WORDS MAISIE JANE DANIELS - SPECIAL THANKS APRICITY AGENCY
Today, multi-disciplinary musician and producer, Lauren Mia, unveils her deeply nostalgic single, Halcyon—a title that couldn’t be more fitting. This track strips you from the noise of now and plunges you straight into the heart of Berlin’s '90s rave scene. With its pared-back electronic groove and hypnotic pulse, Halcyon delivers a euphoria that lingers long after the final beat. Frankly, we can't get enough.
Calling in from Tokyo, F Word's Maisie Daniels caught up with Lauren for a candid chat surrounding the making of Halcyon, the chaotic beauty of navigating womanhood on the road, and a story of how a psychedelic trip became the compass that led her to where she stands today. It's not one to miss!
Maisie Danels: Hey Lauren, welcome to F Word! Thank you for joining us today. Are you calling in from Tokyo – how is it!?
Lauren Mia: Yeah! I’m here, it’s been sensory overload – I don’t even know how to explain it – it’s unimaginably wonderful. I knew it was such an incredible city, and I’ve been waiting my whole life to visit it. I’m from California, so the opposite side of the world, but I’m absolutely in love. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to be here. Just walking down the street – the culture, the architecture, the colours – it’s mind-blowing.
MD: I’ve never been to Tokyo, but it’s at the top of my list, and hearing your response is making me want to go even more.
LM: I don’t want to leave! I would say Japan is in my top three favourite countries I’ve ever visited.
MD: What’s been bringing the most joy to your days lately? I feel like Tokyo might have something to do with it.
LM: I’ve been touring and producing music for around eight years professionally, and I’m getting to a point in my career where I’m able to travel to these countries that I wasn’t really invited to, or visiting, at first. I was playing mostly in the United States in my earlier career. I then moved onto Europe, and now I’ve expanded to India, Asia, Australia, and it’s so gratifying and rewarding to come here and connect with fans – some of whom I have connected with digitally through social media. But to be able to share my music with them in person, in their country, is so special.
Especially when I’m somewhere like India or Asia, where these cultures are so different from what I know, it’s like living in a movie. I feel so blessed to be able to experience these moments and to be immersed in their culture with all of these like-minded music lovers, who are appreciative of art, music, inclusivity, equality, and unity…that’s super special. You get to make valuable relationships with people from all over the world, and you take these friendships with you. Fans are some of my friends too, so it’s really cool. That’s my favourite part of what I’m experiencing right now in my daily life.
MD: That’s so wonderful, I can see you lighting up as you talk about it.
LM: Yes! It’s so special! I had a fan come up to me at one of my shows in Tokyo, and he said how he had been following me for years and loved my music. So really connecting with him and all his friends – beautiful women and men – and hanging out with them all night. And they’re Japanese, and I’m the only American, and it was just so cool!
MD: I can imagine you’ve also been quite insular when creating the music, so when it comes to sharing it in person with your fans, that must feel really rewarding?
LM: It’s super rewarding! Especially because I was a religious studies minor at university prior to going on tour and pursuing this as a career. I know a lot about the different religions and cultures within Southeast Asia as well, and I incorporated some of these cultural elements in my album that I released in November. So it’s also cool to be able to visit India, Japan, and Southeast Asian territories because they also recognise that I incorporated [these cultural elements] into my album. Sharing the album live now and playing those mantras and different elements is really special all around.
MD: Let’s rewind to the beginning. Music has been in your blood from the start, with you learning piano professionally as young as 4 until 12 years old. How did producing enter the picture? Was there a specific moment when you knew you wanted to become a producer?
LM: [Laughs] A very distinct moment, actually! I love telling this story because there were other people who were present and involved in this moment where I had an epiphany. I was always writing acoustic pieces on my piano, even after I stopped working with my teacher. I saw her regularly since I was a little girl – recitals, the whole thing – and then I moved on to high school and stopped working with her, but I still played my piano. Around high school/eighth grade (14/15 years old) is also when I started discovering rave culture. Insomniac was throwing a lot of events in LA/California, which is where I was first exposed to raves.
I kept writing acoustic pieces, but there was a lack of self-confidence to believe that I could be an artist and be on stage – it just never crossed my mind. I did it for fun, but I wanted to be a part of it. I was working in the music industry, interning for [Dim Mak Records] for a year, working on music videos for Philly Mac, working for labels on the A&R side, and doing production for these bigger artists.
Then, around my early 20s, I was attending some festivals that weren’t necessarily Insomniac raves but rather Burning Man, Lightning in a Bottle, and I began experimenting with psychedelics. One day, I saw Stephan Bodzin performing at Lightning in a Bottle around 2016/2017, and I had an epiphany. I saw him performing, and I saw myself in his place in that psychedelic experience, randomly. It was almost like a daydream – I’d daydreamed myself into thinking maybe I could be the one on stage too. I called my mum...
MD: Was this whilst you were on psychedelics?
LM: Yeah! [Laughs] I was on LSD. I called my mum and was like, “Mum, I’m quitting my job. I’ve figured it out, and I know what I’m supposed to do. I’m supposed to make electronic music.”
I didn’t know where to start because a lot of producers start in their teenage years, and in their twenties, they’re already crushing it. I thought, I’m already in my early twenties; where do I start? What do I do? My best friend Gaby looked at me and said, “What do you mean? Go on and do it.” And the rest was history. I left that festival, went home, and quit my job. I enrolled myself in a music school for about a year. I did another two-year programme, isolated myself for years, and focused on my craft in the studio.
There’s so much understanding when it comes to production – analog synthesis, digital synthesis, programming drums, using these different digital interfaces – and I fell in love.
MD: That’s an amazing story! Thank God for psychedelics [laughs]. But seriously, I feel like that was always within you – the LSD just highlighted and brought it out of you. It’s admirable that you went for it. A lot of people have ideas, but to actually go and do the grafting is commendable.
LM: It’s hard! I tracked the first post I put up on my Instagram page and it shows the day I launched my initial project. I said, “I’m just going to go for it.” I was like, “fuck it, I’m going to go for this”. And then I worked, put my heart and soul into it, and here I am, eight years later. It’s pretty mind-blowing.
MD: It's incredible! Your new single, Halcyon, is dropping on the 29th – congratulations! It’s an epic track, and the title is so evocative. The world is a hard place right now, and I enjoyed plugging in and escaping for a while, dancing around my kitchen.
LM: I’m so excited about this one! It’s out in two weeks! That’s beautiful to hear, thank you for sharing that with me. I mean, that’s the goal, right? Music is supposed to take us places or heal us. We are essentially made of sound frequencies. Why do you think with MRI they use radio waves to look inside our bodies? We are frequency and energy.
So music very much has an ability to do that. But it also depends on how individuals connect with it. Electronic music isn’t for everybody, and I know that, but I love when I hear people connect to the music and can feel and understand the journey of it.
MD: I've read that Halcyon came to life after your time in Berlin earlier this year. Could you share how the city inspired this track?
LM: I have my absolutes in Berlin because, earlier on in my career, around 2018/2019, I moved and lived there for a bit. I wanted to live there definitively, but COVID happened, which forced me to go back to the States because of my visa, etc. Regardless, the time that I did spend there, I built such a beautiful community of friends, colleagues, and artists. I was able to really connect with this central hub of the most innovative creators and producers that I feel exist in the world, and I’ve been able to nurture those relationships over the years.
Fast forward to now, I have these friends who are like extended family that live there. So whenever I have a show or even if I have a tour in Europe, my home base is predominantly in Berlin. When I have free time, a weekend off or something, I’ll go out with my friends. I’ve seen the city and the scene evolve over the last six or seven years that I’ve been visiting Berlin outside of the pandemic.
What’s crazy is the club scene—the sound is really changing there. Berlin has always been ahead of everywhere else. It’s very fast-paced, with rolling bass lines, different sounds, but very simple in its production. Not so emotional, but more club/party-focused with core vocals and some pop-culture-infused elements.
I went to a club called OXI with my friend SKIY (who’s also a fellow female artist) and her boyfriend, as well as my friend Felix Raphael, who’s an amazing live act and producer, and my friend Robin, who owns a label called Tiefdruckgebeat. I was blown away by the sounds I heard that night. I didn’t know that’s what was hot in Berlin at that point, and I was like, Holy shit.
I looked around—and I’m turning 31 by the way—there were a lot of younger kids there, and I thought, Oh, this is what they like! The synthesis was less about the emotional, cinematic [journey], which Berlin was once really big on, and more like old-school club vibes. Very simple, but dope, and I liked it! That’s what I wrote this whole project from.
MD: Yeah, ’90s rave culture is having such a resurgence right now. Why do you think the ’90s have become so influential again?
LM: Oh, of course! With all the technological advancements—I mean, the music industry is evolving so much. Let’s put AI aside for one second. We’re talking actual technological advances. The programmes, the hardware, the software—everything is so advanced today that we’re achieving a whole new level of sound. Music is so complex and amazing these days.
Then, you add AI—that’s a whole other ball game. Even just inside plug-ins, when you’re producing music, they’re taking away the rawness, the realness, and the simplicity that we’ve found through electronic music. I think people don’t want to lose that. We don’t want to miss the human-ness of art. It doesn’t need to be so crazy and complex. Art can sometimes sound artificial if it’s too perfect.
Don’t get me wrong—I’ve done that in projects before. But then I realised there’s so much beauty in the simplicity of making electronic music back in the day. I feel like that was the root and the start of something global in electronic music, and want to preserve that.
That’s what Halcyon is for me too. It’s very raw, real. Although the lead was made with a digital synth, it’s still trying to capture and create the sound that existed in its simplicity. It’s a very simple, powerful, and platonic sound.
MD: I couldn’t agree more. I think we are all craving that, and it seems we’ll always be on this loop, generationally...
LM: Definitely! It’s like fashion as well. Everything gets recycled. Sounds come back, trends come back, fashion comes back...
MD: I was watching the In Vogue documentary last night, and it really highlights how we go through this recycling of fashion through the decades, but reimagined.
LM: Something that I wear pretty much every day is my mother’s jacket from the ’80s, and I get compliments everywhere I go! It’s a really old jacket, and it’s dope! Look at physical art—it goes up in value as time goes on.
With music, we have a lot of trends. I have a lot of friends and colleagues telling me the younger generation is being exposed to iPads and TikTok, and their attention spans are shorter, so they’re skipping trends quicker. But, from what I see, they’re also able to appreciate these old-school sounds of electronic music, whether it’s minimal, techno, or house.
MD: Yeah, we need to give them a bit more credit! What do you hope listeners feel when they dive into Halcyon?
LM: I want people to feel like they’re taken back in time when you’d hear an old-school, simple, timeless track at a rave. I was trying to create an experience of euphoria—what it felt like to be at a rave back then.
It’s different now with these festivals and visuals. Back then, it was really just about the lights and the music—that’s it! And the people and the connection. Even if it’s just you on the dance floor, you have these moments of euphoria, and just... rave!
MD: You’re clearly incredibly driven! Between touring, producing, and now launching a label, how do you balance it all? Do you ever get tired?
LM: Yes! I have moments where I’m like, I’m done. I’m not doing this anymore. It happens every three or four months and lasts just a couple of hours, where I’ll feel completely battered. It’s usually after a tour week with all the travel, time zone differences, and—being a woman—there’s a biological element too. We all say we’re equal but biologically, we’re different from men. We have menstrual cycles, hormonal shifts, and when we put our bodies through intense changes, it messes with everything—hormones, sleep cycles.
I commend all the women doing this. It isn’t easy. Making music is the fun part, Touring is tough. It breaks me down sometimes, for sure. I feel like I’m still in the infancy stages of my project when it comes to touring and everything that comes with it. Sure, I’ve put out an album, hit editorial playlists on Spotify, had amazing support from artists globally, and millions of streams, but I still feel like I’m at the beginning.
I’m pushing myself because, even when my colleagues who are more established in their careers get there, they don’t stop. The opportunities keep coming. It’s an intense career path—it’s definitely not for the faint-hearted. You’ve got to have tough skin and believe in yourself because no one else will if you don’t. There’s a lot of rejection, and you have to use that as fuel to keep going. For me, it’s all about the end goal: sharing my art with the world, helping elevate collective consciousness through sound, and contributing as a feminine energy in a male-dominated industry.
That said, I do take breaks—maybe a month off touring to focus in the studio. I have some amazing projects to wrap up for 2025. But in terms of balance? I’d be lying if I said, Yeah, I’m crushing it, it’s great! It’s tough. But I love what I do, and it’s rewarding. I wake up every day so grateful to be doing this, and that makes it all worth it.
MD: I love the honesty you’ve shared. People need to hear the whole spectrum. We have such a culture of showing that we can do it all, but it’s okay to get burnt out, even when we’re passionate about what we do—especially when balancing everything as women.
MD: What’s your vision for Halcyon as a label? Are there specific sounds, artists, or philosophies you’re hoping to showcase?
LM: We’re launching the label at the start of 2025, and I’m so excited! My previous label, Ear Porn, was something I did entirely on my own. But Halcyon is a partnership with my manager, and we’re both women, so it’s infused with this divine feminine energy in the progressive techno-house space.
There are so many women doing amazing things in this space right now, but I feel like there’s still room for more in my niche and sub-genre. Having my partner with me makes this force so much bigger—it’s an evolution of what I started with Ear Porn.
I’ve had a lot of friends and colleagues ask if Ear Porn is done, and it’s not gone forever. But Halcyon represents a new chapter and direction while staying true to the ethos and values I started with. My goal has always been to shine a light on artists who deserve to be seen and heard for their sonic authenticity. The industry is so saturated, and I want to help those bedroom producers—the ones who work day and night creating beautiful art—by giving them a platform to showcase their talent.
MD: That’s so needed, and it’s amazing that you’re using your platform to do this.
MD: If you had to choose one component for a great song, what would it be?
LM: A good bassline is all you need!
MD: What advice do you have for yourself for tomorrow?
LM: Trust the process—you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.
MD: I love that. I feel like I’m getting some secondhand therapy here! Is there a genre you could see yourself experimenting with in a future project?
LM: Absolutely. Even on my album, I started showcasing 145 BPM hard techno—almost borderline psytrance tracks. I could definitely see myself creating an alias for a whole other project in the future.
MD: Do you have any exciting projects coming up that we should keep an eye on?
LM Aside from my release in two weeks, I have some incredible collaborations lined up. I’m working with Binaryh, a duo from Brazil, and another collaboration with Alfa Romero, who are from Italy. I also have a special single coming out on Interstellar Recordings, Insomniac Record’s techno imprint, in March. Plus, the first single from Halcyon is scheduled to be out in January.
MD: Since this is F Word magazine, we have to ask—what’s your favourite “F” word?
LM: Flirty! I’m a flirt!
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