A Chat with Prism Tones (12.08.2026)
Prism Tones has unleashed a rather ambitious concept album, Creative Spark, that perfectly showcases both their musical vision and technical abilities. A genre-breaking collection of tracks, the album highlights how different styles of music can match the emotional message of a track. With songs that cover a range of moods and messages, the album has something for everyone to enjoy. We had the chance to chat to Prism Tones about the album as well as their creative process, being a studio-based musician and much more.
OSR: You recently released your ambitious concept album Creative Sparks which crosses genres from ska to jazz and alternative rock. What was the idea that sparked this album?
Prism Tones: The idea that led to the creation of the Prism Tones project and its first album stemmed from the desire to escape everyday life and break the monotony. This comes across clearly in the album’s picturesque cover art: an almost monstrous awakening from an oppressive reality.
OSR: As the album covers many different genres, do you find it easy to create music across the sonic spectrum?
Prism Tones: The greatest difficulty in composition is finding the right balance between melody, rhythm, and harmony. After finding inspiration, it can be expressed in various forms determined by the instruments used and their sounds, which are decided at a later stage. Therefore, to answer your question, I find it easy for me to compose songs in various genres because I have a lot of material to start from. However, it is difficult to find and choose the sound that best suits a given melody.
OSR: You haven’t just created the album, but there are also curated videos that blend royalty-free images accompanying each track. How hard was it to create these videos?
Prism Tones: Choosing dozens of videos to combine in a way that gives meaning to the starting song is a meticulous, yet very stimulating and fun job. I had also thought about creating videos from scratch using artificial intelligence, a bit like for the images, but I felt it was less consistent with the musical idea underlying the project: creating a giant puzzle made of hundreds of different pieces so that each of them only makes sense once you have a view of the whole picture.
OSR: The album features collaborations with session musicians from 10 different locations. What was the collaboration process like?
Prism Tones: The process is very simple. I used a PC program to write the sheet music, having fun finding the right sounds and writing parts for instruments I’ve never played. These scores included all the instruments stacked one below the other. Once the composition process is done, you can extract the sheet music for each individual instrument and send it to session musicians who, for a fee, record their part and send you their audio. In the end, once all the parts are gathered, they are sent to a mixing & mastering professional who puts them all together and applies effects. This procedure gave the project its name: prism tones, as it recalls the prism that splits a beam of light into various components.
OSR: You’ve decided to stay as a studio-based musician instead of creating a public persona. What is the reason for this?
Prism Tones: Prism Tones is an idea, a project. There isn’t a single person who writes, sings, and puts their face on it. I write the music, someone else plays it (mostly with a different lineup for each song), and someone else mixes it. I like to define myself as a music director: when you go to the cinema, you see actors, you don’t see the face of the person who came up with the idea.
OSR: If people could listen to only one track from the album, which would you recommend to get the full experience?
Prism Tones: Musically, there is no song that represents the entire album because each one has a different genre. Conceptually, the most natural choice is ‘Creative Spark’ because it specifically talks about the inspiration from which the work itself began and the environment that gave birth to it.
OSR: There are powerful messages woven into each of the tracks of the album, but what would you like people to take away from listening to the album as a whole?
Prism Tones: The album contains descriptions of single personal life events. These descriptions are a stimulus to reflect and reach conclusions that vary from person to person. Everyone is different and can think as they please about solitude, unemployment, copyright, etc. However, the overarching concept is that we all encounter negative episodes in our lives that temper us. What happens next depends on our interpretation of these events and our ability to obtain a profit (material or moral) that compensates for such a loss.
OSR: If you could give one piece of advice to any new musician, what would it be?
Prism Tones: Not to make music to please others, but to express one’s own vision and intrigue them, leading them to listen and reflect. The emerging artist must say something different from those who have already achieved success. If there is nothing new or original, you can be sure that people will use your music like a tube of toothpaste.
OSR: What are your plans for the future?
Prism Tones: I already have ideas for producing another album, but that will happen when I have the budget to do so. Until then, I will continue with everyday life, buried and bored by the ordinary.
Many thanks to Prism Tones for speaking with us. Find out more about Prism Tones on their Instagram, YouTube, Bandcamp and Spotify.
This artist was discovered via Musosoup #sustainablecurator
