Outer Heaven remixed: an interview with Umru.
A conversation with Brooklyn-based producer and musician, Umru.
photo by Lex Vasquez.
Umru, raised in online music circles, rose among the stars of PC music and hyperpop. He surfs between producing music that masters a chaotic response and injection into the catchy flows of dance music and a budding deejay career that has taken him around the world. This March, after a one-night stint in Chicago’s queer POC-centered underground, I caught up with him.
Teddy: I always need music. It's the first thing that sets my day in motion. I can hear the BPM and immediately turn around and pick up. What rhythms help start your day?
Umru: I work at Splice—the sample pack company—during the week. It’s semi-full-time and I have a label there, but otherwise my days vary a lot. I don't listen to music constantly, but I’m a cold brew drinker. Some days my sets are always going to keep me up super late, but generally I have to be up in the morning.
T: When you're going between those things—you're getting your cold brew, headed to a set—where does your mind wander? What sonically draws your focus in?
U: I’m always listening or at least feel like I'm always listening to everything going on.
T: I feel like with a lot of your music, I feel like I'm in different places. Do you connect place and sound?
U: Yeah! I think when I’m making music—especially with electronic music, the sources of sound are so endless compared to recording an instrument. There's just so many options. I feel like I'm always fighting against that by trying to bring everything back into the same space to feel like it's not totally dissonant. It's so easy to just pull from whatever sample, whatever synth and that can mean sounds that don't naturally work together. In production, I am always thinking about developing a consistent space for everything. To sound like they're in a room together, not literally from, like, room reverb, but kind of building consistency between all the sounds I use, which I do by limiting the like sources I draw from.
T: My friend described PC music like yours and A.G. Cook as if you are conducting an orchestra of electronic characters. Do you find that specific sounds really work together?
U: Instead of endlessly dragging samples in, I try to build from one sound that I already have to achieve something—trying to exhaust one source before picking a new one. I feel like I'm always trying to find new things that work together or new unexpected combinations.
T: I live for those combinations, and they seem to build on where one sound left off.
U: I try to focus on just the musical elements first—let them inform what the sounds will sound like. But I do often get stuck and obsess over making the “sound” sound exactly the way I think it should.
T: I’ve seen those musical elements get more acoustic with artists I would consider electronic.
U: For me, it's always kind of been a skill issue where I can't play guitar or keyboard especially well. The easiest way for me to translate ideas is drawing in notes on a computer.
T: PC music!
U: I’ve always liked the aesthetic choices of PC music. I was a fan before I was involved with them. AG Cook has been guitar heavy for years, and will use the simplest sound sources to build up these beautiful songs. I feel like it's been disproven that synthesized sounds are considered less real or authentic, no one is even saying stuff like that anymore. I’ve never avoided any specific sounds or instruments, it’s just I can’t play them so I’ll use a lot of recordings or samples.
T: At the same time acoustic’s are getting popular I also notice electronic sounds sounding distinctly generated.
U: I’m never trying to imitate an instrument, only a feeling.
T: Do you find, like, you’re letting the generated sounds speak?
U: Each note doesn’t sound identical, which I think makes it sound more natural. I don’t use a ton of random generation but definitely use a lot of tools to randomize what I think about. The same things that draw people to live instruments, that make them feel more real, are totally achievable on a computer.
T: A little chaos is natural.
U: I think about the context of all of my sounds. I'm not making from nothing. I'm, like, tweaking things that exist. It’s hard with electronic music to make sure everything fits in the same space. A lot of the time I don’t work with live instrumentals because it’s hard to feel in the same space as the sounds I already have.
T: I was walking around re-listening to your discography and I was like, there are so many random kicks and snares that will pop out and almost surprise me. They feel like characters that might have their own agencies.
U: I definitely like a lot of things that have some sort of randomization to them to keep them not static. You know, I feel like I'm always using different sorts of modulations or whatever sources of low flows or whatever. Things that can keep a sound feel like it's moving rather than just the same sample repeating. Actually, especially if it’s a sample and I often have to rein that in at the end of the process. Like, if things sound totally different every time I listen, then I have to turn them back into just static audio.
photo by Lex Vasquez.
T: You're obviously a huge remix artist with some of your biggest projects including names like Charli XCX or Caroline Polachek or 100 gecs. So when you're listening to another song and thinking about injecting your own spin on it, what elements do you jump to and how do you let the original song shine?
U: I feel like for remixes, I'm always just looking for the most memorable or catchy elements of the song, in other words, what is most essential to it. Usually, for me, it’s just the vocals, like a fan doing a remix.
T: What about vocals speak to you?
U: Vocals are going to be somewhat familiar because everyone’s, you know, the human voice is like the most recognizable thing. I'm usually not using anything besides the vocal because that's the one thing I can't replace, and building around that is always really fun. That's my favorite thing about working with pop music and artists. Like if you have a really strong songwriter with melody or composition, then you can kind of build whatever production you want around it, and it can still work. Even if the production is super left-field, as long as the song is super memorable or easy to follow, then you can kind of build crazy or stuff around it and it'll still work.
T: I think about your remix with Hyd, “So Clear (umru corrosion),” as a great example of that. I was curious about why you titled it your corrosion?
U: I do this thing when I make mixes, and include a remix - I always call them something that's not “remix.” It's just kind of like a bit, and I've been doing it for a long time. So I’m always trying to think of a word that describes what changed about the song. “So Clear” and a lot of Haden’s music is talking about and drawing comparisons to materials and liquids or physical processes, so I was trying to go with that. I don’t know if a bit was corroded or the entire thing, but the processing and other changes added layers of distortion. The processing to the vocals left them stripped down, I removed a lot of the classical vocal mixing like reverb and delay and made the vocals drier.
T: I love Hayden's work and have written about them before. I saw you open for Hyd in Chicago last September in 2022 at Co-Prosperity Sphere, you were both great and the visuals were particularly insane with a massive projection for a smaller crowd. It felt intimate, and I remember there wasn’t even a raised stage you performed on. The venue walks that line between art gallery and performance space but have also seen you perform at clubs and raves. So thinking about your work being in museums, but also at the same time in underground venues…How do you mesh the two?
U: Hayden’s amazing at kind of meshing the two. I think for any of this stuff with Hayden I've done, I can abandon the song format and instead use the longer forms to explore the same tones and sounds outside of a direct musical context.
T: I hate the terms “highbrow” and “lowbrow”, but feel compelled to use them when thinking about the places you’ve performed. Your last show, at the venue where I work, stood out to me as you could have performed at a larger club but instead chose an underground spot. Do you feel compelled to support these types of venues?
U: Yeah. I mean, there's not that much of that left in New York for those types of illegal or DIY spots. Like most things in New York, they generally have ended up becoming venues, but there's still a ton of smaller venues where it's like super doable for really any group to put on shows and events like Bossa Nova Civic Club or Rush when it was open. These small capacity venues—they're still clubs, but they have some of the advantages of the DIY spaces that used to exist. Even though I could do shows that sell a larger amount of tickets at a larger venue, the most fun things I've done are at these sort of smaller scale things. There's a club-lighting everybody that you can get. There's a communal aspect that you can't get from a giant show. Not that I'm playing giant shows ever, but it’s a unique size—and with that, a unique experience.
T: Does that individualize the people in the audience? PC music literally comes from making music on your laptop, and has a culture of chatting over forums or in chat spaces like Discord.
U: Yeah, definitely. I think since I've been making music, I've had a pretty—sometimes to a fault—close level of communication with people that were listening to it. I was just part of those communities before I was even really releasing music. I was just a kid on the internet, a community-raised kid.
T: That community made hyperpop and PC music (RIP), which you are kind of the legacy of. Do you sense the community moving towards specific sonic trends? What is the future of online music?
U: I mean, I think different people are moving towards all kinds of different stuff. For me, I think I've just been deejaying more and more.
T: And you've been getting better and better!
U: Yeah, I think my goal with the music I'm releasing is getting closer to the stuff that I like to deejay. It’s like trying to hone back in on making dance music. A lot of the times I've made remixes and edits that are unofficial—that’ll play in my sets, honestly more than my original songs. A lot of the time people will ask me: Why didn't you play this song? And it's a song I haven't played in a set in ages, because it just doesn't sound to me like deejay music.
T: When you're deejaying, how much of that is performance versus like making a sound that makes people stop and say, “Wow, that’s crazy”?
U: For deejaying, I like playing more of other people's music, which I try to interact with highly. I try to not just leave it playing, but create tension and moments that are unique to that set.
T: I loved your set the other day and clearly the crowd did too, but I noticed the crowd was slightly different from the ravers that normally frequent the venue. What kind of audience do you normally find at your shows?
U: It differs a lot. There's obviously a fan base to PC music and hyperpop, and the first thing I ever did was this kind of huge credit for Charli XCX , so the majority of my fan base has evolved from there. But I feel like I've also developed a fan base for my deejaying that goes beyond my music or my associations. The recent boiler room set and just doing more bookings, especially in Europe, got more people to like my deejaying, not just my productions. It's hard to say generally and it differs a lot depending just on the city and vibe of the whole event.
photo by Lex Vasquez.
T: At your Chicago show this winter with Petal Supply, I was surprised to see some of the crowd leaving as your set ended, but then she joined you for an incredibly cute B2B. You were both cheesing so hard! How much of deejaying is about having fun for you?
U: A lot of it. People can feed off of that. If they can hear you're having fun, they will be having fun especially because I’m generally playing music that isn't my own. I play it because I like it. I love being a deejay because I can say I like this song and then play it.
T: Totally! Sometimes, though, deejays don’t play in front of a crowd like on the radio, where I find a lot of that fun is self driven. How much of your musical process is communal?
U: My process has always been pretty communal. I have very little solo music and primarily release music that's a collaboration. I feel like that’s the best application of what I know how to do. It’s about working with artists and producing music for people that can fill in the gaps of what I don't do, like songwriting. For the majority of my career, the focus has been collaboration. I always love to have feedback, even if it's something I make and first play at a show to see how people react to it. It's always been important for me not to just be making music in a bubble.
T: I’m curious what touring so many places across the world has taught you. What does deejaying in a new place feel like, and where do you find your community there?
U: I'm usually happily surprised, especially when people respond well. It's usually in those new places where people are the most excited. I’ve had people who will literally tell me, “I've been waiting since, like 2014, since I heard your music.” It varies a lot in terms of finding friends, but I’ve spent so long online that there’s usually a good amount of people that I've known for a while in any place I go. Not every place, but a lot of the time someone will come up to me and say “remember this name, like that's me!” Sometimes it’s someone I talked to in a group chat years ago or like when I went to Australia for the first time last year and got to meet the people I’ve been in online communities with for the last 4 years.
T: Does that community influence how you find new people to work with?
U: I have spent the majority of the time working with people remotely. Even before COVID I've just been online so much, but I’m still learning from the collaborative process. I’m excited by the people I want to work with, where I’ll hear something and think that it has a quality I haven’t heard before. That literally happens every time I work with someone and I feel like I need to get better.
T: B2Bing is one of my favorite ways to learn new skills. If you’re working remotely, why NYC and not, say, Chicago?
U: Haha, NYC is definitely an expensive place. I’m lucky to make a living working with music and it’s rare these days. I know people in LA who have to make a certain amount of music each month just to see if it lands anywhere. I'm always considering leaving, because I don't work with a ton of musicians here regularly and I’m not maximizing the local music I could be doing. New York is a great place for deejaying and performing, though, and a lot of people will come out to all kinds of events unlike somewhere such as L.A. where it's car-centric. There, it’s a lot more complicated to get around to the next event or something. I definitely consider it all the time—moving to places like Chicago, or even into Europe. I have an Estonian passport, so I technically could live anywhere in the EU without much trouble.
T: Nightlife is very city-dependent, and some cities never sleep. But you’re not a late night person?
U: If I'm playing and people are playing after me, I generally try to stick around. I'm always curious to hear what everyone's going to do. And in New York I'll go to multiple events because stuff is so close together here. But I’m not a late night person, and if I'm just at home, I will never stay out super late.
T: Sometimes my goal for the night is just to follow the music.
U: I’m learning by listening. There’s so much stuff I don’t know and I’m always interested in what and how others create. I feel like it’s still kind of new to me, so I’m trying totally new things.
T: Teacher and student.
U: Kinda, I don’t know if I’m teaching anyone yet.
T: I’m definitely learning by listening to your music. I can’t wait to hear your next releases and hear your next skills. Come back to Chicago soon!
U: Definitely.
edited by Alex Oder.
photos by Lex Vasquez.