From what I hear, your show was the best one at the Elektron Night of Machines in LA, earlier this year.

Oh, that's so nice! I think my set was the most energetic, that's all. I don't think I was the best. There was the most people there at the time, and I played the right music for the situation, I think.

Word is, it was a lot rougher than what you hear on any of your recordings!

Yeah, live is always rougher.

What's your favorite word?

Gosh, you know, off the top of my head - when I was a little kid, I remember being fascinated with the word *cepaceous* which, in English, means onionlike. Because it seemed like a totally useless word! I sort of found archaic and impractical words to be fascinating. I still do. As a result, I've impressed myself a couple of times in finding use of the word cepaceous in actual conversation. But it's not very practical, generally, maybe when you're talking about food, you might use this word, but it's not an everyday word. It's one that's stuck with me for a long time. I used to have this dictionary of obscure, unused English words. Cepaceous was one of them.

Where does the name Cherushii come from?

Well, my first name is Chelsea. Cherushii is an interpretation of my name Chelsea. So, if you write Chelsea, in Japanese letters, it's spelled チェルシー, phonetically *Chi-E-Ru-Shi-i*. If you read that with an English-speaking mind, it looks like Cherushii. I remember, the very first time that I started to read Japanese, the first thing I ever read was my name. I saw the characters written out, and I read it, and I said: Cherushii - that sounds *so cool*! I started using that name when I was sixteen. I started using it as my music name, and then I abandoned it, maybe when I was nineteen or something. My boyfriend at the time thought it was a stupid name. So I stopped calling myself Cherushii. Then, when I was getting ready to release my record for 100% Silk, I decided I didn't want to go by Chelsea Faith or C. Faith - I'd been calling myself C. Faith for a few years prior, but there's a Christian website called CFaith dot com, and I don't want to be affiliated with organized religion. So I ditched C. Faith and started going by Cherushii again.

Exactly one hundred years ago, Eric Satie said that music should be like furniture. For me, your music is the perfect backdrop for a solid feelgood atmosphere in a club. It's a mood booster. What's your secret?

I think the only way to boost a mood in a club comes from spending a lot of time in clubs. I've always made dance music because that's sort of what I started out in. I started out as a performer. Performing in dance clubs. So, from the beginning, I was always trying to make music that fit that scenario. I came from the rave scene. I used to play live on hardware every evening. Spending a lot of time playing my own music live to crowds and later, in clubs, I kind of learned how to connect with how a dancefloor works. But there's no secret! Every dancefloor is different, and you have to feel it out as it's happening, you know what I mean?

Name an artist that has been particularly inspiring for you.

I love K. Hand, the Detroit techno producer. She's an early inspiration to me. She's one of the only women - if not the only woman - from the early 90's Detroit techno scene. She's just an amazing DJ and a killer producer. Actually, that's why I was calling myself C. Faith before I went back to calling myself Cherushii, I was calling myself C. Faith because I was such a big fan of K. Hand, copying her formula! Her name is Kelli Hand. If you've never heard her music, you should look her up. She's a really cool producer and DJ. She totally owned the dancefloor when she was DJing. But she doesen't get a lot of credit for her work. Just recently, I saw her at a little dive bar here in San Fransisco. I think it was her first time playing in San Fransisco, at least it was the first time in a really long time, and I was thinking, this woman has been involved in techno and house music since the early nineties, and a lot of the guys from that time are now playing Berghain to thousands of people, while K. Hand, who is just as good and just as old school, is here at this dive bar in San Fransisco, playing to 75 people. The party was really good, but I don't feel like she's gotten the recognition she deserves, like her male colleagues from the same era. It's a little bit depressing, really. I look up to her a lot.

Like society at large, then. You have to be ten times as good if you're a woman.

Tell me about it.

What place do you go to, physical or mental, to make music?

Well, I usually make music in the morning. Right now, for example, it's 11.20 and I'm in my studio. I like to make music first thing in the morning, before I start thinking about other things. It's funny I say first thing in the morning - 11 o'clock in the morning - for me, this *is* first thing in the morning! I just woke up. You know, I'm on musician time. I like to start making music when I haven't started worrying about other things, I haven't listened to a lot of other music, and my mind is clear. That's usually where I'm at when I'm making music. I can put my first energy of the day into music.

Sort of before the overly analytical mind kicks in?

Exactly. First thing. And also, I get a lot of music ideas from my dreams, and if you wait too long, they'll go away. If I wait until night-time, they will all be gone. First thing in the morning, I wake up, I go to my studio, I eat breakfast there and then make music all day long. From 10 am to 5 pm. Every day.

Are you a classically trained musician?

Yes, I am a classically trained musician. I studied piano, I went to the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and studied piano, performance and music theory. But the classical music world was a little bit to harsh for me. I wasn't very successful. I'm not nearly disciplined enough to make it as a classical musician. Also, classical music is very rigid. I mean, I love it, I love classical music, it's very beautiful, but it's very static and unmoving, in that there is not a lot of room for interpretation, these days. You know, according to history, music historians say that the performers, hundreds of years ago, would put their own interpretation into the pieces. These days, the idea of performing a piece is to realize the composer's intention as fully as possible. That leads you down this road of puritanism in music. So, of course, I was not very successful in this world because I wanted to create my own interpretation of classical pieces. And that's not okay in a Conservatory. That's against the rules. And you fail. So I failed pretty hard.

You make music for regular people, and you seem lika a regular person, in the sense that I have a hard time imagining you biting the head off a bat as part of your performance. Anyway, can you tell me your favorite prank?

I'm a little bit of a shy person, so I don't often pull pranks these days. But when I was a kid, a was more mischievous and I used to pull a lot of pranks, with my best friend Josie. One that I remember particularly is, we would get baloney - a kind of American processed meat, it's pretty disgusting - and we would take it out of the packet, this smelly, pink meat, and we'd leave it on someone's doorstep. Then we'd ring the doorbell, and run away. We never got to see what happened. We could only use our imaginations to imagine what happened when somebody would open the door, and see a stack of meat on their doorstep! That entertained us endlessly, at the time.

Brilliant! Have you seen Regular Show?

No, I've never heard of it.

There's a character in it called Muscle Man, and one of his staple pranks is to baloney his boss' car!

I didn't know anyone else did baloney pranks!

It's worth watching. The cartoon is created by James Garland Quintel from California, and I believe Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo was pretty involved, making the music for that show.

Man, you know about cool Californian stuff, better than I do!

What's your favorite cartoon character?

Let's see. I feel like I'm answering a lot of questions starting with "when I was a kid," but I'm going to, anyway! When I was a kid, I really loved this children's film called Unico and the Island of Magic. It was made by the Sanrio Company, the one that makes Hello Kitty and all those characters. I had a feeling that they made this film just so that they could make merchandise from it, but it's a story about a little unicorn called Unico, I was a little girl, so of course I'd love a story that has a little unicorn in it, a little unicorn that tries to save a small Japanese village from a demon, of sorts, who is turning all the people of the village into living puppets. That means he'd cast a spell on the people and then all of a sudden the people are made of stiff material, they turn into these blocks. Then the blocks walk off into where the demon is building a castle out of the people. He just wants to freeze all the people to turn them into this castle. So, the little unicorn has to save the day, because the reason that the demon is building the castle out of people is that he's so very lonely. He just wants friends. The little unicorn goes on a journey to befriend the demon and melt his sadness. When he finally feels love, he frees all the people, and lets them go again. So Unico is my favorite cartoon. He's a little tiny unicorn, with a little tiny horn and gigantic eyes, very cute. I still watch that, now. And it has really cool electronic music in it. The analog synth sounds that they use as the sound effects - like the sound of a creature jumping up into the sky and flying, or little feet walking on the ground - were these analog synth sounds.

Like something Suzanne Ciani could've done?

Yeah! It sounds really cool. A lot of cartoons of that era, especially Japanese cartoons, have these synth sounds as sound effects. I think that's probably, for a lot of people, some of their first exposure to electronic music. Probably me, actually! It was probably my first exposure to electronic music. I watched this movie when I was three years old, or something. It's not famous, and it's not popular. I'm not even sure why my mother had it. It was the early eighties, so I guess it was available on VHS at the time. These days it's fairly obscure, as far as I can tell. I don't have any other friends who have seen this movie.

Your mom's got real good taste, introducing you to that cartoon.

I'll tell my mom that you said that!

Do you feel that you can channel musical expression through an electronic instrument as intimately as, say, a piano? In other words, do you think the electronic interface of a synth is, in a sense, a barrier or a haptic enhancement?

Of course I think it's an enhancement. I'm an electronic musician. I've chosen that path, so obviously I feel like you can express yourself fluently and honestly through electronic machines. I came to electronic music because I felt that I couldn't express myself, fully, through acoustic instruments. I felt acoustic instruments were too limiting. For me, anyway. For my musical vision. When I was a kid, I studied piano, like I said before, and then I used to write music for piano. At a certain point, I wanted more different sounds, so I started teaching myself how to play other instruments so I played guitar, bass, mandolin, accordion - just any kind of instrument that I could get my hands on. I had all these ideas that I wanted to learn harp, I wanted to learn sitar and all these things, I wanted to have access to more and more sounds. And then, eventually, I got a really crappy, digital rack-mount effects unit for twenty dollars at a music store. I started to experiment with using effects on my acoustic instruments, trying to get different timbres, different types of sound. Then, eventually it dawned on me. Screw these acoustic instruments! I could just use electronics to get my ideas out. When I started using electronics, I was really able to fully realize my ideas in a way that I could never do with acoustic instruments. And that's just my personal preference. Electronic sounds. Because those are the types of sound that I imagined. I know it's not for everybody. I know a lot of people feel like acoustic instruments enable them to connect with them more intimately, but I think a lot of my musical ideas don't come from needing to connect my body to an instrument. The ideas come from my imagination. You know, beyond the realms of acoustic sounds. So I'm all for electronic instruments, obviously! I love them.

When was your first contact with an Elektron instrument?

I bought the original Machinedrum in 2005. It was a really, really big investment, and I was so nervous about it, to spend so much money on one machine. Prior to that I had a 606, obviously a classic drum machine, but it wasn't versatile enough for me. I wanted something more modern. So I got the Machinedrum. I just fell in love with it. It's been part of my setup ever since. I've been playing on the Machinedrum for ten years. I love it.

What's more appealing to you, regarding the Machinedrum, its benevolence or the dark side of its character?

Ha ha! what I really like about the Machinedrum is its versatility, in that you can make really dark, nasty sounds out of it, or you can also, kind of, emulate classic drum machine sounds if you want to. I don't think that's the best use of it, though. I think the best use of it is to come up with new sounds that don't sound like anything else. That's why I like using a synthesis-based drum machine so that I can really experiment with different types of sounds.

In my experience, the music you choose to play in a club largely influences the social interaction boundaries - if a generally happy, easy-going attitude will prevail or, conversely, all all-out bar brawl. What do you think?

I take no responsibility for if people are fighting in a club! But I think it's good to try to convey positivity in your music. Maybe that's cheesy, or hippy, or one-dimensional - but I think music really gets into people's psyches. So, I try to send out positive vibes. Hey, I'm a Californian! I try to send out positive vibes, and make people feel good. Because I think you go out to a club to feel good. I want people to feel happy when they're dancing.

What is the most memorable milestone of your career so far?

Well, signing to 100% Silk was a big game-changer for me. I've been involved in electronic music for a really long time. I started going to raves when I was in high school. I started throwing raves in the early 2000's and performing, shortly after that. I'd been involved in electronic music for a very long time, but hadn't really gotten anywhere. So, signing to 100% Silk was a big turning point for me, because once you have someone who's established vouch for you, it really changes people's opinions of you. Suddenly, you're worth considering, you know? Whereas, prior to that, I didn't have anyone speaking for me, so no-one really payed much attention to me. Working with 100% Silk has been really, really great. Amanda and Britt, who run the label, are just wonderful people. The majority of the people that they sign are just some of the best people, the people I've met, and they're some of my best friends now. I'd say that is probably the main turning point of my career. I have some other amazing experiences as well, but that's the thing that really changed things for me.

Can you tell me a perfect moment you've experienced?

At the Golden Pudel in Hamburg, playing to a packed house on a Tuesday night. I got to play as long as I wanted, and they let me drink as much champagne as I wanted. It was perfect!

You also do radio shows. Is it just my impression, or is radio going through a renaissance right now?

You know, I don't know if traditional analog radio is going through a renaissance, but in general, with Internet radio, there's so many different people doing radio shows live, and also podcasts. There are so many options or ways to get your radio program out there, so I think in a way we are going through a bit of a renaissance. But there still aren't that many people who listen to it, though, and there are a lot of people who are die-hard about analog radio. They're kind of an excentric bunch of people. The people who call in to my radio show are often quite strange, I have to admit.

Well, you have a beautiful voice. Will you do vocals on a forthcoming album?

Hell, no! I'm not a singer. I don't really aspire to be a singer. Actually, when I was a teenager, a lot of the music I listened to had vocals on it, because that's the music you're exposed to on the radio, on MTV and things like that. So for a long time I had this idea that I had to become a better singer in order to get my music out there. But once I realized I didn't need to sing, and that I could make music with no vocals, that opened a big door for me. I started making a lot more music. The vocals was always something I was hung up on, because I'm not a naturally gifted singer, you know. I tried really hard, but my singing voice was just really terrible to listen to. I think my music is much better without me singing on it.

When will we see you in Europe again?

Hopefully, soon!

Interview by Daniel Sterner

Photo: Amanda Kershaw