Tony Seltzer & Anysia Kym: Unravelling The Philostrophy

Brooklyn producers Tony Seltzer and Anysia Kym have long occupied distinct corners of the underground hip-hop and R&B worlds. Seltzer’s been the driving force for a subsection of booming East Coast rap, providing the kinetic soundscapes for emcees like WiFiGawd, YL, and Wiki. Most recently, he collaborated with ascendant New York rapper MIKE for Pinball and Pinball II, records that transform MIKE’s insular style and infuse it with thunderous bass and trap drums. Anysia, who is signed to MIKE’s label 10k, traffics in otherworldly, hip-hop-adjacent R&B. Juxtaposing gauzy samples and jittery electronic beats, her soft voice glueing everything together. After meeting through MIKE, the two started working together, resulting in Purity, a dreamlike, 18-minute album that fuses their talents but sounds unlike anything either has done previously.

We caught up with the duo just before the release of Purity, where they joined via video call from Seltzer’s Noc Noc Studios in Dumbo, Brooklyn, discussing the origins of their collaboration, their Ableton workflow, and their predilection for short songs.

MIKE was the middle of the Venn diagram for the two of you. But as you started developing a friendship and making stuff together, Tony, what was it that drew you to Anysia's sound, and Anysia, what drew you to Tony's? What inspired you to merge these two worlds?

Tony Seltzer: I am always drawn to experimental people who are pushing the boundaries of music. And I wasn't hip to her music until I got put on through MIKE, but after hearing it, I was like, "This is awesome. I've not heard something like this before." She draws inspiration from all over and does her own thing to create something brand new. And she's also coming from the framework of MIKE's world – sample-heavy, lo-fi music – but not making rap beats by any stretch of the imagination. She has jungle influences and dance influences, but all are still within that sound. I thought it was so cool.

Anysia Kym: I feel the same. I wasn't super familiar with Tony's music, but I witnessed MIKE first meeting Tony and talking about his experience, like, "I'm working with this producer and it's music I've never made before." And then I heard it, and I was like, "Bro, you need to keep at that. You're in a different bag." Tony knew how to take what MIKE does and do the opposite, and yet it still felt very authentic. When Pinball came out, we followed each other on Instagram, and then he invited me to pull up to the studio. Neither of us had any expectations, and it just happened very organically. I don't think we knew we were gonna make an album, but he was so open to working with me.

Purity moves through a variety of different styles and genre markers in 18 minutes. "Speedrun" has this 90s atmospheric jungle feel; "Great Escape" sounds like Boards of Canada;  "Diamonds and Pearls" references footwork. Were there any specific challenges in that regard that the two of you laid out for this, sounds you wanted to deconstruct or genres you’d never attempted?

AK: We tried hard not to repeat the same thing over and over. We did "Speedrun," which was the jungle moment, and that was that.

TS: We wanted a nostalgic, sample-sounding feel. We drew a lot of samples from ambient synth tapes, where it's synth music, so it's the music of the future, but it still feels old. That created an environment where, regardless of the drums or vocals we added, it would retain that base layer's textural quality. We created two or three songs before anything that made it to the project. We needed to determine the workflow. So, at first, she wanted to hear beats that I had already made, which was cool, but most of my beats are heavier, rap-leaning beats.

What was the workflow that you found?

TS: The first thing we would do is figure out what I called the "philostrophy" of the song we were about to make, which boils down to: "What is a genre influence, a sound, or a mood we’re feeling? " It was almost like a mood board. We would do silly stuff, like one that didn't end up making the project was a minimal Brazilian funk song. Neither of us had ever tried some of these things before, so we were working them out together. 

AK: Tony would start building, and then I would be writing as I discovered the melody. And, low-key, every time I'd have a bag, he’d start adding a new drum sound, and then I'd change the melody. It was nice that we were next to each other. I'd record something, and then he’d be like, "Actually, let me play around with this."

You made the entirety of Purity in Ableton, and you both use it as your main DAW. What drew each of you to Ableton initially?

TS: I was introduced to Ableton very early in my production career, and it became very apparent that that was the DAW to use. There's the flexibility from genre to genre; you can do so much or very little, and it doesn't feel restrictive in any way. I'm still learning new things all the time.  

AK: The first DAW I started with was FL Studio, and it was pretty limiting. FL Studio is super quantized, which is cool, but if you want to experiment and chop — I sample a lot — it didn't feel like the DAW for that. This was before I was writing and singing, so my work was very beat-specific. I saw homies using Ableton, and it seemed much more user-friendly. Also, I started with Ableton Lite for my first project, and for probably a cool two years after that. Given that I was somewhat restricted and had to learn how to use the system within that, I'm glad I started with the training wheels, because there's so much more you can do. However, as Tony said, it's both infinite and very user-friendly at the same time. So even if you don't come in knowing all the extras and the bells and whistles, you can still make some really cool shit at the surface level.

Download the drums from “Long 4” for free

When you sit down with a sample source or drum sound, how do you start?

TS: If I'm going for a sample, let's say, I'll probably throw it into Simpler. I'll chop a sample, get that going, and then start layering drums, bass, other synths, and so on on top of that. Usually, I'll create an eight- to 16-bar loop, and then sequence it out from there; that loop will typically be the climax of the beat. 

AK: I use Simpler, for sure. 

TS: I used to chop up samples and then drag them into Drum Rack and play them out MPC style, because I used to make beats on an MPC, so it gave me that familiar feeling. 

AK: I never figured out an MPC.  

TS: It was fun, but it didn't matter how good the beat I made was; it was a challenge to create it every time. I realized that, workflow-wise, if I'm sitting with an artist, I prefer to create something that allows them to start writing in 15 minutes. I love the idea of using hardware like that, but I also like the idea of moving quickly. My brain moves fast. It's fun to use an MPC, but you can also just use Ableton. Let's be honest with ourselves here. [Laughs] 

It's not a secret, but something might be fun for someone to try this, if they never have before: Some people like to get the sample all quantized and then put it into Simpler, so when you put the quarter note chops in to play it out as MIDI, it's already quantized. I actually prefer not to do that; I like to throw it in Simpler and put quarter note chops on it, but not in time, so the samples are kind of like whatever happens, happens. For a lot of the chops for this record, I did that exact thing. You can find cool rhythms outside of the original sample's tempo that way.

Aside from Simpler, are there any specific in-house plugins or effects that you consistently return to?

TS: I make good use of the delay with a little filter on it. I do a lot of side chaining with the Glue Compressor.

AK: I'm new to plugins, but I'm a bit of an [Multiband Dynamics] OTT [preset] demon.

TS: Oh, OTT, for sure. I put a touch of OTT on the master track of every beat. The OTT stems from electronic music, right? EDM producers would use OTT to get their bass to sound super crazy and big. I throw it on the whole beat to give it a little chaos. 

In making this record that doesn't sound like anything either of you has done, what have each of you learned about your own processes? 

TS: As with every collaboration, it helped me push limits and try new things. I love working with somebody else, learning from them in their production and songwriting formats, and then bringing it back to what I do. Working with an artist one-on-one, making a beat in person, you tend to do less in the beat to get to the process of writing the song. That always helps me return to my own beat-making and consider whether it needs the 100 layers of percussion I'm about to add. 

AK: I've worked mostly by myself for the majority of my career, until my latest collaborations, and it reached a point where I realized I needed to test the waters with someone else. It’s a selective process. I like to get to know people. We're making music at the end of the day, but it is nice to feel a level of familiarity. And though I like to make music alone, it's always so lovely to meet someone from whom you can find inspiration and push yourself. I feel like I'm biting Tony's answer. [Laughs] But it's the same thing.

Anysia, your last collaboration was Clandestine with Lorraine James? How would you compare these two processes?

AK: I'm spoiled with being able to make projects in person. I'm hesitant to do the sending back-and-forth thing. Lorraine and I got together for like five days. We admired each other's music for a while, and the challenge was the time constraint, because I was in London for a short time. It was the same workflow as Purity, in that she would make something, I would write to it, and I would record. I think if it were up to her, she would’ve made the beat, and had me take it home, but I was like, "If I hear a melody now, let me put it on wax, and then we can go from there." Stylistically, Lorraine uses more texture than drums, and Tony is much more drum-heavy. It was really cool, both experiences were very beautiful.

Tony, how did this process compare to say the Pinball series with MIKE, the Heat Check series with WiFiGawd, or even the Hey Tony compilation from 2021?

TS: MIKE would come in, and I would play beats that I had made the week before. He would pick one and then get to writing. For me, it was a lot of sitting on the couch, coming back to record him, and then doing post-production afterward. There would be a lot of people in here, total party vibes. And not less work for me, necessarily, but a different kind of work. For Pinball II, specifically, I really went in on the post-production, mixing between the songs, and adding sound effects and fun stuff like that.

With WiFi, for the Heat Check series — Heat Check, Vol. 2 specifically — was similar to what Anysia and I did. He would come over, I would make a beat on the spot, and then he would record to it right then and there. But again, a simple process: I would make a beat, it's hard, he records, and then a little post-production, and that's it. 

For this project, even though we could and did finish songs in a single session, it felt more in-depth. We took a little more time when selecting sounds and rhythms, and once the vocals were recorded, we chose the vocal processing. Are we going to layer up the vocals for this one? Are we going to leave it kind of bare?  

So many of these songs feel influenced by particular genres of dance music, and yet there's only one song that cracks two minutes. You get into the vibe, and then you're immediately somewhere else. Why did you want to keep the songs short for this record?

TS: I just love short songs. I have two modes of listening: really digest a full album, or overload on a moment in a song that I love. I think of these songs on Purity the same way. We can get the point across quickly, and if you like it, there's a button to go listen to it again. At the end, we put a little story to it, which is that it's like you have a book, and each song is a page out of a journal or something. You read the one page, but you're not turning the page to a continuation of that song. A whole new song is next. There's the flipping of the pages too; we made a conscious decision not to have transitions between the songs the way that I did with the Pinball II, so that it feels like flip the page; next song. 

AK: To Tony’s point, I find that when I listen to a 45-minute, hour-long album, like The Internet's Purple Naked Ladies album, for instance — "Love Song 1" is like 45 seconds long, and that's my favorite song off the whole shit. I love an earworm. You can have an album that has three-minute, four-minute songs, but the short earworm will make you be like, "Oh, I gotta run that back." 

Follow Anysia Kym on Instagram. Follow Tony Seltzer on Instagram.

Text and Interview: Dash Lewis