moved to Montreal, Canada back in 2011.
How can you best describe your sound?
I like to call it ?Majestic? but it?s really a mix between the hard and epic classical music mixed with today?s flavour. It could be any genre from hip hop to dubstep or bass house, I mix it all together.
Who are your biggest musical influences?
The spectrum is extremely large but if I need to name a few I had say Woodkid, Danny Elfman, Noisia, Prokofiev, Missy Elliott, Philip Glass.
If someone was visiting your hometown for the first time, where should they check out?
I would invite them to come in the Mile-end. That?s where my studio is and where I live. It?s pretty nice and not too busy like the downtown, definitely one of the top sides of Montreal.
There is still so much to do, plenty of cool cafes, restaurants etc? And if you want to go out there are shows all the time everywhere but when I don?t know where to go, I usually end up at Newspeak. It?s a small club, very dark and the music is most of the times good if not really good.
Good vibes!
What was the inspiration behind ‘Uebok’ your track with Instasamka?
I always wanted to make a song with a Russian influence so I remixed a famous eastern folk melody called the Birch Tree also made famous by Tchaikovsky in his 4th symphony. The reason why it?s called ?Uebok? is a long story but in short…
Summer 2018, I was going back on tour in Russia. I landed at the airport, took a picture and asked my friend for some help with the caption. I asked how do you say ‘I am back mofo’ in Russian? He translated ‘mofo’ by ‘Uebok’ and everyone thought it was funny I used that word. Since then people call me that and make memes etc… Now we are here! lol.
In your music video for ‘Uebok’ you travel to Russia. How does the country compare to where you grew up?
Russia is definitely a bit different than Belgium but mainly because of its ex-soviet influence and the language. Besides from that today in most places I have been to it?s pretty similar to western countries. What we shot in the music video is totally fictional, and was crazy even for the people out there. We just made an exaggerated ?caricature? of what people in western countries believe Russia is.
Beach club or sweaty rave?
Sweaty rave for sure!
What can we expect from you next?
A rain of songs from my album ?Renaissance? dropping one at the time before the full album comes out, another music video, a documentary about the whole process with the orchestra and finally some touring!
You can keep up to date with APASHE on his socials below!
