Industry Weekly

[Flipside]

Sian experiments with new sounds and equipment

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“You never really know until you drop it in the club and hear if fully on the sound system and see how it works on the dancefloor.”
Deanna Rilling

Sian is returning to Las Vegas with a grip of gear in tow. The Octopus label boss, a native of Ireland who grew up in Spain, brings his techno prowess to After at the Sahara Lounge this weekend, and we caught up with him to talk music and more.

You bring a lot more to the booth than just a laptop. Explain your live rig? I’m playing with two X1 controllers from Traktor. I’m adding in Maschine Jam, like a sampler sound bank-drum machine combo. It basically means I play live percussion and stuff over the DJ set. I was testing a Model 1 mixer, designed and created by Richie Hawtin’s team. It’s an amazing mixer, and it might be kind of the perfect solution to this hybrid live DJ thing that’s appearing.

Will you have any new, unreleased material for your Vegas stop? Definitely. I actually just finished another five tracks. One thing I really like to do is work on stuff fast then go and test it out in clubs, because you never really know until you drop it in the club and hear it fully on the sound system and see how it works on the dancefloor. There are always three or four tracks I’m dropping in there, kind of slyly throwing them in when no one is looking.

Your label is named for your love of marine biology. Does that creep into your music? I think it’s definitely all related. A lot of my influences and inspiration come from what I studied in biology—I started out doing that. Technology, biology, those things inform what I do, and also track names or design purposes or whatever ... it’s all really connected. Sian with Svast, Oscar Molina, Steller, Focus & Vertigo at After, June 3.

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