Wait For Me is a growing name in the minimal tech & tech house scene. With recent releases on Unnamed & Unknown, Kubbo Records, and Nozzo, Wait For Me has quickly garnered attention for his unique blend of highly detailed percussion, simple yet groovy bass, and catchy vocals, gaining support from a range of established artists including Tomi & Kesh, Gustaff, and MK.
His new single Actual DJs is a mesmeric tech house cut which boasts layers of subtle sophistication. Its rolling bassline provides a steady groove, while sharp fills and a chanted vocal add understated depth to the mix with a deeply hypnotic allure perfect for those seeking a nuanced yes highly impactful dancefloor jam.
Hi Kirk, thank you for taking the time to chat with us today! How has the year been treating you?
Creatively this has been an amazing year. I’ve had the most steady release schedule I’ve ever had since I started releasing music 3+ years ago. I’ve really been able to lean into a lot of my productions with confidence and create some momentum for myself with labels I have been looking up to for quite some time. Personally, the year has been a challenging one. I deal with a clinical form of depression and it rears its ugly head frequently. 2023 was especially difficult with my condition but even through it I’ve found amazing moments of inspiration, discipline & productivity. This might be an overshare for the first question haha but it’s just part of who I am and I always want to be honest when I get the “how are you doing?” question. I know a lot of people out there deal with similar situations so want them to know that things don’t need to be perfect to still have fund & make music.
Where do you think the impulse to create music comes from for you?
A lot from my father. He was a huge disco fan and throughout my childhood could always count on classic disco records being played pretty much non-stop in the car, at the house, at parties etc etc etc. I guess that liking for dance music stuck with me and then I really wanted to get into production around the 2008-2010 time frame. That time was when music blogs were a huge avenue for “bedroom producers” and I found a blog called “gottadancedirty.” I remember just being floored by disco-flavored tunes with a new age twist put of them all being produced by people with very limited equipment and resources. They quality was amazing and just got me thinking like… “If they can make this stuff with a mac & a couple pieces of hardware… Why can’t I?” So around that time I started to lightly dive into production for the first time making disco, nu disco & house style stuff. It wasn’t for a few years though where I’d really start dedicating serious time to improving my skills & abilities as a producer.
What was the scene like in Charleston when you were growing up? Did you find it easy to connect musically with other like minded people?
So I grew up in Boston, MA. Charleston was just somewhere I moved to after college because it has zero snow during the winters. I hate snow & cold haha. Ya I mean growing up in the Boston area was great. Boston is really kinda known though for alternative rock & indie rock so there was barely any of a dance music scene. I did however have friends with a like-minded approach towards dance music. There were these brothers who lived in my town who were Finnish and heavy into trance music. They’re cousin had introduced them to a world of music being made over in Europe and in turn then introduced it to me. I remember enjoying a lot of that music and I think that was my first taste of actually “electronic” dance music. There’s still a lot of trance stuff that will bring back memories of being a kid and just listening to the stuff. I’m not a huge fan now, but I do appreciate it.
How did you hook up with Unlearn Records for the new single?
We got linked up through Grahame over at DataTransmission. Grahame has a great way of getting a lot of his network linked up with labels and I think there was one or two demos that they played live on a demo listening stream with Doc and then after that Doc reached out to me because he really enjoyed my sound. We went through 3-4 different demos and Actual DJs came out on top!
Your music edges towards the more minimal side of tech house – were you in the industry around the mid 00s minimal boom, and if so do you have any particular favourite tracks from that era?
All my minimal fans are gonna hate me because I’m still working on getting my education from the amazing producers that founded this type of sound. I really leaned into minimal because of the music being made now by Tomi & Kesh, George Privatti, Guille Placencia, Nacho Scoppa, & more than I can list. I was much more into the disco/nu disco type sound up into just a few years ago when I discovered the new age of minimal. I kinda coin it as “high energy minimal” because it still sticks to a lot of the foundations of minimal tech while also have a bit more drive & edge from other genres. I have been diving into a lot of that older stuff though lately as its serving as good inspiration. Sounds from people like Luca M, Ron Cost, & NDKj are helping me better understand the elements that really work in minimal.
Tell us about your current studio set up – any particular bits of go-to kit you find yourself returning to?
I am, probably to a fault, a staunch defender of being an in-the-box producer. For production I do everything with a mac & a pair of Beyerdynamic dt240 headphones… and nothing else. I really don’t like anything external as it tends to slow me down. When I produce I like to work at a brisk pace. If I’m jumping from computer to synth, adjusting bit-rates & sample rates for lowering latency with recording, triggering and mapping this/that etc etc etc I get frustrated quickly because I’m not getting the ideas in my head on paper fast enough to keep me excited. I like to keep it as simple as possible to avoid analysis paralysis and get the track DONE. In ableton I mainly work in audio. I’ll usually sketch ideas in midi but once I have something I like it’s bounced to audio ASAP. I think it’s just a visual thing, I can really get a grasp on a sound and how it will fit in the mix but hearing and seeing it. For anything special I use in my daw I’m kinda boring. I use a ton of the internal effects/tools built natively in ableton and have sparse set of external vsts/tools from companies like soundtoys, arturia, kilohearts, etc. I find a lot of my creativity comes from using the tools I have in ways that “break the rules” to get interesting sounds. I’m not big on constantly making purchases of new stuff when there’s still a world I can explore with the stuff I have.
Which artists are currently exciting or inspiring you?
Iglesias & Rsquared. I LOVE their sound. Amazing incorporation of 80s drum flavors in a minimal type setting. Vocals with attitude and bass lines that groove like nothing else. I have been really cooking up some tracks that grasp these flavors and you’ll start to hear that sound in my 2024 productions.
What have been some of your more memorable live performances from 2023?
I don’t perform too much so every single one of them is memorable. I like DJing but it’s honselty why I’m not in this whole production scene. I find more joy out of producing music and helping others produce as well. I do have a show coming up on the 1st of December hosted at this really cool all-vegan restaurant called neon-tiger that they do up like crazy for shows and the past few have been an absolute vibe so excited for that.
What should we expect from you for the rest of 2023 and into next year?
I have this release with unlearn and then one more release with Data Transmission in December. After that, I’m going to be pausing a bit on the social media aspect of music and really focusing on my productions. In the later half of the year I started reaching out to offer production lessons and one-on-one education and the response to it has been absolutely incredible. Right now, I have around 10 students I’m meeting with on a consistent basis teaching them everything minimal tech and helping them get they’re music to a place that their happy about. For me, that’s what really excites me; talking about music, teaching music, being creative in the studio etc etc etc. So, for 2024 I’m really going to lean into production education. I’ve had chats with a few different outlets to perhaps set up some formal courses for a virtual classroom type setting and I’m sure at the very least, there will be something that comes out of that. I’ve also got music signed for the first few months of 2024 so don’t expect the releases to slow down.