Cautious optimism defines GHEIST. The Berlin-based trio has dreamed its first full-length since its foundation, but it took a lot of time, a bunch of successful singles, and a few collabs before the musicians behind the trio felt comfortable enough to sit down at the piano and reinvent their approach to songwriting. One pandemic later, GHEIST emerges with the first single of their upcoming album Zukunft. The brilliant Egos (Reflection Of The Soul) finds the group in full form, offering a poignant yet groovy manifesto radiating that optimism we were talking about earlier. The single is accompanied by an evocative video from the London-based director Taha Ismail, a poetic oeuvre that matches the heights of the trio’s track in a great way. We’re proud to premiere Egos today, and to mark the occasion, we asked GHEIST a few questions.

Can you tell us a little bit about the making of ‘Egos: Reflection (Of The Soul)’? How did you write and produce the track? And what does it represent for you?

‘Egos’ is the result of a beautiful evening/night session we had in the middle of the album production. We loved the idea of composing a track that is even more song-driven than the other ones before, as we always wanted to create an album that is also exciting for home listening. We already came up with the chord progressions as we took our chance for a little session on a modular system to add some random movements. From that point, on we went deeper in the production with synthesizers, bass lines, and vocal writing.

Egos is one of those songs that took us basically one night to come up with as we had such an amazing vibe. It is a perfect example of the variety we like to show and it gives an exciting glimpse into our musical future as GHEIST.

 I read that your album Zukunft was mostly developed on the piano before electronic production came into play? What did this approach bring to the project?

To start our songs on a piano is something we’ve been doing from the beginning. We have this beautiful sounding upright piano in our studio which gives us immediate access to songwriting and chord structures.

This way we’re creating the emotion we aim for before we even go further into our production, which also guarantees a consistent workflow during the process. To us, this appears to be the most inspiring way and comes very naturally.

Your album is aimed at the return of clubbing. How does the live environment influence your music? What are some of your tricks to make sure a track lights up the dance floor?

To be honest, most of our album was already done before we went back touring and, as mentioned before, Zukunft was not only made to work in the club, but also for home listening.

In the last 18 months, we took the chance to reinvent our perspective on music creation and add this new aspect to our outcome. We just recently went back to produce more club-oriented tracks and take all we’ve learned out of the album process and combine it with our latest live experiences. To us, it’s mainly a different way to arrange our tracks to make sure they work the way we want on the dance floor.

On the production side of your creative process, what are some of the studio tools or plugins that inspired you while you were making Zukunft?

Generally speaking, we love the vibe of LFO movements in synthesizers. We usually bounce all tracks in place before mixing, so it’s kind of hard to remember everything we used. But we definitely used a Juno, a Polysix, a Moog Matriarch, and also some soft synthesizers - synced with the E-RM Multi Clock to get some nice poly-shuffled movements.

Our drums are mainly sample-based combined with some 808 Hi-Hats sent through diverse delays to add a special feel. For mixing, we use lots of analog gear from the likes of Moog, SSL and Neve. We also worked a lot with the SSL Fusion, which is great for distortion and a Lexicon 480L. These are some of the main tools we used during the album. 

The video for Egos: Reflection (Of The Soul) presents some spellbinding visuals. What brought you to this concept?

When it comes to the video we gave the producer Taha Ismail total freedom in his creative process as we believe in collaborations with other artists. This means we’re interested in finding people from other creative fields that speak to us in general.

From the beginning, Taha had a clear vision of what he was aiming for and we involved ourselves mainly for the fine-tuning in the end. We couldn’t be happier with the result.

 Can you tell us about your collaboration with the director Taha Ismail? How did it come about?

We’ve been following each other for quite a while already as we appreciate each other’s work a lot. So for us, it was only a matter of time to collaborate. We are very happy we finally had the chance to work together, especially on such a meaningful song for us. There will be much more coming soon.

What music excites you at the moment? Are there any artists you've discovered or rediscovered lately?

We just recently listened to Joy Orbison’s latest album and find it very inspiring.

 What’s coming up for GHEIST?

Our LP Zukunft will finally be released on the 19th of November via our own imprint Radau. Other than that, we’ll be touring through Germany, Mexico, India, Brazil, Uruguay, and Denmark in the upcoming weeks. We’re constantly working on new music and we can’t wait to meet you on the dance floors around the world.

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Egos (Reflection Of The Soul) - Credits

Concept + Direction - Taha Ismail - @directorshaheb

Music: Gheist - @gheistmusic

Starring: Lorenzo Samy Harani - @lorenzoharani

Director of Photography: Aliou Diallo - @alioufilms

Camera Operators: Taha Ismail, Aliou Diallo - @directorshaheb, @alioufilms

Production Assistant: Griffin Gates - @griffin_gates

Set Photographer: Shahriar Abedeen - @sbqbdn

Edit & Grade: Taha Ismail

Words: Sadeka Taqi - @ssadeqaa

Voiceover: Kugar Black - @kugarblack

Production Company: Collective Unconscious - @weareunconscious