“My mission is to make music that people can dance, enjoy, and feel some kind of way from. . .and hopefully break a few musical boundaries doing so.”
Toola is slowly sneaking away from an electrical engineer into a full-time DJ/producer. With a love for dance music, he finds his way into every venue with his enthusiastic personality, not knowing what he is going to play, but naturally gets the crowd’s attention. His cheerful attitude is not the only thing that attracts the crowd, but his feel-good music.
After getting many knockbacks, Toola decided to start making his own parties and add his original music into the sets. Meanwhile as he has a great catalog of music to play, this allows him to create different types of dance music that fits into every vibe one can imagine. Wanting to offer something different to the scene is the only thing on his mind, and it’s not making him stop anytime soon.
Stating that he doesn’t necessarily have a background in music, Toola did proudly play the trombone in the ninth grade jazz band class. Other than this, he is a self-taught DJ, and overtime learned how to produce and roughly play a few instruments here and there.
As music became an emotional getaway for Toola, he expresses that in terms of putting on his headphones and forgetting about everything else. “What really drew me in was that I loved discovering new music, especially music that no one knew,” he mentions. He was always drawn to SoundCloud and kept digging for new music every single day. “For some reason I loved it when a track only had like 20 – 30 likes, the less the better, and I would love it even more if you can’t shazam it.” After this, he began DJing, and started to mess around with producing.
Discussing musical influences, Toola mentions that his inspirations change on a weekly basis. I feel it’s because of the amount of music we as listeners have today,” he expresses. Stating for certain genres he always looks up to the likes of Calvin Harris for dance music, Jamie Jones and Louie Vega for house music, Justice for electronic music, and Alex Turner for lyrics.
Toola’s latest offering ‘La Ola’ is a house track groovy tune with a lot of Latin elements mixed throughout. He heard a mariachi band while he was in Mexico, and their entire sound stood out to him. After that, he went back to his studio and kept searching for an old latin record that he could use the vocals from because it would have been really hard to make a new vocal recording of a mariachi band. “The guitar was a bit tricky to implement but I am however really proud of how the drums and the bass came along. I feel like they sound simple but sophisticated and warm at the same time, and they just hold the entire track together,” he says.
The beat is mostly 909s and a quarter note bassline. The grooves are based around the bongos/congas and the drums leaving and entering the mix. The main element of the track is the vocal and guitar. There are very small notes of TD-3 acid lines hidden in the mix just to emphasize the bassline and to give it a more techy sound.
“Very roughly translated, the lyrics talk about a girl leaving a guy and the guy saying you never loved me anyways. For me, it means a lot more production wise than lyrically. I’m really proud of how it came out and how simple it sounds but still makes you groove to the beat. Speaking of the beat, I think the drum sounds amazing which was important because it holds the whole track together. It also means a lot to me in a weird way of how small inspiration in the middle downtown Tijuana can make you think of the entire track,” Toola says.
Toola wants his listeners to take away the same emotion he felt when he first made the track. To feel some sort of excitement, happiness, enjoyment, or whatever. What drives him forward as a musical artist is the creativity or the process of creating something he has just made. A big part of it however is just the improvement. Whenever he listens to his old music, he would think and hear stuff he should have changed, or added. “Just the fact that I’m always developing, learning, and trying new ideas is what definitely pushes me forward,” he says.
Closing out the interview with a musical highlight, Toola mentions that it has to be with a random stranger who approached him in a crowded club in Los Angeles with his Spotify open on one of his songs, and asked him if he made it and proceeded to tell him he enjoys his music. “It might seem a bit small but it was honestly really cool to have that interaction with someone who has no connection with you at all and actually knows you from your music.”
Check Toola out: Instagram, Spotify, SoundCloud
Words by Danielle Holian