To call Abby Echiverri a techno producer is accurate but hardly sufficient. Techno is just one outcome of a career entirely revolving around sound. After studying music technology at NYU and working as an assistant engineer at a number of New York City jazz studios, in 2013 Echiverri became the head of production at Output, Brooklyn's reigning techno palace of the period. At the reins of what was one of the best Funktion-One soundsystems anywhere (Echiverri left Output in 2016, and the club closed in 2019), she was tasked with overseeing the technical details of parties featuring some of the world's foremost DJs and producers, along with key local talent. Echiverri had a front-row seat to the electronic music scene, and though she was already well versed in synthesizers, the gig led her to wonder what kind of a mark she could make on the scene she was running sound for.

"She understands the science of soundsystems in a way that very few electronic musicians do," says The Bunker New York's Bryan Kasenic, whose brief run of parties at Output left an outsized impression on Echiverri, who in turn gave Kasenic a deep respect for her craft; he's gone on to champion her live sets at The Bunker and has put out all of the solo productions she's released to date. But her technical knowledge of music goes well beyond sound reenforcement. While nothing Echiverri does feels quite like a conventional day job, if she has one, it's as a mostly self-taught electrical engineer, working with clients like James Murphy and Soulwax on everything from restoring vintage studio consoles to designing circuits for new gear.

What brings together her engineering work and artistic output is Echiverri's ability to find joy in the maddeningly technical details of music many of us would be happy to gloss over. "Abby approaches work and pretty much everything with an open and curious mind," says John Klett, Echiverri's mentor turned colleague in specialized audio projects. "It appears to me that learning and taking on knowledge is a major dopamine release agent in her chemistry."

Outside of the nightclubs where her live sets have made her a cult favorite, Echiverri's musical life happens mainly in two studios: a basement workshop for her technical endeavors, and a light-filled second-floor setup where she writes and records. In the latter, her modest but purposeful selection of gear—standalone synths and sequencers, a whirring modular system—sits atop a wraparound desk she designed and built herself. (Echiverri has made woodworking her latest technical endeavor.) From her living room, which is sandwiched between the two studios, on the ground floor of her house in Brooklyn, we discussed the circuitous path that's led Echiverri to make some of the most intriguing techno to come out of New York of late, and the from-the-ground-up approach she takes to audio that ensures she's unlikely to have a conventional producer/DJ career any time soon.

You're classically trained as a musician. Could you tell me about that?

Yeah, I think it was a pretty standard Asian upbringing of studying the piano. I also picked up the violin, flute, and took vocal lessons, so it was kind of a wide range of instruments that I just practiced a lot. My siblings also played, and since I was the youngest it was natural for me to take on. My dad was into music, too, and we played together a lot actually. My dad was more into jazz, so during the holidays everyone would just play standards around the piano. It was pretty cute. My siblings and I were in a trio together and we would play at weddings on the weekends to make extra money. Yeah, there was a lot of music in my household.

Do you feel like that musical upbringing is something that you still come back to as a musician, as a producer?

I think the part that I come back to the most is that melody is very important to me in a way that isn't the priority in a lot of drum machine-driven music. That was something that I actually kind of grappled with, because so much of my favorite music was just one chord the entire song, so figuring out a way to get back to different chord progressions in techno music was really exciting for me. A lot of my first attempts making techno or dance floor music was kind of like a rebellion from a lot of the classical, virtuosic, crazy 16th note-type of music that I had grown up with.

What was some of the music that was inspiring that rebellion?

I clearly remember Arthur Russell, "The Platform On The Ocean." Hearing that for the first time, it was kind of mindblowing. There's the cello element, but also [this] crazy synth line the whole time. So that was a big song for me, where I was like, "Oh, this is what a synthesizer is," or electronic manipulation. I don't even know if there is a synth in that song, but just thinking about the cello in a different way and listening to Arthur's music was really important.

A lot of Arthur Russell's music is maybe one chord or a drone, but then with his cello and with his voice, he's literally exploring every possible contour around it—in a way that's very different from how melody plays out in classical music.

Yeah. And also, there is an idea of the perfect tone of a cello and what that's supposed to be. A cello through a pedal was just... I didn't even know what that was when I was a teenager.

What was some of the other music you were listening to around that time?

I got really into Italo disco. That was definitely a gateway drug for me because I liked a lot of disco. I loved Donna Summer. The Italo genre specifically was just a lot more exciting to me because of the use of the drum machine and basslines and very simple repetitive synth lines that were just incredibly catchy. I was obsessed with Alexander Robotnick's output, some of the good side of Moroder. A lot of that was very influential for me.

Did you have any sense of what was happening in the music from a production standpoint? And if not then, when did that come into play?

At NYU. I was a Gallatin student, which meant I could kind of explore any field I wanted to, and I took an intro to electronic music synthesis. We had to learn how to use a tape machine and record some really basic early synthesizers on it, like the EMS VCS3 or the Buchla, and that was kind of my intro. Which is a very lucky intro, because these synths are just so... [they don't] make it easy for you compared to a Minimoog or something like that. A lot of the first synths I was exposed to were modular or required some sort of patching, which was great because it allowed for a lot more experimentation. I was definitely intimidated by it, but because it was part of my curriculum, it would force me to think about synthesis and try to understand it.

How hard or easy was that process of understanding it?

I'm the type of person that reads a manual before I do anything, which is kind of silly, but it wasn't that. It didn't take me that long to figure it all out. I have a weird trait where I'm just not really scared of failure. I think failure is very good, actually, in learning something. Any kind of beginning approach to synthesis requires some acceptance of failure, because failure is inevitable. You just have to be comfortable exploring and making mistakes, and that's something that I try to instil in a lot of people who come to me who are beginners. Just get used to making a mistake, making a bad sound, because there are lots of bad sounds before you get comfortable with being actually creative.

Were you already producing during this period?

I was playing in bands and not really working on solo music, but I was writing a lot of stuff for the bands. I played synths and sang and also sometimes programmed the beats. My band Dream Affair at the time, we mostly attended but also played and DJed at this party called Wierd. We wouldn't talk about music when we went to this party—we'd talk about sequencers and new synths that we had gotten, or new ways to plug in synths. It was like a really cool forum for synth collectors and the analogue music production world. That was definitely a kind of fetish for a lot of people that went there.

Going to a party like that, where you're getting to learn about things in a non-academic context, must've been really inspiring.

Yeah, definitely. So much of that music that came from that [party] and the musicians on that label, [they were] all trying to harken back to this early ‘80s sound and aesthetic while using the same technology. I guess that made me appreciate making music with restrictions, and appreciate vintage gear.

Live performance of electronic music was a key part of Wierd, too, and it's a huge part of what you do now. Did the party plant the seed?

Definitely, yes. All of the artists that played there, there's kind of like an unspoken rule that you can't have a computer on stage. They would bring so much gear with them, and I would love to go to soundcheck and just see them set it all up, because it was just so mysterious to me. But yeah, I don't think I would have appreciated live music as much if I hadn't seen the entire process of making it, making every sound live as it happened at Wierd versus doing mostly playback.

What did you get up to post-NYU?

I was doing some assistant engineering work at a couple of jazz studios—Loove Labs and Brooklyn Recording—plus another studio, Diamond Mine. I was working in nightclubs doing sound, I also worked in a guitar shop; all things around music, as much as I could. But the jazz thing was—I feel like I learned the most about critical listening through that.

What's it like being an assistant engineer at a jazz studio?

Waking up really early. Kind of gauging what everyone needs and having it ready before they have to ask for it—whether that's the engineer or the musicians. There's a lot of weird hierarchy about it. If you're just the assistant, you don't really make your presence known and are just kind of silently making everything work really well and smoothly. You're [working] a lot with artists who are trying to get a very emotional performance, so you have to make sure that they're comfortable, everything's running smoothly and there's no hitches. I was lucky to work at places where the assistant engineer did a lot of the technical stuff, too. You would set up all the mics before the engineer gets there, patch everything on the patch bay and do a basic mic check, and just help get sounds before the artists show.

What do you think you took away from the experience of assisting at these studios?

There's so many things. It's hard for me to think of the main thing. How to speak to an artist is really important. How to suggest they change something without making it hurt their feelings is really important.

You kind of have to make them think it was their idea to a certain extent.

Yeah. In terms of my own music, I learned a lot about taking things out, EQing things out, and how important that is for the mix. Taking your time with mixing. Yeah. That's something I never did.

Doing nightclub sound was the other piece of your post-college professional life. To me, as someone who's never done either, these jobs feel like they'd be at opposite ends of the spectrum. Was that the case?

It wasn't as challenging to work sound in bars and nightclubs. Working with artists, I think, is the same deal, working with egos and that kind of thing. But when you're working in a club or a nightclub, the work is… tuning a system is a slightly different beast, because you have all night to make it perfect. You're working with different source material every night. That could be wildly different.

Your biggest gig on that front was running sound at Output in Brooklyn. When did you start working there?

I think 2013. I was working at Main Drag, the guitar store, and I ran into my old friend Daniel Neumann, who set up the sound for Output, and we hadn't seen each other in a couple of years at least. He just mentioned that he was looking for someone to take over his job at Output. And I was like, "I'll interview for that." I had some experience, but being the head of the department was a new thing for me and [took] a little bit of getting used to.

What did it mean being the head of the department? Were there people working under you? Was it just a lot of responsibility resting on your shoulders?

My title was head of production, although mostly I dealt with the audio, taking care of the soundsystem. And also, if we had any large productions, like an AV show, taking care of that as well. I had a team of sound people that I would [work] with—scheduling, logistics stuff. But also, I was in charge of making sure that everything was working all the time and sounding good, and tuning it constantly.

Output was famous for its Funktion-One system, which was touted as one of their best and most advanced installations at the time. What was your read on the system? What was working on it like?

I think for me, one of the most exciting things was the subwoofer system that they had, which was called the InfraHorn.

I'm pretty sure Output was the first club in the world to have it.

Yeah. I'd show the system to a lot of people who were interested in having it in their clubs.

You've worked way more intimately with Funktion-One systems than most people. Are they as special as people say they are? What are the real advantages of a system like that?

If you're working with Funktion-One, usually they'll have an installation company that they recommend based on your region. Whereas a lot of other systems, you'll install it and you have to deal with it yourself and set it up yourself. Funktion-One is very involved in the process of tuning. So that's actually what makes them special—they make sure that none of their systems sound bad, and they're there and they check them out in our presence. It's how they maintain their power.

That care that's put into installation—is that something that's maybe under-appreciated about what separates a good system from a bad system? It's not just putting one brand of speaker over another in the club, but about how it's installed, what all of the components are and how you're maintaining them?

Yeah, I think it's not necessarily just Funktion-One that does it well. There's a lot of talented sound people that are really good when they're involved in the tuning of a soundsystem and consulting on what amps and everything else that plays a part. There are a lot of people out there who just think that the brand name is everything, and they just stick it on there without actually hiring anyone to tune it. That's definitely a problem for a lot of clubs.

You were running sound at Output at its height, which must have meant seeing some incredible sets as up close and personal as humanly possible.

I've had some very special memories at that place. Moritz von Oswald hugging me was probably one of them, but also watching Jeff Mills from directly behind him—it gives me shivers thinking about it.

If you're interested in making electronic music, then it's probably impossible for these experiences not to be incredibly influential.

Yeah. I was starting to understand what I didn't like about techno, if that makes sense. Understanding what music I wanted to make, and a lot of that was based on what I didn't like. That was a little bit easier for me to understand. If this makes me dance, then I know it's good. If this is not making me dance, then I'm not interested and then trying to understand why I wasn't interested in it. I was narrowing down what my style was, because that was something I didn't really understand for a long time. I wanted to put [something] forth in the world that was different than everything that already existed.

At Output, you were literally seeing how people made this music. Did you have any technical understanding of what contributed to the music you liked? Were you seeing people bringing in certain types of gear or using certain techniques that seemed to correlate to what you liked and didn't like?

Yeah, definitely a lot of The Bunker sets happening at Output were these huge live sets where they'd set up all the gear. I hadn't [previously] had that much exposure to watching live techno as I did with The Bunker, and artists like Voices From The Lake, Jeff Mills, Mathew Jonson. It was pretty eye-opening to see them making techno, and their style of improvising on the fly was very cool to watch. I think one of the coolest things about live techno is seeing how people just make one small manipulation on the drum machine, and it makes the energy of the track just keep unfolding on itself. The simple actions that you see somebody doing and how much they change the energy is really exciting and rewarding to watch happen live. A lot of the improvised techno taught me about how people are working in the studio, and [how] just the simplest little actions can do so much.

It made me go back to the studio and want to do more jams or longform pieces that I could edit. And think about music and the level of energy and how that changes over time, and how you can create a really long track without [big] changes in the melody. Also seeing people who work a lot with keyboards as well or sequencing basslines was really interesting. There's definitely a lot of stuff with live techno that taught me about the process of composing.

You've described yourself as self-taught in electrical engineering—a discipline lots of people struggle to wrap their heads around in much more structured environments. How did you do it?

Well, the dumb thing is that I took EE101, and I did not learn anything. I memorized for the test, I passed the test. But nothing taught me about real life until I was working in the field. I was really lucky to start just doing soldering assembly tech work for a couple of people who noticed that I was more interested in circuit board design than any of their other assembly techs. So I just learned through reading books and also doing a lot of repair work. Repair work is probably the best teacher in terms of what not to do when you're designing electronic equipment. I don't know if that applies to other fields aside from audio equipment, but repair definitely taught me as much as books did.

Where were you getting that experience?

A lot of it was through my mentors, Jens Jungkurth and John Klett. It's a great story actually. So one of the jazz engineers I was working for, I broke a 500 Series module of his by putting in a transformer the wrong way. He just handed it to me and was like, "Hey, can you outfit this with a new transformer?" And I pretended like I knew what I was doing. [The engineer] brought me to Jens and was like, "Can you desolder this for me? Because my assistant just fucked it up." My eyes must have lit up when I walked into his workshop, because the engineer afterwards was like, "Oh, you seem interested in that."

I started working for Jens because I had basically made a mistake. And that led to a lot of things. Jens started teaching me how to draw circuit boards, which means you're given a schematic, and you draw each of the little lines that connects things in software. Then I eventually showed enough interest that he taught me a lot of electronics, but I also started reading, trying to understand it myself. A lot of people think that I make synthesisers, but I actually started making recording equipment, which is a lot easier in my head.

So Jens is one of your mentors. Tell me about John Klett.

Jens works with John Klett, who is the other guy in the team. NonLinearAudio is what they manufactured products under, but they each are their own entity. They each work on their own projects. John can't quite draw circuit boards so he'll hire one of us or both of us. And then Jens isn't as good at designing bigger systems or knowing that much about acoustics. So we each have our own skills that will get pulled into each other's worlds every now and then.

A lot of projects are discovered by John and are then handed on to me. One of the big projects that John gave to me was modifying these vintage consoles for Soulwax's live rig. And Soulwax is based in Belgium. So John convinced Soulwax, like, "You should tour with these huge consoles from the '70s. You just need to totally modify them so that they actually work." There weren't that many consoles available on the second-hand market. Then the band was freaked out that they had all this custom equipment and they're like, "You need to tour with us, you need to come on the road to make sure it all works."

When you say consoles— are you talking big mixing boards?

Yeah. The definition [of consoles] is basically a mixer that has more than 16 channels, I think. It's a very disputed definition. But yeah, at some point the mixer becomes a console, and I modified three 24-channel consoles for living on stage with the band. Each one controlled the drum set of three different drum players. So the drum player's mics feed into this console as well as the player's synthesizers. The idea was that they're mixing the drums live and recreating the studio experience. So it was a perfect job for me. It was really tedious and ridiculous to bring vintage equipment on the road, but it worked apparently.

I know you were also involved with Despacio, James Murphy and 2ManyDJs' epic DJ soundsystem project. Did that also come through John Klett?

Mm-hmm. [Klett] has a lot of background in speaker cabinet design and acoustics, more so than any of us. So he designed those speakers, and then at some point there was a need for a vinyl tech. They called me because I had done sound for James at some point at Output, and I knew a lot about maintaining turntables. The whole idea is that the DJs get to play this catalogue of music that they don't normally play, all vinyl—and also press a ton of vinyl for edits, which is really cool. As much work as it is, it's a ton of fun.

I'm thinking back to what you were saying about the Funktion-One at Output—that there's this real attention paid to the system as a whole, from start to finish of the signal chain. With Despacio and all the custom speakers and McIntosh amps, it's a similar thing, just unfathomably higher-end. Would you say Despacio is an evolution of your soundsystem work?

Well, with Output, the environment is the same every single night, but the source material changes every night—whereas Despacio, the room is always unpredictable. You never know if the promoter told you the right dimensions or any acoustic thing you're dealing with. So the room's always different, but the music is always the same. It's nice because you have some reference, with what music you're going to hear. But there's a lot of things that you have to change based on what you're given with the room, which is really interesting actually.

Can you tell me about your work with James Murphy? You do quite a lot of technical stuff for him behind the scenes.

It's very similar to the things I was doing for Soulwax. James will have an idea of something really specific that he wants that doesn't exist in the world. A lot of times, it's a combination of features that he wants—different sound references or whatever it is. We've made custom equipment for him for a long time now. Some of the ideas that we've created from scratch have translated into manufacturable products, which is a lot of the reason we do it. Every time we take on any project, we're learning so much about what makes that specific circuit good and what makes it bad. And we're using our ears a lot. James has really great ears, which is awesome. His gut reaction to something is really similar to all of ours, and that's a big advantage.

What is it like translating a creative idea into a piece of equipment?

It's hard, because if you misinterpret it, you do a ton of work [that gets] rejected because you just didn't understand what they were trying to communicate. So you try to prevent that from happening as much as possible by defining what they want. Really, really clearly. The way we talk about it in technical terms is, try to define the spec as clearly as possible. Trying to get the spec out of somebody takes a lot of meetings—meeting in person so you can talk about things and try to understand and repeat things back.

We've spoken about your musical and technical experience, but we still haven't spoken about you stepping out on your own as an electronic music performer. How did that come about?

Simply, I was asked. The first solo thing I did was probably Mysteries Of The Deep, which is my friend Grant [Aaron's] ambient party. And the second one was Nothing Changes, I believe. First and foremost, I'm most inspired just being a patron to my friend's parties, and since the parties were cool, I was like, I would love to be part of that as a musician and challenge myself.

How did you put those early sets together?

Practicing a lot. What I understood it to be at first was that I was writing an hour's worth of material and then replaying it. I think that's still the case to this day, that I prepare each live set as if it's a brand new composition from start to end. I have to make an hour of music and replay it in a way that's still engaging to me and also has a very large amount of improvisation.

How do you approach composition?

A lot of it's just having inspiration. I listen to so many DJ mixes. I consume so much music, so I have a constant idea of, I want this set to be this mood, or just knowing about the party, what the audience expects. If I was in the crowd, what would I want to hear? That's just the beginning.

So step one, knowing what you're walking into. What's step two?

Well, once you know what you're stepping into, you know the energy level [where] you want it to be. Then it's programming some beats, and then writing on top of that, and then thinking about the transition into the next idea. I start with the first song and then it... For me it plays out in my head as a DJ set does, where I have an element in the track, that I imagine would work well with a bassline in a different key.

I think about transitions a lot, and that influences what the next song is. In my head it's very much separate tracks. I don't know if it's the same for everyone, but there's different tracks and then the transition is what element from the last track will play really well over this next chord progression. So the composition process is literally just writing each step of the way, and sometimes one night [of rehearsal] will be just figuring out the transition, and that's all I get done. It's a lot of work to do an hour of music.

Is there any gear you turn to to help you get started and keep the process moving?

I use the Elektron Analog Rytm a lot, and I very slowly pull together samples that I want in the set. A lot of times the samples for each live set are very different from each other. Whether it's a 909 or it's... I love using acoustic drums and "world" drums, or just a sample that came from my Eurorack that I put into the Rytm. So just hearing one transient sound and being like, this is part of the mood that is making up the whole set.

Is collecting samples part of the day-to-day work for you of being an electronic musician?

I spend a lot of time cutting up samples and processing them and not being happy with the sample set that I started out with, and then making more and processing more. So yeah, it feels like homework when I do it because it's like, this is not the creative part. But it's really important to me to have a lot of sample-based drums. I have a lot of synthesised drum sounds, but I think the samples are everything.

Your live sets are really tailored to the situations you're going to perform them in. But do a lot of your ideas end up getting used across a number of sets?

When I have a lot of sets back to back, I have to. But whenever I recycle pieces from a past set, it doesn't feel good on stage. It's just not as exciting for me. I will definitely take basslines that I like, but then just reconstruct an entirely new song or drum patterns and make a new song over it.

You said it's important to you to leave room within your compositions for improvisation. How do you do that?

It's more jamming than improvisation, because you're reacting to it live and making slight changes rather than playing something out from your brain.

I know you're using Ableton Live. Is that where a lot of this takes place?

Not the improv part. The improv part is all Eurorack. Ableton is providing the main clock for everything. But I try to do all of the jamming in Eurorack format.

Are there any Eurorack components that are especially critical for you?

Well overall, LFOs and filters are what makes Eurorack different and more useful for me than a traditional keyboard. I'm using the LFO, which brings randomness to your set and an evolving feel to the sound, not just on the filter but on every aspect of the sound. One of my modules, you can send an LFO to control the shape of the wave and how it folds on top of itself. You hear it and you're like, "Oh, this is something that no traditional keyboard synth can easily do." I have a 303 emulation module called the x0X-heart that's in all my live sets. And sequencers, because you have to sequence everything. You have to have sequencers for your sequencers. And the sequencers aren't just controlling pitch and gate information. They're also controlling… like, the LFO will open and close the filter to the beat or send a delay on and off to the beat or whatever you want. Sequencers are very important!

As much experience as you have with audio engineering and electronic live performance, releasing your own productions is, as of this interview at least, kind of an anomaly. What's the story behind Ab Initio?

Bryan [Kasenic, of The Bunker New York] asked me to do something by the end of [2017]. He said, "I would like to release something of yours next year. Do you think you can come up with something by the end of the year?" I thought he meant by the end of the next year. "Yeah, of course I can do that." This was in December, and then I read it the next week and I was like, "Oh crap. He means in the next four weeks." What he was really thinking about was like, did I have any material ready to go that he could listen to. And I was just like, whatever, I'm going to write an entirely new thing. And I did. I wasn't totally happy with such a quickly put-together [EP], but I think that's what makes it special.

My understanding is that you had some real reservations about recording your music. Why is that?

There's a lot of expectation from people who know me in the music world as a sound person. I was expecting to be judged at this different level. On top of that, so many of my peers—my friends and the people who I hang out with—are just so talented that I didn't feel like I was allowed to release anything until it was as good as theirs. But then, I just did this and made the tracks for Bryan. And his reaction was enough validation for me to be like, OK, this is worth putting out in the world and not feeling bad about it. So that was it. And then I started believing in myself after people liked it and received it well. I definitely need to release more music. It's just—the live music part is really fun. Writing something that I can release… it feels like a different mindset, I think.

It's interesting what you say about perceiving these insanely high expectations based on your musical and technical background. You've recorded with jazz musicians, run sound at what was at the time New York's top techno club, worked with people like James Murphy. Do you feel like you have something to prove with music you release—that maybe you don't when you're playing for a club audience?

My work life and my music life feel very different. I try not to ever advertise my music life, which is probably a pain in the balls for all the people working for me and my music. I don't want to just play the promotion game. I want the music to speak for itself. If it's good, then it's going to spread, and people who are heads are going to share it, that's enough for me. I don't have to think about it too seriously, and I don't take it too seriously. Another thing that I try to do is not really ever equate financial success or any expectation of financial dependence on my music, because I think that's something that really sours a lot of people's relationships with making music. I supplement it with all of the other things that I do, and I'm lucky enough that they all have to do with music. But, I guess the most important thing is to not take it too seriously. If it's good, then everything will fall into place, I think.

Not taking it too seriously, though, doesn't mean you're not looking for ways to push yourself forward. How do you do that? What are the challenges that you set up for yourself? And how are you measuring your own success?

I think a lot of it just stems from thinking about my own experiences and how important dancing is to my emotional health. The idea of being able to do that for someone else is so awesome to me, and that's enough.

Playing live is the best gauge for me of whether there's any interest in [my music], because if people are really freaking out on something that I wasn't necessarily sure of myself, then that's enough for me to go back and be like, OK, this is something that has to go out to the world. It's as if the live sets are testing grounds for what I should release and what people like. Sometimes that's very different in my head from reality. But yeah, the feedback is everything.

How are you tracking what works and what doesn't work in a live set, to then be able to bring back to the studio and execute on it in more of this controlled environment?

It's really clear to me when something isn't developed enough, where I need to add more layers. If I'm playing something live, and I want to keep going, and I want this song to last for ten minutes, then I know that it's in a good place and I don't need to add that much more. [Conversely,] it becomes very clear to me [when] it's not ready. I will speed through that idea onto the next one.

If you had your druthers, would you not bother with releasing music, or do you really see the importance of it?

I want to do more of it because I want people to DJ my music. Seeing somebody DJ my music and seeing what context they place it in is just probably the best feeling in the world. More so than playing live to people. The idea that somebody is able to be creative with something that you created and make all these other people dance is really powerful. If a DJ sets it up properly, the audience often will dance way harder for that DJ set than when I played that idea initially live.

Why do you think that is? Is it because they're able to contextualise it differently than you can?

Yeah. They'll set up the energy for it. Also, when you're playing live, there's an element of patience that you're asking of the audience. You're telling the audience, like, "Hey, some of this is improvised and this is an experiment. So you have to stick with me until the very end and find out where it goes."

Are there things that you do in the studio to take ideas that work in your live set and open them up so that a DJ could use them?

Yeah. The first track that I put out, on 15 Years Of The Bunker, I realised quickly that I had made a track that was impossible to mix because it's really hard to tell where the downbeat is. I learned quickly that the beginning of a track is very important if you're thinking of a DJ mixing it in. Also, if you want the DJ to keep going to your track, it's setting up the different energy levels, that will make them go back to it and be like, "This is a great track that the audience will always respond to." I mean, it depends on who you have in mind. I feel like every track that I make, I actually have a DJ in mind that I would love for them to play it.

Have you had the experience of hearing somebody play your track just the way you would have imagined it?

Not yet. I'm excited for it to happen, I know it will happen, but not yet.

I think it's interesting that despite the kind of work you do with super high-end and custom sound equipment, you're not that interested in collecting and using rare gear in your studio. Why not?

Aside from the obvious financial reasons... I love working with restrictions and giving myself rules. Just make it work with what you've got. That gives you so much more feedback from your instrument than just having everything to use. If you're frustrated with a sound then you're probably not manipulating it enough or exploring as deeply as you could. So oftentimes I'll be [unhappy] with the sound of something. And I'll try to manipulate it, whether it is in the programming of the actual sound or something I process it through. I won't get closer to what I want, but I'll get to a new place that is unfamiliar. That unfamiliarity, I think, is the most important thing.

So yeah, I work with restrictions a lot. Sometimes it'll be also just like a weird set of rules I'll set for myself where I'll want everything to be a certain inexplicable chord progression. Just like working within chords or working within rhythmic restrictions is really interesting. Or just saying to myself, I'm going to start with patching something without hearing it and then just make a track when I finally hear what I've patched. So just making little games for yourself, it's really important. Working with not the greatest tools is always important first. Seeing how well you can manipulate it.

It also sounds like you're talking about being musical with your gear. When you're so motivated by collecting, I'd imagine you can go so far down the rabbit hole that you get away from the musical element of that gear.

I'm more interested in the accidents that happen along the way than the original intent of what the gear is supposed to sound like, if that makes sense. I feel like if I was to buy something for a really specific sound, I would use it on a couple things and then I would get really tired of it. I don't want to get tired of anything in my studio.