Drew Lustman is feeling energized. It wasn’t always thus; there was a moment, around 2017—exactly a decade after his first EPs—that he was considering walking away from music. He’d finished his contract with Ninja Tune and was tiring of the touring grind. He’s described his 2016 album Heaven Is for Quitters—a loaded title if ever there was one—as “a mountain I had to climb, and when I reached the top, I realized I wasn’t all that happy.” Maybe, thought the former sushi chef, it was time to try something new.

But looking back at his catalog since then, you might never guess that the artist better known as FaltyDL had ever come to doubt himself. In the past eight years, he’s released club-focused EPs on a whole host of labels: Aus Music, Hypercolour, Unknown to the Unknown, his own Blueberry Records, and even Stockholm’s Studio Barnhus, a house-oriented imprint you might not immediately associate with FaltyDL’s grounding in breakbeats, braindance, and bass music.

He’s established a close creative relationship with Mykki Blanco, executive producing their albums Broken Hearts & Beauty Sleep and the more atmospheric and experimental Stay Close to Music, which featured contributions from Saul Williams, ANOHNI, Devendra Banhart, and even Michael Stipe; the distance that both artists have come from anything resembling rap convention is self-evident on 2023’s Postcards From Italia, a mini-album steeped in what you might describe as a Mediterranean take on yacht rock, with detours through Eurodance and dream pop.

And Lustman’s solo music has remained just as impossible to pin down. During the pandemic, he ended up retrieving a truckload of guitars and amps from his dad’s basement, which yielded 2022’s expansive, singer-songwriter-oriented A Nurse to My Patience; then, last year, he turned around and delivered the CPU album In the Wake of Wolves, an ecstatic evocation of mid-’90s IDM at its most ebullient.

It comes as no surprise, then, to discover that his new album, Neurotica—out Friday, June 13—is yet another curveball. Though it marks his return to Planet Mu, 14 years since his last record there, it doesn’t really sound much like his previous work for the label. Not everything on the album even necessarily sounds like it was made by the same artist: Pounding, Surgeon-esque techno alternates with pop-EDM so sugary it’d be easy to mistake it for a Skrillex track (complimentary, believe it or not).

The seeds of the album were planted on a 2024 vacation in Catalunya, visiting his partner’s family in the tiny village of El Palau d’Anglesola (“like 600 people soaking wet, when everyone’s home for the holidays—otherwise it’s like 200 people,” he says). Lustman’s text for the press release describes it in such vivid detail that I’m going to quote him in full:

“Summer of ’24, we were in Catalonia. My girl, our young daughter, the old folks. Days by the village pool, afternoons on the dirtbike. At night, I made salads. Simple things. Good things. One afternoon, lying back, phone in hand, I saw a friend post a GRWM. The music behind it stopped me. A song grabbed hold. The track was ‘Secret’ by Mietze Conte, which is fast-paced euro-pop dance music, like soft fluffy gabber with childlike vocals. I hunted down the full version. Played it again. And again. Twenty times over the next few days. It unlocked something. The best music does that. Like the first time I heard Burial. Had to know what was happening under the surface. That time, it led to Love Is a Liability in 2009. This time, it led to Neurotica.“

“I started to record, getting down fast, bright, sugar-rush sounds. 185 to 200 BPM. I wrote them quick—half a day per track. In between, I slowed things down. Gave space for breath. Mike Paradinas helped shape the album, his ear guiding the flow. I tested the tracks. Played them for kids barely out of diapers and grown folks who still move like they are. It worked, on all ages. I kept it simple. Only two rules: keep it moving and don’t look at my phone. Cut the vocals like I used to.”

I love a good origin story, particularly when you can really hear it in the music. And it’s true: Neurotica radiates that spirit of discovery and invention; a spirit of childlike wonder animates the giddy hyperpop of “Con Air” and the opalescent melancholy of “Breeding”—a naiveté that separates FaltyDL’s take on the sound from, say, Two Shell’s, which feels more calculated, more knowing.

But the more I listened, the more I felt like there was a lot on the album that didn’t neatly correspond to that sugar-rush eureka moment; how to account for the beaten-down breakcore balladry of “Chaotic Child” or convoluted techno crunch of “Speed”? And what made it all hang together? And why, for that matter, did the sugar-rush tracks speak to me the way they did, when normally I have little patience for the bright and chirpy?

So this week I hopped on a Zoom call with Lustman to figure it out. We talked about staying motivated in a collapsing industry, learning to hear the world through our children’s ears, why his friends call him the Larry David of electronic music, and that one time a promoter told him he should try to be cooler and more like Joy Orbison.

Scroll on for the full interview.

Paid subscriptions are $5 a month or $50 a year; perks include exclusive playlists for chilling and clubbing (now available on Deezer as well as Apple Music and Spotify); the ongoing Mixes Digest series; and full access to the archives, including interviews with Anthony Naples, Penelope Trappes, Stephen Vitiello, Longform Editions head Andrew Khedoori, drone titans Belong, Seefeel’s Mark Clifford, and more.

Tell me about the origin story behind the record. Obviously, it’s in the press release, but I wanted to hear it straight from you.

It’s so funny coming up with a press release. There’s one thing we didn’t really outline in it: This feels like coming home to a lot of things. To Planet Mu, to working with Mike again, and electronic music that’s more experimental and playful. So could I call that a comeback or a return to form? I’m not sure. Or is it a new form? But I think that’s the element of this album that I’m most excited about. I’ve done a lot of weird records in the last four or five years—not weird, maybe, but curveballs for FaltyDL.

That’s interesting to hear you describe it that way, because this feels like a curveball to me. And I don’t mean that in a damning-with-faint-praise kind of way, but if anything, I would say the CPU record last year felt much more in the FaltyDL zone, and now this is off in search of the unknown, in a really cool way.

But maybe that was what I was trying to do in the beginning? Maybe my form is trying to find something new. I think the original intent of electronic music was to be searching for things we haven’t heard before. So I feel a weight on my shoulders to do that when things are getting more and more homogenized—because of our phones, and because of trends, but also in terms of the way we think and consume things. So it’s like, how do I break out of that? And is it a false breakout? Am I actually still within the parameters? I don’t know.

One of the things that I find interesting about the record is that even though it’s framed in a certain way, it’s still all over the place. The first song is a hardcore techno kind of thing, and then the next song is sort of hyperpoppy, Skrillex-y, super ultra bright. And it keeps zigzagging. I find that the more I keep listening, the more I’m surprised by the zigs and zags it takes.

A huge part of that is I didn’t really A&R the record—it was Mike’s vision, for the most part. My original version of this album was all 190 to 200 BPM sugary poppy stuff, front to back, the whole way. The reason “Son of the Morning” is track one is Mike’s like, you got to warm up a little bit to the speeds of the rest of the tracks. And we went back and forth—I mean, there’s a whole email chain about me doubting that, but at the end it’s like, whatever, it’s fine. Let’s go for it, Mike. You know what you’re doing, I’m happy. There’s a tune, “Trace Your Ground,” which is like 100 BPM, which is slower and more chill. And then the two singles: “Don’t Go,” which was that bright, hyperpoppy one you said, and “Everything We Need,” this kind of Philip Glassy one. Again, I lobbied not to have those be the singles. I would’ve gone with “Con Air” as the first single and then maybe “Cried Later,” the very last track, as the second single, and kept it really high energy, in your face, let’s go.

It’s funny you talk about the sequencing because for whatever reason, on the promo that I got, both “Son of the Morning” and “Don’t Go” were tagged as track one, and because “Don’t Go” is first alphabetically, that was what I experienced as the opening track on the album for the longest time. Just today I was looking at the promo email, and I was like, wait a minute, that’s out of order. And it’s a very different experience when you start with this techno warmup versus starting with in-your-face hyperpop.

I wonder if shuffle is an invention that Apple came up with. It’s funny, you could probably draw a line from shuffle all the way to the Spotify algorithms. Just like, we’re going to give you a different experience. We’re going to give you more control over the music than the artists wanted you to have.

Whoever invented shuffle, it’s someone who fucking hates albums.

Who hates music! Exactly. I know, I know, dude. That’s my number one job these days: to remain in love with music. That’s why I keep listening. To try not to stay shut off. But my Lot Radio show is really good for that, because I show up early and I check these young kids that play right before me, and I hang out with them for a minute before I play. There was a period around the pandemic when I started going more and more in my own direction and just becoming a hermit in my little studio here, and it shut me off to other things for a while. But every five years there’s a whole new generation of producers. So I kind of owe it to myself and what I’m making to check it out.

So last summer you were in Catalunya, scrolling Instagram, and you heard this Mietze Conte song, “Secret.” What is that and what spoke to you? What grabbed you?

I think it’s an electronic alias of a pop producer. I dunno if he’s Swedish or not. I assume all pop producers that are famous are Swedish. But I’m scrolling on Instagram and a friend of mine, Brianna, posts a story, a Get Ready With Me, which I think is such a silly sign of our times. But anyway, she’s sweet, and I’m watching it and the song is playing in the background and I’m listening to it and I’m starting it over again and I’m starting it over again and I’m starting over again, and I’m playing it for Carme. I’m like, did you hear this? She’s like, yeah, that’s cool. She’s not nearly as excited as I am. Probably also wondering why I keep watching my friend’s Get Ready With Me video.

That’s how people discover songs now, on TikTok or on YouTube shorts, in a really short-form video. So here I am: I’d consider myself an audiophile with my vinyl collection over here, just off camera. But I’m basically discovering music on TikTok. Yeah, but it’s so accessible. I just click on the track and then I’m on Spotify and I’m listening to it. It’s that ducking compression with a kick drum at a really fast BPM that just kind sucked me in, with these childlike vocals playing over it. And then these sort of—I always want to call them UK or European chord progressions, that are kind of deep and sad and profound at the same time. They all can kind of get traced back to Aphex, in a way.

Mickey Pearce, Shortstuff, that producer, he put out an album years ago, and his first track is this little ambient track, and it’s so British to me—these beautiful chord progressions, I can just tell it’s made by someone from Europe. In any event, it really sucked me in and it was beautiful. And then I found out that it came out on this label sumoclic—they’ve also done that artist 1tbsp. Maybe there’s a bit of an ecosystem bubbling up. It feels like a new sort of scene, like happy hardcore, gabber, but way more pleasant and digestible.

One thing that I tend to do when I hear something I love is try and get underneath the hood and figure it out a bit. This maybe comes back to me trying to remain in love with music. That’s my cross to bear at this point—I have to figure out how it’s made. I can’t always just enjoy it as a consumer. It’s like, let me figure out what’s going on here. The last time I had really done that was around my debut album, when I heard Burial and El-B and Boxcutter and all that stuff. And I was like, oh, wait, how are these people doing this? I was making all this really fast IDM stuff and I was like, how do I get this cool swing at 130 BPM? I spent a lot of time doing that, and I kind of attacked this in a similar way. I bring my laptop to Spain, so I’m on a laptop, some old computer speakers and my noise-canceling headphones. That’s what I’m working on. Nothing’s in balance. It’s all off. I brought things back here and mixed them a bit more in the studio. But just really try to figure it out. The first one I made was “Con Air,” which is probably the most similar to that Mietze Conte track, structurally, with vocal placements and stuff. Then I really wanted to make sure it was my own, and not just copying him. I still think my tune is slower than their tune, but it starts at 180 or 175, and then I gradually bring it up to 185 by about bar nine or so.

Yeah, I noticed you play with tempo on a couple different tracks, which is of course highly unorthodox.

Well, it’s hard to DJ, that’s for sure. Although there was this album by Seiji years ago that was just DJ tools. Every track is named “85 to 120” or “93 to 107,” and they’re just tools to get you from somewhere to somewhere else. It’s incredible.

That was before CDJs and their plus or minus 10 or 16 or whatever, when you actually needed to work at getting from one place to another.

The time-stretching and re-pitching stuff on CDJs doesn’t always sound so great, so however he did it in the DAW, he made it sound a lot better. He’s an old Plastic People head, a real DJ, so it just sounds incredible.

I remember, in the vinyl days, the stress of knowing I wanted to get from, like, 80 to 120, and figuring out how I was going to do that over the course of a set, pushing the fader up as gradually as possible to get from one track to the next, track after track.

I love when I buy used records and I see whoever owned it before wrote the BPM on there. Fifteen years ago, I would DJ with some friends that were still using CDs, before Rekordbox, and they would have plus or minus whatever number written on there to bring it back to whatever they wanted their set at, like 130.

Were you actively working on other music at the time when you kind of got this bolt of inspiration? Or was it a fallow period?

I was sort of on break with Mykki at the moment. The main thing that’s kept me busy in the last four or five years has been producing for Mykki Blanco, and they were finishing up a two-year master’s degree in fine arts, so they were very busy doing that. I was just doing my own thing. I had the CPU record out and then I was thinking—I was always kind of thinking in the last five years, how do I get back to Mu? I would send Mike a track here and there, nothing really that inspiring, but once I made “Con Air,” I sent it to Mike with a photo of some of the motorcycles that I ride out in Spain, and we started a conversation again. He really liked it and it grew and it grew. And it’s funny, Mike always wants to do albums. It’s not like he’s ever looking just for a single from an artist.

That is interesting, because your earliest stuff for him was EPs, right?

Yeah, it was my lead single, “Human Meadow,” which I got a remix from Mike and one from Luke Vibert and one from Boxcutter, and I was like, let’s go. And then the album and then a couple EPs and then the next album.

I was looking back through your Discogs and label-wise, and certainly EP-wise, you’ve been all over the place. I’d forgotten that you did stuff with Studio Barnhus. I wouldn’t have expected that connection.

A couple of those are pretty straight ahead dance 12s. There’s one EP, The Wrath, that has more sci-fi weird stuff going on in it. I think some of my dance EPs in the last five years have gone a teeny bit under the radar because I stopped DJing. I’m not out there promoting them in the same way. So it’s a bit existential to release dance music and then not try and get gigs with it. I mean, the financial mechanics of releasing a dance record—you might make some money off it, but you’re mostly trying to get gigs off it, to make a living. You know what I mean? It’s kind of like just little badges I want to put on my coat at this point.

But I’ve had really good times running into both Axel [Boman] and Kornél [Kovács] in New York before, and I think they have a great sense of humor. They did this awesome Jimi Tenor stuff on the label, and I like their own productions. Is it Balearic? I’m not sure. It’s kind of fruity and cool. It feels unabashedly them and not too self-conscious, which I like. So that feels safe to me, like a safe entry point. And there’s probably some EPs I did on some other labels too that I can’t remember.

Yeah, there was one on Unknown to the Unknown and some Hypercolour, but that’s going back further. At this point, anything pre-pandemic feels like ancient history. How did the pandemic affect you as a musician? Your rock record came a couple years after that; was that triggered by the pandemic, or was that a different shift?

Mykki and I got some real steam rolling on a bunch of stuff before the pandemic, like 2018, 2019. Our early conversations were them being like, I don’t want to rap. I’m like, cool, let’s make show tunes. Let’s listen to “Ladies Who Lunch” and some really weird stuff and just get freaky in the studio. So come pandemic, I’m already making stuff I’ve never made before, including some rock. There’s that one tune, “Family Ties,” which is kind of like a progressive, no-wavy rock song with Michael Stipe. I’m working with these insane people showing up in my inbox because of this collaboration with Mykki. It was so confidence-building to feel like I could do whatever I wanted. And then when the pandemic rolls around, I’m like, all right, I got to go visit my dad, check in on him. So I drive up and I get all this crap over here [gestures around studio]. I get my bass and I get this bass stack, this is from 25 years ago, and a bunch of other instruments. I start collecting guitar pedals to make stuff for Mykki, but also just to get out some of the melodies that are still ringing in my head from when I was a kid because, well, I’m a better producer now. Maybe I can engineer it better. And it turns out I kind of could, after some tinkering, and then A Nurse to My Patience comes around. I was listening to parts of it recently, and I really want to release the instrumentals because it’s a little cringey to hear my own singing, but I’m also really proud of some of the playing on it too. There’s a couple instrumentals, if I did four or five of them as an EP, that could be really nice for people who kind of were like, what’s he doing here? But maybe couldn’t get on board with the singing.

How do you feel about the reception to that album?

Did you see that Sufjan Stevens is really embarrassed by Carrie and Lowell? So that beautiful album that’s dedicated to his parents that came out seven or eight years ago, he finds it cringey. And I’m like, imagine thinking something so incredible, so beautiful, is your cringey work. I’m not saying that I think my Nurse to My Patience is that beautiful, but I think everyone’s their own harshest critic, and I think that I kind of lost the plot a little bit.

Over the years, you’ve never been shy about trying new things, changing things up. Do you worry about how things are going to be received when you put them out into the world?

Yeah, definitely, 100 percent. But that only comes after. Like right now, I’m freaking out about it, because it’s out next week. But when I make something, when I finish it, I’m like, oh, this is dope. This is the greatest thing I’ve ever done. And by the time I’m putting an album together, I’m thinking, everyone needs to hear this, this is so great. I’m really good at selling myself on something, being good. But I think part of that is because my echo chamber is just these four walls. I have a few friends I play things to, but I’m not in the clubs. I’m not comparing it to other stuff. The one thing I’m trying not to think about is that it’s going to do something for me. I’m just trying to focus on, I want to get this out and share this. I really like it. Not, like, this is going to level me up or it’s going to get me whatever, because that never happens. I look back at it my whole career, and I’ve never gotten what I wanted. I just got what I guess I deserved or what was coming next, and it was always almost better than what I could have imagined, in a way—or far worse. Flip a coin.

I think that’s a healthy attitude. Of course, earlier in one’s career, you’re trying to build something, you’re trying to get somewhere. And over the last 10 or 15 years, we’ve seen the industry collapse. There’s almost nowhere left to go, unless you’re a fluke. I feel like simply surviving, and believing in the music, is a good goal. If you can do those two things, then maybe you’re ahead.

You used the word “fluke,” I think “unicorn.” I think of a couple of my friends that I came up with that are now just crushing it every weekend, some of the bigger names. And I can get caught up thinking, OK, well, how did I go this way, and they went that way? How did I fumble this? What did I do? But I definitely wanted something different, too. I want to make albums and babies, and that’s what I’m doing. They want to have incredible DJ careers, and that’s awesome.

And then the industry is also crumbling. I mean, the career path just isn’t there for most people anymore.

If your goal is to do well so that you can keep doing this, then I’m succeeding. And a big part of that was taking the pressure off by having three other side hustles and helping Carme run her business and getting a partner who saw my vision too, and I could help her just elevate her, and it just feels secure in that way. And a big part of that was living in a small one-bedroom together for 10 or 12 years, working in headphones and kind of driving each other a little crazy.

But I get to come out here and just make music. So then I guess I succeeded. I still get to do this, and that’s so fortunate. But I’m also freaking out. I got this album out in a week and I feel like there’s no hype about it. But then I’m like, it’s not even out yet, I gotta wait. And meanwhile, I’m promoting an album during a genocide, and it feels horrible being online in general. I was talking to Mykki about it last night, and they’re like, well, this is the world we’re in, unfortunately, and this is what you’re giving out there, so you gotta push it out. I’m wrestling with that. It’s a lot. It’s like, do I feel like I’m in hobby territory, or do I feel like I’m still a professional at this? I don’t know. I ask all these questions all the time. I overanalyze it.

Did you have a period where you were gigging every weekend in the DJ scene?

I did, yeah. I think my career kind of went like this [points upward at a steep angle], and I remember feeling like it was more gradual than it actually was. Being like, oh, this will just keep going like this. But now, I can be like, oh wow, opened for Radiohead a year and a half in, signed to Ninja Tune—those were huge moments that I didn’t see as clearly as I guess you can in hindsight. But from 2009 to 2013, ’14, I was DJing a lot. That was a big part of my career, and it was fun. I think I only really started to figure out how to do it well in the last year or two. Or well enough. I started by playing live in Ableton on my laptop with a little MPC controller, and then I switched to CDJs. I hated bringing my laptop into a club—beers are getting spilled around, it was dangerous, sometimes it wouldn’t work, and I’m not going to restart my computer in the middle of a set. That’s crazy. CDJs opened up everything. I could just walk into a club with headphones and a single USB. I was DJing a lot, and it was going pretty well. When I met Carme, I decided that I wanted more stability at home and more time at home. So it became a struggle to figure out that balance, and I just got increasingly anxious leaving the house to go do shows. Also, every once in a while I’d go do a show—I get flown to Italy and I’m in a nice hotel and I’m playing a show and 20 people show up, and I’m like, this is a horrible experience. I have PTSD from underperforming, or clearing a room, going all this way to be jetlagged and not giving a good performance. It felt really icky, and I knew that I needed to dedicate the time that DJing deserved in order to keep that going well, and I wasn’t doing that. I was still 90 percent producer. I should have had a setup here and been practicing the whole time, but I wasn’t doing that.

But then that’s also the time that you’re not making music too. If the time you’re practicing DJing, then you’re not making music or you’re not hanging out with Carme. I mean, there’s only so many hours in the day.

The beginning, for DJs—when you’re young, you’re cash rich. You’re playing these gigs and coming back with all these currencies and you don’t know what to spend it on. It’s just rent and new shoes and video games. And it was great. I was like, oh, this is just how it’s going to be. This is cool, just making cash. This is dope. Stopping touring was an adjustment for a while, financially. Ninja Tune gave me a great cushion for a minute, because there were these big advances in publishing and stuff like that. But knowing what I know now, that takes forever to recoup, and it’s a whole thing. It’s like a whole other conversation.

There was a minute around 2017 where you talked about maybe stepping away from music, but you sound very energized now. It’s like you’ve got a million things going on, both your own projects, you’re working with Mykki. It’s cool to see.

That’s awesome, dude. It’s crazy just to be talking to you. It’s funny to finally come back and have this conversation. It feels really good. And that’s partly why I’m energized. You know what I mean? The last time we really spoke in person, other than a few correspondences, was probably around 2014, the time I was almost winding down my Ninja Tune run. You know what I mean? I’m just grateful for the time I have out here, because my kid is demanding of my time—as they should be.

How old is she?

Two and a half. We are in it. A lot of changes. And there’s a baby in the belly, and it’s a whole thing. Mila didn’t want to go to school today, and we kind of caved, and we’re having a hard time figuring that out, and it’s just wild to be the parent in the room. But I’m 42, so it feels good—but what an adjustment. Oh my God. It steamrolled me at first. In a beautiful way. It expanded my heart to different dimensions just in a way I could never have expected.

And it will continue to do both of those things. Steamroll you and expand the heart. Steamroll the heart, I guess.

That’s a good track title.

Yeah, “Steamroll the Heart.” You’re welcome to it. Speaking of titles, why Neurotica?

I came up with it. I feel like some folks, friends who know me, are like, oh yeah, that’s just Drew—that could describe him. It’s neurotic, it’s erotica at the same time. It’s just a fun rhyme. I remember thinking, oh cool, no one’s used this, then Googling it and seeing, there’s 12 other albums named Neurotica over the years—heavy metal albums, all sorts of stuff. But I came up with the name a couple of years ago, actually, when I was wearing my Huey Lewis and the News hat everywhere, and I was making prog rock. I was thinking of Def Leppard’s Hysteria, the name and the artwork, and I was like, hysteria, neurotica. I want to make something like that. It ended up being way different, but my buddy Tom, who did the artwork, took it as thinking of cleaning in a neurotic way, and he found all these old illustrations about how to clean things, and we just ripped them.

That’s cool.

It’s like cleaning up a spill. It’s the guy that did the artwork of my first few records. He’s got kids and he lives near me, and we have this great relationship where we can just work on stuff together when we have time. I feel like it’s a fun way to poke fun at the fact that I am a little neurotic. I don’t know if it’s partly a shtick or a stereotype or if it’s pretty lazy, but I have friends that are like, oh, Drew, you’re just like Larry David. And it’s like, all right, all right. Enough, enough. But I get it too. Also I have an uncle who literally is Larry David, you know what I mean? I grew up with that, and I can be that way. And I’m not one to bite my tongue. I will say what’s on my mind, for better or worse, although I’ve chilled out a lot, I think in my older years. So maybe it’s owning and playing fun at that side of me.

I feel like for neurotic people, a certain amount of self deprecation is perhaps one of the best defenses or coping strategies for it. Otherwise it just eats you up.

Someone told me early on, I was playing this gig one time in London, like 2012 or so, and the promoter was like, man, you got to be a little tougher, Drew. Joy Orbison was coming up at the same time, and he was like, you see how Joy is?

What, really cool, and you’re not?

Yeah, exactly. Not silly or goofy and just, I was like, all right, yeah, you’re right. But that’s not me. I have to be kind of goofy.

That’s funny.

When I signed my first album to Mike, Love Is a Liability, he was like, you’re going to take the interview seriously. And I was like, OK, yeah, sure. It was coming out of breakcore, where it was cool to be edgy and not take things seriously. And I’m like, yeah, I’ll be serious. But with this album, I was like, I want it to be goofy with it, because the music’s kind of silly. And he’s like, no, I think it’s about love and relationships and this and that. And I’m like, all right, if you can figure out how to convey that, we can do that too.

Was that some of what his A&R focused on, then, drawing out that thread of the album?

Probably. We didn’t talk about that as far as sonically drawing it out, but as far as framing it and talking about it, yeah. Because I made a music video for “Air” where I ripped all these TikToks of people power washing things—I’m still going to drop it. But he was like, no, no, no, no, no, let’s go more serious. And I’m like, I think this is what people want to see. They want to see power washing! So I’ll drop both and we’ll see which one is more popular.

Where are the vocals coming from—are those mostly samples?

Yeah, they’re all samples. They’re from a few different sites, but primarily Splice. I did a sound pack for Splice years ago and then got some credits and never really checked it out. I thought about doing a mixtape last year and getting rappers involved, Mykki and other friends, but it’s a lot of work and a lot of organizing, and I wanted to bring it back to a place where I could just bang tracks out and do it all myself and not need to get anyone else involved. So I would go to Splice for little vocal samples and then just chop ’em up, and that became an incredible source. I’m trying to stay off it now because it’s almost too easy to find things. Everything on there sounds really great.

How does Splice work? Do you license them? Is it royalty free?

I pay annually, or a monthly fee, and you get a hundred credits, so that’s a hundred samples you can download. A lot of artists have done sound packs for it. I’ll be listening to something on there, like, oh, this is really great. And it’s like, oh, Pariah made that drum kit, or whatever. A lot of people have done it. I’ll be listening to a commercial and I’ll hear a drill baseline—that’s a Splice sample. People in film and television and producers are going there. So it could also be a harbinger of more homogenization if we’re all going to the same place and getting the same sounds and spending less time trying to make ’em ourselves.

I would also assume you’re flipping them in your way, right? I mean, they sound very Falty-esque to me.

I think I felt like, well, I better hide the seams and try and chop it up my way. Also, I am making these tunes at twice the BPM of what most of those samples are set at. I did have a moment where I was like, oh, man, someone’s going to hear these and be like, I got ’em all from Splice. But it’s cool. I’ll own it. I used to just sample stuff from YouTube, but I just sort of stopped doing that. But this is nice too, because it is royalty-free. I won’t get in trouble for it. None of the tracks will get taken down. If someone was like, Falty used my song, I would elevate that. Yeah, I did. Thank you. Thanks for making it.

There’s this amazing sample in “Breeding” that sounds like yacht rock to me. I have no idea what it is.

I think some of the chord changes that really worked was me highlighting a whole session and just pitching the entire section up or down. I’ll listen to Hall and Oates in the car with my family, and they do that stuff too. All of a sudden you’re modulated into another key and it’s so cool, and it’s really easy to do that in my software. Sometimes it can sound a little too grainy and forced, so you gotta finesse it, but that’s sort of the pop element. You don’t really hear key changes in dance music so much, right? Here I am framing this as dance music, so I hope someone DJs this out. It won’t be me!

Some of it is very DJ-able. “Son of the Morning” is basically fast techno. I would play that in a set.

I do also think I come onto some trends kind of late. Like the 150 BPM hard-techno thing, I don’t know. Is this business techno?

I think business techno is more like corporate, faceless, commercial. But the 150 BPM hard-techno thing, some of this could kind of fit in there.

Yeah, there’s that club night, Basemement, over here that’s very popular. It’s been going on for years. I haven’t been, but it’s supposed to be dope. Friends have said it’s just really heavy techno. And I was like, cool, let me make something that might get played there. That worked as a muse for that track. And then the other one that’s like 150 BPM, the name escapes me—

“Speed”? That’s another really good one.

Thanks, man. Yeah. It’s kind of crunchy. I wanted to maintain the crunchy distortion, so there was some back and forth with the mastering engineer on that one. But I’m really into Voam, Pariah and Blawan’s label. I think both Pariah and Blawan are amazing, and also—was it a Peder Mannerfelt record they put out? There were a couple really beautifully produced hard-techno EPs they’ve done that inspired me to make that stuff. And another track was maybe going to be on an EP I’ve been working on for Hooversound forever, and it keeps changing, and they switched distributions, so there was a minute of pause there. I ended up taking a track from that EP and giving it to Mike for the album. He really wanted it. So some things were made for other contexts that Mike then just saw could fit in.

That’s really interesting that he had such a guiding hand in shaping it.

Yeah, he has in all my records for Planet Mu. I think there’s probably only a small percentage of folks that deliver a record to Mike and it comes out as is. That’s how we did the first couple albums—I sent him 75 tunes, just kept going, and he’d be like, you’re on a roll.

It’s funny because on the µ-Ziq record that my label put out, he sent us something like 40 tracks and then Albert and I A&R’d the shit out of it. Mike was really easy about it. He had a few suggestions, but otherwise he was really, like, yeah, take these tracks, do what you want with them.

That’s incredible. Yeah, I can’t step outside of myself and hear things for the first time and be like, oh, no, this should be how this goes. I’m too close to it. I don’t know how he does his own albums. Some hit more than others. That last one, Grush, I think has done really well, and he A&R’d that, so that’s incredible.

What are you working on now?

I have some more things I’m tinkering on in the same sugary 200 BPM realm. And then I’ve made a lot of rap beats. I started producing for a rapper last year who now has taken some time off and is doing some other thing, so I don’t know if any of it will ever come out. Unfortunately. That’s how a lot of this goes.

When you say rapper or rap, what kind of style are we talking about? Just in terms of the beats that you’re making.

Well, actually, the stuff they’ve gotten from me has been really all over the place. They’ve been interested in some of the popular stuff too, but I made some stuff that’s got some gospel samples in it, like organs and pianos in it. That feels really big, really. You could walk out on stage to it. But yeah, I was stemming them out and sending them over. So hopefully it still comes out. It would be really cool.

Are you still working with Mykki?

Yeah, we recorded a whole new album in February and March, made about 17 tracks. They’re currently writing a screenplay for a film they’re making. And we’re trying to find the right mixing engineer to take on the album project, but I think they’re going to concurrently happen. One thing I’ve learned with working with Mykki and with other projects on bigger labels is these things can take a while. The pandemic did slow down some of the rollouts of the first albums we did together. I’ll make something and it might not come out for a year and a half, two years later. It’s frustrating, but it’s cool. It’s nice. I’ll forget about it and be like, oh, sweet. This thing.

How has fatherhood changed your relationship with music?

One thing is time. I just have less time to come out and get in the zone.

That’s a big one.

When Mila was born, I would take her for these walks and I would play her “An Ending (Ascent)” by Brian Eno off my phone. It’s so gorgeous, and I would just play it when I’m walking behind her in the stroller. And then it got to the point, when she got a bit older, where I would play it and the first note would hit and she’d go [mimics her face brightening]. She knew it was coming. I watched her figure out that kind of object permanence and, like, oh, this is a thing I’ve heard before, I know what’s coming next. That was so profound to me, that someone is going to have all these new experiences and form their own relationships with it. I forget that in my most jaded moments. I’m like, everything’s been done. What’s the point? And then in my most openhearted moments, I’m like, oh yeah, people still get to have their first experience with discovering themselves through art and music and their own identity, and I get to do that for folks. That’s so cool.

There are still people being born that haven’t heard everything yet! Is she starting to gravitate to music that she likes yet, or is it early for that yet?

I’ll play something I think is cool, and she’d be like, all right, “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” let’s go. You know what I mean? Or some CoComelon, or something really obnoxious, but it’s also well-produced pop music, too. I’m like, this has 200 billion streams—they really nailed this one. “Baby Shark!”

A record that made a big impact on my daughter early on was Maurice Fulton and Mu’s “Paris Hilton.” She loved the acid line. And because the sleeve was pink, she always called it “Pink Music.” Lately she’s gotten really into Yaeji’s “Raingurl.” I guess she discovered it because she’s been the soundtrack to this anime she likes, Jentry Chau vs. the Underworld, and Yaeji has a song on the soundtrack, so eventually the algorithm suggested “Raingurl” to her. When we’re in the car she’ll play it over and over again. The only issue is that one line—“When the sweaty walls are bangin’ I don’t fuck with family planning”—which of course she loves to sing along to. I haven’t really explained that one yet.

Yeah, maybe find a non explicit version of that. I don’t know how much we’re wired to think our kids are perfect, but I have to say, I think my daughter’s rhythm is absolutely incredible. Like, finding the two and the four of the beat. And her singing pitch is incredible. When my girlfriend was nursing her to sleep, my daughter would start humming. I started recording the melodies. I’m in the bedroom and it’s quiet. I’m just using my iPhone, recording her humming, and they’re these perfect, beautiful intervals. She’s working out something in her head. It’s insane. I want to steal them and use them. You know what I mean? I have a bunch of them saved on my phone. My dream is, when she’s nine or 10, if she’s into it, I’ll produce a record for her. I have this fantasy of a crazy, Danny Elfman-style album, make her the center of this huge universe. I don’t know that she’ll be into any of that stuff. I don’t want to force her. I don’t want to ruin her excitement for it. But if she’s down, I will try and open any door I can and help with the music stuff.

That’s really cool. I’m sure that in a home like yours, full of instruments, there are a million opportunities there.

Well, it’s funny. The studio is full of music and full of instruments, but I’ve also always been someone that separates my work from the rest of my life. I think I watched that with my folks, who had jobs where there’s nothing really to bring home. So it was always a mystery of what they did. I’m not keeping it from her, but in my house, I just have a little JBL player. I don’t have a stereo in the house. I collect little radios, like the type of radio you’d bring to the beach. I love scanning airwaves, shortwave radios and stuff. They’re really fun. So we’ll explore sounds together on those devices. But in the house, music might just be playing out of a phone. It’s funny, it’s not an audiophile house. We’ll come in here though, and I’ll play bass through this stack and she’ll stand right in front of it, and it’s the Maxell commercial. She’ll get on the glockenspiel a little bit. So we have fun out here.