ERASE interview

 How did you start making industrial techno and why this genre?

I actually started as a DJ — I was 16, then walked away from music completely for about a decade. When I came back, in 2024, it wasn’t with any plan to resume DJing. Production just clicked for me in Ableton, and from the first tracks it wanted to be industrial — because that’s what was already in me from being a teenager on Rammstein, Placebo, electro goth. I didn’t really choose the genre so much as find it was already there when I opened the door.

What are your musical influences?

The Cure and Kraftwerk are the two constants — one for atmosphere and melancholy, the other for structure and machine logic. Artists like Laven show me what that sound can look like today: hard and physical, but still musical.

What are your early musical influences?

Rammstein, Placebo, electro goth and industrial music generally — that’s the soundtrack of my teenage years, long before I had any idea I’d end up making this kind of music myself.

How is the scene in Oslo these days?

Oslo’s scene is small, and if I’m honest, it can feel closed and clique-driven if you’re not already inside it. There’s talent here, but the infrastructure for building an international career from Oslo is thin — so a lot of my energy is actually pointed toward Berlin and the wider European touring circuit.

Since you play live instead of DJing — was that an obvious choice, and how easy is it to get booked as a live act?

Once I started producing, playing live was never really a question for me — the tracks are the point, and hardware performance is how I wanted to present them, gear exposed, hands on it. It hasn’t made booking easier — if anything the opposite. Line-ups are still overwhelmingly built around DJ sets, and a live hardware act asks more of a promoter: different stage setup, different risk. So yes, it was the obvious artistic choice — and yes, it’s the harder path to get booked.

It feels like the whole scene is built on DJs and not the artists making the music. How do you feel about that?

I feel this too, honestly. So much of the industry — the bookings, the algorithm, even how «artist» gets defined in techno — is built around DJ culture. That’s a valid art form, but it means the people actually building the tracks from nothing can get pushed to the margins of their own scene. I’d like to see more space and respect carved out specifically for live acts — not instead of DJs, just alongside them.

Hardware or software, and why?

Both, but hardware is where the identity lives for me. My live rig is built around the Elektron ecosystem — Syntakt, Digitone II, Tonverk — through a Xone:96 mixer, with an Analog Heat for glue. Hardware forces immediacy and constraint, and on stage it means what the audience sees is actually what’s making the sound. Software still does a lot of work behind the scenes, though — I build custom Max for Live devices modeled on hardware I can’t afford yet, so it lets me prototype ideas before, or instead of, buying the real thing.

Is the scene still treating women differently? What’s one thing you’d change?

I want to be precise about this: I haven’t personally been mistreated. What I do run into constantly is the assumption. People hear the music first, find out it’s me after, and by default they’d assumed a man made it. It’s a small thing on its own, but it says a lot about what «industrial techno artist» still looks like in most people’s heads by default — and I know from others’ stories that for plenty of women in this scene, it goes a lot further than an assumption.

If I could change one thing, it would be that default — the instinct to guess who made something before actually asking.

Industrial techno has been gaining momentum — it seems to correlate with the times we’re living in. Crazier the times, harder the music.

I think that’s real. Music tends to get harder when the world does — industrial has always been a genre of noise, machinery, and unease, and right now there’s a lot of that to draw from. It’s not a coincidence the genre is having a moment; it’s giving people a place to put something that doesn’t fit anywhere else.

As an artist, what inspires you?

Most of my tracks start from an uncontrolled flow state rather than a plan — I’m chasing a feeling more often than an idea. A lot of that feeling comes from the tension in my own life: I work in financial crime compliance by day and make dark, aggressive techno by night, and that contrast is honestly one of the most inspiring things I have to draw from.

What is your ultimate goal?

To build a real international live career around this — playing rooms and festivals that take hardware performance as seriously as they take a DJ set, the way artists like Paula Temple have managed to. Right now that means Berlin, the European festival circuit, and stages like Insomnia this October. Longer term, I want ERASE to be a name people associate with industrial techno that’s actually performed — not just mixed — and I want to get there without giving up the day job that funds it, at least not until the music can carry itself.