20 Questions With Indira Paganotto: ‘Psytrance Was Something Alternative, But Not a Cool Scenario for the Techno People’

When we speak, Indira Paganotto is in a Chicago hotel room where earlier today she woke up and brushed her teeth while blasting Rammstein.

This choice jells with the Spanish psytrance producer’s generally hard aesthetic: her intricate music — laced with a spiritual chants and loaded with kickdrum — is intense, as are looks favoring latex and snakes as accessories.

But while her brand can be heavy, Paganotto herself is effectively a ray of sunshine — cheerful, chatty and deep as we talk over Zoom before her show tonight at Radius. She’ll play clubs like these across the U.S. over the next few weeks, until tour routing takes her to Indio, Calif., where Paganotto will make her Coachella debut in the festival’s Yuma tent.

Before she left on this U.S. run, a film crew from the festival traveled to Paganotto’s home on Spain’s Canary islands to interview her and her parents about her rise, a moment that makes her so proud as she talks about it that she tears up.

As she tells it, it’s been a long road from working for cash in Madrid afterhours clubs to the success she’s achieved as a DJ and producer, a trajectory that’s included two slots on the Tomorrowland mainstage, closing sets at Serbia’s influential techno festival EXIT, a 2025 residency at Hï Ibiza and upcoming shows across South America and Europe, some of them showcases for her label, Artcore. With this rise Paganotto joins the league of techno and techno adjacent stars like Nina Kraviz, Amelie Lens, Charlotte de Witte, Sara Landry and Ida Engberg who are among the biggest and most influential artists of the genre.

Here, Paganotto talks about bringing “the hippies with the Rastas with the LSD in the mountains” vibe to techno, playing Coachella and more.

1. Where are you in the world right now and what’s the setting like?

Now I’m in Chicago. I will play tomorrow night, and the next day I go to New York because we have our own showcase of Artcore. And later next week, I go to Texas, and later I will make my own showcase again of Artcore in Miami, in Factory Town. Super cool. These are busy weeks.

2. What is the first album or piece of music you bought for yourself, and what was the medium?

So the first was Talamasca’s Musica Divinorum and also Ian Pooley’s Meridian. They’re really different styles. One is really psytrance and Goa trance, like me. The other one, which my father give to me, is house music. It’s really different styles, and it really [affected] my beginning, because it was house music and psytrance. I was really obsessed with these two albums.

3. What did your parents do for a living when you were a kid?

My father was a doctor with Doctor Without Borders. He was living in India for 10 years, helping people. He was working with Mother Teresa of Calcutta, for the war and with the kids without arms and all this s—. But in the meantime, his hobby and his passion was also playing in the beaches of of Goa and making parties and also making photography. He loved photography. He was getting lost in the villages in India and living with the local people and making photos and helping them with cures if they were sick. He was a really nice guy.

My mom, she was a super romantic girl. She loved Spain, she [studied] at University to be a professor of literature, but later she meet my father and she left everything, and she went to the Canary Islands because she was so in love. She started being [a flight attendant.] Later she left the work because she was not happy. And now she paints, she has a prayer group, because she’s super Christian. My parents are really different, but they are really spiritual. They are really into art and [exploring] the world. So, yeah, I was super lucky.

4. What do they think of your career?

They are super proud. It was a long path. My father supported me since the beginning, but my mom was like, “You need to make a career.” Actually, in the beginning I started being a lawyer, like for one year. But I was like, “No, it’s not my style.” So I just followed my dreams.

In the beginning it was super tough. My parents didn’t support me too much in the beginning. I was alone in Madrid with €150, and they were just waiting for me to come home. I started working in restaurants and in afterhours for money. It all happened so slowly. Now, they’re the proudest parents in the world. They live in my home when I’m touring, because I bought a big home, and they live there with my sister and my animals. Every time I come from the tour, my mama picks me up in the car. She makes me chicken soup and we talk. So it’s nice.

5. What is the first non-gear thing that you bought for yourself when you started making money as an artist?

The first I bought a snowboard [deck], because before that I was buying second hand, super destroyed stuff. I brought the coolest one. It was so expensive. Later, I spent money on big monitors for my studio, and I bought painting for my studio. It’s really like a dream coming true, the first money [you get] and you’re investing in the studio and feeling like a pro all time.

6. If you had to recommend one album for someone looking to get into dance music, what album would you give them?

In psytrance I would recommend Kumeda is insane. Tristan, Mark Day, Interactive Noise. These kind of artists are really cool. And Talamasca. For me Talamasca is like the masterpiece, because it’s really emotive and romantic, but at the same time with this bassline that will break your heart. And later, for the young generation that are more into hard electro, I could recommend Gesaffelstein, Moderat, Kris Wadsworth, Luna City Express. These artists are known nowadays but did something in me in the beginning.

7. What is the last song you listened to?

This morning when I was waking up, I put on “Sonne” from Rammstein.

8. What’s your take on the current state of psytrance in the U.S.?

I mean, we’re working for that. It depends on the regions, for example, New York, they love. In Miami, we have a really big crowd. Chicago, we are in the process. Texas, let’s see. I’ve never played there before. I think Coachella, for example, I will play this year. This kind of big festival is really a super good opportunity to send this message.

9. Does playing Coachella hold any special significance for you?

For me, it means a kind of conquering of the electronic music scene with my sound, because it’s in the top of festivals in America. I feel super proud when I look back to when I started, and I’m like, “Indira, you did it.” For me it’s a dream, because even my mom knows what Coachella is.

10. You have such a striking fashion sense. How would you describe your style?

I had a lot of styles when I was small, but I was also emo for a lot of years. I love a punk, Green Day, Evanescence. I’m really into this alternative, underground style from the 2000s. Nowadays you don’t see this style, and I’m super sad, because all the young people look them same. I don’t see any skaters in Europe, for example. I miss this. But also, I love the classic style from my mom, who has perfect makeup at 8 a.m. Super perfect, elegant style, like in Italy. So I have these two sides, and it depends on how I feel, but I love the art of it. I think fashion is art. For example, now I’m the resident in Hï Ibiza. We have like, 14 shows and for every show I designed my own clothes that will be latex.

11. Isn’t it really hot to play a nightclub in latex?

Yeah, but you know, I choose this look for Hï because there is a lot of air conditioning.

12. You mentioned your label Artcore. What are you aiming to create with it? What’s the ethos?

Just to create a community where everyone has their own shine. I’m the creator of Artcore, but all our artists have their own light. If they want to release on other labels, for example, we let them. A lot of label don’t do that. It’s a space for freedom. I see all the time in electronic music there are a lot of rules, but me, a hippie vibe and soul, I was struggling. All the time I was like, “why I can’t make this like this?” So I created my own label, like pirate label.

13. It’s intriguing what you’re saying about running into rules. What rules you think you’ve broken?

For example, no one accepted psytrance in techno festivals before. This is the number one. Psytrance was something alternative, but not a cool scenario for the techno people. [Psytrance people] were like the hippies with the Rastas with the LSD in the mountains. But now, no. I’m hippie, but I love to wear Prada too. I can have both. The techno scene was missing these kind of feelings, of music, of smiling, of community.

14. What feeling does a psytrance crowd and sound bring to an event?

It’s when you listen to opera, or when you go to church, or when you listen to flamenco, there is this kind of divinity feeling. I don’t know how to express it in words, but in psytrance there are these kind of uplifting feelings that in techno there is not, because techno was was created in the concrete, in the cities. It was also political. But the psytrance was created for sharing, for smiling, for the kids, for the soul. It’s like bringing the forest and the beach and the nature into the concrete city.

15. You mentioned wanting to make people proud. What are the proudest moments of your career so far?

One was actually the other day. Guys from Coachella were coming to my home to make a video. It was a video of my life, how I started. I was super proud, because my parents were talking in it too, and I saw their faces.They were talking and so super proud that I almost cried. I feel emotional now. This for me is everything.

16. What would you say are the key moments that lead you to this point?

Playing EXIT Festival. I did the closing set two years ago. At home with my ex-husband, I used to look at videos from the festival on YouTube and was like, “One day I will be there. I’m sure.” I did it, and I did the closing set with the Nina Kraviz also. This year, I will go there again with Sara Landry. For me, EXIT was like the temple. And of course playing Tomorrowland two times on the mainstage. This was like, wow. And now, this year we have our own Artcore stage at Tomorrowland. So it’s arriving step by step. And now I am a resident of Hï Ibiza, and this in my career is insane. My new album is coming this year too.

17. What are you currently finding the most challenging in all of it?

I think still being pure in myself. When I was in the mountains in Madrid with my animals and just making music, there was no option to be corrupted. But now, I’m always touring with a lot of energy from people and a big team that all have their own opinions. I accept those opinions if they’re good, but the biggest struggle is still being pure in myself. Sometimes I cry because it’s like, “maybe the set was no good. Or maybe this track is not really pure. It’s kind of mainstream, cheesy,” you know? But my team is honest with me, and I’m like, “okay, that’s true,” or I see it myself.

18. What’s the best business decision you feel that you’ve made so far?

You can fight the war, but you can’t fight too much, because you will be burned. It’s super nice now that I have a team around me. That makes my mission easier. And also working with my manager and booker Alex Avanzato. He’s like my husband, but with nothing intimate. He’s the best manager in the world. He’s a super hard worker, and he loves me, and he loves the team. This year we bought an office in Ibiza together 50/50, for me, the team and all our artists to come visit us. It’s a meeting point. I’m super excited.

19. What do you think the most exciting thing happening in dance music right now is?

The freedom for all the generations that are coming in. There are a lot of sounds, and these new generations can experiment with no fear of what artists from the ’90s will say, because they don’t care. They are like, “this is me, this is my Instagram. I make whatever I want.” It’s good because they share and make whatever they like and they don’t have this pressure from the patriarchy that there was in the beginning.

20. If you could give one piece of advice to your younger self, what would you say?

For every failure, there are 10 victories Indira, so stop crying and go work.

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