Hitimpulse has been crafting a steady stream of untraditional pop songs the last few years. In a relatively short amount of time they aided the breakout of Finnish singer Alma, and became the go to team for sessions with a series of pop’s new class including Astrid S and Zara Larsson. And though they’ve already started 2018 in the studio producing for other artists such as Era Istrefi, they are very focused on making their own records. The international foursome (two Germans, one Frenchman, and one Russian) had their own breakout with a remix of Ed Sheeran’s “I’m In Love With The Coco.” Having recently released the single “Shoulder” earlier this year, they are ready to share more of their left of center sound in the following months. Taking some time away from their DAW, Hitimpulse talked about how they met, some of their favorite places in Berlin, and when to throw an idea away.
How did you meet? We all started doing music at different stages of our life. Two of us are coming from the classical side . And the others started producing when they were teenagers. We’ve all been doing music for quite a long time. We met five years ago. It was the time you sent out tracks you made in studios and posted to myspace. We met on myspace and thought let’s team up.
Where did the name come from? It was probably about four years ago, when we found the whole team and were pretty sure we wanted to work together. It’s refers more to the actual impulse - when something collides. We started off as a production team, but we also now release music as an artist.
What is the process like with four different people? The thing is, we are all pretty good friends and we have the same taste in music. So we never really have fights about how it should sound. I think if you’re a team of four musicians, if everyone trusts the others then it’s never a problem. On our record we’re working four people, but when we’re doing a songwriting session we usually split up. To keep the intimate moment. We always change the constellation.
Things became really serious when we put “In Love With the Coco” on Soundcloud. We were writing so many songs, but especially from Europe it’s difficult to be part of the global music scene. But suddenly Ed Sheeran posted it and BBC radio 1 played it.
What’s your sound like? It’s a mix between urban pop music and future bass. That’s the good thing, working as an artist we can decide what we put out. With Alma (”Karma”, “Bonfire”, “Chasing Highs”) for instance we always want to make the artist happy. We have to make sure that our sound fits to the artist. The stuff that we put out is a bit more experimental. Since “Coco” we’ve been traveling a lot. We’ve met a lot of people who want to work with us.
What are you working on now? We've been a lot in Sweden to work on songs for Zara Larson for example. We’ve also been in L.A. for our own stuff. We did writing sessions for a few weeks there. The aim is to make something really fresh. It doesn’t really aim to be on an A list station - we want to create some new stuff. And we want to release more records in the future.
After “Coco” we did this one collaboration with Felix Jaehn and forgot a bit about our artist project. We want to change that now. In the last two years we’ve developed more and more and we want to release more each year.
As a songwriter you never know. In LA we wrote like 30 songs in two weeks, and maybe three or four might be released. There are so many songs that just lay on your hard drive. which is sad because many of our songs have a cool concept. And as an artist it’s good we release stuff we think could work.
When you’re working on a song how do you know when to throw an idea away? It’s not an easy decision. Every session we also try to write something cool. We try to add production in a session so it’s not just piano - so you can see where it’s going. And you sort of wait and get opinions from people you trust. You see if there’s a hype around certain songs and if people connect.
You actually have to let go a lot. You can’t just think every song is a hit. When we started, there was a huge problem because when we wrote songs everyone was so in love with these songs. But nowadays, the better we get, we’re more honest and we learn to let go. It’s important to know what your strongest songs are. In a writing session we might work two or three hours, and you can’t really describe that feeling you get. But everyone in a room knows when something magical happens.
Do you have any favorite places in Berlin? The first thing I would say is our studio. Our studio is a very special place for us. We travel a lot for writing because we feel the quality of songwriting is different than in Germany. And always when we come back home, feels amazing. It’s actually like a big family because our musician friends also work and chill in our studio, so the studio is the place to be. For food I really enjoy Bergmannstrasse. I think Mauerpark is a pretty special place, because there’s so many different cultures. And the open karaoke on Sundays. The special thing is you never know what will happen, the spirit of that place is so crazy.
Any tracks you’re enjoying at the moment? We actually really like the old Mura Masa stuff, and Cashmere Cat. We also listen to a lot of hip hop because thats our base, we started doing hip hop a few years ago.
Are you thinking about touring? Actually yeah. As soon as we put “Coco” out, the first booking offers came in. And now we’re just releasing stuff because it doesn’t make sense to tour yet. We’re actually pretty excited because we all play a bunch of instruments. We’re not really into djing and pressing a button. We want to just take the time and play a really good live show. Like you can see the process of making the music.
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