Few artists in bass music carry the kind of duality that defines Josh Teed. As a classically trained violinist turned bass producer, he’s spent years shaping a soul-stirring sound that weaves live instrumentation with hard-hitting experimental bass.
Drawing from classical traditions and orchestral elements, his music doesn’t just take you on a journey, but immerses you into cinematic spaces that feel both intimate and expansive. While heavily rooted in bass music, it’s the violin lies at the heart of his artistry. For Teed, the violin is not just another instrument but a vessel for boundless expression, raw emotion, and a sense of storytelling that spills into everything he creates.
With his latest full-length album, The Tides of Change, Josh Teed expands on every aspect of his artistry, resulting in his most ambitious and expressive project yet. Grounded in heavy bass and sweeping orchestral arrangements, the album moves between power and delicacy, with the violin carrying a narrative thread that unfolds like a journey from start to finish.
Released today, October 3, through Gravitas Recordings, The Tides of Change arrives three years after the release of his last full-length album, Recurring Dreams, marking a period of growth and transformation that reshaped his sound and vision.
“I can’t believe it’s already been three years since Recurring Dreams,” Josh Teed explains in an interview with The Daily Frequency. “The amount of change and evolution that I’ve gone through as an artist since then is something that I’m immensely grateful for.”
Of course, that evolution came with obstacles. After Recurring Dreams, Teed ran into a creative wall. Writing heavy bass no longer felt natural, and the spark that drove his early work began to fade.
“For a good year after that album, I was having a mental roadblock when it came to writing heavy bass music, I just wasn’t having fun writing it, and it felt forced when I tried,” he admits. “So I pivoted and wrote a body of work more focused on the chill, vibey side of music, called Taking It All In, which I released with The Gradient Perspective. I honestly believe that the process behind that project really fueled a lot of the progression that resulted in The Tides of Change.”
That pivot gave him the freedom to reset. By moving in a different direction, Teed rediscovered the joy of creation and began to realize what he truly wanted his artistry to represent.
“I’ll always love making bass music, it’s such a fun genre, and its capacity for making people move in a live setting makes for great, high energy shows. However, I just can’t continuously write the same genre of music for the life of me, I’d be bored to death. I know plenty of artists excel with that, and that leads to them having a ‘signature sound,’ but that’s not the path for me, and I’ve made my peace with that.”
Rather than chasing one sound, he came to see his identity as something broader, defined not by genre but by the threads that tie everything together.
“Don’t get me wrong, I still want to have a signature sound within my music, but I want it to be more of an overarching umbrella, not just one particular style. I want it to be at the point where I could write dubstep, future bass, halftime, and downtempo songs, and have listeners be able to tell that it’s my music, regardless of the genre because of the elements that connect all of them. With all the different sounds incorporated within the project, I feel like Tides of Change was a huge step towards that!”
But it wasn’t just his artistic vision that was changing. As his sound expanded, his perspective began to shift as well. Touring had been central to his career, but he started to think about what might come after the constant grind of the road.
“The last couple of years, I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s next for me. I have a lot of love and appreciation for touring. It’s been a massive part of my life for years, but I’m not going to be able to keep it up at this rate forever. I came to the conclusion that soundtracking and scoring is where I’d like to go with it one day, so the logical path from there was to begin experimenting with more cinematic and orchestral composition in my music.”
While that leap won’t happen for the foreseeable future, the idea of soundtracking and scoring has had a direct impact on his sound and in turn the direction of the album.
“I won’t be making that switch any time soon. I know that my skills in that department are nowhere near where they need to be in order to even remotely consider it. However, incorporating that kind of writing into my production has been a great, hands-on way to sharpen that skillset, while furthering my career as an artist.”
Of course, crafting immersive cinematic soundscapes was not a new concept. It was Recurring Dreams where he first began weaving classical elements into heavy bass, creating a cohesive journey that pulled listeners into a world of his own.And while The Tides of Change isn’t directly tied to that 2022 album, it carries the same spirit that first began to take shape years ago.
“ There are definitely some creative ties between Recurring Dreams and Tides of Change. RD was the first time that I dabbled in the classical and bass combo. I realized just how much fun it was to write, but also how much room there was for improvement, and I came back at it with a more polished, dialed-in approach this time around. Recurring Dreams was also loosely structured around a storyline, and the new album took that to a whole new level.
What gives The Tides of Change its cinematic depth isn’t just Teed’s orchestral influence, but his ability to tell stories through sound and paint pictures through melodies. When asked where his knack for storytelling comes from, his answer was simple.
“I think it simply stems from a love for the art of storytelling,” he says. “Whether it’s books, movies, or music, I’ve always had a deep affinity for media that has the capacity to take a listener or reader to another place. I think it’s such a powerful thing, and it’s been ubiquitous in human history as a form of solace throughout all of the difficult times our ancestors experienced. To be a musician is to pick up that storytelling torch, and I want to do right by all the people who walked that path before me. With all of the modern tools at our disposal, there’s never been a better time to do just that.”
It’s that love of storytelling that shapes how he approaches the writing process itself.
“I always start by determining what the vibe of the track is going to be. If it’s something heavier like Gates of Algiden, I almost always start with the most high-energy section of the song first. I’ll get the drop done, then backtrack and write out the intro. Once that’s done, I take some melodic and orchestral elements of the intro, and find places to work them into the drop so that there’s a consistent theme throughout the track.”
And when the mood shifts, so does his method.
“If it’s a more relaxed song like Kardona, I’ll usually start with the melodic composition side of it, and let that be the guiding force behind where the rest of the track goes. The ‘drop’ isn’t necessarily the focal point of those kinds of tracks, so I let it be the secondary focus of the writing process as well.”
That approach doesn’t just create the vibe of the track but lays the groundwork for an immersive experience where each song represents a chapter in a greater story.
“The way I went about writing this album, there was a chapter of the story corresponding with each track. That made it really easy to determine what feelings I was trying to capture within each song, and I just let that guide my writing process.”
Those chapters were made richer through collaboration. Bringing in Dirtwire, Luzcid, AG, and Blvck Svm only elevated the vision.
“Honestly, it was such an easy experience working with everyone! Of course, there are always little things, like the different ways people export stems, the gain levels they work at, but all those things are very easy to work around. I don’t think there was any point in working on this album where I felt like I had to adjust my writing process to accommodate that of the collaborators. I’m extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to work with such an array of talented artists on this project; their cumulative contributions really elevated the quality of the album as a whole.”
But the vision didn’t stop with just the music. Teed also started writing a book to bring the story to life in a new way.
“I’ve been a fantasy fiction reader for most of my life, and dreamed of writing a full novel when I was younger. Over the last few years, I really picked up on reading again, and that dream started to surface once more. At the time, I already knew that I wanted to write a new album, so I thought why not have a go at both of them?”
Of course, that experiment quickly turned into something bigger than he expected.
“The combination of storytelling through the writing and conveying emotion through the music has turned into an incredibly fun concept to work within, and I think it’s something you might just see more of in my future projects. This is the first novel I’ve ever written, so who knows if it will be any good, but the process has been incredibly enjoyable, and I’m looking forward to building on this foundation and learning more as I go!”
Rather than waiting to drop the full book at once, he chose to let it breathe alongside the album.
“I wanted to take a bit of a different approach towards getting the book out, so I’m going to put the chapters out individually at first, a bit like episodes of a show. I’m thinking I’ll do a chapter each month until the end of the album tour, and then release it in its entirety afterwards. I would recommend putting the corresponding track for each chapter on repeat while you read it, but I hope people just go about it in whichever way they find the most enjoyable.”
For Teed, it isn’t just about putting out a record or a book, but about breaking down the walls between mediums and showing that stories can live anywhere. It’s about pushing the boundaries of what it means to be an artist and reminding others that expression has no limits.
“I hope people come away from it with the idea that there’s absolutely zero limitation on the ways in which you can combine different forms of media to create a more immersive experience! Not only that, but I hope they come away inspired to create, and unafraid to share their product with the world should they so choose. It’s a scary thing at first to put your work out there in front of people, especially when you’re new to it like I am with writing, but we’re living in a time where it’s more important than ever for real, genuine, human expression to be put out into the world.”
At its core, The Tides of Change is about carrying forward a tradition as old as humanity itself. Long before stages, speakers, or streaming platforms, people gathered around fires and used stories to preserve memory, emotion, and truth. Teed sees his music as part of that same lineage, a modern extension of something deeply human that has always connected us across time.
“For millennia, storytelling has been the vessel that carries the essence of humankind. Mainline history is rewritten time and time again by parties in places of power, who wish to depict themselves in a favorable perspective, but the actual realities and lived experiences of people have always managed to persist despite that, via spoken word, music, and writing.”
And in the end, it’s that responsibility to his craft and his role as a musician that guides it all.
“We’re currently living through one of those times today, where, regardless of your political affiliation, it’s blatantly obvious that the parties in power are seeking to once again revise history to depict themselves in a more favorable light. I strongly feel that I have a duty as an artist to write music and stories that depict the events, emotions, and realities of our time, just as the storytellers for thousands of years before me did, because the history books decades from now won’t speak to the experiences of everyday people, but the art always will.”
Catch Josh Teed on The Tides Of Change Tour
