Coast2c - Radical Devotion

2025.08.01

Coast2c, a multimedia artist specializing in music and synthesis, has spent decades developing her artistic perspective. She is uncompromisingly raw in her approach, excavating her modular synthesis system for bizarre, expressive, and unique sonic instances.

Radical Devotion marks Coast2c’s third EP release, and her debut on White Owl Records. Developed in the wake of her audiovisual presentation at MutekMX alongside visual artist Julieta Gil, the project reflects a deepening of Coast2c’s creative process. After the exhibition, she returned to her practice with renewed emotional freedom-channeling grief, frustration, love, sadness and joy with unflinching honesty working and incorporating new tools in her practice like the Analog Rytm MkII. Radical Devotion has a raw and honest texture that forefronts Coast2c’s extensive modular synthesis practice. Swirling swells and arps float weightlessly above dampened drums. The subdued techno evolves hauntingly, one theme tumbling into the next.

Entropy Management: Coast2c on Radical Devotion

Sofia Acosta, better known as Coast2c, calls me from her new home outside Mexico City. She excitedly tells me of her new studio space and all the machines waiting patiently to be patched. Her first EP on White Owl Records, Radical Devotion, has been over a year in the making, having gone through many phases of making and re-making. Finally, it is set to release – we debrief in the spirit of closure.

JACK CAVENAUGH: If I’m not mistaken, this EP grew out of your 2023 performance at Mutek MX. Can you tell me about that show, your collaboration with Julietta Gil, and the space you were in after the show?

COAST2C: Yeah! It was a really amazing experience. Mutek has always been a very inspirational festival for me my whole life. I’ve known Julietta for a long time – since our childhood. She’s a multimedia artist working with different technologies, software, architecture, and spaces, she’s a true inspiration to me. But it was very challenging – I wanted to make the music danceable but I brought so much equipment, like eight outputs into my big mixer.

JACK CAVENAUGH: Oh my gosh.

COAST2C: (Laughs) Yeah it was too much, but also, such a cool feeling. After the show everyone was saying great things and I was like – now what? I had just played my favorite festival. So from there I just started recording all these sounds that eventually became the EP.

JACK CAVENAUGH: Do you always use modular, or do you use digital tools too?

COAST2C: For this last EP I had a lot of modular sounds – some of them were weird and funny. I tried to record lots of stuff and then arrange everything on my software. It was super awkward for me though because for me jamming feels so natural. Then to think about a five minute song is kind of hard to me, it doesn’t feel natural. But I understand better how arrangement works now, and I think software helps a lot with that.

JACK CAVENAUGH: That’s so interesting that you say arrangements are challenging. To me I feel like your arrangements are very unique to you – they develop in these ways that are very narrative.

COAST2C: Thank you for your comments because for me it’s the thing that I struggle with the most, but it’s true – it’s little narratives. I think a lot about narrative and how the sounds can move.

JACK CAVENAUGH: When you’re jamming it can feel like you can only move forward in time – or maybe downwards. I feel like your arrangements come from a jam orientation because they are always moving forward, which I think is very techno too.

COAST2C: Yeah totally – and you’re right. Techno is very structured, right? But in the synth world, and especially with modular, sometimes you want to head in a direction and – it depends how you patch – but one thing can just change everything.”

JACK CAVENAUGH: Like you turn a knob and it’s like ‘Woah where are we now?’ That can be a fun challenge.

COAST2C: I think being in front of the modules is like entropy management. Like you’re trying to control chaos. You’re just there and it’s going, and I really like that struggle. One of the first live modular performances I saw was ASSS (https://soundcloud.com/a_s_s_s). And for me, just watching them go from one point to the other, and to hear the struggle, and then finally coming into something where they both feel comfortable. Watching and listening – it was just life-changing for me. I like to put myself in that position too where you’re showing the struggle of your change. You can try to control it, but, you know, sometimes you cannot control everything.
_____________

JACK CAVENAUGH: You call this project Radical Devotion – where did this title come from?

COAST2C: Everything is meaningful, right? When I played Mutek MX – it was right when Israel started bombing Gaza heavily. And then Dua Lipa – she announced that she was releasing her album titled “Radical Optimism.” And I’m there feeling miserable – like how can someone be radically optimistic at this moment? I mean I’m sorry, but like, you know? So it’s about how you can have these extremes in your environment of this woman having radical optimism while a lot of suffering happens.Then you look around and see amazing humans trying to make a difference in the world. That is a radical devotion to who you are and what you feel is right.

Kanyon

Fake Funk Finders