Steve Void, born in The Netherlands as Stef van Vugt, started making music at the age of 15. It didn’t take long after that before he started investing his time in dance music as a fan and as an artist. In 2015, Steve scored his first hit with his adaptation of The Weeknd’s “Can’t Feel My Face”, which did over 7 million plays on Soundcloud in the first months alone. He didn’t stop there however, with all of his succeeding releases like his remixes of “Shades of Grey”, “Beat the Sunrise”, his original edit “Stronger” and “Burnin’ ” with Alex Adair, all reaching millions of plays each, totaling over 20 million plays on Soundcloud alone. Late 2016, Steve’s first official release “Chemistry” hit all stores, immediately charting at both Soundcloud and Spotify, followed up in 2017 by hits like “Never Been Better”, “West LA” and “We Won’t Leave You”.
When did you decide to start focusing on music seriously?
Ever since I was accepted into the Herman Brood Academy 4 years ago it has been 100% all about music. 2 years before that already as well but there were school tasks and other things keeping me away from fully doing this. So yeah from start to now 6 years and building.
How did you end up collaborating with TELYKast & Natalie Major on your latest single “Comfortable”?
So Natalie Major had this amazing vocal and me and TELYKast were trying to figure out what the perfect direction was for it and to get 100% out of the potential in there.
Can you tell us about the inspiration behind the record?
The track is a dance-pop record mainly focused around the guitar as the main element.
Do you think “Comfortable” would have the same feel if you had worked with a male vocalist?
Mmm, I’m personally a big fan of female vocalists, they overall carry a bit more emotion with them and I personally feel for some reason more for female vocals.
What does it mean to you to have creative control of your own label Strange Fruits?
Strange Fruits is made of all the things I was missing in the music industry from other labels. That’s why I decided to create a label based and focused on all the things I truly feel value. Main things are great social packages (artwork, socials to develop as an artist and your music and lyric videos), consistency in PR and results for all releases across the board, this is key to the growth of the label and artist. Artists know what they can expect and feel at home knowing their music will reach 100% of their potential.
Your take on “Can’t Feel My Face” got an extraordinarily positive reaction from fans a couple of years ago, how did that feel?
That was the start of the Steve Void brand and the first song. To see that gathered over 8 mil streams was just a reminder of that the direction was the right one to build further on.
https://soundcloud.com/stevevoidmusic/the-weeknd-x-ember-island-cant-feel-my-face-steve-void-remix
Are you thinking about releasing a remix of “Comfortable”?
Yes, the Steve Void songs, in general, is for me a showcase of and the progress of what I’m able of independent. With the song gathering over 600k streams in 2 weeks we are on the right track and with 2 remix packages dropping 6 and 13 April both consisting of 12 remixes and a total of 24 covering all musical genres. This Friday 30th March, for instance, is the first remix release and it’s a latin cover of the original song.
We noticed most of your productions have elements of Pop and commercially accessible EDM. Is this very much your sound?
Yes, Steve Void is all about figuring out a sound that appeals to a wide variety audience. It’s just fun to hear from different people in age that they like what you’re doing no matter if there 7 or 70, it suits a lot.
What advice would you offer any new producers emerging at the moment?
Mainly search for value in the market and be consistent with that. 1 release every 2 months is simply not enough anymore to get noticed in the beginning. You need to have a consistent PR game and music game going that it’s functioning like a well-oiled machine.
What are your main focuses for the rest of 2018?
2018 is gonna be the year I fully focus on building out my network, label and music catalogue. In 2017 I did the USA, Europe and Asia tour and that was so much fun. Although, I feel I got to a point where I truly get most of my satisfaction from building the network, label and my own music catalogue. 2018 will be mainly polishing and expending the well-oiled machine into one of the top 10 power players of 2019.