Monday

I usually wake up late enough, between 10 and 11 every day. Around 1 in the afternoon I gradually make my way up to my studio which is about 10 minutes from my apartment in Berlin. After years of making music at home I finally tried making music in a separate studio last September and surprisingly I really love it. There's no internet, I can turn it up as loud as I want and it's the same complex as people like Richie Hawtin and Mathew Jonson, so I'm surrounded by likeminded people at work, even though I've never bumped into them.

Tuesday

This is a busy week for me as it's my very last week of album preparation. I've been working on the thing since I moved to Berlin a year and half ago. It was originally supposed to be finished in spring 2011 but myself and the label agreed that while there were enough tracks for the album then, not all of them were strong enough. So I shelved half of them and worked on more. It was a strange process though as my productivity tends to run in bursts, one month I churn out stuff, then the next two I'm banging my head off the keyboard. Finally it all came together at the end of 2011 and I'm really happy with it.

Wednesday

Fine tuning vocals on one track on the album. The vocalist is a friend of mine, Emilie who lived in Barcelona but now lives in Phuket, Thailand so it was all done remotely. I had sent her one track which she loved and then she recorded a vocal with her built in mic on the Macbook, all while a tropical rainstorm raged in the background. It was a beautiful take and later on when she got a proper mike and re-recorded the vocals, the takes just weren't quite as fresh and spontaneous as that very first one. So I ended up patching, cleaning and restoring it, which took a while with various noise gates, eq-ing and little edits. But it's really turned out quite beautifully and is the first time I've ever used a full vocal on an original track of mine.

Thursdays

Thursdays are spent rehearsing for my live set on the coming weekend. If I've been playing every weekend up until then, there's usually no need to do much work on it, it's still fresh in my mind. But even if I haven't had a gig for 2 weeks it's funny how quickly I can fall out of practice. I've been playing live for almost as long as I've been making music (10 years this year). My liveset progressed from all in the box, to a mix of hardware and laptop, then back to just laptop and controllers and now finally I've re-added some bits of hardware back into the loop. The more options I have in the liveset, the more chances there are to create something truly spontaneous, which can either be a monumental catastrophe or something truly special and unique. Over the last year especially I wasn't writing any new dancefloor music, as the album is mainly in a listening direction, so I was recycling and reconstructing my catalogue to date. It's amazing how different some sets can be, while drawing on the same pool of tracks. In one set I really feel like I'm just pushing buttons and in the other I'm surprising myself with how fluid and dynamic everything is sounding. Even sets with a similar tracklist can sound different from gig to gig. It's all down to my mood on the night and the reaction from the people. I enjoy DJing, but I don't have as much time to search out new music every week, it takes up far too much studio time so as a result I decided to focus exclusively on my liveset this past year. That's also the reason I've been investing in it a lot lately, buying new bits of gear and trying out new methods of playing.

Friday

Friday's are yet again spent in the studio tinkering with my toys. Friday nights I generally like to head out to a bar to meet up with friends for a few social drinks. If I'm playing the next day I'll be home at a respectable hour, if not, then anything could happen

Saturday

Saturdays are generally spent travelling. Living and working in europe is such a breeze really. There's not a single day that goes by where I'm not thankful for being able to have such a great career. Lots of Djs bitch about planes. I once lived in Rathfarnham and had to take the bus to college every day. I've got horrific memories of being stuck in traffic for up to 2 hours at a time getting through the bottleneck in Terenure which has led to a lifelong loathing of busses. So now sitting on a plane for an hour or two is a breeze. The gigs are more often than not great fun. I've met so many great people travelling around to gigs. Dance music and culture is so alive in so many places. What really inspires me is when I see people much younger than myself with serious organisational talent and their caps screwed firmly on, running successful nights week in week out.

Sunday

Sunday evening is my total veg out time. Back from a gig, I laze around with my girlfriend and watch movies or have a quiet drink.

Stay tuned for the next two releases from Cymera:

New Single: Strange Things Are Afoot (Backed with Conforce and Claro Intelecto Remixes) - To be released on Connaisseur Recordings April 2012

New Album: Death By Misadventure - To be released on Connaisseur Recordings May 2012.

Keep fresh up to date on all things Chymera-related on his website & Facebook page