Bézier

Bézier is a ripple. Bézier is a synth-organic proto-techno trip: an analog vision of club-floor futures, a journey of kinetic movement through embodied sound. You might know Robert Yang from Berlin, his home base since 2018, where you'll find him disseminating the electric catechism in places like Zur Klappe, a former subway toilet transformed into an underground nightclub. Or you might know him from his previous home, San Francisco, where he spent 14 years as a core member of the queer DJ collective Honey Soundsystem. Yang and the Honey crew threw a party every Sunday night for five years in a row—that's 260 parties, but who's counting?—and toured the globe, while running an eponymous record label that released music by Patrick Cowley, Octo Octa, Vin Sol, and beyond. Or you might know him simply as Bézier, the alias through which he's issued a dozen-plus records of livewire dance music crafted from rippled synths, crackling drums, and a songwriter's knack. Bézier's sound is the product of a lifelong obsession with electronic music. Experiments with MIDI on the family computer and DIY synth repair exposed Yang to synthesis at an early age. That led to a teenage obsession with Autechre and Björk, among others, and undergraduate courses in computer music. Finally came the accumulation of gear, vintage and modern, that powers Yang's sound design. Today, Bézier's tracks are tighter, more focused, and more dialed-in than ever. That's the result of the confidence Yang has earned as a producer and artist—the ability to pay attention to the things that matter and ignore what doesn't. These days, Bézier is back in the studio and at work on his own record label: Körperspannung, or K-SPAN for short. The phrase is German for "body tension"—a phrase Yang's partner Lennard, aka Len.Leo, would use to remind Yang to embody himself as an independent gay Asian musician, to stay strong, to be proud. That sums up the label's ethos: a celebration of creative electronic expression from within the gay community, and a home for music that steps outside the box and blurs the lines. After over 15 years in the game, that's Bézier's ethos, too. All you need to do is listen.