Hi. I'm lev tover. I make music.

lev tover is an indie electronic music
artist from the Netherlands, mostly specializing in making music for video games.

Last update: 14 May 2024

Me, sometime in 2022.

Who is lev tover?

Who am I?
Hi. My name is Julian, but I make music as lev tover. Currently I'm 20 years old and am living in the Netherlands. I actually study film, but make music whenever I have time.

When did I start making music?
I started making music in April of 2020, while in lockdown. I had come up with this tune in my head and wanted to take steps in making it an actual song. On exactly the 30th of September 2021 I came up with the name lev tover while on my way to work.

What programs do I use to make music?
I use free programs like Bandlab and Beepbox since I personally really dig the restrictions and simple layouts they offer. I also use free tools like GXSCC, voicechanger.io and Seemusic. I tried a free trial for FL Studio once, but I was quickly overwhelmed.

Why do I make music?
bleep bloop bleep

What instruments do you play?
I play a ton of instruments, mostly guitar (both acoustic as well as electric), piano and ukulele. I'm not a very experienced player though and heavily rely on post-production and the tweaking of my recordings before it actually sounds good.

What artists inspire me?
I feel very inspired by artists like C418, Toby Fox, Jack Stauber and vivivivi.

Why the name lev tover?
When I was young I often wrote stories and character names always had to abide by certain rules I had came up with. The main one was that the letters within the name had to correspond with being a nice, round number in the alphabet. J is a good number, because it's the tenth letter of the alphabet, but the K is a bad one, because its number eleven. So therefore, Jen was fine, Ken wasn't. Crazy, I know. lev tover consists of only letters that correspond with a letter in the alphabet dividable by two or four. It's just a kind nod to my childhood self. For the rest, it sounds like it could be an actual name. Lev is like a common Russian first name. It could also be interpreted as the word leftover, which mostly refers like something that remains after the rests has been consumed.

What are your favorite games?
Minecraft, Undertale and Life is Strange. Postal 2 is great. I also play Peggle and Cookie Clicker way too often. But mostly Minecraft. Nothing beats Minecraft for me.

What are your favorite game soundtracks?
That's a difficult one for me, because I am a huge fan of both the Minecraft soundtrack as well as the Undertale soundtrack. Right now I'm leaning more into Undertale, tho. Minecraft - Volume Alpha has some songs I would skip when I listen to the album, while every song on the Undertale soundtrack is worth listening to, for me. My favorite songs from Undertale are Fallen Down (obviously), Spider Dance, Bonetrousle and Death by Glamour. My favorites from Minecraft are Dry Hands, Wet Hands and Sweden. Another game soundtrack I really like is Omori, but I haven't finished playing yet.

What music do you listen to?
I mostly listen to music that's pretty far away from the music I make, soundwise. My favorite genre is probably indie rock. I am a big fan of Mac DeMarco. Tally Hall is great. And if you want to hear some great Dutch music, check out Spinvis or Astronaut.

Where do you see your music career 5 years from now?
I personally think five years is too short of a time period for my music career to change that drastically. I mean, a lot can happen in such a timespan, but I don't think I'll be doing anything wildly different from what I'm doing now. All I hope is that I still get as much joy out of music as I am getting these days (or more) and that I've worked on some cool project in the mean time. Some extra listeners here and there wouldn't be to bad either.

What song that you made are you most proud of?
Used to be Percocet, now it's Oh My! God :)

Did you come up with these questions yourself?
Alright, I think it's time to wrap up.

Last update: 14 May 2024

Blog / General Updates

20 November 2023
Over a 100 monthly listeners and 2.5K streams on Spotify! Crazy!

12 November 2023
Scrapbook is doing great! Monthly listeners on Spotify also jumped from 10 people to 68. I can also see Never the Same was added to 13 playlists. Wonder what kind of listeners I have in my audience and in what sort of playlists I am featured.

7 November 2023
Worked on two really fun acoustic songs, you can listen to them on my Soundcloud. I feel like I'm getting better at mixing piano chords and guitar melodies together.

5 November 2023
Vanille Vla, the acoustic song I posted as Hersenstelsel reached 1K listens?? Honestly, don't know where those came from, but was very excited and suprised to see. Scrapbook II is not doing too shabby either, has a collective 500 listens!

30 October 2023
Scrapbook II is out on Spotify NOW!

28 October 2023
Caught some friends listening to the Hersenstelsel song in their Spotify activity. I have listened a couple times to it too now, found a new appreciation for it.

25 October 2023
Some new changes in the Spotify policy caused Scrapbook II to be delayed. Waiting for a response, but don't think it'll be fixed today. My song as Hersenstelsel did come through.

22 October 2023
Made a new lev tover Youtube account. Wanted to upload a video of me making music, but the recording of the guitar came out messed up. Maybe another day.

21 October 2023
Three more days until Scrapbook II releases! Actually quite proud of it.

18 October 2023
Added some new pictures to the photo gallery. Experimented with a long shutterspeed, which causes the photo's to have all these blurry parts. Really like the results.

17 October 2023
Made a weird, 4-minute long ambient track, but you're not aloud to listen to it just yet.

12 October 2023
Made some sketches surrounding my music making and of some of the instruments I play. Also drew a sort of logo for lev tover. Order a hoodie and beanie with a few on the drawings on it. Might be potential merch, if the quality is good enough.

10 October 2023
Drastically changed the layout of my site today and apparently lost all my previous blogposts. I guess we'll have to start again from scratch.

Last update: 14 May 2024