Words by Sara Cederberg
Danz CM has built a quiet empire on curiosity. Formerly known as Computer Magic, the Los Angeles-based musician, composer, and creator of the beloved Synth History zine has spent the better part of a decade interviewing her heroes, self-releasing records, and doing just about everything herself — from scoring commercial work to fund her merch, to editing her own videos under a Carpenter-inspired pseudonym. She’s a one-woman operation who treats the DIY ethos less as a limitation and more as a way of life.
Her EP, LÄRM! (German for “noise” or “commotion”), is the sound of that freedom taken to its logical extreme. Recorded entirely with analog synths and a tape machine, the album trades the synth-pop structures of her earlier work for something looser and stranger — Krautrock-inspired improvisations steeped in Norse mythology, existential wonder, and the creeping absurdity of life inside the algorithm. It’s a record she made purely for herself, and you can hear it.
Off Shelf: LÄRM! feels like a deliberate pivot — you’ve described it as Krautrock-inspired and “medieval,” which moves away from the synth-pop of your earlier work. But listening to Berlin Tokyo Shopping Mall Elevator, I can hear the seeds of this shift. Was there a moment when you realized you wanted to strip away the pop structures entirely, or did the album’s direction reveal itself more gradually as you worked?
Danz CM: Since 2023 or so, I’d been working on a synthpop record. It’s coming out later this year – “Over the Ocean” is on it. I finished recording, mixing and mastering that one – name TBA. I also had an instrumental record on the back burner, called MYTHS. I felt impatient about waiting for those records to come out to make more music, and was feeling inspired one day, and just decided to make LÄRM! I wanted to make something that was only ‘for me’ – if that makes sense – without thinking too much about what genre it was going to be. I don’t like being confined to ‘synth-pop’, I want to make whatever I feel artistically inspired or inclined to make. I think releasing music myself kind allows me to be more free like that, so I just went for it!
OS: You’ve said the title LÄRM! represents the noise we’re fed daily by algorithms — news, memes, content designed to keep us engaged. There’s a line in your statement about “breaking free from the Matrix” and the rose-colored glasses falling off. For someone so plugged into media through Synth History, how do you personally navigate that tension between documenting culture and needing distance from it?
DC: Surprisingly, these days I can’t stand social media, even though I’ve built Synth History, Danz CM and Channel 9 using it. Before it felt like it connected everyone, you could follow your friends and learn new things and would deliberately follow art accounts. It very much feels like ‘enshittification’ now. Meta doesn’t show me what my friends are doing anymore. Every once in a while I’ll see what a friend is doing if Meta deems it worthy, which seems counterintuitive considering I’m following that person to begin with. I can only imagine the reverse is true for my own posts. It’s all ads and content designed to keep you glued to the app for as long as possible. If a post on Synth History does well, a bunch of accounts will then copy it, for the sole purpose of growing their own account. I used to spend hours researching a synth or editing a video for a post – only to have the post copied word for word. It’s all just noise and not worth engaging with. I post still because I feel like it’s something I grew and don’t want to let anyone down. But I think today the most important thing is building your own communities in real life. For musicians it’s playing shows and interacting with your fanbase outside of social media. For the zine it’s hosting events and getting it in physical stores. Social media feels like a giant facade and not as valuable as it once was. Although I do enjoy Bandcamp and Twitch. I navigate Instagram by posting and then shutting it off completely [laughs].
OS: The album was inspired partly by Dan Carlin’s Twilight of the Æsir episodes on the Viking Age and the idea that empires rise and fall, religions become myths, everything fades. That’s heavy existential territory. Did making LÄRM! feel like an act of defiance against that impermanence, or more like an acceptance of it?
DC: I’m inherently always thinking about this stuff, about existence and the meaning of life, if there is any. I don’t mean to say this in a nihilistic way at all, I’m definitely an absurdist, not a nihilist or existentialist. I accept the fact that I might not know the concrete meaning of everything and the “why” but why not have fun going along for the ride? In my case that ride is learning about stuff that inspires me and writing about it or making art or a culmination of both.
I love learning about new things and was just drawn to Norse mythology after that episode. I’m currently listening to Mythillogical by Charles Snart, which is more creature-focused and that inspired the track titles on MYTHS. I can’t help what I feel inspired by, it just happens!
OS: You recorded this album entirely with analog synths — Minimoog, Roland Saturn 09, Casiotone 403, Grandmother — and ran everything through a tape machine. In an age where digital tools make perfection easy, what does the unpredictability of analog gear give you creatively? Are there happy accidents on LÄRM! that wouldn’t have happened otherwise?
DC: I love making things that can’t be ‘recreated’. I love taking photos with an analog camera, shooting with Super 8 film. Something that exists in the moment only. In terms of sound, I prefer vinyls to MP3s, analog synths to digital. A sequence I manipulate on the Grandmother in realtime and send through a tape machine with analog delay is more unique to me than using a preset plug-in. Although, there are ways to make a preset sound cool too – it’s just a matter of how you go about it.
There are happy accidents on LÄRM! for sure, I mean the entire record is completely unplanned except for some cleaning up at the end when I was mixing it. I left a lot of happy accidents in!
OS: In 2020, you retired the Computer Magic name and became Danz CM — you compared it to evolving from Charmander to Charizard. Now, a few albums later, does that shift feel complete? Has stepping out from behind the “band name” illusion changed your relationship with the music or with your audience?
DC: With some of the early Computer Magic stuff I had no idea what I was doing, no idea how to control my voice. I was just so excited about the fact that I discovered this ‘hidden talent’ – of being able to make music completely by ear – that I would make song after song without thinking of the ‘whole’. The melodies are all great, and it’s raw, for sure. But I just felt like that was one era, and Danz CM is another. Computer Magic to me was this bedroom pop artist hiding behind a name, figuring out what she was doing, and then I got to a point where I knew what I was doing in the studio. Early Computer Magic stuff is like a demo tape. Some of the later Computer Magic stuff is more Danz CM-esque, that’s why I added Danz CM as an artist on Davos, Danz, Dreams of Better Days, etc. Those albums were already showcasing the step up in technical ability. I keep the very old Computer Magic EPs up for the fans but if it were up to me, certain songs would be archived forever into the abyss [laughs].
I think stepping out was essentially shooting myself in the foot, actually! I’d spent a decade building a brand then essentially started from scratch. It wasn’t like Danz CM was a side project or a rebranding, I just felt differently about what the name Computer Magic represented and wanted to change it, without thinking of what that would mean for my career. It’s not like Computer Magic’s 20k Spotify followers transferred over to Danz CM when The Absurdity of Human Existence came out. It was like I was a new artist, a lot of having to build back up again. People still aren’t aware, even though it’s been years. At the time, I didn’t have money to hire PR, like a big label – or even an indie label – would have done, to have blogs and Pitchfork write about the change. So it felt like it was done very ‘quietly’. Even my friends to this day ask me, “So how’s Computer Magic doing?” It’s frustrating. The most loyal fans found out and stayed and the rest just dropped off and think I disappeared.
I think it was the right thing to do, at least internally for myself. I had no label to tell me: this is a terrible idea. A label would have treated the name like a product, and you don’t change the name of a product when you establish product recognition and brand equity. The problem is: I am my own label and, like my early music, I am figuring it out as I go!
OS: Synth History has given you access to so many of your heroes — Vince Clarke, Suzanne Ciani, Trent Reznor, John Carpenter. When you sit down to make your own music afterward, does that feel intimidating or liberating? Has a particular conversation with one of these artists changed how you approach your own work?
DC: I don’t really think about it, to be honest! Maybe later, I’m like, “damn, it is kind of crazy I got to talk to so and so” [laughs]. The moment I’m talking with them though, I’m just curious about their relationship with gear and creativity from my standpoint as an artist and have never felt intimidated by anyone. Maybe nervous something would go wrong during the interview, like my voice memo recording would malfunction or something.
It’s definitely inspiring to talk to someone like John Carpenter, who did everything himself early on in his career. He made a pseudonym for editing Assault on Precinct 13, John T. Chance, and that inspired me to make a pseudonym for when I edit my own videos, which is Johann Flash. For the Synth History mini doc I directed on Ela Minus, I’m listed as Johann Flash (film editor), Carlotta McKittrick (sound designer), and Hal Bowman (colorist). People take your work more seriously that way for some reason, which is a trick I learned from John. Learning stuff like that from my heroes is inspiring for sure. Suzanne Ciani also told me she made commercial jingles to finance her music career and that’s what I’m doing now, just scored a series of ads for Shopify and Free People and used that money to fund my merch. Essentially I am my own angel investor because who else is going to do it? I feel honored they give me the time of day and happy I get to learn from the people I admire most.
OS: The “Painting 793 AD” video has you in knight’s armor riding the NYC subway, shot on Super 8. There’s something beautifully absurd about it — medieval imagery colliding with modern commuter life. How do you think about the visual side of your work? Do the images come to you alongside the music, or do they arrive later as a way of interpreting what you’ve made?
DC: The visuals definitely come with the music. Just like I hear music in my head and make it, I see visuals in my head and want to make those, too. I just liked the idea of an entity being ‘stuck’, out of place. I wanted to wear full-on armor, but could only afford the helmet and chain mail so went with that and the dress! I’ve always felt like an outsider, I guess those visuals are probably representative of that, too. If I could, I’d wear that helmet around everywhere and my partner would probably attest to that [laughs].
OS: Finally — and I ask everyone this — what are you listening to or reading right now that’s bringing you joy or inspiration, whether it’s connected to LÄRM! or completely unrelated?
DC: Well, I’m definitely very much into mythological creatures at the moment, listening to that podcast I mentioned above. I’m currently reading The Book of Yōkai by Michael Dylan Foster and The Golden Bough by James George Frazer. I’m also very into learning about cryptology and deciphering runes. I’ve been weaving ‘The Interdimensional Extraterrestrial Time Travelers Society’, which I made up, into all of my artwork and websites lately, it’s on the back of the LÄRM! vinyl. It might be the title of my next record as a culmination of this era of inspiration, we will see.
I was very much into sci-fi for a long time, still am – the original Alien for example. Now I’m going through a phase of being into the organic nature of powerful ‘ideas’ or ‘beings’. Why do all these different cultures have variations of the Leshy? Going back to Alien, the mythology of the xenomorph itself is what intrigues me now, rather than the visual aesthetic of 1970s retrofuturism, although I’m still inspired by both and incorporate both into my visual aesthetic. Inspiration is like a ride I’m on, and what I was inspired by before still exists within me. I never know what will get me going but if I ‘follow it’ through I learn something new and that inherently impacts my art. In the case of Synth History, I just followed my interest of synths.
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