Sarah Sommers is rapidly building a reputation for herself through her high-quality techno productions alongside her intense and spellbinding live performances. Cultivating a loyal army of fans in such a short space of time is nothing short of extraordinary.
Raised in London and Melbourne, and now fully embedded in Berlin’s underground, Sarah’s journey—from warehouse raves and the London dubstep scene to Berlin’s most iconic techno clubs like Tresor and Berghain —shines through her music and her message.
Her recent US and European tours, as well as her ongoing Festival performances, including Fusion Festival’s main stage, Turmbühne, Garbicz, Body Movements Festival, Lethargy Festival and many others, have earned her a growing cult following — online and in her physical shows.
Following her most recent performance at Body Movements Festival in London, her next UK show is at Fabric in London on September 5th.
We sat down with Sarah to discuss her recent exploits, hardware, and new EP on Ellen Alien’s Bpitch imprint…plus, she answers some questions from her amazing fans!
WWD: Welcome to When We Dip! You’ve just released your latest album, VIVID, on Ellen Allien’s label BPitch Control. Is there a story behind this latest release?
Yes, so it’s about 34 minutes of tracks recorded live and which have been part of my live set for about the last 9 months. When I was writing them, I was getting vivid images and atmospheres of certain dancefloors I had been on over different periods of my life. For example, my track Tresor was inspired by that dancefloor. Shed 14 was about my early raving memories from Melbourne, where we’d go to the docks to a huge old warehouse called Shed 14. It was just one big old warehouse with a big sound system, lights, lasers and lots of ravers; it felt futuristic. And Sunrise is for me about those uplifting moments when you’re still on the dancefloor, maybe in a forest, as the sun comes up feeling connected to strangers. Bubbles is maybe an anomaly, I don’t really know where she came from haha I just let her grow organically. I love her wonkyness. Speedub has elements of memories from being in the dubstep scene in London and Cologne.
I was ecstatic that the album resonated with Ellen and the BPitch crew when I submitted it. Ever since the beginning of my time making electronic music I had dreamt of being part of, and contributing to, the Berlin electronic music scene. So to be able to contribute to Ellen’s label at the heart of the Berlin scene which has been around since the early days of techno and rave culture is a dream come true.
WWD: Where did you pick up that raw sonic aesthetic? Who inspired you? It’s both vintage and new.
Thanks, so I didn’t get it from any one place or person, I think it’s a combination of the particular hardware I love and use as well as my fairly broad taste in electronic music and sounds across different eras from old school sounds to modern ones. I’ve always loved raw straight up synth sounds and intense things which move you physically, mentally or emotionally. In the beginning I only had hardware and the machines were pretty limited, with no sampling, just synths, drum machines and some basic effects pedals, I’d just do these epically long jams for many hours. After some years I sold my hardware and switched to just using the computer but then later I missed the hardware and went back to my roots of using all hardware because that’s just how I connect best with the music and feel most a home producing and performing, sometimes it can be a bit limiting but the machines are much more flexible now.
WWD: How did your deep interest for synthesizers start?
It began when I went to my first raves as a teenager and saw Live Acts for the first time. The sounds seemed really magical and out of this world to me. These old analog machines looked and sounded organic, mysterious and mystical. So after going to these raves for a while I decided to try and find a synthesiser of my own. I looked in all these secondhand pawnbroker shops in Melbourne and then finally stumbled on a Roland Juno 60 at the back of the shop up on the wall. I didn’t know what it was or how it worked. But I called another musician friend and he said it was good, so I bought it for $200 and took it home on the train whilst getting lots of stares from other people on the train. I played with it for a year with nothing much else and taught myself the basics of synthesis.
WWD: What RGB Value is your signature pink color?
(255,0,140), For print it’s Pantone 806-C. Or hex #ff008c, although there’s a small range around there that are my favourites. It’s a deep hot pink with a slight warmth but not too much. With RBG lights you can pretty much get it by mixing any value of red with about half the amount of blue. But I love it if it’s really fluorescent pink. The brighter and more intense the better. But it’s not allowed to be orange or purple lol, some paints or products call themselves fluorescent pink but they’re basically orange. Ewww haha.
WWD: Is your hardware in a constant flux as a new kit is arriving or have you settled on your set up?
There is a bit of flux but the setup is also fairly stable. It consists of my Eurorack modular, Elektron Syntakt, Elektron Analog Rytm, Erica Synths Perkons, a 303 clone, a mixer from 1010 music and a midi controller from Intech Studio. My latest addition has been another very small eurorack case with just 2 modules, the Bohm from Ohmforce and the VHIKK. The machines I perform on are also the ones I write the music on, it’s basically my whole studio touring with me, it is a lot of gear and I travel by myself with 2 big pelican cases and another small one for clothes so it’s probably not going to be sustainable indefinitely if I continue by myself. So I will probably have to look at making it slightly more practical in near the future.
WWD: How was your recent tour in the US and do you have any plans to go back?
It was amazing and exhausting. Travelling with all the gear, the jet lag and the lack of sleep between different cities on consecutive days was tough sometimes. But the experience was amazing and beautiful, getting a window into all the different scenes in the different cities was fascinating. The raw underground vibe of the LA warehouse rave scene, the amazing communities and spaces in New York, Chicago and Austin and the down to earth and music passion I felt in Denver were all unique and special in their own ways and it was really interesting to experience first hand. And I’m excited to be coming back to the US for a second time around Halloween!
WWD: What’s your process like? Do you work on all of your tracks until they are finished or do you have many unfinished tracks?
It’s a fairly organic process, it’s a mix and it’s not set in stone. Usually in the weeks coming up to a performance I’ll start with just jamming, usually many hours of just jamming and going in and out of things until some parts come out that really intensely touch me and I fall in love with. I then try to build on those, and will come up with some complimentary parts. Sometimes the new parts I come up with I really love, but they don’t fit the first parts, so either they can go on to become other tracks or just different sections of the same track. I loosely collect these different parts together into different patterns as well as different percussion etc. and then I’ll sketch out a rough progression in my mind but still with a lot of freedom to do whatever. I just try things and see what works. Then I’ll just perform the sketch. And this gives me a lot of freedom when I perform it to just go with the flow of what feels and sounds good in the moment. After each gig I’ll have a feeling for what worked and what didn’t and what I liked and didn’t and I’ll modify things. I often come up with changes or combinations during the performance that I like and which I hadn’t tried before. After the first few gigs I will start to settle on a structure and progression for a track. Maybe after 10 performances or so I might finally record the latest version of the track. Sometimes I refine it a tiny bit more, tweaking the track slightly just before recording. I’ll then record maybe 10-15 takes sometimes depending on how I feel about it and then pick my favourite one. So when I perform there’s pretty much always a mix of tracks that I have a fairly solid structure for and new ones which are very loose. I like this mix. Often even after I’ve recorded and released a track it will continue to evolve over time getting changes and improvements. Sometimes they evolve into completely new tracks. So ultimately my livesets always have a bunch of unreleased tracks.
WWD: Who would be the best unexpected person you’d like to see in your audience at one of your gigs?
Richard D James, Thomas Jenkinson, or my Dad.
WWD: Great choices! Thanks for the chat 🙂
The ‘Vivid’ EP is available here