Habstrakt, or Adam, is a French-born LA-based “dj music producer or something” as he describes himself on his Twitter. Currently, he is on the second leg of his U.S. tour for his new album Heritage. The album is a blade-running, synth-driven musical journey with a blend of hard EDM and slower ambient tracks.
We sat down for a chat this past Friday to discuss all things Heritage, self-care, and DJ culture. Although it was about nine hours before his set at the Brooklyn Monarch, he wore reflective speed glasses atop his head. You can take the man from the rave, but you can’t take the rave from the man. Here are a few excerpts from our chat.
The Knockturnal: So let’s talk about Heritage because I’m excited to talk about this. I love the artwork that you put with it. I was wondering, what was the thinking behind that? What drew you to put these images with the work?
Habstrakt: Well, I’ve been designing those kinds of flash tattoos with Photoshop and doodles that I make on my iPad or on paper for a few years now. I started doing COVID and so I have a bunch of them. I usually tend to print my favorite ones and frame them in my apartment. So when it came to this artwork,
I started you know, the same way as everything else on Photoshop, square pictures and dragging stuff around. I just was spending way too much time on it. It’s very personal, and the album is very personal. The album is also tied to the place where it was made which is this place where I live now, it’s a very creative environment that I built for myself. And then I looked at the wall of my living room and I was like, that’s the artwork. It’s already there. So we just took a picture of that. I really like it because it’s genuine. It’s got pictures of my parents on it.
Sometimes you look very far for something that’s just right in front of you. And then you have that moment, that “wow” moment where it just hits you. I think that’s what a lot of my art is about going to those extreme lengths to be creative and having a very weird creative process and then realizing that the solution was right in front of you the whole time, right? It fit the narrative [of the album] really well.
The Knockturnal: Yeah, you can see it’s you up on that wall. So what was it like making Heritage and everything? You mentioned place, you’re based in LA right now, so is it about LA and about that culture?
Habstrakt: Not so much much of LA itself. It’s more of a long journey through electronic music, right? And so that’s why you see all those weird influences and ambient stuff. Because I don’t really listen to much EDM music per se. When it comes to anything electronic I’m very into ambient and then the rest I listen to like, Joy Division. I’m an old punk, you know.
It’s much more my own journey within electronic music. Specifically, it coincides with the moment I came to LA and realized that I really wanted to be serious about making music. It tells a story of the last five to six years and was all compiled and written over the last year. The writing process was both making new stuff without any sort of boundaries or limits. Unlike making singles or working with recording labels where they demand it is a DJ banger. A single has to be formatted in a certain way, and structured in a certain way.
I was breaking away from that model and at the same time going back through some of my archives and some of the ideas that I started a while ago that I thought, I could never put out as a single. But then this older stuff fits perfectly in this new context. So it was a mix of making new stuff and picking through those old ideas; always with the vision of I can do whatever I want as long as I vibe with it. Forget any notions and preconceptions that labels and the industry want to put on what you’re making right now. I feel that is a big problem at the moment with art and creating music. What we make is seen as content, not art.
The Knockturnal: Tell me about it. I feel like everything is now supposed to be a TikTok banger. I was listening to Heritage and I was like this album, it’s a story it’s I’m supposed to be invested in. Is that what you want people to take from Heritage? What do you want from your show tonight? What do you want the people to hear and feel well?
Habstrakt: Habstrakt on stage is very different than Habstrakt in a studio while being the same. But my culture is rave culture, my culture is heavy music, so when you see me live, I play a lot of heavy heavy stuff. A lot of stuff from the album that I play [on stage] are remixes of them. For the songs that are not really DJ-oriented, I either remix them myself or have people make remixes. But all the songs that are you know, bangers on the album, I play them. So the live show, there is definitely a lot more energy, intense bass-oriented type stuff because that’s my culture and that’s where I really have fun. I love mixing all that really fast stuff and DJing.
A big influence for that on me was DJ Snake. He makes very pop songs but then you go see him live and it’s so hardcore, mosh pits and everything. He told me very early you can find consistency in doing that. You can show what music you want to make, and what music you want to play, and then you interlink those two together.
So the people that liked the albums should expect something a little bit heavier on stage. Very in the vein of you know, bass music with no boundaries in terms of genre, very house oriented of course. At the same time, the album has a lot of low and quiet moments. Tonight will be very good cardio for me. I’m very lucky to have fans that understand that deeply. They can get so many different sides of Habstrakt.
The Knockturnal: I’m assuming there’s going to be a lot of bass face tonight. Is there anything you personally want to say about Heritage to your fans? If you had to preface the album with anything.
Habstrakt: I think like most of the rest of the things that I do, I don’t really like to put myself first. I really want to put my art first. Again, I think we’re putting too much focus on the artist and not enough on the art these days. So I want everyone to listen to it in their own way on their own time and whenever they feel like it, and draw their own conclusions and emotions out of it. I think that’s also why I try to go wide with the spectrum of genres because not everyone’s in the mood for 15 heavy songs or for 15 really slow songs.
So that’s also why the album’s kind of short. I want it to be a compacted trip that you could actually see through, it’s not two hours of a waste of time, it’s only 40 minutes long. But, I’m happy to play the game of social media, even this interview right now, taking pictures and posting funny videos and everything. But at the end of the day, I’m still always convinced that my art will speak 10 times louder than my own self. That’s to say: listen to it, take what you want for me, and make it yours.
When you release a piece of art to the world, it’s no longer just yours. It belongs to anyone else and to their emotions and how they interpret them. So I just want people to do that and just find something for themselves. You know, if that one song reminds you of that one time in your life then I’ve done my job right. Even if you don’t like the 14 other tracks, it’s fine. I think we need to focus more on the art and less on the artist. I feel like I’m in a better place in my life to have a message. Should it be that the message is that I shouldn’t have a message, right?
The Knockturnal: That’s so interesting. It sounds like you’re in a better more creative space right now, which is great. Is this something you’ve learned in making music for the past decade and touring?
Habstrakt: Yeah, so you learn a lot in every aspect. You need to be attentive enough and open your ears and try to learn from what happened. You see people do that in this industry and repeat the same mistakes not just the music, I’m talking in general. What I’ve learned the most, putting everything together, is the important thing is taking care of yourself and listening to yourself.
If you feel like you need to rest, rest. If you need to eat, eat. If you feel like tonight you need to have a quiet moment, do it. Never push it off to tomorrow. Because in music there are a lot of really high and intense moments and sometimes you have very few moments where you actually can rest and focus on yourself. So the second you could take care of yourself should be eating well, resting, working out taking care of your soul and your body.
The burnout is real. It’s real and I’ve felt it. I’m not ashamed of it. I’ve pushed myself too much. You know, touring on the weekend, working at home on the weekdays, deadlines, deadlines, deadlines, stressful shows, and I’ll just be like, I can’t do it and I need to disconnect for a week. It’s real and you have to be attentive to that because it piles up especially when you get older. Stress blocks your body and your mind. So I’ve learned to listen to myself.
