Artwork by: Tronicbox
An Interview with TRONICBOX, The Man Behind Those Viral 80’s Remixes on Youtube
Internet sometimes could be such a wonderful place to find hidden gems and one of them that we stumbled upon a while back was TRONICBOX. TRONICBOX could be found on Youtube or Soundcoud, and his take on current hits to be remixed into 80’s bangers has successfully turned him to an overnight sensation. His 80’s cover of Justin Bieber hits “What Do You Mean?” has picked up over 3.4 million streams on Soundcloud and raked in 1.4 million views on Youtube. We decided to interview him through email and he’s kindly answered all of our questions. The man whose real name is Jerry Shen, works as a musician, gamer, and software developer and comes from Saskatchewan, Canada. The name TRONICBOX itself does not have much history behind it, he just thought that the name sounds appropriate for a Youtube channel.
Starting the channel to share his silly music experiments, TRONICBOX found luck with the 80’s remixes. “I do lots of musical experiments with many different styles of music. The audience picked the 80s as their favorite.” he says. As you probably have heard his remixes by now, it includes the original vocal of the current singer in which he adds 80’s music background. He told us that the process of remixing the song was basically similar with any singer’s production method. Since the vocal already exists, he emphasizes more on its musical instrument and does what he thinks fit for the song. He was taken aback with such enthusiastic response from the listeners and some of them even said that his remixes are better than the originals. We think that he does a great job of bringing back those 80’s nostalgia in 2016.
Artwork by: Tronicbox
TRONICBOX does not only use music software to create the musical background for his remixes, but he also utilizes real music instruments, stating that he could not do it with one of them missing. He also goes as far as editing the images of the artists he remixes and infuses 80’s styled artworks which look amusing, dare we say. Justin Bieber with a mullet hair and Ariana Grande with huge curly hair are something we could not imagine happening in this era. When asked about the musicians he’d love to do remix for he answers, “It’s really about picking the song that would work in a certain format. Though I do like Ariana Grande for the fact that she has incredible technical facility which makes my job easier.” As a prove, he has done three remixes for Grande which are “One Last Time”, “Focus” and “Into You”.
We proposed the idea of doing a reversed remix in which he has to make a 2016 music arrangement for 80’s hits to him, and he said that he’d got one in his project but hated the sound of it, so he needed to work more on it. He also has tried several different genres for his remixes including emo, polka and jazz. Little do people know, TRONICBOX also works on his original pieces but the remixes which generate more responses, got him quite busy in the meantime. He revealed that he is currently working on an original music for a UK musician although he did not mention a particular name.
Furthermore, TRONICBOX stated that he hasn’t thought about making this internet fame into something more commercially benefiting although he is open to receive donation on his Paypal account. His concern is providing quality content for his viewers and he spilled that he was about to release another 80’s remix that should be out in the following days. We can’t wait to listen to the new remix and we hope another musician out there are triggered to do fun remixes like TRONICBOX does. We’ve picked our favorite 80’s remixes from him that you could listen below, enjoy! You could go to his Youtube channel for more.
