At New York festival Sustain-Release, there's an old, creaky bridge over a swampy lake that connects the camp grounds to the woods. Standing over the water at dawn, slivers of pink light pierce through thin clouds of mist and trees gently sway to a chilly breeze, seemingly talking to each other. This moment loaded with mood, intrigue and radiant power perfectly captures the essence of an Aurora Halal DJ set.

Using long, luxurious blends, Halal—cofounder of Sustain-Release—moves across deep techno, hypnotic acid, electro and drum & bass. Her sets have an ethereal quality, high-voltage with a spectral sheen, which places her in the same category as DJs like Wata Igarashi and DJ Nobu, like-minded peers who share a penchant for slippery grooves and psychedelic moods. "I'm always trying to have two tracks speak to each other, and have the interaction between the elements be greater than the sum of the parts," Halal described during a live interview at Nowadays, where she's a resident, for Resident Advisor's 21st anniversary celebration late last year.

Aside from DJing, performing live hardware sets and booking artists for her long-running Mutual Dreaming party, Halal is also a visual artist and videographer who has worked on documentaries about Ceephax Acid Crew and modular synth godfather Morton Subotnick. Each of these creative pursuits feeds into her DJing and production. During the course of our interview at Nowadays, she explained her love for CDJs, how she organises her rekordbox and her roots in New York's DIY community.

The last time I caught you in action was right here at Nowadays. It was the eve of my birthday and I was in a terrible mood, but your set really brought me out of my head. I think that speaks to the mystical nature of your sound. It's very driving, very slamming, but also transportive. Is there a specific narrative or mood that you're trying to communicate while you're DJing?

My goal is to transmit my universe, and that can take different forms. The mood is always something that's engaging your mind and body at the same time, kind of a yin-yang where there's darkness, but it's also soothing and sexy. I want to create a vulnerable space where you can reflect on what's going on with you internally, but then have swells of climax to lose yourself in. I'm also interested in things that are nasty or playful.

We're going to get into those nasty elements later. When I listen to you, I'm often reminded of hazy nature moments, like crossing the bridge over dawn at Sustain-Release, or walking through a thick fog. Is there a particular place or maybe an emotional state that you want to take people to?

I love fog.

Fog is so romantic.

Fog creates a hallucinatory space where there are shapes that you can't quite make out. When something is blurry, there's more that can be imagined in the distance. Nature is a huge aspect for me as well, like at Sustain-Release. My first dance experiences were in the woods. It's the sort of primal feeling of connection to Earth and its shifts in light. Patterns in nature are very similar to patterns in loopy music and there's something inherently psychedelic about both. I think the two go hand in hand. The place that I want to take you to is an imaginary space, a dream world. We're exploring that space and there's different little nooks and crannies that you can find within it.

I feel like when you create the sense of fogginess, you're allowing dancers to be vulnerable and lose themselves. It creates space for escapism.

I remember I went to Berlin in 2006 and had my first experiences in a super foggy room and it really resonated. It's not about being on display, you can close your eyes, you're alone in your world. Fog is a whole headspace.

You generally operate within the realm of hypnotic techno, but in both your studio mixes and sets, I hear a lot of drum & bass and electro. Talk to us about your approach to track selection.

I've never been wedded to a certain genre. In fact, I think the expectations around proper techno have always been a turnoff to me. There's a conservatism to a standard set of ideas that have been done for 40 years at this point, and that's kind of boring. When you leave the idea of genre behind, you're left with rhythms and feelings that can be united across all kinds of different sources, and it's expansive. I'll listen to things, I'll click through them and see if it speaks to me or not. If it does, I can use it in the story I'm trying to tell.

Sounds very instinctual.

It's an intuitive thing. I also love all kinds of other music that I can't really use in my sets because I'm trying to create this specific universe. There's so much interesting music coming out in all these different niches. A lot of bass music is basically techno to my ears, so I've been enjoying incorporating that, and it mixes well with other stuff I play because there's lots of interesting changes in the tracks to do blends with.

Where are you normally looking for tracks? Discogs, record stores, Bandcamp?

Yeah, all those usual places. Digging is kind of like pulling a thread on the sweater. When you get a hint of something exciting, it leads to more discovery. I'll find a label that has some interesting things and go through the whole discography. This can take hours, but then I get two or three that I feel like I can do something with and then go further from there. I use Soulseek too. I'll search for an old '90s track I love, find it in obscure comps and download all the tracks to sift through and find some unique lesser-known ones.

How do you decide to start a set or a mix?

In general, I want to start softer so that I have somewhere to go, and be able to build in energy and into new spaces. I collect a lot of deeper music but it doesn't always work on the dance floor, so finding a way to include it is important to me. That's usually in the beginning or the end, especially in warm up and closing sets—which I love—but I'm trying to become more confident about doing it during the peak as well. I love DJs like Powder who pull off these very chill moments that feel so good. Anthony Parasole gave me really good advice when I was first playing at Berghain, mentioning how he always includes a cool-down. Building climaxes and then having a groovier period to follow it helps sustain the energy.

Totally, it's like any good workout. I want to get into that momentum as well as some technical details. Let's discuss your setup. You normally operate on three CDJs and a Xone mixer. Why do you prefer this setup?

I like a minimum of three CDJs, ideally four. It's usually two playing, but I'll do very long blends between them, and the third deck will have an ambient element or a vocal.

That's where the soft touch comes in.

Yeah, I'll have whispery vocals that I recorded, or Monolake ambient tracks, stuff like that. And often, if a track is really driving but a bit generic, I'll want to deepen it by putting something over top that can change the whole mood of it, like a dissonant string. Sometimes when I have two tracks going together for a long time, I need to bring a third one in as the next track and you don't want to lose energy by taking out the first one, which might be just a loop of a clap or a bassline at that point.

When you do use four CDJs, what's happening on the fourth?

The fourth is just for keeping options open because it takes time to load each track and get it ready, so I will line up a few options and then at the last minute decide which is next. DJing is such a mysterious art form because I will have ideas of what I plan to do, but then what ultimately happens is a flow that you can't really control. The goal is to enter a sort of intuitive blackout space where I become a conduit. The more loose and intuitive I can be, the better the result. Another aspect of how successful a set can be is as simple as lighting. When they're really bright and directly on me, it will make me self-conscious and stressed, and I'll recede into myself. It's a whole conversation with how relaxed you feel so you can honestly transmit your personality.

I'm curious to hear why you like the Xone mixer. It has a few critics here in the US.

It has really smooth filters, which I use a lot for long blends. The filter keeps more of the energy of the previous track, while removing the bass. The headphone out sounds really good on the Xone versus the Pioneer, which is a bit crunchy. It's weird, but I've always mixed with both headphones on instead of using the booth monitor.

Why?

During my first gigs, there was a bad delay in the booth so I couldn't trust the monitors, and I immediately switched to headphones. But I still use the headphones a lot of the time because I like knowing the details of exactly what's happening. I want to feel confident that the blend is tight.

That makes sense because a lot of your sets have a lot of layered, cascading ambient touches. Do you ever incorporate vinyl into your sets?

While I respect that craft immensely, I've never really played vinyl or collected it that much. I think that I'm part of a generation where vinyl doesn't mean as much. I've always been a digital person. I just don't care about objects. When I was a preteen, I would get MP3s from FTP programs way before Napster came out and I went to computer programming camp. It wasn't until I messed around with some older CDJs that I fell in love with DJing, especially because I made music on an MPC1000, which felt similar, and I latched onto it. I enjoy the possibilities of CDJs to the point where I feel vinyl would hold me back because I do so much looping, and I make edits and prepare intensely in Rekordbox, using playlists, cues and saved loops.

You mentioned blends and loops. I'd like to get into your general approach to mixing. You're going to be demonstrating some tips for us after the chat, but it'd be great to hear how you approach mixing and what tricks you rely on.

I've always been excited by long, trippy blends. I was obsessed with Daniele Baldelli's cosmic mixes from Italy in the '80s. He had super slowed-down, soupy long blends that would twist your mind in a crazy way. I'm always trying to have two tracks speak to each other, and have the interaction between the elements be greater than the sum of the parts. Almost like remixing them. That's what's on my mind when I'm picking songs to play together. And I first scan for tracks that will be in a compatible key.

What qualities you look for in tracks that make them suitable for these long blends and get dancers to reach that place of vulnerability?

A lot of the time, it's just tracks that have a potent vibe to them. I'm looking for them to contain some kind of transference of energy. But then others are simply tools that don't do that much so that I can use them to bridge different rhythms smoothly. I like drops too—when something crazy or surprising happens. It's all about trying to find a balance between something that's subtle and something insane.

So many crowds want their techno harder and faster but your sets are more proggy—there are lots of nice pads, lots of texture. How do you build energy when staying in such a specific range of hypnotic, psychedelic sounds?

I play in so many different environments that if I were to think about what the crowd wanted, it would be really hard to keep up. So I tend to not worry about what the expectations are and just do whatever I'm in the mood for. You get to know your tracks, and how they hit on the system and the dance floor. It often comes down to the way they're engineered. I first noticed this early on with the Function record Incubation. It's very minimal and feels very chill at home but it's actually very explosive on a sound system because of the way it's mixed. You get an idea for which ones will be energetic. In order to keep the energy, you can't blow it early, because then you'll run out of places to go. I try to gradually build and then reach a sort of climax of tension building. Then you need to release this tension with—for lack of a better word—a banger. It gets exhausting to listen to bangers after a while, so you need to cool it out, and then it's going to be welcome to play something that's deeper or more of a left turn.

In addition to DJing and producing, you run Sustain-Release and the Brooklyn party Mutual Dreaming. I'm curious to hear how being a promoter has shaped your DJing.

I'm a huge fan of other DJs and it's inspiring to see people play. I like to listen to music and think about the aesthetics and the ideas communicated in them. I feel like I have an advantage for booking parties because I get to tour, so I try to really go around and watch a lot of sets and pick up what they're putting down. Bringing in the ones that I think will fit the vibe of my parties is one of my favourite aspects to all this.

Who are some DJs that you look up to or have really shaped your sound?

Oh, there's a lot. I guess in order of when I heard them, I loved Ron Hardy. I love DJs that embody their own vibe and are non-commercial. I'm a huge fan of early Plastikman, that's probably one of my most noticeable influences. Drexciya, of course. Arthur Russell and Paradise Garage music. I don't play like that, but I love house, boogie and disco, real songs. Joey Anderson blew my mind around 2014 because I feel like he had an elusive, slippery vibe that I wanted to do. Source Direct's evil, sensual sound. Sandwell District was an influence because it's soft and hard at the same time. Josey Rebelle is very sick. I'm currently excited about DJ Masda, who has made me want to find more groove.

When you were starting out and launching Mutual Dreaming, what was it like breaking into the New York scene? Did you have any tough moments?

It felt natural. The artists and dancers in NYC are very innovative and open-minded. The existing clubs didn't speak to me, so we started our own. When I started in 2010, I was in the DIY community, and there were tons of spaces which let me do whatever I wanted as a promoter. I got to sort of play around with all the elements, climb up on ladders and do the visuals myself without any real equipment. When I met the lighting artist Nitemind, he had the ability to bring it all to life and reach the potential of how I really imagined it. We've all come a long way, and yet I feel there's so much more to discover.