bignic

bignic

is an Ontario-based musician and programmer.

His music has been featured in multiple video games, including Zombies., a corporate lifestyle simulator.

In an exclusive interview with The Wub Wub,
bignic speaks about how he has evolved as an artist, what you can expect from him in the future, and his opinion on file sharing.

What was your journey to becoming a DJ? 

I wouldn't call myself a DJ - I write my material... I think it was 1996 or 1997 that I first heard a scratched up Daft Punk CD and the greatest part of that experience was that I couldn't tell if the track was skipping or if it was meant to sound like that. It destroyed my notion of “what music is allowed to sound like.” Shortly thereafter I heard some Chemical Brothers and I was hooked. Until then, the only “electronic” music I had been exposed to was really awful pop/dance music and it never occurred to me (until that time) that there could be really serious and gritty music in that genre.

Where did the name "Bignic" come from? Also, what's your real name?

My real name is Nicholas Gorissen. I’m 6’5 tall and about 400lbs... so “big” was obvious. People just called me bignic in high school and it stuck.

How would you describe the "bignic" sound?

In the early 2000’s I mainly wrote downtempo electronic stuff, very sample based, not much in the way of melodic hooks or dynamics. Then I started to experiment with vocal tracks and moved into a bit more electronic rock / pop sound with more melodies, few samples, and a focus on songwriting. The past few years I feel like I’ve evolved into more of a chiptune/chip-house sound with much harder beats, bigger synth hooks, and an emphasis on bassline funk and trying to get people to move.

Where do you get your inspiration from?

When I’m truly inspired by something, its most often because I had heard it in a dream. Most of my softer tracks came about that way, lamenting or sorrowful because of the intensity of the dream experience. Quite often with those, the melody is already clear in the dream and I just have to try my hardest to remember it, and to transcribe it as soon as I wake up or risk losing it. Most of the bootyshaking music isn’t inspired by anything other than a desire to play with a synthesizer and discovering an interesting hook or chord progression.

What are some of your musical influences?

I listen to a wide variety of stuff. The stuff that had the biggest impact on what I produce now would be Daft Punk, Chemical Brothers, Justice... all the obvious ones really :)

Your music has shaped different video games like Spell Team Death Match and Zombies. How did you start making music for video games?

A little known fact is that “Zombies.” was born, in part, out of my desire to find video content for all of the tracks I had written. YouTube is such a huge marketing tool for musicians and I had almost no content for my music. So I thought if I could write a game that gave people something visually appealing, then its essentially a music video. So the game provided me an opportunity to get the music out there to a different audience by associating it with visual content that grabbed their attention. People started contacting me left and right after the game released, but I was only able to pick a few projects like Zenzizenzic and Spell Team Death Match.

You offer your a few of your albums, such as "Homesick" and "A Liar and a Thief"
for free on Bandcamp.
I assume you feel positively about online music sharing? Or no?

Oh boy... :D As an indie, I’m “OK” with file sharing because I’m still of the opinion that I’d rather people hear my music than not. Of course I’d love for them to pay for it, and with things like bandcamp, its so easy to do that. So if an artist has a bandcamp page and people are still downloading that music from pirates, then I doubt they were ever going to buy it anyway. The problem comes in when they start to pirate things by default because its more convenient or because they’ve become accustomed to getting value for free, rather than at least checking if they can purchase the art easily/affordably.
The internet has radically changed how people perceive value and I don’t think I’ve heard an ideal solution to that problem. So all I can do personally is to say “Hey, I think this is totally worth 4 bucks and you will get that value out of it by the time you finished listening to it.” By the tenth time someone listens to it, I’ve given that person much more than they paid for AND I haven’t lost anything.
In the end, the onus is on consumers to support the artists that they want. All an artist can do is make it as convenient as possible for the consumers to fund them directly. With things like ingiegogo and kickstarter and patreon, we’re seeing the possibilities open up. We’re seeing the middle men get cut out and we’re seeing the money go directly into the hands of the artists. There will probably always be pirates but like with anything in life, I don’t see the benefit in fighting against what you don’t want. I’d say, support the solution rather than fight against the supposed problem. There have been a few fumbles with crowd funding already, but ultimately I think it’s a step in the right direction to bridge the gap between artist and consumer. In the future, there wont be any excuse not to directly fund the art that you want. This wont be an end to piracy, but it’ll be an end to the moral/ethical “grey area” where people hide behind the ideas of convenience and skewed value judgements as a reason not to support the art.

What can fans expect from you for the future?

I’m working on more soundtracks for the future and would like to do more orchestral stuff. I’ve sold my talk-box because I was really abusing it and wanted to force myself to continue to evolve and innovate so... I’m really not sure what flavor the next album will have.

Check out Bignic online!
Official Website
Twitter
Facebook
Bandcamp

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