While Rare DM is self-proclaimed “age ambiguous”, she will admit, “I started playing drums when I was 11.” The multi-instrumentalist, born Erin Hoagg to a pair of fine artists in northern Michigan, refuses to be confined, musically or otherwise. “My parents met at the College of Creative Studies in Detroit, so creativity was encouraged throughout my upbringing.”

Slightly-pixelated on my laptop’s screen (more as the product of spotty reception than audience- facing image styling), Rare DM radiates zeal over Zoom, and I think for a moment I may be communicating with an entity of a future era. Her cutting profile is zig-zagged by an impossibly angled bob, a bare-faced visage emanating the androgyny she orchestrates across her visual library. It’s no facade – for Rare DM, appearance refracts what is inward.

Rare DM wears bodysuit NORMA KAMALI, vintage coat GEOFFREY BEENE from FARFALLA VINTAGE, vintage hat SHINY SQUIRREL, vintage shoes FARFALLA VINTAGE.

“I think because of the way that I look, the way that I sound, people expect me to adhere to a certain lifestyle, to the ‘techno scene’. I’ve never smoked a cigarette in my life. Health is wealth. Bike riding is extremely important to my creative process. I’m an adamant foster of kittens; I work with Bushwick Cats. I’ve fostered 32. I have two with me now.”

Although Hoagg transmutes a bevy of synth scene stereotypes, Bushwick runs through her blood, as she sought her sound in the city’s skyline in her nascency.“I moved to New York to attend FIT. I’d never visited before I came for school,” but, like most creatives with an ambition, Rare DM “knew New York was where I wanted and needed to be. Schooling was how I got my shoe in the door early. I was exposed to so much.”

The techno artist, whose titles include “Rolex”, “Skater Hits Me Harder”, and “send nudes”, culls multi-generational, multi-genre inspiration in the conception of her beats. “My grandmother was a runway model in the 1930s. She’s wildly influential in my taste, and my interest in fashion. She’s a Leo like I am.”

Rare DM wears vintage suit THIERRY MUGLER from NIGHT SHIFT NEW YORK, vintage earrings SHINY SQUIRREL, vintage gloves artist’s own, shoes CHARLES JOURDAN.

Ancestral astrology aside, the musician’s aura echoes past lives in aestheticism and oration alike. Her blunt blonde bob, a perfectly-angled platinum helmeting her signature slender sway (and signature of the ‘20s and ‘30s most avant-garde figures), is no accident. “I’m typically self- styled. It was a treat to work with an actual hair and makeup team for this shoot. My trademark haircut by Sean Michael Bennett is an extension of myself, as much as my music or my style is.” The cut, as her sound, is a definitive distinction, demarcating Hoagg‘s unflagging individualism.

“While studying at FIT, they were really pushing the business side of fashion. It was incredibly homogenized. I realized I don’t want to work for Calvin Klein, I want to be Calvin Klein. I dropped out of school to play drums for a band, and I dropped out of said band to pursue solo music.” The artist is, “currently releasing a slew of singles at a faster pace than the past; a body of work that is more accurate to what I do live and is the music I want to make. I’m trying to stay away from being pigeonholed as dark wave.”

Instantly alighting, Rare DM illustrates her production process, a singular act in its conceptualization and labyrinthine technicalities.

“Music is knowledge combined with my taste. I never thought about how so much of the music I loved in high school was electronic.”

Rare DM wears dress MOLA WALKER, belt PATRICIA FIELD, stockings AGENT PROVOCATEUR, shoes CHARLES JOURDAN.

What many may consider Rare DM’s signature sonority is more accurately attributed to a series of informed exploration begetting trial-and-error successes. The artist’s state-of-the-art sound system is entirely self-built, an amalgam of acquired accoutrements that she’s both amassed and mastered, a personal Rome whose construction spanned years. “My first album was very layered, because it was on an interface that couldn’t do much. The synthesizer thing didn’t really click for me until later. I got to try songs out on a synth because my landlady had one. The first synthesizer I owned I found on the street, cleaned out from a church near the vintage store I was working at in lower Manhattan. That’s when I realized the music that I made could sound like the music I loved.

A drum machine is similar to a kit. I like the tactileness of hardware gear, of acquiring pieces of gear and building out my studio. I’ve crafted this jamming spaceship. I have 16 inputs. I can be my own band and improvise with myself.”

As an independent creator experimenting with indie-electronica influences, Rare DM laments, “Spotify playlists are the biggest block in my career right now. I’m a killer live act— the experiences I had being a drummer taught me I love live performance. Not everyone in this genre right now, whatever genre that may be, can say that. I’m someone to look out for, but the algorithm won’t put me in your mix. The next step is getting signed to a label that gives me the means to make the art I’ve been working hard to do by myself.”