The vaunted techno producer discusses the connections between visual art and music, balancing a full-time career as a fine artist and how he creates his signature sound.

There's a connection between visual art and dance music that's seldom explored on our channels. Mike Parker is well known in the underground techno scene for minimal, hypnotic and beautifully executed sound design that sits somewhere at the edges of club music. But he also received his master's degree in fine art and teaches drawing and painting at Daemon University in Buffalo, New York. Fans of Parker will recognise his visual trademark: monochromatic prints that adorn the covers of the records he puts out on his label, Geophone.

In this RA Exchange, Parker sits down with Chloe Lula to talk about how he balances his art- and music-making practices and how they inform each other. He also opens up about the long process of sticking to his sound and finding an audience rather than catering to the demands and suggestions of labels and distributors. His 2001 breakout album, Dispatches—which he reissued last year—is a meditation on the act of living far away from any listeners or immediate influences, and he discusses the ongoing drawbacks and rewards of balancing the Eurocentric pursuit of DJing with day-to-day work that's so geographically removed. He also opens up about his longtime collaboration with Donato Dozzy, his love of mid-20th-century sci-fi movies and how free-form radio shaped his approach to music and art. Listen to the episode in full.

EX.761 Mike Parker

Producer & DJ based In Berlin.
1/3 of @ungesund_bln
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Producing Techno, Ambient & nerdy Sound Design things. 
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Requests & Bookings
music.elias@pm.me

Organizer and DJ at @SEQUENCEDC

Booking inquiries: degeneratedc (at) gmail.com

A perfectionist curator of modern techno, Ron Jackson is known for his uniquely-crafted sets and linear rhythmic grooves and the mastermind behind SEQUENCE, the Washington, DC based underground techno party that has elevated the local scene to world-class status. 

Ron Jackson has booked and played alongside the likes of Cell Injection (Drumcell & Audio Injection/Truncate), Marcel Dettmann, Zenker Brothers, Takaaki Itoh, Wata Igarashi, STERAC, The Gods Planet, Recondite, Developer, and many more.

Mike Hall aka Wave Funktion is a Bristol based music producer and DJ. As a teen growing up in Liverpool during the late '80s and '90s, the emerging UK rave scene kicked off a lifelong passion in House and Techno. After relocating to Bristol and becoming a serious vinyl addict he began DJing at many underground nights around the city. Dabbling in music production through borrowing friends' studios and synths led to him eventually setting up a small home studio and getting heavily into sound design and electronic music production.

EX.761 Mike Parker

Resident Advisor