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PBG: 3-Question Artist Interview with Silver Dawn: Single "One And Only (Just For Now)"

Updated: Jun 25

We're thrilled to spotlight Silver Dawn’s upcoming single, “One And Only (Just For Now),” dropping May 15, 2026. This track is a kaleidoscope of glitchy indie dance energy, weaving in a spiritual lens on nightlife and the fleeting connections we chase. Silver Dawn takes the pulse of the club and infuses it with a thoughtful, emotional undercurrent, blending dance-pop urgency with hints of industrial rock. Her creative journey is rooted in a childhood shaped by her physicist father’s love for vinyl and sonic experimentation, which sparked her curiosity for jazz, composition, samba, post-punk, and free improvisation. Self-taught in music production, Silver Dawn approaches sound as vibration, memory, and movement a way to truly connect with yourself and the world around you.



1. “One And Only (Just For Now)” instantly pulls us into the haze and heartbeat of a night out, but there’s this undercurrent of longing and something almost spiritual woven through the club energy. What inspired you to dive into the world of that type of music culture and nightlife, not just as a way to escape, but as a space where real connection and deeper meaning can still break through?


I’m interested in what makes us human beneath the veil of societal expectation at any point in time and space, and joining together in musical reverie is a fundamental part of who we are isn’t it? Although in Western Europe there was an effort by the church to discourage the primal rhythms and beats which bring out our wilder side, we still wanted to connect with each other through a shared feeling and dancing together to music - even if it needed to be bound by strict rules like the quadrilles and waltzes in Regency England. Club energy is about us reclaiming that wild part of ourselves, but still looking to connect with others on some level, like a country dance.

What’s different now, is that we interact with so many more strangers, especially if we live in a big city, and there are no rules to connecting - so there’s this overwhelm, it's confusing and there can be a lot of bravado and getting high to dissociate from that longing. I was trying to explore that feeling.


2. Your creative process feels so instinctive starting with the MPC, letting those raw ideas flow, and then shaping them in the computer to match the sounds you’re hearing in your mind. How much of Silver Dawn’s signature vibe is born from pure instinct versus careful planning? And when you stumble on a glitchy or unexpected sound, how do you sense when it’s the real heartbeat of the track?


I think it is mainly raw instinct. Feeling a kind of pulse or rhythm in my mind and mucking about with synth bass sounds or maybe drums first. I find that when I am playing with a sound, it tends to ‘want’ to go somewhere, like how much delay, slide, phasing, or whatever in that synth sound suggests whether I want a fluid riff or staccato, octave leaps or semitones. Once I am feeling that sound, I get myself into a kind of blissed out state playing something over and over, and once I’ve come to, I’ll probably build that into a loop. I might do a contrasting couple of sections before transferring over to Ableton. Once in this part of the process, I will start hunting for and shaping sounds and motifs that I am hearing in my mind first - “Is it like a glass chime? Is it like a reversed vocal? Is it distorted guitar? Organ? Supersaw?” That kind of thing, I’ll probably also be forming an idea of what the song is about, maybe recording myself singing or speaking something, or doing a gibberish vocal. Having said that - I sometimes do that on the MPC too. If I stumble on an unexpected sound I love, it is easy to hear straight away if it belongs in that track or I have to save it as a favourite for another track. If on the other hand I feel like I need to clear away a load of sonic space for a sound, then I know that it has that main character energy.



3. You’ve shared that you used to hide your voice behind layers of processing, but now you’ve let it come through raw and real. What shifted for you in your relationship with your own voice, and how has embracing that vulnerability shaped the emotional honesty in your music today?


I think it is part of self-acceptance all round really. Looking without, for music acceptance, was blocking my creativity and holding me back. Looking within, I can learn to trust what I like, and it doesn’t matter if most people don’t like it, the fact that it rings true to me and I like it, means there must be other people it rings true for too. The whole thing is very vulnerable because you are setting yourself up for criticism and rejection, but paradoxically I feel my own strength building as I go on. I am going to go out on a limb here and say that feedback as part of the creative process is not all it is said to be. Those opinions can clang about your head and confuse you, because listening to feedback means trying to imagine yourself into someone else’s perspective, taking you away from where all the important answers are inside you: Your own taste, your own truth, what excites you. That’s your guiding light and north star.


4. Bonus Question: What does Produced by a Girl mean to you personally?


There’s something slightly gender-divergent when a woman or girl takes up music production, starts DJing or takes up certain instruments like electric guitar, bass or drums, and although some people will dispute that, I know when I doomscroll looking at a lot of production, synth or guitar videos, the algorithm starts thinking I am a man. In my experience, blokey scenes work in a way where people try to impress, jostle for position, and find out where everyone fits into a hierarchy. Even traditionally feminine scenes like knitting circles generally become competitive and about showing off when men get involved. For women and girls it's a different motivation and set of priorities, whether it is nature or nurture isn’t really the issue. We benefit from sharing our struggles and weaknesses in a way that is fairly taboo amongst men, perhaps it's because we need to help one another overcome conditioning and limiting beliefs about gender. Pink Pantheress got crowned Producer of the Year at the Brits this year, and I have enjoyed all the incredulous reaction videos from men about her cavalier attitude towards tech and production. She shamelessly used Garage Band and her iphone microphone to record and produce tracks, she’s openly unbothered by standards like song lengths or putting your tracks into an album so they can be coherently played in sequence- it is pure gold. But in all seriousness, Pink Pantheress shows us that we don’t need to talk in maths, namedrop and posture like we know it all. Produced by a Girl, to me, means that women and girls have music inside us and we are entitled to just start producing that music in our own way, for its own sake - no apologies!



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Written By: PBG Chief Editor, Mary Knoblock

 
 
 

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