Déandrah has been making odd, out-of-step electronic music for a few years with brought-in elements of electro-esque rhythms, breakbeats and granular voices. Coming from a punk and hardcore music background but fatigued by the standard band format limitations, Déandrah’s project is into presenting their interpretation of club music. Ranging influences from sampling early 2000s video game soundtracks and homemade tape loops, churned through broken mixers and filter banks, turning waves of noise into amalgamated anxiety and anger driven music. Not fitting perfectly within the confines of a dance genre, reconciling the somewhat clinical nature of dance music with the essentially human aspects of experimentation such as error, disorder and spontaneity, pushing perceptions of how we can move our bodies to very quaint and odd places.
Can you tell us a little about your experience? Where are you from / how did you get into music?
I am from Switzerland but spent most of my life living abroad. So not sure where I am from anymore. But currently, I am based in Amsterdam.
My family has a really big artistic background and intuition but besides my mum who was a professional ballerina for many years, the rest opted for more “steady” career orientations. Besides this, I think I got into music as most teens do as a way to rebel. So I was in and out of bands from the age of 14 until the age of 24 but started making electronic music by myself at the age of 18. I gave up bands eventually because it’s too much of a hassle working with people. It bored me.
Does your training come from the Internet?
From master Shifu himself. That, and trial and error from probably having too much free time on my hands.
Who have been your main inspirations (both musical and in «life»)? And how have they affected your sound?
Soundtracks. From anime or video games. No particular time period, but especially mid 90s-early 2000s. Lots of lovely pads to sample, which is funny, because a lot of the aforementioned soundtrack composers use samples from Sample Packs and slightly edit or pitch them. Sampling samples. Sample inception. I’m for sure not a weeaboo but definitely am drawn to the aesthetics of what I just mentioned.
How would you define your sound? And how has your sound evolved so far?
It’s evolved quite a bit. When i first started producing by myself, it was more in the style of glitchy, lo-fi hip hopesque beats. Kind of like early Brainfeeder stuff as I was immensely inspired by the LA beat scene 10 years ago. Now, it’s been harder and faster, which I suppose in part reflects from my punk and hardcore background. Recently, someone described my music as “Industrial Braindance with elements of breakbeat”, which I thought made sense. I’m just trying to do something different. I like my music, but cannot say for sure of it’s quality, although I do think it’s interesting. Different in any case, which suits me just fine. I’d encourage everyone to do the same. Even if your music is shit, at least it is genuine.
What can you tell us about your last job? What inspired you? What do you want to transmit?
Throughout 10 years I have been in and out of kitchens, from michelin start to yuppie gastro pubs. It definitely has an influence on how I produce. Being meticulous and obsessive with details. Facing pressure and spending hours behind prep to in the end, perform a gig which in this case translates as a service rush. All in all, it’s a lot of work to serve people who will consume your creation in less than 5 minutes (the duration of a song most of the time) really synergises with my work methodology. You might get praise, you might get disappointed, but all in all, you always learn something. Whether it being emotional, about yourself, or technical.
What can you tell us about each track that makes up your latest work? What concept do you want to convey?
This EP was made after my “late 90s-early2000s video game soundtrack” mix I made for my friend Yukarita for her residency on Echobox Radio.
Diseased by Peter Pan syndrome and wanting to keep riding this nostalgic wave, I made this entire EP using samples from the PlayStation 1 game Music 2000, which was arguably my first DAW.
The artwork was a collaborative effort with @astrosuka & @soffja
. It was their visual perception of what the record was when listening to it.
What projects are you working on right now?
Releases, features and events with the platform I run Dee Dee’s Picks (@dee_dees_picks//deedeespicks.com), a couple of tracks for two different labels as part of their V.A. comp, some DJ gigs, some audio-visual performances and installations that will act like interactive mirrors made with Touch Designer and Xbox Kinect V2.
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