10 Questions with ... Hook N Sling

BRIEF CAREER SYNOPSIS:

Facebook: facebook.com/hooknsling
Instagram: instagram.com/hooknsling
Twitter: twitter.com/hooknsling
YouTube: youtube.com/hooknsling

Soundcloud:

1) What do your friends call you?

My friends call me Hook. My Mom calls me Anthony, My Dad has called me Hook once before and it felt really weird. So yeah, mostly Hook.

2) How do you go from Anthony to Hook N Sling?

My last name is Maniscalco and I find it a little bit of a jumble and hard to get out, so I thought a stage alias at the beginning was a good thing. I suppose it all began when I was DJing back in Sydney and I was looking for a stage name. I was a DJ first and then a producer, so the DJ name Hook N Sling came first and then as I started producing I used that name.

3) Were you some type of a pirate fan growing up?

(Laughs) No, it's the name of an old funk record that I use to sample when I first started producing. I would produce these records and I used this song called "Hook And Sling" to sample my beats from, because it has this really cool drum solo in the intro. So I would chop these samples up and use them as my sounds for my song. I put together two or three tracks and then I was like, how am I going to get this thing together? So I decided to call it Hook N Sling. And now it works for me and against for me. Sometimes I get sent two pairs of headphones, I am given two hotel rooms, the rider always comes out with extras, such two sets of alcohol for the guys, so that's pretty good.

4) You're originally from Sydney, Australia who's now living in L.A. What made you make the transition from Sydney to L.A.?

It was when "Take You Higher" came out back in 2011. I was living in Sydney at the time and it broke big on radio over here, especially on Dance radio. I was getting lots of offers and it was my first real taste of recognition. There were offers coming in to play the U.S.; I think Miami was the first one. That was the straw that broke the camel's back in that I couldn't do a Sydney-to-Miami trip more than once in a couple of months and I had gotten a couple of offers to play for a few months. I was with my girlfriend at the time and I said, "Come on let's just go to L.A. Let's do this U.S. touring and see what happens for six months," as I was over the whole 30 days of traveling. So I got an Air BnB in L.A. and now I actually live there. I have a house there and I have a dog named Zack.

5) When "Take You Higher" came out in Australia, was that a sample or a remake of a massive song?

It was a sample from a really chill, downtempo song, called "Big Jet Plane" by Angus And Julia Stone. It was such a huge hit in Australia, but it never broke outside of there, so me and my friend Will, who I did the track with, made it as an edit for our festival sets. We felt is was such a huge record to play, but no one had done a version to play at a festival, so he and I got together and did this edit. We basically remixed it and it became "Take You Higher." The band wanted to name it differently because we wanted to differentiate the song from the original with the new dance version and it just took off. Nettwerk put the song out here and it was crazy six-12 months for me.

6) "Take You Higher" was 2011, but for you it started in 2004...

I was DJing on and off, throwing house parties and stuff like that with some friends I was living with. I was a graphics designer up until music took over. At that time I was also in college. Throwing house parties is basically how I got my first gig. Someone at a bar in the city was there and said, "Do you want to throw a night at my bar?" I took that crowd to a bar and that's how it all started.

7) 2016 into 2017 has been big for you. You had a song with Galantis "Love On Me;" "Open Your Eyes" with Sam Feldt; a single with Parsons James & Betty Who "If You're Hearing this." Now you have a new single out with Digital Farm Animals "Arms Around Me." How did you end up teaming up with Digital Farm Animals?

Now that you've said that, I just realized that it's the most amount of music I've put out in a 12-month period of time in my career and I've also done three remixes. I've been very productive with writing and touring as well. A lot of these records I start. Galantis for example, I started with that sketch of an idea and if you listen to "Arms Around Me," it's quite similar in vibe -- especially the piano chords and the vocals because I wrote them around the same time. In terms of timing, it's always eight or nine months in the making. Galantis had just put out "No Money," so it took a lot of time for it to happen. The way I work with Galantis, for example: I did a remix for "Gold Dust;" Christian got in touch and said, "I love this record we should do something together," and that's how "Love On Me" happened. With Digital Farm Animals, my manager was reaching out to them as they had heard about my stuff and we got connected that way. Sometimes it's personal like that; other times it could be with management connections or other networks.

8) You have done a number of remixes over the years, including ones for Calvin Harris, NERVO, Kaskade. You recently did one for Cheat Codes & Demi Lovato "No Promises" and now you have a Halsey remix coming out...

I'm such a fan of Halsey and it was such an honor to have a chance to remix "Bad At Love" and do my own thing. The original is amazing and I was really inspired.

9) What's the biggest difference between doing an original production versus a remix of a song?

The biggest difference is in a remix. You always have the initial spark of an idea; that's already given to you on a plate. We want to talk about this emotion or this story that we want to tell. With an original, no one is telling a story yet, so you have to start right at the bottom. As a remixer, you come in and you might be one of those remixers who just changes the drum on a track and then puts it out, but what I like to do is go back, deconstruct the song completely and put it back together. So yes, you have that original spark you get to work with so it's a little bit easier.

10) In the last year or so you've done some great collaborations, who would your all time great collaboration be with?

I'm looking around on your wall here to get some inspiration. I've checked off some names that I've always wanted to work with and some of it has been accidental, such as the Axwell "Tokyo By Night." That was completely accidental; I did not mean to collaborate with him on that and thank god I sent him that record because we ended up doing it together. That was supposed to be a collaboration, but due to paperwork we couldn't do it and it became more of a remix, even though it was an actual Axwell and Hook N Sling collaboration.

You do a monthly radio show called 'Spectrums' and your tour was called that as well...

It's a one-hour mix show. Everything is pretty much a DJ mix of stuff I am inspired by. It's called Spectrums because I am the kind of DJ, artist, whatever you want to call me, who is not inspired by one genre of music, I play a lot of different stuff. Sometimes it's an all-House affair and other times I'm playing a lot of different styles and tempos. It's kind of a mix of not necessarily the latest and greatest. I always throwback to say an older deadmau5 record that I really loved six years ago, so it's a good mix of what I am really feeling right now and stuff that I've always loved. People were really into the tour and I get a lot of messages from people telling me they love listening to the show and what they are doing when they are listening to the show, before they go out or while they are working out. It's good having that feedback from the fans.

Growing up, who were some of your inspirations?

I taught myself how to play the guitar. Living at home with my parents, my dad always had a guitar laying around. He use to be in a band, but nothing that he would ever really talk about. He had all this sheet music laying around the house so I would playing Cat Stevens, Crowded House, Led Zeppelin, all of his favorite bands, so I would kind of like strum along to all of this music that I suppose he was inspired by.

If you were going to give one piece of advice to an up-and-coming DJ/Producer/Remixer, what would it be?

Only one? I have two actually. A lot of up-and-comers want to know how to be successful, but I believe if you want to become successful, you don't think about wanting to be successful. You should focus on writing the best you can and being true to yourself, and that in itself paves the way to success, because people respect you for who you are, and you get to become an artist unto yourself. The other one is work fucking hard.