For those times when chill, background music is required, look no further than Dr. Compressor, the Swiss producer who is cleverly molding his own brand of abstract, instrumental hip-hop. Oddly enough, Dr. Compressor (real name Yvan Gessler) was diagnosed with a curious virus in 2002 that produced a permanent acouphene, or ringing noise, in his left ear. After lots of experimentation, he found the ringing improves when music is playing. A producer was born.
With influences like Portishead and similarity to the beats found on Deltron 3030 or some other sci-fi informed albums, Dr. Compressor prefers to let the music speak for itself. He doesn’t name his tracks, he simply assigns them a numeral. He uses a lot of samplers with granular synthesis abilities, which gives a particular color to his sound, as well as the use of emulations of vintage processors like EQs, compressors, tape saturation, tube amplifiers, and more.
“This is why I can say I’m not proud of my music, and I suck as a composer, but I’m proud of my sound,” Gessler says in a press release. “I think I finally also created that perfect organic sound, but using just a computer, and that’s the point of the stuff I do, and distracting my ears.”
Check out Dr. Compressor’s new album, Doctor’s Orders, on his Soundcloud page below: