Name: Dan Leavers aka Danalogue
Nationality: British
Occupation: Producer, keyboardist/synthesizer player, improviser, performer
Current release: Danalogue's debut solo LP Teleportations is out via Castles in Space.
Recommendations on the topic of sound: Terence McKenna, Paul Stamets, Alan Watts, the illustrations of French illustrator Moebius, cosmic trigger by Anton Robert Wilson, and actually not connected in some ways - read Three Body Problem trilogy by Cixin Liu

If you enjoyed these thoughts by Danalogue and would like to find out more about his work, visit him on Instagram, and bandcamp.



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects, and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

The name of the album ‘Teleportations’ comes from my own attempt at questioning where my mind/body/spirit goes when I’m playing music, both live and in the studio. It feels like I teleport immediately upon interacting with music into a completely different dimension, a landscape of emotionally constructed shapes/colours.

I often make critical analysis of music with eyes open, but perform in the moment almost invariably with eyes closed, channelling into the sound, and also I deep listen with eyes closed.

How do listening with headphones and listening through a stereo system change your experience of sound and music?

I recently went to Fold, a club in Canning Town with an insanely good sound system, and the sub that Kode9 wielded expertly rattled your skeleton to the very core, feeling like an internal massage the likes of which you can’t really get anyway else. The kick drum that comes in at the start of “Thetawave Convergence” sounds great on a soundsystem.

With headphones you benefit from the intimate surround sound vibe, sound objects appearing in different sides of the stereo field are heightened and finer details can be absorbed.

A good example of the stereo field is in the synth solo of “Far Beyond the Sun” around 1:50, with different lines appearing in the left and right headphone.



Tell me about some of the albums or artists that you love specifically for their sound, please.

I love Terry Riley’s Shri Camel, …



... Patten’s Estoile Naiant, …



… and recently have been getting really into early Pan Sonic on mute records. Early oneohtrixpoint never has great synths as well.

[Read our Pan Sonic's Mika Vainio interview]

Do you experience strong emotional responses towards certain sounds? If so, what kind of sounds are these and do you have an explanation about the reasons for these responses?

Yes. In fact I tried to make this album almost entirely of passages and writing that gave me a strong emotional response.

I find that chord sequences can be very emotional, it’s the sequence of different chords that create a sense of dissonance and resolution that perhaps mirror the human condition of working things out either in short moments or across a whole period of your life which gives emotional meaning and poignancy to a certain harmonic progression.

And then I hear melodies as attempts to surf those emotional waves and dance in the middle of them - which then has another emotional meaning of humanity making its way through or even dancing your way through, and expressing something, despite the pain and difficulties.



I guess “Moebius Tryptich” has a good example of this around 1min:50sec

There can be sounds which feel highly irritating to us and then there are others we could gladly listen to for hours. Do you have examples for either one or both of these?

Yeh, often it depends on context.

Like my housemate was saying how she hated the sound of the coffee grinder in the morning, and then I sang a note with the grinding machine sound and it made her laugh.

Like if you take a baby crying, which is (mother nature's most painful sound to receive to make sure you do something about it) and put it through a space echo and reverb and pitch shift it down, it might be kind of cool. This is the nature of being in the studio for a lot of your life you are always thinking like this.

There are frequencies when you mix that are displeasing, usually around 3500 hertz and I tend to dampen and soften a lot of the high end frequencies to make my records sound relaxed and warm. Sometimes I go too far maybe I could use a bit more treble! But it’s a style I have carried through comet is coming and soccer96 as well.



My last track on the album, “Earth Remembrance Day,” I just have listened to that tape loop a million times and never grew tired of it, has a wistful melancholy but with a touch of optimism which I found really cool.

Are there everyday places, spaces, or devices which intrigue you by the way they sound? Which are these?

London Underground is pretty fascinating with all the tubes pulling away with different electronic sounds and whooshes, and then noisier sections of the rail track that sound like you are speeding through the belly of a giant monster

Have you ever been in spaces with extreme sonic characteristics, such as anechoic chambers or caves? What was the experience like?

I’ve not been in an anechoic chamber but I would love to try. Caves I’ve been in a few, and using the eventide harmoniser effect unit you can create a lot of bizzare spaces.

I spend a lot of time in headphones making imaginary environments with extreme sonic characteristics instead!

What are among your favourite spaces to record and play your music?

The ones where you feel invited to be yourself the most with no prejudice or judgement - that’s when you can reach the heights of your personal ability.

Some of the gigs with the warmest reception and live from the crowd can bring the energy so high on stage as well, they really play a vital role in a show.

Do music and sound feel “material” to you? Does working with sound feel like you're sculpting or shaping something?

Sometimes - especially in the mixing process using eq and compression you are literally sculpting the sound waves into different shapes.

The waves are invisible to your eyes but you can feel them in different ways, depending on this massaging

How important is sound for our overall well-being and in how far do you feel the "acoustic health" of a society or environment is reflective of its overall health?

Every culture has music, humans have participated in music since forever, and have gathered together in groups to engage in the performance and sharing of music and singing for hundreds of millennia. This must make it essential to our communities and general well being.

But that sort of quantifies it mechanistically. It’s a form of ritual, of spiritual transcendence, of exploration of the liminal meta spaces, which are ignored by materialist science but are real spaces, maybe more real than the regular world.

Many animals communicate through sound. Based either on experience or intuition, do you feel as though interspecies communication is possible and important? Is there a creative element to it, would you say?  

I don’t imagine that trying to communicate will make anything better. I’m sure all they’d say is “stop destroying our habitats!”

As a child i definitely communicated with my cats through sound. There’s probably ways through research and the use of AI that can increase our ability to communicate with animals that is both incredible and something to be cautious of; it wouldn’t be cool to throw off mating patterns or animals’ experience of reality in a negative way.

I actually feel like the more we leave nature to do its thing the better

Tinnitus and developing hyperacusis are very real risks for anyone working with sound. Do you take precautions in this regard and if you're suffering from these or similar issues – how do you cope with them?

I have toured for over 20 years; and if I’m honest been known as a “loud performer,” with my stage sound often loud enough for my band mates 10 meters away on a big stage.

I have a bullish and slightly cavalier approach where I feel like if I worry and feel scared about problems from music it will manifest for me. And actually if I age with crippling deafness and my relationship to music gets destroyed in the meantime maybe that’s my fate. I think worrying and anxiety are the opposite to my creative mojo, and maybe a sacrifice to the music gods every now and then is what is required to be truly dedicated.

Having said that I did eventually move to in-ear monitoring which is better for protecting the ears.

We can surround us with sound every second of the day. The great pianist Glenn Gould even considered this the ultimate delight. How do you see that yourself and what importance does silence hold?

Everything is in opposition, silence and noise, movement and stillness. You need both.

Seth S. Horowitz called hearing the “universal sense” and emphasised that it was more precise and faster than any of our other senses, including vision. How would our world be different if we paid less attention to looks and listened more instead?

Our brain is probably set up for biological survival; and it does very well to keep us watered and fed and in a state of awareness.

I think there are many dimensions available to our brain which exist around us all the time, best accessible when you are safe. But they are there, our brain can engage in so many facets of reality that aren’t conducive to regular programming but delve deeper into the experience of consciousness.