Contributing Writer
NevadaSYSTEM exists somewhere between atmosphere and escapism. Rooted in the vast stillness of the Nevada desert, the project blends organic instrumentation, cinematic textures and melodic electronic production into something deeply transportive. Bamboo flutes, live percussion and Eastern string elements sit alongside analogue synths and progressive club energy, creating a sound that feels both intimate and expansive.
Their latest release, Above The Noise with Qian Qiao, captures that balance perfectly. Written during a sleepless overnight flight, the track pairs soft, emotional songwriting with immersive production and understated tension. With support from artists including ARTBAT and Richie Hawtin, alongside releases on Enormous Tunes and Cafe De Anatolia, NevadaSYSTEM continues carving out a unique space within melodic electronic music.
We caught up with the project to discuss the story behind Above The Noise, blending cultures through sound, and building music that feels like an escape from the noise of everyday life.
1. To start, can you tell us a bit about the story behind Above The Noise and how this release came together with Qian Qiao?
I wrote the lyrics on a red-eye back to New York – everyone asleep, 3am, somewhere above the clouds. So the title’s pretty literal.
The idea wasn’t to be optimistic or pessimistic about it. Chaos is happening, it’s always happening, but you can find a pocket above it. That’s the feeling we chased. Sonically we went softer than usual. Live winds, live percussion, a great vocalist. Guzheng next to Serum, bamboo flute against analog synths. A lot of things that shouldn’t work, sitting next to each other.
2. Your project is rooted in the Nevada desert, how did that environment shape the emotional direction of your music?
The desert is just big. Like, genuinely disorienting in how big and empty it is. You spend a lot of time in your own head out there – and it hammers home that you’re alone, even when you’re technically around other people.
That got into the music. I’m not really drawn to big, obvious emotions… anger, triumph, whatever. It’s more of a slow burn. A quiet kind of melancholy.
3. The name NevadaSYSTEM feels quite conceptual, what does it represent to you today?
It’s that tension between wild, open nature and rigid human-built systems. Hardware, frameworks, structure. We’re bad at accepting randomness. We always have to try to make something make sense, even when it doesn’t really.
The project lives in that gap.
4. There’s a strong fusion of Eastern instrumentation and Western club culture in your sound, how did that combination first come about? The bamboo flute and organic elements play a big role in your music, what draws you to these textures?
I’ve studied a lot of these instruments – shakuhachi, dizi, xiao, pinkillu – and the thing that gets me is each one has its own personality. You play something long enough and it stops being just a tool. It has a history, a timbre, and quirks. You have to work with it, not just use it.
And honestly the east-west framing doesn’t perfectly fit what I’m doing. It comes more from not really belonging anywhere – picking up pieces from different places and trying to make something coherent out of them.
5. You describe your music as something that “finds you somewhere else”, what do you hope listeners feel when they hear your work?
I want people to escape, basically. If you feel like you don’t quite fit, I want the music to make that feel okay rather than lonely. That’s what “4am and empty roads” means to me – that specific feeling where you’re in your own world, time stops mattering, it doesn’t really matter if you’re alone or in a room full of people. You’re just… in it.
6. You’ve had support from artists like ARTBAT and Richie Hawtin, how has that impacted your journey so far?
Putting music out always involves getting past a fair amount of insecurity.
So when it lands with people who’ve genuinely shaped this music — that means something. It’s less about the names and more about the question it answers: does this actually resonate?
7. How do you translate such a layered and atmospheric sound into your live hybrid performances? What does a NevadaSYSTEM live set look and feel like compared to a traditional DJ set?
The big difference is that a live set can go wrong. And I’ve come to really like that. You get accidents, you get moments that won’t happen again. When we play in different countries we can pull in local sounds, local artists – so every show ends up being genuinely different rather than a replay of the last one.
Everyone’s obsessed with everything being perfect right now. But if something goes sideways, it goes sideways. It’s fine. I enjoy both formats – the hybrid is just where my head is at more these days.
8. How important is storytelling within your releases, beyond just the music itself?
It’s just part of the music. You can’t really separate them. Melodic house is about movement, about going somewhere. So naturally you’re asking where did we come from, where are we now.
The way I think about it, there’s a smaller world running alongside normal life. You cross paths with people, sometimes briefly, sometimes it sticks.
9. You’ve released on labels like Enormous Tunes and Cafe De Anatolia, how have those platforms helped shape your sound or reach?
Enormous was a big deal for us – it’s always been a favourite, and it represents the more driving, club-ready end of what we do. Cafe De Anatolia felt like an obvious fit from the start. The organic focus, the eastern influence – it lines up naturally with the flute and zither work we’ve been doing for years. Very global, very textural.
It’s just about finding where a sound actually belongs.
10. What role does silence or space play in your production process?
Without silence it’s just noise. Simple as that. It’s what lets you actually hear the breath in the flute, the air coming out. Without space nothing lands properly.
I think of it as remembered silence rather than constructed silence. It’s there because of what came before it, not just because you left a gap. What’s the sound of the kick drum tail fading out? What about the flute’s voice in the cathedral when your breath ends?
11. Looking ahead, how do you see the NevadaSYSTEM project evolving sonically or conceptually? If NevadaSYSTEM is “the frequency of the road,” where is that road taking you next? More life, less thinking about scale. We’re working with fantastic vocalists, and I want to bring live percussion and strings into the shows in formats and venues that make it work. Which doesn’t fit neatly into the standard club touring model, so that’s an interesting problem to work through.
More places I haven’t been, more local artists and traditions to dig into. I’ve been spending a lot of time with guzheng and guqin recently, especially in more treated, prepared formats – curious where that goes.
Mostly I just think of it as a conversation. It goes where the music and the people take it.
