N° 31 is producer WoodysProduce's ongoing and newest project. Since August 1, he's been releasing an original track and a video every day, putting his usual pop influences aside to focus on a more intriguing sound. Every afternoon, the 33-year-old producer, known as Ryan Woodcock, wanders around L.A. in search of something to film; the result is a spontaneous visual and auditory daily log of his experiences.
Advertisement
Ranging from minimalistic, dark, and spacey sounds, to more rhythmic trappy tunes, the tracks mirror their respective videos in an obfuscating yet symbiotic way. "It's an observation through sound and video. The music is directly inspired by the videos, so it really depends on what I film," he says. "Last night, for instance, I went outside and there was a bee dying in a spider web. So I filmed that and made a track that reflected its struggle."The series feels like a curious, melancholic journey into the unknown. Black-and-white aesthetic and slow-motion, hypnotizing repetitive movements are N° 31's recurring visual themes. "85 percent of my visuals come from stuff I shoot on my iPhone 6 using a Ztylis lens, but I sometimes get visuals from some of my close friends, like Rossco Soletrain. I also remixed DJ Shiva's music video," he says. "It's never anything specific, though, it kind of just happens. Like the other day I went to the Getty Museum with my mom and filmed a bunch of painting," he says.Woodcock started out as a hip-hop producer ten years ago and is best-known for his hip-hop remixes and pop-infused tunes. "I remember sending out a beat CD to Sha Money XL, 50 Cent's manager at the time…he hit me back and was like, 'hey, you've got some good stuff.' That's when I knew I had to pursue this, chase the proverbial challenge," he laughs. The North Cal import promptly moved to L.A., where he's been based since, except for a short stint in NYC where he got his artist name. "I linked up with rapper Charles Hamilton and we decided to start blogs. Everybody called me Woody, so I thought of WoodysProduce because I was always going to have the freshest shit [laughs]. The blog didn't last long, but the name stuck," he says.
Advertisement
Last summer, he released a new remix every day for his Summer Citrus Remixes project, but says the recent SoundCloud purge led him to pivot towards putting out more original stuff. From there, N° 31 was born. "They were going to delete my account if I had one more copyright infringement, so I took down a lot of my remixes. I also had my YouTube suspended for about 6 months," he says.Whatever the medium, the self-proclaimed renaissance man likes to dabble in multiples creative projects at once. "I have crazy ideas and I just go and execute them. I'm developing a hip hop-based cartoon called the Gooberz with a few friends of mine; we essentially taught ourselves how to animate in about a year," he says. "I also just bought a watercolor paint kit, that's my next thing."Now that he's hit the halfway mark with N° 31, he says he's gotten his creative process down and isn't running out of stamina just yet. "There have been a few days, though, when the sun is starting to set and I still don't have anything. But now I feel pretty good, I've got a vision down, and I know where I'm going," he says. "L.A. is an extremely interesting place."WoodysProduce is on Facebook // SoundCloud // TwitterNatasha is on Twitter.