Sound Advice: Tourist

Join Tourist on Sound Advice, the weekly interview series covering artists’ journeys and their creative process. In this episode, we discuss the British dance producer’s latest album, ‘Music Is Invisible,’ his trance inspirations 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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British producer Will Philips, better known as Tourist, joins us on this week’s Sound Advice to talk about his latest album, December 2025’s ‘Music Is Invisible.’ A departure from the UK garage and trip-hop of his prior releases, the album explores euphoric trance and progressive house. One of the seeds of inspiration for his sixth album started with staring at a photo that hangs in his studio. It depicts the dancefloor at famed Manchester nightclub, the Haçienda, in the late 1980s. Tourist imagined what soundtrack might please these sweaty, ecstatic clubbers, and used that as a guiding light to explore the fleeting feeling of transcendence in all of its messy, melodic glory. 

We talked to Will about the meaning of trance, sampling Kate Bush, how producing Grammy-winning pop songs for the likes of Sam Smith and Kacy Hill has informed his solo work, and his approach to live performances and collaborations — in particular, with ambient vocalist, Julianna Barwick, who appears twice on his new album. Tourist also highlights the role of SoundCloud throughout his career, as well as reflects on the importance of letting yourself fail and being yourself on the road to making something great. 

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‍LISTEN TO THE AUDIO EPISODE OF SOUND ADVICE FEATURING TOURIST

LISTEN TO ‘MUSIC IS INVISIBLE’ BY TOURIST ON SOUNDCLOUD

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Things We Talked About In This Episode of Sound Advice

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Connecting Melodic Trance and Pop on Tourist’s December 2025 Album, ‘Music Is Invisible’ 

• We begin the conversation with Tourist’s latest album, ‘Music Is Invisible.’ As Tourist explains, the title comes from the album’s opening vocal sample, courtesy of avant-pop vocalist Kate Bush. Here, Tourist details why the vocal sample spoke to him, how it connects with his ideas about music, and why he’s connected more deeply with music than with other, more visual-led artforms. These sentiments inspired him to write ‘Music Is Invisible,’ and became the narrative threads that pulled all of the music together. 
• Listening to ‘Music Is Invisible,’ the genre that guides it all is trance. After focusing on sounds like UK garage, trip-hop, ambient and house, on albums like 2024’s ‘Memory Morning’ and 2022’s ‘Inside Out,’ among others, why pick trance? Here, Tourist explains what drew him to the genre, what about trance connects with him as a songwriter and producer, and why focusing on one genre was a limitation that forced him to be creative in different ways. 
• One of the reasons that Tourist picked trance as the lead sound for ‘Music Is Invisible’ is that he finds connections between trance and the pop music he’s written for himself and others over the years. As he explains, pop songwriting is “in his DNA,” and being “on the edge of corny” is better than making overly serious music that willingly locks listeners out of understanding and enjoying it. 
• With trance, he says, he can “indulge in everything I love without feeling guilty.” He reflects on how he found the process of writing ‘Music Is Invisible’ under strict genre instruction “actually quite liberating.”  
• What truly connects trance, pop and his way of creating music, Tourist says, is writing melodies live on the piano; asking “What’s the melodic story we’re trying to tell?” Here, he goes into greater detail about how he put aside the focus of groove that dominated his earlier work, guided by UK garage and trip-hop, and instead focused squarely on melodic piano work for ‘Music Is Invisible.’ 
• As he progressed, he noticed that, despite the genre limitation, he found himself working more instinctively than ever, without overthinking the tracks in real-time. “I think trance is a very instinctive genre,” he says, “it’s songwriters’ music … it fell out of me.”

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How Tourist’s Love of Melodic Dance Music Guides His Creative Process

• Over the last 15 years, Tourist has released six solo albums, remixed artists such as The Weeknd, Flume, Christine and the Queens and Hozier, and written songs for pop artists, including Sam Smith’s Grammy-winning 2015 hit, “Stay With Me.” Reflecting on his career, he says that, rather than having clear goals, he purely followed what he found to be meaningful with music. 
• Here, he explains about how he fell in love with pop-adjacent dance music as a teenager — listening to Air, Daft Punk and The Chemical Brothers on the radio — and how those melodic hits have guided his tastes and choices as a musician. 
• Here, he gives advice to fellow artists: that everyone is a work in progress, so you should always be open to new ideas and be able to criticize yourself in a healthy way. Most importantly, translating that back into his work flow, you have to make and move on, otherwise you’re “never going to make any music,” let alone share it with the world.

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The Subtle Art of a Great Collaboration, From Ambient and Pop to Trance

• Thinking over his pop collaborations, what advice would Tourist give to fellow producers about working with vocalists or other musicians? “Being an eternal novice is the only attitude to have,” Tourist says. Be humble, have fun, try new things and, most importantly, connect with your collaborators over your mutual love of art first, before trying to convey your ideas about music in the studio together. “The best people get in the room and try to understand people,” he says.
• One of the collaborations on his latest album, ‘Music Is Invisible,’ is with Julianna Barwick. The American composer, musician and vocalist has worked with acts like Icelandic band Sigur Rós and harpist Mary Lattimore, blending her euphoric, choral vocals with ambient instrumentation. On the surface, she seems like an unlikely collaboration for a dance music producer’s trance-pop album — but here, Tourist explains how they worked together, what they connected on and how they created the track “Invisible.” 
• As a practicing musician, not every day is a super productive one. Here, Tourist also talks about how to get yourself in the mood to write and record music, even when the creative juices aren’t flowing. One tip is to listen to albums that inspire you: for Tourist, he was drawn to William Orbit’s production work on Madonna’s groundbreaking 1998 album, ‘Ray of Light,’ as well as Enya, Moby, Tiësto, Ferry Corsten and Sasha & Digweed.

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The Vital Role of SoundCloud in Tourist’s Career, and Advice to Fellow Artists

• For as long as Tourist has been making and releasing music, he’s been on SoundCloud. Here, he discusses his early journey on the platform, how he found the “no middleman” experience of uploading his music directly to his page “liberating,” and how the ecosystem of early music blogs, SoundCloud and core fan feedback gave him the confidence and clarity to keep making original tracks. “I owe a lot of my career to SoundCloud,” he says.
• When it comes to being noticed — on SoundCloud, and in the wider music industry — Tourist offers up some sage advice to fellow artists. “Don’t be scared of what you like,” he insists, because “the thing you think is weird about you is probably the most interesting thing about you.” 
• By embracing what makes you unique as a person and artist, that confidence and experimentation will shine through in your music, and naturally make you more noticeable. “There’s no cost to experimenting,” Tourist says, so keep uploading your music to SoundCloud. You never know who’s listening.

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Taking ‘Music Is Invisible’ on Tour in 2026

• Now that ‘Music Is Invisible’ is out in the world, Tourist will be taking the new album out on the road, for a live experience. Here, he talks about how his usual way of creating a live show — to make an album first, then worry about the live show later — was flipped with the making of ‘Music Is Invisible.’ The new show feels like a “distinctive entity,” which leads off the trance theme. “Trance music feels right for the live stage,” he says. 
• His challenge, now, is weaving his previous work, with more contemplative and ambient elements, cohesively into the new show. Here, he talks about how the show will look and sound, his take on LED screens on stage, and how he’s working with lighting designer Ed Warren (Interpol, Four Tet) to create a live experience that feels like Tourist’s own version of a My Bloody Valentine show, one of his other, favorite artists. 

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Links and Extras

Follow Tourist’s journey on SoundCloud.
Press play on Tourist’s 2025 album, ‘Music Is Invisible.’
Follow Julianna Barwick, who features on the tracks “Invisible” and “Capricorn.” 
Hit play on Tourist’s collaboration with Real Lies, titled “Love In Silence.”
Go back to where it all began with Tourist’s 2012 self-titled album.
Listen to Tourist’s previous album, 2024’s ‘Memory Morning.’
Explore some of Tourist’s wide-ranging influences, including Air, Daft Punk, The Chemical Brothers, William Orbit and Ferry Corsten, to name a few. 
Listen to the New Era Trance 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.

_{CREDITS Host: Vivian Host, Executive Producer: Mike Spinella, Producer: KC Orcutt, Audio Engineer: David “DibS” Shackney, Coordinator: Trevor McGee, Editorial Associate: Lauren Martin}