We caught up with the brilliant and insightful SUB NEON a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

SUB, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Do you wish you had waited to pursue your creative career or do you wish you had started sooner?

Yeah I do. I got the bug early on! I’ve been a musician since I was 14, when I got my first guitar. I started out with a burning desire to stand on stage and shred in a band in front of hundreds of people but when I hit college, in my small town, I was approached to try out in a band as the singer. Apart from standing in front of a mirror at home with a hairbrush in my hand, I’d nevr considered fronting a band.

And despite some early nerves it went really well and I progressed through 3 or 4 bands in the UK, ending up with a metal band called SubforM, and we played some pretty crazy shows.

But then it all stopped, The band broke up, I moved to London and life got in the way. There was no time left for music

It took me a lot of years to figure out that over that period, I had lost an important piece of myself. I then decided to get it back. I have always been a multi genre music fan and I hjad previously experimented with synths, samples and loops, so I threw myself into building SUB NEON, my first solo project and I’ve never looked back.

So to the question of do I wish I should have started sooner or later. I think I have done that. It’s the part in the middle that I deeply regret having lost myself. As any artist will know, its not just about the outcome, its also about the craft. For me, the process of creation – and I run every aspect of the project, from production to mixing, marketing to artworking – the journey is as important as the destination.

So my advice to anyone with a creative itch is to scratch that bad boy. Your art is a defining part of who you are so it is a disservice to yourself as much as it is for those that will miss out on experiencing your talents.

SUB, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m a UK based electronic music producer, guitarist and vocalist. and I gravitated towards the synthwave and dark synth community but my music doesn’t really fit into either of these genres.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the often nostalgic, sometimes futuristic feel of these genres, but they are saturated and I feel some of t it really too simplistic for my tastes. And so, when I started SUB NEON, I wanted to do something different. There is something darker, that sits behind the nostalgia.

I sed elements of synthwave in my music for sure, but I also love the deep dark basses in EDM, dubstep and of course metal. So I try to fuse bright synths and the blugeoning basses together into a sound that is unique but also hopefully, really engaging.

SUB NEON is also all about fusion thematically; the combination of reality with nostalgia. It’s about what happens in the shadows of the neon glow. Wha I mean by this is that synthwave is very much about the ‘good old days’, but its also a fanasty of a time that never really existed. So I seek to tell stories in the music, supported by imagery and video that tell eally human stories, spanning mental health, raw emotions and human struggles.

That struggle was definitely a part of the development process. Taking a standing start to production against 11 million artists on Spotify is pretty daunting, but first and foremost, I am doing this for me as a creative outlet. but learning how to use an EQ, creating space in a mix, sound design and so on is HARD! But that perseverence was truly rewarding when the output started hitting where I wanted it to.

My proudest achievement so far is a rack called Darklight, which is a pretty close snapshot of what SUB NEON is all about. It took 5 months to complete and contains 11 changes but I’m super happy with the result. It’s also been picked up by a lot of playlists, and has generated nearly 6,000 streams on Spotify to date! Plus it was the track that prompted Retrosynth Records to reach out and offer me a record deal!

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I am a marketer by day, so this is a busman’s holiday for sure! My secret sauce isn’t really so secret but for me, it’s all about consistency. Across platforms I’ve probably attracted nearly 5k followers which I’m thrilled with seeing as I’ve only been doing this for a year.

I post nearly every day and the content I share is a mix of works in progress, milestone moments, the celebration of ohers people’s work and I also try to create mini campaigns for a new single, tha reallly resonate or get people thinking. There are alot of neon cars driving around synhwave social media, so like my music, I take a slightly darker approach.

The other important part I’ve found is to engage with the community of producers. And actually, that part of the scene is as rewarding as the craft. Not only will they help you in any production challenges you afce, but they will get right behind your work and help to magnify the message!

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

Primarily, this project is for me. There were forces in my life who told me that pursuing my creative dream was a waste of time. I was stupid enough to listen for several years. In that time ,I spent far to much of my life working in jobs that didn’t fulfill me. I still do because you know, food is pretty important. but now I have exorcised those forces from my life and given myself permission to do the one thing that I love, In the creative process, I have found happiness again.

So that is the primary goal. happiness. Anything else that comes from this project is literally icing on the cake.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.subneon.net
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sub_neon
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/subneonofficial
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/sub_neon
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5fRCoEMGLxq-JHmsVdtqxQ
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@sub_neon