Raven Aartsen: Feeling Over Formula

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Irving Plaza is over capacity. Any shiver I had from the 10-degree wind chill outside has been replaced with the beads of sweat dripping down my back. I’m leading my friends through the crowd, trying to find a spot where we’ll be able to see but won’t be stuck too far in the depths of GA. I can barely see in front of me; I can barely hear anything over the hum of my fellow Zoomers buzzing with anticipation to witness pop-rap icons Coco & Clair Clair in person. Overstimulated is an understatement.

Just as we’re getting situated in our spot (squished between the soundboard and one of the tens of gaggles of NYU undergrads), a tall figure comes on stage and gets behind the DJ booth. He’s lanky and mysterious, with dirty blonde hair that hits his shoulders. He keeps his head down, puts his headphones on, and starts to play Atari Era’s “Dirty Girl (On the Dancefloor),” a mid-aughts disco-house deep cut. The blunt, robotic lyrics—“You’re a dirty dirty girl / On the dancefloor”—send the crowd into high gear. Instead of overstimulated, I felt perfectly stimulated. He followed up “Dirty Girl” with “Perfect (Exceeder),” one of the many songs from the Saltburn soundtrack that ruled summer 2024. He pumps his fists in the air and jumps up and down with the audience, feeding off of our energy just as much as we’re feeding off his. We whooped knowingly at the opening beats of SOPHIE’s “Immaterial Girl,” screeched at Azealia Banks’s “New Bottega,” and relished in the mid-2000s glory of Rihanna’s “Only Girl in the World.”

To our surprise, the still-anon DJ stayed behind the booth for Coco & Clair Clair’s set, providing the live backing for the duo’s endless string of bad girl bangers. Halfway through the set, Clair, in her slicked back pony, wraparound sunglasses, fur coat, and DGAF drawl, says “Everybody give it up for Raaaaaaven!,” to which our new favorite DJ humbly bowed to a crowd of his latest converts. Mystery solved.

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Raven Aartsen (sometimes known by the Americanized “Artson”) started touring with Coco & Clair Clair in early 2023 and hasn’t really stopped since. Aside from being their DJ, Aartsen is also the Atlanta trip-hop duo’s main producer, most recently working on their 2024 breakout album, Girl, which he also mixed. Though he’d known of the duo from their early hits like “Crushcrushcrush” and “Pretty,” they didn’t meet until early 2019, when Maya Laner of True Blue brought Claire Toothill to one of Aartsen’s shows in Ridgewood, Queens. “I remember being like, ‘Who the hell is this guy? This is so intense,’” says Toothill. “There are 12 of us in this tiny room, there’s no stage, he’s acting like it was the Super Bowl. That’s awesome. He was giving it his all.”

Laner saw the vision, but was still surprised at how far the connection went. “I thought Claire would appreciate Raven’s performance, because he’s such a compelling and free performer,” Laner says. “I had no clue they’d hit it off to the degree that they have and ultimately end up working together.”

“I was kind of starstruck. I was just doing my silly, crazy performance,” Aartsen says. “I didn’t know until years later, but Claire even texted Coco in the moment being like, ‘Oh my God, I’m at this crazy guy’s show. I think you’re going to love it.’”
A Netherlands native, Aartsen’s been based in LA on a work permit for the past year, living in a sun-bleached bungalow tucked into the Glendale mountains. When we first talk, he’s calling from his in-house studio. Late morning light spills through the window behind him and washes the sand-colored walls in a soft gold. The room feels like something out of a Scandinavian interior blog filtered through Laurel Canyon. It’s warm and mid-century and, like, low-key luxurious. Built-in alcoves cradle synths, pedals, and speakers like artifacts. Most of the furniture is custom—he built the alcoves himself, along with the desk, shelves, and couch. He lifts his computer and spins around to give me the full picture. “I love building stuff,” he says with a smile. “When I moved into this house, I kinda went full Pinterest mode.”

Talking to Aartsen from his studio feels a little like seeing the teacher’s lounge in elementary school—like you’ve stumbled into a secret room where the real decisions get made. I’d seen glimpses of this studio online; anytime Coco & Clair Clair post from those earth-tone walls, fans know it means something’s cooking. Aartsen fits in the space like he’s part of the architecture. He laughs easily, holds a gentle gaze, and speaks with the kind of slow, considered cadence that begets relaxation from whoever he’s sharing space with. He’s disarmingly sincere—open in a way that feels increasingly rare. If you say something nice to him, he’ll say something nice back. No self-deprecation or deflection. Just thanks.

“He doesn’t have a cool guy bone in his body,” says photographer David Brandon Geeting, who met Aartsen in 2021. “He’s inviting and warm, and I felt like we clicked on a certain level.” Geeting has since released his first song under the alias IRA VAIL, produced by Aartsen and recorded in his home studio. “Our stars keep aligning, and it makes sense to have him around,” Geeting adds. “It feels like I’ve known him forever. He only adds good to my life.”

AARTSEN GREW UP IN EINDOVEN, a small Netherlands suburb about an hour south of Amsterdam. His parents gave him an early introduction to the likes of Michael Jackson and the Rolling Stones, while his older brother was the lead singer of a rock band. Aartsen accompanied his parents to his shows and watched in awe (“He always danced in the first row,” his mother, Magdaleen Kroese, told me.) He even grew up with a designated music room, most often his attic, where he and his friends started making beats on GarageBand as early as elementary school, Aartsen teaching himself the basics of production along the way.

Aartsen’s parents recognized his penchant for music early and enrolled him in an alternative music school called Paraplu (Dutch for ‘umbrella’). There, he formed a band called Kylfa with two classmates, falling into the rock drummer role he held into his 20s. “The school was more tailored around the idea of having fun with other people while you create music,” Aartsen says. “Rather than being super technically gifted at your instrument of choice.” The band clicked immediately. They were even interviewed for a Dutch news segment called Villa Life in 2008. Thirteen-year-old Aartsen has a similar lankiness that he still possesses at 30. His blondish hair is in an of-the-times Bieber-esque haircut that sweeps across his forehead, and whenever he speaks about channeling his emotions through their music, we get a flash of his mouth full of braces.

When he was 15, Aartsen joined Mozes & the Firstborn, a gritty, shoegazey rock band that ended up signed to a Dutch Universal imprint. He was notably younger than the rest of the members, and his parents would take turns accompanying him to his first shows in Amsterdam. The band later toured across Europe and eventually the US, sleeping on couches and cutting their teeth at house shows on both continents. “I still don’t know how he managed to survive, because he didn’t have much money for months,” says Kroese. “He only ate peanut butter sandwiches.”

“I was so young when I started, it’s like a past life,” Aartsen says, now reflecting. “It was very DIY, very punk vibes. We did 100 or 150 shows a year for over two years.” But after years in the rock scene, Aartsen started to feel the limits of a single sound.

AMSTERDAM CRACKED THINGS OPEN. “When I moved, I started producing for more hip hop artists, more trap and rap,” Aartsen says. “That was my first time thinking, ‘Oh, I’m not just a rock drummer. I actually love so many things.’”

Not long after he became entrenched in the Amsterdam music scene, Aartsen left Mozes & the Firstborn to pursue solo work. It was a smooth transition, so drama-free that he can’t even recall the exact order of events. What he is sure about, though, is that he became drawn to house and electronic music, eventually moving to completely digital production (before then, he’d exclusively worked with live samples). As his process became more digital, his perspective shifted, too. He was no longer chasing one fixed vision, but learning to shape-shift with whoever was in the room.

For a while, Aartsen the Artist and Aartsen the Producer were fighting for top billing. Between 2020 and 2021, Aartsen released six singles, two EPs, two full-length albums, and two film soundtracks—in short, a recipe for potential burnout. “I was so hyper-focused and obsessed with my own career that it just took a lot of the fun out of it,” he says. By 2022, Aartsen shifted focus, thriving in collaboration, figuring out how to exist as a producer and an artist at the same time. What once felt like compromise (giving up control) started to feel like possibility. Working with others clarified his artistry. He found a freedom that defined his later solo output. “Maya [Laner] from True Blue proposed the idea that I do a whole album that’s collaboration-based, kind of like Gorillaz,” he says. “So now if I do a session with someone and there’s no set project that we’re supposed to work on, it can be anything. I think that really opened my eyes.”

Since then, he’s worked with artists like St. Panther and DEELA, and released an EP with YULLOLA under the moniker The Manmade Lake. Aartsen’s also utilized his in-house studio at his Amsterdam apartment, welcoming artists to stay in his guest room for one- to two-week residencies to work on new music. “I really love the concept of seeing myself more as a pop producer,” he says, clearly content with his current path.

Laner remains one of Aartsen’s most frequent collaborators. She was first featured on “Locks For You,” off Aartsen’s 2021 album, Peak In Me. Since then, they’ve released five other songs together, most recently “In A Well,” from Aartsen’s latest album. He’s worked on nine other songs with her, most notably her breakout track “I Wanna Believe” from 2023. “I was really, really nervous and really insecure,” Laner says, reflecting on her first time working with Aartsen. “Raven was so chill and dedicated to making something nice while having the best time doing it. He made me feel really safe and comfortable.”

“It’s pretty intimate to share your vocals and your lyrical ideas,” Aartsen says. “I try to build a relationship with an artist where they feel very safe to experiment and have fun. I’m pretty confident in how I relate to people on a personal level.” Through this, he’s been able to let the artists he works with take the wheel, while still being there to offer recommendations and guidance. “I have big Virgo perfectionist energy,” he admits. “But when I work with other people, I try not to impose my own perfectionism.”

His ability to click with people and meet them on their level is one of the cornerstones of Aartsen’s personality. It’s instinctual. “He makes you feel comfortable because he’s so confident in whoever he’s working with’s ability to do something, even if it might be slightly out of their gamut,” says Geeting, who worked with Aartsen on the album artwork for his 2023 LP, Transformia. “He’s a real cheerleader for his fellow artists and for himself. He’s able to put egos aside in order to make magic, whether it’s with another artist or with himself.”

“When we were working on Girl in Amsterdam, we’d go out then come back, and it’s all soundproof, and we would be able to turn shit all the way up to the max,” says Taylor Nave (aka Coco). “That in itself was inspiring and memorable to be able to have that freedom and for him to have intuitively made such a spot to foster that energy.” She adds: “‘Kate Spade’ was the most memorable,” the song they’d called their magnum opus at Irving Plaza. It’s a sassy, unapologetic trip hop track that includes absolute banger lyrics like “I’m a bad bitch I’ll kill the both of us / Vodka Diet Coke I’m not doing any drugs,” set to a driving trap-adjacent 808 and atmospheric synths. You can picture the duo rushing back to Aartsen’s studio after an Amsterdam night out, eager to blow off steam.

“Oh yeah, something was in the air that night,” Toothill adds.

“Everything that he’s passionate about, he’s really good at,” says Nave. “He does not half-ass things. He’d rather literally kill himself,” she teases. “Put that in print.”

WORKING WITH COCO & CLAIR CLAIR helped Aartsen break even further from his artist persona. Their process was loose and instinctive. “They’re not really thinking about an audience or what music they should make,” says Jeroen Dankers, one of Aartsen’s childhood friends. “I think they really inspired him to also be more free and not overthink everything.”

“Before my first tour with Coco & Clair Clair, I was still in the mindset of ‘I’m an artist and everything I do apart from me as an artist is secondary, and it’s only here to help my process in becoming a better artist,’” Aartsen says. “And when I started touring with them, I was kind of like, ‘You know what? It is actually so fun to just take it as it comes.’”

One of his first sessions with the duo was on their cover of Wham!’s “Last Christmas,” a slightly uncharacteristic endeavor for two musicians who prefer talk-rapping to full-blown singing. Everything clicked, even if unexpectedly. “It was such an offbeat song for us,” says Toothill, looking back. “Seeing what he was able to do to our vocals and the weight it took off our plate was really impressive.”
Aartsen’s lack of formal training helped him connect with Nave and Toothill. “We have our own language,” adds Toothill. “So we’d be like, ‘We want to add a little dinghy noise.’ And he just immediately knew what we meant by that.”

He’s become a mainstay in their recording process, helping the duo take their sound to a new level. “I cannot imagine recording without him putting that magic touch and helping us get our vocals to sound exactly the way we want,” Toothill continues. “Raven comes into the mix and he’s like, ‘I can make anything happen.’”

Aartsen brought the techniques they needed—and just as importantly, the work ethic and respect. He wanted to help their sound shine, being mindful not to cover it up with his own opinions. “Especially in music, more often than not, men are very sensitive,” says Toothill. “Maybe because in the rap world it’s male-dominated, especially in Atlanta, but we’d butt heads with a lot of guys who didn’t think we were serious. And I’ve always been impressed by how Raven doesn’t let his ego get involved in that way.”

His overall lack of ego could be thanks to meditation, which has become a mainstay in Aartsen’s routine, first out of sheer philosophical interest, then seeping into his work. “I try to enjoy whatever comes my way and I’m inspired by,” he says. “I try to challenge myself and then move on from there, which honestly, I think has made my life better.” He continues, “You get so much for free if you just open yourself up to it.” Aartsen took these lessons from prolific producer Rick Rubin after reading his book, The Creative Act: A Way of Being. “I like how he doesn’t want to impose too much of his own ideas or thoughts,” Aartsen explains. “He’s just listening and making sure the artist is going in the direction that’s most them, and that really stuck with me.”

AARTSEN RELEASED HIS LATEST LP, De Dronken Zenmeester (or Dutch for “The Drunken Zen Master”—an obvious nod to his meditative ways), in March. The record sounds like what would happen if a house set fell asleep in a sunbeam and woke up thinking it was ambient pop. It’s glitchy, heady, often hypnotic, but never loses its pulse. What started as a catchall for his house-focused productions transformed after stepping away from the project to join Coco & Clair Clair on tour. “Because I had so much time to let the songs breathe, they developed into their own styles,” he says. “I wouldn’t even call it my house project anymore.”

The album dropped with little-to-no warning, using the momentum from the Girl Tour as his built-in promotion to skirt an intricate marketing campaign. “The rollout is super emphasized, but in reality, no one really knows what’s going to take off,” says Aartsen. “Maybe that’s scary, but it’s also very freeing. For me, I’m just a one-person project right now. Why shouldn’t I just enjoy it?”

And while he didn’t explicitly mention the album on tour, Nave and Toothill could tell he was sitting on something. “I think a lot of artists are like this, where it’s never done. It’s never right, it’s never perfect, and they don’t want to drop it,” says Nave. “But I think it was good that he had something to motivate him to just be like, ‘You know what? I’ve been sitting on this long enough. Let me put this out now.’”

That concept, once unthinkable to the goal-oriented Aartsen we met in the Villa Life broadcast, now defines his creative life. The joy is in the making, and the making is rarely done alone: “It’s about staying open to the moment—whatever comes, whoever walks in, whatever wants to be made.”

Though I first encountered Aartsen behind the DJ booth, it turns out he only started spinning after joining Coco & Clair Clair on tour. “People assumed I would DJ apart from being on stage with them,” he says. “Now, it feels like just another way to let people in.” His sets lean on instinct, following feeling over formula.

“There’s not so much thought that goes into it other than, ‘Do I like these songs and do they go well together?,’” he says. “Whenever I hear a song that I really love and want to DJ, I add it to a playlist. And then once a month, I go through the playlist and download all the songs, and then I just start messing with it and see where I like certain transitions.” The way he talks about DJing sounds a lot like how he talks about producing—sensitivity over strategy.

I ask him about “Dirty Girl,” the song that made all the ears in Irving Plaza perk up: “I play it almost every set,” he says, smiling. “The crowd went so crazy the first time I played it that every time I didn’t after that, it felt like something was missing. I knew they were missing out.”

I think about how the whole room seemed to loosen at that moment. How the person behind the booth earned our trust before we knew anything about him.

That’s how Aartsen moves—through cities, through sessions, through whatever comes next. He’s chasing that feeling, letting things breathe. The shape of the work changes, but the rhythm, somehow, always holds.

Raven Aartsen: Feeling Over Formula

The LA-via-Amsterdam artist, producer, and DJ’s latest album, De Dronken Zenmeester, and his collaborations with Coco & Clair Clair show how surrender fuels the best kind of sound.