Zebby James talks about his multimedia project “Spirit Swords”

Today on our Hot Seat we have music producer Zebby James with us. Let’s have a chat with him.

Twist Online : First of all please introduce yourself to our readers.
Zebby James : My name is Zebby James, I’m from Pennsylvania, USA, and I’ve been producing music for over a decade under many different aliases and doing many different projects with musicians from all over the world. Recently, I started a multimedia project called “Spirit Swords”.

Twist Online : Who or what inspired you to get into this industry?
Zebby James : I’ve loved music ever since I was young. I grew up on music from video games, and in my younger years I would play video games like Dance-Dance Revolution. My generation grew up in a weird time, where music was becomming more electronically influenced, and that definitely had an impact on where we allocated our musical preferances. I think a lot of us were inspired by guys like Deadmau5 and Skrillex when we first started and found our sound throughout the years. I went through all the forms of EDM: dubstep, all the subgenres of house, you name it. I found that mine was closer to the electronica sounds of the late-90s and the early 2000s, like the video games I grew up on.

Twist Online : Tell us about your project “Spirit Swords”?
Zebby James : Spirit Swords is a multimedia project in which I work with artists, musicians, and writers to release multimedia concepts through music, art, and video. All of the content revolves around a specific story.

Twist Online : “Promise Me You’ll Win” is the first track released under the project “Spirit Swords”, our readers would like to know more about it?
Zebby James : Promise Me is such a great track. It’s my debut single from the project, it comes out on all major music retailers on September 23rd, and it features Pipa Moran, a lovely upcoming vocalist from the UK who’s worked with tons of artists. I’ve gotten to work with her a few times, and her performance on this record is killer. The song is about someone who is dying, and their last words are a wanton request for the listener to promise that they’ll fight on with all their heart, and promise that they’ll win. The concept is just the beginning concept of Spirit Swords. The track itself is very uplifting and melodic, and perfectly captures that late-90s trance vibe with modern elements of music production.

Twist Online : What kind of response have you received from the release?
Zebby James : The immediate response to the announcement of the song has been great. It is our first release, so nobody is quite sure what to expect, aside from a few teasers that we were able to share. So far, we’ve had lots of positive support, shares, and attention. I’m more excited about the artists and other musicians that have noticed the art project for what it’s worth. We’ve had a lot of talented people asking us how they can help contribute and be a part of the Spirit Swords team. I’m really excited about working with a lot of them.

Twist Online : Any plans of releasing music video of this single?
Zebby James : After the release on September 23rd, there will definitely be an official lyric video AND an animation video. I’m really proud to say that I’ve got a great team for the video content. Our main producer for visuals provided a lot of the visuals for Porter Robinson at the Second Sky Festival this year. The lyric video and animation video for the single will be posted on our Instagram, @spirit.swords, and on our YouTube and Facebook pages, Spirit Swords, in addition to our website, www.spiritswords.com.

Twist Online : Have you set some goals to achieve ?
Zebby James : My goals for this release are simple: I’d like to get as many DJs to play this track as possible and reach 100,000 plays across all the platforms before the year ends. This is the very first piece of content being published under the Spirit Swords brand, and if we can reach 100,000 streams in just a few months, I think it would show a lot of folks that we’re not messing around.

Twist Online : What’s up next?
Zebby James : (laughs) I can’t say what’s coming next. But what I can say is that Promise Me begins “Phase One” of our release schedule for our brand’s content. As I said before, Spirit Swords is a multi-media project that focuses around a story, so our supporters can expect us to release stuff that tells the story of Promise Me to bring it to life.