Bobbi Watson is a sound engineer, light designer, Dj-producer and live act. In 2024, she appeared on Polën's first compilation and she recently released her debut Ep “Sonian Tales” on YUKU, revealing 3 tracks blending ambient techno, experimental bass music and organic textures. From her studio in Brussels, Bobbi Watson speaks about her new live performance in collaboration with Lénaïc Pujol and the part that takes the field recording in her work for shaping specific sound-ecosystems and taking the audience to a cinematic and immersive dimension. She also speaks about Azurium collective that she co-founded in 2021, the Vallée Électrique festival as the co-director of visual arts and performances, her Soum-Soum duo with the percussionist Mathilde Guimard, her regular Pölen Biotope’s jam sessions, her residency on Kiosk Radio and Gimic Radio among others. 

Welcome, a glass of? 
A beer.

Where do you come from? Do you have any music education? 
I grew up in Strasbourg, then wandered through different cities for my studies: Montréal, Bordeaux, Lausanne and finally Brussels, where I settled for now. Music came early, back in Strasbourg, I was immersed in the vibrant local electronic scene, navigating parties on both sides of the border. I also had a couple of years of formal training, but I think my real education happened in jam sessions, learning to trust my ear and let it guide me. After my stage director master's, I also did a sound and light engineering certificate, that's when I truly dove into the architecture of sound.

Who are your main references? 
There are many, but if I had to choose just a few: James Holden, Polygonia, Skee Mask, Rrose, Hainbach, nthng, Beatrice M, JakoJako... But honestly, the people who've shaped me most are part of the Polën and Melifera label communities as well as my Azurium collective. We're friends who make music together, play each other's tracks, and influence each other. That shapes me not just musically but, in the way, I approach creation itself.

How was the reaction when your close knew about your willingness to have a music career? 
I don't think there was a specific moment, honestly. Djing and music just started taking more space in my life without me really seeing it coming. I was focused on stage direction, and suddenly this was becoming central too. Maybe the turning point was our first official Azurium event, closing a festival that we organized with my master's classmates to finally present our plays after covid. That night brought so much joy, it shifted something in what I wanted to pursue.

How long did it take from the first production experiments to this first release on Yuku? 
I don't really remember when I first installed Ableton on my computer, but my first real dive into production was in 2020. I was working as an assistant director on a play where the composer didn't show up, so I ended up producing a piece for it. Like with any art, it's hard to say when something is truly finished, and add perfectionism and some lack of confidence to that... you end up with a first Ep 5 years later (laughs). I think part of what really helped push me forward was joining the Polën community. My first released track was for their introductory VA in 2024, and the collective residencies we did around it gave me the confidence I needed to finally put my music out there.

What kind of gears did you use to compose your Ep "Sonian Tales"? 
Mostly Ableton and my favorite VSTs, along with various recorded sounds: field recordings, my voice, various objects-instruments, Constance's violin... What shaped this EP more than the gear itself is probably how I approach composition, with a narrative angle in the arrangement. I also spend a lot of time on sound design, either through pure synthesis or by manipulating audio materials, and then weaving them together. Like in “Knock Knock” where I was really picturing the drums as lively characters in dialogue with each other.

What part takes the field recording in your work? 
It can be very concrete, bringing a specific landscape into the music, or purely textural, adding organicity. Sometimes a field recording is the very beginning of a track—if there's a place I really want to evoke, I'll start with a long atmospheric capture that I don't transform too much. Other times it's just an element—I'm working on drums and want to make them more organic, so I'll extract a sample to sculpt a sound. I also love how field recordings can make different times and spaces coexist. In the track “Sonian Tales”, for instance, there are recordings from the Sonian forest, but also from a moss-covered piano abandoned in a valley of la Drôme that we played with during a Polën residency.

How did you link with the label YUKU? 
It's actually a nice little story. On my 30th birthday, I went to a friend's atelier to borrow a fog machine. He wasn't there, so another guy lent it to me and we shared a coffee. I had just finished mixing the Ep and was starting to think about where to send it. While talking about it, he suggested I reach out to YUKU. I knew the label already, and when he mentioned it I thought my tracks could actually match their vibe. A few days later, I got an unexpected reply from them. Best belated birthday gift ever.

A story behind the name "Sonian Tales"? 
“Sonian Tales” came from an episode I did at Kiosk Radio for my “Organic Tales” residency, focused on the Sonian forest. Like for every episode, I convinced myself I'd actually manage to finish an intro track in time—spoiler: I didn't (laughs). But I kept developing that material afterward, and it eventually became the first track, and the title, of the Ep.

How do you know when a track is ready to propose it to labels? 
When the deadline has passed (laughs). No, more seriously, when I'm finalizing tracks, I do listening sessions in different places, taking notes on what needs adjusting and getting feedback from friendly ears. Then I have sessions where I work through all those notes. My final test is listening while doing something else: if nothing strikes me or pulls me out, then it's ready to send. Though the final "details" can still take a while after that, but at some point, I just try to let go to be able to work on new stuff.

What effects are you looking for on the listener?
I don't think I'm looking for a specific effect, but I'm drawn to creating spaces where different energies coexist, some kind of dreamscape to navigate. It echoes the experiences as a dancer that made me travel the most, somewhere between the physical sensation of the bass and the mind wandering on pads. For the track “Quartz Harmony”, at first, I was picturing it as an ending movie soundtrack. From that emerged orchestral aspects in the track, which drove me at some point to want to bring in a real violin. I happened to have met Constance Gérault at Gimic Radio that exact week, and I was really interested in how she could bring her classical vocabulary to it. In the arrangement, I wanted to keep pieces with her violin sound almost raw, letting it enter like the main character.

Speaking of which, do you consider music as physical? 
That's a tough one. I consider music as an abstract medium, you can't physically hold it. But it definitely has physical effects, especially when listened to through a proper soundsystem. It can bring incredibly strong physical sensations. I remember feeling dizzy once just from the basslines on a huge dub soundsystem. Maybe it's no coincidence that music so often comes with dance, as if movement was part of its DNA. Maybe music isn't really physical until it reaches a listening body, passes through it, and sometimes, awakens movement within it.

Since when do you perform solo and what is your current Live set-up? 
I've been Djing for about 5 years now, not counting the unofficial house parties, and playing improvised live sessions with the Polën community for two years, but this solo live setup is fresh out of the oven: I started building it late August for the Concours Circuit auditions. My current live setup is built mostly around Ableton: three MIDI controllers including a piano controller that replaces the synth I don't have yet (laughs), one microphone for small instruments, and one for my voice. I'm looking forward to investing in more hardware though, to free myself a bit from the computer. Beyond the musical gear, coming from stage direction, I couldn't imagine my music without a visual dimension, so from the very beginning I started collaborating with Lénaïc Pujol to create a scenographic light installation that would be inseparable from the music itself. My little luminous stage house.

Could you speak about your project Soum-Soum? 
Soum-Soum has quite a nice story behind it. I met Mathilde in Bordeaux, in a drum rehearsal space. A few minutes after we met, we burst out laughing because we were both nodding our heads to the same track I'd put on a small speaker. In our first conversation, we realized she was looking to collaborate with a Dj, and I was thinking of working with a percussionist. I was playing a lot of tracks with traditional percussive patterns in my sets at the time. A few days later, we randomly met again at the same house party. I was DJing, and at some point I heard percussion—I'm like, hmm, I don't remember percussion in that track. I look up and see Mathilde jamming over it with a baby djembe. A few weeks later, between two lockdowns, I invited her to do a first experiment together at an atelier where we were organizing a party with Azurium. That first hidden show led us to name the project the day after. Never found a name so quickly, Soum-Soum, referencing that discreet first gig together. Since then, this submarine aspect has taken more place in our artistic direction. In 2026, the submarine will surface with our first EP, and we're really excited to bring this material to the stage!

Any ritual before a performance?
Re-tie my shoe lace. And a hug, if it's a shared performance.

For you, what makes a perfect live jam session? 
It's probably obvious, but listening. Really listening to each other. Sometimes choosing not to play is exactly what's needed for the ongoing moment. Polën Biotope came out of a collective residency organized by Polën - sibling label of Melifera - in 2023 for their first VA. Nine of us explore ambient, downtempo and drone territories as well as the surrounding ecosystem through different artistic processes. We started jamming regularly during the week, and we were moved by what emerged spontaneously, some kind of deep collective listening. Both the music and our growing friendship made us want to develop this into a live format. We usually perform in the middle of the audience, inviting them as close as possible to the process. The project welcomed more artists during a second residency in 2025. Polën Biotope is like a shifting organism with several heads: its composition changes for each performance. 

Speaking of which, Melifera Records is the organizer of La Vallée Electrique festival which will celebrate its 10 years birthday this Summer! I heard that you team-up with Paul Rêve, for all the visual arts and performance aspects. Could you describe La Vallée Electrique in 3 words please? 
Arts, living world, dreamy gathering.

And what about your “Organic Tales” show at Kiosk radio? 
Organic Tales is a sound exploration based on a creative protocol. Each episode is inspired by a different natural entity, for instance a specific forest or ocean. The process involves collecting various materials beforehand—like field recordings, scientific archives, forgotten poems, musical selections, and other spices—which are then woven together to create an abstract journey around it. Kiosk Radio has given me a lot of freedom to explore with this format, and it's been exciting to see other artists navigate the concept too.


What is the philosophy behind Azurium? 
Azurium emerged from a group of friends evolving in various artistic mediums who were all gravitating around the same shared flat in Bordeaux. We founded it as a pluridisciplinary laboratory, a space to experiment at the crossroads of disciplines and share knowledge, both within the collective and beyond. It's at the same time a structure to support each other's projects and a group of artists that sometimes comes together to create collectively, either for our own gatherings or for events organized by others. These collective works begin with building a universe, often inspired by the space itself, then weaving a fragmented narrative through different artistic pieces. The audience is somehow the final piece of the puzzle, bringing it to life and extending it beyond our initial vision.

What are the main barriers you are facing for career growth? 
It's very pragmatic, but right now I'd say money and time, which comes back to money somehow. Like most emerging artists, the time issue also comes partly from managing everything alone: admin, project production, communication... Wearing all these hats is time-consuming, can make you lose sight of why you're doing this, and takes away from the creation itself.

If I mention Aphex Twin, what comes first to your mind? 
Magician. An endless discography to discover. It also brings back a lot of memories. Many theater and dance rehearsal moments, because I used to work a lot with his tracks for warm-ups and improvisations.

Your top 5 labels? 
Difficult to pick just five, but let's say Melifera & Polën—cheating a bit by counting them as one (laughs)—YUKU, Virtual Forest Records, Samurai Music, and QEONE.

Recently, which artists blew you away the most? 
The live set from Malesa, a duo composed of Dalida Carnage and & Trois-Quarts Taxi System, two artists I really admire. 

Your 5 top places in Brussels? 
Kiosk Radio and Gimic Radio for good music and a drink, Marolles flea market, sunset from the Palais de Justice railings and the Sonian forest, of course.

Without music, life would be… 
Less colorful. Like missing a language to express things that words can't capture.

Your top 4 new releases?
- Paul Rêve & Solarythm “Snakes and Horses” 
- Okgwa “Sikdang” (Space Drum Meditation remix)
- Smogo “Bestial”
- Solma “Diophan”

Your top 4 oldies? 
- Azu Tiwaline “Reptilian Waves” (Kangding Ray Remix)
- Skee Mask “Via Sub Mids” 
- Beatrice M. & Trois-Quarts Taxi System “French Lessons”
- Polygonia “Dreaming Trees”

Your projects? 
For the coming year, there's a second Ep in the works. In connection with that, I'll also extend my live set to a one-hour version to be presented in February. Soum-Soum's first Ep is also in the making, and I'm looking forward to that. We're also preparing a beautiful edition of La Vallée Électrique festival for June. Beyond that, I'm working on a longer-term project—a triptych exploring becoming-mycelium, bringing together my different mediums: a performance, a short film, and an album. Given what I just listed, that one probably won't be finished in 2026 (laughs).

Interviewed by Sabrina Bouzidi / photo by Melissa Fauve.