With his new London Town EP on Aespheric, Rkay documents a place that raised him and he does it all through driving, hypnotic techno with a touch of personal visualization via the album’s artwork. Each track on the six-song release is tied to a physical location and a personal experience.
Rkay’s own black-and-white photography marks the cover of the work, shot across the city over five months of wandering with an Olympus camera in hand. It’s a full-circle project that connects the dots between architecture, rave culture, personal growth, and underground sound.
There’s tension in these tracks, but also movement—and a quiet pride in capturing London as it really is.
You hear it in the weight of the kicks, the flickers of emotion between buildups, the patience it takes to build atmosphere that actually lands. It’s not trying to do too much. It’s trying to do one thing well—and it does.
In this conversation, the London-based artist opens up about what it means to keep your identity whole while pursuing music seriously, how working in building conservation has sharpened his perspective, and why film photography has become his favorite reset when music isn’t enough. Whether you’ve walked the same streets or not, London Town has a way of pulling you in—and this interview gives it even more weight.
How do you make space for your identity outside of music?
To be honest, I don’t ever think about making space for my identity outside of music. Because music is only a part of me just like everything else that makes me whole.
As much as I love it and as much as it is involved in my everyday life, I also have a career, my family, childhood friends and other hobbies that I split between the time I have so really, I don’t need to make space. I will say however that people who know me may agree that music is the biggest part of my personality.
What parts of your life feed your creativity in the studio—even if they’re not creative?
Unironically, this was a very hard question to answer because it’s everyday life that can spark that match to enable me to come up with an idea to produce something, so there’s a lot of answers to this.
But I’d say the main ones are the environment where I’ve lived/grown up, my experiences of partying, going to gigs and how I see our society in the future. When I say partying, I mean the way everyone slowly drifts away from reality and we almost form our own along the night. It’s an amazing experience where everyone is deep in the music and we’re all dancing our lives away.
However, it’s not necessarily just the music that sticks in my head after a night out—it’s the whole atmosphere; from the flashing strobes, people’s arms in the air, screaming voices of excitement and smoke machines that I will try and replicate into a song I’m writing. This is a big reason why my newer productions have more of an atmospheric driving energy towards them.
Have you ever felt like your art was your entire identity?
Never.
Although it’s a massive part of who I am, I’m conscious to not lead on my art if it’s not really the subject—especially when I’m meeting new people. Reason being is that I’m just an ordinary dude who happens to indulge himself in creating music almost every day (yes, every day haha).
Even if I’m not exactly writing music, I’m doing a lot of listening and mixdowns, so when it comes to life outside of sitting in front of Logic Pro X I try not to tie those two together as hard as I may want to.
This isn’t me saying I don’t like talking or thinking about my art because I absolutely do—especially when I get asked about it—I just think you have to make room for everything that’s important to you in life and know when it’s the right time to bring things up and when it’s not.
What helps you stay grounded when things feel too tied to music?
To be honest I don’t think I’ve ever had this problem.
Music really is a lot of my life and I’m not just talking about my own productions. It’s influenced me so much in a positive way that things have never been too tied to it.
After all, a lot of the times I go out is to listen to music that I actually enjoy, commute to work listening to the music I enjoy, make the music I enjoy—and ultimately, it’s shifted me to just enjoy my life.
Even if other aspects of my life aren’t so positive, I can always count on music to somehow lighten my mood. I don’t think I’ll ever feel too tied to music, especially where I work in the construction industry for my career. I think it’s a good balance between the two so that things don’t get too tied to music.
What’s something you do regularly that keeps you feeling whole?
My job, to be honest. I work in building conservation, so it’s the likes of restoring old structures such as churches, monuments and listed buildings back to life whilst still preserving their history.
Much like techno, I think it’s mandatory that people involved in the music (whether they’re techno activists, go clubbing regularly or contribute to the art in some way) know where the roots of this music originated from.
So the two relate to each other in that sense, and it feels good knowing I’m helping to preserve this country’s history by restoring some of its very old buildings.
How do your relationships benefit your music—and vice versa?
I’ve always listened to electronic music. However, before avidly taking techno seriously—by researching how this all came up and going to events/parties—I used to be pretty closed-minded.
This would typically make me not understand other people’s feelings easily as well as why they thought a different way as I did. Looking back, this didn’t come across well at all and kind of held me back with different types of relationships. Now that I’m deep in 4×4 music and everything that comes with it, it’s opened my mind and made me more of an understanding person. As for the other way around, just connecting with people through going to parties and events has broadened my view on music as well as inspired me to make more.
A lot of my music taste has been influenced through others, and honestly, if it wasn’t for the people I’ve met in my life, I’d have a very different music taste.
What do you come back to when music isn’t enough?
Photography. I’ve recently picked up shooting on film and I’m in love with it. If I ever feel like there’s a void in my life, I pick up my Olympus OM1 and go out to London and start shooting pics.
The feeling of getting back your developed negatives from the lab and flicking through the photos—remembering when and where you shot that particular picture and how it differs from real life to a still image—is amazing. It’s the reason why I decided to shoot the photos for the London Town EP, as I wanted to convey how I saw my hometown through my eyes.
I’ve decided when I have more spare time to venture out through England and explore more areas with my Olympus—maybe even take some colour photos instead of all of them being black and white.
The post How Photography, Construction, and Techno All Shape Rkay’s Sound appeared first on Magnetic Magazine.