Hailed by the likes of Skrillex and Fred Again.., SILK’s emotive hybrid of tech house and pop merges melodic songcraft with irresistible, club-ready beats. The likes of the soul-touching Quiverand the crystalline surge of OnMyMindreflect the breadth of SILK’s talent, but hitting on a sound that resonated took more than a few false starts…

For better and for worse, the relationship between modern music artists and social media is intertwined, meaning that while small-scale DIY artists can suddenly achieve global success and generate massive audiences overnight, the requirement to have such a self-built, ready-to-go audience can now be the barometer on which major labels take an interest. Alongside that demand, there’s the cold reality that a lack of instant feedback, or positive engagement, can have detrimental effects on the mental health of artists who are still developing.

It’s a situation that SILK (real name Olly Ettridge) knows all too well. “I might post TikToks and they might not get as many likes as the [2022 single] Quiver one did,” he says, “and you feel like shit about it. But, are you going to let your success be governed by that? It’s really damaging.”

But while Olly had been naturally frustrated by the lack of response social media would sometimes give to tracks he’d spent months working on, it would also be instrumental to his success. As with the aforementioned, sublime Quiver, “I had this chord progression and basically finished Quiver on a two-hour train journey. I pulled in and thought ‘I’m just going to post it online’. I thought people might not like it as it’s a bit different to what I’d done before. But at the end of it I decided ‘I don’t care, I’m doing it’. I woke up the next day and it had like a million views. It was a really crazy moment. I realised we’d found something that landed.”

Before long, SILK was sitting pretty atop 55 million TikTok views, 35 million catalogue streams and a euphoric summer tour in Australia and New Zealand alongside Australian DJ Golden Features. He saw out 2023’s Leeds Festival in front of 25,00 punters, and, in September, sold out his first headline London show.

Photo: © Pablo Gallegos

Supply the love

Let’s rewind the clock a little, to the very beginning of Olly’s journey. We wonder if music had been a prominent part of his childhood? “I’ve always kind of been into music from a very young age,” Olly says, “I was obsessed with dance and indie stuff growing up. I started making music when I was about 10 years old. I went to Denmark Street and I bought my first interface and a MIDI keyboard, which I still use from time to time. I started from there, experimenting with all the bands I was in, trying to record some of our music. I went through that phase up until I was about 17, then when I got to college I got way more into dance music. I thought ‘I’m going to have a crack at this’. I was doing music production at college as well so it kind of went hand-in-hand. My teachers Justin and Jason were really into dance music as well, so when I told them that this was what I wanted to do they really helped me.”