DJ Sabrina The Teenage DJ has been releasing outsider house music since her 2017 debut album Makin’ Magik. Its sample-based dance music with a strong 90’s / early 2000’s aesthetic throughout. There are often layers upon layers of sounds flowing in and out on top of each other with nostalgic spoken word vocals taken from old TV Shows. This mish-mash of sounds creates a strange hypnotic effect where every song flows into the next and you’re transported to another world. Plunderphonics artists like The Avalanches are the easiest comparison point but it’s certainly not a one-to-one. There's something really special about DJ Sabrina’s sound that makes her one of a kind.

DJ Sabrina puts out music at a rate that would make King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard blush. She dropped 11 albums between 2017 and 2024 all with lengthy runtimes, the longest being Destiny which is 41 tracks and 3 hours and 56 minutes long. She’s extremely active online and is always posting new tracks and interacting with fans while remaining anonymous. Nobody knows her real name and the only artwork associated with the project is pixel art. There have been rumors that DJ Sabrina is secretly legendary electronic musician Aphex Twin or even Taylor Swift, but they’ve shut those theories down. In addition to their robust solo catalog, DJ Sabrina co-wrote and produced the song Happiness for The 1975 and created official remixes for artists like Superorganism, Hotline TNT, DJ Seinfeld, and Porter Robinson.

We chatted with DJ Sabrina about all of this and more:

There's so many songs I feel get lost from every album, and even entire albums I feel have been forgotten, which is a shame as that was exactly what used to drive me insane years ago when I couldn't figure out why no-one liked some of my favorite music. I still imagine no-one but me is listening to anything and I can never really get it into my consciousness that so many people enjoy anything I do, it's all just incredible to me that even one other person likes what I do. I wish Enchanted would be re-examined, that always surprises me that it wasn't more popular.

Last year, you released the albums Hex and Sorcery, which combined are over three and a half hours of music. Your most popular projects have been longer albums like Charmed (2020) and Destiny (2023), which are three and four hours, respectively. The monumental length is seen as almost a selling point. What’s your mindset behind the quantity of music you release?

Is there any fear of some of your favorite songs getting lost in the mix with this volume of music, or do you think it works in your favor to have so much material out there? Is there a DJSTTDJ deep cut that you think deserves more love or a personal favorite that you would like to highlight?

Other artists generally have the mentality to cut and condense as much as possible, but you seem to take the opposite approach. I think the consistent level of quality while releasing so much and so often is something I really admire about you as an artist. Would you agree with the idea that you don’t feel too precious about what you’re releasing?

I actually work extremely hard to get the albums as perfect as I possibly can, which is difficult when they're sometimes 4 hours long and have 40 tracks. I go over and over them again and again and have dozens and dozens of re-mixing sessions for each and every song to try and get it pleasurably listenable to me. I never get even close, but I try, and it's a lot harder to get it to sound good for yourself than everyone else, that's the real challenge. I also have hundreds of unreleased and unfinished songs; the last album had two or three tracks on it that I started in 2021, and the next one will have some tracks from around then too, maybe even older than that. I also sometimes use songs from a decade ago if enough time has passed and it still holds up. I think actually I'm probably too precious about what I release, I have to be or I won't be able to listen to it ever again myself.

Originally, I had accumulated so many tracks after working for a half-promised release by a now disgraced label. They kept stringing me along and eventually I said to myself, "enough is enough", and just decided to release it on my own label. I'd already gotten two albums worth of material that people had heard via Soundcloud, so it made more sense to just put it all together into one release, since there's no physical limit on streaming albums. I'd planned on a tape release if people liked the album, and since cassettes have the biggest and more flexible lengths of all physical mediums, it all seemed to work out nicely. I just kept releasing this way as people were happy with the longer-than-usual style, and I have so many songs that it's easier to do this way than cut down for some arbitrary length that was pre-determined by the limitations of a now niche physical format from a long time ago.

Image: Hex (2024) album cover

I'm almost never not making music, but if I’m not, just something useless like playing a 90's video game or watching a 90's sitcom or comedy movie.

You’ve previously talked about wanting to remain anonymous and said that “being elusive means the music always comes first”. Do you still feel this way? How does anonymity change the way you make art?

I'm never too sure what my being non-anonymous would serve to the music or the personality of the band. I respond to everything on social media, emails, DMs and comments and I have tracks on every album where I (and Salem!) perform vocals for at least two or three of the songs on every album. Didn't a Youtuber do a face-reveal and then immediately regret it and wish he could stuff Pandora's contents back in the box? I think it would make sense for a selfie-posting, 5-hour live-streaming, artist-managed and label-signed touring band, but for someone not signed, with no agent, no manager and no charisma, it makes more sense for me to just work on new music instead.

What are you doing when you’re not making music?

Is making music a full-time profession for you or is this something you’re doing on top of a day job?

I think everyone has a day-job in music, unless they're part of the 1% that wealth-horde and steal those fractions of pennies from all of the exploited Spotify artists with songs under 1000 plays that never get paid any more.

A hybrid of multiple layers of sections and loops of those layers and sections, human activated and manipulated. Live instrumentation and electronically triggered electronic sounds through the use of traditional instrumentation. Huge visual screens, lights and fog synchronised with the music in any direction it may spontaneously go that night. Stage dancers that double as casual musicians. Stand-up comedy. Multiple encores and full downloadable recordings of every show. It would have it all.

When I think of dance music the experience I imagine is a group of people experiencing it together in a crowded club, but your music has never been played live. Does this factor in at all when you’re making the music? Are you creating these records with headphone listening in mind, or is there a way you’d prefer listeners consume them?

I mix on monitors and listen to my music on earphones for reference and recreation, and I probably imagine other people would too in The Great Age Of iPhone. We all have low-attention spans thanks to these electrified glass sheets in our pockets and palms. Going to a live show just means drinking (which I don't) and holding a glass sheet with a spy lens towards the performer. I guess if anyone wanted to do that, I'd oblige, but I don't have a manager or agent to book shows for me, or a budget to do so with (these budgets come from the money that other label artists have made, and I'm not signed). I think listening on earphones also means you can hear all of the stereo imaging, which is one of my favorite things about listening to music if it's been considered at all by the artist.

If money was of no concern what would a DJ Sabrina concert look like?

Do you have any plans to tour or play live shows?

I always have plans, but I never have the means!

Image: Sorcery (2024) album cover

He got in touch and liked Charmed (album), Next To Me and Faithless (songs) and wanted to work on something. I sent a demo, he sent it back, I adjusted and sent some more back, he released the single and the album a couple of years later. Always planning to work together again and lots of demos have been sent around...

Your music is very sample-based and there are often dozens in a single song. Where are you finding these sources and how do you plan to incorporate them into your music? Do you have a partially finished song and go looking for a sample with a specific vibe, or do you start with the sample and build from there?

I do both of those things and I get samples from everywhere (except AI, that sucks), sometimes a sample or two or ten will help an existing song along, and sometimes a sample or two will get a song started, and sometimes all of this happens. I just enjoy the sound of songs being constructed with layers of energy. The traditional form of a single melody from one source over a harmonic base can be challenged just as easily as it was in the transfer from orchestra or quartet to guitar and singer. Music for a long time was one big linear melody formed by many parts playing simultaneously, implying harmonic function through the tight ordering of the notes until the singer-songwriter simplified the concept down in the mid-60's. Jazz and classical were popular until pop took over, then progressive-rock was popular until synthetic drums and synthesizers took over. I think the form can and should be challenged yet again.

You co-wrote and produced the song Happiness for The 1975. How did that come about and are there plans to work together again in the future?

DJ Sabrina’s music is very forward-thinking and modern, but it is also deeply rooted in nostalgia. From the heavy sampling of ’90s and early 2000s TV shows to the pixel art graphics, there’s a strong retro vibe to it all. This nostalgia gives a warm euphoric feeling to the music but also shows a deeper melancholy that’s present in songs like Something New (one of my personal favorites). What is your relationship with nostalgia both as a person and as an artist?

Well, I live in the past and nostalgia, it's my religion, so to me it's just normal and just influences whatever I do visually or musically. A lot of people say it's very nostalgic music, which I think is true, but for me it's just a natural reflection of the music and art I enjoy every day, so it just kinda sounds regular to me. I never really think of what I do as being fresh or a modern thing, I kinda just throw all of the things I like into everything at once. Although, I admit I can never think of anything that sounds quite the same as what I do, which was a tough sell in the early days as people want relatability. To this day, I can privately goof around with a review submission ponzi-scheme website and I'll get 0% accepted, maybe because it doesn't sound like most of the other EDM Allstars.

Image: The 1975 - Being Funny In A Foreign Language

Marcus Miller, Kirk Whalum and Bob James.

What other artists would you like to collaborate with?

Jai Paul, Haim, Thundercat, Carly Rae Jepsen, Charli XCX, Sabrina The Teenage Carpenter, Mike Skinner, Janet Jackson, Rita Ora, Stevie Nicks, Madeon, so many...

What music have you been listening to recently?

You’ve spoken about some of your influences being artists like The Avalanches, J Dilla, Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, Jai Paul, and Fatboy Slim. Do you have any artists that serve as inspiration that we might not expect?

All of the music I use on my Combinisions is a huge influence, I'm making pop music electronically, not electronic music. Stock-Aitken-Waterman, Phil Collins/80's Genesis and Alan Tarney's work with Leo Sayer, Cliff Richard and Barbara Dickson would be some of my biggest influences. The analog sound is mostly influenced by the 80's Riverside Studios sound, Prince's early-mid 80's albums and Glo-Fi music. Bon Iver and Bruce Hornsby are a huge influence and Daft Punk's Homework and some of Discovery for the rest of the sound.

Image: Don't Leave Me | DJ Sabrina The Teenage DJ on Bandcamp

What's next for DJ Sabrina and Salem?

More music that we hope will be better and more enjoyable than the last pair of albums we released!