Logic1000's radical self-acceptance

No final dos anos 2010, Samantha Poulter, também conhecida como Logic1000, lançou músicas que a colocaram no radar de alguns dos mais celebrados artistas da música de dança.

Nos anos seguintes, as produções da artista nascida em Sydney variaram de deep house e UKG a breaks, downtempo e experimental pop, exibindo uma profundidade emocional que lhe rendeu fãs em todos os cantos da cena da música eletrônica.

Agora morando em Londres, ela se encontra com Alice Vyvyan-Jones para discutir seu novo álbum 'Confirmation!', parentalidade, brincadeira e autoaceitação.

Saindo de mais uma gravação de seu podcast, Therapy, Samantha Poulter — mais conhecida como Logic1000 — aparece no Zoom. Ela tinha apenas 15 minutos para se recompor antes de se juntar à nossa chamada.

Poulter has dialled in from the living room of her new East London flat, following a long stint in Berlin. It’s a space she describes as small, far from perfect, but home.

Between raising her daughter and navigating a life abroad, the Sydney-born DJ, producer and promoter has never stopped creating. Her catalogue moves between deep house, UK garage and downtempo, and, like Caribou (with whom she’s frequently been compared to and worked with) and acts like Overmono, Poulter has a gift for uncovering emotion in club music without sacrificing its physicality.

Seu álbum de estreia, *Mother* de 2024, que documentou a nova paternidade com honestidade contundente, solidificou essa reputação.

Desde as vocais vulneráveis em espanhol de Nebreda em “Ever Lil” até os ritmos frenéticos de “Can’t Let It Go” e o pesado baixo em “Heartbeats”, aquele disco deu forma sonora à natureza desorientadora da nova maternidade.

Enquanto isso, o comp DJ‑Kicks dela explorou territórios mais lentos e meditativos, reunindo sons ambient, downtempo e leftfield.

On writing ‘Confirmation!’, Poulter tells DJ Mag, all rules fell away. Created alongside her partner and co-producer Tom McAlister (who releases dance music as Big Ever), the album was formed by a conscious decision to let go.

Apesar de sua imersão na música dance, o casal não queria se limitar a um único ritmo ou gênero, uma liberdade que se refletiu em suas maneiras contrastantes de trabalhar no estúdio.

Enquanto McAlister gosta de “tinker” sem fim, Poulter tem um instinto de saber quando algo está concluído. “Ele é um perfeccionista nesse sentido. Eu sou geralmente quem diz, ’Não, isso é tudo.’ Acho que é por isso que trabalhamos tão bem juntos.”.

This newfound confidence in production, Poulter tells me, only seemed possible through a feeling of security she built whilst living in Berlin. “Berlin gave me this real sense of safety.

Over six years it developed my confidence — not socially, but in a much deeper way. It gave me this feeling of being safe in the world. When you feel safe, you’re not constantly in fight-or-flight.

You become more playful, more grounded and more able to explore. Berlin really gave me that as a foundation.”.

That playfulness now sits at the heart of both her creativity and her life outside the studio. Motherhood, she tells DJ Mag, was how she “rediscovered” play. Through her almost five-year-old daughter, Genie, she’s learnt that neither music nor parenting has to be taken so seriously.

The visualiser for ‘All In For You’ captures this beautifully: Poulter lies on a living room floor surrounded by her family playing board games, a portrait of her two worlds coexisting.

Becoming a mother has also changed the way Poulter thinks about feelings, both her daughter’s and her own. She jokes that the lessons she tries to impart are “a very Buddhist way” of approaching emotion: not to “mute” it, but to “feel the emotion, let it transform and go”.

Behind her, a well-thumbed copy of Buddhist monk Thích Nhất Hạhn’s The Art of Living sits on the bookshelf, a book that introduced her to “red car theory”, the idea that what we choose to notice begins to shape what we see.

But motherhood has also meant looking backwards, forcing Poulter to confront parts of her own childhood she’d long left untouched.

Esse movimento em direção à reconciliação também se reflete em ‘Confirmation!’. O disco termina com ‘Forgiven’, uma reinterpretação de 2018’s ‘DJ Logic – Please Forgive Me’, que a colocou no radar de artistas como Four Tet — que também a lançou em seu set de Coachella de 2019.

The track gradually builds, but never reaches a traditional climax. Instead, it quickly resolves: a tender reckoning, a soft absolution. “It’s a full-circle moment, but at the same time, a 180.

It’s a nod to my past self,” Poulter explains. When she wrote the initial version, she says, she was “meek, scared and kind of traumatised”, but also “so full of hope” and willing to take a risk.

This current ease with herself hasn’t come easily. It follows years spent navigating physical and mental health issues, bouncing between jobs and wrestling with a complicated sense of self — experiences Poulter has written about with striking candour on social media and in her Substack.

Listening to her now, though, there’s little sense of someone claiming to have “figured it out.” Instead, she speaks with the confidence of someone who’s learnt to make space for every version of herself.

It’s a feeling that runs through ‘Confirmation!’ as much as it does her life. Across the album, collaborations with Christine and the Queens, Jam City, FAUZIA, yunè pinku, KUČKA, and Tiffi M further deepen her commitment to self-validation.

No final de 2023, Poulter encontrou outra maneira de explorar as conversas que há muito tempo existiam por trás de portas fechadas. Junto com a colega DJ e mãe Heléna Star, ela lançou Therapy, um podcast que explora a maternidade, saúde mental e criatividade na indústria musical.

The response has been positive. “People tell us it feels like they’re sitting in a living room with their girlfriends,” she says, smiling. “Helena and I had stayed in touch for years, and when she became pregnant she’d ask me questions about motherhood because I’d already had a baby.

Those conversations happened so organically that eventually we realised we should record them.”.

Sempre que nossa conversa se aproxima da sentimentalidade, Poulter ri, não para descartá-la, mas com o descrédito de alguém que ainda não consegue acreditar que descobriu a si mesma em um lugar que antes lhe parecia impossível.

Talvez essa seja a verdadeira confirmação. Não os elogios, pistas de dança lotadas ou marcos de carreira, mas a certeza que vem de conhecer a si mesmo.