Futureproofing #14: An interview with Philip Sherburne

Plus, Marco Shuttle, Fast At Work, MoMA Ready, and the "dubstep-tech house connection."

Marco Shuttle’s Sonidos y Modulaciones de la Selva

This edition is special to me because it features an interview with a personal hero of mine: the music journalist Philip Sherburne. I've been reading his stuff since I was a teenager, and his writing was instrumental in helping me fall in love with electronic music and eventually start writing myself. I first met him when I was 21—I'll never forget his first words to me, "I thought you would be older"—and more recently I've been able to work with him editing some of my Pitchfork reviews. But otherwise our relationship has been mostly limited to social media, and even through that he's been a consistent supporter of my work, for which I'm eternally grateful.

Edited by Tom Gledhill

He runs through his career in the interview below, but for those unfamiliar, Sherburne is probably one of the most influential electronic music journalists ever. He's written for a variety of places, including as a part-time staff writer at RA when I was just starting there, but Pitchfork has been his home for the most recent stage of his career. He also runs an excellent Substack, Futurism Restated, which is more than worth the price of a monthly subscription, and a pretty decent label called Balmat.

Sherburne has a writing style that I've probably tried to emulate myself, consciously or not—it's down-to-earth, explanatory, and just flowery enough to have beautiful turns of phrase and metaphors without crossing the border into wordy or pretentious. His monthly Pitchfork column, which started 20 years ago, remains a vital source of dance music media history from an era whose archives either did not survive or remain incredibly hard to find. 

But he's also a super chill dude, and I had a great time talking with him from his home on Menorca in Spain, where he's been based for quite a while now. We spoke about what it's like working as a music journalist these days, as well as his illustrious career and his relationship with dance music as he gets older and more isolated (literally, living in a small Spanish village).

The interview

What keeps you going every morning? 

I think it's just an obsession. I've always been obsessed with music, and even though I probably am not obsessed in the same way that I used to be when I lived in Berlin and I was DJing, going to Hard Wax once or twice a week and buying records—that's a different kind of obsession—I'm just immersed in it. Half of the social media accounts I follow are musicians or labels or music fans, and I spend my day surrounded by music and other people who are enthusiastic about music. Just today, Chris Duckenfield, from Swag, posted this deep house edit I've never heard before, which sent me to a Bushwacka! compilation on Bandcamp, where there was a Circulation track—and I thought, "Wow, Circulation, I haven't thought about that in years," which sent me to Soulseek to try and find some Circulation tracks, because that would be cool for the next time I DJ here on the island. That's what keeps me going.

How often do you DJ these days?

As little as once a year. At the end of 2023, I realized I hadn't DJ'd at all that year. Then it was December 31st and a friend said they were putting on a party at a farmhouse, so I spent a couple hours whipping up a USB stick and I played for five hours. It was so fun, and it rescued my year, because it would have been the first time since, like, '98 that I hadn't DJ'd once all year. 

I've been reading your stuff since I was a teenager, but I was wondering if you could give me a quick rundown of your career.

I didn't set out to be a music journalist, or a journalist at all, although I took some journalism classes in high school. I went to college for English Literature. After college, my plan was to go to grad school and become an English professor, because I didn't know what else I could do. I graduated college in '93 so it was a very different economy. The internet hadn't really taken off yet. And I'm from Portland, Oregon. I didn't know people in New York media. I didn't know how one would get into the media. That was completely out of my realm of understanding. 

But I was a music fan—the very first piece of music criticism I ever wrote was a review of a Fugazi show at my college [in Rhode Island] in my senior year. I grew up on new wave and goth and hardcore, and by the early '90s I was really into screamo, stuff like that. In '94 I had my electronic awakening thanks to Warp and Rephlex and some really good record stores in Providence. Around the same time the internet happened. Almost immediately, I got really into the IDM List. I started writing a lot about music within the context of a newsgroup, which was sort of proto-social media. Marie Kaczmarek from the IDM List reached out to me and was starting a website—I don't think the word blog existed yet—called Urban Sounds, and it was going to be music reviews and interviews, and she liked what I wrote in the newsgroup. I started doing record reviews and some interviews for them. 

Then in '98 or '99 I did my first thing for The Wire. I went to Los Angeles on my own dime to hang out with the Plug Research people for a weekend and wrote a little scene report. It just snowballed from there. I moved to San Francisco, and started doing things for SF Weekly. I became the city editor for Flavorpill, which was an event listing service. Through that, I became the editor of Earplug, their electronic music newsletter, and I wrote for a lot of small magazines—like, $60 for a review kind of thing. I found my way to Pitchfork, and then everything just… continued to where I am now.

How long have you been full-time at Pitchfork?

I'm not actually full time at Pitchfork. I'm a contributing editor there. I think it's a half-time job. But I've been doing that since 2014, and before this position I was writing for them since 2007, just freelancing.

So you don't have a full-time job.

I don't, and I haven't had for almost my whole career. I've been lucky to always have a tentpole gig that paid the rent. It wasn't always music journalism—Flavorpill, then I was working at the streaming service Rhapsody, and for the last 10 or 15 years I've been doing stuff with Third Bridge Creative, which is like a content services agency, all unbylined stuff for music clients. Now, Pitchfork is the tentpole. The rest of my time, I can freelance, which in the last two years mostly means the newsletter. 

From your perspective, has it become harder to freelance?

Yeah. There are fewer places to freelance for. The rates have not risen commensurately with the cost of living. Right now I switch between Pitchfork and the newsletter, and I'm pretty good with that. I did a couple things for a magazine called Departures, which was American Express's travel and lifestyle newsletter. I went to Switzerland to write about Gruyère cheese. And a piece about life on Menorca. A whole new frontier for me! I was excited about that, because it wasn't just about music. Then American Express pulled the plug and the magazine went away.

Have you done much other non-music writing since then?

Very little, but I would like to. I did a piece about the Azores Islands in Portugal for Conde Nast Traveler, about Tremor festival. I would love to do more… I was going to say travel writing, but I don't think so, because that's a whole other gig and set of constraints. And I don't have the contacts. From what I understand, it's about as difficult as music writing.

I was kind of shocked after I quit RA last year how hard it was to get any freelance work. 

I've heard anecdotally about major national daily newspapers with really strong music coverage that are no longer as adventurous in their pitch taking as they used to be. For a long time, if you knew somebody at those places and you had a name, you could get interesting work. I think it's a lot more difficult.

Aside from the freelance market, what's different about being a music journalist now than it was, say, 20 years ago?

Everything! On the one hand, it's hard to generalize because it's so specific to my lived experience. I'm middle aged now, I have a ten year old kid, I live on an island of 100,000 people. When I lived in Berlin, I went out a lot—not as much as some people, not as much as Todd L. Burns—but I was seeing artists, DJs. I was in the culture. I'm not in it day-to-day like that anymore. And so my perspective has changed. 

The big thing is that there are just so few outlets left. I'm so grateful that Pitchfork still exists, it's rare to have a platform where you can speak to a broad, sort of generalist audience of people that care about music, and to be able to write in-depth stuff, to be able to write about stuff that's pretty weird and peripheral. If that job goes away, I don't foresee being able to continue doing what I do on that level.

How has your relationship with electronic music changed over time—getting older, moving to a remote place?

I'm probably less passionate about the day-to-day nuances of the dance music scene, but I still follow mixes, and I still love the records. I think it's just aging. And as you age, your tastes get anchored to certain things in the past, while the youth keep coming up with new stuff. I'm not super interested in 160 BPM trance edits or whatever—but that's probably done now! That was like, two years ago. I still try to challenge myself, and dig, especially for my radio show here in Spain, Lapsus Radio (which is now just on the internet, on Patreon). It keeps me making the effort to find things that are new and unusual. 

Do you find yourself gravitating more towards ambient or experimental music as you get older?

Probably. I've always been interested in ambient and experimental music, and that was my entry into electronic music, so I've always had this bias towards the non-functional. It was a couple years before I bought any "proper" techno or house. And even then, it was, like, Surgeon—banging, but quite weird—and Matthew Herbert. But I was also really into the Rune Grammofon label, and Pan Sonic. I gravitate more towards that stuff now, but it's always been something that's really important to me. 

How has living in a somewhat isolated place changed your relationship with electronic music?

I don't think it's changed it all that much—I'm sure it must have, but even before I lived [on Menorca], I was living in Barcelona, where I was souring a bit on nightlife already. Like, the DJ that you've come to see probably isn't going to play until 3 AM. It takes a commitment, and a younger person's metabolism. So by my last couple years in Barcelona I wasn't going out that much at all. I was seeing musicians and DJs around town, and talking to friends about music, but I was rarely going to see stuff. I would go to Sónar or Primavera Sound, and now, Unsound Festival in Kraków is my annual chance to really plug in and see a ton of stuff—both experimental/ambient and proper dance music. I try to get as much in as I can that week, and everything else aside from that is a bonus. 

Moving to Barcelona from Berlin makes sense, but how did you end up on Menorca?

I went to Barcelona for the first time in 2000 to go to Sónar with a crew of XLR8R people from San Francisco, and I fell in love with the city. I called my mom from a payphone on La Rambla and said, "I'm moving here someday." I kept going back in the summers, and by 2003 I had been laid off from my dot com job in the Bay Area. I got a room in Barcelona through a friend of a friend, as a trial run, and eventually made the move. I didn't intend to stay in Europe, but then I met my (now) wife. I didn't have papers in Spain so we went to Berlin where it would be easier to work, because I knew everybody there. Then we went back to Barcelona, then we had a kid, and we were getting burnt out on city life, and the rents were going up.

My wife is from Menorca, and her mother still lives here. I had my trepidations because it's such a small island. In the winter, things shut down—in February like 70% of the restaurants are closed, nothing is happening. But I've come to love it. We live in a town of around 8000 people—tiny, but very green. I've recently gotten really into trail running. And it's only a 30 minute flight to Barcelona—and the government subsidizes airlines, so I get a 75% discount on plane tickets to Barcelona. My wife and I went to see Jessica Pratt play in Barcelona recently and the airfare was just nothing. It's nice. 

You are a rare full-time music journalist who doesn't have an actual full time job. So what does your typical work day look like?

I get up at 6 AM because I like to drink my coffee and do some doomscrolling before my daughter has to get up. She's up at 7, so then we're doing breakfast and getting ready to go to school, which is 8:30. I start my work day then with a couple hours out in the midday to cook lunch. And here lunch is like, 2:30.

Oh man.

I do have a second breakfast in there somewhere. Like a hobbit. But yeah, I work for a few hours in the morning and then after lunch until like 8. So I work a lot, but I also have the freedom to step away from my desk if I need to. I try to get out running a few times a week. And if my daughter has a holiday, I can take time off and do something with the family. It's flexible.

Your work is mostly Pitchfork and Substack. So how do you decide what goes where?

The Pitchfork stuff is a little more… considered. I'll spend days on a review—I try not to, but it usually ends up that way. The pattern I've developed is, after the initial listening and getting to know an album, when I sit down to write a review, I spend an afternoon or evening of really intensive listening and note-taking. Track by track notes, and a rough outline—just getting the ideas on paper. Maybe get the lede or the first paragraph down. Then the next day, I wake up and finish the review by lunchtime. So it's really one day's work, but broken into two halves. 

The newsletter is more "first thought, best thought," or, like, I'm unspooling thoughts in real time. My initial idea for the newsletter was to be cursory, much more pithy—like, two sentences on new releases—but I can't do it! I always write more. I try not to sweat it too much, I just write what needs to be there and give it a quick edit. 

You and I both get more music than anyone could possibly listen to. So how quickly do you decide if you want to write about something or not, or if it's worth exploring?

Pretty quickly. There are times I can tell just from the press release that it's not my thing. The stuff that goes in the "maybe" pile is the hardest, because some stuff you need to spend more time with. And I'm sure there's stuff that I've passed on that could have grown on me, but I have the method that I have. The best I can do is skim as things come in, and then try to spend more time with them after I put them in my promo playlist. The newsletter has really helped me structure my listening and forced me to pay attention to more stuff, because I don't want anything to fall through the cracks. But like you said, the amount of emails, the amount of Bandcamp links, and there's just so much more music out there, so many labels, so many artists—and a lot of it is really good! I have a bias towards writing about things that are really exceptional, but sometimes things are just "good" and I want to acknowledge that too. 

When you say structure your listening, what do you mean exactly?

I guess I mean what I focus my time on. I have a spreadsheet broken down by release dates with notes about where the music might end up—Pitchfork, newsletter, playlists, radio show. But the emails are incessant! Just since we've been on the phone now I've got another dozen or two promos. By the time I get those down, just briefly listening to the promos, there are three more emails in my inbox. Some days, it weighs very heavily on me, and makes me anxious. Other days I just think, I can only do what I can.

Do you find yourself still looking for music outside of what gets sent to you directly? 

Yes, mostly through Bandcamp, because I'm not buying physical stuff that much more. I have so many records, but most of my listening is digital. I get a lot of stuff from Bandcamp emails, and emails from places like Boomkat, Hard Wax, and then people that I know and trust. It comes from everywhere, and I try to cast the net pretty wide.

Do you ever have any anxiety that you're missing out on something, or that you're out of the loop?

Always. On the one hand, there's the passion, and the appreciation, and the joy, and on the other hand is that feeling that always lurks underneath a little. But it's not debilitating.

I think 10 or 15 years ago in electronic music, everyone in electronic music media was talking about the same things, the same DJs, record labels, and ironically, as the media world has shrunk, everything feels more fragmented. There are tons of micro scenes that don't get coverage or any kind of intellectual appraisal. Do you feel like there's less consensus, or less of a narrative, in electronic music more recently?

When I was writing for RA, I remember discussing this idea every year, especially during the year-end round ups. Like, "things have gotten so scattered." And that was because we were talking about, like, Shed and DJ Koze. Now it's like, HorsegiirL and 2hollis. 

Things have gotten so wildly decentralized that sometimes I feel like I have no idea what's going on. I try to stay on top of everything I can. I feel like things that are going to get covered on RA or played on NTS, I'm on top of that. It's all from the same universe. But there are micro scenes—or mega scenes—that I don't know anything about. I think EDM was the first time I was really forced to confront that idea. EDM had a parallel media structure for a while, but then that went away. I've been thinking about this a lot because I've become fascinated by the techno and house content in my Instagram Reels. Because I get served it, I start clicking on it. I'm seeing all of this stuff, music that I had no idea was so huge, because none of the media that I read talks about. Maybe there's a parallel world of websites where these artists are a big deal, but I doubt it. These artists are just fucking enormous, and I have no clue about it. 

Is there any style of electronic music you find yourself gravitating towards?

Lately I’ve been going through a little dub techno phase. We always joke about it on the radio show, because, like, every week, I have a new dub techno track I want to play. But that's not a new interest, that's something that I've always loved. Lately I’ve been feeling like I really want to make a DJ mix of it, and I’ve been building a big playlist of dub techno and minimal techno tracks. I've really been enjoying Huerco S's Loidis project. I'm fascinated by the idea of somebody a generation younger than me focusing on this music that was very important in my coming up in electronic music. It's a set of references that are very dear to me. He did a recent mix that made me want to do an answer mix—like, "this is my version of minimal." But at home it's mainly a lot of ambient and ambient-adjacent stuff, the kind we put out on the label. I'm always looking for something "ambient," but different or new somehow. The next thing we do is going to be very different. I think it's a risk, but I'm excited about it.

You mentioned in a recent newsletter that you were on a drive and you listened to R.E.M.'s Fables Of The Reconstruction. I'm wondering what other non-electronic or non-work music you like listening to? And how often do you get to do it?

As often as I like, really. That's one nice thing about running, is I can listen to anything. When Chat Pile's first album came out, I fell in love with that so hard—again, it's about a set of influences that were important to me growing up. Steve Albini, Helmet, that kind of vibe. I've spent a lot of time in the last couple years listening to both Chat Pile albums. And I've gotten quite into billy woods and Armand Hammer, listening to those records while in the car or running. I pull out a fair amount of oldies when I'm in the car, and there's a lot of driving on the island. R.E.M, The Cure, you know. 

Lately it's become more difficult because my daughter, who is almost ten, is starting to make her own choices. She's typically in charge of the music in the car now. She's gotten really into this guy named brianjcb, who is one of those people who (I think) has no real profile outside of Spotify. But he has millions of plays there. The music is like… it's EDM-y. I have no fucking clue. He has one trick, which is like a trappy, electro kind of beat, with synthesized guitar melodies and counterpoints over the top, very funky. It's kind of like post-post-post-post Daft Punk in some way. Every song sounds the same, and he has sped up and slowed down versions. She loves that shit. So I'm also listening to a lot of that. 

Again, it's fascinating to me: who are the millions of people that are listening to this? Where did my daughter find this? I've been shoveling music at her since she was born. She very briefly discovered a Spotify post-rock playlist without my input—this was several years ago—with Tristeza and Explosions In The Sky on it. That was amazing. But somehow she’s gotten into this weird EDM-y thing. It could be worse! I'm always trying to put on music from my youth that I thought might connect with her, like Madonna or The Go-Go's. None of it worked.

And the inverse, when you're listening to music for work, what are the situations you listen to it in? Do you have any rules or methods for appraising music once you've decided you want to write about it?

I try to listen in multiple contexts. I will take it out on a run—like, right now I'm working on a review of the Loraine James's new Whatever The Weather album, and I've been running to that. I also listen while cooking. Those two things help open the music up for me. And then there's the very focused, in front of the computer, taking notes kind of listening—brainstorming, free associating, writing anything down. It can get clinical, like, BPM, style, instrumentation. Then trying to figure out what it does and how it works, what it's doing to me. What are the commonalities on the record? I'm always looking for a story, any kind of structure, because I'm mostly reviewing instrumental electronic music. If I was reviewing stuff like Jessica Pratt all the time, I’d have a lot more to work with—lyrics and stuff like that. But mostly it's instrumental, so I have limited resources. 

Whenever I write about music that has lyrics, or is made by a celebrity, I'm like, “Wow, this is so easy!”

The last thing I want to ask you is something that I hate when people ask me. So: What is your favorite album of all time?

The first thing that flashed into my mind was Autechre's Amber… which probably isn't right. The dark horse entrant, the second thing that came to mind, is Thomas Dolby's The Flat Earth.

Well, I think if it came to you right away, that's a sign that it might be it.

If I just have to reach for something that's gonna make me feel good, it's that. More than almost any other record I know, the Thomas Dolby turned a switch in my head, and stuck with me. 

Weekly listening

Various - Hover Capsule [Fast At Work, 2025]

Fast At Work has long been one of my favorite warehouse parties here in LA, with a wide-open approach to uptempo music that bridges the gaps between UK-inspired genres for lineups that highlight musical similarities rather than differences, where "fast" is more of a state of mind than a sound or a tempo. You might have drum & bass, techno, dubstep and UK garage all on the same night. (Their slogan, "fast-not-hard," is a more succinct way of getting that across.) The label's second release is an overstuffed various artists EP that embodies that ethos, with killer techno dubstep from Carré and Addison Groove, all Appleblim-style drum loops and backwards chord stabs, and typically perfectly-engineered proto-dubstep from Introspekt (with one of the strangest basslines I've ever heard in a UKG-adjacent track—it sounds like a tuba!). Other highlights include Ruby May Moon & Emanuel's "River," which is uptempo techno made of gossamer, and Baalti's "Motion Therapy," whose thwacking drums and LFO basslines would sound brutal if they weren't so funky.

Beatrice M. - “The Dubstep-Tech House Connection” [NTS, 2025]

This is an eyebrow-raising title for a mix if ever there was one, but the French dubstep DJ pulls it off. The mix came to me via Tom Gledhill (they edit the newsletter for me, and have some of the coolest dance music taste of anyone I know) who called it "very Andrew-coded"—which is correct. Expanding on the idea of the old dubstep-techno hybrid referenced in my Peverelist and Ramadanman newsletters, the mix extends the idea to older, straight-up mnml records by the likes of Margaret Dygas and Dario Zenker. Beatrice narrates the whole thing track by track, waxing rhapsodic about Scuba's SUB:STANCE night at Berghain and yearning for this late '00s period of dance music as a lost era of creativity and crossover, which is funny to hear for someone who lived through it.

Above all, though, the voiceovers are charming and funny, especially when you can hear Beatrice's voice rise with excitement in the Appleblim and Martyn interviews interspersed between tracks. (And, in true dub head style, Beatrice messes with their voices with delay effects and reverb to better mix into the tracks that follow and precede them.) Informative, funny, and absolutely banging, this might just be the most fun I've had listening to a mix that didn't involve an actual party.

Sa Pa - The Fool [Short Span, 2025]

Sa Pa is a remarkably consistent producer whose work straddles the dub techno-ambient divide. His latest EP comes on a new label from another quietly brilliant figure, Matthew Kent, formerly of Blowing Up The Workshop and other concerns. (If you're unfamiliar, BOTW originally put out the 100% Galcher mix that made Galcher Lustwerk a star.) These four tracks are remarkably dissolute, glitchy, and airy—only "So Simple," which feels a bit like evil GAS, has much of a steady rhythm, while "Captigon" is built around a dubbed-out stagger that feels more like a heartbeat. Snatches of piano buzz in and crackle out like rogue radio waves, and the fantastic, 13-minute "Boredom Memory" is both creepy and (almost) cozy, with an extended sample that sounds like a kettle whistling on the stove. Extreme minimalism with absolutely stonking subs, The Fool is ambient music you feel more than you hear.

Whatever The Weather - Whatever The Weather II [Ghostly International, 2025]

The second album from Loraine James' ambient-leaning IDM project Whatever The Weather is, on first glance, the most beautiful record she's put out—it's also probably the most approachable. Touching on the melodic sparkle of Arovane and the digital artifacting of Oval, Whatever The Weather II almost feels like classical IDM, with strange chord progressions and alien landscapes. The album cover might be desert scrub, but to me it sounds like the salt flats in Utah—astounding and strange but completely real, plopped into the middle of a familiar landscape, with gorgeous songs that range from yearning and nostalgic to occasionally joyful.  

MoMA Ready - MR001 [MoMA Ready, 2025]

Speaking of consistent, MoMA Ready is one of the most reliable techno and house producers to emerge in the past decade. He releases a lot of music, to the point where it can be hard to keep track, but his new EP benefits from its laser focus—four tracks, two that lean housey, two that are straight techno. The highlight is the bouncy organ house track "Suddenly," which is another addition to the pantheon of club jams with serious monologues, this one about living life to the fullest in the moment, over a burrowing Reese bassline and jogging hi-hats. "Thought Of As" is classic chord-stabby Detroit techno, while the brisk "Feel Like That" features old-school synth string sounds and more muttered vocals. What's most striking across MR001, though, is its feeling of melancholy. No matter how propulsive the drums or inspiring the melodies, there's a tinge of sadness, captured especially in "Suddenly"—like recognizing you're getting older, and that you've wasted time, but resolving to go forward and make the best of it anyway.

Sully - Model Collapse / The Wash [FABRICLIVE, 2025]

This is the first release of original music under the FABRICLIVE banner (London club fabric's long-running Friday night, which has its roots in drum & bass) and it's hard to imagine a more appropriate artist to launch it than Sully. Here, the UK producer focuses on sounds that hew closer to the late '90s drum & bass that launched the night when it first opened. "Model Collapse" is like peak-era techstep through a psychedelic lens, loaded with eerie, deflating synths and a bassline that wobbles and whirrs in unexpected places. The drumfunk-inspired "The Wash" is lithe and snaky, with breakbeats that hit hard but feel light on their feet, like they're made from aluminum. Both tracks are loaded with the kind of fussy detail and off-kilter sounds that define the best of functional drum & bass—ear candy that whizzes by while you're locked in.

Marco Shuttle - Sonidos y Modulaciones de la Selva [Astral Industries, 2025]

On this album for the always-intriguing Astral Industries label, Italian techno producer Marco Shuttle hollows out his sound for a record built purely of atmospherics—specifically, field recordings made in the Amazon Rainforest in Colombia. There are plenty of animal sounds and bird calls, rustling and rattling, but there are also what sounds like drums, processed sounds and otherworldly whirrs, and, on the second half, a synth passage that sounds a bit like a UFO hovering just above the jungle canopy, before a spoken word passage from one of the indigenous guides who took Shuttle into the forest. Sonidos y Modulaciones de la Selva is far more interesting than the usual field recording record, primarily because Shuttle knows where to manipulate and process things, and when to leave them alone—the aural equivalent of a panorama that captures a wider field than any one person could ever see, but still rooted in reality.