Boundary is a wunderkind if anyone was ever deserving of the moniker. The 25-year-old Santo Domingo producer has been releasing quality projects since he was 17, amassing a remarkably consistent discography of albums, EPs and loosies during that time. I classify much of his more recent work as essentially in the Detroit techno tradition, but mixed with the heightened texturality of late 90s Warp artists and the hyper vibrancy of Y2K computer graphics. His tunes often consist of dusty and soulfully programmed drum beats enrobed in deep space static and cosmically radiant synths. Everything has an earnest artificiality to it, as if he’s actively acknowledging the music’s digital birthplace and its potential as a space for creative imagination. The web can feel like such a bummer nowadays, a somehow supercharged mirror of our irl capitalist hellscape, but it was once a place of genuine wonder and possibility. Boundary tapped into these feelings explicitly on 2024’s excellent 3com ep, which shot me back to days spent surfing the web in my mom’s office growing up, and ultimately cemented my fandom.
His latest release is Proxima Centauri, out last week on the LA-based Point Records. Proxima is a concept record about an interstellar program (the album itself) birthed from the titular star that bestows upon its user (read: listener) a moment of total and all-seeing consciousness. While the album’s overall sound is indebted to the same influences as previous projects, there are only a few tracks that you could imagine hearing in any sort of DJ set. Instead, much of it is built around densely layered and grandiose synths befitting its galactic origins. Listening often feels like an ascent, a perpetual rise to the heavens that invites you to look beyond all the bogus drudgery of our day-to-day and seek greater meaning in this life we share. But beyond the album’s commendably high ideals, it’s also just an incredibly enjoyable listen. In addition to his many other gifts, Boundary has a knack for melody that renders even the simplest of tracks hypnotic. I could listen to the plucky keys lead on “Soul Hacker” for far beyond its 3-minute runtime, and I love how the fuzzy synth line on “Clearly Defined Results” reverses, scrubs, and renews itself over and over and over again. This is an epic release in terms of sound design, execution, and intent; it’s Boundary’s most accomplished work to date.
I was super happy to be able to chat with the man behind Proxima Centauri over video a couple Fridays ago. A lightly edited transcript of our conversation is below.
Nick DeMasi: The new project sounds epic. I feel like it’s different for you. It shares a similar palette with previous releases, but it’s not as club-oriented. It feels a lot more like at-home listening and very conceptual. Why did you want to go in that direction for this album?
Boundary: I think it’s just the fact that I live [in Santo Domingo] and I’m not playing any club shows at all. Electronic music here is mostly for rich kids. Venues are clearly designed for a specific socio-economic group. I was in Colombia last October, and I played some club shows over there, and it was really fun. But then I came back to the DR, and I had this mental block where I couldn’t even make music. I wanted to play, but I felt like no one gave a fuck about my music out here. That’s not a true statement, by the way; it’s just that there are no good venues for me to play. I’ve already played at the venues that are super posh, and I’ve decided to not do that anymore. Every time I play those places, I feel like ass afterwards. Since I wasn’t playing live, I was like, “Well, I can make more conceptual stuff.” I don’t know if you’ve listened to Fantasmagorico, which is my first album.
No, I haven’t.
I was 16/17 when I made that. The decision I made was to go back to my roots. I’ve never really done club music with the intention of it being club music. There are more clubby releases, but I’ve never really gone in with the intention of making a danceable record per se. So I decided to go back to how I felt making my first album, which was basically like, “How can I take the best things from all the music I love and make it one thing?” That’s the reason this record is how it is. It’s an appreciation of all the music I love condensed into one project.
What are some of those genres for you? I mean, I can guess, but I’d love to hear in your own words.
Well, the strongest influences are video game original soundtracks. I grew up playing this PlayStation One that had lots of weird pirated games with really crazy soundtracks. That was basically what I did for the first four years of my life: just turn on the PlayStation and scroll through the infinite list of games that it had. I kept playing the game if the music was hard enough. Then I grew up, and my dad showed me In Search of Sunrise Vol. 6, this compilation by Tiësto. That compilation is so fire. It’s the peak of progressive trance and house music. It was mind-blowing to me. That was the first time I heard “Arguru” by deadmau5, and that shit blew me away. I also have an older brother who I shared a room with for most of my life. He’s five years older than me, and he was basically a Tumblr kid. Do you remember Hype Machine?
I remember it, but I never interacted with it. It was like a blog aggregator, right?
Yeah, exactly. You could hear a bunch of music that was coming out back in 2012. My brother showed me Hype Williams and Dean Blunt on there when I was 12, and I became obsessed. I wanted to be that dude. He’s still a huge role model for me. It was very refreshing to see someone, especially someone black, do that kind of music. It’s just so effortless; that’s what I love about it. Obviously, he can do his own compositions and everything, but he can also sample six seconds of something and be like, “This sound is the whole ass song.” That was so fire to me. It was so, I don’t know. It’s not the word I want to use, but the word I can find in English is anti-establishment. It just felt very punk. Other than that, you know, Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, Autechre-my brother showed me that stuff too. Later I branched out into noise music. I honestly listen to a little bit of everything. I try to grab inspiration from everything. A few years ago I found emo rap music, and that shit goes so hard. There are some bangers out there. The next record I’m working on has a fake band concept. That’s what’s coming later.
With this record, you had the idea of a fake orchestra. You thought about each of the sounds as being played by a person, as if it was their instrument. How did that influence how you produced the record?
Well, first of all, only two songs were made last year, and all the others I made in February. I feel like it’s the most complex stuff I’ve done, and I gotta thank that workflow, because I don’t know any music theory. I’ve always struggled with chords, so a lot of my songs gravitate towards drums and a single melody that stays, which actually happens in this album at various times. But by stacking these melodies over and over, I noticed that I was basically doing chords, only they’re even more involved because every single note has its own timing and sound. The workflow makes it sound like you’re playing a symphony. I’ve stayed with it after the album, and I really like it. It’s making me work in ways I never expected. I feel like the limits of my music theory knowledge are being unlocked.
That’s so cool. You’re basically just intuiting the chords instead of planning them out. I read an interview you did around the time of your previous release, Oxido En El Espejo, where you mentioned that part of it was a doomsday narrative about the natural world, but with this album you’re taking to the stars. Why the change of scenery?
I went down this Wikipedia rabbit hole searching space shit, and found this Proxima Centauri thing. It’s the closest star to the Sun, but it’s still 1.32 parsecs away. A parsec is a unit of measurement for a light-year. So it’s super far away, but it’s still the closest thing to us, which is very mysterious. I found it interesting, so I took down that name and kept it for a while until I felt like a project was really worthy of it. And then I’ve just been thinking that, with everything going on in the world, it’s absurd that we keep going. Like, I really don’t understand how the ball keeps rolling with all the evil and cruelty that’s going on in the world right now. How the fuck are you supposed to handle it? I had this idea that it would be amazing if everyone in the world suddenly got this flash of consciousness about both all the evil and good things that are happening. In my head, that would make people go insane. Like, people would probably freak out. The overall idea is that the album is this Proxima Centauri program, so the listener becomes the user of this program, and hopefully by its end, they have this realization. I’ve seen a lot of different reactions from the friends I’ve shown it to. Some of them have cried to it. Some of them are in shock. Some of them feel really good. That’s what’s special about it. The ending song reflects so many things. Some people have told me it sounds like everything ended. And some have told me it feels like a new beginning. Like something just renewed itself. It was very important for me that people feel like “Damn, I can actually do something to make things better,” after listening.
When I listened to that last song, I thought it was very hopeful. Can you talk more about that hope? What ultimately is it that you’re trying to spread?
I mean, I can only talk about my country; I don’t know how things are being handled in other parts of the world. I’m not sure if it’s some sort of pseudo-psychosis or anything, but I’ve noticed that there’s been this push for selfishness. It’s something I feel is just growing and growing. For example, an issue here in my country is the Haitian immigration crisis. Basically, Haiti is a hyper-impoverished country. It doesn’t even have a stable government. There’s a shit ton of gangs that have taken over their capital, and it’s very fucking unsafe. I live in Santo Domingo, and the city is filled with these big ass skyscrapers. If you come here, you’ll think it’s Miami or some bullshit. The Dominican private sector has always used Haitian immigrants to do construction work, and they get paid like ass. There are also generations of Haitians already in the city, so they have kids. The current government has made people believe that we’re getting invaded by Haitians and that it’s the main problem right now. People are scared that Haitian gangs are gonna come here and wreak havoc, which is absolutely not true. And that shit has caused some absurd levels of hate and racism out here, which is crazy because we’re black as hell too! I assume you’ve heard that meme, “I no black, I Dominican.” That is 100% true; Dominicans hate being called black. All these people who have talked shit to me about Haitians, I wish they would have a flash of consciousness and realize that they’re going through hell and back just to get work. It’s not their fault that Dominicans don’t want to do these jobs. And meanwhile, there are a bunch of private companies taking our natural resources. The fucking president just gave a permit to Google so they can put a goddamn data center in a protected zone, and no one gives a fuck. That shit drives me mad. The government has basically made us fight ourselves so we don’t realize all the evil-ass shit they’re doing. People are not fighting for what they’re supposed to fight for. I mean, it’s been revealed the existence of an elite ring of the most powerful people on earth that fuck and eat kids, and no one did anything! That’s the level of absurdity we’re living in, and that’s why the message of this album is: “Dude, you gotta wake up!”
I feel like that’s been the playbook for forever. Keep the people divided so that their attention is diverted from the people accumulating all the power. The last thing I wanted to ask you about was the visuals for the record; how are those getting made?
The idea is to make a click-and-point game. They’re these old PC games from the late 90s and early 2000s. Way before even, but I’m going for the vibe of that era. Let me see if I can turn the camera around. [Flips camera] So imagine this car was a picture, and then imagine you click this mirror with your mouse, and some text shows up about the mirror. That’s basically what I want to do. I want to go and record videos and take pictures of a lot of places, and make this adventure game. I’ve actually written stories about what each song is about. It’s a visualization of the program.
Have you always thought about your music in a story-like fashion? Does that come from your early experiences with video games?
Honestly, not really. I’ve always been more ambiguous about what the music is about, especially the titles. This album has two titles in Spanish, and they’re very ambiguous. I do that a lot, starting a sentence and not finishing it. I love that kind of thing. So, I actually avoid giving stories to most of my releases. This is the first one where I’m very firm about what it’s about.