Eric Hilton, the producer, DJ, and composer best known as the co-founder of Thievery Corporation, has partnered with Berlin-based boutique analog rotary mixer atelier RESØR for Trust A Thief — Eric Hilton Signature Series, a limited edition, hand-built discrete rotary mixer/hi-fi preamplifier, designed from the ground up around Hilton’s personal approach to listening, mixing and flow. This isn’t a reinterpretation of an existing product — it is a deeply considered instrument shaped by decades of musical practice. Limited to just 50 units worldwide, each mixer is individually assembled and calibrated in Berlin to Hilton’s exact sonic and aesthetic standards. The enclosure is crafted from solid mahogany, a conscious nod to the Golden Age of Hi-Fi, when materials mattered and sound was treated as craft rather than commodity.
“This mixer reflects how I actually listen and perform,” says Hilton. “It’s about flow, subtlety, and intention. RESØR understood that immediately.” The Trust A Thief – Eric Hilton Signature Series RESØR Rotary Mixer is available to order now exclusively HERE.
This collaboration arrives during a particularly focused creative period for Hilton. His forthcoming solo album, A Sky So Close, will be released on February 20, and both projects reflect his continued emphasis on atmosphere, subtlety, and immersive listening, values that also shape the philosophy behind this instrument. Check out the album’s new single, “The Emerald Door,” on YouTube HERE and on all platforms HERE.
In these times of anxiety and deprivation, journey to a place of sensual attainment on A Sky So Close, 12 tracks of pure sensory indulgence. Eric Hilton’s luxurious production skills are on full display here, as well as the deep grooves that he’s been delivering since the early days of Thievery Corporation. But on A Sky So Close, there is a hedonic weightlessness to this music that verges on the tantric, with no climactic finish to bring the listener back down to Earth. Hilton keeps you floating in an extended, delicious haze.
“This record is an atmosphere, a state of mind. I indulge myself by making music that I want to listen to,” says Hilton. “It’s a more solitary record than some of my other work, there is not a big list of guest performers on this one. It’s really like my stream of consciousness.”
A Sky So Close follows Hilton’s well-honed production methodology of layering samples and live playing to deliver a more organic sound, with the added punch and feel that only a performance can bring. “I’m really a bassline designer,” says Hilton. “I mean, I’m a passable bass player, but if a lick is a little too tricky for me, I’ll bring in a friend to play it. And I also really like to weave bass samples and live playing together, so you can get new kinds of grooves that one person couldn’t really play.” Drop the needle on “Kali” or “Ghatam” to settle into two of the album’s deepest bass grooves.
The title track delivers the album’s most widescreen elegance. Finger tipped tabla hits, string flourishes, wah guitar and a cooking bassline create an empyrean expanse filled with exotic birds, ancient aliens, and beckoning goddesses. Perhaps the most surprising piece on the album is “The Emerald Door”, a desi-meets-drum and bass exploration that sounds somewhat adjacent to the Asian Underground music scene of the late-’90s.
For the final two tracks on the album, Hilton gently leads the listener back out of the haze. “Behind My Eyes (Reprise)” has a laid back but tough groove; the goddess slides your jacket on, kisses your cheek and gently pushes you out her door, back onto the street. “The Lotus Gate” is a mysterious closer, with Ipcress File dramatics that seem to be leading somewhere explosive … but where to next? Eric Hilton is full of musical surprises.
In the meantime, let go, and fall into the sky. It is … so … close.
Thoughts Words Action 