In a world increasingly defined by artificial intelligence and algorithmic convenience, Los Angeles-based artist and creative technologist August Kamp is building something far more human, and far more strange. With her new single 'Sugarize', Kamp steps boldly into a new era of groove-driven electronica, delivering a track that feels both delicately intimate and dazzlingly future-facing.
Crafted from her solar-powered studio nestled in an off-grid botanical garden, 'Sugarize' is the first glimpse of an upcoming record that promises to deepen her already sprawling discography. Over the past six years, Kamp has quietly assembled one of the most distinctive and ambitious bodies of work in indie electronic music; 10 albums and 4 EPs of emotionally charged, technically intricate sound worlds that blur the line between nature and machine.
So with the new single out now, we sat down with her to find out more about her origins and what has been inspiring her most over the years.
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What was the first instrument you fell in love with?
the OP-1 portable synthesizer by teenage engineering. i never played any instruments growing up, so the prospect of learning any instrument was always very daunting to me. my first couple albums were made entirely on my laptop, but a laptop is such a multi-tool of a thing - it’s not quite as purpose-built as something like a guitar. the OP-1 was the first strictly musical instrument i truly fell in love with.
What kind of music did you love when you were younger?
When i was younger it was pretty dependent on the accompanying context for the music. Music by itself was not quite as interesting to me until I guess middle school when I really started to like the killers. My family showed me the eels around them as well, and I have maintained loving the eels up into the present. My real gateway to loving and caring about and understanding music was the album 22, a million by Bon Iver, which came out in 2016 so I was 16 or 17 when I heard it.
What was the first album you remember owning?
I grew up a little after the time of owning albums, but the first album I remember feeling a sense of spiritual ownership of and really identifying with would definitely be, again - 22, a million by bon iver LOL.
What is the one song you wished you could have written yourself?
i’ll have to say the last song in that record - “00000 Million”. that’s just a lyrically airtight song. absolutely untouchable in my opinion.
Do you have any habits or rituals you go through when trying to write new music?
I always start by making the beat and the beat is always some form of experiment or cluster of experiments. I say all the time to my friends and family that I struggled to perform my songs live for the same reason that I struggled to do covers of other people’s music. I can’t play a song that already exists.
Every time I make music, I’m just trying something new and trying to find sounds I like. I feel like making music is a lot like going for a dive in a submarine. You can say what part of the ocean you’ll dive, and you can say what time you’ll go, and on what day in what season - but you cannot with any certainty say what type of fish you’ll see until you dive. I always just love to see what I can find, honestly. Most of my instrumentals these days start with (or at least involve) working on my hardware before I bring anything onto the computer. I do most of my music work on the field series by teenage engineering. It’s a lovely little compact arrangement of aluminium devices that have a uniform size and form factor - specifically - a mic, mixer, and recorder. then there’s this lovely matching portable synthesizer, that is also a sort-of pseudo tape-machine. it’s the hi-fi-follow-up to the OP-1 actually - their first synth which they released like 10 years ago.
I actually work with these guys a lot now and I do beta testing for them as well as just education and artful videos using their gear in my garden studio. And through developing that relationship, I have really fallen in love with just hardware in general. I used to work entirely on my laptop from start to finish with every song, and I made a lot of albums that way, and I think there is something freeing about escaping the computer for the initial burst of momentum that can become a song. And I always start with the instrumental, then I write based on what it makes me feel.
Who are your favourite artists you have found yourself listening to at the moment?
i love hannah cohen, sam gellaitry, bon iver, westerman, the japanese house, jim-e stack, and my friend diego (who is also my friend, and is indeed named Diego).
If you could open a show for anyone in the world, who would it be?
100000% bon iver.
What do you find is the most rewarding part about being a musician?
I would say just having a catalog of the time I have been alive since I started making music that exists beyond the sensory capabilities of language. It feels like a sort of ongoing memoir, but something about music for me that I love is that if I hear a song that I listened to a lot at a certain point in my life, then I will suddenly be sensory-level transported into a strange warm, nostalgic feeling of existing in that moment in time. Being able to do that with music that I myself made about those very moments in my life is so multilevel useful, and magical to me. I am documenting as I go, and I can revisit those moments in language as well as sense-memory.
And what is the most frustrating part?
I think the most frustrating part is not being able to really predict or control when or where you’re going to have inspiration. Making music is like going for a dive in a submarine - you can say where in the world (or ocean) you’re going to go and when you’re going to dive, but you cannot say with any certainty what fish you’re going to see until you see it. Making music feels very much the same way, often to a fault - lol. but it’s beautiful because it is a way to observe nature, i think.
And what is the best piece of advice you have received as a musician?
“just do whatever you want”. that’s the best piece of advice i know, full stop. follow wherever that takes you.
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August Kamp's new single 'Sugarize' is out now. Check it out in the player below.