Sound Advice: TEED

Join TEED on Sound Advice, the weekly interview series covering artists’ journeys and their creative process. In this episode, we discuss his latest album, ‘Always With Me,’ journey on SoundCloud, studio processes and more.

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Welcome to Sound Advice, the series spotlighting artists’ creative process and their SoundCloud journey. We’ll get the inside knowledge straight from the source on how musicians, producers and creatives are leaning into everything SoundCloud offers to elevate their sound, get heard and catapult their careers. Sound Advice is now available in audio format on the SoundCloud Stories profile.

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Raised in Oxford, England, and based in Los Angeles, California, indie electronic producer, DJ and singer-songwriter Orlando Higginbottom, better known as TEED, joins us on Sound Advice to kick off our 2026 season. Initially known under the name Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, he burst onto the scene at the tail end of the bloghouse era in 2009, with quirky electronic pop releases on Hot Chip’s Greco Roman label. This was followed up by his 2012 debut album, ‘Trouble,’ which received big accolades from Pitchfork, DJ Mag and the BBC. 

It took him a decade to release a second album, but in that time, he did a lot of DJing, remixes and collaborations, writing songs for artists like BANKS, SG Lewis, Mark Ronson, The Blessed Madonna and Nelly Furtado, to name a few. As he reveals during our conversation, TEED works on music every day, in almost a tradesman-like fashion. He talks about how he likes to use SoundCloud, his techniques for getting out of a songwriting rut and the making of his third album, ‘Always With Me,’ which was released on his own Nice Age label in December 2025.

We discuss the album’s nostalgic inspirations, from childhood memories of France to early crushes, his vocal techniques, and how he makes things sound cohesive. He also gives some deep thoughts and great advice on music-making, artistry and what it takes to run an independent label today.

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LISTEN TO THE AUDIO EPISODE OF SOUND ADVICE FEATURING TEED

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LISTEN TO ‘ALWAYS WITH ME’ BY TEED ON SOUNDCLOUD

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Things We Talked About In This Episode of Sound Advice

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Creating the Nostalgic, Natural Sound of TEED’s 2025 Album, ‘Always With Me’

• We begin the conversation with ‘Always With Me,’ TEED’s latest, third album. When it comes to the world of the album, and where his spark of inspiration came from, TEED shares that music-making is a daily process for him. It’s “an impulse and a practice,” he says. Here, he goes into more detail about how he likes to work through music each day,  treating it as a process of play, discovery and vague creation, without set targets. 
• By working this way, TEED feels that he’s more malleable — by not “getting too attached to the initial idea, and grinding it into the ground,” he’s able to adapt, bounce between genres and let the ideas guide him. This method informed the writing of ‘Always With Me,’ as the album’s themes are loosely based on nostalgia, childhood memories and formative experiences with romance and loneliness. Here, he talks about how he drew on those feelings in the studio.
• One of the core themes of ‘Always With Me’ is nostalgia: a somewhat tricky, personal and ephemeral concept, which everyone is aware of but is often hard to explain. Here, TEED elaborates on how he stayed in the right headspace during the album writing in order to tap into this theme, to allow it to “happen naturally” and “not feel cynical.” In our conversation, he focuses on two album tracks in particular — the title track, and album closer “Start Again” — and details exactly how he wrote, produced and recorded these tracks in order to musically convey the theme of nostalgia. 

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How TEED’s Love of Dance Music Culture Informs His Writing and Production Work

• Since the earliest days of his career, TEED has been deeply interested in underground dance music culture. He’s been DJing and raving for as long as he’s been writing and producing music. There are elements of dance music in ‘Always With Me,’ including the softer edges of trance music, with its euphoric pads and sentimental melodic riffs. 
• Here, TEED describes how he is careful about how he incorporates dance music into his work — how he’s “always trying to make something that works in both worlds,” referencing the creation of a great song to listen to on its own that can also move a dancefloor — and what his reservations are about contemporary dance music culture, particularly when it comes to the use of vocal samples as a way to signal genre and feeling.
• Having fallen in love with jungle music as a young teenager, and starting to DJ soon after, TEED reflects on how he started producing electronic music as a way of contributing to the dance culture he loved. Here, he describes how, over time, his ways of thinking about writing and producing electronic music have evolved, and how he gradually came to his own sound and style as TEED, through exploring jungle, drum & bass, house, hip-hop and more. 

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TEED on Overcoming Writers’ Block, Becoming a Prolific Collaborator and His Advice for Fellow Artists

• TEED took a long break between releasing his first and second album — 10 years, in fact — despite making music every day. Here, he’s frank about the realities of getting writer’s block, or feeling uninspired or unsure of which direction to go in, so he shares some wisdom about what to do if you’re in the midst of writing or producing a track, and don’t know how to keep moving forward. 
• Some core tips for TEED include making music at a different tempo than the one you normally work in, and see if the ideas come alive from there. He also suggests copying someone else’s music as an exercise in how to use tools without “putting pressure on yourself to finish something original.” By treating music-making as play rather than work, it becomes an enjoyable exercise rather than a pressured experience based on hard results. “It’s like musical yoga,” he riffs, “turn up to create, and things will come.”
• Over the years, TEED has also been a prolific collaborator, working with artists such as BANKS, SG Lewis, Mark Ronson, The Blessed Madonna and Nelly Furtado, among others. So what advice does TEED have for when you’re working with other artists in a booked session, and are feeling the peer and time pressure to create something great on the spot? “Good ideas take time,” he insists, so it’s good to go into session without unreasonable expectations. He shares how some ideas can be dormant for months, then suddenly come together in a few hours. The key is to focus on “creation, not efficiency or economy. We’re not athletes, we’re artists, and it takes time,” he says wisely. 
• In a collaborative session specifically, TEED thinks it’s important to look for the weak points in a track, rewrite them, and don’t let the moments you’re unsure about slide. All of those moments are the track, and if you’re not happy with all of them, it’ll show in the final result. 

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Operating as an Independent Artist in 2026, From Using SoundCloud to Running a Label

• TEED has been an active SoundCloud user since the earliest days of the platform, and has grown a significant audience for his music through sharing his music and DJ mixes. Here, he reflects on three of the biggest moments of his career so far on SoundCloud, how he’s used the platform to reignite his solo production work at a time when he was struggling creatively and professionally, and how he uses the platform as a living archive for his work.
• SoundCloud is an important part of TEED’s presentation as an artist because he works independently. Having been on Polydor for his 2012 debut album, ‘Trouble,’ and then becoming independent since — and now with his own record label, Nice Age — TEED has experienced being signed and unsigned as an artist, and knows what it takes to make that kind of transition. 
• Here, TEED talks about some of the hardest-yet-most fruitful lessons he’s learned in that process, how he likes to operate as an artist and label owner, and what advice he’d give to fellow artists who are going through the same experiences. 
• “The first and hardest lesson is that it’s not a meritocracy,” he says, of the music industry at large, because “the quality of the work itself is not a guarantee for people to listen to it; you have to get it out there, announce it, write emails and make connections in the industry.” Step by step, you have to present your music in ways that people will actually find it. “Cross-pollinate your worlds,” as he puts it.

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How TEED Found and Captured His Singing Voice on ‘Always With Me’

• Across the 11 tracks of his latest album, TEED works his vocals into the tracks. Having sung across projects over the years, he admits that he’s often been insecure about his vocal presentation. Here, he goes into more detail about how he’s worked through those insecurities, and how his recording, editing and processing techniques in the studio have molded his vocals into a shape he now feels more confident about. He also goes into finer detail about the equipment he uses to get his vocals to that good place, across distortion units, delays, filters and more. 
• When it comes to having your own vocals in a track, he says, it’s healthier to focus on the idiosyncrasies of the process and the vibes, rather than trying to get a voice to sound technically “perfect.” As a parting bit of wisdom to fellow artists, “You don't need every new plugin,” TEED says, “just good speakers and headphones.”

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Links and Extras

Follow TEED’s journey on SoundCloud.
Press play on TEED’s 2024 album, ‘Always With Me.’
Hit play on TEED’s collaboration with SG Lewis and Shygirl, titled “Sugar.”
Go back to where it all began with TEED’s 2012 debut album, ‘Trouble.’
Listen to “Happier,” the 2025 collaborative track between TEED, The Blessed Madonna and Clementine Douglas. 
Explore some of TEED’s wide-ranging influences, including Mylene Farmer, Marianne Faithfull, Satoshi Tomiie and Ryuichi Sakamoto, to name a few. 
Listen to the New Era Ambient playlist on SoundCloud.
Never miss an episode and follow the official Sound Advice playlist on SoundCloud.

Getting The Most Out of SoundCloud

Learn more about using DMs to connect with fellow artists and potential collaborators.
Learn more about how to make a custom playlist on SoundCloud.
Learn more about unlimited uploads, available with an Artist Pro subscription.
Learn more unlocking access to unlimited distribution, available with Artist Pro.
Learn more about getting heard with SoundCloud’s updated algorithm, available to Artist and Artist Pro subscribers.

To discover additional features a SoundCloud Artist or Artist Pro subscription offers, visit here. To catch up on past installments of Sound Advice and make sure you don’t miss out on future episodes, visit here.
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_{CREDITS Host: Vivian Host, Executive Producer: Mike Spinella, Producer: KC Orcutt, Audio Engineer: David “DibS” Shackney, Coordinator: Trevor McGee, Editorial Associate: Lauren Martin}