Producer Djrum on why having “too much of a goal” in the studio can be “restrictive”: “I’m always starting up sessions and not finishing them, but I don’t see that as unproductive”For UK producer Djrum, creativity thrives in the space between unfinished ideas. Instead of viewing incomplete tracks as failures, he sees them as building blocks – fragments that can merge, evolve and spark new directions in his music.
Speaking to MusicRadar, the producer – real name Felix Manuel – explains how his best ideas in the studio often emerge from unexpected detours.
“You have to allow yourself to not have too much of a goal in mind. It can be really restrictive,” says Djrum. “This happened to me just yesterday. I was working on a track and I wanted to add a bass sound to it. I loaded up Serum, which is a bit of a go-to when it comes to bass, and I started making a kind of Reese sort of thing.”

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“As it developed, I made this really cool sci-fi kind of sound that was absolutely not a bassline. That’s the sort of thing that happens when you’re tweaking parameters and you just find something that sounds good. It was a tangent. I ended up making this sound that wasn’t the bass that I needed for the track.”
As one can probably tell by now, Djrum’s process is anything but linear. The producer often juggles multiple unfinished tracks, allowing them to develop organically over time.
“I’m probably working on four or five different tracks at any time, or even more,” he says. “I’m always starting up sessions and not finishing them, but I don’t see that as unproductive.”
“Those aren’t necessarily dead ends. It might seem like that, but maybe I’ll pick them up later. It’s a case of having a lot of ideas that are free to connect with each other in the pool of ideas. It’s about allowing them to cross pollinate.”
Often, some elements in his tracks become highly polished early on, even when the rest remain skeletal: “I can have a very polished intro, and have no idea what’s going to happen next,” the musician says. “But that intro is finished, because I really went in on it, because I needed it to be finished in order to know that it was right.”
According to Djrum, it’s important to follow ideas as they appear without overthinking so as not to disrupt the “flow” of things.
“I know some people like to do all the polishing at the end,” he says. “I think it’s fine as long as it doesn’t upset the creative flow. That’s the most important thing in all of this. Any detail you can get bogged down by at a too early stage can kill the vibe. It kills the creativity, it kills the flow and the enjoyment. Enjoyment is one of the most important things.”

Djrum’s upcoming album Under Tangled Silence arrives 25 April. Check out his new single Three Foxes Chasing Each Other below.

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