As a child growing up in South Tyrol, a small region in the North of Italy, Konstantin Ladurner would pass the time drumming with his hands and beat-boxing, finding a way to make music. When he realized this passion, he started taking piano lessons. At the same time, he would watch MTV, where he further fell in love with music, especially American music.
“I loved to watch hip hop, R&B and alt rock music videos. My first favorite band became Linkin Park,” said Ladurner. “As a teenager, I put together a band with my best friends and started playing the bass guitar. I would then start taking bass lessons and that’s when my passion really flourished as I fell in love with the instrument and I would practice bass lines from my favorite bands. I would practice every day and loved playing with my band. It also re-sparked my love for piano as I would slowly get to a level where I could write my own songs.”
Now an industry leading music producer, Ladurner is living his childhood dream. In 2017, he released “Need You” by Maxiz, which has over 4 million streams on Spotify. More recently, he produced the beat that was used and turned into the song “sardines” by Audrey Nuna and Deb Never. Eighty percent of the final production consists of the beat Ladurner initially produced to his manager Anwar Sawyer.
“Konstantin is able to make an artist stand out from the rest, which in today’s times is more important than ever. He can deliver the sound that the artists want but then he also adds his own signature touch to it, which makes them stand out.
Artists love this as it makes them unique without compromising who they are and what they love. Today’s artists face tough competition and everybody needs to stand out in some form. Konstantin understands this and executes respectively, which puts him above other producers in the industry,” said Sawyer, who is a music producer himself as well.
The hit “sardines” was put on top Spotify editorial playlists such as “anti-pop” (+cover), “jasmine” (+cover), “New Music Friday” (slot nr. 24) and the release of it was supported by YouTube Music with a billboard in Downtown Los Angeles. The release was then sponsored by Adidas in their “Songs From Scratch” video series, where the creation of songs between different artists gets documented.
The series had featured many legendary artists in the past, such as Joey Bada$$, Kehlani, Brent Faiyaz, Chet Faker and now Audrey Nuna and Deb Never with Konstantin’s song. Furthermore, the song was recently featured in the famous game Fortnite, as well as the well-known reality TV show “Are You The One” on Paramount+, available to millions all over the world.
“When I was 17, I really dove into hip hop and slowly started to understand what a music producer was. I started to connect all the dots as I would see Pharrell Williams in the music videos of Gwen Stefani, Nelly, etc. even though he wasn’t rapping on the song and finally understand that he was the one who made those beats. The same happened with Timbaland and I thought to myself ‘I want to be like those guys’,” he said.
Now, Ladurner is just like those he admired in his youth. With so much success already behind him, he has several more exciting projects on the go. In January alone he had 3 releases with 3 different artists, one of them being the singer Akshara and her song “EYES”, which has already received 20k Spotify streams in its first week of release, which is very impressive given the fact that it was released fully independent without the support of any label. This proves that, outside of major artists such as Audrey Nuna, Konstantin can also guide independent artists to success. Despite these achievements, Ladurner remains humble.
“It reminds me that I’m on the right path. I look at all the successes as little steps that are part of my journey. It just proves to me that I’m good at this, that I deserve to compete with the greatest producers in the world and that I belong here. Everything has a meaning and I try to look at all things as signs and so far, the signs have told me to keep going,” he concluded.
And fans everywhere are thankful he did.