‘Sweet Memories’: An Interview with CID

New York based producer Carlos Cid, known by the stage name CID, made a stop at Foundation’s Elevate Saturday this December. CID was the special guest opener prior to Chris Lake, and his set surely did not disappoint. The night was full of our favorite house and deep house tracks. The crowd was loving the bouncy vibes emanating from CID’s tunes from the moment he stepped on stage to the end. His stage presence was simple, yet engaging, and it truly reflected in his music.

During his set, CID performed a variety of his popular tracks, along with classic house tunes and fun remixes. CID’s rendition of the classic House Work hyped the energy, and enthralled everyone to show their best dance moves. His collaboration with Kaskade, Sweet Memories, concluded the set at Foundation. The crowd loved the track, and swayed to the deep house wubs until the end of the set. Following his set, we had the opportunity chat with Carlos “CID” about his interests in house music and developments in the electronic music scene.

If you know anything of CID’s early history, his influences in music started at a young age. At about 12, he started DJing. While it might not have technically started out in house music, CID always had strong influences from that New York sound. In his youth, he would go weekly on a bus for miles to a record shop, which influenced his knowledge and taste of genres.

“It wasn’t specifically any artist, but more about the experience of going to the record shop and seeing all of these DJs on vinyl. That was definitely inspirational, and I had two older brothers who were into 90s hip-hop, so that provided sample ideas too.”

From our own research, we knew about CID’s ventures to the record store, but wondered what was that ‘ah ha’ moment where he developed an interest to create house music. He always took an interest in house music, but the DJs he looked up to were known for their music, not their DJ sets. This inspired CID to begin producing his own music. CID enjoyed the production side of music, so he stopped DJing for a while to focus on that.

“In my mind, I wanted to focus on production to then be able to come out as a DJ on a bigger scale.”

He currently has a Grammy for his production with Cedric Gervais’ remix of Summertime Sadness.