RAW
LOVE
In my own words.
Techno artist and producer. New York Times bestselling author. Shaped by Berlin’s underground, based in Southern California.
When did techno first hit your body?
It started with a gift.
My friend Brie wanted to learn to DJ, so I bought her a really good controller. Then I started learning too.
I was searching for my own sound when I found Patrick Scuro’s peak time techno. It was physical, emotional and always told a story. I felt it in my body before I understood it.
I was 52. I taught myself Ableton, kept reaching out to Patrick, and eventually flew from California to Berlin just to see him play and meet him. He listened to my tracks and saw something in me. My last six releases came out on his label, Animarum Recordings.
He believed in me, but I also went after it. I found him.
What does Berlin give you that nowhere else does?
On that first trip, Mark and I went to Berghain.
Even standing in line, the bouncers noticed something between us. They told us they see thousands of people, but they could see our connection. They let us in.
Inside, I fell deep into hypnotic techno. First I felt completely connected to Mark. Then somehow I felt connected to everyone around us.
No judgment. People from all over the world. Everyone free to be exactly who they were. Some of the people we met there are lifelong friends now.
I had never felt anything like it.
From that moment, my dream was to play in Berlin. When Patrick asked what dream he could help me with, I told him. He connected me with Christoph Steinweg of Symbiotikka at KitKat Club, and on my next trip I played there.
Berlin changed the direction of my music. It showed me what happens when sound, freedom, expression and human connection all exist in the same room.
How does a relationship researcher end up making techno?
I’m driven by curiosity. When I have a question nobody has answered, I go looking for the answer.
Mark and I had something great, and I wanted to understand why. I wanted to know what the happiest, most connected couples did differently.
That curiosity led to a massive international relationship study with more than 1,500 questions and eventually became The Normal Bar, a New York Times bestseller.
I had no degree in the field and had never written a book. I just had a question I couldn’t stop asking.
Music came from that same place. I wanted to learn something completely new and tell stories in a different way. Instead of words on a page, I could tell them through sound.
When people meet Mark and me in clubs, they often ask us what our secret is. Our answer is simple.
Our bodies crave each other outside of our minds.
That idea is at the heart of RAW LOVE.
What does RAW LOVE mean to you?
RAW LOVE is about loving and accepting yourself and the people around you in their truest form.
It’s about dropping the judgment and the layers we put on ourselves and connecting with what’s underneath.
The instinctive part. The imperfect part. The part that’s real.
I believe in it so much that I trademarked RAW LOVE across music, production, books, clothing and merchandise. And it’s tattooed on my arm.
It’s a reminder of what I want to put into the world.
How does a track begin?
Usually with something I’ve lived.
Almost every track starts with an experience, a feeling, a conversation or a moment with Mark after more than 33 years together.
Let Love Dance started on the Berghain dance floor. We met Kenia, a French woman living in Berlin, and spent hours talking about life and dancing together. Later, she came to the United States for the first time and stayed with us for two weeks.
I brought her into the studio. Her voice became part of Let Love Dance and Human Connection.
That’s how I make music. I live something first. Then I turn the feeling into sound.
Every track tells a story from beginning to end. Sometimes it’s about another person. Sometimes it’s about the world around us. Sometimes it’s primal. Sometimes it’s about going somewhere we haven’t been before.
Why three EPs?
Techno has always been my backbone.
My years making hard techno, peak time and hard dance with Patrick and Animarum were a dream come true. But Berghain opened another door for me. That’s where I fell in love with hypnotic techno.
As I kept producing, the new tracks naturally started separating into three different worlds.
Body. World. Beyond.
It gives me room to tell one larger story across all three EPs.
Why are voices part of your music?
Because a voice makes electronic music human.
Love and connection are at the core of so much of what I create. Friends, family, partners, strangers meeting on a dance floor.
I’m drawn to the polarity between masculine and feminine energy and to the tension that happens when one calls to the other. But for me, the voice is really about human connection.
My first track, Dive Into My Soul, was sung by my close friend Camie, an artist and performer. She had never recorded vocals on a techno track before. The track passed 100,000 streams and reached the Beatport Top 5.
Every vocalist I’ve worked with since has been someone I know. I don’t just hand them lyrics. I tell them the story.
Picture this. This is what happened. This is how you feel.
Then we capture that feeling.
Completely lost in the sound. Your mind finally lets go and your body takes over. You feel the person you’re dancing with. You feel the room around you. For a moment, all of those separate people become part of the same thing.
You’re not just you anymore.
You’re us.
Berlin followed me home.
What are you creating now?
I built my own warehouse inside my house with steel walls covered in graffiti, three CDJs and a Xone:96. It’s where I disappear.
I produce there, then mix my unfinished tracks into other records and hear how they actually live on a dance floor. Then I go back and keep creating.
Right now I’m building the three EP trilogy, moving deeper into hypnotic techno and telling a much bigger story through the music.
At the same time, I’m building The Pleasure Experiment, which grew out of the same question people have asked Mark and me for years. What’s your secret?
It explores our bodies, our nervous systems, desire, pleasure and connection, and how much of that we were simply never taught.
In a strange way, the research and the music have ended up in the same place.
I’m still asking questions. I’m just answering some of them with sound.
- LABELAnimarum Recordings
- CHARTSBeatport Top 5
- PLAYEDSymbiotikka at KitKat Club, Berlin · Burning Man
- AUTHORThe Normal Bar, New York Times bestseller
Shaped by Berlin.
Built around the body.