A couple of weeks ago I had the chance to interview my friend Sophie, otherwise known as Swaya, on her way home from Seltzer Sounds in Brooklyn, where she’s currently working as an audio and mixing engineer. One of the most devoted and multi-talented humans I know, in the past few years Sophie has made waves DJing in Montreal, hosting CKUT’s Venus Radio, engineering and mixing staple Boston rapper Michael Christmas’s upcoming album, and producing an incredibly diverse catalogue of music.

Her output ranges from Baile Funk-influenced edits to ear-soothing ambient tracks, from crying-at-the-club dance mixes to experimental, genre-defying DIY pieces. Swaya released the EP “23” in 2019, a visceral, fast-paced 4-track project accompanied by one of the best merch drops in recent memory. This year she’s put out another collaborative EP with DJ Pacifier titled “Such Relaxation,” and a 2-track project with Valeda called “I looked for you in the water but saw myself.” Most recently, she produced NYC rapper Babyxsosa’s ethereal new single, “WYA/Difference Between.”

Given all of these achievements, I am that much more grateful to Sophie for agreeing to a different type of interview. Although we touched on her process and mindset when she made, “23,” this interview is not guided by any completed work, nor is it in service of any type of project roll-out.

Beyond being an extremely talented and hard-working artist, Sophie is, and has been for all the years that I’ve known her, an exceptionally humble, reflective, and deep-thinking person. She is someone who’s been in a fascinating variety of creative and organizing spaces, and she’s someone who I personally am always learning from. Here, she’s been generous enough to publicize some of her insights, experiences, and struggles with creativity, artist identity, individualism, engineering, and life in the music industry; all from the candid and relatable space of pandemic uncertainty.

Interview below has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Tal from Also Cool: I know you’ve been doing a lot of engineering and mixing the past couple of years, and you’re personally between projects right now. How do you feel like engineering professionally has affected the way you hear your old music?

Swaya: Listening to my old music, I’ll have moments when I think ‘yea this is cool,’ but I feel like my parameters and my assessment of what’s good are always changing over time, so I’ll be inspired by something new, then my old shit might sound kind of weak. It’s also happened to me consistently since I started engineering and being around people in the studio that I’ll have moments where I think my music is too weird or too dissonant or too busy, which is not necessarily something that I actually believe; it’s just a feeling I’ll have for a sense of time. I don’t have any regrets about making that music though. I’m proud of it, I just don’t feel that attached to it at the current moment.

Tal: How distinct do you feel your mindset as an artist is versus your mindset as an engineer? 

Swaya: Well I think in engineering you’re obviously working for someone else. As an engineer, I show up and I’m trying to listen to the artist and see the track kind of unfold. I want to let things happen and be as little in the way as possible and also as anticipatory as possible, so I can get the right sound in the moment. 

When it’s just me, it depends on the context. Recently I’ve been feeling like my process isn’t always happening in the flow of the moment. It’s something I’m still figuring out. For a while I was trying to be disciplined and focused about it and make at least one beat every day, but I’ve stopped that. I’m trying to make music more often now, but not from such a disciplined mindset. 

Tal: What did you feel was holding you back when you were trying to make a beat a day? Why are you not into that now?

Swaya: I’m too exhausted right now. Like I literally can’t. I feel like I can’t force it. I made beats yesterday because I smoked some weed, that’s what helped me do it. I’ve been having conversations with people recently about consciously smoking weed to reduce anxiety around making music. Like doing it thoughtfully. It reminds me of when I used to be getting ready for bed and I would take a long time washing my face or painting my nails before bed. Doing these activities that are caring for yourself before you sleep, then, when it’s time to sleep, you feel able to relax. I’m trying to take a moment to hesitate and actually feel like I want to be creative before I make music. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about hesitation, not diving into things or pushing through. With the pandemic and being alone for so long, I’ve realized how negatively just diving into shit impacts me. When I was mixing that album for Michael [Christmas], I had to stop myself because I would just lose time doing shit that wasn’t doing anything.

Tal: Hesitation is a really interesting way to frame a process. When you talk about self-care before going to bed, it makes me think of ritual. The idea of practicing something that is taking you into a new state.

Swaya: Yea! I think because I’m “in the industry” in this specific way, it can be hard to have this ritualistic way of making music. When you’re so in it, as a job, as something you do, as part of your identity, like a career, it can really take the ritual out of it, you know. 

Tal: Yea there’s something that feels maybe paradoxical about working a career in art. On one hand, art is self-expression and it’s felt and personal, but then art also exists as a career path and an industry. What has your experience been like trying to navigate the tension of working in industry as an engineer and also trying to find a way to still make your art and still express yourself?

Swaya: Well, there were already aspects of my personality that made me feel like I would be a good engineer. I can be overly empathetic and I can prioritize other people’s needs, so I'm a good person to have working on your behalf, you know? So knowing that about myself made me think I’d be good as an engineer, but it also makes my identity as an artist feel a little shaky sometimes. I’m constantly questioning my work, and it can be easily shaken up by my surroundings. When I was in the studio last year, I felt like I wasn’t really that understood. It improved my abilities obviously, like how to mix stuff, sound design, having access to resources and knowledge, but it did make me question what ‘my thing’ was. 

Tal: It’s interesting to hear you say that. It sounds like your empathy and collaborative spirit, which are qualities that make you a good engineer, kind of got into tension with this idea of having ‘your thing’ as an artist. It makes me wonder, to what degree is being an artist individualistic? Does each artist need to have their own ‘thing’ in an individual, possessive kind of way?

Swaya: Exactly, and that’s my point. I’m a very community based person. When I was in Montreal, I had a community, and I had music that I understood as being part of me and also part of a broader scene. Going into a space without that shook my foundation in some ways. The impulse when you lose that community is to fall back on the individual, and wonder what’s my identity as an artist? I don’t know if that’s really necessary.

Tal: It’s so late capitalism to suffer from lack of collective care and then put that blame all on yourself, right? Isn’t that the capitalist condition? 

Swaya: Exactly!

Tal: Do you think differently about your solo releases than you do the collaborative work you’ve put out?

Swaya: It all feels part of the same thread. The 23 EP for me was different because it was a lot of dance music, as opposed to the more weird, experimental hybrid shit I was doing before. I really made that whole album alone in my basement in Boston. Being alone made me think of nightclub spaces because I was reflecting on my time in Montreal. I spent so much time there, and it was so formative for me. Then, because I was back at my parents’ house, which was such a drastic shift, I think I felt a profound absence on a lot of levels.

In terms of my life and friends, but also in terms of the identity and sense of self that I’d developed and grown into over time. I find that my sense of self is very bound up in my relationships with other people, so moving actually made it really hard to feel that self. That’s not so much what I was thinking about when I made 23, but that’s what I was going through while I was making it. 

Tal: So how has your relationship to creativity and making music changed during coronavirus and the social uprising we’re seeing around the US?

Swaya: I will say for me, honestly, the pandemic has been an important time to evaluate my ego, to evaluate what I think I deserve, and what I actually contribute. Then, when the George Floyd protests started, for me, making music was not a priority at all. I’m still navigating what it means to bring my abolitionist ideas and politics into my work as a musician, but my immediate idea was that that space was less important than what’s going on in the street. That’s where my attention went, that’s why I got into doing the mutual aid work.

Tal: Right, so where are you at with bringing your politics into your artistry? Or how are you thinking about that question?

Swaya: I’m thinking about it more on the community scene level. There are huge problems with the industry, which isn’t sustainable or profitable for anyone. The people who are able to work the way I do often get their start because they have class privilege, access to resources, that sort of stuff. I mean, there are lots of questions I have for myself about what it means to be working with rappers, what it means to be a white person in this space. And I think part of why I talk about abolition is that I’m not really looking for band-aid or charitable solutions, I’m looking for real shifts, you know? 

Tal: As someone who’s working as an engineer in these industry spaces and has experience as an artist too, what are some things you’ve learned or experienced about the music industry that you think people outside maybe don’t know about or don’t think about?

Swaya: Well, the industry is so unprofessional. I just didn’t know that you can be the biggest producer, the biggest engineer, whatever, and you still might not get paid. You know what I mean? It could be a project with a huge artist. There’s no protection built in. I think what we’re learning -- and why I appreciate bandcamp, the electronic scene, and the people around me -- is that a lot of the positions we have in the industry exist to put money that comes from your music into other people’s pockets.

Because I’m just an engineer and I mostly function in underground scenes, I’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg. But, in my experience working with other people and seeing other people I know work with labels and booking agents and that sort of stuff, honestly, DIY and community-based work can often be more transparent and actually help you make more money.

Back when I was still DJing, there were big events with big headliners that I did where I got paid less than I did DJing like an underground rave. It was pretty surprising to be paid less to perform at big events run by organizations with resources, opening for big headliners, than I was for playing my friends’ rave at an underground space like Cyberia. I think people don't realize that big corporations and nonprofits pay so little like that.

Tal: Something we’ve talked about in the past that I wanted to ask about here is social media use and social media brand for an artist. As someone who’s not aggressively marketing yourself through social media, have you felt like that’s affected your experience in the studio or other professional spaces outside of Montreal?

Swaya: Yea definitely. I find it frustrating that whenever I show any hesitance or disdain for using social media to brand myself, people take that as me not wanting to be a serious artist. 

Tal: Can you expand on that? Why do you make that choice for yourself, and how have people perceived it?

Swaya: With all the changes I’ve gone through, I haven’t felt the energy or desire to promote myself in that way. That may change, but in the context of the studio, my resounding feeling has been that people take it like being lowkey on social media or not aggressively promoting yourself means that you’re not serious about music, which is really frustrating. I’ve sometimes felt like I was less respected than other people in the room because I wasn’t doing quite the same thing. I don’t have anything against social media, I really think that it’s a great tool. I just wish sometimes that people would do more to interpret what’s actually going on in the room in the moment. My issue is really with the disrespect. 

When artists who I haven’t met yet hit me up, the way I originally meet them is through their social media, but what I’ve learned is that that doesn’t correlate to them as an artist, or how they treat you. It can be interesting: someone who seems like a random person who isn’t doing too much can be a super talented artist. Also, what goes on in the studio can be really removed from what goes on in social media; there are all kinds of moments and things that happen in the process of making the music that no one is ever going to see. All these people who are involved that no one else is gonna know were involved. There are all kinds of people who have worked with big artists, or are integral to the music scene that stay out of sight.

Tal: Like engineers and songwriters?

Swaya: Yea, but also homies. I feel like people can come up by being in the spaces and knowing people, or they can come up on social media. And there are differences.

Tal: Talking about all the people behind the scenes who go uncredited, the illusions of how an artist comes up alone, and hearing about all the people who are actually involved in that, it does seem to reinforce this idea that music-making is inevitably social and communal, even if that can be masked.

Swaya: Hell yea. Definitely, I agree. And there are lots of people who come up with each other and credit each other, and there are also lots of people who are intimately involved in the process who don’t necessarily want to be in the limelight. These things can exist at once.

Tal: What are some ideas or conversations you’ve been a part of that give you hope or optimism for life in the music industry?

Swaya: I’m still searching for answers on a lot of fronts. But, for example, we were in the studio the other day talking about different label deals; there was an artist in there who had some interest from people trying to sign her, and Tony [Seltzer] and I were talking about how when you have new artists who are starting to build a name for themselves, it’s so important to give them guidance, to give them a sense of what their options are. Because the industry won’t give them that. The ability to provide guidance and knowledge and resources is really important and useful.

On the other side of things, one thing that makes me feel hope is Bandcamp. It’s not anything radical at this point, but it’s nice seeing people I know deciding they don’t need a label, and they can put their shit out themselves and get some money directly. When I think about the radical possibilities of music, I think about music no longer being a commodity, but that gets a little heady and hard to think about at this time. When music isn’t a commodity, I mean, I don’t know if that’s possible. Those of us who are white or non-Black, isn’t our relationship to dance music or hip hop always commodifying? You know, I don’t know. 

But ultimately the strength that I’ve been finding is in community, always. Coming back to that, trying to build that here in a new space with new people. 

Tal: Are there any artists or other people in your life who you want to shout out or give thanks to while we’re here talking about community, and we have this platform?

Swaya: I’m shocked I haven’t mentioned this already, but earlier in the pandemic, me and a couple friends reached out to each other - it happened kind of simultaneously - and we decided to form a little group. We had all been thinking of forming a collective, not a front-facing one, like a brand, but an inward facing one, sort of an internal support network of people who work in music. So we’ve been meeting sporadically, talking through insecurities, talking through industry, talking through all sorts of issues that we face. That’s been really grounding for me and much needed, so huge shout out to them: D-Grade, Remote Access, DJ Pacifier, Mvcoko.

I want more people to listen to Valeda’s music since it’s so good. I’ve been enjoying keeping in touch with homies like Tati Au Miel and LUNÁTICA, who make amazing music. In terms of rappers I would say Harocaz, who’s in Boston and has great songs. My friend GIB DJ, he’s an amazing producer from Boston. We started having zoom hangouts and playing beats with each other, and we’d call out and invite other people to come. There were some great people involved in that, like my friend Magella who’s a great musician from Montreal and my friend Lucas, whose artist name is Jamesboy.

Also huge shout out to John Scott at Phoenix Down for giving me a chance to intern at your studio and learn essentially everything I now know about audio engineering. Shout out to the other Phoenix homies as well. Shout out to Tony Seltzer, for being really helpful and supportive and cool welcoming me into his space. Finally, shoutout to my friends and roommates who’ve supported me, Cecilia, Michelle, Marie, you.