After more than two decades making records across indie rock, folk, pop and soundtracks, Belfast-born, Mexico City-based Nico Allard has found a new use for his songwriting instincts.
His electronic project D1RT TH13F begins with Hold On, released today: a spacious house track where an ethereal vocal and subtle keys sit above a controlled, club-focused low end.
For Allard, the shift is as much about removing sounds as adding them. Repetition, analogue texture and small changes in the arrangement give Hold On its momentum, while the vocal keeps a song at its centre.
In this FM PRO 10Q, he discusses Mexico City’s influence on his sense of rhythm, the studio choices behind the track and why having more production tools has made him more interested in limits.
I’m probably always going to make electronic music with a song hiding somewhere inside it.
Q1. After more than two decades making records, what made this the right moment to begin D1RT TH13F?
I think I finally stopped feeling like I had to make records that reflected the way I’d made them before. I’ve spent more than twenty years primarily thinking like a songwriter—songs, arrangements and performances, with each record as a complete piece—but over time I became increasingly interested in repetition, rhythm and what happens when you remove information rather than add it.
D1RT TH13F came out of that. It wasn’t really a conscious decision to start making house music. It was more that I found a format where a lot of things I’d always loved—minimalism, atmosphere, groove, analogue imperfection and songwriting—could coexist.
Q2. You approach house music as a songwriter rather than a genre purist. How did that perspective shape Hold On?
The emotional arc of the track mattered to me more than whether it adhered perfectly to a particular house convention. I tend to think in verses, tension, release and melody, even when the arrangement is essentially built around a groove.
With Hold On, I wanted the repetition to feel hypnotic rather than static. The vocal gives you something human to hold onto while the production keeps changing around it in fairly subtle ways. I’m probably always going to make electronic music with a song hiding somewhere inside it.
Q3. Which element arrived first—the vocal, the hypnotic groove or the heavier low end?
The groove came first. Once that worked, everything else became a question of how little I could add without losing the momentum.
The vocal then gave the track its emotional centre, and the low end developed around those two things. I generally don’t start with a huge bass sound and build upwards. I’d rather establish the feel of the record first and then make the bass serve that.
Q4. How do you balance cinematic atmosphere with the physical impact a track needs on a club system?
I try to keep those things in different parts of the frequency spectrum and, to some extent, different parts of the arrangement. The low end and drums need to be extremely clear and fairly disciplined. That gives me more freedom to let the guitars, vocals, reverbs and textures become strange or atmospheric without the whole record turning into fog.
I like records that feel large without necessarily having a lot happening. Space can actually make something feel more physical because the important elements have somewhere to land.
Q5. Your influences stretch from West African and Latin music to post-punk and ambient. How do you bring those references together without the production becoming overcrowded?
Mostly by not trying to demonstrate all of those influences at once. I’m much more interested in borrowing an idea than borrowing an entire aesthetic.
Something from West African music might influence the way two rhythmic guitar parts interact. Latin music might affect the percussion. Post-punk might inform the repetition or the dryness of a sound, while ambient music influences the sense of space. None of those things necessarily need to announce themselves.
The moment I can clearly hear five genres fighting for attention, I’ve probably gone too far.
Q6. Has living in Mexico City changed your relationship with rhythm, nightlife or electronic music?
Definitely with rhythm and electronic music. Mexico City has this constant collision of sounds—you hear electronic music, cumbia, reggaeton, older Latin records, live musicians and street music—and it makes genre boundaries feel slightly less important.
I’m actually not a huge nightlife person, which is probably useful. I’m experiencing a lot of this music slightly from the outside rather than trying to reproduce a particular club scene. Living here has made me think more rhythmically, but I still approach the music as somebody who has spent most of his life making records rather than DJing.
Q7. What does the D1RT TH13F identity allow you to explore that your previous projects could not?
Restraint, probably more than anything. It also lets me work in a very different way. For years, I worked almost exclusively on tape, with as little digital interaction as possible.
In a traditional song, you can feel pressure to keep supplying new information—a new chord, another lyric, another section. D1RT TH13F allows me to stay with an idea for much longer and examine what tiny changes do to it.
It also gives me permission to treat the studio itself as part of the composition. A bass movement, a delay appearing for two beats, the texture of a tape machine or the way a percussion pattern shifts can carry as much narrative weight as another verse.
Q8. Is Hold On an introduction to a wider body of work, and how far have you already developed the project’s sound?
Very much so. I’ve already written and recorded quite a lot of material, so Hold On feels less like an experiment and more like the first clear statement of where the project is going.
There’s a fairly consistent language emerging: hypnotic house rhythms, a lot of space, melodic songwriting, guitars, organic percussion and sounds that aren’t always traditionally associated with electronic production.
I’m still interested in letting the project evolve, though. I don’t want to find one successful production template and make the same record twenty times.
Q9. FM PRO TECH: Which production tools, instruments or processing techniques were most important in creating the spacious sound and club-focused bass of Hold On?
A lot of it comes down to arrangement before processing. There simply aren’t that many elements occupying the centre of the mix at the same time.
Funnily enough, I hadn’t used Ableton until about two months ago. I enjoy building ideas in Ableton— chopping samples and experimenting—but I find LUNA better for performance-based recording and mixing. I still work primarily in LUNA, which suits me because my background is much closer to traditional recording studios and analogue workflows than electronic production. I use a lot of UAD processing and tape emulation, and I’m constantly adding saturation in fairly small amounts rather than trying to make anything sound obviously distorted.
The bass is deliberately controlled and relatively simple. Sidechain compression gives the kick enough room without creating an exaggerated pumping effect. A lot of the perceived width then comes from keeping the fundamental parts—the kick, bass and main vocal—quite focused while allowing delays, reverbs, guitars and secondary elements to occupy the sides.
I also use movement sparingly. Something like Soundtoys PanMan might appear on a vocal or texture, but I don’t want everything constantly flying around the stereo field. When movement is occasional, you actually notice it.
Q10. FM PRO TECH: With independent artists now able to produce and release sophisticated electronic records themselves, where do you think technology genuinely creates freedom—and where can it become a creative distraction?
The freedom is extraordinary. I grew up making records when access to a serious studio, good microphones, tape machines and expensive outboard gear created a very real economic barrier. Now one person can make an incredibly sophisticated record in a bedroom and distribute it globally. I don’t romanticise the old limitations, but I can’t help approaching my little corner of the house world from an analogue point of view.
I do feel concerned about the sheer number of options the digital world presents. You can spend three hours auditioning kick drums or downloading another synthesizer instead of deciding what the record actually needs.
I think technology is most useful when it disappears. If a tool lets me get an idea out of my head more quickly, it’s valuable. If I’m thinking more about the tool than the piece of music, it’s probably becoming a distraction.
The irony is that having essentially unlimited possibilities has made me increasingly interested in imposing limitations on myself. A lot of Hold On is really about choosing fewer things and committing to them.
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