The ears behind three decades of records

Origins: an engineer’s mind, a musician’s ear

Samy Guediche was born in Switzerland and started making music at 12, in the 1980s. He went on to study science at EPFL, the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, and left before graduating to follow music full time.

The scientific training stayed with him. He still treats sound as a system to understand first and then shape by ear.

In 1991 he bought an Atari 1040ST and an Akai sampler, and learned to sequence, sample and build tracks from scratch.

California, 1994

In 1994 Samy moved to California and worked on west-coast rap and R&B productions. In that music, a record lives or dies on how the kick and the bass sit together. That lesson carried straight into the psytrance he would make later.

Discovering psytrance, 1999

In 1999, at Burning Man and through San Francisco’s CCC collective, Samy discovered psytrance. Hypnotic energy, sound-system power and fine technical detail pulled him in, and the genre has been at the centre of his work ever since.

CPU and the 3D Vision era

Samy began releasing as CPU in 2002, the same year his trio Biodegradable put out its debut album on Acidance Records. In 2003 the first CPU album, Central Processing Unit, came out on 3D Vision. Beatport describes it as having “changed the sound of psy-trance”. A second 3D Vision album, Computer Error, followed.

He has since released more than 100 tracks on more than 25 labels, including 3D Vision, Flying Rhino, Hadshot, Dragonfly, Acidance, Phantasm, Spectral, Space Tribe and Materia. He also records as Samy Guediche and Dr Sam, and with the tech/electro house project BeatKrush.

More than 500 shows have taken him to Tokyo, Brazil, Mexico, Burning Man, the Swiss Alps, the Azores, Israel, Australia and Morocco. Festival appearances include Psychedelic Circus and Full Moon Festival in Germany, Antares, Karnival Freaks and Nagisa in Japan. Artists including Bliss, Painkiller and Azax Syndrom cite him as an influence.

Nutek Records

In 2006 Samy co-founded Nutek Records with Painkiller, Mekkanikka and DJ Amito. The label’s first release, the Skydivers compilation, was compiled by C.P.U. and came out in July 2006.

That same year, his Nutek album Discodelic is credited with kickstarting the electro-trance style that became hugely popular in Brazil. Eat It followed on Nutek in 2008, then the digital-only album CPU on Acid. As the industry moved to digital, EPs became the main format, and Samy’s releases followed.

Tokyo, IDPS and teaching

After living and working in Barcelona and Amsterdam, Samy is now based in Tokyo. There he launched Nutek Japan and the event organisation Nutek Productions.

In 2011 he co-founded IDPS, the International DJ and Production School, with DJ Tsuyoshi, and has taught DJing and electronic music production there to more than 100 students, including performers from Japanese talent agencies who came to learn to DJ.

Beyond records and the classroom, Samy composed the music and handled part of the music direction for Mictlan: An Ancient Mythical Tale, a video game inspired by pre-Hispanic Mexico, coming soon to Steam.

A note from Samy

For most of my life I’ve chased one thing: a track that hits as hard on a festival system as it does in my head. Muddy low end, a kick that disappears, a mix that falls apart at volume: I know these problems well, because I’ve had to solve them on my own records. Whether I’m mixing your track, teaching you or designing a plugin, I’m passing on what took me decades to learn. Send me your music and let’s make it ready for the big systems.

— Samy