For Eera, There’s No Such Thing As Overrated

All photos courtesy of Eera. Interview may receive compensation from purchases of products through included links.

Welcome to SOUND ADVICE, Interview’s weekly destination for playlists curated by our friends, enemies, and lovers. In recent weeks, we’ve featured playlists from Petra Collins, Eli, and Mckayla Twiggs. This week’s installment is courtesy of Eera, producer and co-founder of era-defining musical collective Surf Gang (no pun intended). With his second album, Just Keep Holding On, out today, we tasked the musician—whose hypnotic, EDM-influenced work has earned him credits with artists like Bladee, Xaviersobased, and Earl Sweatshirt—with answering some questions about his search history, dream collaboration, and more. Afterwards, he made us a playlist where Surf Gang devotees will be pleased to find frequent collaborators like Samba Jean-Baptiste, Harto Falión, and Loukeman among the influential producer’s tasteful, wavy selections.

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Headphones of choice? Probably the wired Apple earbuds. I like the Audio-Technica ATH-M50X too.

What keeps you focused? Surf Gang, my friends. We all really believe in what we are doing.

NYC or LA? LA, but it’s mostly because that’s where I’m from.

Dream collab, dead or alive? Maybe Avicii or Aphex Twin…I feel like I’ve worked with a lot of people I would consider dream collaborations already. I feel pretty blessed in that way.

Your most used emoji currently?

Where do you get inspired? Old music, games, the internet. 

Where do you make your music? Either at home or on the road. I’m actually building a studio at my house right now. A lot of my album was made at friends’ houses and random studios around Europe. I think you get really different results making stuff at home versus in a foreign environment. 

Name your favorite artist no one knows about: The Cabs, for sure. A really amazing Japanese band from the 2010s that recently got back together.

What’s the last thing you Googled?  寺. I’m studying Japanese and it’s a pretty common right-side radical. Radicals are really interesting, it’s kind of like pictographic prefixes and suffixes.

What’s overrated?  Honestly nothing.