I’d like to begin by noting that this is not a conventional interview,
but rather a fragmentary,
memoir-like exchange between two people who have yet to meet...
- When it comes to electronic music, the struggle for dominance between machine and human often comes up , but you hold the reins.
"To me the Lena and the following albums is very much like writing a book and painting a picture about how I write a book, and the whole process is told by the form of sounding material. It’s a kind of hologram. "
"I never try. The arrangement, the sound, the ‘colours’ of sound, including the track titles are already in my head years before I start to work on the actual music. In the case of Lena and the following albums, everything already exists in my head. Right know I know exactly how im gonna finish it with the fifth album. The reason im saying this to help you understand how strict and intentional I am when is about music and writing music. I don’t let the machines decide, there is no place for coincidence. “
- The father represents absolute order and law in the family. It's a kind of... to put it bluntly, a god- like existence (I am non-religious like a typical Japanese, but I respect both Christian love and the self-world of Buddhism). Until a certain age, living within that order and law makes one's past self almost identical to the father. Is looking back at father(the past self)and re-examining musicality the
journey of Lena and the subsequent series?
"I'm obsessed with idealizing human relations, simplifying them to the bones and then rebuild it again, placing them to a new environment. The father figure was one of the tool to describe Lena’s personality by her environment, where is she coming from. On this way the listener can associate during listening. With this trick I don’t let the listener to have free association on music, I rather force the listener to think about what I want him or her to think about. Only on this way the listener can sense the goal of this project, to understand it in details, and to be impressed (or not) about my subject of art. "
- Did you replace the father with the male character in the novel on Lena's album to attempt to overcome both the father and your own past? I ask this because I believe that music, life, and religion are closely related.
”My father never supported me to be producer or musician. Coming from working class family, to me becoming an artist was never an option. He always thought im wasting my talent, life and
opportunities on art. I was a good student and a good behaving kid. He wanted me to be a doctor or lawyer rather than a hungry artist, constantly surviving and facing with challenges. He had good
intentions, but he was never able to express it properly. No wonder why my relation with my father was quite hostile through so many years, till his death.
”BUT at the same time, my father was a very good person, with big and good heart. I understood that, I always knew that, and never doubted him being a good father. As you may see; by the
description his figure was truly matching with the desperate, controversial figure in my script to Lena. Im a part of my father, and Lena is my imaginary daughter who also has a part of me. And between them: its me again. ”
"At the end you may understand already this is how the Lena-series is not just about my imaginary daughter’s life, but my life, projecting to a form of a woman - from childhood to the elderly age. Right now im working on the third album, which refers to the middle age of ‘her’. you may have the question why im so obsessed with the woman form? Its all because women are simply way more vulnerable, sensitive, colorful, adaptive and capable then men. Their strength is not physical, and their value is not measurable. At the same time this is exactly how I would describe my music too."
- I wonder if your attempt to express Lena's album as genre-less music stems from a sense of crisis in the world confined by techno, especially minimal techno, as a kind of formal beauty? As I
research about you from scattered information on the internet, Romanian history, and minimal techno, some questions arise.
”Basically, the problem with my music and my style since the very beginning of my career that i have never fit to an exact genre. Im a kinda’ black sheep in the music scene. People from different genres found me and approached me in the past two decades, and amongst others there was a time when Romanians felt related to what i do.”
”To be very honest to you; back in the time when that movement was peaking I was always very famous about my harsh opinion against the Romanian Minimal scene – which was not really against the genre, but the scene, the ’politics’ and the hierarchy behind it. Under a very short time everything just became the copy of the copy, the original meaning and message was lost. Many young kids opened small labels and released their music, started to be DJ’s and producers, and claimed their positions in European scene, saying ‘Im Romanian, and I play Romanian Minimal’. Meanwhile the leading artists turned their head away, pretending that the flood of cheap minimal music that poisoning the music industry is not their problem. I had this very honest conversation with few of them too, but - aside the fact that they all were very kind and respectful to me - at the end they all said kind of the same thing: its not their responsibility to control the scene and the new generation of artists there. ”
”Me strongly believing in culture behind art on the old-school way - where principles, experience, vision and talent all together form the hierarchy of certain micro-cultures - I blamed them for letting the beautiful values of their music scene to be wasted, and at the end; lost.” ... "I tried to stay away from this phenomenon as much possible. (You have to understand that the existence of ro-minimal in Japan and the middle of Europe were very different at the peak of the genre.) To reply your question, yes – as it is mentioned often – most my releases were consciously against the cliché of ‘techno’, including ro-minimal too. ”
—It’s true that riding the waves of a scene and consuming it that way may place a certain responsibility on both the creators and the listeners. Do you have any thoughts on the current state of music, especially the electronic music scene?
”I believe we are living in the age when we have all the tools (both analog and digital) and we have all the knowledge to create honest, genre-less music to express ourselves accurately. But globally what happens? 95% of the present electronic music scene is about to repeat 30 years old standards, same kick-hihat-clap combinations, same boring 4.4 rhythm – but its even less what it was, because the original message and the rebel soul of Detroit and Chicago has lost already. Its just an empty shell. In the past few years same happens with the contemporary / experimental genres too. Where there should be freedom of creation without boundaries actually there is a bunch of copycats, replicating each others sound. The result is that the most of albums out there just sound like it was written by the same person. We really have to dig for truly unique, uncompromised materials.”
”As an artist I can't participate in that, and consciously remained an outsider, a hermit of the scene.My goal since such a long time is to make electronic music more human, more unique, more dramatic and more honest on my own way. ”
ーCertainly, with everyone now able to create music literally at their fingertips, I feel like the process leading up to the establishment of a genre is crucial.
”To describe this with the example of jazz: When people talk about the heroes and historic figures of jazz you can realize that you cant compare them to each other: Miles, Coltrane, Thelonious
Monk, and there is Chet Baker or Dave Brubeck – despite their music is called ‘jazz’ they all had their own voice. ... and the just played on one instrument! Our options right know is infinite, still
most of the time the content out there is so weak, so boring, so weightless that we have to find the real materials with magnifying glass. I deeply miss the diversity and uniqueness from the modern
electronic music scene. When I seek for new releases I seek for these new voices, ‘cause those are the ones who push the evolution of this form of art. ”
—Thank you very much for sharing such valuable thoughts. Nearly two years have passed since this exchange, and in 2025 the third installment of the LENA series, MAIDEN, was finally released. In earlier discussions, you described the work as portraying “the middle age of her” and in the time since then, I imagine you yourself have gone through many changes in your environment. While I understand that the concept for the series up to the fifth release may already be in place, have these changes had any influence on your music-making?
"In deed, in 2025 I moved to Baku, Azerbaijan which was truly a life changing event. Leaving the place behind where i was working for nearly two decades made me worry if I will capable to see things on the same way, to think on the same way. It's still early to make any rock solid statements but i think it's gonna work out well. My new studio here is ready, and it sounds good, but i don't rush anything.
The concept of the LENA series is ready since many years, its in my head and nothing really can change that. The fourth and the final fifth album is on the way, and it's meant to be released till 2030."