INTERVIEW: DJ Sabrina The Teenage DJ on The Process Behind Her Two New Records

There has to be a reason why anonymous outsider house producer DJ Sabrina The Teenage DJ releases records at the end of fall. Does she take stock of the work she’s done and uses it to ring in the new year? Or is it because she knows we need a little pick-me-up during the darkest days of the year? Whatever the case, this year is no different; late November saw the release of a new fleet of tracks by one of the genre’s most prolific, consistent voices.

Well, it’s a little different, and not just because there’s two full-lengths (four hours of music total!) to indulge in. Last year’s Charmed, which I counted among my Favorites of 2020, also helped expose her signature brand of thumping ecstasy and T.G.I.F. reminiscence to a larger audience by several degrees of magnitude. That audience will likely find a lot to appreciate with the new records; one sees a spiritual continuation of the clement atmosphere of her previous albums, while the other boasts a darker, clubbier, more haunted direction.

I got the opportunity once again to conduct an interview with the mysterious artist about her new records. Read it below!

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Charmed ended up being kind of a breakthrough moment for you, huh? Any cool things happen because of that record?

More than I can list! So many people have discovered my music through Charmed, I’ve had tracks played at festivals, I’ve been reviewed by Fantano, Charmed, MM2 and TOR have been top listened albums on RYM, where do I stop, haha!

I was at a Porter Robinson concert a few months ago and when I heard “Next To Me” come on in the lead-up to the show I freaked out, so congrats on that!

That’s so cool! I’ve heard a few people mention he’d played that and another few off Charmed in-between sets, really can’t believe he put it in his favorite albums playlist either!

So in the interim, you put out a bunch of singles that were essentially collaborations with other like-minded electronic producers. Could you give me a little info on some of these, like the one with Nameless Warning? How did some of these come about?

Just chatting really, someone might as if I’m up for a collab or I might ask if I know they play something, Nameless Warning had an amazing foundation that I added some ideas to, same with a couple of the others, but then I might come up with a basis and they’d add vocals and so on. It was pretty casual and I had wanted to do some interesting work with other people for a while so it was fun!

So in the span of a year, you’ve managed to put together two full-lengths – just over forty songs in total – and that doesn’t include the myriad singles you’ve co-written with other producers that were released in the meantime. Your productivity, as always, is unbelievable. How do you manage it?

This is pretty much all I do, haha! I mean, I don’t think of it as prolific or whatever, to me I just make songs every day and I try to make an album feel full and satisfying. These last two albums had many tracks left over from Charmed and I still have so many left over from these two albums that I’ve already got the entirety of the next album started!

I imagine makin’ all this magick in such a short time doesn’t leave a ton of room to listen to other stuff, but has there been anything you’ve been spinning lately that’s been particular inspiring?

Been listening to even more Norman Brown and Kaori Kobayashi than usual, I tend to listen to smooth jazz all through the summer but this year I’ve just kept going haha!

What was the reasoning behind releasing these records together? Did you create tracks specifically for each individual record, or were they all essentially written beforehand and then sorted after the fact?

I’d had the idea for Makin’ Magick II since before Charmed, maybe a year and a half ago? And I’d had the idea for The Other Realm probably 3 years ago. I knew it was going to be difficult not to disappoint after Charmed. As Spielberg himself said, “If you give people the same movie with different scenes, they say: ‘Why weren’t you more original?’ But if you give them the same character in another adventure, but with a different tone, you risk disappointing the other half of the audience who just wanted a carbon copy of the first film. So you win, and you lose both ways.” I had a few tracks left over from Charmed, Witchkraft and even some older ones from 2014 and it seemed like fun to separate the different styles up into two different albums rather than throw them together. Then I just kept working on new material and if it felt more Other Realm-ish, it would go on there and if it felt for Makin’ Magick II-ish, it would go on there. I think “It Was Always Right” was going to be on MM2 right up until a month ago so there was never any particular set method to any of it, just going on feeling.

Are there any tracks off of either record that you’re particularly proud of?

“One Day” and “Princess” were very special to me, the former being a sister song to “Down With Love” and “Princess” being a sister song to “My Baby, I Become Unhinged.” “Princess” shares similarities with “My Baby” in that it simulates and deals with depression and the struggle to overcome it, but with a more positive message this time.

Let’s get into these individually, starting with The Other Realm. You mentioned in a Tweet that canonically this record is meant to come before The Makin’ Magick II Album. Could you expound on that a little?

“End Of An Era” is a death and a funeral. The Charmed novel goes into detail on the final stages of the protagonist’s life and her journey to the other realm, but it’s shown from the mortal dimension. Transcendence is the other realm side of the experience, our beautiful projections and romantic assumptions of the moments of dying stripped to reveal a much more unconscious and soulless space. This directly pairs with the concept of using physical models for the art instead of the imaginary, human felt depictions… real, but does it seem to be as alive? The album ends with “The Promise”, the events of which work in a reverse time-scale to “Spirit” in the mortal realm and wraps around, so the end of The Promise is the beginning of Spirit and vice-versa. “Realms” is the void that remains after rebirth (“Realms 8000” is a tribute to Fatboy Slim’s “Acid 8000”, and Tweaker’s Delight/Jack It Up).

Sonically, The Other Realm is a significant departure from what the project’s been known for so far. It’s still a party record, but it’s also spacious, heavy, more like a dark club than a beach getaway. Tell me about some of the concepts behind this record.

I’d wanted to make an album that was a bit more like the lo-fi house parts from the early albums, and some of the more acid-based, heads-down sound of parts of Spellbound and Enchanted. It seemed like a fun concept, and I had the idea for the album art for years, finally getting around to photographing and visualizing it just a month or so ago. I also always had the idea for using the original San Francisco ransom note font from the old Mac OS, it has such an unsettling look that I’ve never seen matched in any other font quite like this, which was perfect for the out-of-body experience the album is meant to feel like.

The opening track is a red herring of sorts. I remember discovering certain vaporwave-based trends over the last decade that involved screwing down samples to the point of being unrecognizable. death’s dynamic shroud.wmv is a good example of this I feel. “Transcendence’s” darker mood feels tied a little to that sound; was that intentional?

Back in the early ’10s I was listening to so much witch house, I just loved all of that ghost-in-the-machine/Twin Peaks/digitally haunted vibe. Aphex got a head start with “Equation” and I’ve always just been a fan of that horror-without-horror sound, it was nice to have an environment where it didn’t feel too out of place.

Listening to The Other Realm, I was more aware than usual of the unique vocal tracks peppering each song. Unlike the samples you use to build these tracks, a lot of these – like the one on “(Been Thru Some) Changes” – feel created specifically for the record based on the lyrical content. You don’t have to name names, but how do you go about collating these unique vocal takes? Are they usually friends, or fellow creators?

Perhaps they’re vocalists from the other realm? :p Yeah, it’s just hitting up people who have a similar mindset or I like their sound, hopefully it always comes across a little tongue-in-cheek rather than super, super serious and showy! All of the early albums had a joke line “All vocals by DJSTTDJ” which was kinda like a funny reference as if it were a band, but I’ve changed it to “SOME vocals by DJSTTDJ” as it feeels a little more appropriate, haha!

In contrast to The Other Realm’s audible departure, The Makin Magick II Album feels directly tied to the project’s past. There’s the title, and the fact that its general mood is sunnier than its twin. Tell me about the thought behind linking this record to your debut.

Yeah, it was a joke reference to The Marshall Mathers LP 2 which is why the inner art is kinda based on the album cover of both MMLP1 and MMLP2. I always think it’s funny how an album can become this classic entity, and making a sequel that bears practically no similarity besides the title seemed really fun, a kinda satire on comeback albums and movies reusing characters or box-art imagery to foster commercial appeal. The sunny vibe was always intended as a rebirth album from the other-worldly experience in The Other Realm.

Like your other records, there are a few epics studding Makin’ Magick II, but one that stands out is the 11-minute “Being Alone.” It’s one of the few tracks on the record anchored by minor chords, and there’s a poignancy to its refrain that takes the sense of longing underneath much of your material and digs deeper into a potential source. Tell me about the making of that song in particular.

It ties in with a recurring theme of loneliness, a complete lack of friends or socialization whatsoever at any point in your life and not really being able to exist in a normal sense because of it. It’s not the worst possible concept I could think of, but rather a very real and accurate depiction of how it feels; how much regret you have from your past, how weird your present is and how genuinely frightening it is to contemplate the future.

I’d also like to discuss the final track, “Music,” which has some resemblance with the Stardust classic “Music Sounds Better With You.” Any link between the two?

Yes! “MSBWY” is one of my FAVORITE songs of all time, and “Music” was heavily influenced by Daft Punk and Roulé Records (it’s title is an obvious homage to Musique). DJ Falcon’s first EP, Thomas Bangalter solo records and Lé Knight Club are all some of my favorite records and “Music” felt like a really driving end to the album.

Considering that your previous album exposed you to a wider audience, is there a certain weight of expectation now behind putting out music? During the last year, did you ever feel the pressure to cater to these new listeners, who might be expecting something specific out of your work?

I’ve never really felt too much pressure, but I didn’t want to release singles this time as I didn’t want to ruin the energy Charmed had made for itself! It’s so much more fun making music when people want to hear it, than making it and nobody caring or liking it, but even I have to admit becoming exhausted by the end! Some tracks like “That’s All I Got So Far” and “Being Alone” are six months old and “Be Ready,” “Airplane Song” and “Lose Myself” are a year old and it’s really tiring to just sit on songs with no-one else hearing them for that long, it doesn’t really make much sense to me why they’re not being listened to, lol! But it was fun hoarding it all together for a big end of year double-album release. I just worry that it wasn’t mixed well enough, wasn’t mastered well enough, wasn’t sequenced well enough or wasn’t produced well enough. It’s always a huge struggle as I both want things to be perfect but I also like to work fast, haha! Releasing both an underground-type record and a pop-type record simultaneously should hopefully satisfy everyone a little!