It’s no secret that the majority of the electronic music we hear in 2025 is made on a laptop. It’s easy to see why: working solely with a DAW and plugins is fast, convenient and more affordable than running a hardware-based set-up, and everyone from bedroom producers to Grammy-winning engineers have wholly embraced the accessibility of software, along with its near-limitless creative potential. But when we go completely in-the-box, do we sacrifice something in the process?
The answer to that question can be heard in the music of Ela Minus, a hardware-obsessed electronic musician that makes an irrefutable case for the necessity of knobs, buttons and analogue oscillators. Minus’ debut album Acts of Rebellion was composed with a rigorous commitment to recording “live electronic music” - an assortment of synths and drum machines were recorded with no edits, no overdubs, and no in-the-box processing - and while its follow-up, this year’s DÍA, saw the artist adopt a more flexible approach that allowed for a handful of effects plugins and some DAW-based editing, Minus remains a hardware devotee. Like the sound of her chosen machines, Minus’ music is raw, direct and at times unpredictable: it’s the musical antithesis of arranging Splice loops on the Ableton timeline.
Hailing from Colombia, Minus - whose real name is Gabriela Jimeno Caldas - started out drumming in hardcore bands, before departing for the US to study jazz drums at a prestigious music college. There, she chanced upon a course in synthesis that opened up a new perspective on the potential of electronic music and sparked a fascination with the technology used to make it. Minus immersed herself in coding and electronics, periodically breaking open gear to gain a deeper understanding of its inner workings, before landing a gig at Critter & Guitari, a boutique synth-maker best known for the cute-but-powerful Organelle, an instrument that Minus helped to design.
Minus’ aforementioned debut landed in 2020, but where that project was centred on its titular concept of rebellion, both personal and political, DÍA looks further inwards, with track titles like I WANT TO BE BETTER, and the triptych of ONWARDS AND UPWARDS, making Minus’ intentions clear. DÍA is a document of personal growth - “I’d love to save you, but I’ve got to save myself first,” Minus sings over a deafening Microkorg bassline on UPWARDS - recorded during a tumultuous period that saw the previously Brooklyn-based artist bouncing between hotel rooms and rented studios across both sides of the Atlantic, wrestling with the pressure of a follow-up to her well-received first album.
Though its message is empowering, DÍA's mood is mercurial and its sonic palette steadfastly abrasive, all scorched fuzz and distorted textures. Vocals are driven red-hot through pedals and synths are brutally crushed by compressors, as Minus displays a punkish disregard for the polish of conventional recording techniques; while the record was largely self-produced, its final mix and master came courtesy of engineers-of-the-moment Marta Salogni and Heba Kadry, a duo that also worked on Acts of Rebellion.
DÍA's anthemic, soul-searching synth-punk lands somewhere in the centre of a Venn diagram shared by Kraftwerk, The Knife, Floating Points and Fugazi, and though many of the album's tracks have techno in their DNA - BPMs are high, kick drums are loud and unyielding, and basslines play a starring role - this isn’t just music to dance to: Minus’ arsenal of wall-shaking synths is a vehicle for self-discovery, not only moving our feet, but moving us, too.
We caught up with Ela Minus following DÍA's release to find out more about how the record was made.
You started out as a drummer but later moved into electronic music. What was behind the shift?
“A couple of things. Growing up in Colombia in the punk scene, I wasn't really exposed to electronic music at all. Then I moved to Boston to go to college and I started going to clubs and experiencing techno, and I started realizing a lot of my favorite albums from back when I was kid - like Radiohead’s In Rainbows - actually had a lot of synths that I just didn’t know were synths.
“I realized when I was halfway through college that the only thing I knew how to do really well was play drums, so I probably should learn something else. I looked at all the majors at school and there was one called Music Synthesis. I was like, 'that sounds cool, and also I know nothing about this', and so just out of curiosity I applied.
“I got in and then got really obsessed with synthesis as a concept. I actually got a major also in coding, because I wanted to program software synthesizers. Then through that, I got really into hardware, and then actually got a job building synths; assembling them and programming them and designing them.”
That was at Critter & Guitari, right? How did you like working there?
“It’s great. It was so fun. It’s a very small company, and the boys that run it are really smart and cool. They taught me a lot.”
In a previous interview, you mentioned taking apart an MPC to understand how it worked. Do you think an understanding of electronics is something that came naturally to you?
“I don’t know about naturally, but I guess so, because it makes sense to me. I would take apart whatever I could, fucked up gear that was really cheap. I’m a very visual learner. It’s hard for me to understand anything if I’m looking at it like you would in school, not in a hands-on way. So all the concepts of circuitry and synthesis were abstract, and I was like, ‘I just need to break it open’ - once I do that everything makes sense to me. I think that’s why I need to use hardware, because I need to touch it and turn a knob and hear what it does.”
What were the first pieces of hardware you started experimenting with?
“There was an ARP 2600 and a Buchla at school that I used a lot, they were the first serious synthesizers that I had access to. Then as I was saying, I got an MPC and a Moog Minitaur, which is very simple, like one knob per function. Then an Elektron Machinedrum. Those were the beginning of it all.”
Moving forward to the new project, you wrote and recorded across a number of different locations, is that right? Do you have a fixed studio setup anywhere or do you tend to bring your gear around with you?
“I used to have a fixed studio at home in New York, but in the pandemic, I had to leave my apartment, so my home studio disappeared. That's why I made this record like this, because since then, I haven't settled down anywhere, so I don't really have a home studio. So these past few years, I've been renting studios and working from Airbnbs and hotels and wherever I happen to be. I bring a few things with me, but it's becoming more and more minimal.”
What are the most important pieces of this travelling set-up?
“My laptop, obviously. It changes, you know, because at the beginning I was like ‘I’m always going to use my bass synth, and I’m always going to use my drum machine, because I know them so well’. So I started travelling with those, but now, I don’t know.
“The palette between the first record and the second record is very different, because I used different things, and that has inspired me again to be more open and to be less fixed in my ways. So I’m actually not travelling with anything right now. I have my laptop and my interface, just because I don’t like dealing with technical stuff when I arrive at a studio. Actually, I also have a distortion pedal that I love, and I’m travelling with that because I feel like it can add a lot of personality to anything.”
Which pedal is that?
“It’s BOUM from OTO Machines. I really love all of OTO Machines' stuff, I have all of them. I’m actually very proud that I have the BISCUIT serial number one. [laughs] Actually, similar to the BISCUIT, what I love about the BOUM is that it has so much personality. It sounds so good.
Ela Minus: “The more you edit the more you kill the soul of your music"
“For example, with my drum machine, live and when I record, I take one channel of everything out to the BOUM because it compresses in such a nice way. Especially for drums, but also what I like to do is have more than one thing running into it, whether that’s all the drums, or the drums and a bass, or drums and synths… because when you compress a lot, what I find the most interesting is the relationship between the two elements and how much you can push that. It makes it feel very alive. I’m really into distortion at the moment.”
Which other tools do you use for distortion?
“I used the BISCUIT a lot in this record, the hardware version and the plugin version, because I didn’t carry it with me all the time. The BISCUIT, the BOUM and the Distressor. It doesn’t really distort that much but I was pushing it a lot and clipping it. With the Distressor, I used the Neve 1075 preamp a lot. I really like the distortion you get from making preamps and compressors clip.”
In terms of synths, what featured the most heavily on this project?
“I used the Moog Subsequent 37 a lot - every studio I used seemed to have one. At first I was like, ‘whatever’, and then I actually really liked it and I used it a lot. I also used a lot of Moog Voyager. There were a couple of old-school ARPs that I used. I also keep using the Moog Minitaur as a bass synth, just because it's just so solid. I really like that. And I also have a Sirin, which is like the same synth, but the higher octaves. Because they're both analogue and monophonic and have the same engine, it's really nice to use them together.
“What else? There was a Jupiter-8 in there as well, a Juno-106 and a couple of Juno-60s as well. A couple of Microkorgs, too, which was interesting, the classic one. ONWARDS and UPWARDS, those two tracks on the record, they’re just the Microkorg through the BOUM.”
I was going to ask you about the bassline on Upwards. That’s such a sick sound.
“It was really hard to finish, actually, because I recorded a Microkorg and the drum machine together through the BOUM. The entire track is that, except for the really high-pitched acid-style melody, that’s the Sirin. Literally everything else in the track is just the Microkorg and the drums through the BOUM.”
Running those two together in a live take obviously removes the possibility of editing the parts later on. Do you like that way of working, even if it means you’re unable to go back and change things?
“Yes, I do love that. It’s extremely tedious sometimes - and sometimes, when I have an idea and then I can’t do it because I can’t edit, I take it back and I hate myself for doing it - but at the same time, I feel like I’ve become more relaxed with that approach.
“At the beginning, I was really extreme; when I started making music alone with synths, I was obsessed with the idea of creating live electronic music. I didn’t want to edit, I didn’t want to do overdubs, I didn’t want to use any software synths. I was like, ‘I’m going to make a live setup, and I’m just going to record the output to my laptop, and I’m not going to edit anything’. If I had new ideas, I had to play it again. That’s how I made the first record.
“Now I’m more open, but at the same time, because I was going to studios where I only had enough money for two hours, so I had to record as much as I could without thinking and not worry about editing. A lot of magic happens when you work like that. The limitations can be annoying sometimes, but you have to just get creative and roll with it.”
So you’ve let go of that rigid philosophy for this project?
“Definitely. For this record, I was like, ‘fuck it, I’m just gonna make a record. I don’t care. I’m not going to think about rules or anything, I’ll just make whatever I feel like making.’”
You mentioned you’re using more software now. Which plugins are you into?
“I don’t use any software synths, not for anything. I don’t even have any. But I used a lot of Soundtoys plugins. I love Decapitator, and I’m obsessed with MicroShift. It does something very special, it opens the sound up and leaves so much space for other things. I also like Crystallizer and PrimalTap, the delay. The only other thing was EQ, FabFilter Pro-Q 3. I EQ a lot, that’s what I do the most on the laptop.”
Can you tell us about a production trick or technique that you use frequently that contributes to your sound?
“What we were talking about before, not being afraid to process things out of the box and record them like that. I do that a lot. Processing things externally and messing with the signal flow that you use, I like that. Also the fact that I use EQ a lot to mix. That’s pretty much all I do when I’m mixing. It’s just EQing to leave space for other things, so frequencies don’t fight with each other across different tracks, so that they sit better in the mix.
“Also what I would say is, don’t be afraid. I’m not afraid of doing things that maybe aren’t ‘right’. For example, if I want to distort something, making it really fucking loud so it clips. I want to be intuitive with it rather than think about what’s technically right or not. I’m completely self-taught in production, so I don’t even know if something’s right or not, I just go with it.”
Are you someone that likes to mix as you go, or are you leaving that to a mixdown at the end of the project?
“I’m definitely mixing as I go. When you’re working with synths, it’s impossible to separate mixing from composition. Mixing is an important part of the composition. I remember when I was at school playing drums, we had recording classes, and they said ‘don’t worry about the drums being in tune, we can fix all of that in the mix’. I was like, ‘what? That’s nonsense’. It’s such an old-school way of thinking, and one that came from not being able to control everything when you were recording, which makes sense when you’re working with tape and stuff.
“But now, mixing can be such a creative thing, once you have really good sounds. If you mix as you go, you can still do a pass at the end. I did that a lot on this record; I had the record finished and I felt like the mixing was done. Then I did one last pass, which was about extremely creative mixing. All of my notes were like, ‘how do I make this more anxiety-driven?’ I was thinking how I can use the mix to make you feel anxiety. I push the mixes a lot on that kind of emotional aspect, but not on a technical level.”
How did you give the mix that anxious dimension?
“A lot of very annoying things. These were ideas I had from the beginning. For example, I recorded a vocal thinking that I wanted it to be annoying; like the kind of voice that’s banging in your head, and you feel relief when it stops. So my interpretation was driven by that. In the mix, I would put the vocal really up-front, and a bit shriek-y, so it was kind of annoying. But then the phrases are so fast and it’s really compressed, so when my voice stops, the track opens up and it’s way louder, and it’s meant to be a relief. Then the voice comes back and you’re like ‘oh, fuck sake’ [laughs].”
In the same way that you associate mixing techniques with emotions, do you feel like certain pieces of gear have an emotional association for you?
“That’s a really good question. I think so. The first piece of gear I think about when you ask that is the Moog Minitaur, which is such a satisfying bass. Whenever I feel like I need solidity, emotional solidity, that’s what I go for.
“Also the Sub 37, I love the noise it has. Leaving the arpeggiator on, turning the envelope all the way off, with maybe a bit of attack.Then having the noise generator on and moving the envelope a bit so you get a note here and there, to me that’s such an emotional tool that gives the song a sense of movement. I did that a lot on the record, almost all the way through, now that I think about it.”
When it comes to synth patches, are you designing these from scratch or tweaking presets?
“I start with presets, definitely. Even if I have something very specific in mind, I usually look for a preset that has something similar and then I start from there and do the changes I need to do. Presets are cool, but sometimes they’re like - ‘why? Why is this even happening?’ There’s certain companies that are the worst for this. Dave Smith, for example - all due respect to Dave Smith and his company - but some of the presets, I’m like: ‘this is nonsense. How can you use this?’ So with certain synths I will start from scratch, but that actually only happens with Dave Smith. [laughs]”
If you had to get rid of all the gear you owned and only hang on to three things - excluding a laptop - what would they be?
“I guess I would need a sequencer, that would be a bit annoying if I didn’t have one. Maybe I will keep, not the MPC, but a sequencer called Pyramid by Squarp Instruments. This is very hard. Is it three? Can I have four? This is too stressful. [laughs] I would keep the Minitaur and the Sirin together, and actually maybe the Juno so I can make chords too.”
Walk us through your live set-up?
“It’s still very minimal. It’s the MPC1000, which I’m using as a sequencer, I’m not sampling on any more. The Moog Minitaur, the Moog Sirin, an Elektron Analog Rytm with the OTO BOUM. Then I have something by Critter & Guitari, I change it, but either the Pocket Piano or the Organelle or the Septavox.
“Because I didn’t think about how to play this record live, I did a lot of overdubs this time, so there’s a lot of acoustic instruments: bass guitar, clarinets and other things. So I have a 1010music Blackbox, which is this really cool small sampler. For effects, I have the OTO BIM and BAM, and I have two microphones, one is distorted and the other is clean. That’s it.”
In the past you’ve been known to leave room for improvisation in your shows. Is that still the case?
“Yeah, always. I don’t really like speaking in public, I get really nervous. Because I came from this idea of making a live electronic thing, since the beginning I was like, ‘why would I stop between tracks? It makes no sense.’ So I just keep going. But lately, because my songs have vocals and a pop structure, what I do is connect them.
“I leave empty sequences with a random tempo that makes sense in between both of them. Some days I’ll be inspired, and I’ll start playing on the sequence and recording stuff and make something to transition into the next track, and other days when I’m not really into it, I’ll go straight into the other one, but I still have to get creative to connect them. So I still do that, and it’s fun and challenging.
“Actually, a lot of the ideas for my songs come from those sequences. Sometimes, during a show I’ll record into the sequence a chord progression that I did to pass from one song to the other, I’ll save the sequence on the MPC and then when I’m back in the studio I’ll develop that into a song. Almost all of my songs start like that.”
As someone that produces your own material, do you see sound design and production as a separate discipline to songwriting, or are they two sides of the same coin?
“I think both. I think it depends on who you are. For me, they do feel like very different things. Two crafts and two artforms and two jobs even, but at the same time, I do feel like they are two sides of the same coin, as someone that both likes writing songs and producing them. I do feel like it’s interesting - not important, but interesting - to try to stand on one side of the coin through the process and look at what you’re making from both points of view.
“It’s changing all the time, and it depends on the track. Sometimes you make something and you’re like: ‘this is not about production, this is about the song’. It’s about identifying the soul of what you’re making is, and identifying what it is you need to do to serve that. Sometimes that’s production and sometimes that’s songwriting. That’s what I always do. I try to identify what the soul is, and then I work to serve that.”
You’ve spoken before about trying to “abolish the ego” in your creative process. How do you accomplish that in practice?
“I worked a lot on myself with that idea while I was a drummer. That has helped me tremendously, because I think drums are a more selfless instrument. Obviously there are egocentric players on every instrument, but for me, my relationship to the drum kit was one of: ‘this is not about me, this is about the music’. It helps that I’m at the back, it helps that I have this huge instrument in front of me. All of those things are benefitting the ego death because they’re not putting attention on you.
“Through those years as a drummer, I exercised that a lot, but with what I make now, it’s about… for example, if I feel embarrassed about something, lyrically or vocally or production-wise, I just don’t care. I actually think that’s a good sign. That’s all in the ego, for obvious reasons.
“Something else that’s really important is I try my hardest not to care about what the song is saying about me. For example, it’s really easy with production and sound design to be a show-off. Especially in electronic music right now, a lot of what people are doing is that, and that’s just ego. So whenever I find myself trying to impress, or liking a sound because it’s impressive that I made that sound, then I’m like ‘fuck this, I don’t want to do this’, and I throw it away.”
Ela Minus’ DÍA is out now on Domino Records.
