Five Minutes with Haptic

I’m told my father sang and played guitar to me a lot while I was in the womb. He taught me my first instrument, guitar. My mother used to take me into reverberant spaces and ask me to sing, and then shower me with praise. Reflecting on it now, it’s strange to think that I thought I chose my own life path – maybe I was just responding to praise and certain stimuli.

2.Inspirations

My childhood was musically omnivorous in a middle-of-the-road type way, devouring my parents’ tastes – Paul Simon, Pink Floyd, K.D. Lang, Sting, popular stuff. Then into adolescence and a love of industrial, grunge and progressive rock, a relentless fascination with Trent Reznor and Maynard, and finally into adulthood with an enduring obsession with all the career phases of Röyksopp.

3.Your Crew

I mix audio for film and television during the day. It’s an introvert’s career; you have to give your life to frequencies. But my crew is the Surveillance Party. They are a mad bunch and seem to be intensifying and growing in number by the day. I am unspeakably proud of the peaceful, social, vibrant people we have with us now. I want 100 per cent self-expression for every one of them.

4.The Music YouMake And Play

As a vocalist I work mostly with European tech house labels like Sincopat, Suara and Stil Vor Talent. At live events I improvise experimental drum and bass using an open source instrument I built/programmed/twisted over the course of five years, commonly known as a reactable.

5.Music, Right Here, Right Now

Well, he is a labelmate but Xan Müller is a constant source of inspiration to me. I have him play on a lot of my DnB tracks and I don’t release anything without showing it to him first. He is very much my main ally and (lovingly) rival. Of course I’m also clearly admitting my bias here, but my favourite band in Sydney right now is No Illuminati. The first Surveillance Party they played at, I found the singer Cat frantically trying to learn her lyrics backstage before her set, and I thought, “Well this will be interesting.” Then mid-set they casually tore out out a cover of ‘99 Red Balloons’ in German (she doesn’t speak German). She’d gotten bored and decided to switch languages on impulse. The crowd was just mesmerised, and the poor security guard lost his mind he was so besotted.