AUTOMATIC YES TO TELOS: AN INTERVIEW WITH ZEDD
Multi-platinum, Grammy Award-winning DJ Zedd has just released his much-anticipated album, Telos. This exciting project features collaborations with a diverse array of artists, including Remi Wolf, Bea Miller, Muse, and John Mayer. One standout track, "Dream Brother," offers a reimagined version of the classic by Jeff Buckley. Telos showcases Zedd’s musical roots beyond the EDM scene, highlighting his love for classical, jazz, pop, and rock music. This concept album is a true treat for music lovers who enjoy listening to vinyl from front to back and uncovering hidden details in each track. Personally, I’ve never gone out of my way to explore EDM, but this album has opened my eyes to the genre and deepened my appreciation for it. Zedd is all about the details, so it’s no surprise that the colorful stained glass window featured on the cover perfectly represents the multilayered journey this body of work takes you on.
We recently got to attend a press conference hosted by 1824 to learn about the creation of Telos and what can be expected on Zedd’s upcoming tour:
What was the timeline of creating this album?
It’s a little bit difficult to answer exactly when I started the album because I think the pandemic was the moment when I thought, "Well, this is the perfect opportunity to spend enough time to work on a project, and this would probably be the time when I would like to make an album." I was kind of convinced that I would be ready by 2020. The truth is that I felt very uninspired during the pandemic. And while the timeline was so perfect, the inspiration wasn’t there, and I made a bunch of amazing songs that are sitting on my hard drive, which are probably going to become somebody else’s songs at some point down the line. It just felt like I didn’t want to make an album just to make an album. If I made an album, just like my first two albums, I wanted it to be really special, and creatively, to make a really special record, you need to be in a very special state of mind. I canned everything besides “Dream Brother.” That was the only record that I thought had a soul that I wanted to continue. I kind of started over, and what I realized at some point was I was going to make a record for myself. It’s not going to be for the streams; it’s most certainly not going to be for the algorithm, and it’s probably not going to be for most of the people who have put me in the billion-number stream club. It’s going to be for people who love art—people who like sitting down and listening to music as a form of entertainment, and not having it play in the background while they do something else. The same way I listened to albums when I grew up and would sit down and actually listen to them. Some of my favorite records were the ones that I listened to first and didn’t enjoy immediately, but I trusted the artist. I listened to it more and realized it was more than I understood at once, and sometimes those things take time.
I’ve been making these songs throughout the years that felt too complex, or too musical, or too theatrical for the music that I have been releasing throughout the years. When I realized I was going to be making an album for myself, and just for myself, all those songs, all of a sudden, felt like they had a home. It dated all the way back to 2015, when I started “Out Of Time,” to nearly a decade ago. “Dream Brother” was just a few years after, when I started the idea and concept for it. A lot of the songs have been accumulating over a course of nearly a decade, but only in the form of a demo, or idea, or concept. Telos became the perfect playground for all of them to live and be themselves, and not feel like they have to fit in one way or another. It was probably the tail-end of 2020 when I started really focusing on the album, when I canned everything and kind of started over. So, 2020-2021 is probably when I really started focusing on working on this album.
Sometimes I make songs, and I feel like they need context. Everything in music is about context, and sometimes I feel like if I was to release a song like “Sona,” that is partially 7/4 or 7/8, however you want to count it, then if it has tempo changes, people will be misunderstanding the song and will think that I am moving in two different directions. Sometimes you need a larger canvas to tell a proper story. Sometimes I make music and let it be. I know one day some opportunity will arise, and it will make perfect sense, whether it is a movie or some sort of show or something. It’s not like good music goes to waste, but I don’t just like throwing good music out there for no reason, without any proper concept. Sometimes it’s good to write a bunch of ideas, and you know I have 30 or 40 songs that I wrote that are sitting there in piano form, waiting for the right opportunity for me to go back in and sort of make them into what I need them to be for whatever purpose they might be used for.
It’s been almost 10 years since your last album. How has your music-making process changed since then? Did that break help you explore new ideas?
The first difference is that I think, 10 years ago, I felt very insecure about working on the vocal parts of my songs, and I think particularly the lyrics. My English probably wasn’t as good as it is today; for those who don’t know, I was born in Russia and I grew up in Germany, so English is my third language. I didn’t move to America until I was 22 or something like that. I felt insecure, and I liked leaving that part of the vocals to somebody else, especially because I’m not the singer, and I still feel this way—I want the singer to feel that this is part of them. I don’t want it to feel like it’s all me, and the vocalist should have their own space to breathe. I think on Telos, I was very particular about the vocals, and I was way more involved, both lyrically and melodically, just throughout the whole concept of writing the vocals with the singers for most songs. Other than that, I think that my level of knowledge of producing music is much better than it used to be. Things take, counterintuitively, longer because I want them to be better, and I trial more. If I zoom out really far, I think my sound is a lot more mature and less showy, if I were to say. Knowing when less is more, knowing the right places to be able to explore—so just a little more mature, as I am as a human. I think that is reflected in the music.
What film or TV show do you see tracks from Telos being in?
I feel like certain songs have certain different cinematic connections. For example, my song with Muse—before Muse was on it, it was obviously instrumental at that point—always felt kind of like a space movie to me. I’ve always had that visual in my head, for some reason, of something inevitable about to happen, and you know it’s almost a countdown—you have this many minutes to live, and it’s this long build-up to almost being shot into space or something along those lines. Obviously, "Shanti" has a much more India-based visual in my head. I think a lot of them have very different cinematic tones to them, but they all have an overarching cinematic experience to me.
Between my friends, I am known as the guy who watches two movies a year, so I’m not really the biggest expert to answer exactly which movie or show it would be, but hopefully something grand and spacey.
What was it like working with the collaborators of this album?
It was honestly a huge honor because a lot of the collaborators on this album are artists that have inspired me to be who I am today as a musician. For instance, Muse—I used to be in a band, and Muse was our first song as a band that we played live in a concert. It was a cover of “Plug In Baby.” John Mayer has been a huge inspiration, and I’ve listened to John’s music for years. Jeff Buckley was an artist I grew up listening to, and I think music can be really, really good, but I think you have to put in work to get that good. So a lot of these artists are huge inspirations, and artists like Bea Miller made me be able to finish songs that I was stuck with for so long because she has a very versatile voice. She can be a Billie Eilish, and she can be an Adele at the same time in one voice. I’m so honored that I was allowed to work with these incredible artists who both inspire me and have pushed me to make better music.
How does Telos compare to Clarity and True Colors, your previous albums?
I think when I was writing Clarity, I didn’t know I was writing Clarity because I was sort of in the studio to help Lady Gaga write her album, and I had kind of reached the point where I made ten songs for Lady Gaga before we actually met, so I was kind of at a point where I had done more than enough and needed to wait. I was genuinely like, I might as well make music for myself at this point. So, Clarity started sort of by just making music and, halfway through, realizing, wait, I think I have an album, and sort of then filling the gaps. While I think the process of, hey, I think I’m making an album started way sooner with Telos, and also with the concept, Clarity didn’t really have a concept. Not that it makes the album any worse by any means, but I think the term "concept album" in this case applies way more because I knew I wanted to have an orchestra connecting everything, so that I have more flexibility to explore genres and still feel like it’s all connected because it all has this theatrical, overarching orchestra. Telos is more of a concept album than Clarity was. True Colors was probably somewhere in between. For True Colors, I really wanted each song to have a different flavor, and I think what I’m realizing now that I made three albums is that I tend to like the same things in each album. I want the first song to always open with an unconventional chord progression that is really based on a lot of major/minor changes that makes you uncertain exactly how to feel, which is kind of my sweet spot, harmonically speaking. Not sure if you should smile or cry. Then there are the same dips to me, like “Lost at Sea” and “Papercut,” and these kinds of songs; they all kind of have the same places in my albums. The last songs tend to be really long and kind of a journey—not on purpose—but I grew up listening to these albums that inspired me, and subconsciously I gravitate towards the same flow of an album. I think the difference is the processes. This album started with a core idea, and the other albums more so developed naturally.
Your album sounds like a live DJ set. Was this planned or incorporated in the process?
It’s something I knew I wanted to do right away. I think the reason why I haven’t been super happy with the world of albums in the last decade is that more and more, increasingly, albums to me felt like playlists. It felt like they were put together somewhere between the executive producer of an album and the label, in collaboration with DCPs, to see what would get the most streams. And that just feels not amazing, and it doesn’t give you any reason to listen to an album. Truthfully, not every album has the aspiration to be listened to in one swing. Some albums just want to give you 20 songs, choose your three favorite, put them on your playlists, and go. I’ve never been a fan of these albums, personally. No disrespect, it’s just a personal opinion.
I’ve loved albums that are journeys, and one way to create a journey or get someone to listen to the whole album front to back is by making it better than a playlist. What a playlist can’t do is intelligently morph into the next song. It can connect the songs, and playlists have gotten really good to where they have matched keys and BPMs and energy levels, but one thing you can do when you write an album is to sort of start mapping out, we had literal maps figuring out how to connect from one song to another while not forgetting that breaks are incredibly important, which is why the album has a few breaks. I think compared to a DJ set, even my DJ sets, I actually do put in a couple of full breaks. I think they are really important, and they make the context for the non-breaks. Always keeping in mind where the next song goes. Until you finish producing whichever song, you don’t really know exactly how you need to feel going into the next one. Keeping this in mind and sort of building your key structures and your tempo structures and your energy structures ahead of time is how I got to where I am, where I feel like you kind of go through one phase into the next phase into the last phase of the album.
in your career, Which show has been the most challenging for you and which has been the most fun?
I think this current tour is probably the most challenging in terms of show, not just because there is a moment where I play drums in the show, which is something I haven’t done in forever. Also, the more I learn about the aspect of making a good show, the higher my standards rise, and the more perfect I want certain things to look. The general rule of thumb for me is, if you can hear it, I want you to be able to see it. So, if there’s a snap, you should be able to show me where that snap is visualized. My music is way more complex than it used to be, so the programming of the lights becomes exponentially more complicated. So, I would say the programming for this tour has been excessive. I mean, it’s been a month-long process and multiple people working in shifts to be able to get things as good as I want them to be. The most fun has always been really hard to say. There is something really special about Omnia, where I currently am playing in Vegas, because I think it’s just one of the best, if not the best, clubs in the world. Everybody who has been there is blown away by the chandelier. It doesn’t matter if you’re behind me on stage or if you’re in the crowd; everybody is surrounded by this spaceship. When I play at Omnia, I get to enjoy as much of the show as everybody else, which makes it really fun for me.
What is your favorite part of the EDM community?
It’s basically around love and acceptance, and that alone is something that is not a given in today’s world, unfortunately. The world can use a lot of what the EDM scene stands for. When I think back to how I started out in this industry, it felt like everything was built around supporting each other, and I think that is so unique. I work a lot in the pop industry, and I feel like there is so much competition and kind of spite and hate between artists that I overhear when I work for other people. While I would make a remix, all my friends would play out the remix, and they would remix each other, and we would be on stage with one another, supporting each other. That felt so amazing. It felt like we were going through this together and we were going to make the scene bigger. I think that’s one of the most amazing parts about the EDM community. When I get to play shows, sometimes I just look around, and everybody is smiling and happy or crying in a good way, you know, happy tears. I think that’s such a beautiful feeling, and that doesn’t work this way for every genre. This is kind of a unique thing.
How did you work through your feeling of burnout after the album was completed?
There are a couple of lessons in my life that I have learned along the way that made me realize that burning yourself out isn’t worth it. It’s a really tricky balance because everybody has a different breaking point, and sometimes pushing yourself will get you to produce the best result. It’s a delicate balance, and you really have to listen to your body. Sometimes it’s easier to see these things in retrospect. I remember being in the studio for days, and I was genuinely scared to work on anything because I was scared of the feeling of disappointment if I spent a whole day working on something and felt like, “Eh, this isn’t good. I’m just going to delete and start over.” To the point where I spent multiple days in a row in a studio, quite literally doing anything I could to avoid actually working. Then I spent a day off—a proper day off—where I just walked around and looked at houses, and I love architecture, so this was like a great field trip, if you will. I came back to the studio the next day, and I was so productive, and it felt like, wow, I could have just spent one day off and avoided these days of anxiety and no productivity. My lesson learned was, wow, when you genuinely feel too anxious and feel like you’re overworked, maybe just take a breather and take a day off. Sometimes just getting your mind off of the work and into something completely different can give you a week of runway.
I think during this period of finishing Telos, the very obvious way that I was overworking myself was that I was losing so much weight, and not by choice. I couldn’t sleep at night. I would wake up thinking about the songs I was working on. As somebody who has really tried over the last couple of years to be really healthy and get on a very healthy diet, sleep schedule, workout routine—everything that I could do to be healthy—I think the last couple of months I really pushed myself probably to the limit or beyond. Not really proud of it, but I think there was so much at stake. I have put so much into making this happen that I had to fight my way through it. That being said, if there isn’t a real reason to work yourself to this point, I would not recommend it, and I haven’t really gotten to this point in a long time because I’ve experienced it in the past where I felt overworked and completely not creative at all; you’re kind of shooting yourself in the foot. Especially if you make music or any kind of art, if you have a job that you can’t just show up and do—if it’s not a labor-intensive job that requires your brain to be magical—and you overwork yourself, you’re just going to take away the magic, and you’re going to be left with nothing. Listen to your body. Mental health is so unbelievably important; I know it sounds cliché and everybody says it. Unless you’ve experienced the other side of this, it’s hard to imagine what you lose by not taking care of your mental well-being.
Who or what gave you the confidence to step outside of the box ?
This was a multiple-stage process. My inspirations lie far beyond EDM. I spent a good chunk of my time in classical music and sort of in funk and jazz. I spent a very long time—about nine years—in a rock, metal, hardcore band. I’ve listened to so much music outside of electronic music, so most of my inspiration isn’t electronic music. I love those things deeply, so for me, when you listen through all of my discography, you'll always find that the drum fills throughout all of my songs are typically playable on a drum kit. They are a little more musical than an electronic fill that is just meant to be like imaginary. My fills tend to be more playable because it feels like, as a drummer, I want them to be playable. It’s just my roots.
There wasn’t a plan to make an album that does this, but at some point, like I previously mentioned, I started all of these ideas that live in their own universe, but they are all very musical and theatrical. I got to the point where I couldn’t solve the equation of how to make these songs work in a traditional 4/4 or EDM way. I am mostly known for EDM, but as a human being, I love everything. I love all sorts of music, and ultimately, the true form of artistry isn’t to make what people expect you to make and what you are known for. I miss XYZ version of Zedd. Some people miss the metal version of Zedd. There are a lot of Zedds along the way. The true form of artistry is to do what you, as a human being who is the art and artist yourself, whatever that is you want to do, is what you do. Certain songs, I just couldn’t make them work in a traditional EDM sense, which was the point when I decided I’m just going to make this concept album, which is sort of an autobiography of everything that is important to me, everything that inspires me in the form of an element; whatever that would sound like is what it sounds like.
For example, “Sona,” which has different time signatures and Irish whistles and pipes and real drums and real guitars, but also features my signature electronic synths, I played that song while I was working on it for a bunch of friends, and I was like, “What genre is this?” Nobody could give me an answer. Nobody has a clue. “I don’t know. It’s kind of electronic, but it’s kind of rock. Kind of alternative.” That is just because what the song wanted to be. There wasn’t like, “I need to use my EDM kick, I need to use this.” It’s just, what does the song composition scream it wants to be, and whatever that is, it will be. The choices I then started making are where does the album sit, what function does it have, what song is before and after. In the case of “Sona,” while I was still in the writing process, I thought that kind of song would be awesome to lead into “Lucky,” which was a cornerstone of the album, so I wrote it in the key to perfectly transition into “Lucky.” Those were the decisions that I then made as sort of a utility to get the song to be functional within the album. Artistically speaking, it’s whatever BPM the song is, it is. Whatever time signature it is, it is.
Another good example is when I was in the studio with John Mayer, and we were working on “Automatic Yes.” There’s this little hook right before the chorus, that part is two or three BPMs slower than the rest of the song. A very minor change, and our thinking was it will give you just a little tiny fraction more anticipation. It will give just a little more anxiety, in a sense, and then you drop right back to where you were before. At some point, we were talking about if we would do this, and I was like, I love the idea because I know exactly what John was thinking. Like, we just let you sit for a fraction of a second longer, and you feel the difference, but as DJs on our grid, it’s kind of going to mess them up because that fraction is going to move you just off the grid enough for anyone who uses Sync or uses certain DJ systems that kind of put you in a grid. John was like, “Oh yeah. Let’s not do that. Let’s not mess with all DJs.” And I was like, but your point was valid; I understand your point. It’s cool, I like the idea, so we’ll do it. So the decision has always been for anything along the way, whatever the music wants, we do, no matter if it messes with DJs or messes with genres or people who are disappointed to not get bangers for forty minutes. That is the core of the album: whatever the music really needs, it will get.
How has your built up experience influenced the way you collaborate with other artissts?
If I can answer the question in an example, it would probably be “Out of Time.” It’s a song that I started writing about ten years ago, or nine years ago. I’m very precious about the chord progression. I think it’s one of the most me chord progressions that I have ever written, and at the time, when the song was still instrumental, the drop was very synth-heavy. I wrote this amazing counter melody; I love it. You can’t really hear it in the song. You might be able to hear it in the instrumental. You can definitely hear it in the stems. I wrote this amazing counter melody, and I sent it to my manager because I was so stoked in how it dances around the main melody. Then, as I was working towards finishing the song, Bea and I got into the studio, and we wrote the vocals. The vocals were kind of fighting with the melody that I was so damn proud of, and I feel like ten years ago, I would not have made room for it, and I would have probably changed the vocals to make room for the synth because I loved it so much. With time and maturity, I realized that the vocal gave me the real emotion that I was looking for. That amazing counter melody was just feeding my ego, which is cool, but it really isn’t what the song needs, and so I just made room for it. You will maybe hear it one day in an instrumental version or something like this, but I just noticed that zooming out and really looking at what a song needs is something I get better with throughout my years because I think you kind of lose your ego and you kind of look at the bigger picture of things. I think that’s one way I matured.
The other way I matured is, I think, to really let go of expectations and genuinely listen to your heart and your desires of what the music wants. And fight against the thing that you know will mess the algorithms up and not please everybody in the short term. I really strongly believe that, in the long term, all these decisions pay off, but it’s really hard in the moment to see it this way, so I think one way of maturing is zooming out even further and looking at the bigger picture of things.
If you had the opportunity to remake the album what would you change?
I always have this analogy; this is probably a silly answer, but it’s an honest one. I’m a huge gamer, and I remember playing Tomb Raider, I want to say three, and there was a bug. I fell onto a platform, and I saved, and I wasn’t able to get out, and because I couldn’t unsave, I had to start over. It was so deep into the game that I was like, no way! I can’t go through these emotions again. I think my answer for Telos would be, if I had to redo Telos, I never would. It’s really an emotional kind of outpouring and is really stressful, and to really get into this mindset where I lost a bunch of weight because I couldn’t sleep at night, because I was constantly thinking about the music I was making. If we rewind the time by three years, and somebody had my knowledge of the album and what it would take to get there, I probably would never do it again. Which is why the definition of Telos is the end. I kind of really sympathized with it because at the end of Telos, I was like, oh my god, I just poured everything into this. I have no idea if I have any energy left to make music after pouring myself out of it. Would I change anything about Telos? I wouldn’t. I love this album so much. I’ve lived with it for so long before it finally released; it’s completely surreal. I’ve never been more proud of any piece of music that I’ve made, so I would neither change a thing, nor would I ever do it again because it was too much work.
How does your video game collaborations like Valorant differ from your own stuff? What would be your dream collab?
The main difference was that I was sort of the vehicle that was supposed to drive to the end goal, and I wasn’t able to choose the destination as much. The goal was to create a unique skin that maintains all competitive integrity, especially for a game like Valorant; they were very clear that their main goal was that there is no advantage in my skin over another. Everything has to feel fair, which is honorable. At the same time, you want to push the envelope, and you want to create something different and something new and something exciting. I couldn’t believe how much work it was. You would never believe that it took nine months or ten months to do these few sounds. I also just learned a lot about game development in the process of doing this, which was really fun. Finding the balance between putting one foot over where you’re supposed to be, to be different but maintaining competitive integrity, was really challenging. I think Valorant, the whole dev team, was so incredible to work with and really inspiring to work with, and seeing some of the guys would be up until midnight creating new versions, even though they didn’t have to, made me really inspired and made me want to work harder for it.
In terms of goals, I really enjoyed doing this process. I think audio is an unbelievably important aspect of a video game that sometimes gets overlooked too much. I think it really guides our emotions as we play a game. Depending on the game, it can really kind of tell you when to be careful by the choice of the music in the background. There’s a lot of action that you can really produce with the music and not just the actual game. My goal or dream would be to one day be the lead audio designer for a long-form, like a larger video game. Not just a skin, but really sit down and design the acoustic DNA of a video game. Make it so that people really are attached, like people sometimes are to Final Fantasy and certain games where the music is really distinct. If somebody came to me and said, "Hey, we want you to score the next XYZ, and it’s going to take seven years," I would love to do that. I would love to go deep and create something really special for a video game because video games are my passion, and music is as well. I think that would be a dream of mine to score on a deeper level than just a little collaboration.
Telos means completion and accomplishment. What does finishing this album mean to you?
The level of quality of this album is something that I doubted myself about for many years, thinking I could accomplish it. It felt like an album where things are truly connected and not just kind of glued together, but actually musically connected, musically transposed from one key to another. It had to be in a way that wouldn’t really sound unobvious—something really cinematic, genre-blending. Kind of like a lot of records that I grew up listening to and really loving. I wasn’t sure I could really do it, and if I could, I didn’t know if I ever had the time to do it because a career is kind of a flight. The take-off takes so much fuel, and once you are up there, you have a little bit of flight time. Making an album like this takes more energy and flight time than you would want to spend when you’re up there. Just strictly commercially speaking, I didn’t know if I would be able to take as much time as I personally would need, as somebody who takes a lot of time processing the music that I make. The moment I decided this isn’t going to be a commercial album for everybody—this is going to be a work of art that, 20 years from now, all reviews would change their numbers because people might not have spent the time it takes to really dissect what’s in it, they will all bump the numbers up for the ones who didn’t immediately spend the time listening to it. I decided to make that type of album, and I took that time, and I’m really proud of it. That was the goal and completion aspect that is all I wanted, and I can’t believe I finally did it. So Telos, really in that regard, is a personal accomplishment—a goal that I had reached that I wasn’t sure I could reach.
A heartfelt thank you to Zedd for being so genuine. It was truly inspiring to witness the depth of his passion for his craft and the enthusiasm he brings to this project. To keep up with Zedd’s tour and releases follow him on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/zedd/?hl=en
Thank you so much to 1824 for this opportunity. To learn more about their company follow them on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/1824/?hl=en
