
Adi Gelbart doesn’t just make music – he builds universes from rewired circuits, stray thoughts, and instruments both classical and invented. He’s the kind of artist who’ll teach himself trombone just for color, build a cello-synth hybrid for live shows, and write a novel while composing for a big band. With “Liquids & Flesh”, his first full-length album in nearly a decade, Gelbart returns with synthetic choirs, AI paranoia, glitched-out psych-pop, and the occasional bunny theatre interlude. We caught up with him to talk about sentient computers, emotional cuicas, tape tricks, and why making five throwaway songs a day might be the key to salvation. Enjoy reading and listening!

Chain D.L.K.: Hi Adi! How are you doing?
Adi Gelbart: Not too bad!
Chain D.L.K.: “Liquids & Flesh” is your first full-length album in nine years. What inspired you to return with this record now?
Adi Gelbart: I was busy with other projects for a while – finishing writing my novel “Egglike”, then diving into a series of notated works for acoustic instruments and electronics. Each one was a dream come true and I was thrilled with the results – especially the one where I got to write for a full-sized big band – and yet looking back, I found the process a bit lacking. You spend a year composing, hearing everything through MIDI instruments on a computer, imagining how it’ll sound with real players. I missed the immediacy of working solo, surrounded by actual sounds, knowing right away what’s beautiful and what’s throwaway. So, I made a new resolution: record as many albums as I can, at home, on my own. I play many instruments, which opens up endless possibilities. I recently started teaching myself trombone and harp so that I’d have even more colors at my disposal.
Chain D.L.K.: The album blends synthetic voices, algorithmic models, and vocoders with acoustic and analog instruments. What drew you to explore this fusion of the human and artificial?
Adi Gelbart: The human voice has an enchanting property – it instantly triggers a deep emotional pull in the psyche, more so than any other instrument. I suspect it’s wired into us by evolution. It goes even beyond human voices – there’s a song by Chico Buarque called “Desalento,” where near the end a choir sings the melody together, and then a cuica blends in, sounding like monkeys chattering. I always become very emotional during that part, as if there’s still a monkey living inside me answering the call of the tribe.
I thought it would be interesting to use the magic of the human voice but create it electronically instead so that the listener feels the human warmth while sensing something synthetic behind it. It creates this subtle, uncanny effect that’s hard to pin down.
Chain D.L.K.: The track “Nubachi (It Who Is Alive)” is particularly striking with its choral-like artificial voices. Can you tell us more about its creation and meaning?
Adi Gelbart: The inspiration comes from the haunting polyphony of the Baroque era like Allegri’s Miserere or Lotti’s Crucifixus a 8. These are crazy pieces in the way they weave human voices into something eerily transcendent (you wouldn’t get this effect from regular instruments!). I wanted to play with this style and these colors as a starting point but switch it up: instead of humans singing to God, it’s computers chanting in praise of their future god – the first sentient computer or “It Who Is Alive.”
Chain D.L.K.: Your music often feels like a narrative unfolding through sound. Is there a conceptual or thematic thread running through the album?
Adi Gelbart: I don’t start an album with a theme in mind, but it’s funny how one sneaks in once the songs come together. For “Liquids & Flesh,” the thread is my obsession with the rise of AI in the last few years. It’s a theme I’ve touched on before – in my book “Egglike,” where a sentient computer is one of the main characters, and in the title of my previous album “Preemptive Musical Offerings to Satisfy Our Future Masters” (Gagarin Records). Back then it was a far-off idea, but now that the AIs are here in our daily lives, I can’t stop thinking about it. I have this morbid fascination with the end of humanity – not that I want it, but too many nights of falling asleep to doomsayers like Roman Yampolskiy half-convinced me that we might be living on borrowed time. Even if we dodge that, our creativity is under threat – they’re training computers to be artists now. What’s left for us? So with this album, I leaned into my human imagination, still free from machine input, and acoustic instruments, as a way to assert my humanity. The computerized voices are the shadows creeping in from a future about to come.
Chain D.L.K.: You’ve cited film scores, BBC Radiophonics, and musique concrte as influences. Were there specific works or composers that shaped “Liquids & Flesh”?
Adi Gelbart: The song “I.M.” is a nod to the Beatles’ psychedelic-Indian stuff. The same could be said of “Deffir,” which even has a computerized voice doing a Yoko Ono-style vibrato at one point. I wouldn’t have shaped “Weeping Monolith” like that without Frederik Schikowski’s music in my head. Otherwise, these distinct influences are by now baked into my style.
Chain D.L.K.: “Time (And Yet I Say)” has a skewed, fragmented vocoder aesthetic reminiscent of Herbie Hancock’s “Sunlight” era. Was this a conscious nod or something that emerged organically?
Adi Gelbart: It just happened to end up like that. I love how Herbie Hancock, with his incredible mastery, seems unapologetic about jumping from “serious” experimental works to shameless pop. I admire that so much in artists. No fear!
Chain D.L.K.: How do you approach balancing the organic and the synthetic in your compositions?
Adi Gelbart: This mix has always appealed to me – whether it’s Messiaen blending Ondes Martenot with an acoustic orchestra, or DAF tying live drums to synthesizer basslines – there’s just something about these two worlds of sound occupying the same space. How I balance them doesn’t follow a plan – it’s like colors on a palette.
Chain D.L.K.: The album’s title, “Liquids & Flesh”, suggests something bodily, visceral – what’s the story behind it?
Adi Gelbart: “Liquids & Flesh” is a quote from the album’s side B opener “Time (And Yet I Say)” which first appeared as the closing song of my audio-visual work “VISIONS for orchestra, electronics, and Bunny Theatre” (YouTube link). In that film, the bunnies meditate on a creature they’ve heard of but never seen – a bird – until they finally encounter one. They sing “A bird, isn’t she magic? Liquids and flesh that are flying,” marveling at this creature, which is only a mixture of liquids and flesh, and yet it pulls off the miracle of flight. It is sort of a love song to love itself – how magical it is, even as it’s made of ordinary ingredients.
I think all my works are about transcending the earthy existence, the “flesh” so-to-speak. There’s a strong cynical undercurrent to my views on humanity and life, but underneath it all still lies a sentimental hippie.
Chain D.L.K.: You’ve played a wide range of instruments on this record, from clarinet to mini glockenspiel. How do you decide which instruments fit each piece?
Adi Gelbart: It’s an instinctive process. I start by recording some basic parts, play them back over and over, and let my subconscious tell me which instrument would add something. I try it out, and if it works, it stays. That’s about it.

Chain D.L.K.: Your work often involves self-built electronics and unconventional setups. Did you design any new instruments or processes for this album?
Adi Gelbart: For “I.M.” and “Deffir” I used a lot of tape manipulation. At the time of recording, I didn’t own a cello, so I recorded the melodies on my double bass to tape at low speeds, playing with long glissandos. Then I doubled the tape speed to get that exotic string sound. I did this same trick for fast phrases on the organ, sometimes reversing them on top.
For my upcoming live shows, I built a new Arduino-based electronic instrument. Synthesizers can’t imitate this glissando sound – portamento is not organic enough. It’s got a cello-like neck. It only needs one hand to operate – when I touch the neck, a sound comes out. It leaves my other hand free to tweak the properties of the sound.
Chain D.L.K.: What role does improvisation play in your music-making?
Adi Gelbart: Improvisation is pretty much everything to me. I never sit around thinking, “Ok, how should I start writing this next piece?” Or if I do find myself doing that, that piece is bound to fail – which happens often when I’m starting up again after wrapping up a big project. It’s only in the moments when I remember that, even with all my experience and skills, I am just an idiot, that something worthwhile will come out. That’s because the creative part only shows up when you let it run wild like a clueless kid. One trick I use when I’m stuck is to tell myself to do five throwaway songs in one day. More often than not, the first or second one will end up as the best song on the next album. In fact, on the current album, three tracks were born in the space of a few days when I was playing this game with myself. Of course, later on, I sit and work on the details slowly and shape them into the final version. But it all starts from playing around blindly and improvising.
Chain D.L.K.: Given your DIY approach to performance and recording, what’s your studio setup like?
Adi Gelbart: Over the last few years, I’ve cut my synthesizers down by about 70% and brought in more acoustic instruments. I had an incredible week in Studio Bell – home of the Canadian National Music Centre – where I got to play with the wildest analog synths and modulars you can imagine, a real treasure trove of history. It was brilliant, but when I got back to my home studio, I felt a bit fed up with that abundance of machinery. Even my eurorack synth, which I used to love, started gathering dust – they’re just everywhere now, and that ubiquity killed the magic for me. These days I stick to my main synthesizers, a few tape machines, old preset drum machines (I never get tired of those), and about seven different spring reverb units. Then there is the harpsichord, my beloved Vermona organ, and plenty of brass, reed, and string instruments. I use basic inexpensive microphones and one preamp I got because people kept nagging me about using the mixer’s preamps. Everything goes through a mixer to a computer running Windows 7 with a Cubase version from 2004. I tell myself twice a year that I’ll upgrade, but then here we are.
Chain D.L.K.: The album is coming out on your new label, Egglike Records. What’s your vision for the label, and why did you decide to start it now?
Adi Gelbart: Egglike Records came out of a simple need: I wanted a way to release my music so that I could control myself. Working with labels can be a mess – unless you’re a proven name, they move too slowly and act overly cautious. I’ve got plans to put out a lot more music in the coming years, and I don’t want to sit around waiting for releases to happen. At the end of the day, I just want to spend my time making weird music and getting it out there. Having my label cuts through the nonsense. That said, I’m not done with other labels – I’ve got an album of my guitar-driven electronic tracks already lined up for October this year on Kitchen Leg Records.
I’m still figuring out what releasing music looks like for someone with my kind of niche audience. Will it all be vinyl, or should I lean more into digital? We’ll see how it plays out. Once I’ve built some experience with it, I might start releasing other artists too.
Chain D.L.K.: In the years since your last LP, you’ve written a novel, made a film, and composed large-scale ensemble works. How do these different creative outlets inform each other?
Adi Gelbart: Well, for one thing, spending long stretches in a different medium builds up this itch to return to what I’ve left behind – after nine months of scoring note after note for a string quartet score, nothing feels better than plugging a drum machine and an organ into some effects and hammering out chords with no pressure.
The projects feed into each other too. For example, the computer character, Alpha, who was born in my novel, sparked the idea for “Poems by Alpha,” where I programmed a computer to churn out poems that I then set to music for a string quartet and a synthetic voice. That synthetic voice started creeping into my electronic tracks and video works after that. The book also gave me most of the titles for my last album and shaped its thematic idea.
Chain D.L.K.: You have a new double LP for big band, harp, and electronics coming next year. Can you share anything about that project?
Adi Gelbart: The project is called “The Portal, Finally.” It was performed at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin in 2022. For this work, I built a triangular portal and wrote music for a big ensemble to try and crack it open – to reach whatever’s on the other side, whether that’s an alien civilization, another universe in the multiverse, the outside of the simulation, or god itself. Each of these four hypotheses gets its movement, described through music, and at the end, the orchestra performs a musical prayer infused with mystic energy to force the portal open. I spent a year on the composition and got to perform it with some of Berlin’s best musicians. I’m excited to finally put it out.
Chain D.L.K.: Your live performances are known for their surreal, immersive quality. How do you translate your recordings into a live setting?
Adi Gelbart: I always want things to “happen.” If I’m not having a good time performing, then the audience won’t either. If I’m not immersed, the audience will feel it. So I make sure that I always have interesting things to do – melodies to play, different instruments to switch to, machines to twist into noises – the rest is taken care of by the computer. And then there’s the video, which adds an abstract narrative layer. My animations add a mystical element. It’s all synced to the music, at some points even tied to the specific keys I press on the keyboard, and it’s sort of my way of sneaking some over-the-top vibes of arena prog-rock into my low-budget DIY setup.
Chain D.L.K.: Your work exists in a space between high-brow and low-brow, accessible and complex. Do you consciously aim to blur these boundaries?
Adi Gelbart: Absolutely! To me, the dichotomy between those poles should stay in the theoretical realm. It shouldn’t steer the creative process. Anything can be beautiful, anything can have depth. The human experience covers a wide range – joy, boredom, curiosity, eating falafel, death. I don’t want my art to stick to just one of those. On an aesthetic level, complexity – like you find in modern classical music or free jazz – brings incredible elements to music, but I wouldn’t want the weight of those worlds to take over. Then there’s the other side: things that tug at your heart, warmth, campiness, simplicity – which are just as magical in their way and just as problematic if you only fully embrace them. I love how Quentin Dupieux handles this in his films – one of my favorites (“Smoking Causes Coughing”) manages to mix surrealism and Kaiju brilliantly.
Chain D.L.K.: How do you see your music fitting into or resisting current experimental and electronic trends?
Adi Gelbart: There’s some experimental stuff that I find great, but when it comes to the scene as a whole – to what’s currently trendy – I don’t feel connected. Playing trumpet the wrong way around was somewhat experimental in 1961, but for some reason, it’s still considered an experiment? Justin Bieber takes more artistic risks than that. I’d love to see artists allowing themselves to broaden out a bit. A few milliseconds of a major triad are not going to bring forth the apocalypse.
As for the electronic scene, for my preferences, it’s too centered around beats and sound design. I gravitate much more towards the spirit of early electronica.
Chain D.L.K.: If you could collaborate with any artist – living or dead – who would it be, and why?
Adi Gelbart: As long as I have the powers of resurrection, I’d go with Eric Dolphy and then get out of his way. He died at 36 after having recorded his two biggest masterpieces (“Iron Man” and “Out to Lunch”). Our world lost out on so much brilliant music he could have made if he’d spent more time on the planet.
In exchange for the resurrection, I’d ask if he’d mind recording a few solos for my stuff.
Chain D.L.K.: What’s something you wish people understood about your work that they often don’t?
Adi Gelbart: At the risk of sounding like a clich postgame interview from a basketball player, I’m just thankful that my music and art get to be part of people’s lives. I want them to misunderstand it in whichever way they choose.
Visit Adi Gelbart on the web:
https://www.gelbartcorp.com/ https://gelbart.bandcamp.com/