Photo: Alvar Arisó
Colombian‑born Ela Minus was studying jazz performance as a drummer at Berklee College Of Music when she got a taste for electronic music. “I loved synths,” the artist and producer says. “I saw there was another major called Music Synthesis. But I never really wanted to produce, to be honest, but I loved synthesis, so I did a double major.” She subsequently landed a job building synthesizers with Critter & Guitari, where she contributed to the design of the celebrated Organelle synth.
“I was always playing drums in parallel, and it got to a stage where I had sounds in my head — the music that I wanted to make — but I couldn’t communicate it to my bandmates,” she continues. “And I realised that learning how to produce was probably going to be easier than trying to explain what I wanted to other people. I just taught myself to do it, really.” Fast‑forward to the present, and her latest album DÍA has drawn critical acclaim from all sides.
At the moment I can’t stop listening to
One would be Nala Sinephro, Endlessness. But also I can’t stop listening to Nicolas Jaar Piedras 1 and Piedras 2, obsessively. Both of them. I’ve been a fan of Nicolas Jaar for forever. I would say he’s probably the only contemporary musician that I admire in every aspect: the production, the musicality, the way he’s dealt with his career... When you see him, you can tell he stands for something, and I really admire that. I guess I look to that as a reference. The combination of these two records, which he released together, one being very experimental, kind of sound candy, and the other one being kind of a pop record, really, in a lo‑fi way. The songs pretty much have a pop structure, they have choruses, and it’s so interesting for me.
The artist I’d most like to collaborate with
For this one I’ll say Nala Sinephro! You know, I love jazz and I love jazz musicians. I think the combination of jazz musicians and electronic producers is an incredibly rich and prolific source of music; obviously a lot of people have already tapped into it, like Floating Points, but there’s still so much more we can do. Nala Sinephro’s musicality, the way she mixes acoustic instruments with synthesizers — that’s something that I really love, which I would love to do more of.
The first thing I look for in a studio
Again, I’m going to answer with two things. The first one is the vibe. Like, if it’s got really bright lights, like you’re in like in a hospital, I’ll go get a candle. Or if it’s messy, it just makes me want to organise it! It just doesn’t make me want to make music. It makes me think, “This needs to be fixed!” That stresses me out. So first of all, it just needs to be an inspiring environment.
Ela Minus: One studio I have been working in has an ARP 2600 that was very old, as they all are. But this one they had clearly fixed, over and over. So it had a very unique sound to it.
And the second, obviously, is the synths. Before this record, I would never really go to studios, because I had my own home studio. I just didn’t have the need, before the pandemic. And then in the pandemic I had to leave my home. This new record I made completely in rented studios. I think the one thing I instantly looked for, even in the gear list before I went in, is which synths they have. The weirder, the better, obviously! Eurorack systems are very cool because they’re so unique — even if they have certain modules that are quite mainstream, the way someone chooses to build it will always be different. One studio I have been working in has an ARP 2600 that was very old, as they all are. But this one they had clearly fixed, over and over. So it had a very unique sound to it. It was very messy, but it worked. That studio actually had a couple of synths I think the owner had fixed himself. He also had a [Moog] Voyager that was very... uniquely fixed! It had real character.
The person I would consider my mentor
Well, I think my drum teacher. Her name is Terri Lyne Carrington. She deserves all the shout‑outs! She really changed my life. She came into my life at Berklee, really soon after I started, like, in my second semester. I was the only female drummer in my year. So to have a teacher who was also female, who could talk to me about it — I’d never met anybody who could talk about it with so much experience. She really taught me through drums. It expanded through to my life and my production and to everything I do. She taught me that while I needed to practise the instrument with a lot of discipline, the only reason to do that was to get to know my own voice as a musician as deeply as I could. That all that mattered was that I was able to connect to that, to something that we each have that nobody else has, and to be able to express that through a certain skill. I had four years of her teaching me that. She’s an incredible drummer. I do think she really changed my life.
My go‑to reference track or album
I think it depends on what I’m working on. I have a playlist of mix references, of master references, songwriting references. And it really is kind of all over the place! I can remember a couple off the top of my head, like for my song ‘Broken’, the reference was a song from the album Crash by Charlie XCX. It’s really poppy, but it sounds amazing. I really like that record. Usually when I’m about to mix, that’s when I’m looking for references. I don’t want to sound like an arsehole, but the way I tried to mix this record, I couldn’t think of any references, and that was kind of the point. I worked with Marta Salogni, who is the only person I mix with. We spent a lot of time mixing, and the entire concept was: “This cannot sound like anything else we’ve ever heard!”
My secret weapon in the studio is
It’ll change, but right now it’s a bit‑crusher that exists both in hardware and as a plug‑in. It’s called Biscuit, by Oto Machines. I’m obsessed, it’s my secret weapon. I use it a lot, and every time I use it, everybody is like, “What the fuck is that?” I’m very interested in distortion and bit‑crushing, any way of deconstructing sound. Pushing sound to extremes, I guess. I was investigating other ways to distort. And obviously bit‑crushing is a big one, but I was interested in a physical thing that wasn’t necessarily digital. And I could only find this one. I actually have the serial number #1! I bought it just as they were starting to make them. I’m very happy. It has eight buttons for each bit, and you can, you know, leave it clean, or invert the bit, or mute it. The inversion really fucks up the sound, very extremely. But because you have eight of them, you can do things like invert one but mute another one. And it really makes interesting distortion. It has other modes too: you can double the waveform, like, add a sawtooth wave to whatever your sound source is and tune that. It’s really, really interesting. And they have a really good plug‑in now that honestly works equally well. I was very surprised with the plug‑in.
The studio session I wish I’d witnessed
Floating Points, Promises. That’s the first thing I think of. Pharoah Sanders was such an incredible player. The album sounds so magical: the arrangements, the way they recorded it, how his saxophone sounds, how the symphony sounds, the mixing of the synths, everything. Everything about that record sounds so unique and special to me. I was lucky to see it live — without Pharoah but with Shabaka [Hutchings]. When [Sanders] died, the show was already planned for the Hollywood Bowl, so Shabaka played his parts, and even the live mixing of that was incredible! I travelled to go to that because I love that record, and I knew it was going to be something special. And it was. Probably my favourite show of the past few years. So, to witness that in the studio...
The producer I’d most like to work with
El Guincho. He’s produced a lot of FKA Twigs and Björk stuff. He’s one of those producers who I think, again, clearly has a pop sensibility, but with unique production. He has a solo record maybe from 2010, called Pop Negro, which is like a cult favourite, I guess. It’s great. I think he did another solo record, but he’s moved more into production. He produced ROSALÍA, El Mal Querer. Like, really big pop. But I do feel like a lot of what makes it really interesting is his production. I mean, that’s what makes it into interesting pop. His rhythms feel very fluid, the way he produces beats. It feels like it’s coming from humans! As if you were in a in a carnival in Brazil, or something. But it’s really electronic. It has a very unique character.
The studio experience that taught me the most
Just one? I’ll say: the process of making this entire last record. It really is the most I’ve worked in other, external studios, so the entire thing was a huge lesson for me. I was a producer who was attached to my hardware. And I had to go into all of these other studios with nothing but my laptop, and work from scratch with different hardware, with different systems, with different interfaces. And I was able to make a record out of it. The entire thing was a very big lesson.
The advice I’d give myself of 10 years ago
I think, just dive in faster. With producing, I didn’t really think about it as a serious thing. I was like, “I’m a drummer and I have a job building synths! I’m just going to produce a couple of songs to, like, quiet the urge of this music I have in my head, but I’m not going to be a producer or do a solo project.” I didn’t take it seriously at all. So my advice now would be: take it a bit more seriously. Spend more time, do it faster. It took me a while to think, “Oh, actually, I think I can do this.” It took me years to become like that. So just spend more time doing it, from the get‑go.