Interview: Sarah Sommers, Electro-Artist from Melbourne (English Version)

An interview with Sarah Sommers. I met the likeable British-Australian in her adopted home of Berlin for an interview and talked to her about her music and her special gear.

Sarah lives out her love for the color pink and electronic music – which lies between different dance music styles, bass-heavy genres such as Dub, DnB, Dubstep and techno with a 90s flair. She loves to mix different genres and styles and inspires not only the partygoers of Berghain but many more with her live shows. Sarah is currently touring all over Europe with her music and was recently featured at Superbooth.

And Sarah certainly has a lot to look at, I don’t know anyone who has customized their gear with as much attention to detail as she has. We talked about her musical roots, her current music, her setup and her sound, but we also discussed her joint project with Love Hultén and, of course, her very special equipment.

Sarah Sommers Interview: musical roots

Sonja:
You are dedicated to electronic music, but I know that you also played the bass-guitar before. How did you get into music and how did your musical development go?

Sarah:
So I learnt piano as a child. Then as a teenager I was in a couple of bands at school playing bass, but I was more into music with prominent bass, like slap bass and funk etc. I became a bit frustrated with band rehearsals so I switched to using drum machines and pedals, and I experimented a lot with running my drum machine through the pedals, like flangers, distortion, delays, turning them on and off to create different effects.

photo by Gösta Wellmer, instagram: @goestagraph

I was also listening to a lot of UK jungle music during this time and I soon went to my first warehouse rave in melbourne, Australia. I found the sounds and textures so alien and different, it was like discovering a completely new world and new language. I wanted to know how these sounds were made and what the mysterious machines behind the sounds were. I looked in second hand stores for synthesizers and stumbled on one selling a Roland Juno 60, before they were crazy expensive. I had no idea what it was or if it was good and so I called my friend Ivan who was much more into electronic music than me and I asked him “is this juno 60 thing any good?” and he said, “yes! get it!” and bought it and took it home on the train with me, with everyone looking at me like: “what is that weird thing?!”. I played it for 1 year with almost nothing else but it really taught me the basics of synthesis, and so I was hooked.

In the summer I worked picking cherries at the local cherry orchard to get enough money to buy more drum machines and synthesizers. I soon started playing live at friend’s private parties and not long after at raves and clubs in Melbourne. I then moved to Europe living for several years in France, then Cologne, then London and now finally Berlin where I have been for 5 years. But for me the most recent influential time was the ending of the pandemic, when the restrictions were lifted I felt so incredibly free that I finally permitted myself to do all the things I had thought I could not do before and I went back into music in a much stronger way than I ever have before. I began performing live in Berlin and I wrote my debut album HeartCore based on my live sets, which came out earlier this year digitally and on vinyl and was a dream come true for me after so many years of dreaming about doing it.

Pink, pink and more pink:

Sarah customizes each of her instruments

Sonja:
Your trademark is your pink gear. As a graphic designer, you are of course a pro when it comes to designing new layouts for your devices. Do you remember the first device that you redesigned to your liking?

Sarah:
So as “sacreligious” as it might sound to some, as a teenager I already covered my Juno 60 with Barbie Stickers xD. But it wasn’t until about 3 years ago that I decided to bring my love of pink (which has always been part of my personality) together with my love of music and machines. The Behringer TD3 was the first one I painted and decorated. I had a lot of fun and I figured if I messed it up at least it wasn’t super expensive compared to other pieces of gear. But it worked well and I liked the result but I wanted to explore doing more detailed interfaces.

I’d been using Elektron boxes for a few years and I wanted to decorate them in a way that would be non-destructive so I experimented and using my experience with photoshop which I had learnt at university and for work doing graphic design I started to put together designs I liked and printed them on a vinyl sticky paper and then got a crafting cutting machine to cut out the holes for the knobs and buttons etc. it was really a lot of work, but I was super excited by the result and they give me joy when I use them.

Sonja:
Who has influenced you the most musically and what are you listening to at the moment?

Sarah:
From the early times of getting into electronic music, it was really the live artists at warehouse parties. I loved seeing the artists working with the machines that produced the sounds. When I would go to raves I would look at all their machines and it was magical and mystical for me. Seeing people use 303s, 808s, 909s and other synths and drum machines. Things I’d never seen before. Around this time I also discovered The Prodigy and particularly the first 2 albums, Experience and Music for the Jilted Generation. For me these were incomprehensibly beautiful masterpieces that inspired me immensely every time I heard them and they still do today.

Today I’m still heavily inspired by other live artists and music I hear in Berlin and from around the world. I feel like anything can be an inspiration and I love music from a broad spectrum of electronic music as well as jazz and other genres. Artists like Squarepusher, Aphex Twin a lot of electronic music from the 90s, breakbeat, also Hip Hop like Beastie Boys (Ill Communication, Paul’s Boutique, Check Your Head), DJ Shadow – Endtroducing, Beck – Odelay, as well as early dubstep and bass music, UK Garage, DnB, 90s Techno, the list goes on and on lol, it all had and has a profound effect on me.

Sonja:
How long did it take until you had redesigned all of your devices?

Sarah:
It’s an ongoing process and if I get a new piece of gear I want to use in my live setup it usually takes a few weeks to prepare it and come up with the design I want to use. Most of the gear you see in the pictures has been customised over about 2 years.

Sonja:
Have you ever really messed up a case?

Sarah:
No but I have sometimes had to adjust things afterwards where I hadn’t allowed for the thickness of the paint, or the precise positioning of the vinyl sticker, for example causing the buttons to not move as smoothly, but these were things that were easy enough to fix. I feel like there is so much more to explore with the customisation I’m keen to try out new ideas I have.

Sarah Sommers about her setup and „Sarah’s Heart“

Sonja:
What does your current setup look like?

Sarah:
So my main live setup, which is also my main studio setup, consists of my eurorack modular 7U 104hp housing modules from VPME QD (which I love), Knobula, Industrial Music Electronics, 1010 music, Westlicht and others, as well as Elektron Analog Rytm, Elektron Syntakt, Erica Synths Perkons and the TD3. It’s quite a lot of gear to take out live so I’m currently looking at ways to reduce it a bit.

Sonja:
What criteria does a device have to meet to be included in your setup?

Sarah:
I just have to really love it. If it has a beautiful and versatile sound. Some things I absolutely love like the Melbourne Instruments Nina, but she’s quite heavy and precious to take out gigging so I tend to sample her into my bitbox sampler on my modular which I then take out live.

Sonja:
You have also had custom devices built for you. Would you like to tell us something about this?

Sarah:
So when I saw the machine which Love Hultén built for Cuckoo, which is this amazing green machine that looks like something from a magical submarine, I fell in love. I have had a lot of dreams about unusual or strange synthesizers that don’t exist and seeing this really sparked that part of my imagination. So I reached out to him and asked if he would be interested in working together on a pink synthesizer. I already had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted, something in the style of the VCS3, which is another synthesizer I love, and it should of course be pink.

I liked the periscope looking thing with the oscilloscope screen on Cuckoo’s synth, so I imagined something like a heart on a kind of stalk coming out the top of the synth with an audio display of the waveform.

A special kind of custom device: Sarah’s Heart was created in collaboration with Love Hultén

I imagined the Erica synths Perkons and the Syntrix both of which I love mounted into one synth. It was a fun process working with Love on the design and it involved searching quite a bit for the right pink, and me often saying, “I like it but can we make it more pink?” xD. The end result which he built is stunningly beautiful and I love it very much. I call her “Sarah’s Heart”. I don’t take her out live because she is so precious, but if one day I have a big enough gig then I think she can come to the stage :)

Sarah Sommers about songwriting and good songs

Sonja:
What makes a really good song in your opinion?

Sarah:
Oh I think this is incredibly subjective, like any art. Personally I think as long as you love what you do that’s all that really matters. It’s very interesting to sometimes see one or two of my tracks which I really like and have released have not always been as successful as I thought but some of the ones I wasn’t so sure about people seem to really like. But I just follow my heart and make what really excites me.

Sonja:
How do you create new songs? Do you need a special framework for song writing? Are there situations or places that particularly inspire your creativity?

Sarah:
So I do a lot of jamming, particularly when I have an upcoming gig because I like to always have some new material to perform. I sometimes have been inspired over the previous weeks and months, especially if I go out clubbing, and have an idea for the kind of track I’d like to write, like techno, or melodic or deep and dubby or something faster. Sometimes it’s just the emotion that comes out in that moment. I can start with one idea and I just let it take me on a journey, for example I might start with 90s uk breakbeat and end up making techno with influences from 2010. I do love to meld and bring different genres and references to different eras together. I love so many things from electronic music and I’m inspired by so many things I’d love to incorporate elements from it all.

I don’t really have a special framework or even a specific machine I start with. I might have an idea for a bassline or a synth sound or a genre but I just turn on the machines and start exploring. The exploration is where most of the fun is, discovering sounds and that moment when you are just overwhelmed by the sound and feeling and just think “wow that sounds really cool”. I don’t work with a computer, even though I have in the past. I have nothing against them though, they’re excellent tools. I just love the immediacy of the hardware, it’s how I started making music and it’s where I feel most at home even if it can be a bit restrictive sometimes and the computer definitely makes it easier to make more complex things. I don’t like to have any rules, I just try to do what I feel and what I hear in my head.

Anything left to say?

Sonja:
Was there ever an interview question that really got on your nerves?

Sarah:
This one. Haha no just kidding :-). Actually I did have someone once ask me if he could “interview” me after a performance. I said yes, he said “what would you say to people who say she only got to where she is because of how she looks”. Well I thought that was a weird question and I was a bit sad because I thought he’d just heard my entire performance and that was the first thing he decided to ask. Like did he even listen to my music? I don’t know. I guess because I put a lot of effort into my aesthetic some people can think that I’m trying to compensate for not making good music or I’m just doing it for a gimmick and attention and that it’s shallow.

photo by Gösta Wellmer, instagram: @goestagraph

So I sometimes find myself explaining that it’s simply all part of my self-expression and my art. It’s part of who I am, I love pink and glitter, colour and sparkly things, I like extremes and dramatic things also in the music. If anything I would say the way I look has sometimes made it harder for me to be taken seriously, luckily a lot of people recognise my authenticity, passion and love I have for what I do. I don’t want to compromise myself or my music just because it doesn’t fit into some kind of norm. I don’t want my music to be in the background, I want it to touch people, mentally, physically and emotionally. I would like to also be a symbol to others for being true to yourself no matter what.

Sonja:
What else would you like to say to people out there?

Sarah:
I thought about this question a lot. I feel like there is a lot of hurt in our industry, the music industry. It’s so hard to make money with music yet I truly believe music is something really valuable and we as humans need music to be happy as a species. Music can heal us, it brings us up when we’re down, allows us to let out our emotions, it unites us and brings us so much joy. And I feel like there are so many potentially great musician’s out there who are frustrated by this industry which takes advantage of musicians and makes it hard for us to live out our passion. I understand that frustration, it also held me back. But don’t give up, find a way to do it anyway, on your own terms.

And I want to say to those people who are struggling with self-doubt or are afraid they “will never write that album”. I was also like that for many years. Just start. Set a smaller goal, like just write and release one track or an ep. Don’t be a perfectionist, it doesn’t represent everything about you as an artist or everything you will ever do, it’s just a snapshot of what you’re doing right now. If you dream of doing it, do it, whatever your age. Live out your dreams. Do what truly makes you happy, it’s never too late. You will never regret trying but you will regret never trying. <3

Many thanks to Sarah for this wonderful interview. We laughed a lot and I tried my best with my English pronunciation. When we finished the interview, I discovered that Sarah speaks German perfectly ;-). I got to know probably what is the most visually impressive setup I’ve ever seen, and she simply makes really good music with it. Music which is currently delighting fans in Berlin, across Europe as well as the US. She’s hoping to soon head across the pond and we’re excited to see what Sarah Sommers has in store for us in the near future.