Electronic music has long drawn inspiration from musical traditions around the world, but few artists have attempted to integrate those traditions as fundamentally as Yazan Sarayrah. Rather than treating Arabic music as a source of samples, ornamentation or atmosphere, the Jordanian producer builds his compositions from the ground up using maqam systems, Nabataean poetry and the landscapes that shaped his upbringing, allowing them to determine everything from melody and phrasing to arrangement and sound design.
His new album, IRTH-TRONIC, is the result of more than two and a half years of experimentation, finding ways for microtonal Arabic music and contemporary melodic techno to coexist without compromising either tradition. That meant creating custom tuning systems inside his software, adapting analogue instruments to perform notes beyond the Western scale, and embracing rhythmic structures that refuse to fit neatly into conventional electronic music frameworks.
The result is an album that feels both ancient and contemporary, balancing analogue synthesis, guitar, voice and carefully curated electronic production with a strong sense of place. In this interview, Yazan discusses the technical realities of working with microtonality, the challenge of translating oral traditions into club music, the hardware and software behind the record, and how live performance became an essential part of shaping one of the year’s most distinctive electronic albums.
You describe IRTH-TRONIC as microtonal melodic techno. From a production perspective, how did you approach writing with Arabic maqam systems without forcing them into Western harmonic conventions? Were there moments where you had to rethink your entire workflow?
I think it’s important to mention that microtonality doesn’t limit music; it actually expands the musical vocabulary available to us. It opens up more possibilities for melody and expression because you’re not limited to the usual divisions of the octave.
Just like in Western music, when you set a key and a scale, everything in the composition follows that foundation. The same applies to maqam, you set the maqam first, and then every element has to follow that musical system. The difference is that Arabic maqams are not usually available as presets inside a DAW, so I had to create custom tuning files for the synth plugins I use, like Diva and Serum, so they could follow these scales.
With my analog instruments, I developed a different approach. On guitar, I use small micro bends to access the notes between the standard notes, and over time I adapted the same idea to my analog synths using pitch bends. It became a natural part of how I approach these instruments.
There are countless producers borrowing sounds from different cultures, but your music feels rooted in a much deeper relationship with its source material. How do you ensure Arabic musical traditions shape your compositional process rather than simply influencing the finished sound?
The difference is that I don’t start with electronic music and add Arabic elements on top. I start with the poem or piece first, then I imagine how it can exist within the context of electronic music, the tempo, the arrangement, whether it’s a solo voice or a choir, the melodies, phrasing, and sound design are all shaped by the soul of that piece.
For performance, I was always checking with my brother and my mother to make sure the meaning, pronunciation, and expression stayed true. I think working with cultural traditions requires staying connected to real references, so the core of the art form remains intact while allowing it to evolve.
Electronic music often relies on repetition, while traditional Arabic music can be incredibly fluid in its melodic movement. Did those two approaches naturally complement each other in the studio, or did finding a balance become one of the biggest creative challenges of making this album?
This is an interesting question because it touches on one of the main creative challenges I faced while making the album. Nabataean poetry and music doesn’t always follow equal counts between phrases, one phrase can have a different length from another. Bringing that kind of natural rhythmic movement into a genre that often relies on predictable equal sections was a risk I wanted to explore. Instead of forcing one side to adapt completely to the other, I tried to allow each side to have its full creative spectrum, without limiting the other and that was the biggest challenge. This album is the area where these two spectrums meet.
IRTH-TRONIC has a strong sense of place throughout. Was there a particular landscape, historical site or memory that became an anchor for the record, or did each composition develop its own relationship with the places, stories and traditions that inspired it?
As I’ve mentioned in other interviews, I believe the environment you grow up within has a strong influence on the way you perceive and create music. I grew up connected to the desert side of our region, and that environment has shaped the way I imagine sound, both intentionally and unintentionally.
I find myself drawn to sounds that feel like they are coming from far away, hard textures, a more fluid perception of time, and the feeling of sound bouncing from the surface of a mountain in an open desert. These images are deeply connected to how I imagine space and movement in music, and this might be why IRTH-TRONIC carries such a strong sense of place.
Your productions make deliberate use of space, allowing individual melodic ideas to carry a great deal of emotional weight. When you’re building a track, how do you decide which elements earn their place in the arrangement and which need to be removed?
I believe every phrase has to contribute to the overall impression the track leaves, everything has to complement the other elements. Since I’m bringing two different worlds together, it becomes important to find a balance between traditional and contemporary sounds, as well as between acoustic and electronic elements.
What was important for me was allowing each element to have its own role and emotional weight as part of the whole body of the track, and each track as part of the whole body of the album. The traditional elements shouldn’t become repetitive or overly dominant, and the same applies to the electronic side. If a sound or phrase only serves itself, no matter how creative or unique it might be, it eventually has to be removed if it doesn’t serve the bigger picture.
Your live setup combines analogue synthesis, MIDI controllers, electric guitar and voice, while the studio recordings have the same tactile quality. How do hardware and software each contribute to your creative process, and were there any instruments, synths or plugins that became defining voices across IRTH-TRONIC?
Coming from an instrument-based and analog, band-oriented background, physical interaction with an instrument has always been an important part of my creative process.
Working with a specific, defined sound palette helps me keep the sonic identity focused. The digital world (Ableton in my case) offers endless sonic possibilities, but that sometimes can become overwhelming, scattering exciting choices across a body of work can eventually lead to a less defined character.
I try to develop a collection of sounds that I feel connected to and keep returning to. With the guitar, I have specific tones for leads, textures, and pads that I’ve shaped over the years with my pedals. I approach my synths in a similar way, both analog and digital. I rely heavily on my “DeepMind” for leads that blend with acoustic instruments, Diva for basses and pads, and Serum for sharper, plucky textures. I also only used the “Kick 2” plugin from sonic academy throughout the album for the kick. At the same time, I kept the traditional acoustic instruments in their original form.
Your live performances evolve in real time through voice, electric guitar, analogue synthesis and live manipulation. Have those performances ever changed the way you think about your own compositions, leading you to revisit or reshape ideas once you were back in the studio?
Yes. Before becoming the album it is today, I performed many of these ideas live and explored them through improvisation during shows, partly because I was still developing the material and didn’t have enough finished tracks to fill an hour-long set. Some of those moments naturally found their way back into the studio and became part of the final compositions.
As I’ve mentioned, I come from a band and live music background, so responding to the moment and performing in real time has always been an important part of my creative process. The live environment can reveal ideas and emotions that might not appear in the studio in the same way, and that conversation between the stage and the studio became an important part of shaping the album.
IRTH-TRONIC feels like the foundation of a broader artistic direction. As you look beyond this album, do you see yourself continuing to develop this musical language, or is each project likely to explore different ways of expressing identity and heritage through electronic music?
Finishing this album after more than two and a half years of work, I think it’s still a little early for me to fully answer this question. It’s a journey that I’m still processing, and I don’t really know where it will lead.
As this is my second album, I found myself approaching the process with the same curiosity that guided me through my first album. Looking back, that first album helped reveal a sound identity that I was then able to explore, then intentionally use throughout IRTH-TRONIC.
I believe creativity reveals itself through the process itself. The journey unfolds and guides you through new ideas and directions that answer to a final outcome. What I do know is that I want to continue exploring music with the same curiosity, allowing different stories, experiences, and influences to naturally shape where the next project goes.