Italian-German artist David August grapples with life’s great unknowns through his productions. He puts aside his ego for his
June EP WORKOUTS to “let the music go where it wants to go.”
A classic of Eastern philosophy, the Tao Te Ching is a slim and lucid text published in the 4th century BC that espouses living with
“wu-wei” or “effortless ease”: “Open yourself to the Tao, then trust your natural responses; and everything will fall into place.” This surrender from self-consciousness and control is the approach David August has taken with his music as his career has matured. “If you let music or a piece of art go where it wants to go, if you try to get into that state, you can get into a very pure form of expression,” he said.
Relinquishing an ego-based approach to his music is a relatively recent pursuit. The 34-year-old artist, who is of Italian and German origin, took time during the pandemic for auto-didactic ontological study, researching Middle Eastern mysticism, Greek philosophy, and quantum physics to make sense of the nature of being and his role as a musician. The result of this was his four-chapter epic, the album VĪS released last year, and its sister EP with more dancefloor sensibility from this June, WORKOUTS. The seclusion was good for August; it allowed him to liberate himself from “narrow-minded” and “hyper-conditioned” club environments to explore electronic music with all the avant-garde storytelling and unusual technicalities he desired.
August is Aeyde Radio's sixth guest and someone who approached the mix with the pleasure of freeform listening. Not every music experience, he points out, needs to be highly ambitious. “I feel there is this tendency that we have nowadays, or especially in contemporary music, of wanting to reinvent the wheel constantly.” Instead, he said, lately, “For me, it is really about enjoying music that is spreading an atmosphere you feel comfortable in.” Those quotidian tasks—cooking a nice dish, reading a book, or cleaning your apartment—need their own tranquil soundtrack, too, and August curated his selections for precisely that.
“The classical world
for me was, first of all,
very academic. I felt like rebelling against the constraint that this environment brings.
Also, it lacks the physical movement that I wasn’t able to express.”
Whitney Wei:
What’s your musical background?
David August:
I’ve been doing music since I was very young. I was learning classical piano, and I played the guitar. I had a band with a drummer friend when I was like 12 or 13. When I was 16, I started to play around with software on my brother’s computer. My brother used to show me all this UK stuff—Portishead, Radiohead, and an even more alternative rock that I was introduced to inevitably because he was listening to it at home. I was the annoying little brother, always sneaking into his room. But at the point where I was trying to produce electronic music, it came out of, I think, more personal curiosity.
Whitney Wei:
Why electronic music? Why did you not continue with the classical background?
David August:
I saw benefits and curiosity in both worlds. The classical world for me was, first of all, very academic. I felt like rebelling against the constraint that this environment brings. Also, it lacks the physical movement that I wasn’t able to express. I mean, depending on what you’re doing in the classical environment, you can be like a ballet dancer. But for what I was doing, which was sitting on a chair pressing black and white keys, I was fascinated by the physical energy—like, for the first time in the club, experiencing people dance until they got sweaty. I wanted to become a part of that.
Whitney Wei:
Are there any other peak music experiences in your trajectory that led you to who you are now as an artist and musician?
David August:
It’s hard to pinpoint a specific event. I think there was a period from 2019 until 2022 [sic] that held several important steps towards a certain growth as a person and as an artist. I spent two years in Italy; I was in a little village where part of my family comes from, and nothing was going on... I was happy to spend this time in this house and just deep dive into a couple of existential questions and try to research the answers through music. I was very inspired by mysticism, quantum physics, and Eastern philosophies. I chose music to research or to tune with all these [existential] questions that were coming up. All this [isolated] time brought me to an approach to less ego-based music; in this sense, it was a very transformative time. Before that, every time I was making music, it was about me—I had to put myself in there. Then I realized that it feels more relieving and also more rewarding to make music with a more impersonal approach instead of always putting my ego there.
“If you let music or a piece of art go where it wants to go, if you try to get into that state, you can get into a very pure form of expression.”
Whitney Wei:
When you say that there’s a more impersonal approach to music and you were considering existential questions during this period, was there [anything in particular that happened] that led you to want to question the ego and detach from it?
David August:
It came through some very influential literature, but also some people in my life who actually had an impact on me. One that comes to my mind is a mentor—I would call her this way—who is still based in New York. She is from a different generation; she’s around 67 or so and was a very important composer in the ‘80s in this post-minimalistic scene. Through the pandemic, we were having these voice messages that we sent as emails; we got into very deep conversations. The most important thing that she told me that is still stuck in my head: as a musician, as an artist, or as a composer, you have to put yourself into this empty space, and in this empty space, an idea comes to you because of your life experience and because of your intuition and out of that idea, you just follow what the idea wants. I mean, she’s speaking about a very natural, highly authentic approach to music without interfering with what the music wants.
What happens many times is that, at some point, you interfere with what you want, as the person with your ego, on where you want this piece to go, but maybe you should let go [to allow] the piece [to go] where it wants to go. This holistic approach on making music was really inspiring to me. If you let music or a piece of art go where it wants to go, if you try to get into that state, you can get into a very pure form of expression. Whether it’s ugly or not, because where it wants to go can be ugly, you know, but accepting that is way more authentic, instead of trying to be something that is not your true self.
Whitney Wei:
During this correspondence with your mentor, were there certain tips or techniques she shared to get into that empty state? I’m curious about the integration.
David August:
I guess a general selfless approach to other fields of life can also help you get into that state when you create. If you don’t change as a person, I think your artistic approach will not change. Does that make sense? Maybe [one way] is to feel inspired by a certain higher devotion—and this does not necessarily need to be like a religious devotion—but just a curiosity about something beyond what is comprehensible.
I’m not a religious person; I wasn’t even baptized, but I believe in something unexplainable and present. I think this humility towards the unknown, [the] unreachable, can help to get into the selfless state.
“...we just need to see music as something that can have different shapes. I respect the club culture and its expectations, but for me, it is too restricting.”
Whitney Wei:
On June 14 this year, you released the EP ‘WORKOUTS,’ your first dance floor material since 2020’s ‘Reminiscence of a Jewel.’ This new project is described “as a way to reconcile with this facet of his former self.” Let's talk about this former self. Who was he? Why has he departed the club and now decided to pay tribute to it again?
David August:
The former self is the David who started to make club music when he was 16-17. It’s also an interest I carried with me for most of my career because that’s what a good part of the people who followed my music knew me for. Then, at some point, there was a shift towards being curious about different sides of music. This departure was somewhere around 2014-2015, when I had the first glimpses of curiosity towards seeing electronic music as not necessarily dance music or club music, and I was, back then, I think, hyper-conditioned by this club environment, which is extremely restrictive. Doing a piece without a kick drum—like it sounds so stupid—but it was scandalous. This is completely narrow-minded because we just need to see music as something that can have different shapes. I respect the club culture and its expectations, but for me, it is too restricting. I think it was just toxic for me, for my creativity, and, to be honest, I felt that I needed to break myself free from this condition, and it took me a while. I was still feeling the pressure of this environment around 2016-2017, even when I was doing more theatrical shows, of what people wanted me to do.
I was also discovering a lot of club music I was completely sleeping on. I absorbed so much new, fresh inspiration from subgenres of club music that don’t have this condition because this condition is mostly, sorry to say, associated with techno and house. I think we never had such eclectic DJs in the contemporary dance environment as we have today, where you have extreme shifts of BPM, genres, and even different periods [and decades] where people pull from. It’s rich and diverse in all senses and that was inspiring for me. I could see freedom inside this environment, and this made me interested in approaching club music again.
Whitney Wei:
Why are you based in Berlin? You once said to Numéro Berlin, “It is a very rewarding city for creative people because of the people, not because of the city itself.”
David August:
I would still copy that. I’m here because of my friendships, my partner, and my network of people. I don’t take them for granted. It’s also an infrastructure that gives you a sense of home. It remains a city that, as an artist, there is always a possibility to be inspired by, but I must say that lately I feel resistance because of the political situation. Sometimes I would like to leave. I think it [Berlin] can remain a city to have a foot in the door, but I sometimes feel exhausted. It is overwhelming trying to accommodate life in a big city. If you live here, you are conditioned by your environment, and you want to participate in it and that’s all great. I wouldn't mind another place, though, maybe by the Mediterranean Sea, and having a couple of months per year in Berlin or in one of those cities that help to shape your artistic inspirations.
Mix 06 by David August is broadcasting on Aeyde Radio.
Listen to Mix 06
