2018 was a renaissance year for Christoph de Babalon, bookended by the reissue of If You're Into It, I'm Out of It , his essential 1997 album, and Exquisite Angst, a collection of archival tracks from the same period. In light of rising public interest in darker, stranger sounds and the resurgence of jungle and drum & bass, it seems trends have finally caught up to de Babalon, whose deteriorated breaks and haunting ambiences have long held a uniquely powerful quality.

De Babalon isn't one for run-of-the-mill production chat—"I have the most standard equipment you could imagine," he told me—but there is much to be gained from his insights on the psychological side of making music. He spent many years making music for a largely indifferent public, an experience he described as "shouting into space and nothing comes back." Now, he's faced with the opposite situation. Following his 2018 comeback, de Babalon had a ream of offers from popular labels wanting to release his work—the kind of pressure that can lead artists to compromise their sound, consciously or otherwise. These themes dominated our conversation, which also covered the struggles of working with DATs, recovering from a hard drive crash and the sacrifices of dedicating yourself to the creative process.

What were you doing before you got into electronic music?

I played in a noise rock band. It was very pure and there were no electronics involved, just guitars, drums and vocals. Our average age was about 14. I was doing the singing but it was basically just screaming. We played pretty slow, but we'd still make it really, really annoying for the audience.

How'd you get from there to electronic stuff? Were you hearing it on the radio or at parties?

I'm not from the party context. Definitely not! I was pretty much a rock and metal kid. There were a couple of other things I was in to, like Public Enemy and Beastie Boys, mostly stuff that came out on Def Jam. But I think I always wanted something more extreme.

Later, I really loved the early releases from a Nottingham label called Earache. They put out thrash, punk, hardcore, really fast stuff. They released a lot of early Napalm Death. Probably the same could be said of a lot of rock kids, but I think Godflesh helped me to start thinking more about electronics because they were using a drum machine and a lot of samples. That's the same reason we were into Ministry, Revolting Cocks and stuff like that.

I had a friend in class who was into the same sort of metal as me, but once we got to Def Jam it became a deciding point: are you going to be into hip-hop or metal? My friend went in the hip-hop direction and eventually became an MC who'd rap in English. He had a great producer making beats for them called DJ Sleepwalker.

Cool name.

He made the most amazing instrumentals. I hadn't heard much hip-hop and it was very inspiring to me. That got me into the idea of sampling and thinking about what I'd actually do if I had a sampler. Then I saw how expensive they were and realised I couldn't afford it. So I got an Amiga instead.

You never made any hip-hop?

Not really. Sometimes I find the lyrics off-putting. If you don't agree with their sentiment, it can upset the rest of the music. I just want to enjoy the atmosphere. As a non-native English speaker, you can kind of switch off and the voice becomes rhythmic noise. But in German rap, it's really hard, even if you like the beats. I don't wanna know what an MC is thinking. Too much information. That's why I didn't go that direction.

How long did you use the Amiga?

Five or six years. Of course, most people working with samples, and particularly artists in jungle and drum & bass, were using primitive tracker software back in the '90s. I was using one called OctaMED. At the time there wasn't any hard disk recording. I maybe should've gotten an Atari ST for Cubase. It's amazing when I look at the people still using trackers in the present day. There's even a newly updated version of the concept, what's it called…?

Renoise?

Yeah, it looks amazing but I had absolutely no clue what is going on when I checked it out.

So I take it you don't use trackers anymore?

Not for a long time. I don't miss it, but I would like to play around with one a little bit to see if it would make much of a difference in the music since it's quite a specific process. Nowadays I use the same software that everyone else uses, and I am happy with that. I don't want to be special. I don't need any customised stuff. I have the most standard equipment you could imagine.

Do you still work mostly with samples or do you synthesise sounds and record acoustic material?

It used to be only samples because of the nature of tracker software. The Amiga only had four tracks, so I'd have a group for the beats and another for the layers or whatever. Then I'd run them through a BOSS digital delay foot pedal, the DD-3. I loved that thing. I also had a drum machine back in the day.

How has your process changed since then?

It's different in a good way. I couldn't maintain the total seclusion from society, just in my room, being a loner, hermit kind of producer. Well, I am still a loner. I like it at home, but it's a bit more balanced now. What hasn't changed is the feeling at the start of a new track where there's a bit of a mystery to it, where you surprise yourself. It's the same feeling as in the early days with my Amiga when I'd sequence some samples and think, "This sounds pretty good, there is something in here." Of course, I wasn't thinking so much about the outside world back then and I still try not to when I'm making music. I don't want to think about what would X or Y say about this, or will they play it.

The difficult thing is when you start trying to please people. I think you immediately lose yourself in a very uncreative environment. I can't work like that. There have been some offers I got that were really tempting but I found myself bending in a way that I don't enjoy at all, so I'm quite happy these offers don't exist anymore. But I had to really work to find my pace last year, because there was a lot more interest from more visible labels. Of course, I want to take every opportunity and make everybody happy but I realised this outside pressure on the music can't be good.

Are you a perfectionist with your tracks or do you get to a certain point where you're satisfied enough to leave things be and move on?

I used to be, but at some point I decided productiveness is more important than perfection. I find it very frustrating not getting things done. If you're spending so long labouring over each little thing, you lose those moments that are fun and gratifying, you know? There are plug-ins that are so amazing you could spend your life working with them without making a track, but I want to make music, which means limits are important.

When you play live are you playing stuff you've already recorded? Or are you improvising, testing things you're working on?

I always play a lot of works-in-progress. It's good to test out mixes on the guinea pigs, but I try to have a healthy balance of material I know will work and newer tracks that I just want to put in for a bit of colour or to see if they're worth continuing.

So you'd never show up and improvise?

Oh no, I'd never bore anyone like that. I'd just get caught up in one sound and people would be thinking, "Why is this siren going for half an hour already, this is obnoxious!" When you're playing with a lot of gear, sometimes you don't realise something sounds quite boring because you're so busy doing stuff.

I've heard quite a few live acid sets where the first three minutes are great, but it just went on like that for half an hour. It's just these dudes enjoying their instruments, which is fine, but it's like a guitar solo that never ends.

That's not to say that no one knows what to do on stage with their synthesisers. In Sweden last year I saw an amazing live set from Via App. I met her beforehand and she mentioned she was going to use a modular synth so I was a bit skeptical, but it was pretty rocking, full of energy. I enjoyed that very much, but I don't ever want to be reinventing the wheel with a live set.

Were you able to play live with the Amiga in the '90s?

No way. It was a giant computer! I remember going to somebody's house and playing tapes of my early music and the guy said, "What the hell is this? Where can I find it?" People didn't really know much about drum & bass and jungle at that point, so it was properly weird if you hadn't heard it before. So then when I eventually got gigs they were more like DJ sets where I'd play only my own music, which is kind of the same thing as I do now. I still have a couple of dubplates that I cut for those sets.

I have a lot of old DATs, too. They are terrible, such a painful medium. Of course, I wasn't so professional and sometimes the tracking wasn't right so you'd get that specific DAT glitch sound. It's the worst sound I can imagine, like how chalk squeaking on a blackboard is for some people. It has painful connotations for me because I'd go through a track I made, hear the glitch and then have to throw the track away. You could try to cut around it, but it was too much work. I'm really happy we don't have to use DATs anymore.

I lost so much music over the years. Recently I lost an entire hard disk of tracks and projects. I tried to recover the data, but it wasn't repairable. I had old stuff and new stuff all together on that one disk, which, of course, is a recipe for disaster. But I never had hard disk problems before so I thought, "Yeah, I'm fine, all these people don't know how to handle their shit, they have bad electricity or something." And then it happened to me.

I was destroyed by it. I said, "OK, you wanna cry or kill yourself about this?" Because it felt like I'd lost so much and I wouldn't be able to recreate any of it. So I got a new hard drive, created a nice work-in-progress folder and tried to make as many projects as possible. I'd make maybe four ideas every evening, just to get rid of the feeling that it's a completely empty page situation, which would be like a personal apocalypse. Such a terrible feeling.

But you're getting back to normal now?

Yeah, I worked out a couple of backup schemes, so I hope this never happens again. It was bad timing, too, because it happened exactly when I was finishing Grim Zenith, which turned out being something of an important release for me. So I lost all the projects for those tracks. But the label always says after I send them the demo, "For us, this is finished, you don't need to do anything." Obviously I had all these extra changes I wanted to make, but in the end, fate or something said, "You're finished! You can't go back!" So it was a very close call. Grim Zenith might have never existed. Lucky I had some mixdowns on my desktop.

You didn't really release anything between 2001 and 2008. Were you making music then?

I was trying a few different approaches but I didn't know how to go on. I didn't know what to do. They were strange times. I wasn't getting feedback or anything back for my work either, so there wasn't really anything motivating happening. But I was working on music for theatre. It was interesting to be focused on a process that involves so many people and different dynamics, rather than being in a bedroom and making beats alone. It was also quite exhausting because you have to pay so much attention during the process. Also, music isn't always regarded as very important in this context. Sometimes they just want something to sound like Bruce Springsteen or Elton John and for everyone to be happy.

Did you keep this process separate from your own music?

I was using techniques that I used for my own music, but they were quite separate in my head. I didn't know what to do. I wasn't motivated to put anything out. The last thing I put out was the Fat Cat split with Kid606, and some random appearances here and there.

Outside of theatre, were you collaborating with anyone during that period?

Around that time, it was kind of a wish of mine to work with other people. I think that was really what I was missing, because I'd think, "I'm so boring, I can't inspire myself." I needed this kind of ping-pong with somebody who's also enthusiastic about this, then we could create our own musical world. That was what I was really looking for.

I had a project with a guitarist between 2003 and 2006 called Übergang. We made one EP but then it kind of fell apart. It was a combination of logistical and personal reasons, maybe we were in different phases in life. We made a lot of music but not much of it came out. We played a few gigs and it was really fun, but eventually we couldn't go on, we broke up. At that point I said, OK, I tried it, now I've got to do this myself again. That's when I came up with the crazy concept album idea of Scylla & Charybdis, which was—I don't know what I wanted to prove there, or to whom. I mean, nobody was interested in my music at all during that time.

That's the best time to come out with a huge concept album, when no one is paying attention. Then you're free to do the craziest thing you can come up with.

Exactly, there was no demand. I even played with the formats and had a collector's edition boxed version, a tape, a CD. I just wanted to prove to myself that I could make a proper concept album. I really wasn't aware if anyone out there would buy it or not. I didn't have any proper connection with the market at the time and I was just putting this out, only wanting to make a really beautiful product that maybe people will only start to enjoy in a year, or two, or five—my friend Ian Liddle, who made the cover, called it a slow burner.

Making music and playing shows by yourself can be a very solitary experience. Did you ever feel isolated as an artist?

That's an interesting point. Making music, coming up with these crazy concepts for records and really wanting to put them into reality, even when there's no audience who cares about it and nobody is asking for you to do it—why do we still persist? It's a bit crazy, you know? Practically everything before Grim Zenith was like that. There were a lot of times where people asked me, "Can you live from your music?" And I'd say, "No, I live for it!"

But it's sort of a sacrifice as well. Sometimes you don't know why you persist, you just want to keep it going, but you don't get any feedback from the outside or any gratifying thing from a magazine or anything. It can be very hard to understand for the people who are close to you but don't do music themselves.

Your friends ask what you're doing tonight, and you say, "Sorry, I'm working on a concept album no one wants."

"Another 12-inch," OK, yeah. "Breakcore," uh-huh—it is weird and isolating, but I've got to do it. Of course, you start questioning yourself when it feels like you're just shouting into space and nothing comes back. In my case, there were usually two moments a year that felt like, "Wow, somebody out there knows," or some supposed authority says, "This is good stuff, I'm going to invite this guy to a radio show," or you just have a nice gig.

The most beautiful thing for me at the moment is that there are young people who are interested in my music. I kind of grew old with my fans, and it's hard to deal with people who've been listening to your stuff for 20 years. They either lose interest or they start hating you because you sound so clean now. They think they own you, that they own your sound. But when people in their 20s or early 30s come to my concert and say their dad showed them my music, it's like, what the fuck? I just need to get used to the fact that I'm quite old now, but I'm very thankful that there are fresh young people who just discovered my music and like it. It's not just music for old people.

Not just for breakcore veterans.

Veteran, that's what they call me a lot now. "Legend" is a nicer option. In German, the word "veteran" doesn't have the best connotations, it's military language, but I know people mean well when they say that.

Were you still playing out around when you weren't releasing much music?

I think in 2008, around the time Scylla & Charybdis came out, I played at this huge festival Radiohead did in Barcelona. Modeselektor was there and all these other people who worked with them over the years or artists they like. Those gigs were very unusual to me and still are.

You pen pals with Thom Yorke?

We were never close. We said goodbye and hello when we toured in 2001. I lost a lot of money touring with them.

I'm not shocked.

I expected to ride the bus with them, but I ended up paying for everything myself. I wasn't good at business. It's a bit embarrassing to say, but when they asked me to play, I hadn't heard of them. I think I knew "Creep." I told a friend of mine about their offer and she said, "What? You?!" I was like, OK, maybe this is a bit strange. It was one of the weirdest moments in music history. So unreal. It didn't help my career at all.

Radiohead isn't the sort of band where people come to see the opener.

Maybe, but the crowd would have torn me apart if it weren't for Radiohead. They're a band where people respect that they choose that support. They think, Radiohead likes it so I'm going to be respectful. So that helped me in front of 25,000 people. It's really weird.

Do you still enjoy playing live?

Yeah, I do. I've had some problematic gigs, more because of technology, things not working correctly, but mostly it's been quite solid. As strange and sometimes dark or irritating as my music might be, I see a lot of happy faces of people enjoying my music, so that makes me very happy. I can just make the music I want and stand there, I don't have to jump around or have big fireworks.

Nothing against fireworks…

No it's awesome, I just don't have a concept of that. If I had one, I'd be all for it.