Cautiously optimistic, relieved, all those things. It wasn’t a deliberate decision to not make any music during this time. It just didn’t feel relevant to release anything given how shit things were looking globally. It was a good opportunity to dive into other stuff too outside music which had been neglected for too long.

Firstly vocal tracks, I’ve known Mønölitio for years, but only started working with him properly by complete coincidence. I’m really pleased with how those tracks have turned out. I’ve also gone more cinematic and soundtrack on this record. Not by design, I just started getting into Kontakt libraries, Eventide reverbs and playing more with live instrument sounds. For the last album, it was all vintage analogue synths and the story was ‘going backwards’ with technology.
On this album, I’m just using the same digital tools everyone else has access to. The difference is these tools have got so much better sounding over the last 2 to 3 years and it’s been awesome to rediscover that. Finally, finishing this album has been a profound personal achievement. I made so many false starts. I don’t really give a shit what people think of it, it’s just really nice to have it out there at a time when music can be appreciated fully again in a club or screen environment.

Obviously, this was all encouraging and helped get my name out there beyond just an electronic music audience. Since then, Mixmag has temporarily gone out of print which is sad. Bandcamp has grown exponentially and no longer feels like a niche little record store. But mostly that my system of creation has changed completely. It used to be entirely feasible to jump on a plane spontaneously for a weekend and use a studio like Handwerk (the room I recorded much of that album in), sadly that place is no more, and Europe and the United States have largely been out of bounds for the last 18 months. A lot of this album was produced in the early stages on a laptop in my attic.

I can’t categorise it easily, not because I think it’s particularly genre-defining – it isn’t, but there isn’t a ready-made tag for it because there are quite a few styles in there and the beat per minute range in the tracks is comparatively large. Maybe that’s a good thing. Someone said ‘slow techno’ which sounds a bit wanky, but I probably just prefer ‘electronica’ for now, because usually, electronica charts are the only ones I look at and buy music from myself as a DJ.

I was stuck in a real rut before I started Principleasure, just really unsure where I wanted to be as a musician or even if I wanted to keep doing it. It was generally a really shitty place. There was a lot of groundbreaking electronic music in the tail end of the 2000s and early 2010s, and then everything just went a bit stale.
Then I moved to Los Angeles and started putting together Principle Pleasure Studios in an old loft. It was one thing to have all that old technology in working condition, but getting everything to sync together and all the sequencers to play in time was a beautiful moment. The groove of the drum machines and the unique idiosyncrasies were exactly as they were in recordings from thirty or forty years ago without any computer emulation. It was magic working like that.

I usually start out with a clear idea, but the process of bouncing and finalising tracks is pure trial and error. It’s not too different to using a guitar and voice, I suspect. You start an idea, develop it and either keep or shelve it depending on how it pans out once it’s properly arranged or how it fits with the other tracks in the album. Usually, I’ll work in the classic eight-bar loop and keep layering on drums or a melody. By the time I’ve added three or four elements, I’ll know whether it’s worth arranging or not. I don’t usually go back to something, it either works or it doesn’t on the first attempt.

I’m a bit cut off lately, like most people. My favourite form of discovery was always clubs, particularly in downtown Los Angeles, which had a really vibrant techno scene before the shutdown. I do some digging on Bandcamp and sometimes Beatport, but it’s not the same. I hope all this strife brings some new creativity but at the same time, I’m not holding my breath. There’s a lot of people in a weird space and that’s fine. There will definitely be some form of musical upheaval soon, whether as a rebellion towards major streaming platforms or lack of opportunities in general. Hopefully, that will mean more variety and uniqueness.

I really want to do Principleasure live with a drummer or vocalists and some of those synths. For me, nothing comes close to playing live or at second best DJing. Put simply it would be excellent to start touring this thing. Beyond that, of course, working on a good movie soundtrack is an ideal aspiration. I’ve always had music technology projects in the background too, without a doubt I’ll be working on launching something new there soon.