We sat down with one of the musical prodigies of our current era this time.
It’s in times like these when you look back and say, “Oh, am I blessed“. What’s the right thing to do when an artist is at such a high level of expertise that his first-ever release was on Avicii’s label LE7ELS, and then went on to release three albums on Anjunadeep, remix and tour with deadmau5, launch a label with a release by Hernan Cattaneo, and collaborate with Above & Beyond, John Digweed, and Nick Muir? You have a chat with him, of course. Perhaps that way some of his wisdom will fly to you like pollen from a flower.
Jokes aside, we’re really excited to tell you we’ve landed an interview with the one and only Spencer Brown. In the above paragraph you can find just SOME of the impressive things he can flex regarding his musical career. At just 31 years old, he’s shown the entire world just what a prodigy he is, putting out music from all kinds of styles and subgenres and charting high every single time.
Fun fact, I’ve admired Spencer since 2017, when he got me into deeper music thanks to his moving track ‘Divine Intervention’. After having released ‘Relentless’, his collaboration with the legendary duo Bedrock, and in the middle of a very busy year that includes him even taking part in scientific research, it was about time we had a good, profound talk with him, in the impactful style we’re known for. So, without further to do, here it is, one of my favourite pieces of all time, our interview with Spencer Brown. Enjoy.
The Interview
(Please note, the bolded text represents a question, while the paragraph(s) following it represent Spencer’s answers.)
So, first off, thanks for coming in.
Thank you for inviting me! We’re having a great time over there in Germany.
Did you play there recently?
No, I’m working on a book on the state of dance music, and my writer and I are here for the week. I’m working on a project called No Socials with him, a musical duo that will have no social media or online presence, only releases and live shows. He’s writing on the whole process.
I also spent two nights at Berghain this week. I actually found it had one of the nicest crowds I’ve ever met. While I was there, Ben Clark, Marcel Dettmann, and Roman Flügel all played at Panorama Bar. It was an incredible, holy place, and I’d argue it’s in my top two clubs of all time, along with Stereo in Montreal. I always take two to three times a year, where I’ll take a weekend off to party and see masters playing, like when I saw John Digweed at Stereo. This time, it was Ben Clark and Marcel Dettmann, whose music is very different from mine. I love to listen to the people who are considered masters and go experience a night of clubbing without me working, so I can let loose. It really helps my music. I learn something unexpected every time—how grooves work, how melodies interact, or when to bring them in. I’m not going in thinking I need to learn; it’s a side effect. I go in to have a really good time, and I always end up learning something.
Which is interesting to hear from artists like you because, in the eyes of many, you’d have everything figured out already, with the amount and variety of music that you have, and the labels you’ve signed to.
When I left Panorama Bar, where the BPMs were much closer to me versus the main floor of Berghain, I thought, ‘Oh my God, I have so much to learn‘. Flügel and Dettmann played deep sets, far from what they usually play, and both had full control of the room for hours. I knew I had a lot to learn from that experience. I believe that anyone who feels they know everything, and have nothing left to learn, is at the beginning of the end. The second you think you know what you’re doing, you really don’t—that’s the paradox. Nowadays, I feel confident because I work from a place of passion. The more I understand myself, the more I can convey what I want in my music. But I also keep half of my brain thinking, ‘How can I get better?’ I want to keep getting better every year; I’m always a student. I can be a teacher for some people, but I’m also always a student with my brain open to learning more about everything.
Amazing, I love that philosophy. Well, as we speak, it’s been a little while since your latest track, ‘Relentless’ alongside John Digweed and Nick Muir, was released. So firstly, huge congrats on it, it’s incredible. And secondly, would you mind giving us a bit of an insight into how the track came to be?
I originally wrote the melody for this track in deadmau5’s studio in Toronto around 2021, but it never turned into anything good. Still, the melody stuck with me. A year later, I tried to work on it again without success. Then, I sent a pack of ideas to my mentor and favorite DJ, John Digweed. He said, ‘Let’s work on a track together.’ After sending him a few ideas, I sent him that melody, and he said, ‘We need to work on this one.’ I sent the basic parts to John and Nick Muir, who added drums and a kick. John then said it was missing a ‘third chapter’ to go dark. I went into my archives and found the dark siren from a 2021 project and another noise synth from a project in Bali, and bounced it back to them. John said it was still missing something and suggested an acid bassline for the final section. I created that on a flight back from Argentina. After even more work, John then sent it to Eric Prydz, who said it was fantastic but ‘missing a final climax.’
I’m making it sound easy but this went on for months. We’re working on version 26, then version 32, then version 40… I went back to the project once more and made the part in the very end where the melody and the dark techno part come together for the big peak. And we sent it to Prydz. And then Prydz said, “Almost there, it’s just missing a little vocal”. Oh, my God, can this track drag on any longer?!
So I went on Craigslist and I bought a little vocoder synth. It’s like an old Korg made in 2005 or something. I recorded myself just talking into it. And the very first take of what I said, which wasn’t written down because we were on the phone about social media, was “I’m in control of your mind. I suck the life out of you. I am the silent addiction”. I said that into the vocoder, holding down one note. Then I put it in the track and I sent it. John tested it, I tested it live. We gathered a few mix notes. I tweaked the mix a little bit and then we bounced the stems, got the final mixdown, exported it. And then it hit number one on Beatport. [laughs]
It took so long, man. Some of my tracks take 30 minutes to make. This one took a year and a half, and actively a year and a half.
Yeah, it’s not like you made it and it was there on a shelf sitting somewhere for years.
Exactly. And the arrangement kept on changing and changing, again and again. Getting the flow right was the biggest challenge. The first version was closer to 20 minutes long so we cut it down. And then it was a 15-minute version, then 12, then seven, and we’d cut it far too much. And then it went back up to nine, and only then did it turn into its final form, which is close to ten minutes. It just kept on changing the arrangement, over, and over, and over. And the project got so complicated. I was losing touch of what was where.
Some of my tracks have seven channels, like ‘Offsides’, the track I released a couple of releases before. It’s a massive bomb in my sets. That was only seven tracks and it took less than an hour to make. And then ‘Relentless’ was closer to 120 channels, and it took a year and a half. So it goes to show that there is no one way to do a track, even two very successful tracks can put out completely different lengths and channels.
Well, you can actually feel the complexity in ‘Relentless’ versus ‘Offsides’. I love both, but the former is something else, it’s a ride.
‘Offsides’ was cool. It was simply a tool for my sets. I wanted a peak-time tool, something that I can play if I need energy. While ‘Relentless’ is more of a feeling track. It has more melody in it.
I read a comment somewhere on YouTube. A guy said that it felt like it was 2002 all over again, but made with current sounds and current surgical techniques.
That’s amazing. Because I was born in 1994, so I didn’t get to live through the first progressive wave. But I always wished I could experience that. So I try to channel the feeling of some of that old music. I don’t think too many people are even going for that feeling at the moment. People are chasing different sounds and different things. But I’m quite inspired by that sound of the early 2000s, the late 90s. It’s really interesting to me, especially because I didn’t get to live through it.
I get what you mean. I love classic trance. I love the golden ages of Anjuna. I was born in 2000, so of course I didn’t get to live through it. Well, I hope you know ‘Relentless’ was hot in Argentinian forums. Because John played there twice in the last couple of months. And in these progressive Facebook groups, everyone was asking for the track over and over again. They all knew the ID, but never knew when it was going to be released.
You can see that it’s a track that’s a little bit different. It doesn’t really sound like anything else that’s coming out at the moment. And we’re honoured that it hit number one. It’s amazing to see the support. We didn’t make it to try to make a number one. We made it just because we liked the track. And we put out something a bit different.
Now, slightly tangential to this, about working with your idols. You’ve worked with Above & Beyond, with the Bedrock guys now, so how do those thoughts play in your head? Like when you’re sitting in the studio with one of these guys, one of your referents, and suddenly you realise that it’s true, that you’re working with one of the people who guided you.
It’s just following the heart and the passion of the music. That’s what’s created these things. My referents also know that I’m in it from a place of love and passion for the music. And for the community and the scene. It does sometimes feel surreal, if I’m all of a sudden now sitting next to someone who I’ve looked up to for the last decade or two. But you soon realise these are just people too. They’re living their lives the same way I’m living my life. And while you can think of these people as the masters or the idols, they’re people too. We’re going to a restaurant and having a beer or whatever, having dinner, talking about their kids. It’s just normal people.
It is surreal to work with these people. And I’m absolutely blessed. But I think it’s cool to see that everyone is just a human at the end of the day. Everyone is very passionate, the same way I’m passionate about music.
About passion. I’m interested in knowing a bit more about diviine. Because we know it was born trying to find more creative spaces. More freedom. But how do you see the label going forward? Does it still retain its original mission?
My label was a place to release music exactly the way I wanted. Now, a few years in, I’m thinking more about its functionality on a dancefloor. I love house, techno, deep house, and trance—but it’s all dance music, so I look for music that moves me and can also work a crowd. These two things are my main filters for all our scheduled releases. I also never want the label to be a machine that prioritizes quantity. Every release must be special and excellent, whether it’s my own production or someone else’s. It has to be something I want to play both on the dancefloor and listen to constantly around the house. I don’t want to put out a track that sounds like everything else; I’m looking for music that stands in its own space. Something different, but successful, if you will.
I see. You’ve made it, though. You’ve nailed the sound in terms of, it’s different, but it’s pleasantly different. Because you’ve got the other extreme where people just release a bunch of weird textury stuff. And in the professional sense, it is all great. But then it doesn’t really work for many things, it fails to captivate the wider ear, if I get my point across.
I’ve found that a track needs two extremely important things to work on the dancefloor: groove and feeling. The groove is how the kick, bass, and percussion all interact to make you want to dance. The feeling is how the melodies, chords, or vocals make you feel and stick in your head. The way these two things interact is crucial. When I was younger, I was a drummer, so I was all about grooves and didn’t think about melodies. Later, in my mid-20s, I became hyper-focused on melodies, almost sacrificing dancefloor functionality. The more I’ve DJ’d and listened to other artists, the more I’ve understood that the groove is just as important as the melody. When you can balance a great groove that makes you want to dance with elements that make you feel something, that’s the real sweet spot. When I DJ, I’ll set a hypnotic groove with a few tracks, and then I’ll bring in the powerful, melodic elements that bring emotion.
If we could now talk about production for a little bit. You’re known for putting out an absurd amount of absurdly quickly and very well-produced music. How do you get that much creativity? How do you, for example, undergo writer’s block?
I throw paint at the wall and sometimes it sticks, really. I think if you just make a massive quantity of sketches, sometimes it’ll be good, and most of the time it’s not, and you don’t hear the things that are not good. I have around 1,700 projects on my computer, and you probably haven’t heard 1,500 of them. What I like to do is turn the brain off. I’m just constantly making things without thinking too much. The second you start thinking a little bit too much about it, then it loses the spirit, so I make a bunch of things and then decide later if it’s good or bad.
And to answer your question of how do you keep inspired, it’s different for everyone, but for me, I talked about going out a couple times a year and listening to “the masters” do their work, and seeing how they do their work. After going to Berghain for a couple days, I’m going to be inspired for many months to come, like, “I can’t stop making music now” because I’ll have learned things that weekend that I just wasn’t aware of.
You tend to post stuff on your socials, I really like to read them through, and there was this one time that you said you were remembering the time when you decided to go music full-time, and spending seven hours a day after work, or between studying. So this method you’re telling me, that’s been your way ever since. That’s just so inspiring to me.
When I’m feeling creative, I work a shitload. I’m constantly working and making music because it’s enjoyable and I have to get it out, but there are periods in my life where I’m not feeling creative at all, and I just can’t make music. And I don’t force it at all. During the pandemic, I was making a lot of music, and then right at the end of 2021, there was an eight-month period I didn’t make a single track. And then when the inspiration came back, it came back, and I made a bunch of music. It is good to live with it, forcing creativity is possibly the worst thing you can do.
A bit of a personal question coming up. How do you make your low ends sound that filthy? For example, I’m referring to ‘Reforma’, where you can’t pinpoint anything in the low end, as if it were empty, there’s no evident bassline, there’s nothing apparent, but it’s still full of stuff and complete.
‘Reforma’ was actually me playing drums in real life. I think it’s important to understand what frequencies do—how 40 Hz, 80 Hz, and 120 Hz feel—and when to make them shine. I’m very precise with how I mold my low end, which at its core is a combination of EQ shelves and cuts, focusing on the space occupied by the kick and bass and where they cross over. I believe some producers make the mistake of assigning static frequency spaces for the kick and bass. It’s just as important to have them interact and blend, and know how long to duck them when they’re on top of each other. It’s a combination of time and frequency—how much time is occupied by those frequencies and what frequencies are occupied at what time. You need to know how these frequencies interact on a deep level to achieve a clean low end, which you can only learn by simply trying over and over.
Regarding your career, since your early releases on Avicii’s label, then Anjunabeats, then touring extensively, founding your label, working with John, and so on, do you ever feel a bit of imposter syndrome, or do you feel at peace, like you’ve been climbing your way through just with passion and effort?
There’s imposter syndrome like in any creative career, and anyone who says they don’t have that is lying. There’s imposter syndrome in everything, especially when you have success, but I think recently it hasn’t been as strong because I’ve felt a little more grounded. I’m taking a little better care of myself, so it’s not as strong to me at the moment. But it does come back at times. Grounding with your friends and your family at the core, and treating your body and mind with respect is the key to getting past that, but everyone feels a little bit of that sometimes, myself included. I felt it a lot more earlier in my career, when hopping on the DJ booth and you’re all of a sudden thrown into a bunch of people.
Have you ever thought of making a subalias, or different alias, to “catalogue” your music in a cleaner way? Do you think it would be necessary at all?
Well, how I see it is, if I couldn’t play something as Spencer Brown, then I would create a different alias. In Spencer Brown, there’s techno, tech house, progressive, deep house, and trance, because it all fits into a set of mine. But I’ve made some harder techno that doesn’t, just for fun. And it doesn’t fit as Spencer Brown because the BPM is way up. I usually don’t go above 128 or 129 BPM, but I was experimenting at 134, 138. That wouldn’t fit as Spencer Brown, so if I were ever to release that, it would be under a different name. That would be the only reason why I would categorize something that I make individually as a different alias. I told you about the No Socials project; that’s a different thing because it’s a project in itself, and I’ve already explained what it is and why it is. But it’s a duo rather than a single alias.
The No Socials thing fits like a glove to the next question: Can a producer nowadays get recognition for good music only, without any heavy big-brain marketing involved?
We’ll see! It’s a good question. I think there’s an oversaturation nowadays. Everyone is marketing everything and blowing so much in your face, so that’s why we’re doing this experiment with No Socials, to see what happens. And the author, Max, is detailing our experiences in this book that will come out, and that will be, so to say, the “analog social media” of what’s happening with this project, where it’s something that we’re investigating at the moment.
Everything is being blasted in everyone’s face at all times, to the point it’s tough to get any air from the “Look at me, I have this release, look at me, I have this show, look at me, look at me, look at me”. It’s a little bit exhausting, both as an artist and as a consumer, it’s insane.
Let’s talk a bit about albums. You’re kind of a more old school guy, in the sense that you do stuff that is more of a journey, when you DJ, when you make your songs, and of course, when you do albums it’s twice that. Why do you like making albums? Why not just stick to singles and EPs that are statistically selling better, making more conversions and stuff?
I think it should just be whatever your music dictates in any given moment. I was working on my fourth album not long ago, and I tore it apart. From there, I’m choosing a few tracks to release individually. The people I showed what that fourth album was, I think everyone really enjoyed it, but for me, personally, it lacked the through line of Illusion of Perfection, Stream of Consciousness, Equanimity. Those all had a central theme that was getting pushed and pulled through, different vibes through each, and for this, it didn’t have the continuity that I wanted. So when I decide to start piecing it back together, whenever that may be, I want the album as a whole to become obvious to me. How I do it is I just realize that track A and track B and track F and track G, for instance, they all have something similar, or that B sounds really good with G, and F sounds really good with H, and I’m like “Okay, well actually this one sounds amazing before those four tracks” and then it starts to piece together naturally, rather than forcing things together. That’s it to me, realizing the album has already been made, I just need to put the pieces together. That’s how they all came to be. I never sat down to make one, they just came together really.
I like that idea. I like that you see the album concept as something more than just a collection of tracks, perhaps a collection of cohesive tracks, sometimes even thought of to make your experience a journey.
That’s why the last few tracks I’ve released were singles or two-track EPs, because that’s how I felt like those could be best expressed. But if there’s a collection of tracks that could be better expressed as a whole, then that’s how I’ll release them, it’s all track-dependent. ‘Relentless’, for example, I felt like it worked very well on its own; ‘The Bow’ and ‘Thanksgiving Groove’ work together as a little two-track thing; ‘Offsides’ worked as a single, and so on. I don’t ever have any intention behind how I create the music, whether it’s making it, releasing, there’s never an intention; it’s just having fun and then figuring it out later.
Now, I’ve got two final questions which are more miscellaneous. If you could go back in time, any number of years you find interesting, and meet your past self. What would you tell that younger you? Were you worried about something that wasn’t really necessary?
It’s a really good question. I would say, back when I was 18, I wasn’t as self-confident in who I was, so I’d lean the answer to a message of that matter, but at the same at the same time, I think the experiences of not having self-confidence, and learning self confidence, were how I grew as a person and as an artist. So I wouldn’t necessarily change anything in the past, but I would like to hear a little ““Continue on your path, keep on believing in yourself” message.
That’s beautiful. Finally, how do you see yourself in a few years’ time? What do you wish will be your legacy as Spencer Brown, what do you want people to remember you by?
Great question. The one thing that’s always driven me is making what I believe is excellent music, and creating safe spaces on dancefloors that can produce energy that transcends what we can do in our day-to-day lives. I love that feeling of creating something that you can’t explain, when you have this energy, and everyone’s on the same wavelength creating this connection. I think I want to be known as someone who channels energy. I see myself as a channeler of energy from my day, from my experiences, from the crowd, I see it as I’m just a medium for that to happen. I want to be known as someone who is a very good channeler of energy, and creates experiences that transcend the day-to-day realm.
Final Words
This was a dream come true. Talking to one of my idols and learning good things from them, understanding how their brains are routed, is frankly incredible. We hope that we gave you a great insight into Spencer Brown as well through this interview, and that you can, perhaps, also learn a thing or two from this good guy who’s conquering the world, one release at a time.
Below you’ll find the essential playlist of Spencer Brown songs curated by Spotify. Make sure to follow us to get the latest news and views from our beloved music world.