Ziad also known as Acetantina / Kaizo Slumber is a 21 year old artist based on Newcastle, United Kingdom.

He experiments with genres like juke/footwork, jungle drum and bass, vaporwave inspired capturing ambients and very videogame influenced glitchy melodies under the alias of "Acetantina", his music can put you in a hypnotic but rhythmic trance with projects with a darker ambience like Carmen Winstead or in a energetic and happy mood using colored videogame inspired sound design with projects like Blank Fashion Mystical.

He experiments with more heavy genres like hardcore digital, techno and punk in the Kaizo Slumber project, a rave revival/hardcore music duo consisting of the producer and vocalist Ziad and Juno, the drummer.

Acetantina didn't really have a specific set aesthetic tbh. I started off making chiptune-y sorta music and veered into vaporwave until I thought to start a project that had a more cohesive aesthetic vision and a sonic palette that was unique but could work across a bunch of different genres, and that's how I started Kaizo Slumber.

The Slumberkei aesthetic is unabashedly retro-futuristic, and instead of the lethargic and cynical attitude that say, vaporwave had towards its subject matter, I take a more post-ironic approach. I really like blobitecture, bright iridescent colours and glittery synths with lots of energy and so that's what I try to add to the Kaizo Slumber look and sound, even if I'm doing takes on several different sub/microgenres.

Definitely a lot of Nintendo and Sega games. Despite it being very representative in my work, I don't really play many video games anymore as I mostly spend my free time either making/listening to music, watching YouTube or spending it with friends and family but I played a lot of those games when I was younger. Music-wise, I'm a huge music connoseiur and listen to a lot of different things and what I listen to in any given month or year will change but some major inspirations for me are Aphex Twin, Atari Teenage Riot, Death Grips, Danny Brown, Wesley Willis, and a lot of hardcore in general.

Super Mario Galaxy is an all-time favourite for me, it's a game I grew up with and is the reason I even cared slightly about music in video games (and later on in life that would become an interest in music as a whole)

Super Mario 64 is a classic, I once did a decent 24-min 16-star run that I did not record or log but am still quite proud of Few titles here and there that I appreciate for the gaming but their aesthetics and atmosphere are their crowning achievements and that I take a decent amount of inspiration from in my work: Nights into Dreams, and Elebits I think both of those were made by Sonic Team if I recall correctly.

I finished my last album as Acetantina called 'Carmen Winstead' and basically drafted out the sort of music and visuals I wanted for this project. Kaizo Slumber mainly began as a very simple rave-revival project but I wanted to keep the vision open-ended so I could take the "Kaizo template" so to speak and be able to apply to across different styles and ideas.

Then I started work on all of the Kaizo Demo EPs which took the basic ideas I had for the project and explored different avenues. For example, the first Kaizo Demos leaned heavily into drum 'n' bass while the 2nd one took inspiration from other rave genres of that era. The 3rd Kaizo Demos was more influenced by Jersey and B-more club while the 4th one was more trance-y. And from there I just went on to make projects that I wanted to see in the current scene as Kaizo Slumber!

I'm not always great with collabs because if there's a part that I can already do, I usually prefer to do it myself but I'd love to collab with more artists. I nearly got one in with Danny Brown but that fell through very quickly.

How it happened was Danny was looking for DnB producers to collab with for a project. I reached out to him on Twitter and then he followed me We sent a few messages back and forth, sent a demo and was met with radio silence. I'm assuming he ultimately canned that project since this was around pandemic time which is a shame.

Hiraeth by CatSystem Corp, Blank Banshee 1 by Blank Banshee and my absolute personal favourite (althought it just barely counts as vaporwave) Dreams by Winter Sleep.

Of course, I regularly use Ubuntu and Kali for my CompSci course and I've played around with Debian, but I primarily use Windows because it's what I'm used to and it runs better for FL Studio.

1.- Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works 85-92

2.- Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works Vol. 2

3.- Miu Sakamoto - Dawn Pink

4.- Winter Sleep - Dreams

5.- Danny Brown - XXX

Well hey thanks for the interesting questions, this was fun!