Italian producer and multi-instrumentalist Mouth Water has been busy.
After performing at Primavera Sound in Barcelona, opening for Röyksopp, and turning heads with remixes by Lindstrøm, he returns with a new single titled “Smoke.” Out now via Through The Void Records, the track blurs the line between dream-pop and synth-pop, weaving delicate nostalgia into a sleek, modern soundscape.
“Smoke” tells the story of escape and identity through lush synths, mid-tempo percussion, and vocals processed into vapor. It’s a hypnotic track with a melancholic undercurrent, but also one that reveals a producer at peace with contradiction—melody and mood, clarity and haze. That duality echoes Mouth Water’s larger ethos: the tension between mastery and curiosity.
We caught up with Mouth Water to talk about unlearning bad habits, why he’s revisiting old gear with new perspective, and how working with a beginner changed everything.
How do you keep learning when you’ve been doing this a long time?
When it comes to music and technology, the amount of learning is not only endless, but is constantly expanding. So when I feel I’ve mastered or at least become pretty good in a certain area, whether it’s regarding music theory, sound engineering or a new piece of gear, I move on to the next thing that interests me the most.
I then try to dive as deep as possible into it spending hours or days learning it inside and out. It’s kind of frustrating because I struggle every week to make time for this, but it’s never even close to enough.
Sometimes however learning comes more naturally just from making music with someone with a different skillset or workflow from your own, but you have to be open to trying out their different ideas and approaches.
What’s something you’ve relearned recently?
A couple of years ago, I decided to finally learn everything my old Korg MS20 could do, since it was sitting on my shelf collecting dust. I went really deep into it, and even got creative and came up with some unusual applications, but then didn’t use it for a long time. When I decided I needed its quirks in my new album, I realized I forgot a lot about its operation, so I dedicated a whole afternoon just to go through it and relearn it all over again. Now its operation is a little more ingrained into my brain but I still need to keep using it for it to stay fresh.
Have you ever unlearned something that was holding you back?
Sure, sometimes bad advice from long ago becomes your modus operandi and you don’t even realize it’s holding you back until someone points it out or you have one of those eye opening moments on your own. That’s when you realize you need to make a change. One thing that comes to mind is the lesson someone once gave me that all elements in mix should be clearly and equally audible.
It sort of made sense back then because I was very inexperienced. Now I can get a much more dynamic mix by burying some elements, and having others stick out. I’m not a fan of rules anyways, not even the ones that seem to be genre defining.
How do you stay open to being wrong?
If you mean happy accidents, I embrace those all the time if they sound interesting as soon as I realize I’ve made them. This also means I always take a few days off before re-listening to a certain production of mine, this way I can assess with fresh ears if it works or not and if I still like it.
If I don’t, I’m not afraid to scrap it and start over or at least rework the parts that aren’t doing it for me. The realization of being wrong sometimes also comes from other people’s feedback, which can be hard to swallow if you’re proud, but I usually accept it, sometimes even when I shouldn’t.
When’s the last time a beginner taught you something?
Probably when I worked with this inexperienced singer who played no instruments, never studied music theory and had no knowledge of song structure. She would come up with these great but odd and incongruent song sections, or repeat the verses, but change the words on choruses, and other unusual practices.
My first instinct was to correct her and make everything as you would expect in a song, but then I realized I could embrace that lack of squareness to create something out of the box and more original. It paid off in the end.
Do you ever revisit old tools or techniques with fresh perspective?
Sure, I have a lot of gear which I use often, but I never took the time to learn it properly. Then someone may ask me to do something with that tool that I hadn’t even thought was possible, and sometimes I realize it’s capable of that and more. So I decide to study it to extract its full potential.
What helps you stay humble in your process?
I think there is a fine line between being humble and being insecure. I used to be insecure and accept all criticism from anyone, which was a good and bad thing, it helped me improve, but it also deviated my productions based on others’ personal taste. Now I’ve learned to trust my instincts while still staying open to critique from people who understand my vision or challenge me in thoughtful ways.
Also, the process itself keeps me humble: no matter how many tracks I finish, there’s always something that doesn’t sound like I imagined. So until I can transform everything in my mind exactly into the sound waves I envision, I must keep learning, especially from those who I look up to.
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