Italy’s Francesco Guglielmi, better known by his production alias Eater, has been crafting a diverse assortment of high-energy bass music for years now, all to major acclaim from some of the biggest names in the industry including most recently the head t-rex Excision himself. Finding a niche in the ever-growing experimental trap scene, he’s been growing at an exponential rate, with his titillating productions reaching tens-of-thousands pairs of ear canals. Now, he’s blessed us with an absolutely steamy guest mix, the 93rd edition in our series, and taken the time to answer a few questions about his beginnings, the state of the Italian music scene, and what he has coming next. Check out his phenomenal guest mix and full interview for yourself below!
What was the inspiration behind the name “Eater”?
Well, I wish that I had a better story for that, but basically I was looking around for a new name and I came around this track by Mura Masa called ‘Lotus Eater‘ and I didn’t really like the way that Lotus sounded in my head, so I went with Eater ahaha.
I see you grew up and currently live in Italy, can you tell us a little about how that’s shaped your journey so far?
Living in Italy has been both good and bad because the opportunity to make it in the bass music scene is a lot more difficult, but I think that is also what gives me an advantage because if you really want to go somewhere here you have to work ten times harder and the quality of your work has to be the best that it possibly can.
What’s the Italian music scene like? Is bass music big out there?
The Italian music scene right now is evolving around Italian rap which I’m not to a big fan of, but that’s another argument ahaha. The bass music here isn’t that big, at least for what I see, there are a couple of festivals which allow some artists from that scene to play, but I think that the time where you’ll see bass music have its own space here is still far, maybe in 5 to 10 years it will have the relevance that it has in the US right now, but that’s highly improbable. Even though I hope that I’m wrong about that and who knows, it might take over what the scene looks like right now.
What’s your biggest motivator? What gets you up every morning excited to put in work?
My biggest motivator now is my girlfriend which is also my biggest fan. Seeing her reaction when I make something cool pays off every bad moment and struggle. My biggest excitement is still to get up every morning and put the work in, other than her is just me imagining the sensation of being able to travel, live, and be happy with my passion, and also make other people happy with it at the same time.
…taking breaks and enjoying your family and friends is more productive than destroying yourself with work, because at the end of the day music has to be fun and not forced.
How do you find a happy balance of working on music while also maintaining a normal life?
I still struggle with that but I think that I’m finding the way to do it. One of the best pieces of advice that I received was “work smarter not harder” which shifted the way that I work. Right now, I still work hard and a lot don’t get me wrong, but yeah sometimes taking breaks and enjoying your family and friends is more productive than destroying yourself with work, because at the end of the day music has to be fun and not forced.
We just premiered your collab with Edo, ‘40Hz’, can you tell us how you guys got connected and what the process was like?
Me and Edo go way back ahah, we went to middle school together and been friends since, so we just meet really often like we’ve been doing since then, but right now we make music on top of that. One day we were at Edo’s studio and we were just playing around until we got some ideas and one of that was what eventually evolved into ’40hz.’
having the right references and not putting a ton of stuff into your track and keeping it as simple as possible really helps achieving that.
Something I’ve noticed about your production is that it’s insanely crisp, do you have any tips & tricks to reach that same level of polish?
Well, first of all thank you for that compliment, and I don’t really have any specific advice to share because it all comes pretty natural to me fortunately, but having the right references and not putting a ton of stuff into your track and keeping it as simple as possible really helps achieving that. And also choose wisely what you’re putting into the track and not just using something to fill it up.
You’ve made a wide range of genres throughout your releases, what kind of advantage do you believe this gives you?
I think that it gives me the ability to experiment a lot more than I would if I would have locked myself into a specific genre, and that was one of the best decisions that I’ve ever made for myself.
Any plans for some shows out here in the US anytime soon?
Unfortunately at the moment there are not shows planned out for the US, but I have a good feeling that 2020 will bring good news for that.
You’ve made an absolutely blazing guest mix for us today! Can you walk us through what you’ve prepared and how you went about putting it together?
First of all thank you for the kind words, and yeah so the mix included some of my newest tracks along with some IDs and edits of them, and it will also premiere the new tracks off my upcoming EP. I wanted to give listeners a little sneak peak of some ideas that I have lying around, and also some collaborations that I’m really excited for. I don’t promise that everything you hear will come out but fingers crossed.
2020 is already off to a blazing start for you, is there anything on the horizon you’d like to talk about?
Well this Friday my track ‘Machine Gun’ with my friend Gawm will release on Bourne Recording. It’s been played repeatedly by Excision, so we’re pretty excited for that one. After that my EP will come out, which I’m also pretty excited for because it’s going to set the bar even higher. And yeah, after that expect a lot of different music, I already have something planned but I don’t want to give it away yet, so I would say get ready for my EP but also keep an eye open for what’s coming after that.
Tracklist
Eater – Buyaka
Eater & Edo – 40hz (FUXWITHIT PREMIERE)
Eater – ID (VIP)
Eater Edit (Battlefied x Shake it) w/Eater – ID
Eater – ID
Eater – No Break (FUXWITHIT PREMIERE)
Eater & ??? – ID
Eater & Plsma – Sending w/Trampa – Runners
Eater – Redux (Plsma Edit)
??? – ID (Eater Remix)
Eater – Censura
Eater & ??? – ID
Eater & ??? & ??? – ID
Eater & Gawm – Machine Gun
Eater & Edo – Anger
Eater & ??? – ID
Josh Pan x Away – Mask (Eater Remix)
Eater – Zone (feat. Rollie Dezel) [Gehena Remix]
Eater & Gehena – Boondocks
Eater & ??? – ID
Eater – One And Only
