When Olof Dreijer moved into his flat in Gothenburg, he found that the previous occupants had left behind a piano. He didn't play the piano. And he didn't especially like the sound of this one. But, on a whim, he decided to crack it open, placing felt and duct tape over its strings just to see what would happen. He warmed to his modified piano so much that he based an entire 2024 EP, Coral, around it. "Often piano music can be a bit serious," he said upon its release, so he augmented it with a bird flute run through Auto-Tune—as you do.

That tells you plenty about the way Dreijer has operated since starting out in the late '90s. He came to global prominence as half of The Knife, one of the defining electronic acts of the 21st century so far. Working alongside his sibling Karin, AKA Fever Ray, the group were as loved for their progressive politics and on-stage theatricality as their hooky, haunted synth pop. (In 2010, RA named Silent Shout as the ninth best album of the 2000s. If anything, you could argue for it to place higher.)

Dreijer developed a firm footing in the techno underground through a run of sparkling minimal records, released semi-anonymously from 2008 to 2011 as Oni Ayhun. So when The Knife called it quits in 2014, many in his position might have looked to capitalise on these successes. But Dreijer's instinct told him the opposite: he faded into the background, focussing instead on grassroots volunteer work and teaching. It's only in recent years that he's creatively re-emerged, releasing music under his own name and fully blossoming into the singular artist we know today.

Dreijer outside his Stockholm studio. From Oni Ayhun to The Knife, he's produced one of electronic music's most emotionally rich catalogues.

When I spoke to Dreijer this summer, he had the air of someone who'd spent a long time figuring things out and had now reached clarity. He's established a creative life that allows him to pursue wide musical interests while staying grounded to his educational work. For every reimagining of Tunisian folk music with Houeida Hedfi or bewitching steel drum experiments alongside Mt. Sims, there's been a club remix of experimental pop artists Björk and Rosalía, or an EP of floral synth bangers for Hessle Audio.

The overflow of this purple patch has resulted in a new collaborative EP with Colombian artist Diva Cruz on Dekmantel Records, as well as his awaited debut solo LP on the way soon: a record he described as a "a mix of calmer and dancey tracks."

Over time, Dreijer explained to me, his music shifted from being conceptual to now being guided primarily by emotion. But no matter which part of his broad catalogue you dip into, you can always make out that knack for resplendent melodies, something he achieves these days with two trusted vintage synthesisers and an ancient delay unit, the AKG TDU 7000. Paired with deep absorption of North and West African rhythms, Dreijer has achieved two qualities that countless producers yearn for: success without undue concessions, and an instantly recognisable signature sound.

The AKG TDU 7000, an old delay unit, that Dreijer has utilised for the majority of his productions.

What do the earliest stages of an idea look like for you? Are you making notes? Humming a melody? Thinking about a concept?

Usually it's just a melody that shows up in my head at night. I record it on my phone, then I try the melody out; play it and see. Often when the melody comes up it's too advanced to put into dance music, so usually I have to make it slightly more simple and monotonous. It's still techno that I'm doing, but I'm trying to squeeze a lot of melody in there.

I play the melody over and over and improvise on some kind of keyboard, synthesiser or piano, then try to find basslines that help the melody somehow. Then I start to try a lot of different rhythms. With the melodies, I play with different instruments, record them with the microphone and then maybe translate it from audio to MIDI in Ableton Live. But if I start with a beat, then the beat will become more of the hook, so to speak.

When you have the basis of rhythm and melody, do you basically know the track's overall destination?

That's a very interesting question. For the first ten to 15 years of making music, if I had an idea, I wasn't good enough to realise that idea. I feel it's only in the last five years that I've been able to create the way I've wanted or imagined. Before, I'd thought something had to be this way, but I never achieved it. You have to be slightly more relaxed with it turning out to be a bit different. I'm getting better now.

In recent years, Dreijer has creatively re-emerged, releasing music under his own name and fully blossoming into the singular artist we know today.

To return to something you said earlier, you were planning to stop making music professionally. Why?

I had a long period when I was thinking we don't need more music from privileged men like me, and I was focusing mostly on realising other people's projects and teaching. I was thinking I'd work full-time as a youth worker with music projects at youth clubs. I'm not sure why, but lately I've become more easy on myself, allowing myself to have fun making music. I had a long sick leave because of a back hernia and couldn't make music properly for [a few] years—then I saw how much I missed making music and how much energy it gives me.

I think many people would, like me, associate your music with colourful, bright and expressive synthesisers and melodies. Has there been a particular synth that's helped you to create this signature?

For most of the tracks on the Hessle Audio and AD93 release, I use the Oberheim Xpander together with the Chroma Polaris. The Chroma Polaris might not be so known, but they work really nicely together, so I usually have them on all the melodies.

What is it about the way they work together that you like?

I like the Oberheim Xpander because it has so much modulation going on, which you need for organic sounds. Otherwise, it's a bit clinical. But the modulation needs to be very subtle, and the Xpander is very good at that. It's not aggressive, but soothing and beautiful. The other thing is that it has very soft envelopes. I like it when music has a mix of soft envelopes and slow attacks, and then very fast, more percussive things.

I hear that in your dance tracks: interplays between straight and dynamic rhythms, with contrasting synths. In fact, I often think that your synths sound like voices or instruments.

Often people think that I use steel drums in my music but I usually don't. I use electronic sounds with the steel drum as a sonic reference, and I have many instruments as references in mind when I make a synthesiser sound. I usually like synthesiser sounds that try to emulate an acoustic instrument.

I also associate your music with a heavy use of delays. It seems you have a fondness for very evocative delay tails, which make me think about organic environments like jungles. This doesn't simply feel like a nice little background effect, but something that's integral to the music.

I think it's really fun to be creative with the delay. Usually you have feedback to increase the amount of taps. But the delay I worked with when I started making music didn't have feedback. You have to feed back into itself on the mixer, on the return [channel], which made me start being creative with that. In that feedback chain you can add a lot of exciting things. The most important is EQ and compression, but [you can also add] different kinds of reverbs. There is no reverb on the dry melody, and so that creates this feeling of depth in the mix.

The most important thing is to have maybe three or so LFOs on the delay time so that it wobbles but doesn't wobble all the time. Because if it's the same LFO, it becomes a bit boring. It's like the standard effect. Again, I just want something that is natural-sounding, and usually you need a lot of LFOs to do that.

Are the taps being modulated with things like pitch, tremolo and panning?

Usually just pitch or time. It's the classic wobble thing.

I didn't ask you what unit you're actually referring to.

The AKG TDU. I've had it since forever. Somebody told me that it's the first delay that was made, but all I know is that it's very old and very rare. It's on every song of mine. I have tried so many delays but usually I get bored if there's not enough modulation.

Are there other tools or instruments that are integral to what you do?

I also use the Oberheim SEM modules, which are very beautiful. It's only these last few years that I got into more expensive analogue stuff. For so many years, especially with The Knife, it was very important that the gear be super cheap, so anybody could access it. We were learning along the way, but we weren't really good at producing, so this stuff was easy to understand—or quite easy to understand [laughs]. In the last ten years or so, I've gotten into how beautiful a nice analogue synthesiser can sound, and that can also be very fun.

Looking back, are you at all surprised at what you were able to achieve with the productions on The Knife records?

Oh yes, I could never have thought [we could do] that!

How would you advise somebody today if they were curious to make the leap from software into exploring hardware or older gear?

My first advice is that you don't need any of this stuff, actually. There is nothing saying that you need to have any of that. You can do so much without any hardware. I think most of the most amazing music these days is just done on the computer.

But if you really wanna try something, there's an Argentinian synth called the GS e7. It's a polyphonic synth that's about €1,500. It's a lot of money for anyone starting, but it's at least cheaper. I haven't tried it but it sounds very good on the demo.

It seems that with the second-hand market for analogue synths there's very little that's affordable.

It's very tricky. But then, for example, there's a plugin version of the SEM modules, the GForce OB-E, I think it's called. That sounds very good and very close to the originals, I think. If you want to do weird modulation and mix it with your rack, then it's very nice to have the modules.

Colourful, bright and expressive synthesisers and melodies are a key part of Dreijer's instantly recognisable sound.

Let's dig into your working process a bit more. Are you somebody who's fast and energetic when you work, or more calm and deliberate?

I work very slowly. I take a lot of time. I live with the tracks I'm working on for months. Also if I do production for others, I change the sound of the track or the rhythms or the production many times. I can change the style of production maybe five or six times, so it's very frustrating to work with me [laughs].

We're talking about broad changes, then?

Yeah, different beats, rhythms, synthesisers, phrasing. It's a process. Now, when I make my solo tracks, they don't change style. If I make a track, I want it to last for many, many listens across a few months. When I know it has gone through that process and I'm still not bored of it, then I know it's OK. Because I work like this, I don't do so many remixes. It's a bit faster, but still I'm too slow. It doesn't make sense unless it's something really exciting.

Do the tracks you don't release go through the same gestation period?

No, I won't have worked as much on them because I obviously haven't been as excited about them. But I still have them and they're good to have. If a film [score] or production job comes up and you need to dig through your older ideas, they will be there. I have a lot of material that I'll finally continue working on because I'm planning to make an album for next year. It'll be a mix of calmer and dancey tracks.

How do you go about establishing a working method when producing for other artists?

I try to just realise the vision of the artist, then make that as clear and good as possible within my aesthetics somehow. I worked with my friend Bahareh—artist name Uroish—a couple years ago, producing three tracks. She asked me to do Iranian '80s disco, and I was like, "Who am I to do that? And how?" But she showed me a lot of references and I did my best. I love these challenges.

Now take Diva [Cruz]: she came to me and asked if I could help her make Brazilian funk in Spanish, because she hadn't heard that so much. I was like, "OK, I have so much respect for Brazilian funk, so I don't think we can do Brazilian funk the way we know it." But we can be inspired by that and use this interpretation to do something personal that is a mix of all our influences.

Are there any big learnings you've had from working with other artists?

I learn from every project. When I started working with Houeida [Hefi], she said in Tunisia they have between 100 and 250 traditional rhythms, and this album included maybe 20 or 30 of them. It's a whole new world to me. When I started playing in her band, it completely reprogrammed my concept of groove, and I still carry that with me. She's inspired by traditional Tunisian music but also Moroccan music and the Sufi music from North Africa. For example, the piano tracks on Coral have a melodic structure and way of thinking you also might hear in Gnawa music from Morocco.

"I feel it's only in the last five years that I've been able to create the way I've wanted."

Let's talk about your teaching. Could you tell us generally about the work you do?

It began by coincidence. I think it was around 2012, in Berlin. There was an activist refugee camp set up in Oranienplatz in Kreuzberg, and it was a lot of refugees from West African countries who had been activists in their home nation. I went there and asked if they needed any help—to help them build something or help practically. They asked, "What do you do?" I said I work with music, and they said, "Yeah, we need a band."

It turned out that they needed to learn. So, together with a few others, we set up a music school. I called in people I knew who could play an instrument to give lessons, but after a while, it became more organised and professional. [The students] could go there and rehearse with teachers. It was a small group of maybe ten or 15 people. That went on for many years. The idea was to have this band as a way to communicate their message, because they had actions almost every week at the refugee camp. They set up a few tents on this public square, so it affected many people; it was very prominent. I was helping as a sound technician at small concerts here and there.

When I moved back to Sweden five years ago, I started working in a more organised music school for immigrant youth, most of whom came alone to Sweden. I was giving music production classes and we had summer camps all over Sweden. I'd do sound recording workshops, teaching students how to record with a portable recorder and make beats or melodies. Just fun things that inspire creativity. That's been amazing.

I tried to continue with this during the pandemic, either online or with small groups at my studio. But since I'm working on my own music, I haven't had the time to do it. I'm not teaching right now, but I will probably go back to that in a while. [With teaching] I like to approach making sound and music in a slightly less respectful way, in a more punky way, which is always refreshing to be around.

Obviously a lot of barriers have been broken down with the rise of freely available music production information, but do you see any downsides to the advent of YouTube tutorials, for example?

I mean, there probably is. But in general, I think it's just amazing, and it's made all this stuff that used to be very exclusive much more accessible. So much amazing music is done in cheap ways.

I guess I was thinking that maybe some naivety or freedom is lost when you have access to so much information.

It depends if you're speaking to young people from the West or not. If you speak to people who are in the West, or from more privileged backgrounds, there are a lot of labels, and sometimes the labels aren't so creative. It's like, "I want to do this thing, and it should sound like that."

If you're young and have music in your life, and want to make a style, then that's great. When I started, I felt the labels weren't as clear. With others who aren't as exposed to all these labels, I can see that their minds are sometimes more open. But I think if somebody just wants to be creative in whatever they do, that's amazing.

"We need to keep changing all the time: ten years ago, I made creative choices I'd never make today."

You've spoken eloquently in the past about matters of cultural appropriation, and I wondered if we could consider this from the perspective of teaching. If you had, for example, a class of Western students, how would you advise them to navigate this area? What are the things that students should be mindful of?

I'm not sure I have the best answer to this question. My classes have been very practical in helping people making their first attempts in music production or learning an instrument. I also mostly have students who are refugees, so they are more aware of colonial structures, and I learn a lot from them.

It's always good to expose people to a lot of music and learn many ways of making music from different parts of the world. If I had students from a Western background, I'd try to inspire some humility and inspire them to make their own thing; usually that takes you a long way. I'd try to find a way to talk about how the West has stolen a lot, so hopefully this can lead to a more humble approach.

With access to so many sounds, it's incredibly easy for someone to go on a popular platform and grab a sample without understanding where it comes from, or about the culture it's connected to. So in some senses, the accessibility is great, but it does feel like there's a tension there.

There's a lot of that going on, and it's something I think about all the time, in every situation. I'm inspired by a lot of different things, but it's very clear sometimes where the inspiration comes from. My way has been trying to come up with my own personal expression. But we need to keep changing all the time: ten years ago, I made creative choices I'd never make today. It's a learning process. We are a product of everything around us.