Lost And Sound
Lost and Sound is a podcast exploring the most exciting and innovative voices in underground, electronic, and leftfield music worldwide. Hosted by Berlin-based writer Paul Hanford, each episode features in-depth, free-flowing conversations with artists, producers, and pioneers who push music forward in their own unique way.
From legendary innovators to emerging mavericks, Paul dives into the intersection of music, creativity, and life, uncovering deep insights into the artistic process. His relaxed, open-ended approach allows guests to express themselves fully, offering an intimate perspective on the minds shaping contemporary sound.
Originally launched with support from Arts Council England, Lost and Sound has featured groundbreaking artists including Suzanne Ciani, Peaches, Laurent Garnier, Chilly Gonzales, Sleaford Mods, Nightmares On Wax, Graham Coxon, Saint Etienne, Ellen Allien, A Guy Called Gerald, Jean Michel Jarre, Liars, Blixa Bargeld, Hania Rani, Roman Flügel, Róisín Murphy, Jim O’Rourke, Yann Tiersen, Thurston Moore, Lias Saoudi (Fat White Family), Caterina Barbieri, Rudy Tambala (A.R. Kane), more eaze, Tesfa Williams, Slikback, NikNak, and Alva Noto.
Paul Hanford is a writer, broadcaster, and storyteller whose work bridges music, culture, and human connection. His debut book, Coming to Berlin, is available in all good bookshops.
Lost and Sound is for listeners passionate about electronic music, experimental sound, and the people redefining what music can be.
Lost And Sound
Gyrofield
Kiana Li, the electronic producer and sound artist known as Gyrofield, creates music that steadfastly refuses simple categorization. Growing up in Hong Kong before relocating to Bristol and eventually Utrecht, she began making music in isolation – alone in her bedroom and sharing tracks online. When their parody track “Out Of My Mind” unexpectedly caught fire in 2019, it marked the beginning of a fascinating artistic evolution that continues to unfold in surprising ways.
Our conversation reveals how deeply intertwined Kiana's artistic and personal identities have become. As a self-described "cat-spirited interdisciplinary artist," she discusses how exploring gender fluidity has influenced her approach to creating music that exists beyond conventional boundaries. "What happens when we make identity fluid?" she asks, suggesting that both transness and artistic expression allow people to "possess otherness and turn it into something beautiful."
What emerges most powerfully from our discussion is how music has functioned as both survival mechanism and connection point for Gyrofield. Growing up neurodivergent and socially isolated, creating electronic music offered an essential lifeline. Now, as a respected artist with releases on labels like Metalheadz and XL, she's using her platform to explore complex emotions while still creating moments of joy.
Follow Gyrofield on Instagram:
Listen to Gyrofield’s music:
Suspension of Belief – Bandcamp
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Huge thanks to Lost and Sound’s sponsor – Audio-Technica – makers of beautifully engineered audio gear. Check them out here: Audio-Technica
Bored on the beach? Grab a copy of my book Coming To Berlin, a journey through the city’s creative underground, via Velocity Press.
And if you’re curious about Cold War-era subversion, check out my BBC documentary The Man Who Smuggled Punk Rock Across The Berlin Wall on the BBC World Service.
You can also follow me on Instagram at @paulhanford for behind-the-scenes bits, guest updates, and whatever else is bubbling up.
From Hong Kong bedrooms to label cosigns and genre chaos. Hi, paul here, welcome to Lost in Sound, the show that goes deep with artists shaping music and culture from the underground up and today. On the show, my guest is Gyrofield. But before we get going, lost in Sound is sponsored by Audio-Technica, the global but family-run company that make headphones, microphones, turntables and cartridges. They make studio quality yet affordable products because they believe that high quality audio should be accessible to all. So, wherever you are in the world, head on over to audiotechnicacom to check out all of their range of stuff. Okay, let's do the show, shall we? We'll be right back. Thank you, hello, and welcome to episode 177 of Lost in Sound.
Speaker 1:I'm Paul Hanford, I'm your host, I'm an author, a broadcaster and a lecturer, and Lost in Sound is the podcast where, each week, I have conversations with artists who work outside the box about music, creativity and about how they're navigating life through their art. So, whether you're new here or you've been listening for a while, it's good to have you along, and there's been a lot of listens and love for the last couple of episodes, so thank you so much for that. And in this episode I speak with Gyrofield, the electronic music producer and sound artist originally from Hong Kong, now based in Utrecht, via Bristol. Gyrafield, aka Kiana Li’s
Speaker 1:musical journey began as a teenager, making tracks alone in their bedroom and sharing them online. In 2019, a parody track called out of my mind that they made unexpectedly caught fire and got picked up by drum bass names like sub, focus and 1991. Since then, she's been steadily carving out a distinctive voice, making music that pulls from drum and bass, ambient, hyper pop, dubstep and techno, often all at once. She's released music on labels like Metalheads and XL and Objekt's Kapsela label.
Speaker 1:For me, it's this restless curiosity that I think really shines through in her work. Like when the mood is right, kiana can put out a total drum and bass banger, like on her recent single Mother, but more often than not, not their work refuses easy categorization. Her most recent release, the suspension of belief ep, which we talk about in detail, is a real case in point of that. Much of her work is shaped by personal experiences growing up neurodivergent and socially isolated, navigating gender identity and working through trauma. There's a lot of ground that gets touched on in our conversation. Kiana is a deep thinker and I do feel that there is a lot here. That goes into connections between personal and artistic identity.
Speaker 1:I don't know if it's too glib of me to sum up, um, but music for gyrofield has been a form of survival and connection. That's just how it seemed to me from the conversation we've had. Anyway, you're about to hear it in a minute, but if you, if you like the show and you haven't already, please give it a subscribe. If you have five minutes and you feel like it, give the show a rating and a review on the platform of your choice. It really, really, really, really does help. But, yeah, so you're about to hear the conversation. We had this chat on Friday, the 18th of July 2025. And this is what happened when I met Gyrofield. Kiana, thanks so much for joining me today. It's great to have you here. So I wanted to start off by asking like. Like. Your Instagram describes you as a cat-spirited interdisciplinary artist. I was wondering what that means for you.
Speaker 2:I guess, in this current era and in my particular journey of searching through my gender, different concepts of, I guess, like otherness coming to the picture, and I would like to know some more about transness and it's a very difficult and granular topic. But yeah, what I see is that it's just an affinity to some sort of an affinity to some sort of thing that isn't, you know, the male, female sort of, um, I guess, a structure that we have here. You know, some people feel they have affinity towards some sort of like animal or, like you know, some people have, like you know, third genders or like non-binary identities, and that's sort of yeah, I mean the online sort of sphere for, like queer people. Growing up, it started to become more open and I explored my gender during a time where, like that was becoming a bit more normalised.
Speaker 2:There were also some bits of weirdness to it I guess, like you know, parts of it I've kind of kept um, but all in all it's quite um personal right it's. It's really hard to further break down the thing, like into a more granular stuff right, I see, I see what you mean sometimes.
Speaker 1:I mean please forgive me if I get this wrong but I think sometimes, um, like statements or like the identity we put forward in our art, does the speaking for us, or it's an expression, perhaps that that you know it's, maybe it's a summation of something that's perhaps too complicated to sort of talk about lightly.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think I've discovered like an equal importance when it comes to the art versus the artist. Right Because we all kind of want a good story behind. You know, a piece of art.
Speaker 2:And it's you know, and that's one reason why on social media there are a lot more narratives being pushed now alongside the music, like, even if it's just simple, as you know, like this is a tune I wrote and it's going to be like the sound of the summer or something you know that's still forming a narrative with something. So I think it's really important for art, no matter how, you know, I guess anonymous or elusive or hazy, the sort of topic might be to relate to some sort of I guess, anonymous or elusive or hazy, the sort of topic might be to relate to some sort of, I guess, structured feeling which is the very basis of a narrative. Burial has it going with the sort of, I guess like South London and the sort of like urbanism sort of theme going on, and he's able to like branch off of it, and so I think it's a good case to make that, no matter sort of like how anonymous, like people will enjoy having some sort of like grounding, like real grounding, to music yeah, I think that's a really interesting perspective.
Speaker 1:I also think of, like a classic example like Aphex Twin, and the way he would use, like sort of like, his face in this sort of like fantastical way. Do you feel like electronic music allows for more of a maybe like more of a sense of control over your own narrative than, say, perhaps like other types of music, where there's perhaps more of an idea of like, a like a very old-fashioned authenticity and transparency? I guess, in terms that we use the, the musician is supposed to represent like a very sort of transparent, linear narrative?
Speaker 2:I don't think you know, in the past, when artists have gone big and they've got, you know, a substantial amount of media attention, that their sort of story is particularly linear, like it's definitely sensationalized in a way right where certain moments that probably don't matter much to the artists become sort of amplified and turned into something that is completely out of proportion, or you know, or having moments where you know a young artist, they make genuine mistakes and they do stuff that probably, like a lot of people have done in their lives and it just gets blown out of proportion because of, I guess, the yeah, their name plus like a certain kind of thing happening to them or like you know it's. It's sort of like gossip and paparazzi kind of stuff. But yeah, I don't think that we have to play by that book at all and indeed not many people do. It's really hard to actually maintain a rock star sort of like persona. It's always a very fine line for the people who walk in the past.
Speaker 2:What I find is really what feels really right for me is that I'm able to capture snapshots from my life through short texts I write underneath or posts or like for releases. You know I've done a few of those for my last um, yeah, my last few records and, yeah, just plucking out moments where I felt like I had something right to say or something that, in aesthetic and visual and sound, represents you know a point of time in my life. I feel like it really is like that for a lot of artists, where you sort of get stab shots into their life, even if they're not super like public about it. There is, um, a level of transparency and um that can be spun in a very sort of artistic way if you just, I guess, don't try to, I guess, oversell it or try to make it something that it's uh, it's not yeah, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1:Um, and I think with I mean with the suspension of belief record, what was the sort of snapshot takeaway for you with that? Because I know that there was like an element of like being in contact with nature going on there yeah.
Speaker 2:So, um, I was doing a shoot with, uh, this photographer called nick hadfield for um, my release on excel recordings. That was in june of 2024, and quite randomly we had to look for like a wildlife or like a nature, natural setting. I felt that would be right for the shoot. So we were both working on the direction together and I just started plucking into the sort of post-industrial estates and the post-industrial sort of borderlands of places near Bristol, near the river Avon, and yeah, it was quite interesting to get into that. And then, you know, nick showed me these things about sort of like hauntological imagery in sites and places and you know, as well as actually being out there for the shoots, it's a really interesting feeling to have. You know, I think it was literally like Trant and FC and we were just we found a little bit of a forest around like 100 metres to the side of that little tiny place and it was almost like entering a different state. You could not imagine there being roads just nearby or being able to hear the sound of cars whizzing by on a busy day able to hear the sound of cars whizzing by on a busy day. So it's really interesting to see that, I guess, just beyond our, you know, our human reaches, everything else out. There is nature and, um, I guess there's some ideas that were more felt, but I not found a way to fully like, produce words out of it and communicate it by word. Even during the time when I was finishing the tracks, the idea and the elaboration of the tracks, they changed a lot and I feel like that's a great way to then draw from these impulses of what I think about, you know, the idea of like humanity versus nature, progress versus, you know, almost like, changing and disfiguring the environment to suit us.
Speaker 2:I actually had a conversation, like just by text, with um, a friend, I think someone who's much smarter than me, to be honest, um, and she brought up the term of sonic renegotiation between like us and nature. Uh, that's about the record, and I think that fits very well because in in a big sense, this was a record to, I guess, like dissenting opinions and changing and renegotiating beliefs internally and externally. So I found that to be a really fit word for it. You know, to think that since the industrial era, what we've sought to do as society is try to move past all this natural stuff, natural limits, and try to, you know, bring out almost like an isolated view of growth and human progress, which is also reflected in in, like philosophy and, I guess, how it's kind of neglected with the progress of science. So, yeah, I find that to be a really apt way of tying together all the concepts I've had.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I was always writing from quite a lifelike lens, since I could say the record I did for Metalheads was when I first started to really embrace the feeling of capturing life and still life and moments within my work. So every, I think every record has been a step forward or a step into a different aspect of it. But yeah, like the experiences in nature did have a big effect and also I think it was hearing a lot of music that was able to deliver on that feeling and deliver on that concept. You know there's like really deep techno, like Lucy's label, stroboscopic artifacts.
Speaker 1:I love them yeah.
Speaker 2:And samurai music has done some really interesting fusions of um bass music into almost like a tribal, ambient or industrial as well, and so it's really interesting to think of these um like almost real crossover points. They derive a lot of inspiration for me yeah, that's really beautifully put, thank you. I love the term sonic renegotiation I know it's like it's not even my.
Speaker 1:You know my doing yeah, no, I mean, it's good to give credit, isn't it? And I I could imagine a book called that in a couple of years time. I think another thing about this ep that I noticed is that the production, like I think before a lot of your releases, I feel like I've dug into like a lot more of like a grain and like maybe embraced a sort of like. It's interesting you mentioned hauntology with with like the experiences of making the more recent record, because I sort of feel that there's more of a kind of like a dusty element to your previous recordings. Recent record because I sort of feel that there's more of a kind of like a dusty element to your previous recordings, whereas here it feels like everything is a lot more like suddenly high fidelity. Was that a conscious choice as well?
Speaker 2:um, I, I think in general electronic music has had a direction of tending to more clean and synthetic sounds. You know, there's, I guess, a really good example. I put up this recent release by Cole, super Mother Time, which was so you know, it's a totally different experience hearing it on a system, with, you know, in a room, with some sort of echo and reflection, versus on headphones where it's just so incredibly like I'm almost like crystalline and clean and cut into fragments and structures within the track. And that made me think, because there's a lot of music that sort of goes in that direction. But among you know, one of the big inspirations I took on for Suspension of Belief was the elements of like dub and um working with sound almost like it's in um, you know you're doing dub takes. So the way I approached it was really just by having very intricate automation like baked in and recorded for the tracks and also adding an element that almost interplay with each other through the same sort of delay or dub or, you know, echo sound and that can really add a sort of like dub-like cohesion to things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I also mentioned I think this record is actually a bit you know it's a bit messy by my standards also because there's a lot of rhythmic elements that have different shapes. You know, stuff is very pointed and spiky and prickly almost at times like prickly is a quite apt word for it because it feels like many different um spikes that are small and detailed. But there are also points where I bring in elements very, very smoothly and sort of um almost like transparently, where there's moments that feel, as I guess, um where this sort of um impact of it slowly settles in, like you know, the subs and the kicks really like um building up but always building towards something. And in the track Rorschach, like that was a very deliberate decision and very you know it reminded me of like early minimal techno records where often by you know, their sense of aesthetic, they will smooth out things that don't necessarily need to be made into an abrupt moment or change. There would be a lot of tracks where the kick drum slowly fades in or slowly fades out before coming back in again. So it's interesting to hear just anything different to the way that the music is structured and tried to like factor that in into a sort of creative consideration.
Speaker 2:Um, but I was very particular about like the smoothness of things, like quite an interesting concept because it is as narrow or broad as you want it to be. So there's a lot of fine-tuning in terms of my point of view, which then translates into fine-tuning the technical side of things. So from my perspective, the way I wrote this is definitely a very messy record and one where I feel like there's more definitely there's more like detail than you could consciously, like perceive in one go. You know the reverb and echoes do add to something and that's sort of like the. You know there's like a sensor object, but then there's this haze around it or one way I put it is like you know, when you look with your eyes, you're not consciously looking at the whole picture, you're focusing on something subconsciously. Your brain just sort of gets you to focus on a particular object at a time and everything else is a little bit. You can, can't quite. You know. You know it's there, but it's in a way that's it's not like a photograph.
Speaker 1:I think that's such a really amazing way of putting it actually. Like I'm thinking of when you were saying that, I was kind of picturing that like in any day surroundings and like how reverbs and echoes are like that sort of space at the side of, quite often at the periphery of your vision and, uh, also, I was wondering, like, in terms of like the, the difference in terms of location had an impact, because you know you, as far as I know, you started making music in hong kong, then moved to bristol and now you're intrecht and I was wondering what the change of these elements has had for your process so when I first read this question I was like I was really doubting if there was anything to say on that.
Speaker 2:But actually, you know it ties more into my you know the progression I've had as an artist in sort of opening up and accepting dance music as a really key part of what I do. And I was listening to this music really without like an understanding of the underground scene or any music scene really, when I was growing up in Hong Kong. Yeah, to me it was really just like cool music that sounded like nothing else I'd hear, you know, in my surroundings or nothing else I'd be able to find in. You know my parents, uh, like cd collection or something, so even some Western pop music. It had that feeling to me. But I was also starting to listen to all this stuff at a time when pop music became more intertwined with electronic production, like bands were going out of fashion and you know there were these pop acts who would have electronic or dance music producers come in and do some work with them and you know that was kind of the blueprint of what would become the modern like pop landscape. So there were things I understood, like songwriting, like um, like melodies and progressions. Um, that came before really the deep understanding of the like the technical aspects. Like my first experiences producing were transcribing songs by ear onto synth presets on my DAW. So it was quite humble beginnings and I frankly didn't have a great understanding of the technical side until I really got into drum and bass and then I was really keen on finding out you know, how people made those sounds and made those, I guess, crazy noises.
Speaker 2:And I feel like during my tenure in Bristol I've had a really big change in the way I understood this like bass music and how it currently sort of operates. For one, I kind of got tired of the bass noises Like I kind of felt like ideologically and aesthetically they're kind of a dead end. I don't know where else I'm supposed to turn these. You know like I don't know what else I could turn these bass noises into that would then bring back the emotion in it. There's, there's certain ways to do it and of like, of course, so many of the classics in jungle and drum and bass are able to do it, but they do it through quite simple and subdued and, yeah, contrasting ways where you know like I guess like the quintessential example drum bass would be crest's warhead where just like low sub drone for like the entirety of the track almost, and then this bass nice comes in and is corroborated by these metallic snare hits and stuff.
Speaker 2:So as I went from being just a bedroom producer in Hong Kong to being a bedroom producer in Bristol during lockdown and then coming out of lockdown getting my first gigs, I was very fortunate to be able to have gigs where people already knew what I did and wanted me to play my music, which I was happy to like feed into you for a while.
Speaker 2:But eventually it was just not, I guess, as creatively rewarding as I thought would be.
Speaker 2:You know there are a lot of producers that are that DJ in a way that they just play out mostly their own tracks and sure, that's that's a way for a producer to perform. But I began looking into, you know, selecting and and actually digging into stuff more. I mean, that was a really gradual process and I felt like maybe that as I tried to dig into like 140 bass and like techno and house, I had a quite a surface level understanding at first and I would pick the stuff that sounded cool. But I would always come away with it thinking like what's this other DJ playing and why is it like so much, so much cooler than mine? In a way, that feeling still kind of like persists as I'm, I feel like I'm still, you know, quite early into the process of digging and looking for stuff and trying to fit into my own voice and, uh yeah, like later into my my time in Bristol, I started doing the shows for NTS. That was maybe the last no, no, no, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Was it?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, it was just before I left Bristol, moved out, I started doing a monthly residency for NTS and I found that to be really helpful in getting me to play and dig for stuff that I wouldn't normally play and also fully opened the door for me to curate.
Speaker 2:You know, even if it's just an hour and even if it's just, like you know, a show, you know limited to each show, I could still curate and deliver a progression and a pace and deliver a progression and a pace between like 20 to 30 tracks and I found that to be really helpful in both sketching out ideas or just trying something new. You know, there's been episodes where I went into quite like liminal and weird as like electronic material that's been the odds like acoustic tune played um, this week I recorded the next broadcast and it's now like bi-monthly since the end of um last year and um this one is sort of like bringing a wide collection of music from African diaspora artists into a sphere that is both like interesting but also fitting for me, like I guess that's one way in which I'm like doing digging and trying to find a voice in DJing, because I ought to value and I learned to value the medium a lot like over the years.
Speaker 1:I mean when it comes to that as well, like you've said before, that you consider yourself an outsider in drum and bass and you know. A lot of aspects of what you've just been saying kind of tie in with that and it's really interesting to hear about how you're developing and how the journey of curation is playing into what you do. But in terms of like, if you do consider yourself an outsider, do you feel like that? That has its advantages.
Speaker 2:Well, for one, I was never like happy to just, I guess, give allegiance or, you know, like stick with a certain group of people. I've learned that you know independently and also because of events that happened during my time in like the uk scene it's it's a weird one where I have, I think, a more complicated relationship with drum bass because of certain incidents I've had, and you know a lot of these incidents it revolve around people who run labels and you know certain clicks that that come with them. Yeah, in scenes there are often circles of people. If they don't operate around the label, then they operate around a style or a sound or, I guess, a particular way of doing things, and those are, I think, great fodder for you know like music journalists. Because then you know like music journalists because then people know, like this is what to expect from this group of people and this is what the style is, in some way a snapshot of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But I felt like there was always too much unpredictability in my production and in my writing to really justify trying to stick with a certain scene. I have sort of an old saying to myself that if I try to write a banger it never really works. But there were times early on when I was first discovering drum and bass, when I still, I guess, had a strong like songwriting mindset to things, I would write some really weird and like kind of lopsided like bangers, like there's some of it that genuinely worked, which is, I guess, of course it is unexpected, but it's nice to just write music and then give it the terms and descriptions afterwards. Yeah, and I found myself over the years like gravitating to what other people who are also outsiders in the scene, in a way, like either by choice or kind of just by like naturally shifting away, like Darren Debridge has been. You know, he's probably the example of that because he's completely, you know, turned drum and bass upside down in this time and, from what I know, the autonomic movement, as influential as it is, was never that popular in its day.
Speaker 2:And you know, when I got into drum and bass I quickly discovered a very particular sect of people who were making this really deep, percussive, almost techno-influenced sound of the genre and that also opened me up to a world where drum and bass didn't have to be about the drop and there could be very coherent and lucid progressions fleshed out over six to eight minutes, even more. And, yes, there's things like that, like swapping pockets of the scene, that continue to excite me and, of course, the people who are able to then take these different pockets and implement them to their work or even create something new entirely, like I guess, in drum base. There have been a few constants, I guess, to the scene and like calibre is one of them, and it's also really nice to like hear someone just kind of doing their thing and be in a way, sort of revered for it, like it. You know, I have to admit I don't love or, yeah, I don't listen to every caliber tune for one, there's too many.
Speaker 2:But it's also that I think I've learned to not automatically like focus in and try to enjoy every piece of work that an artist makes yeah and especially in a scene so focused on craft, as like UK dance music and particularly drum and bass, where people are trying to figure out the best ways to make snares or kicks or basses or you know. But you know what if I wanted to write a track that had no kicks? What if I wanted to write a track, you know, that had none of those bass noises? So then it became sort of interesting to to pick and choose pieces you know, like it still really is true for me these days.
Speaker 2:I recently played like two I'd say drum and bass and air quotes. I'd say drum and bass and air quotes, um sets at a at a like properly drum and bass festival and it was real like tricky one because I wanted to curate two sets that were, I guess, like floaty and atmospheric but also quite driven and, yeah, beat driven. But that led me down this road of figuring out how to get the most roll out of every track.
Speaker 2:You know the most like space for texture and for rhythms to overlay each other. As I started mixing it a lot like techno and doing lots of loops and stuff, it was quite fun, but maybe a different crowd it would probably be appreciated a bit more, but it was still a nice challenge to have, I guess. Um, to try and make something work for people that may not fully enjoy it. It's kind of mirroring my experience of trying to make you know my experience of consuming art and media work by you know, being able to sort of pick and choose and form my own perspective off of it I mean, that's a really good way of putting it.
Speaker 1:I feel I've I've always had that view myself, regardless of any kind of genre, that I, for one, I think that there's something that perhaps, like I find a little bit doesn't gel with me about, like fandom, like I feel like we put too much attention onto, like individual people who you know, like you mentioned, like, if you want to try something that doesn't have a certain kind of rhythm, it's, but I think it's also the same in people's lives as well.
Speaker 1:You know, it's putting too much emphasis onto someone as just a human being, um, to live up to a standard, and it doesn't really allow the artist to be able to develop in certain ways freely, as freely, really, and um. So, just echoing what you were saying there, and I wanted to move on and touch a little bit about gender, if that's okay, and you mentioned at the beginning about one thing that you've mentioned before is how you described your gender transition as being sort of very deeply interwoven with your creative path, and I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit more about, like, how that resonates with you currently. You know, I realized that, like you know, life is a very floaty stream and what we might have said in an interview a year ago might be very different to how we feel about something now. So I was, I was just wondering, you know like, how you relate to that now yeah, there's, you know, because I started doing some interviews when I was like 17 18.
Speaker 2:There's stuff in there that definitely just like well, like you know, it's a bit like and, and you know, the stuff of mine I put out and it's still on, you know, streaming on all that from when I was like maybe 16 on. So the things and tracks and moments that in in those moments really, you know, at the time really served a purpose to me and opened my eyes towards something. But now I feel like it's, you know, it doesn't really fit or work with. What I think is is is me creatively and, as I mentioned, I was quite into songwriting and I was very influenced by a, I guess future-facing groups like PC Music and Bubblegum Pop kind of had its heyday in the late 2010s, and that was also the time when I was using vocals in my own music and what I would do is I would sing in a lower register and then have it pitched up and processed in a way that's completely like unrecognizable. It was good for a while and I did meet some of the people who were, I guess, making this sort of music that they called hyperpop, as I understand that term's been a bit quite abandoned now because of, I guess, the media and major labels, of removing the diversity and the creativity and the sort of alternative nature of that. But for a while I was really invested in that scene and well, at least with certain people.
Speaker 2:And then, you know, I started. It got quite a hard pivot. I took into drum bass and suddenly all this energy that I had was like using voice and, I guess, in a way, disfiguring it in order to sound like a more true version of me. That became another, another point of difference amongst the very synthetic and sparkly and high-energy sands that I was now making. So, a few years onward from that, I've learned to generally be more understanding and kind to myself back then because, you know, at the time I was living a very different life and I had, you know, I spent a whole summer in 2019, a summer when I was, um, still like relatively and like a nobody. I was just dropped out of high school because I was like mentally just fractured and of course that and you know I remember, you know I yeah, I came out to my mum, um, through quite, I'd like, lowly circumstances.
Speaker 2:It was not really the way that I wished it would happen, but it took a long while of like figuring things out between me and her to really get back on the same page again. And yes, it's dealing with a lot of feelings that are complicated and not easily solvable within time. And, of course, I was still making music, and music was sort of the only thing I had at the time to really do something with myself and I. So I saw it not just with, um, like a importance of identity, it was also kind of like an existential thing where I was contending with what it means to exist and eventually become, in my eyes, a person again. Um, so, yeah, I was going through this sort of like loss and like reconfiguration of myself and, yeah, I mean, even if it was not the most pleasant of circumstances, I have to understand and more often open my mind up to you know what, what has happened and what has become of it. Because I think it's really important for the narrative on transness to be one that's associated with suffering, of loss, of grieving, and of course, there's more of that than I would, you know, like to tell. But what the establishment, what you know, like Western society is afraid of, transness is, I guess, the ability to find familiarity and like otherness and to fully reject the notion that. You know you have to be placed within a box, you have to be conformist, you have to be, you have to follow a certain life path. I feel like it invalidates a lot of the dogma that we are fed. You know in Western society that there's always, I guess, a group of people to blame for something, for the ills in society. There's always a scapegoat in a way. But what happens when we can make identity fluid, when we can determine the terms to our own selves, even if it means realizing that we were in fact? You know, even if we indeed become part of that like scapegoat group in a way?
Speaker 2:You know there's this narrative that's very strong in the UK about how, you know, trans people should not have basically the right to be themselves in public. You know that's ultimately what a lot of these um, you know anti-trans bills and legislations are about banning trans people from using their gendered bathrooms and you know, I mean our civil rights are being sort of squashed in many other ways. But this has been sort of their scapegoat for a good few years and it's really important to not conflate that with the entire trans experience, like it's really important for people to see elsewhere, even if it's not someone they know, but through, like important trans voices that, like we, are still able to achieve joy and, in small ways, our own liberation because of it and within that, we possess and own otherness and turn it into something that we can create a sort of beauty out of otherness. And we can take beauty that we see in other people, people that by society's standards, we're not, you know, supposed to be, and transform it into a part of ourselves. It's, you know, I think there's a really important thing, that about change.
Speaker 2:Like, everyone goes through change, but, I think, trans people, in a big way, they are able to take the winds of change and repossess them and make their own path out of it, and that's a much more sort of um, you know, it's learning to be kind to myself on a personal scale, is learning to be a more open and supportive and compassionate person on the outside and, and through my art, it's understanding that my perspective draws from these important experiences and that, despite everything, we are here to say something that's meaningful to us and, you know, find meaning in our own ways and that's, I think, the most that we can do now as people.
Speaker 2:So it's. Yeah, I mean it's a complicated thing and of course the minutiae of it is, you know, I wouldn't really describe by myself without you know other people or other like trans or queer people, to help sort of corroborate. I think it's a lot easier to have like to talk about things like this in a more like open discussion sort of thing, whereas if it's one to one, I feel like there are just a few like important things. You know, it's not just transformation. Transformation it's also a kind of transcendence in a way. Yeah, I'm sorry that.
Speaker 2:I mean that went very lofty, but you know no so that was very eloquently put.
Speaker 1:Thank you, and um, um. What would you say um to someone who was, perhaps, maybe you could see yourself in, maybe like 10 years ago, like, perhaps, um starting out on a journey, um with identity as well as like potentially using creativity um as as a as a tool? What? What would you say to someone in that situation right now?
Speaker 2:So I guess it's quite fair that my own journey with identity started about 10 years ago and that's about when I also started messing about with music and computer software for music, and back then I really had no clue besides the sort of beginning of this, like the stress of this, like distress, and um, things have started to make sense more and more in a way that I was not liking, and I think it's quite difficult to like reach my former self and not in some ways give survival advice. Um, you know, and in a quite grim way, that's sort of what we faced. Um, I still have dreams and almost like flashbacks to, when you know, to the life I sort of missed, or I felt I missed in high school and in secondary school, and it's a very difficult one to fully get rid of. It's like still really like flows up in my mind and it's really hard to then, you know, be fully back there and tell, tell you know, my younger self what to, uh, you know what to to make of all of this. But I possessed a very like paranoid and like like fearful attitude which in some extent is like understandable. I had the idea that sort of everyone was out to get me in some way, not like getting me in a way that's like a you know police arresting a criminal or something, but in a sort of like existential way that like I'm everyone's going to have lives and everyone's going to do stuff that I'm not able to do. Somehow I'm barred from this because of, I guess, a certain level of inner resentment or shame or something towards myself. So you know that that shame and guilt and grieving those come in droves as you grow up, you know as a transgender, like adolescent, but honestly I think the one thing that saves me during all that time is having fun. Like I would want to open my young self up to more emotional openness and to understand others, maybe a bit better than I did.
Speaker 2:Because of that strong us versus them or me versus everyone else mentality, it was hard to get going as someone trying to make friends, as someone trying to get a grip on their lives, someone even like trying to get into creating and the communities around it. I found myself definitely a bit more antisocial than I'd like and now you know doing, you know teaching through Patreon, patreon, through one-to-one, and always communicating with people on on social media or via email and by text, the transformation has been made and I feel like if there's one thing I needed to get myself on earlier in my life, it would be to learn to communicate and, because it's something that I hold very dear to myself to be able to both report truly, but also to create something fantastic from simple mundane circumstances. From simple mundane circumstances, like I find my own writing, both in music and in written form, to be really, yeah, really important, highlighting what I think makes life special for me. It's those moments where I can feel a sense of belonging, not just with a sound or a piece of music that I made, but also with the history of dance music that came before it. And I can engage in this dialogue by doing what I do now.
Speaker 2:And, yeah, I mean, I feel like it's really important to hold that humanistic view of the arts because, in the end, those are the stories that create. You know the electronic music nowadays and you know you wouldn't mention dubstep without a start in in, you know, in Croydon, or you wouldn't mention jungle without its influence and dubwise in the Windrush generation. So it's really about the stories and I think opening yourself up to someone who is knowledgeable or is um, friendly enough to allow you to show emotion or to show intrigue or interest and be able to entertain. That. I think it's a really powerful thing.
Speaker 2:In fact, I, I think I first start learning how to be literate about my feelings on online, like chats, because of, you know, because I was not taught it when I was growing up. So it's, it's definitely something that I wish I had learned more and, um, yeah, I mean, ultimately, I wish I would, I could have more fun during that time and I feel like being open to people and potentially, you know, even with the fear that it will dismantle or destroy certain relationships, I feel like it's, you know, back when I was a teenager, that was like the end of the world to me, but I really would hope that things could be different. And, um, yeah, I mean, and also like having fun also includes, um, listening to more records, I think. I think that would be a good thing to ask my younger self to do. I think it's a good place to start there's such a beautiful answer.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:There there's like a yeah, a universe of of ideas and inspiration, I think there and um, and just like finally, I just wanted to ask, and again, this is a little bit of a big one, so um, but it's like okay, um, and it kind of ties in, I think, in certain ways, to what we're talking about already.
Speaker 1:But I feel like this is something I'm really interested in asking guests at the moment, because it feels like we're going through like a very particular, perhaps unprecedented point in in human history right now, with with things happening in the world like the, the genocide, the, the threat of AI, the erosion of human rights, the kind of economic collapse, and sometimes it can feel a bit like you know, I do this podcast and we're talking about music and art every week and it's like I do believe that music and creativity have something very fundamental. It isn't just like flippant and silly, something very, very deep and I think you've articulated this really beautifully. But I was wondering, in this current state of the world right now, what does music mean? Like what, what potential does music have? Or even maybe just personally, what, what do you hang on to for music?
Speaker 2:yeah, I, hanging on is definitely a word to say. I think emotionally it's been difficult to create in the past few months to a year record, flower Burial, which was the one preceding the suspension of the Leafs. You know, I thought no more records for a while, like I needed to just take a breather and recalibrate. But, as it would turn out, my thinking towards music became more, I, I guess, like, ideologically charged. I felt like I couldn't just make music about dreaming anymore. I had to, I guess, get real in a way and you know, and I started to formulate an idea of, like a dance record that would have the sharp, pointed messages and be articulated in a in a great way, artistically and actually it became a sort of pressure and it's quite difficult to got to think of music now, not just in what should I create? What will satisfy my curiosity and thoughts about the world, when these thoughts about the world demand so much action from us? Like, instead of being just a record, it has to be a record that speaks about our current times. It has to be a record that feels important to myself and says what I feel about things, and it's really, yeah, it can get so paralyzing and in a time where we have to engage in dialogue, engage in discussion and and rethink our views, recontextualize our views in in light of everything that's happened, it's very difficult to then have to, you know, write or create something about it. So I think it's really important for me right now not to lose sight of the very, very simple and the very basic idea of making music, which is just to make sound and to make movement and motion happen that I can then translate into, I guess, a piece of audio. It's definitely not. You know the emotions don't come directly. Or you know the meaning, the messages don't come directly through it. It's always been more subtle and psychological and something that's worked upon while I'm finishing the record. But you know, these charged times make me think of having to inject all that meaning in from the very get go and often that's not really possible. So, as well as the immediacy we have when understanding these things and taking stances and opening up dialogue, I feel like I have to take patience and time and really consider what my next moves are in terms of writing music.
Speaker 2:I ended up, you know, writing some things that were very sort of all over the place since Suspension of Belief, sort of all over the place since Suspension of Belief. Some of it was, I guess, dense and obtuse and weird and a bit hard to listen to even, but there's also other things that are more dreamy and almost futurist in a pleasant way. I think it's really important for art right now to express a hope and joy that is, you know, an appropriate level of hope and joy, because I don't think those are going to be really expressed in many of these dialogues and conversations. So, yeah, I've been leaning into stuff in post-punk, in techno, of course, in dancehall and even in African per percussive traditions, just looking for anything that could create a level of joy and create something that I didn't know I needed. I guess the most important thing right now is to put myself in the audience musically and listen out for what I can bring myself, as well as listen up to what other people are giving into the world like yeah, it's definitely a very like.
Speaker 2:It takes a lot of consideration, but I hope that you know I will be pleasantly surprised by what comes out of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you so much, kiana. Thank you so much for talking with me today.
Speaker 2:Likewise, it's nice to spill the brains all over the table now.
Speaker 1:All over the table. Okay, so that was meul hamford talking with kiana lee, aka gyrofield, for the lost and sound podcast, and we had that conversation on 18th of july 2025. Thank you so much, kiana, for sharing your time and thoughts with me there. Suspension of belief is out now on capsella, that's's Objects Capsella label, and Akin slash Mother is out on Fabric Live. If you like the show and you haven't already, please do give it a subscribe. Give the show a rating and a review on the platform of your choice. It really, really, really does help.
Speaker 1:And if you want to check out more of what I do, you can check out my BBC radio documentary the man who Smuggled Prunk Across the Berlin Wall by heading on over to the BBC Sounds app or on the BBC World Service homepage. My book Coming to Berlin is still available in independent bookshops or Vyla Publishers website, velocity Press and Lost in Sound is sponsored by Audio-Technica, the global but family-run company that make headphones, turntables, cartridges, microphones, studio quality, yeah, yeah, affordable products, because they believe that high quality audio should be accessible to all. So, wherever you are in the world, head on over to audiotechnicacom to check out all of their range of stuff the music that you hear at the beginning, at the end of every episode of lost and sound is by tom giddens. Hyperlink is always in the podcast description. So yeah, that's it. I hope, whatever you're doing today, you're having a really fucking great one and I'll chat to you soon. Thank you.