Rontronik on ‘Zero Eight’
Photo Credit: Tygr Rawwk Rcrds
New York producer/DJ/creative director Rontronik (Ron Croudy) unveiled his latest album Zero Eight this summer. Recorded live, the 40-minute project is a sonic exploration around the end of the COVID lockdown. Rontroniik describes the project as “improvised, experimental, ambient, noise, audio.”
Growing up in Flint, Michigan, Croudy was surrounded by burgeoning dance music scenes. “I was very much into electronic music since being a kid,” he says. “The Detroit techno scene the Chicago house scene, and groups like Kraftwerk were super popular. It’s what I was raised on.” He expands, “Jeff Mills was a regular radio DJ at the time. That’s what we heard. I always wanted to play that, I wanted to listen to it. I was a big fan of Juan Atkins, Cybotron, and Model 500. All that stuff was in my mind from the beginning.” His influences eventually extended into other genres. He explains, “As time went on, it became Front 242, the first Ministry album, Skinny Puppy, and a lot of the industrial–including Depeche Mode. Then it expanded outward into Flying Saucer Attack, My Bloody Valentine.” Those influences, alongside jazz–John Coltrane, Miles Davis–and classical music would lead Croudy to explore more experimental styles. “The noise sound, the experimental sound was very much a big thing,” he says of its influence. “Pushing boundaries and looking at futurist situations coming from the audio side of life.”
Croudy began experimenting with electronic music in college and later started the label Töshöklabs with friends. “We put out a few compilations and solo albums for different people. We did a few live shows and a project for the Whitney Museum,” he says. Rontronik would eventually begin to release his own electronic compositions.
His latest project, Zero Eight, is his take on the world opening up. “It started around the time the world was coming out of COVID,” he explains. “I was doing online streaming–just DJing at the time. I started creating new tracks and decided to test those tracks on the streaming platform.” That led to Rontronik composing live on streaming. “Zero Eight was one of the major pieces that I had done. I created the base of that project live on my streaming platform.” After making some edits and adding “nuances,” the end product is still very much a live project. The experimental and ambient track (it’s meant to be one continuous track) sees Croudy asking questions about the future from that vantage point. “I think you get a lot of tone from–you know–the world was closed and now it's open. We’re coming out of quarantine. What are we doing? Where are we going?” he asks. On the project, Croudy expertly crafts a mix of uncertainty and anticipation into one 40-minute piece. “I hope that people who listen to Zero Eight and see the video get aspects of what I try to convey out of that. I hope you enjoy it.”
As we close out 2024, we’re taking a moment to spotlight some of the standout creative projects from the year. To help us celebrate, we’ve teamed up with a few of our favorite artists whose work has made an impact.
Next up in our Best of 2024: Artist Picks, we hear from lucidlüc. The Atlanta-based artist blends psych-pop, punk and hip-hop. Lucidlüc’s curated list includes the diverse sounds of Tyler Jackson and Alli Cat.