Espen Kraft’s Sonic City: Breathing Cyberpunk Shadows

Espen Kraft opens the portal to his latest creation, a track steeped in dystopian haze and cybernetic allure. The mood is unmistakably dark, a cityscape painted in synth shadows and industrial grit. This is not just music—it’s a world built from the ground up, where every element pulses with the tension of a rain-soaked alleyway. The cyberpunk aesthetic is more than a style; it’s the air the track breathes, thick with anticipation and digital ghosts.

The dry signal of the 808 is only the beginning. Espen transforms these raw materials, running them through layers of filters, distortion, and creative edits. The result is a drum sound that feels lived-in—scuffed, dirtied, and haunted by the echoes of forgotten machinery. Each section is carved out, enhanced, and reimagined, turning the mundane into the cinematic.

Experimentation is the guiding star. The Jupiter-8’s arpeggiator is synced to the 808, and as Espen tweaks filters and triggers patterns, new textures bloom like fractured light across a midnight skyline. The process is tactile, almost sculptural—sounds are chopped, looped, and layered until they shimmer with atmosphere. The real magic, as Espen reveals, is in capturing these fleeting moments before they vanish into the ether.

Beyond the circuitry, Espen’s own voice becomes an instrument of intrigue. Singing in a register so low it nearly vibrates the floorboards, he records in the early morning, before the day can steal away those subterranean tones. The urgency of the process—capturing the voice before it slips away—adds a raw, human edge to the track’s synthetic core.

But the voice is more than melody. Swishing, vacuum-like sounds drift through the mix, not from any synth, but from Espen inhaling into the microphone. These spectral textures, shaped by breath and filtered into oblivion, become the track’s ghostly inhabitants. They follow the rhythm, bend with emotion, and remind us that sometimes the most evocative sounds are born from the simplest gestures.

Espen’s workflow is a dance with the unknown. Recording every session, he allows for accidents and improvisations to become the building blocks of the final piece. This philosophy—always rolling tape, always listening for the unexpected—means that moments of magic are never lost. The city of sound grows organically, each loop and sample a found object repurposed for new meaning.

Techniques like chopping, sampling, and looping are not just technical steps, but invitations to discovery. The track evolves as layers are added, subtracted, and transformed, each pass revealing new corridors and hidden rooms. There’s a sense of play, of curiosity guiding the hand as much as intention.

To truly feel the magnetic pull of these sonic ghosts, one must witness the process in motion. The video is a testament to the beauty of improvisation and the power of letting the machines—and the moments—lead the way. Some atmospheres can only be experienced, not described; Espen’s studio is one such place.