Reaching New Heights With Krista Bourgeois

Reaching New Heights With Krista Bourgeois

Unconventional methods have shaped Krista's output. Her industrial soundscapes often degrade into raw and dystopian textures. As a producer and DJ, she simply works to challenge herself, her audience, and the status quo. OBSKUR MUSIC, TRUANT.J, and Soma Records are among the record labels that champion her discography.

2022 Progress and Entrepreneurial Ventures

Thank you for having me! 2022 has been a bit busy musically as I moved to Berlin in the fall of 2021 so finally getting settled and working on music again has been really nice. So far this year I've been fortunate to play a couple of gigs in Europe and also released two remixes while I've been working on a full-length EP behind the scenes.

Business-wise, it's been quite a bit of paperwork and red tape to start a small business in Germany as an ex-pat so it was a long journey to get the legal stuff sorted, but my partner and I recently had our business license approved, and can start brainstorming for the future of the label now which is a huge weight lifted and really exciting.

Building Community Through Residencies

I appreciate that, thank you! I'm a "long-distance resident" now since I'm on the other side of the pond but Tenth Aesthetic is still my family and I'm grateful to have connected with such a supportive crew early on in my career.

My advice for getting a residency or being invited to join a DJ crew is to really first research and then involve yourself in the community you want to be a part of. I think "spending the time out at shows and even online supporting events helps you connect with the folks within the scene."

I think that forming those relationships is really essential in all aspects of the music world and especially with DJ crews because you are working and interacting really closely with a group of other people and it's important that you all mesh together well.

Somnium Recordings: Vision and Mission

A few years ago my partner and I went to a really amazing and over-the-top audio-visual performance and that sort of sparked the drive to create our own version of that. We spent the pandemic performing live streams with audio-reactive visuals and eventually took the performance to some warehouses in LA. That then grew into the idea of creating a platform that joins visuals with techno spanning a label, audio visual podcast, and eventual live shows. We are still in the early planning phases of it but hope to launch the label in 2023.

Besides the audio-visual aspect, I want to create a platform that "focuses on female, gender non-conforming, and queer individuals as there is a big imbalance in opportunities in the music scene."

The name Somnium comes from the science fiction novel of the same name. The word itself means "dream" or "vision" which really resonated with our idea for the label.

Musical Influences and Sound

I spent my teen years really into heavy metal and eventually found myself listening to harder styles of electronic music after being introduced to raves when I was 16. I slowly gravitated into the house scene and eventually ended up really invested in the harder techno scene.

Once I went to my first industrial techno show, something just clicked in my head and I knew that was what I wanted to make and DJ. I think "I've always sought out intense music that can help me cope with my mental health stuff and there's just something about really aggressive music that is cathartic."

Remix Process for "Draconic Cycle"

For this remix, I wanted to keep a lot of the percussion and the bpm the same because it's already a driving and intense track and that's right up my alley. My first step was to add some processing to the kick to add a bit more punch to it and then sort out the percussion. That's my usual process for producing in general, I lay out the percussion first and create a rough arrangement. Then, I usually have a library of sounds I've recorded whether in the box in Ableton or with my modular and then I see if any of them fit the vibe I'm going for in the track.

With 3SBAT's track, I used a few of the vocal FX samples and used that as a base to build other sounds around. I think "this was the most fun I've had remixing a track because the stems from the original track were already so good."

Upcoming Projects

I'm 99% finished with my next EP so that should be released sometime this year. I'm also hoping to finalize the debut EP for Somnium and I'll be coming back to the States sometime in the fall to do a run of gigs as well if all goes as planned!