Trentcast [INTERVIEW]

Forrest Wagner, born and raised in a small northwestern town of Wisconsin, discovered his greatest passion at a very young age. Due to his father’s influence, Wagner intertwined his life around music in every which way, ultimately devoting himself to the creation of tracks that feature wobbly, grimy bass. Although he had a definite plan to enter the music industry from an early age, he still had to find his place in the scene.

When first deciding his stage name, Wagner bounced back and forth between names like ‘A System of Trance’ and ‘The Energy of Trance’, highlighting his initial interest in producing trance music. After some time, he decided to completely switch up his sound and use the stage name of ‘Trentcast’. Wagner detailed the origin of his current stage name, explaining, “My dad played a huge roll in my progression towards learning the art of production when I was growing up. Around the same time that I started becoming curious about it, my family was running a mom-and-pop internet cafe downtown, and so my dad and I would often play LAN games together, like old school Counter Strike and Unreal Tournament. Good times… I was maybe 12. His gamer name was Trentcast, and he had gotten the name from a main character in one of his favorite books. I really looked up to my dad growing up, especially since he had helped me get my first few songs ever recorded and on a CD.”

Wagner’s father also introduced him to some of his most powerful influences in the music industry. “[My dad] was listening to artists like Armin Van Buuren, The Chrystal Method, Depeche Mode, and Pendulum as far back as I can remember, so I grew up with a variety of electronic music. Eventually I just got to a point at a really young age where I felt this crazy urge to figure out just exactly how this kind of stuff was made and it went from there.”

Trentcast, a self-taught musician, began working with production equipment when he purchased a MicroKORG synthesizer before he was even a teenager. Due to the convenient layout of the synth, he utilized the opportunity to really learn how to start controlling music. Recounting the first track he ever created, he tells, “I was around 12, I think. It was some ridiculous trance/house thing made on an old software called Techno Ejay 5. My earliest songs were laughable at best, but that’s part of the learning experience. My dad helped me record my first-ever songs from computer to computer with an aux cord going from the computer I made the song onto his laptop. I didn’t really publish anything, just made music for fun for years and showed the songs to my dad and my close friends.”

As time went on, Wagner’s taste in electronic music developed, and he began heavily involving himself in the dubstep scene around 2008-2009. Through his continued exploration of the genre, he eventually stumbled upon artists like Cookie Monsta, Vaski, Bommer, FuntCase, Aweminus, Requake, Badklaat, and Cure, all significant forces that ultimately helped shape Trentcast’s production style. “I have a lot of respect for the artists and community because they are what makes it all thrive so well. They fill out the shows, they buy the tickets, they come from miles away, they promote the events, they produce the tunes, they help others get on line ups, they set up the stages, they get the artists riders taken care of, they spend so much time preparing for whatever it may be that’s involved in the scene in some way, shape or form. We are a community.” Today, Trentcast is releasing wonky tracks and continues to impress people with his energy and innovative underground dubstep sound. As a way to chill out while producing music, Wagner also maintains a side project creating lo-fi hip-hop tracks under his alias of          F O R R C A S T.