The UK producer, composer and electronic artist offers insight into releasing music exclusively on SoundCloud, building community and removing pressure from the creative process.
Welcome to Sound Advice, the weekly interview series spotlighting artists’ creative process and their SoundCloud journey. We’ll get the inside knowledge straight from the source on how musicians, producers and creatives are leaning into the many facets of Next Pro to reach their audience and grow their careers.
Hailing from a small village in England, Aaron Hibell is a producer, composer and artist who pulls from a wide range of influences to craft his distinctive sound, which blends orchestral productions with electronic music. Growing up roughly three hours north of London, during the pandemic, Aaron began performing in front of an abandoned monastery in Norfolk and uploaded videos from these sets on TikTok, an endeavor that helped lay the foundation for his burgeoning artist career. In tandem with building a rapidly growing community on social media, Aaron coined his ‘Monastery of Sound’ series, dropping his debut mixtape in 2021 exclusively on SoundCloud. Using the series as a vehicle to develop his signature style and expand his artistry, Aaron continues to hone his craft and take fans along for the ride.
With three installments of the ‘Monastery of Sound’ mixtape series under his belt, Aaron has gone on to release two EPs, 2023’s ‘Twilight Zone’ and 2024’s ‘Astral Projection,’ as well as collaborated with Scottish award-winning composer Lorne Balfe on the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack for the 2023 film, ‘Tetris.’ In addition to playing landmark gigs such as Boiler Room London (alongside French techno and hard trance DJ, Trym) and performing a live orchestral set of his track “ghost” at the famed Hallgrimskirkja church in Iceland (alongside Swedish rapper Daniel Adams-Ray, with the track co-written by the late producer Avicii), Aaron has also been tapped for official remixes for artists such as Jamie Irrepressible and OVO’s Naomi Sharon. Ahead of releasing his forthcoming debut full-length album, Aaron caught up with us to talk more about how he has utilized SoundCloud to keep his audience engaged, connect with other DJs and experiment with creating different versions of his tracks.
Can you take us through the process of putting out your ‘Monastery of Sound’ mixtape series to releasing EPs and now working on an album? What do you see as the differences, if any, between mixtapes, EPs and albums?
Mixtapes are generally a collection of cool things I’ve been working on, like edits or DJ tracks. I think EPs and albums are more intentional, and mixtapes are more raw. With the ‘Monastery of Sound’ mixtapes, I hadn’t really posted anything on social media up until the summer of 2021 when I went to record some videos by the beach. My mom suggested I film at this old abandoned monastery and I started posting on TikTok and connecting with the audience that I have today. In the beginning, TikTok was the only place I started to get traction. I had developed a bit of buzz [on TikTok] and everyone wanted to hear these tracks but they didn’t have anywhere to go listen to them. Eventually, I decided to drop on SoundCloud. There was a lot of anticipation, and from then on, I’ve had really good listenership and a really good fanbase on SoundCloud. I’ve now done three mixtapes [as part of the series] and they all have slightly different sounds.
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I released my first EP last autumn, called ‘Twilight Zone,’ and then followed that with ‘Astral Projection.’ ‘Twilight Zone’ was a lot more uptempo, trance tracks and ‘Astral Projection’ gave insight into my more orchestral, ambient, ethereal sound. I’ve also got a harder, clubby EP in the works. I like giving snapshots into my influences and I think EPs are a really nice way to do that. The EPs were a glimpse into different aspects of my sound leading up to the album, which will be a combination of both, and will have a narrative to it, start to finish. [For the album], I had a few flagpole tracks where it was like, these feel really big, and then it was easy to tie it together with other tracks I had that kept popping up that [I felt] fit the narrative.
What is the narrative or concept you’re exploring with your upcoming album?
The narrative is basically the subject, this person, whoever it is, is on a journey that follows a toxic love story at the start of the album and ends up in the realization that you don’t need someone else to complete you. It’s about realizing that you can stand on your own two feet without necessarily needing someone else to do that. The album starts off with two people meeting and that excitement, that uncertainty. Then you delve further into this obsession with this person and love, but then there’s a turn in the relationship and things are bad. You’re longing for them but then you come to this realization in your head that you no longer need that and the fulfillment you’re looking for has been within you all along. It will take you on a full journey through different moods and feelings.
What inspired you to do a daily one-hour track challenge and how has it helped guide your creative process?
Last year, I was in a bit of a rut creatively, and I saw something about how [to be creative] you need to be in almost a state of play and a state of flow, and you can’t be too caught up in the [mindset of] “this needs to be the best thing I’ve ever made.” After having released quite a few successful things, I felt a bit of pressure to make things that were “even better,” so I didn’t make anything good for a while. So this one-hour track challenge was a way for me to tap into being creative for an hour each day where it doesn’t actually matter how good it is or even if it’s terrible, because the next day, I would do another one. When you take the pressure off of your creativity, you realize you can play freely and you just make whatever you want, whatever comes out of you. I urge people to be more experimental. We’ve already got enough people making the same type of music, so it’s always refreshing when you hear something new and something different.
How has SoundCloud played a role in helping bring the one-hour track challenge to life and help you engage your audience?
I started making a lot of ideas and I put them into a SoundCloud playlist. I would put them up on Instagram and every week I’d give out a few more links to the playlist. Eventually people heard a few different tracks and [gave feedback] on which to release. Three of the tracks in my last EP were from the one-hour track challenge and ended up coming out officially. I think people like being involved in a journey and a story, and I think if you do things in real time, people are like, “Oh, my God, this is happening, right now. He’s making this track right now, in an hour, and then he’s gonna go play it at the gig on Friday.” It’s very engaging when you can do things like that.
Learn more about sharing private playlists on SoundCloud.
Do you like to experiment with different versions of the same track, where they may not make it onto a final release but they make sense on SoundCloud?
Absolutely. SoundCloud is a good place for diving into a bit more context on an artist, and is a good place to upload exclusive content and alternate versions. I think the social media aspect of SoundCloud makes it feel very engaging and more like social media, as opposed to just a DSP. You can come on and engage with your fan base in a way that you can’t on other platforms. I’ve connected with a lot of DJs through DMs and sent them tracks. I connected with Sara Landry on SoundCloud, for example, and sent her some music. We ended up getting in the studio together and working on some ideas when she came to London. A lot of cool things can come just from sending someone a DM. It’s a great place for DJs and communities to connect.
How to get the most out of the DM feature on SoundCloud.
How do you use SoundCloud when it comes to organizing music or your release schedule?
SoundCloud is literally — I’m not just saying this — my go-to in planning out releases and trying out different artwork and seeing what looks good. My manager is always swapping out artwork and saying, “Okay, how does this look in the context of an album?” I like how you can customize the artwork and there’s a visual aspect to it; it’s nice to listen to something with an image in mind. It’s really easy to swap tracks in and just get a feel for how things are gonna look on all streaming services. It’s also interesting as well, when making different EPs [because] you see the different orders of things. It’s really a useful tool.
Learn more about best practices for adding or changing artwork on SoundCloud.
What is the best piece of advice you’d like to offer to fellow artists?
Whatever you do, don’t compare yourself to other people. You’re on your path; everyone’s on their own path and everyone’s path is going to be different. The most important thing is that you improve yourself, and that you’re better than yesterday. It can be very distracting when you’re looking closely at other people and it gives you a lot of anxiety as an artist. Everyone portrays different things on social media so you don’t know all the struggles people are going through as well. I think giving advice is really tough because it really depends on what stage you are as an artist. I’d say in the early days, it’s important to observe a lot of what people are doing and really take it all in. But when you have something that starts working [for you], you need to put blinders on and just go for it and work on being a better version of yourself than the day before.
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