Shout out the homie Jaiyn, who is also a music artist you need to be up on, for interviewing the prolific genius Nondi_ for Finals. AFAIK this is Jaiyn's first music writing, and it's a homerun. Get into the convo, to get into the mind of one of the most uncompromising musicians, who is way out on their own planet in the universe of dance music.

-Andrew

Let’s start off easy with how are you? How's your week been? You know all those things.

I've been doing fine, I'm just like recovering. I had a show earlier this week and it was really good and I'm just still exhausted. I'm just still recovering, and carrying around shit. I'm just real tired. I'm actually working on music right now and working on all sorts of other music business-y stuff because I'm just trying to be more serious about this stuff now, I guess. So yeah, I'm just tired, but I'm still working. That's how I'm feeling.

I've done some research but it would still be cool to hear you talk about your process of getting into music production and making music. I know you organize, so I was wondering which came first? Were you always using the two together?

As far as how I got into music, it was like, I don't know, I was playing a bunch of video games and, specifically, listening to tons and tons of Aphex Twin. I had gotten into IDM from playing a bunch of rhythm games and stuff. And, like, I was just listening to lots of Aphex Twin and it went from me being, like, Oh, this is so cool to being, like, I have to make stuff like this. So, that's how I got into it. I watched a few youtube videos and pirated FL Studio and that's how I started.

I guess as far as organizing, the thing is, I started music way before organizing and until recently didn't see the two as being in tandem at all. I started organizing basically after Trump got elected because I was certain Hillary was gonna win. When I realized that she wasn't I was like, “Oh I literally don't know anything about politics,” so I decided to get real serious and read lots of socialist theory and that's when that sort of started. I just started thinking of it as a necessity because of how bad things are. I'm very passionate about it, but, I treat it as something, like, Oh, I absolutely have to do this because, shit is, like, fucked up.

Since I'm becoming more, I guess you could say “professional” as an artist, since I'm doing this now as a career, I feel like I have at least some responsibility as a working class artist to politicize that for the working class. Most of the music I have put out isn't political music or really saying anything. Well, I wouldn't say it's not political, but I didn't put it out with that being, like, the main message. But, I think through what I've been learning from people, like older people who are in organizing spaces and reading different theory, getting lots of influences from lots of different places, is there is an approach that I can take in making my music more political. But the way I try to take things is, I try to do everything as naturally as possible and do things how I believe is to the best of my ability without going crazy or anything, so I'm still figuring it out. I have like a couple political tracks, and I have made tracks specifically for different organizations and stuff just to put in their materials and promotional stuff. But mostly what I want to do is learn how I guess you could say, make music for the people, I guess. Like, not even being a Nondi_ thing or something that I'm putting out. Something I do, collectively with other people that just really represents the message of different social struggles. That's what I want to do. And I guess, that's a way bigger thing to figure out. Yeah. Yeah.

I know that at least for Flood City Trax, there was a lot of Detroit and footwork inspiration from that. And I was basically wondering if you've traveled to these places, and if traveling to these places has influenced you post-visiting, or was it a part of you growing up?

So, I'm from a small-ass town, Johnstown, PA. It's only really been, I guess this past five to six years of my life that I've even been leaving the city. I originally was from Philly, but when I was about 10 years old, we had to move because it just became too expensive. And I already had tons of family out here living in Johnstown. So, mostly my experience has been in this small town. And it hasn't really been until recently that I've been able to go out and see other places. I have been to Detroit once, and it's actually a funny story. I was there for the People's Conference for Palestine. And it was actually, right next to Movement Detroit. Like, Movement was happening at the same time. So it was real weird vibes, but it was cool. I think, that definitely affected me…finally being able to go and see the trophy and that sort of being the context. I've loved Detroit techno for fucking years now. Moodymann he's, oh my gosh, don't even talk…what yeah, fucking Moodymann. He's a Detroit artist. He's more house but he is from Detroit and shit and he was the first black electronic musician I ever heard of. And, I just remember the moment I discovered Moodymann, it was another, like, “I need to make this sort of thing.” And I'm just really influenced by the sound of Jeff Mills and Robert Hood. Sort of, like, second wave, hard and minimal Detroit techno type sound.

Seeing Detroit was amazing. The vibes there were really good. And, I know every place in the US is sort of fucked up too, but, I don't know. It felt really good. And when I was there, what I was doing at the conference, I focused very much on learning the cultural aspects of the Palestinian struggle and how they handled that. I started thinking of the concepts that they taught me and comparing it to what Black people have just gone through in America. That really started getting me to be like, “Okay what can I really do to politicize this music because it can be.” I feel like dance music And Black American electronic music in general, it's like this vast untapped resource. I feel like it speaks to people in a very different way than other types of music. And, I really, absolutely want to go to fucking Chicago because footwork has probably became my favorite genre ever. Like, the last fucking decade, most of what I've been listening to has been footwork. I've mostly just listened to tons and tons of fucking DJ Rashad. I guess with Flood City Trax it's sort of a reflection on me being really influenced by this music but not being able to see those places. Not only that, just living in a place where there's no one I can really relate to about any of it because growing up, the view of music that I had out here was just really black and white. Literally. it's like oh if you're Black you listen to hip-hop. If you're white you listen to rock and that's the two types of music. I was super alienated from people and I remember when I discovered electronic music it was just so different and it wasn't like what other people were listening to.

And I came to understand that wasn't really true because I discovered that a lot of stuff that I was listening to I was just taking for granted. Like fucking Philly Club and just Ghetto House and all of those things were actually part of that the entire time. Something I guess about Chicago's music is that I didn't realize how much of it I had been hearing, my entire life. DJ Nate, I think, was the first footwork artist that I discovered. I just found him on YouTube. And I remember listening to his music, and it sounded so familiar. It sounded like I literally had heard it before, but at the same time, sounded like nothing I ever heard before.

It's like an ancestral…

Yeah, no, that's how it felt. It felt ancestral. And also, the specific way I felt. Like, yo, this sounds like when I was in high school. It felt like those things at the same time. And it was real fucking amazing. And I was just hooked from then. I remember I was just excited to hear any sort of footwork. When I was making Flood City Trax, the thing I was thinking about was all the context that goes into footwork because it's really based around the dance battles. That's why it sounds the way it is. That's why they go as hard as they do and it's as complex as it is. I wanted to make a footwork album, but it has to actually reflect me, though. I was thinking I can't just pretend like I'm from Chicago, basically. I actually learned this from an R.P. Boo interview that I was watching because he has many very wise words. He was talking to, I think it was Red Bull Music Academy, about how Chicago is just a place that he sees in everything. He was talking essentially about how Chicago is going to have its representation. People aren't going to forget about Chicago or Chicago footwork or anything because Chicago is such, it's just a musical capital of the entire planet basically.

And, thinking, I can't just sit here and bite Chicago, basically. I can't go as hard as any Chicago producer because I'm not from there. So I have to make something that reflects where I'm from while still honoring what influenced me. That's how I felt when I was creating that album.

So you've released a lot of music and I'm kind of curious to know if you feel like you're situated in your sound? Do you feel like you've found a good pocket/rhythm of where you're at, or do you not think about those things when you're going to make stuff?

I think my goal as a musician is to always be evolving and I really do want to represent my region. I think I have a very regional sound. Personally, when I play shows around where I live, usually somewhere in Pittsburgh. I don't know, I feel very at home. It's just, a lot of just real, hard-sounding stuff in West PA. Usually, really hardcore, really rough, lo-fi sort of sound, and that's very well represented just around this region. Usually people are into a lot of different sorts of hardcore, rock music, folk punk and shit. There's obviously tons of hip-hop out here, but with the dance sound out here it is more hardcore.

Really tied into digital hardcore and, uh, other sorts of shit. There's Hot Mass and stuff in Pittsburgh, but I haven't been there, even though I played at the same club that Hot Mass is usually held at. I've never been there. I consider my sound to be pretty regional and pretty situated in Western PA. the culture that's out here and everything.

One of my favorite artists, Ryuichi Sakamoto, who passed away a couple years ago, something I love about him as an artist is that even though he was making music for so long, since the early 70s, if not even earlier than that, he was good throughout that entire period and he was always making something new. And that's essentially how I want to be as an artist. I always want to evolve into some sort of new style. I don't want to be stuck even like making dance music or anything. I want to be able to have that freedom to express myself in so many different ways. That's why, sometimes I'll make ambient stuff into... actually, my sound has changed so much. Before Nondi_, I was producing stuff primarily as Yakui. And as Yakui, my stuff was a lot more experimental, glitchy and ambient.

Now my sound is a lot more… I wouldn't say clubbier but I'm pushing it more into a dance music oriented genre. Like you could actually play it at the club in a set. Even though I don't think Flood City Trax sounds like that, everything I've made since has been going more in that sort of direction. And, I used to make dance tracks sometimes in the past, but now it's, like, primarily the main thing I do. And I guess that's because I really like watching people dance. I do like the communal aspects of all of this music. Dance music alone is just music, which is important. It can be fine just being itself. But to elevate it, it really takes a community and it takes that community representing itself in a real way.

Do you feel like it's important to feel understood through what you're releasing? Or, to feel understood as a person?

That's a good question because it's a sort of yes and no thing for me. You can say in the period where I made Flood City Trax, it was absolutely a yes. Like, I wanted people to just really understand why I made that music. And I guess part of the reason for that was because of how much, like, I loved and respected footwork. Knowing I'm using this music from this community that I really wasn't part of but using it in a way to express myself in a way I couldn't before. Since then, I guess it's become more of, “Oh how hard can I go, actually?” I don't know how else to put it, that I'm just really trying to make super cool bangers. Sometimes I do make more experimental stuff but even those in my mind are just me making different types of bangers as far as that goes...

I don't care what type of person anyone thinks I am or if they even know the context behind it. I just care that the people who are listening to it are like, “Oh this goes hard as hell, I want to dance hard as hell to it,” which has been my current approach to music for like a year or so.

That's fire. Yeah I think I get too caught up sometimes of looking at my music and as, like, a catalog on a rack and how it all sits together. But it's, like, sometimes you don't need to look at it that broad. And, that'll come eventually, you know?

I just want everybody, like any type of person, to listen to my music, even if they don't like dance music or something. Often I don't even want people to like or care about me as a person or like my personality or anything. I really really really want them to listen to the music. Flood City Trax, when i created that, that's an album. You don't create that type of album often, it's so conceptual and it just represents me at like such a fucked up time period in my life because I was really going through it.

And it's like, I'm not sure if i'll be in that mindset again or if I'll ever make an album like that again. My current mindset right now is definitely like, “I don't care give a fuck. I'm trying to make you hear either some shit you're gonna be like, Yo this is so weird, or some shit that just makes you want to dance real hard. Those are my two mindsets right now.

Nah, that's fire because we definitely need redacted dancing in the club and moving around. It's kind of like the only thing we really have is our bodies, you know? Yeah, yeah. I guess we can kind of segue. I've realized that movement has been really big with my creation. To the point now where I feel like my energy just doesn't seem like it's settled right if I'm not moving my body. But this has been a recent thing. I started running this time last year. I've definitely noticed my approaches to making stuff has been I guess different. What is your relationship with movement?

So really what happened is I noticed that my body was physically deteriorating basically and I had a ton of pain in my body and I realized that I really do need to start moving otherwise my body would fall apart, basically. Yeah, movement to me is really interesting because, when I was younger, definitely, moving around just got my brain just going, and I came up with all sorts of ideas and stuff. I paced around in my room. But recently, I've been deciding to take longer walks and just walk around my neighborhood and stuff because there's so much terrible shit going on and it gets in my head, and I realize that just walking around gets that all out and it gets me so motivated to create. When I'm walking, all I do is just think about what I am gonna make next.

Yes and we spend so much time like you said, pacing in the room and doing all of this kind of running in place kind of movements and whenever we're I guess in smaller areas. So I definitely agree. For me, I feel it's kind of like purifying water in a way. That's how I think of it. Let’s get into some production specifics. I think it’s interesting to understand the choices that people make when they create and if they're making them intentionally. If choices were made to be that deep or not that deep. To start off, which DAWs do you use? Do you have a certain preference? What's been your journey or relationship with that?

I use FL Studio and I basically always use FL Studio as my primary production. There are a few things that I experimented with. I learned Renoise and learned a bit of… dang what's it called. It's not even a DAW, it's an audio program.

Audacity?

Audacity okay. Yeah i used Audacity for a little bit but I didn't really use it to make music, I used it to make effects and stuff.

Oh interesting interesting.

Yeah, primarily though, I've always used different versions of FL Studio. And right now I'm just using the latest version of FL Studio.

Do you think it matters to you about using different types of DAWs? Is it just more so what's comfortable and this is a station that works well for you?

With FL Studio, it is just the one that I'm most comfortable with. I realized, early on, I'm just going to end up making music that sounds how I want it regardless of what I was using. There was a time, back in the day especially, when people were like, “Oh FL Studio is for amateurs. you shouldn't use FL Studio” and this sort of stuff. I really did believe that because I wanted to keep improving, so I started learning to use other DAWs. What I realized is I kept relearning the basics of doing things and it's sort of setting me back. Regardless of what you use, most DAWS are so advanced, you can create anything in them anyway, it really doesn't matter. It is sort of arbitrary and I really really do love FL Studio. Mostly because I'm comfortable. I'm totally open to learning new DAWs and stuff but I haven't really had a reason to. I did make a few tracks with FL Studio Mobile and figured out how to do a whole bunch of stuff in that. Mainly for fun and experimenting and also it was eight dollars, so yeah.

I definitely get that. Is theory important to you? Have you had a background in that? And does that impact your approach to what sounds you hear when you create stuff?

Yeah, I never formally learned theory. I wouldn't say I really know it now, either. The way I view it is, for a lot of music, you really don't need to know theory to create it. If you get really good regardless, you end up doing things naturally without knowing you’re into theory. So I never learned it, especially with FL Studio they make it real easy. You could pick like different scale stamps and not even have to learn the scales yourself and stuff like that. Even more advanced stuff, you could generate basslines so it's unnecessary for me to learn it.

But as I've started wanting to improve even more, I've been realizing that I probably should learn theory because I like to learn more. But I really don't think it's necessary to use it, especially for a lot of Black music, which has its own sorts of roles that really aren't described in music theory. Making different types of dance music, theory doesn't often help that directly because you have a different mindset and approach to it. I've noticed there's people who know a lot of music theory who get confused by syncopated beats that are really simple actually. A lot of that isn't really described by music theory, so I think you have to mix up. First of all, learning the technology you're using is the most important thing, especially if you're making music with a DAW or something. Learn how your DAW works and all the different things it does. That's the most important too, mixing your song. The sort of attitude and different approach you take towards the music is going to be the most important, for the type of electronic and dance music that I'm into.

I think sometimes I get caught up in intellectualizing things because I think maybe it'll help me understand myself in this process more, but sometimes you just have to get it out there. Get it out of your body and, you know, leave it at that. Mm-hmm. I guess it would be cool to kind of know, do you play your own stuff back? And how do you feel about the very, very, very first song you ever recorded/made? Do you play that back today? Do you compare? Is that a prevalent thing in your approach to music now?

So I've always just listened to all of my music over and over. Probably more than anyone else on the planet. I've listened to my music more than you could ever believe. Even tracks that I just made within a couple of days or even hours, I've listened to it thousands of times. And I just do that really just so I can understand what I'm doing. There was actually a period where I was just working so much. It was probably about three years where I literally only listened to my own music. I was producing so much and I had so much. And the reason I started producing really, one of the main reasons I started was to be able to make some really cool stuff at any time. If I couldn't find a type of song, I wanted to make it so I could listen to it and really enjoy it. I'll go back to my earlier stuff and I'll listen to it a bunch. A lot of it is really bad. It does not at all compare to what I'm doing now. My earliest tracks are just really weird granular ambient tracks. I didn't know how to make music or do a melody or even a beat back in the day, but they're also just really interesting because they sound really experimental. Often, I'll resample my old old tracks. Slow them down or try and stretch them and do all sorts of different things to them and make them sound way better than they did before. It's sort of therapeutic because I get to go back to my younger self and alter or relive those experiences in different ways. Now that I'm an adult that's really how I feel about that. I even resample new tracks. a lot of my tracks are samples of other tracks that I’ve made.

Do you have any gear that you use when you're producing that you hold close to you, or anything that maybe that was important to you, like growing up, that you carry with you or is it mostly online like VSTs or…?**

Yeah, so basically, I produce everything digitally, and there are a ton of VSTs I use and that I've been using since I started. I'll still use them in my music, and I can't move on from them. The one I can think of primarily is Synth One, which is this free Japanese VST that’s really good at making all sorts of sounds. Often people think when I use it, it's chiptune or something. but no, it just sounds super cute and i love using it. It is crazy because it's such a well-designed VST that often, I even use it to make sounds that stand up to the real modern, super professional CPU-heavy stuff. Obviously, there are definitely hard limits on it though. It only has three oscillators. So there are limits that come up when using it, but it's just so versatile and good that I use it often. I've just made a ton of presets in it.

There's a couple other VSTs that I've used. There's one called Albino. I use Albino 1 and also Albino 3. Even though they're sort of the same, I'll switch between them. What I usually do is the pad presets and there's a couple Dark Cloud stuff I like using because they're just so pretty and easy to use. Yeah. I like using the arpeggiator in there and doing sort of slight beats. There are just so many different VSTs. I use mostly built-in FL Studio stuff though. The sampler and everything in there has a ton of just good built-in features. The pre-computed effects are real good to put on kicks to make them sound crazy.

I have a ton of random old VSTs, like a ton. There's this one I use to make the most fucked up noise possible. And when you load it, it's a parrot. It's a parrot and two knobs. These crazy and harsh noise sounds. It's sad because it doesn't actually run on newer versions of FL Studio. So if I want to use it I have to use FL Studio 11. Which now feels like going back 20 years in time.

Which sonic elements do you think are the most important whenever you're making stuff?

It really depends on what I'm trying to make. Now, typically I produce to make things sound sort of lo-fi, but also at the same time bright and clear. It will be lo-fi in the most unrealistic way possible. Right now I've been focusing more on brightness and harshness in my music. I’ve been influenced by baile funk in that way because one thing i think about is just how good that sounds. Like baile funk sounds on tinny bad speakers. Recently I've been producing to make sure that literally every sound in my tracks can be heard or if not completely heard you know it's happening, even on the worst possible speakers. You could be playing it off of speakers from 1987 or something and it still sounds fine. So yeah, Harshness with a bit of clarity is what I've been focusing on.

In the past, I've gone through so many different sounds and textures. A lot of my early tracks sound completely different from what I'm doing now. I had a lot of more organic and clean production. Tracks that sound just really squishy and gross and natural. I was really pushing towards that sound when I was younger because I just wanted to be able to maximize on doing sound design. I wanted stuff to sound like IDM, really, but also as if it was alive. Because back in the day it felt really special. I remember the first time I heard the song Lemonade by SOPHIE and just all the bubbling and stuff. That was really crazy sounding. And even before then, I wouldn't say that was a big influence on me, but it's just something I remember from back in the day. I was like, whoa. I sort of just want to imitate this.

Really, what it comes down to now, is having this sort of low-fi-ness to my sound and that actually comes from me wanting to be an emulation of how I heard music growing up. I was and still am really into Jeff Mills. His album Waveform Transmission Volume 1 is my favorite techno album ever. When I first discovered that album, the version of it I had was pirated. It was really, really messed up. And I didn't realize that. There's all these glitchy breaks and stuff, I thought was so insane. The tracks would be this hard techno, then out of nowhere, flip up into just, like, falling apart. And, I thought that was all intentional. When I actually listened to a real version of the album and none of it was there, I was like, What the fuck?

So yeah I had a lot of real crappy rips and stuff. I always love lo-fi aesthetics. I have an album and you can actually find it on my bandcamp from 2009 or 2008. When I was really young I made this album full of just real little lo-fi sounds. There is a net label I was following back then that released stuff that sounded similar. I wanted to put it out there but I was too nervous and worried if they would think it was bad. It's funny because that label puts out literally anything. There is absolutely no quality control and they wouldn't have cared. I didn't release it until recently but yeah. I enjoy the lo-fi sort of aspect.

Where that comes from and why I value that was because I listened to lots of Boards in Canada growing up. I really wanted to emulate that sound. It was not easy back in the day. I remembered people would go through so much just to get something that sounded just, like, lo-fi and real old. What Boards in Canada did. Wow.

And it probably took six years for me to figure out how to make things sound authentically lo-fi. So, I would start with cutting. I mostly did a bunch of real precise EQing. cutting out high ends, focusing on the mix. I did a lot of automation with pitch to make it sound like synths were wobbling and stuff. I did a whole bunch of that and eventually I realized that there were programs you could just put on the master, all sorts of different saturation, which would help better for you to get that sound. I think the fact that it took so long to be able to recreate it without having to use effects definitely helps because even if I'm not using a different effect or putting a saturator on. My stuff sort of ends up sounding lo-fi even if I'm trying to produce it as high quality as possible. Yeah sound design is so important and I think that's something you realize the more you start making things.

It's like you kind of low-key passively programmed yourself. What's your relationship with ambient music? I know we kind of just talked about it kind of, but in the context of creating because there is an experimental aspect to it as well.

Ambient music to me, in a lot of ways… and i'm speaking real broadly here… is a continuation of classical music. It’s way more accessible to the average person. I've made tons and tons of ambient music and what really strikes me about it, is that it's something that is very, very simple. I could play a couple chords or a couple notes or something. And I can take that and add on different effects/stretch it out and it just becomes this really beautiful piece. I have a side project called Crushing Union which is sort of based around all of that. I wouldn't say all of the tracks are ambient because some of them are just really harsh and heavy. But, they're based around taking these simple productions and slowing them down in order to make them into this bigger, more serious sounding thing. Something I like about ambient music in general, is that it is so meditative. It allows me to sit in my feelings in a way that feels constructive. There's so much to ambient music. It's just so broad, too. Even in terms of what I make, I've made so many different types of ambient music. Now, usually, if I'm making ambient, it's really droney and just really heavy and stuff. But in the past, I've made stuff that's more melodic and progressive. sort of based around New Age music. I like a lot of New Age music. People treat New Age like it's really corny and stuff. Like it is, I'm not going to deny it but there's just really beautiful music that comes out of it. I think ambient music, and going back to its connection to classical, I think of pieces by the pianist Erik Satie. Where he made these really simple and direct emotional piano pieces. He even called it furniture music. It just sort of faded into the background, and used to set a mood or keep you in a certain mood.

So I like ambient music a whole lot. I've made a lot of ambient music mostly because it allowed me to be intellectual in a way that I usually don't. It's interesting because a lot of people also call the stuff I make as non-ambient. I do have some straight-up ambient tracks. Some people have said Flood City Trax as “ambient footwork”. I'm not even really sure I can, like, talk about the entirety. Ambient is just so much.

How do you feel about performing live and translating your production in that setting? Do you like to experiment/change things up? Or add in old ideas that you never got to fulfill when you were creating? What's your approach to performing live?

With performing live because of how poor I've always been I've had technical limitations to doing that. That doesn't mean I haven't done it. In the past week or so, I performed up at Club Pittsburgh. What I had to do, essentially, because I didn't end up DJing or anything, is I just made a really, really, really big FL Studio project file. I played that out. There are some bits of it that were live because I had to fix the EQing on the fly, because some of the drums were messed up. For the most part doing things with FL Studio, it's not really designed for being live. There are parts of it I couldn't tweak at all because the music would completely fall apart, it's just that glitchy. My other project, Crushing Union, which like I said, my ambient one, is one where I do a lot more live work. Every single track on there is basically made either in one take or a couple takes. My approach to that is basically mixing on the fly. doing reverb on the fly. doing EQ on the fly. So even if it's this loop, it feels like it's not. That is my main approach. I would really love to do more and I'm definitely gonna do more in the future just with hardware and drum machines. So I can actually flip things up.

When I'm performing live, because like I am just doing things through FL Studio, I go all out and make tons of new creations for the people who are going to be out there dancing. I don't just want it to be, “Oh i press the button,” I want to be like, “Oh, you got an experience. You got to hear this before anyone else. I made this for this party…” With Club Pittsburgh, I put it out as an album called Tracks from Across the River in 2019. I also released a project in 2020 called Soul Tech, where I also did the same thing. I just made an entire project file in order to perform live. And when it wouldn't fall apart, I was tweaking it and adding as much new stuff as I could.

Yeah, that's honestly what I was trying to get into as well. I feel like it would be a lot for someone to look at and understand, but it's like, just let me cook. Um, also another thing that someone told me was like a good tip was, instead of using volume to change the level of sound, using filters instead. I was like wow that's like such a small edit that could really make something feel a lot more full or give it a different sound.

It's interesting because volume is definitely one thing. It's a lot, actually, like how loud your sounds are. It has become normal for me to try to make sure that everything can be heard in one of my tracks. So like, there's a sort of equality of loudness. Even if something is way just louder than another thing, you can hear everything else over it as well. But, like, a lot of that really isn't, “turning it up.” It’s putting different effects on everything. Like I said, I use a ton of different saturators. A ton of like, flangers and other sorts of stuff like that. Different filters and EQs in order to get my sound.

Like, it really just comes down to, how do you want something to sit in a track? Since I'm so influenced right now by just harsher sort of lo-fi digital online-sounding stuff, what I try to do is make everything in the mid-range just sound pop out and be the most important part. Something that helps out a lot with that really is tons and tons of distortion and also tons and tons of different sorts of other shit like, bit crushers.

How do you feel about your music existing in digital spaces and online and on platforms? have you had any I guess conflict with streaming services? What’s your outlook? Do you like putting things out because you know it's an inner expression? Or is it more external?

So I just love releasing music. It is actually sort of a problem because I will just release literally everything. I really just want to be heard, I guess. And, I have this nervousness of making something cool and it not being out there. And, something happens to me and no one ever hears this cool track. So, I really try to make sure my stuff is as accessible as possible. But that's, like, a new mindset for me. Because, honest to God, I hate the streaming services.

They're just terrible. They're truly ruining music and taking all of our money, taking all of our royalties. My stuff was not streaming up until probably like a year or a half ago. I started dropping a bunch of stuff on there and people thought I was releasing tons of new music and that's when I realized that there's an entire massive world of people on streaming who will never ever listen to your music unless it's for their convenience. Because I want to be heard. I'm having my stuff on streaming for now, but it’s not like ideal. I definitely want to find another platform to host my stuff because of these streaming services. They're terrible, like Spotify, of course the genocide and Palestine on top of all sorts of other evil things that they do. And it's not healthy for people's discovery of music. It's definitely not healthy for musicians and the music industry. All the wealth that is being stolen from musicians to go fund just stupid, terrible things.

In a better world there wouldn't be any streaming but right now if you want to exist as an artist of a certain size you have to be on streaming and I just hope in the future it is not that way. I hope that musicians win a strong union that gets us fair royalties. Bandcamp is a good platform, sort of. They did not treat their employees correctly. I appreciate their editorial and stuff. And, it's good that they are probably the only site, really, that is existing for independent musicians to actually sell their stuff to people who want it. But it really shouldn't be the case that your choice is like either a single platform or all like these streaming sites. We really don't have anything really there to help the artist, it's mostly all how can you help a corporation market your music essentially.

Does that outlook impact the way you show up online and in digital spaces?

I wish music could be something that I can live in the small town and do. And my career is fine because I could just go play to the locals and they'll be interested and I'll make money regardless of if it's popular. Because really, I didn't start doing any of this at all because I wanted money or I wanted popularity. Like I said, I wanted to do this mostly just to impress myself, but as it's gone on and has gotten more serious I've realized that I wanted my career as a musician. I view myself as a musician. Well, I'm a worker first and then I'm an artist essentially. By doing this I am doing labor that is contributing to the country. As musicians we certainly contribute billions and billions of dollars to the economy. All sorts of people across the world are always listening to our music and people basically devalued the art that we do, most people don't even buy music anymore because they don't think it's worth it. They expect it to be free and being put into that position is really like, Dang, I am just like a worker. I'm just doing factory work, essentially. Pumping out all these songs literally like a factory and it's because I've always made a ton of music. Especially like in the last few years, I've been going crazy with releases to the point that I know people cannot even keep up with what I release.

I started to intentionally slow down this year because there's a point in time last year where I probably had a new release every single week with multiple tracks. It’s not really sustainable and it was sort of making me go crazy. But it's the sort of position that you're forced to be in, in order to be successful or to make money. I remember I used to upload on Tumblr. Someone sent me a message saying that I need to knock it off reposting my music because they see the link like every five minutes. I told them, too bad because it was working.

So I'm assuming you've gotten over release anxiety.

Yeah, I don't really have much release anxiety. I really don't even care critically how people receive my music because I'm going to think it's cool regardless. I think it's cool when there are artists who are really prolific and they just have a ton of different type of stuff. They have a ton of music. Not all of it is the greatest music ever. Some of it is weird or some of it is just dumb. But I think that's fine.

There’s a lot of artists I listen to with giant discographies, I’m thinking of Aphex Twin. You could listen forever to all sorts of things. Some of his tracks are the coolest shit you'll ever hear and then others, you're like, “Why did he make this?” I think that's cool. I think that's part of the art. Sometimes you have these artists who, they're really singular and mysterious. They don't release stuff and when they do it's really good. And then you have artists who have a ton of stuff and a ton of perspectives and a ton of things that you can listen to. It turned out that I was one of the latter. When I was getting started, I wanted to be cool and mysterious with it, but that's just not how I am. So I just released a ton of stuff.

In terms of your production, do you mainly produce and make things for yourself? How do you feel about collaborations with people? Is it more so a process that you do on your own?

When I started it was definitely all about myself. I really could not work with other people mostly because of my own nervousness and thinking people would judge me for doing things the wrong way. But I recently came to understand that people can't do that cause they don't even understand what I'm doing. But I've become way more confident and I've been doing a lot more collaborations. I really want to do even more in the future. It was something I definitely had to work up to and learn how to do.

But once it clicked for me, it's a goal to work with more artists. Not only work with artists, but to make music that might not necessarily be for me and instead be for someone else.

I'm actually working on the soundtrack to a video game and it's real ambient stuff. Stuff I usually don't sort of make at all and they really have me doing very specific things for them, and I'm gonna be making genres that I usually don't make. But it's good for me though, because another one of my early goals when I started producing was I didn't just want to make one type of music. I wanted to be able to make anything, anytime. Having that mindset has helped me out as far as wanting to branch out and make music I typically wouldn't think about making at all.

Was music a really central point of your childhood?

I would say when I was like a younger teen. About 13 or 14 years old is when I really got into music. In that period, it was super important for me because it was such a form of escapism, because I was going through terrible, terrible things. I did not at all have an easy upbringing. It was really tough. Yeah. And I was really isolated. So I just didn't have much to relate to with anybody. I felt alienated by everyone. I definitely felt alienated by all the music everyone was listening to. And discovering electronic music and dance music, it just felt really liberating. It felt like I finally had found something that was for me. It ended up being like I couldn't really relate to most people I was talking to about music, because like they didn't at all listen to anything I was listening to. But for me, the entire world was opening up to me.

Back in the day when it came to music, I didn't know anything about any producers or anything. What was always striking to me is, when I would look them up, it would just always be a normal person. It would be, like, someone who I could see on the street. They weren't, like, these superstars. They weren't super glamorous or cool. Just people making crazy fucking music. I want to be like this. I just want to be a person who's out there just making this crazy stuff. I'm just a person.

Do you have a measure of success? For me it's like internal contentment. Do you have… I guess aspirations? Or are you just more so exorcising what you feel inside of you? That sounds so wild saying outloud…

I do have aspirations with music because i have a family, so I want to make this be able to work for me and my family and be able to like support them. And like, I'm just really just bullheaded with it. I'm going to be doing exclusively music. And my boyfriend right now is completely supporting me and helping me through that and everything. So I have his support and the support of my other family members to keep pushing forward doing this and focusing on music. Even if, like, I don't get the biggest payouts ever. Because to me like internal contentment with music is always gonna be there, because I'm always gonna make something I like. But at this point I think the world is just so fucked up. I absolutely want to make it as big as possible and as have as many people hear my music as possible so then I can sit there and tell them the music industry's fucked up and we need to be paid more. I want to see how far I can take this being a real career and I want to talk my shit the entire way.

Do you have a gear or production wish list, things that you find cool, quirky…

XDJ, because the most fun I've ever had was on an XDJ. I love that it's a whole built-in system and I don't have to have a laptop or Serato or Rekordbox or something running. I can do everything there. That's, like, the biggest thing that I want to do because it will make it so much more fun and easy to DJ.

And I guess I would like some sort of modular sandwich. Because there was a time in the past where I got to use one for a month for a little bit, and it was just the coolest shit ever. Just sitting there slowly figuring out exactly how it works was so neat and it's something I haven't experienced.

Also for the gear wishlist is literally any gear. That would be fucking amazing, so I can actually do live performances and not have to like go crazy making an entire like set up in FL Studio every single time.