Talking with Nicola Cruz feels a bit like tuning into a different frequency—the producer and DJ has spent the last decade helping redefine perceptions of South American electronic music through a series of transcendental releases and live appearances. Based in Ecuador, Cruz doesn’t give many interviews, so I was super happy to have this rare conversation

He talks about his approach to DJing, where instead of scanning a crowd, he locks into the energy of one or two people and lets that guide the set. It’s a more intimate, slower way of connecting, sometimes taking hours, and sometimes never quite happening at all. But when it works, it shapes everything.

We also get into his field recording work—using geophones to capture the movement inside glaciers, recording whale sounds deep underwater. These aren’t just sonic experiments; for Cruz, they’re a way of exploring how we relate to the parts of the world we can’t usually hear. His new album Kinesia lives in this space—somewhere between the physical and the imagined.

At the heart of it all is a deep belief in creative freedom. Though he’s formally trained, Cruz talks about the importance of unlearning, of breaking structures down in order to build something new. 

If you’re interested in where electronic music, listening, and inner exploration overlap, this one’s worth your time.

Listen to Nicola Cruz’s music: Spotify | Bandcamp

Listen to Kinesia: Spotify | Bandcamp

Follow Nicola Cruz on Instagram: @nicola_cruz

If you enjoy Lost and Sound and want to help keep it thriving, the best way to support is simple: subscribe, leave a rating, and write a quick review on your favourite podcast platform. It really helps others find the show. You can do that here on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen.

Thanks also to this episode’s sponsor, Audio-Technica – makers of beautifully engineered audio gear. Check them out here: Audio-Technica

Want to go deeper? Grab a copy of my book Coming To Berlin, a journey through the city’s creative underground, via Velocity Press.

And if you’re curious about Cold War-era subversion, check out my BBC documentary The Man Who Smuggled Punk Rock Across The Berlin Wall on the BBC Sounds app.

You can also follow me on Instagram at @paulhanford for behind-the-scenes bits, guest updates, and whatever else is bubbling up.

Cristobal Tapia de Veer on instinct, tension, and walking away from The White Lotus

It‘s not often I have a guest on the show primarily known for scorring for screen but the outspoken, punk-rock ethosed, voice-warping composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer is so Lost and Sound it hurts. 

Whether it’s the unnerving soundworld of Utopia, the chaotic beauty of The White Lotus, or the warped voices of A24‘s Babygirl, his scores don’t just sit behind the picture—they shape how you feel it.

In this conversation, we talk about how some of his most striking ideas come in a flash. How one of The White Lotus‘ most memoral earworms: “took me the time it takes you to listen to it,” he says. “I feel like somebody else did it for me.”

We get into why scoring the show felt like “trying on a yellow dress,” and how stepping into unfamiliar territory let him bring something raw and unexpected to it. He’s honest about how uncomfortable that space was—and how that discomfort helped him land something sharper.

Cristobal opens up about working in an industry that often pulls in the opposite direction of intuition. We talk about trusting the subconscious, letting go of control, and how stepping back sometimes allows something better to come through.

We also touch on his recent public split from The White Lotus—and the bigger questions that come when creativity and power don’t align.

If you’re interested in how a politically minded Iggy Pop fan became one of the most highly revered film and TV composers working right now, or just curious about what it takes to stay true to your instincts inside a system that often doesn’t want you to, this one’s worth your time.

If you’re enjoying Lost and Sound, please do subscribe and leave a rating or review on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you listen. It really helps to spread the word and support Lost and Sound.

Cristobal Tapia de Veer on Instagram 

Cristobal Tapia de Veer on Apple Music and TIDAL.

Follow me on Instagram at Paulhanford

Lost and Sound is sponsored by Audio-Technica

My BBC World Service radio documentary “The man who smuggled punk rock across the Berlin Wall” is available now on BBC Sounds. Click here to listen.

My book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culturet Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more. 

Lost and Sound title music by Thomas Giddins

The boundary between imagination and technology blurs in Lila Tirando a Violeta's mesmerizing sonic experiments. From her early DIY noise experiments in Uruguay to her current position as one of electronic music's most distinctive emerging voices, Lila's creativity has flourished despite—or perhaps because of—the challenges of living with a chronic condition.

When health issues confined her to hospitals and home at age 23, Lila found herself transitioning from improvisational performance to structured composition. The internet became both her music school and lifeline, leading to collaborations with artists like Loraine James and Amnesia Scanner—relationships that began digitally before materializing in the physical world. This digital-first approach mirrors the themes in her work, particularly her fascination with David Cronenberg's Videodrome, which she references in her new album "Dream of Snakes."

What makes Lila's creative process so compelling is her transformation of limitation into innovation. She samples her own pulsating tinnitus, captures field recordings from hospital rooms, and builds intricate sonic collages without formal training. Though her aesthetic suggests urban futurism, she's found her creative sanctuary in the quiet Irish countryside, where nature and technology intertwine in unexpected ways.

Most striking is Lila's openness about navigating the music industry—from including special lighting requests in her rider to dealing with international promoters who expect her to play reggaeton simply because of her South American heritage.

If you’re enjoying Lost and Sound, please do subscribe and leave a rating or review on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you listen. It really helps to spread the word and support Lost and Sound.

Lila Tirando a Violeta on Instagram 

Listen/Buy Dream Of Snakes here

Follow me on Instagram at Paulhanford

Lost and Sound is sponsored by Audio-Technica

My BBC World Service radio documentary “The man who smuggled punk rock across the Berlin Wall” is available now on BBC Sounds. Click here to listen.

My book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culturet Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more. 

Lost and Sound title music by Thomas Giddins

Bartees Strange makes music that doesn’t sit still. One moment it’s soaring indie rock, the next it’s touched by soul, punk energy, or the weight of hip-hop—yet it all holds together in a way that feels completely his own. We sat down in a quiet Berlin hotel room to talk about the creative process behind his new album Horror, produced by Jack Antonoff and released on the iconic 4AD label.

Bartees doesn’t approach songwriting as a straight path. It’s more like piecing together different fragments until something unexpected clicks. “I might write five or six sections and not know they’re in the same song until I start plugging them into each other,” he said. That instinctive method pulls influence from across the board—Fleetwood Mac, Parliament, Burial, Neil Young—and filters it through a sound that’s urgent, intimate, and ever-shifting.

What stood out most in our conversation was his view on genre itself. For Bartees, it’s not just about music—it’s about identity, and how people are often encouraged to box themselves in. “Music is representative of people,” he told me. “And people separate themselves from each other because of all these things that don’t make sense. Through music, I can show people that all those things you thought were unique to you are also unique to them.” His work holds a quiet defiance, a kind of gentle political energy that moves through emotion rather than statement.

Before committing to music full-time, Bartees worked as deputy press secretary at the FCC under Obama. That experience brings a clear-eyed perspective to his writing—but it was never about strategy. “I tried not to do it. I got a job, I worked… but after a while, I was like I’d rather just not survive than not do what I want to do.” That sense of risk and necessity lives in every note.

If you’re enjoying Lost and Sound, please do subscribe and leave a rating or review on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you listen. It really helps to spread the word and support Lost and Sound.

Bartees Strange on Instagram 

Listen/Buy Horror by Bartees Strange here

Follow me on Instagram at Paulhanford

Lost and Sound is sponsored by Audio-Technica

My BBC World Service radio documentary “The man who smuggled punk rock across the Berlin Wall” is available now on BBC Sounds. Click here to listen.

My book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culturet Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more. 

Lost and Sound title music by Thomas Giddins

David Longstreth on Dirty Projectors, Orchestral Experimentation, and the Radical Psychedelia of Fatherhood

David Longstreth stands at a fascinating creative crossroads. For twenty years, he's been the driving force behind Dirty Projectors, crafting music that defies easy categorization while earning collaborations with icons like Björk, Rihanna, and Paul McCartney. Now, with his ambitious new orchestral song cycle "Song of the Earth," Longstreth explores our shifting relationship with nature while processing what he calls "the radical psychedelia of fatherhood."

Speaking from his California home studio (formerly a kitchen, before that a garage that "bloomed with mold"), Longstreth reveals how this project emerged from conversations with his longtime friend Andre de Ritter, conductor of the Berlin-based ensemble Stargaze. Drawing inspiration from Gustav Mahler's "Das Lied von der Erde," Longstreth initially set out to write nature poems, only to discover his feelings about the natural world had "gotten weird" – reflecting our collective anxiety about climate change.

The beauty of Longstreth's approach lies in his embrace of uncertainty. Throughout our conversation, he repeatedly describes putting himself in musical situations "beyond what I'm capable of," allowing the learning curve itself to become part of the creative process. This has been his method since recreating Black Flag's "Damaged" album from memory for Dirty Projectors‘ 2007 "Rise Above" (deliberately avoiding revisiting the original) through to this orchestral collaboration that marries environmental themes with deeply personal transformation.

Perhaps most captivating is Longstreth's description of how parenthood has fundamentally altered his perception. Watching his three-year-old daughter experience the world for the first time has made him question everything he knows, creating a profound sense of renewal that directly influences the emotional landscape of "Song of the Earth." Twenty years into his career, Longstreth has found a way to make music that feels simultaneously ambitious and intimate, political and personal – a rare achievement worth celebrating.

If you’re enjoying Lost and Sound, please do subscribe and leave a rating or review on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you listen. It really helps to spread the word and support Lost and Sound.

Dirty Projectors on Instagram 

Dirty Projectors Official Store

Follow me on Instagram at Paulhanford

Lost and Sound is sponsored by Audio-Technica

My BBC World Service radio documentary “The man who smuggled punk rock across the Berlin Wall” is available now on BBC Sounds. Click here to listen.

My book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culturet Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more. 

Lost and Sound title music by Thomas Giddins

Seamus Rawles Malliagh, better known as Iglooghost, is an artist who doesn’t just make electronic music—he builds entire worlds. His sound is hyper-detailed, bursting with surreal textures, and deeply tied to the mythologies he creates around it.

In this episode, we dive into how growing up in rural Dorset shaped his imagination, from childhood experiments with ley lines to the eerie, folklore-like atmosphere of empty landscapes. We also explore the making of his most recent album, Tidal Memory Exo, crafted during a five-year stint living near Thanet’s brutalist seafront. Immersed in what he calls “aesthetic ugliness”—concrete towers, decay, a nearby sewage plant—he channeled these surroundings into an intricate fictional narrative, where a storm isolates Thanet from the mainland, birthing underground music subcultures.

Iglooghost shares how discomfort and constraint fuel his creativity and how mythology plays a key role in his artistic process. Whether you’re deep into his sonic universe or discovering him for the first time, we get into one about how environment, storytelling, and electronic music collide.

If you’re enjoying Lost and Sound, please do subscribe and leave a rating or review on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you listen. It really helps to spread the word and support Lost and Sound.

Iglooghost on Instagram

Iglooghost on Bandcamp

Follow me on Instagram at Paulhanford

Lost and Sound is sponsored by Audio-Technica

My BBC World Service radio documentary “The man who smuggled punk rock across the Berlin Wall” is available now on BBC Sounds. Click here to listen.

My book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culturet Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more. 

Lost and Sound title music by Thomas Giddins

Étienne de Crécy is one of the architects of the French Touch movement—those lush, filter-heavy grooves that shaped house music in the ‘90s, right alongside acts like Daft Punk, Air, and Alex Gopher. But his journey didn’t start in the clubs. Before electronic music, he was a punk bassist, navigating Parisian record shops that looked down on house music before the scene exploded worldwide.

In this conversation, Étienne reflects on three decades of pushing electronic music forward, from his groundbreaking Super Discount series to his latest album, Warm Up. This new record marks a shift—more organic, more vocal-driven, and carrying a double meaning: a reference to its sound, but also a nod to the global moment we’re in. “We are just at the warm-up… for the climate, for politics.”

We talk about his creative process, his mathematical approach to composition, and why he avoids the easy route of plugins in favor of crate-digging for samples. Plus, the story of how he unearthed a long-lost collaboration with Damon Albarn, recorded twenty years ago and now perfectly fitting Warm Up’s aesthetic.

As electronic music culture shifts—where younger generations lean into harder, faster sounds—Étienne remains committed to a philosophy: “What I’m learning is to stay simple and to be amazed by simple things.”

If you’re enjoying Lost and Sound, please do subscribe and leave a rating or review on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you listen. It really helps to spread the word and support Lost and Sound.

Étienne de Crécy on Instagram

Warm Up Listen/Buy

Follow me on Instagram at Paulhanford

Lost and Sound is sponsored by Audio-Technica

My BBC World Service radio documentary “The man who smuggled punk rock across the Berlin Wall” is available now on BBC Sounds. Click here to listen.

My book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culturet Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more. 

Lost and Sound title music by Thomas Giddins

Loraine James is one of the most forward-thinking artists in electronic music today. Her sound is instinctive, fluid, and deeply personal—whether she’s crafting glitchy, jazz-infused beats, bending genre expectations on Hyperdub, or exploring mood and texture through her Whatever the Weather project.

In this episode of Lost and Sound, Loraine talks about her approach to making music without rigid plans, letting emotion and instinct guide the process. She shares insights into the creative freedom that shapes her work, from improvisation to embracing imperfections in her own way. We also dive into the personal themes in her music, including the deeply moving 2003, a track that reflects on loss and memory.

With a new Whatever The Weather album out now on Ghostly International, Loraine talks about the balance between control and spontaneity, how she navigates external expectations without compromising her sound, and why she’s never been interested in fitting into any one scene. Thoughtful, open, and refreshingly down-to-earth, I feel we got a rare look into the mindset of an artist constantly pushing her own boundaries.

If you’re enjoying Lost and Sound, please do subscribe and leave a rating or review on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you listen. It really helps to spread the word and support Lost and Sound.

Loraine James on Instagram

Whatever The Weather on Bandcamp

Follow me on Instagram at Paulhanford

Lost and Sound is sponsored by Audio-Technica

My BBC World Service radio documentary “The man who smuggled punk rock across the Berlin Wall” is available now on BBC Sounds. Click here to listen.

My book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culturet Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more. 

Lost and Sound title music by Thomas Giddins

What happens when music becomes so deeply personal that it reshapes the course of your life? Kali Malone joins me to explore this through the lens of The Sacrificial Code, the album that transformed her from an underground experimentalist into one of contemporary composition’s most vital voices.

Malone’s approach to the organ exists in a liminal space—both ancient and futuristic. She explains how recording on a 16th-century instrument for the album’s reissue created radically new interpretations despite the composition remaining unchanged: “The music is strictly composed, but the registration and delivery change its identity so much.” You could read it as a poetic parallel to human evolution—our core essence intact, yet constantly shifting.

We dive into the tension between intuition and discipline, a defining force in her work. In an era of relentless digital noise, Malone advocates for silence as a creative act: “Remove all the layers and all the noise, and you’ll slowly start to hear what you feel, what you want, what you believe in.” It’s a philosophy that resonates far beyond music, speaking to anyone searching for artistic clarity.

From Colorado’s DIY punk scenes to Stockholm’s experimental avant-garde, Malone’s journey reveals the role of artistic communities in shaping sound. Her deep collaborations with Caterina Barbieri and Maria W Horn (both previous guests on Lost and Sound) highlight how musical friendships create “secret languages” that transcend time, breaking down artificial boundaries between traditions.

And when asked what she’d tell her younger self? Without hesitation: “You’re not crazy.” A simple but powerful affirmation for anyone carving their own path—where instinct often feels irrational but, in the end, is the most honest route forward.

If you’re enjoying Lost and Sound, please do subscribe and leave a rating or review on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you listen. It really helps to spread the word and support Lost and Sound.

Kali Malone on Instagram

The Sacrificial Code pre-order on Bandcamp

Follow me on Instagram at Paulhanford

Lost and Sound is sponsored by Audio-Technica

My BBC World Service radio documentary “The man who smuggled punk rock across the Berlin Wall” is available now on BBC Sounds. Click here to listen.

My book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culturet Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more. 

Lost and Sound title music by Thomas Giddins

Tesfa Williams has been shaping the sound of UK underground music for over two decades. From his early days as Dread D in the Black Ops crew—helping define the sublow sound that fed into grime—to becoming a key figure in UK funky, his journey has always been about pushing bass culture forward.

In this episode of Lost and Sound, Tesfa breaks down the evolution of UK club music, from jungle and garage to grime and beyond. We talk about his early days in West London’s underground scene, the impact of pirate radio, and the industry challenges facing electronic artists today. He also shares the motivations behind his recent name change and how it connects to identity, culture, and artistic evolution.

We also get deep into his latest album, Raves of Future Past—a record that bridges the past and future of UK bass with Tesfa’s signature blend of raw energy and deep musicality. Plus, we explore the fragmentation of today’s music landscape, the struggle for meaningful connection in a digital world, and the importance of community and reclaiming spaces for underground music.

This is an essential listen for anyone passionate about UK club culture, sound system lineage, and the future of bass-driven music.

If you’re enjoying Lost and Sound, please do subscribe and leave a rating or review on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you listen. It really helps to spread the word and support Lost and Sound.

Tesfa Williams on Instagram

Beyond Today EP by Tesfa Williams is available now on Heist Recordings, Bandcamp.

Follow me on Instagram at Paulhanford

Lost and Sound is sponsored by Audio-Technica

My BBC World Service radio documentary “The man who smuggled punk rock across the Berlin Wall” is available now on BBC Sounds. Click here to listen.

My book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culturet Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more. 

Lost and Sound title music by Thomas Giddins