Sound Design with evolsleep/evolsound

For this very first episode of 2025, I sat down with evolsleep, a Russian-born, Melbourne-based sound designer and music producer, to discuss his journey of moving to Melbourne and building a successful music business, evolsound. With clients like Adidas, Champion, Sennheiser and Volvo, you've probably heard his work already. Shortly after his latest release 'Kinda regards', over coffee in Fitzroy, I dug deeper to find out how he started his audio branding business, how he avoids writer's block, and how he balances music business vs his own music. If you ever wondered how one becomes a sound designer or lands a gig to do sound fx for movies, listen this episode!

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Transcript

Intro

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Okay. Uh after 15 minutes into recording this podcast, I realized that I accidentally stopped recording. You're listening to Serial Music Talks Podcast. I'm your host, Diva a.k. Lutia, and you're here to listen to some really honest conversations I have with Melbourne musicians, music producers, sound designers about breaking into new markets, music hostile, imposter syndrome, writer's block, posting on social media, ah, a lot of struggles. We're just gonna go again. So for this very first episode, I sat down with Alex, aka Evel Sound, who is a Russian-born, Melbourne-based uh musician, sound designer, uh, and a film composer to talk about uh his incredibly successful uh audio branding business called Evel Sound, but also to talk about his uh ways of avoiding uh writer's block, how he balances time between his uh own creating his own music and creating uh sound designs for clients. And of course we did that in the most busiest coffee shop in Fitzerry North. Hi, Alex, and sorry. Hi, Lysia. Oh my goodness, please forgive me.

SPEAKER_00 1:41

That's totally fine.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

We know what we want to talk about. Coming all the way from Russia, now living in North Melbourne, house, why? Why Melbourne? Why Australia?

SPEAKER_00 1:54

Well, that's a good one. I always wanted to experience life uh abroad for like more than like two-week holiday, and I also wanted to to combine like as we may say in Russia, I'm I'm not sure how to correctly translate it to English, like combine good with efficient, like a pleasure with efficient stuff. Uh and so I enrolled to study at JMC Academy on the engineering and music production. But before that, I was choosing actually between three countries: Australia, Netherlands, and Sweden. I really love Sweden, but the thing there was that I don't know Swedish language and the program was in Swedish. And with Netherlands, there was that they didn't really help with the student business. And Australia was relatively sane prices to Netherlands and to Sweden, and I thought like what would be another chance to end up in Melbourne and Australia? So here I am.

SPEAKER_02 3:00

So yeah, you've been here for like four years. Uh how would you say it was like an overall experience of coming to Melbourne as a you know, let's let's give it from a perspective of like someone who as a musician, as someone who wants to do their own thing and like does not work in a 9 to 5 job. How was it?

SPEAKER_00 3:20

Did you find friends quickly or I did find friends and I I found a lot of friends, but I would say like in 2019, first time I came here, I didn't like do my music much back in that time, and I didn't work much in uh music and uh sound design. So I was like still learning and also like wanted this study to kind of give me a door to the industry. But the overall experience I loved Melbourne from day one. I'm originally from smaller, uh it's kind of like relatively small city in Walter. Well, what's relatively small in Russia? It's 300,000.

SPEAKER_02 4:05

That's big. That's like the third biggest uh city in Croatia.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

I mean yeah, like now I I would say I would even prefer living somewhere in a smaller place. But yeah, I used to live in my hometown called Surbut there until 18. Then after I finished school, uh we moved to my parents to Moscow. I can't say that I'm a big Moscow fan because that's really a huge city. That's like metropolis. And Melbourne felt a perfect balance between like chill and also the city vibe. So I love Melbourne.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

Yeah, I love it too.

SPEAKER_00 4:46

So overall experience and the lifestyle in Melbourne in Australia, I love it. But you said that you know it's been like maybe a year, like in the last year or two, that you started to feel like you're gaining momentum music-wise here in Australia or music-wise, like still I wouldn't say that because especially like with my own music, I just started to finish tracks and posted literally like last year, second part of last year. But with uh work, with commercial work, it's been since I got back in 2022. I started to kind of like find my way freelancing in that area. That was tough, but I would say overall 2024 was pretty good for both.

SPEAKER_02 5:38

Okay. But you did say like, you know, you came here because you wanted you're seeking for something that's like efficient but also feels good, I guess. Like I we also have a saying in creation, I don't know, but it's sort of like for me it's the best translation is like to hit two flies with one hit. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 5:57

Yeah, we have like the same uh with rabbits. Two rabbits. Rabbits, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:03

Okay, yeah, we have flies. But what I wanted to say is like it feels like you do a hot you you do hustle while I was doing the snooping around to see uh the work that you've been doing lately and like before and etc. It seems like first of all, uh Evil Sound, your music business, your like commercial music business, sound design, audio branding, how you call it as well. It's crazy successful. Like when I see it, like you have some really impressive clients, like I saw Volvo, I saw Zennheiser, I saw I don't know if I saw Champion or like so how? Because now you you said that oh you know there's not much traction, I just started, blah blah blah, but then I go on your website and it's like whoa.

SPEAKER_00 6:52

Tell me, uh well, yeah, like Evel Sound began I'd say like four years ago now, almost four years ago, and it pretty much evolved from my freelance work. And while I uh when I got back uh to Russia in 2020 because of COVID, it was much easier to stay in Russia during that time than in Melbourne. Uh I did I started a sound design course there, and in parallel I started to like do my own work, and that basically started out as I found on Instagram small animations, 3D art of different 3D artists, and I love that kind of stuff. And they didn't have any sound at all. It was just like silent animation. Yeah, but that was like 2020, it wasn't that common to have, especially custom and bespoke sound back then. And I just started to practice my like skills and different like also like music sketches in different genres, uh and I started to post it online and send to these 3D artists, and they were just blown away that there can be actual sound there. And so like once they started to get their paid gigs, paid commercial gigs, they started to bring me on board. And I remember like once I even I just like spent like 10 bucks for um for an Instagram ad. I saw like 10 bucks for one of my posts to make it advertising, showing to other people. And I I think I put like randomly Netherlands, like Sweden, and like I don't remember this, third country for no reason at all. And from that ads, uh the director from Amsterdam reached out to me with pretty big projects for uh two bicycle campaigns just because he's seen like this advertising and he liked the sound, and we started to work together since then, and that I would say like probably the main like impulse from it never happened again. I tried a couple of uh more like it's it never happened again.

SPEAKER_02 9:23

Tell me what was the ad?

SPEAKER_00 9:25

What was the ad? It was just like an animation. I did like it was it didn't have sound, I didn't the sound, and I just posted it online and that's it.

SPEAKER_02 9:35

It wasn't even like an ad saying hey.

SPEAKER_00 9:38

No, no, no, that's just like visuals and we can no call to action, Alex.

SPEAKER_02 9:42

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

Exactly. I didn't think about that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:45

Oh wow, bravo, okay.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

Yeah, and that's I guess a bit of luck.

SPEAKER_02 9:50

Uh yeah, I sort of don't don't dis attribute anything to luck, but that was, you know, it seemed like you were quite determined to start with sound design.

From Film to Commercial Audio Branding

SPEAKER_00 9:59

Yeah, I did a lot of like this like fashion projects back then. And then eventually I didn't even think of it evolving evolving to Apple Sound as what you can see now. I didn't even think I was just that was kind of like meditation to me because I usually even my music came out, usually come out from visuals. I refer to visuals and it's much easier for me to write my own music.

SPEAKER_02 10:27

Okay, okay, this is this is also on my list of questions. The sound design.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

I used to while I was in Russia a couple of years, I got a chance to um join the team of film product uh film audio film cross-production, and they're pretty big in Russia. They do like feature films, series, and yeah, I did some sound design there.

SPEAKER_02 10:52

Do you still do it?

SPEAKER_00 10:53

Do you want to do it more or like uh I do I don't work with feature films much recently because like and also like with that team after the war began with Ukraine, everyone like flew away of the team to different countries. And like here I would say like I'm more I do short feels sometimes, but not features much.

SPEAKER_02 11:17

Okay. Well I guess it's just like it seems like it's a bit different.

SPEAKER_00 11:21

It's a bit different approach, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:22

It's from commercial.

SPEAKER_00 11:24

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's I would say like it require also like more people, it requires a team. We have, for example, a team of six of us doing specific tasks, each one.

evolsleep - The Darker Personal Project

SPEAKER_02 11:35

I also think I want to mention this uh how I how I got to know Alex through Ableton User Music Group. Shout out to them, to Ryan Powder League, who is uh leading the group. It's um an amazing group. At least I'm I'm so I'm so happy that I found that group because I know we can just nerd out of kicks, sidechains, and I don't know. I I just got I just I I cannot wait the next meetup.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

I feel the same. Yeah, okay and it's for you guys. And it's for you.

SPEAKER_02 12:10

So yeah, if you're in Melbourne and you're into even if you're not into Ableton, you can be into Logic Pro. If you're into music composition or uh production of any sorts, just um just Google it and you'll find it. But this is not about the Ableton uh music group, but that's where I so on the last meetup there's always this section about where people from the community um play play their songs for like to get some uh feedback. And um Evil Sleep a song came up and I was like as soon as I heard it, I was like, whoa, what is this? This is not from Melbourne. I actually felt like I know this can't be from Melbourne because it was so dark. And I always since I moved to Melbourne, I just feel like everything is so happy, bright, which is look, that's the reason why we moved from our countries to here. But we still like dark stuff. Yeah, I prefer dark, so yeah, I've heard that your song, and I was like, boom, I have to reach out to this guy and see him what is this, what is this? And then I discover Evil Sound and Ev's, you know. But Evil Sleep is your music project, right? So Evil Sound is like money, and it's still fun, but it's yeah, like it's I'm I'm just joking, sorry. Yeah, like it's more like how do you approach it? Because it's all you, it's all your creation. So, how is like the balance between doing music and doing sound design?

SPEAKER_00 13:43

So that's a tricky question because I still try to find that balance. Uh and actually the thing with that track you've heard initially it was a project for 3D animation company I work with. Uh they were doing their like short process reel of their like behind the scenes stuff uh of our recent project. And they asked me to do like a 20 to 30 second bespoke uh soundtrack, and I came up with pretty much what you heard. And then I went while I finished it, I was like, wow, that's maybe that's a bit of overkill just for uh the production reel, and I can extend it to full track. And then uh literally like a week ahead was that's Ableton uh Ableton music group Melbourne event. I was like, okay, that's my goal to finish it to the full track. I did it like in two days or so. And yeah, so I would say answering your question with the balance, and also like I found out those animations. I did uh like small music sketches even like three, four years ago. That's pretty much my music, and now I just try uh start to extend it to full tracks. So I would say the lines are really blurred.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 15:13

Yeah. But yeah, with like more like commercial music and sound design. I don't know, I usually don't think much about that. I wouldn't say I have any like obstacles so finishing if working to the brief or something like that.

SPEAKER_02 15:36

I'm not sure if that's good or bad, but I guess it's sort of I sometimes wonder it's something that we want. You know, we want to like a lot of you know, a lot of people that I talk to, a lot of musicians or or even artists in general, they all have this I wanna do art full time. But then, you know, some of the art is sort of you know more for money, like you know, still keeping your integrity, not in a bad way, right? Yet some of them is just something for yourself. And it's really easy to then the the boo the line is blurred.

SPEAKER_00 16:16

Yeah, in a way, but also like for example with Evel Sounds especially with like more commercial work, I would say time-wise I spent way less time doing the actual like music or sound design than everything else. Like you know, the communication, like emails, meetings, stuff like that.

SPEAKER_02 16:40

It's entrepreneurial stuff.

SPEAKER_00 16:41

Yeah, and I prefer not to do that honestly, because that's n I hope we will swim to that some somehow. Yeah, that's another thing, like it's really hard for me to delegate something. Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:56

Okay, another another probably tricky question, like do you want to have everything in control?

SPEAKER_00 17:05

I I'd say like recently I try to let it go a bit more because I just realized that I can't do everything at once, and like if I would like to do like this stuff, like I will sound commercial and my own music, and I'm also like really into multimedia art installations. I try and like dig myself into visuals as well a bit. And we have only 24 hours a day, everyone, but yeah. That's a lot of stuff behind that that I prefer not to do myself, but I just needed to do that at some point to get there.

SPEAKER_02 17:49

It's funny because like when we met today, when we sat down, we actually the first thing was like, Oh, you know, how was your January? How was the break? And then you know, like you you've been trying to have a break, I I'm struggling to take a break. I I think many people who are freelancing in a way, right? Like or having their own business, it's a bit hard to say, oh okay, so now I'm gonna stop working.

SPEAKER_00 18:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:17

And I don't know about you, but like, you know, when someone asks you what do you do in your free time, how do you respond?

SPEAKER_00 18:25

That's the thing, I guess I don't really consider work as work because after all I think I'm happy to do the thing I love to do, like even like commercial projects. I I can I know some people, for example, especially I know musicians who like released a song like five years ago and now they're looking back at this song and oh what what that crap was. I'm pretty much like looking at any project I did like years ago and like wow that's a masterpiece. No, no, not like that, probably, but I'm like there's no like work that I don't like. I know that it's all like experience. So and also like yeah, I guess I'm lucky that I don't feel like I'm really working and while I'm working, if you know what I mean. Yeah, yeah, no, maybe only the time when I need to send emails.

SPEAKER_02 19:26

No, okay. It's good that you've mentioned that because now we're gonna talk about the things that you hate. So let's say sending emails hustling, you know, you have to sell your like I uh these all these money, like all these words seem a bit like harsh, but I do feel you know the reality is when you when you release music you have to promote it. Well you don't have to, but if you want others to hear it, you really sort of need to, right? And then uh the second thing is you have to do social media, right? Apart from sending emails and doing uh entrepreneurial stuff, how do you feel about social media?

SPEAKER_00 20:11

Well that's another thing I would love to not to do for evil sleep and evil sound for both. Obviously, but I guess for evil sound it's easier because like usually I post there just like the projects and that's it. But it's still like you need to set up the time, you need to be consistent. For example, in 2023, like mid-2023 to like mid-2024, I almost posted nothing, and then I realized like I need to do that. But for music for Aerosleep, for example, I you may notice I don't have much music out there yet. But it's a lot of like photography, like personal like videos. I like just shooting myself videos, even like some long board dancing I used to do back in the days.

SPEAKER_02 21:04

I saw some video, like some photos on your Instagram, but I actually don't know what that is.

SPEAKER_00 21:11

That's like imagine skateboard, but twice bigger, and you can dance at them. You still do it occasionally, yeah. I did it a lot back in the days, but now I guess I got older and that's it. For example, I did I released a couple of tracks recently. I didn't do any of like promotion, I just released it because I had a lot of struggles throughout like past I will say like 10 years, 15 years with my own music. I had like some inner blocks that prevented me just from finishing tracks. And now I feel like those blocks are gone and I just like want to release it, and then later, maybe when I will have like like Five to ten tracks. I I would think like what I'm gonna do with that, maybe like send to labels or stuff. But yeah, unfortunately, now I feel you need to be really active on social media. I can't cause I can say myself is actually that much that I see a lot of people on TikTok, musicians, reels, they just like every day posting even like some not really related to their music stuff, but just like some explainers or like walkthrough of their studio. I don't like I feel it's not my thing. I want not to do this. I go with the floor.

SPEAKER_02 22:42

I I've been like asking other people this question, other artists, and no one seems to be liking it, but it's like the most interesting thing, I guess, and not necessarily helpful, is that you know you have content. You actually have uh you know like music, you you do sound design, you have you don't you don't have to like think what you're gonna post, right? You are creating the whole day, yet you seem to have it the hardest to post something. It feels a bit absurd in a way, like okay, so you create all this content the entire day, but then it's really you really struggle to post any content, or like, oh what should I post right now on the social media? And I feel like it's a curse.

SPEAKER_00 23:30

Yeah, I can totally relate. I had I still have this thing with my personal account. I will sleep. Uh with the content I post there, I care I still like kind of like carefully thinking what I would post next, what I should or shouldn't. But apart from that, I tend these days not overthinking much because that's what I would say. Like a lot of this stuff comes from overthinking. Yeah. In the very worst scenario, for example, like tomorrow people will forget about you, about like if you meet someone or like you're trying to uh how to say like to make an impression by either like personal interaction or like your posts or your content. Some people will just forget about it instantly, they just like scroll down, but at some point you will receive some people who would actually enjoy it. And for example, I had like weird weird to me situations when I got some followers. Five, six years ago. I didn't do music back then, and they were just like following me because of my photography, maybe maybe longboard dancing or something like that. And they're still like following and writing me messages that they're kind of like following my life in a way. And yeah, and they started to listen to music and we're like interacting, and but I used to think like, oh, what should people think about that? What should like my friends or people I know think about that? I probably shouldn't do that much overthinking, I should just cause. Yes. What I found out usually people who overthink they would have like a tougher route to get somewhere they want again just because of this like mental block, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:26

I think it was actually really uh a good move for you then to just like if you had all those blocks.

The 10-Year Block - Perfectionism Killed the Music

SPEAKER_00 25:34

Same with music, with my music as well.

SPEAKER_02 25:36

How did this block happen? So you you you just had like a lot of unfinished songs. What was the situation?

SPEAKER_00 25:43

Not even that. Um I would say like I started uh like mu let's call it like started music when I was like school age, I started playing guitar. And sorry, have you uh had a formal education or no no also and it wasn't like I started uh JMC here. Okay. Back in the days, like when I just graduated from school in 2010, uh we didn't have much of like open creative education in Russia. It wasn't considered as understandable path after school. And that's what basically my parents told me like you need to get an understandable degree first and then do what you want. So my first degree is logistics.

SPEAKER_02 26:27

Logistics?

SPEAKER_00 26:28

Yeah, I even worked in that area like logistics, machine management, that kind of stuff. Yeah, that's understandable degree.

SPEAKER_02 26:39

So funny the word understandable degree, okay.

SPEAKER_00 26:42

Yeah, that's how we call it in Russia. And but the thing with music, I was always into music since school. Like I was playing guitar in metal bands, cover songs and stuff like that. And then I in 2011 I found out Skrillex and got into electronic music. I found out that uh Skrillex uh use used Ableton and all the like massive synthesizer and stuff like that. So I pretty much like torrented all the stuff. I'm from Russia, guys.

SPEAKER_02 27:14

So I don't know if we can put this on Spotify or whatever, I have to check. Sorry.

SPEAKER_00 27:22

But yeah, and but back in this stuff, while I wasn't really educated in like music, how it works, how the how it actually works, I had a thought in mind that I should make every sound from scratch. Like kick drum, uh uh snare, synth, whatever sound there is in music, I should make it from scratch. And it stopped me for a decade from finishing songs because I tried to make everything from scratch. It didn't sound good. I mean some something sounded well, something not. That's probably helped me a bit to understand like synthesis because I learned a bit about that throughout this call project. It's a sound synthesis and like analog synthesis, is that what you like synthesis, uh like sound synthesis, yeah. For example, again like Skrillex use massive, that's uh synthesizer, native instruments massive. Uh I just read out that in the article, and there was a guy on YouTube that time, there wasn't many YouTube tutorials back then, but all that were out, they were pretty good. Sadovic production, he did pretty good course on massive massive synthesizer. I went through his course. I know this software now really well because of that, but again, like it was a block for me to finish the music because I had this I don't know why I thought like every sound should be made from scratch. And then only in like 2020, pretty much 2021, once I started to do this like project to visuals, to animation, I realized that well everyone uses samples, presets, and you can just like use whatever you have and wow, but it makes makes sense why you you know you started with sound effects and so the design, you know, when you were like thinking that every sound Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I don't actually I don't record myself much of my my own sounds. I usually stick with combining or like layering uh the system. Now I guess like just because that previous blogs taught me for like a decade from finishing my music, for example, I just stick with the shortcut and also like that I know that would work for me.

SPEAKER_02 29:47

But wow, that was a huge block.

SPEAKER_00 29:50

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now I don't even care if I would use like, you know, like some priests may have like a already built-in analogic sequence.

Workflow, Melodies First

SPEAKER_02 30:00

Yeah, I I was wondering uh also uh just just to get closer to the end of this conversation. The first thing that I wanted to ask you, like if there's a routine that you have, like is you know, I've been talking with some artists, some of them, you know, they pretend that this is work like any other, and then they're in studio from nine to five. Do you have a like a home studio?

SPEAKER_00 30:21

Do you have some rules about when do you do music or I do have full studio, but I don't have any rules, especially for my own music. But I do have a template usually that I stick to. It's pretty complex people, like if somewhat would open my project, probably only I would understand what's going on. But I I set it up only last year and would just say that you're organized in a way.

SPEAKER_01 30:51

Okay, yeah, I'm just curious, like in a way.

SPEAKER_00 30:53

Yeah, I because before, like, for example, making that kind of template, I was kind of disorganized with music, but I feel after I did that it helped me to finish more tracks and to be more confident about the stuff and to do stuff faster. With music in general, I don't have usually like if that's my music, if that's not a remix, I usually like stick with writing my melody or like a pad first and then some uh drums.

SPEAKER_02 31:27

That's what I was curious about. So you start with the because you mentioned that you do a lot of music start from the visuals. So is that still something, let's say you want to write a new song today? Yeah. Is that how you approach it? What what comes first?

SPEAKER_00 31:43

In terms of music, usually pads or like melody. If that's a remix, like when I I usually like to do some fun remixes as well. I just like extract vocals and usually that techno remixes, and there I just go like four to the floor, then high-heads. It's pretty much the track is done. And yeah, some occasional scenes or like pets, but with any other project, usually melody, melodic stuff.

SPEAKER_02 32:13

Okay, I have a few really quick questions to end with. I can remember four. Let's do five quick questions and then we're gonna uh end this conversation. First one, favorite doll plug-in.

SPEAKER_00 32:35

Oh, I I actually I was thinking about that because I was knowing that's coming. But I can't name one. Probably there's gonna be Gatekeeper and OCT. And oh Chichi.

SPEAKER_02 32:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 32:53

Multi-band.

SPEAKER_02 32:54

Okay, we'll put that in the newsletter. Um uh favorite film score.

SPEAKER_00 33:00

Dark series uh with Ben Frost soundtrack. Oh yeah, I love that too. Yeah, that's my favorite series. It's a really good TV show. And I would name another one Arrival uh Johan Johansen.

SPEAKER_02 33:15

That's a movie, right? Yeah, yeah, okay. Johann Johansen. Okay, I'll we'll put that in the newsletter as well. Uh favorite Melbourne-based musician or music or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 33:28

I would say Alpha Wolf. That's a m yeah, that's a metal band, Alpha Wolf. They were originally from Tasmania, but they moved to Melbourne Gates. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:39

I will accept this.

SPEAKER_00 33:40

And Jiva.

SPEAKER_02 33:42

Big hype. Most inspiring piece of writing. It can be a book a quote.

SPEAKER_00 33:49

When life leaves us blind, love keeps us kind. Chester Bennington, The Messenger, the song, Lincoln Park song.

SPEAKER_02 33:59

Hey, wow, you're tall of surprise. I will listen to this song on my way home. The best and the last question, the best underrated or unknown music you think everyone should hear?

SPEAKER_00 34:15

I would say rival console and lore, maybe. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:23

I would add that. I would I would add that if you haven't had added. Yeah, I think that's it. Thanks for taking the time to meet me on this nice day.

SPEAKER_01 34:35

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_02 34:37

Yeah, this was really inspiring and truly. And now I'm gonna have some new music and plugins if they're not too expensive. Thanks for doing this. Thanks so much.