Regue - Six Senses

Carlos Reguero, known as Regue, has spent over a decade moving quietly through underground scenes: Córdoba, London, Berlin, and now Porto, where he's based today. Alongside his own production work, he's part of the team behind Signature, an underground night in Madrid. For Zabam, he recorded a set built almost entirely from records he rarely gets to play out: organic textures, field recordings, water, drums, woven through deep, patient electronic selections. We spoke about what that process looked like from the inside.

A: Let's talk about the podcast. I listened to it twice, and what struck me immediately was the quality of the digging. Every record felt special, not easily accessible. And I couldn't ignore all the natural sounds woven through it: birds, water, drums. Where does that come from for you?

C: Thank you. Yeah, I've always been really connected to nature. During the tough times we always had, I'd go to nature to disconnect and reset. That connection reflects in my sets. I love organic sounds, I love electronic music, but I believe in the combination of the two. For me, that's a perfect match. You can hear that touch throughout the set.

A: And a podcast set is a very different creature from a club set, no crowd to read, no room to respond to. How does that change how you make decisions?

C: In the club, I find it genuinely difficult to express myself 100%. You need to do your job, serve the crowd, and that's it. A podcast is different. When someone gives me freedom, and most people do, I think it should be that way that it becomes something where I can truly open myself up. The music has always been about expressing myself. And a podcast has this quality where it heals you, too. You're releasing something. Whatever feelings you carry when you're selecting the music, they go into it, and that's actually good, you're distressing through the creation.

A: What did you have in mind for this one specifically?

C: Since the beginning, when Laimonas told me to make a podcast for Zabam, I knew I could express myself fully. I know the platform, you are wide open, you speak about things the scene doesn't usually speak about, you give another vision. So it wasn't about a specific sound or fitting a format. It was about everything I have in my mind, about myself. It felt like Zabam was asking me to be exactly that. So that's how I approached it.

A: How much of it was planned in advance, and how much happened in the moment?

C: When I dig, I buy everything I like, even records I'd never play in a club. Maybe half of my collection will never see a dancefloor, but that's part of the process. So I already have a kind of "podcast pack" in my bag: records I've set aside because they're too delicate, too unusual, too something for a club context. When someone asks me for a podcast, I go to that pack and start thinking about how to build from it. What I'm going to play is never fully premeditated. But I usually have one track in mind - the anchor, the one I know I need to include, and I build the story around it.

A: Like a film.

C: Exactly. For me a podcast is like a movie. I'm very cinematographic in how I think about it. I build in three blocks: the beginning, where you go slow: first track ambient, second track slow with percussion, to ease the listener in, and then the adventure begins. It shifts, it changes, it gets more serious, and then it becomes simpler again but deeper. It's always about creating an experience.

A: What format did you use? Vinyl, digital, a mix of both?

C: Mostly vinyl, with a couple of CDs. I do have dubplates, but they're expensive enough that I keep them for club sets. That's where you really feel the difference of that physical contact. For a podcast, sometimes I'll rip a CD and run it through Ableton, just a light touch to adjust the frequency levels. One of the tracks I actually edited a little too, because it was really difficult to mix at the end. I adjusted the structure slightly to make it more playable. But the core of it is records.

A: How many takes did it need before it felt right?

C: Just one, which honestly surprised me. A few years ago I would have recorded a podcast four or five times, unhappy with the flow or the mixing. But this one was done in the first take. The key for me is that I need to feel it the day before. I go to bed and I already sense whether the next day is going to be the day: the energy is there, the tracks are coming to me. I played through the selection before hitting record, to get comfortable with the transitions, to have the movie in my head. And then I recorded it. That readiness is everything.

A: You mentioned you need to do it alone. You can't have people around.

C: Yeah. It's not that I'm a lonely person, I love being around people. But I'm very introspective, I spend a lot of time in reflection, and with music it's the same. I wake up in the morning already thinking about it, already projecting toward the creation. That internal space is where I need to be.

A: What do you do when that space doesn't come, when you're stuck and you have a set to record or a stream scheduled?

C: You need to disconnect. For me, I take my motorbike and go for a ride alone. Just a trip, no destination. I'm very detail-oriented, so I'll notice small things along the way that inspire me. It doesn't have to be anything music-related. And then yeah, I also go back to old sci-fi films, the early ones, with those special soundtracks that really made the film. When I watch something that moves me, I just want to go to the studio immediately. That's a trigger for me.

A: Beyond that, where do you dig? How has your approach changed over the years?

C: In London I was a bit obsessed. Record shops, private sellers…  London was almost too picked over by the time I got there, all the big names had been through before me. So I was mainly on Discogs, following the rabbit hole to find the obscure stuff. But gradually I started going to shops more, and I realised something: in a shop, the record finds you more than you find it. On Discogs you're hunting. In a physical space it's more like a projection: you go in expecting to find something, and sometimes you do, sometimes you don't. Here in Porto I have a dealer I love, he buys collections, he has a warehouse with around 160,000 records. I'll spend a whole day there and come out with things that are truly hidden, truly special. You need the hours and the patience, but that's part of it. I still use Discogs, but I feel most natural doing it in person now.

A: And what does this set say about where you are right now as an artist?

C: I think it says I'm in peace with myself. I have a taste that not everyone will like, and I've accepted that. For a long time I thought being influenced by everything around you was positive, but at some point I realised it can damage your sense of yourself, if you absorb too much, you start simulating sounds that aren't really yours. A lot of DJs get stuck because they're playing something they're not. So I've always tried to follow my roots, my own thing. What I put in this podcast is what I actually have in my mind. That's the most honest version of me I can give.