Procrastination plagues most of us, right? Trapped somewhere between laziness, cowardice and the walls of our home is the blank page of a project months in the work that will eventually materialise right before the final deadline. At times like these, our brains seem to be making fun of their own inability to create. I Heard You Laughing, the title of the new EP by Parisian producer and DJ Sene — first name, Erwan — is about this exact moment. “The record is inspired by my way of managing my days by working around the project,” he explains. “When it’s hard to work at home, where I’m not inspired, I procrastinate. The tracks are kind of jokes about those moments.” Based on the finished product, it seems that Erwan managed to break the cycle and more.
I Heard You Laughing, Erwan’s second solo project, is a metallic ambient mass of deep techno best listened to as though it were one continuous song. “I’ve reduced my equipment a lot,” he tells us. “Now everything revolves around an old Soviet eighties drum machine that I bought on eBay. I created a basic frame for each track with this drum machine, recorded it all at once and then added layers over it. Everything comes from this industrial frame.”
It’s hardly surprising that Erwan knows how to build sounds so effectively; the musician is incidentally a sculptor. “During my studies at the Beaux-Arts I always tried to mix music and art — either by composing music for the films I made or for installations. It always failed. I never managed to tie the two together. Now I’m doing sculpture and the way I make music is quite related, with the cuts, additions of elements little by little. I can’t imagine not bonding things together.”
To celebrate the release of his EP, Sene has made i-D this exclusive mix — a miscellany of all his musical references and the rendering of his very own brain waves, probably.
This article originally appeared on i-D FR.