Name: Raul Alvarez
Nationality: Spanish
Occupation: Producer, composer, engineer
Current release: Raul Alvarez's One Night In The Heaven is out via ANALOG DEFENSE NETWORK.
Recommendations: Music: Jean Michel Jarre – Equinoxe; Book: Manly P. Hall - The Secret Teachings Of All Ages

If you enjoyed this Raul Alvarez interview and would like to know more about his music and work, visit his page on the Analog Defense Network website. He is also on Facebook.



When did you start writing/producing/playing music and what or who were your early passions and influences? What was it about music and/or sound that drew you to it?


I started in 2005 playing acoustic guitar and then in 2010 I switched to electronic music using Reason software first, and later Ableton.

My early influences were artists such Jean Michel Jarre, Aphex Twin, DVS1 or Richie Hawtin; after, life gave me the chance to work with all of them in The Funkhaus.

[Read our Jean-Michel Jarre Interview]
[Read our Richie Hawtin interview]


What drew me into music and sound was the low-frequency range. I discovered the power of the sound wave coming from subwoofers as something similar to magic inside my body.

The first time I had the chance to play with sine waves and a subwoofer I felt something I cannot express with words.



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects, and colors. What happens in your body when you're listening and how does it influence your approach to creativity?


I worked for 2 years with the 4DSOUND system in MONOM. There, sounds are shown on the screen as objects: cubes, rectangles, walls or spheres moving around the space.

I feel music as a landscape of objects similar to architecture or a collage; but for creativity it is always the low frequencies that make me feel it inside the body, crossing the skin, bones, nerves, and blood ….


How would you describe your development as an artist in terms of interests and challenges, searching for a personal voice, as well as breakthroughs?


In the last years, I'm more focused on IDM than Techno, but both are the perfect sync between mind and body.

I started with a more Techno / House approach but I feel something more personal, that IDM can offer more freedom. I always worked also on the tech side of music, doing mixing and mastering for other artists and labels

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Tell me a bit about your sense of identity and how it influences both your preferences as a listener and your creativity as an artist, please.


As a listener I feel a sense of identity with artists and music which gives importance to the low-frequency range and matches the kick drum with the sub; how the harmonics grow in the frequency spectrum.

As an artist it's similar. The creativity comes by starting with a kick drum and a bassline. I feel that this makes for the foundation of what comes later; leads, arps, pads, hihats and everything else.


What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and art?


The key ideas behind my approach to music and art are to transmit something that cannot be expressed with words.

Human communication misses something that art and music can transmit with frequencies, colors, and shapes. Something related more to symbols than words.


How would you describe your views on topics like originality and innovation versus perfection and timelessness in music? Are you interested in a “music of the future” or “continuing a tradition”?


I think there should be a balance between “music of the future” and “continuing a tradition”.

I feel the perfect balance with music should be influenced by the first steps of electronic music and developed with an alchemist soul. Evolving from an old-school background to an experimental and futuristic approach.


Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools - and what are the most promising strategies for working with them?


I like both digital and analog worlds. Ableton is a nice tool that gives the chance to work in a safe environment while modular synths give that random inspiration of something unexpected.


I use Reaper also for 360º mixing (ambisonics) and 360º mastering.


Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please.


I wake up at 9.00, have breakfast, shower, check some emails and networks and at 12.00 I'm in the studio. I have the chance to spend my day there nowadays. At 15.00 I eat something and at 16.00 I'm back in the studio until 20.00.

I usually have jobs for mixing and mastering for other artists and labels which I do first rather than making music; I like to start with the tech side before the creative side.

Other artists usually give me inspiration for starting a new project.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece, live performance or album that's particularly dear to you, please?


I always start with the kick drum, after a bassline that fits with the kick. Then I add some percussion; later I usually get the modular in action to find some landscape, and lastly, the keyboard to fit the pads with some plugin.

I use both analog and digital instruments


Listening can be both a solitary and a communal activity. Likewise, creating music can be private or collaborative. Can you talk about your preferences in this regard and how these constellations influence creative results?


I like both. Sometimes I like to be alone making music and sometimes I like to share the studio or a project with someone.

The collaborative part always gives more inspiration. But as I have the chance to work with other artists's projects for mixing and mastering when I'm alone in the studio I can listen to other people's music to find that inspiration.


How do your work and your creativity relate to the world and what is the role of music in society?


I feel that music is a way of communicating feelings, something that cannot be expressed with words. I think that my work and creativity relate to the world in a way to give the listener an approach to my inside.

Speech is a superficial way of communication while music is a deep way of communication.



Art can be a way of dealing with the big topics in life: Life, loss, death, love, pain, and many more. In which way and on which occasions has music – both your own or that of others - contributed to your understanding of these questions?


After being isolated in a psychiatric hospital in Berlin I felt in music was the only answer to what happened.

I felt dead after 6 days in a room doing tantric meditation and the police had to come inside the house with some friends to bring me to the hospital where I was isolated for 2 weeks and I broke both legs trying to escape.

Music was the answer to coming back to life and trying to get myself back


How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other?


I think that music is what comes first, science explores what music tells. As we use irrational numbers of frequencies to create scales, science uses irrational numbers to create engineering.

The golden ratio is the most simple perception between the tonic and the perfect fifth. But there are infinite irrational numbers inside the music, which are being discovered by quantum physics - for example the plastic ratio or the supergolden ratio.


Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?


I saw cups of coffee which look like art pieces. Art is everywhere and music also … in the birds, the sound of a waterfall, the wind. I think that music is an approximation of what Pythagoras called the music of the spheres.

In perfect silence, we should be able to listen to the sound of the planets moving around space.


Music is vibration in the air, captured by our ear drums. From your perspective as a creator and listener, do you have an explanation how it able to transmit such diverse and potentially deep messages?


Because it's not only our ear drums that capture the music, when listened to properly with a good sound system. Our skin, bones, nerves, and blood vibrates at the same frequency as music.