Interview – 7XINS

Let’s talk about the origin of One Knob Per Function what sparked the decision to capture your live material in this way?

I think I first had the idea early 2024 when I was looking through the recordings of live sets and I wanted to document them or publish them in some way. One of the ways was to maybe publish them to Soundcloud but I thought about the fact that many of these “tracks” or ideas in my live sets will never become actual tracks so I decided to present the recordings in the form of a select cuts instead. Then I had the idea of publishing them properly making them available on online stores and a limited run of cassettes. As I am going through a bit of a process at the moment of getting a load of studio work out there and switching up the live set I thought it would be a good idea as a kind of farewell to all the old sets I did making way for something new. It feels good to have them published properly and documented as pieces of music rather than just another recording online.

How do you define your approach to techno? Is there a philosophy or attitude behind the sonic aggression in your sets?

Yes there is a philosophy actually! To me live performance is an opportunity to express yourself in your truest form, when you make music in a studio or at home everything is very controlled, you have these moments still where you transcend and an idea falls together but in a live environment its an opportunity to get outside of your every day skin and push the elements in a much harder and aggressive fashion. Its quite a contrast and pushing these raw creative moments through a formidable sound system in real time directly to an audience, its a very different thing. Its a very sensory experience, you want the sound to almost overwhelm people, in the right ways obviously.

With me I think my works vary quite a lot, I make a lot of music that could be considered listening music and isn’t purely aimed for the dance floor. A whole set of just my productions I don’t think would quite have the aggression or energy my live set has so I have this approach of sampling anything I have written and gathering all the parts to make something more dance floor ready. I take the best bits and write new parts that are solely just for the live set, I tend to aim for a more raw and less defined result with the weight and energy to keep the dance floor moving. I try to keep things as less processed as possible, the modular lead lines go straight into the mixer. Eurorack levels are loud, powerful and sometimes piercing. They tend to cut through the mix quite brutally. I think its great for the audience to experience that very raw form of electronic music. The kicks and basses and pushed hard through the pre amps in the mixer to the point is quite there is some chaos and degradation, again very raw. The lack of bus processing as well makes it a little more dynamic and unrefined and its a way of me presenting my sound but in a much more raw and dance floor ready form, as I said earlier I think its quite important that we keep that alive for the audience so they can experience something a little more human and not so heavily controlled and even “safe” maybe.

Also another thing is that I personally don’t believe that live sets should just play something that is predictable or expected, for example playing every track from your productions in the same form they were written in. Rehashing things in a different way but still with that taste is a nice way to present it. My productions are different to my live sets and my DJ sets are different to my live sets, its a way of demonstrating different parts of my identity/artistry and somehow sprinkling a little bit of my sonic signature on all of them in different ways and each method kind of inspires or feeds into the other.

The album title suggests minimalism, but the sound is maximal and intense. Can you explain that contrast?

I think a simplified approach making the set easy to control and tactile but yet being able to effect things in a big way with simple controls. That contrast is kind of the point, even if it wasn’t planned at first. One Knob Per Function is a nod to minimalism in design, machines that are stripped back, intuitive, immediate. That’s how I like to work keeping the interface minimal so the focus can be on expression. But when I perform, I’m not aiming for a clean, stripped back sound. I like things to feel overwhelming, immersive, physical.

There’s something powerful about taking a simple element and pushing it to the edge, overdriving it until the sound almost degrades. That’s where the energy comes from. So the contrast is deliberate the setup is minimal, but what comes out is sometimes messy, chaotic, and emotionally dense, but very human in the end.

What’s the most memorable club or night captured on this record and why?

I had to go back through and have a listen for this one because there are so many moments I loved. I think it had to be the Monnom Black event with Fold. I was playing after Thomas P Heckmann in the early morning, he killed it, shelling the shit out of it towards the end of his set with really high energy tracks quite a bit faster than I like to play and I thought everyone was going to go and have a rest for a bit after that, understandably. To my amazement most of the crowd just stayed there wanting more. I did this long drawn out intro with a synth sequence on the modular with some atmospheres and the sunlight started blasting through the windows, it was quite a cathartic moment. Most of the crowd stayed with me for that whole set with a lot of energy which I am really grateful for, feedback was amazing from that one and people still mention it to me. So its really nice to have that documented as a moment in time.

From distortion to atmosphere, your sound is deeply textural. How do you sculpt these layers live in real time?

Yeah I mean its incredibly dense and wide, a little too much sometimes but seems to work well a lot of time and people have told me it feels very immersive on the dance floor. I think trying to cram so many dense layers in a small range goes against the rules really but somehow I’ve managed to make it work with EQ. The “Model One” allows for this very well the reason I love this mixer is the parametric EQ on the channels

which are quite clever, the Q gets narrower the more you boost or cut, so even though things might be occupying the same frequency range you can choose what gets pushed to the front and what sits at the back. I also have an aggressive parametric EQ in the modular for the lead lines I can play with. Having the reverbs come back to a separate channel as well allows me to push the mix more wet or dry via the EQ on that channel too so I can focus on different parts of the reverb. I play with these a lot so the texture seems to evolve quite a bit over time. A lot of it is experimentation really! Andrew Scheps is a good example of the additive EQ philosophy, instead of subtracting everything choose to boost the parts that give you an emotional response, I think thats kind of the approach. Only the mixes are not defined at all in my live sets unlike professional studio mixes, they feel very raw and sometimes messy, but the concept is the same, as mentioned earlier I personally like a far less clinical approach to live techno there is something about that raw energy that the crowd feel differently to DJ sets and I think thats something we should try and keep alive.

As the first release on Severn Electronics, what does this record say about what’s to come from the imprint?

This is the first LP on the label we have done a few EP’s and a VA where we raised some money for children in Palestine, but yes first LP on the label.

Severn Electronics is still in its early days it’s taken some time to get off the ground, but it’s always been intended as a long-term project. After a couple of years laying the groundwork, I finally feel like it’s beginning to take shape. So far, I’ve mostly used it as a platform to release my own material, and I’ve got a lot of unreleased studio work lined up, including a debut studio album that leans away from dance music entirely. At the same time, I’m in conversations with a few artists whose work really resonates with the sonic identity I have in mind for the label. The goal is to build a strong catalogue something cohesive in atmosphere and intention, but not confined to any one genre. There’s a lot of room to experiment, and that’s what excites me most. Intention is something very important to me, not about how artists work just looks or sounds but whats the intention behind it you know? If you can make someone wonder about the intention of a piece work I think you have succeeded in creating something special.

I’m also planning more collaborative projects under different aliases likely as one off releases. Longer term, I’d love to see it grow into something a bit more communal, maybe even a collective of like-minded artists. That kind of organic evolution feels right. It’s open-ended, and that’s part of the beauty of it.

How do you hope audiences engage with this release on dance floors, in headphones, or perhaps differently?

Thats a tough one,

I think this release sits somewhere between physical and internal space. Yes, it was captured in clubs, built for impact, distortion, pressure the kind of energy that moves bodies. But for me, this record is more than a snapshot of live performance. It’s a document of a very personal process years of searching, shaping, and shedding. So I don’t really mind how people engage with it whether they’re dancing, walking, lying still, or even just half listening. What matters is what it brings out in them as a listener. If you’re on a dance floor and feel a kind of chaos or catharsis rising up, that’s beautiful. But if you’re on headphones, sitting with the detail the tension, the human element of the sets that’s equally valid. I’ve come to see these sets as moments of surrender, and this album is a kind of farewell to that phase of my work. So I hope it reaches people wherever they are, physically or emotionally. And if it helps someone let go of something, even for a moment, then it’s done more than I could ask for.