Name: Sphente
Nationality: American
Occupation: Composer, producer, multi-instrumentalist
Current release: NTHNL and Sphente's new album Awareness of the Wind Within is out via Protomaterial.
Recommendations on the topic of sound: Lavender Suarez’s book - Transcendent Waves: How Listening Shapes Our Creative Lives

[Read our NTHNL interview]

If you enjoyed this Sphente interview and would like to know more about his music, 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?

I’m definitely an eyes closed person.

I try not to listen to music passively at this point my life (for instance when doing chores or commuting), and focus on intentional listening sessions. I can connect with sound more deeply if I leave space for absence from it. Visual stimuli detract from the experience of being transported by sound, or having a deep emotional connection.

I have spent many thousands of hours in club-, festival- and rave environments in my professional life, and unless the lighting design is truly inspired, I generally can’t stand all the flashing lights. It prevents your brain from locking on to the intricacies of a sound system or performance/production.

My event series Long Gong was developed to be a stark contrast to this. Walk into the club and the only light source is an emergency exit glow somewhere far off in the corner. People have to enter slowly for their eyes to adjust. No phones, no cameras, no BS distractions. Just pure sinusoidal electro-acoustic gong straight to the dome.

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

I do love listening to vocal music in particular on headphones, but until you’ve experienced low-distortion full spectrum sound it is hard to know what you’re missing.

Music and audio is not a sensory phenomenon limited to hearing, of course vibrational “touch” plays an enormous role. I actually think it’s incredibly underestimated how important the physical sensation is, especially if we are getting into the take-home impact a sonic experience has on someone.

“Headphone music” doesn’t exist in the real world, neither does tiny speaker music. Sounds in nature, in the city, even just speaking to someone, they are all paired with a touch response. Sometimes it’s subtle and you may not notice you are feeling it in your chest, your toes, or your fingers. But in absence of that physical connection, it never feels quite real.

But that is why a properly powered and calibrated system is so important, because if you are sensing distortion in the physical impact of audio, your body can tell it is unnatural, and it can induce a stress response even when the signal may be calming.

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?

As it relates to DJ environments, MP3s and other lossy formats, time-stretched audio, and redlining mixers all tend to give me muscle spasms and spike cortisol levels and just make me feel emotionally ill.

I have to keep my distance from that sort of reckless spinning.

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?

This is an idea NTHNL and I like to play with a lot when we make music together. Riding that line between sounds that are harsh and those that are soothing.

On some level I think if your goal is to relax people, you have to start by making them uncomfortable. Then they are primed to receive the intended waveform. If you want to upset someone, there is no better way to do it than by priming them first with a peaceful soundscape and then turning it upside down quickly.

This was a focus with Awareness of The Wind Within, asking how do we deliver a listening experience that ultimately has restorative or healing properties without falling into the sonic trap that becomes boring wellness music? The freedom of exploring these sort of sounds in the roles of artists rather than any sort of sound practitioner or facilitator, is that you can hit it hard and not have to worry about scaring your clients.

“Surrender From Below” on the record is what this is all about.



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

I’m currently living and recording in the Atlantic Forest in Brazil, working on my next album. A sharp departure from my previous nyc lifestyle.

I find it difficult to record in the city. Someone is always playing music that distracts me, or if not then someone is complaining about the sounds I am making. I prefer to be in nature where the sonic backdrop is only birds, rain and insects.

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

Sound is a wave that has the same life-giving and -taking raw power as the ocean does. It is three-dimensional and it is physical.

This realization hit me fully for when I gonged at Sustain-Release back in 2023. It was the first time I gonged through a full-size four-point Funktion-One setup and the largest room that I had played in at that point. The physics of gong-feedback and self-oscillation in that kind of setup are extremely intense.

I was riding the resonance deeper and deeper over the course of a 90 min performance and at the climax it was roaring so hard from the gong feeding back, I genuinely thought it might shatter into pieces or at least crack in half. Not from the energy from the mallet but from the force of resonance.

I think of it more like water bending I suppose rather than a sculptural product.



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?

Unfortunately, I do have some pretty serious issues with pain and sensitivity as a result of working in the industry.

There’s two sides to it because I’m not sure if I would have developed the depth of understanding as an engineer, the ear for audio clarity and quality or the appreciation for sound systems and even music that I do now, had I not put myself in the conditions I lived through that resulted in some extent of damage to my ears.

I reached a point after a scare with my ears last year that I determined I had to stop working with/for people that have misaligned intentions to my own. I won’t put myself in a high risk audio environment to help someone sell alcohol or generate social content anymore.

I see the ongoing inevitable hearing health risk of being a musician and engineer as a similar sacrifice to the one a shaman makes. Under the right conditions, I’m willing to absorb a certain amount of damage to my body for what I consider to be good intentions:

I’m trying to curate experiences that have a lasting impact on people that goes beyond a night out.