Hinkstep, an experimental downtempo music project by Sweden’s own Jonas Tegenfeldt.Jonas is a multi-instrumentalist, has released countless albums/EPs and has an incredibly fine sense for musical significance, which you can recognize when he attempts to drift into other genres with his productions. He can’t miss! So, in a musical sense, Jonas is very well versed. Where that comes from, and also how adaptive Jonas is in terms of blockchain technology, we’ll find out together.

Jonas, a question which I know every artist enjoys so much and can’t wait to get asked: How would you describe the music you’re making?

Always a tricky question... My 2021 wrapped Spotify year report told me I had listened to over 180 different genres, so naturally my inspiration comes from a lot of places, and I believe it can also be heard in my music. Technically it’s like a mix of progressive rock, deep dubstep/d’n’b basslines, hard hitting breakbeats and an endless universe of reverbs and echoes. Some call it psybient, some say triphop, some say trance, but actually the name Hinkstep was “invented” in lack of a better style/genre to describe my music.

Seemingly, you’re very talented. What do you think, how did you develop an interest in making music? And looking back, how hard or easy was it for you to acquire the understanding and skill level in regards to music making/production.

Music has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. My brother and I were always jamming in our basement “studio”, me on the drums and him on the piano, recording cassettes and having fun. A cracked version of Fruity Loops v1 was installed on our parents’ computer way before YouTube existed, so my production knowledge came from hard work, experimenting, listening and analyzing everything I could. Nowadays, almost 20 years later, and with an audio engineering degree, I still learn new things every single day. This is one of the reasons I truly love music production. There is no finish line, no top of the mountain. There is only progress.

I first came across your music 10 years ago, when I looked up how one of my own releases did on Ektoplazm, which was a fairly popular platform for free electronic (psychedelic) music. You had put something up there too. If you think back, has your understanding and opinion of music distribution changed a lot over the course of your career?

No, not really, I still fucking suck at the “business” side of things, haha. But of course, I know more now than before. Promotion and advertisement etc. It is just so boring. I have a philosophy that if your music is good enough, you don’t really need to bother with that shit. Energies attract each other and your audience will find you. I try to have a good relationship with my followers and treat them all as my true friends, even though we have never met before and maybe never will. If you do that, I think the music will spread by itself naturally, through friends, to their friends and so on.

You have been an Alpha Artist on enter. When you jumped on enter, had you dabbled in NFTs before?

I did a try on Opensea before and actually sold one visual item. Besides that, I didn’t have much knowledge about NFTs at all.

Okay, so I’m interested in this because I was so green when I first got in touch with enter, and I’m trying to understand how to be slightly “more ahead” in the future. Would you say that you had an interest and a good understanding of the NFT ecosystem before, and of the “crypto world” for that matter? Or was your involvement with enter tied to an incredibly steep learning curve?

Oh, it was a very steep learning curve. Luckily, I had a lot of support from enter (* shoutout to Kim Andre Røine! You’re awesome, brother!). I’m still far away from being an expert on the subject, but if it wasn’t for enter I would be completely lost.

For other music artists, regardless of their crypto/blockchain experience, can they get involved easily? Would encouragement make sense?

I think anyone can easily get up and running on enter. Especially after the latest updates. I’m not sure what type of encouragement should be done, but they should definitely do some research. There is quite a lot of information about crypto, so people can get a basic understanding before jumping in.

On that note, taking into account the different ways of music distribution, what’s your impression of the NFT market? Can this be a holy grail in terms of compensation models for music artists? Any criticism maybe?

I think NFTs will have a hard time competing with streaming services like Spotify, because it is simply too easy to have access to all the music you ever dreamed of with just a few clicks.

However, I do believe there is a huge potential to create limited items, special editions and even an interesting way to sell concert tickets and other collectors’ items with your NFTs. And I think it’s a great way to support your favorite artists by buying their NFTs because there is no middleman or label in between you and the artist.

But people are surely smart, and someone will for sure develop the “crypto world” into incredibly creative things that could very well blow my mind.

Alright, what or who inspires your music?

Like mentioned earlier, I listen to so many different kinds of music, so my inspiration comes from many places. I’m also very inspired by stories, like taking a scene from a movie and trying to convert that into my own musical journey. Lyrics are also a huge inspiration, in fact many of my albums and song titles are based on song lyrics, for instance “A generation lost in space” comes from a line in Don McLean – American Pie, “Follow me down” from Porcupine Tree - Lazarus and “And every once in a while I’d sing a song for you” from First Aid Kit – The Lion’s Roar. And the list goes on...

Regarding your life as a producer/artist/performer, what are you looking forward to in the years to come?

I’m looking forward to the world waking up and ending this madness we have seen the last years. I really miss traveling around the world, playing music and meeting beautiful people. I’m also hoping that my current writer’s block will end, so I can let all my creativity out again. It’s been quite a while now since I was truly in that creative flow state.

Now, with all the might and wisdom you have today, if you could visit your former self, say jump 15 years back, what would you tell young Jonas to be the most important thing to keep in mind?

There is no good or bad, there is only now, and it is what it is. Either you accept it, change it or walk away from it.

No matter what, always do your best. Be kind and remember that love is all that really matters. Kind of cliché, but simplistically true.

And I would tell him to not be fucking stupid :)

Jonas, such a pleasure. Thank you ever so much for your time.

Follow Hinkstep:

https://enter.audio/artist/hinkstep

https://enter.art/artist/hinkstep

https://hinkstep.bandcamp.com/

https://www.instagram.com/hinkstep

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