Halina Rice’s Sonic Hypnosis: MusicRadar Tech Unveils an Immersive Dreamscape

Halina Rice invites us into her world—a place where electronic music is not just heard, but inhabited. In the opening moments, she stands surrounded by the spatial promise of a 21.1.11 L-Acoustics system, ready to dissect her track “Hypnosis” from the album Unreality. This is no ordinary breakdown; it’s an unveiling of process as atmosphere, where every element is chosen for its ability to transport.

Rice’s approach is immersive-first, and it shows from the outset. She begins with the Roland Boutique SE-02, letting analog breath and digital memory intertwine. Her process is fluid, capturing moments of sonic transformation—filters shifting, delays blooming—then selecting fragments that shimmer with potential. The result is a soundscape that feels both meticulously crafted and organically discovered, a sonic fog through which emotion pulses.

As the track transforms from studio to stage, Rice’s vision expands into a multisensory performance. Her live setup is a constellation: two laptops—one for audio, one for visuals—communicate via MIDI, ensuring every scene triggers both sound and image in perfect synchrony. Lighting is woven in, with Ableton automation translated into DMX commands, painting the air with shifting color and shadow.

Each stem, meticulously prepared and pan-neutral, becomes an audio object in the L-ISA environment. The immersive rig allows Rice to place sounds above, behind, and around the audience, turning the venue into a living sound sculpture. The technical elegance is matched by practical wisdom—keeping gear streamlined for solo touring, relying on the Ableton Push for tactile control, and building in space for live improvisation.

The performance is not just playback; it’s a living organism. Rice can reach for a synth, trigger samples, or let the Novation Peak’s arpeggios spiral unpredictably through the immersive field. The result is a show where every sense is engaged, and every moment is alive with possibility.

Rice’s sound design is a study in cinematic tension and release. Drones and FX are more than background—they are the emotional gravity wells around which melodies orbit. By manipulating foley and noise, she crafts atmospheres that feel tactile: distant thunder, spectral rain, the magnetic resonance of a memory half-remembered.

Her process is guided by intuition, sculpting chaos into clarity. She listens for the hidden potential in every fragment, exaggerating what moves her and discarding the rest. The structure emerges like a film narrative—highs, lows, dropouts—each section designed to hold attention and evoke feeling. The stereo master is just the beginning; the real magic happens when stems are freed into the spatial domain, each one a sonic ghost drifting through the immersive architecture.

This is music as storytelling, where every sound is a character and every silence a breath. The cinematic approach is not just aesthetic, but emotional—a way to say something, to translate inner sensation into shared experience. Rice’s world is one where listeners don’t just hear—they drift inside.