Around the time John Beltran was living in Ann Arbor prior to the pandemic, he resurrected his Placid Angles moniker, which has come to yield some of the most adventurous music in the electronic music producer’s celebrated and diverse catalogue.

While the Detroit-based producer and DJ no longer lives in Ann Arbor, Placid Angles has endured to become something of a go-to alias for Beltran to channel his love for combining nostalgic '90s-centric breakbeats with deep house and ambient techno.

His latest Placid Angles album, Canada, has received rave reviews. The record is dedicated to the country he visited as he finished the LP, and it encompasses everything the Placid Angles project represents since his first album under the alias, 1997’s The Cry, while channeling his love for labels like Warp and 4AD in equal measure.

“It's still fun, and I think Canada is my best offering,” Beltran said. “I'll get a lot of disagreements, because a lot of kids love [2019’s] First Blue Sky. I agree that's a good one, but this one really, really hits it for me.”

Growing up in East Lansing, Beltran fell in love with electronic music and Detroit techno while making road trips to venues like The Shelter in Detroit in his early 20s. Releasing "Aquatic," his first 12-inch on Detroit techno legend Carl Craig’s Retroactive label in 1991, Beltran has spent the next three-plus decades exploring everything from minimal ambient techno on his 1996 classic Ten Days of Blue to Balearic world music and jazz fusion.

Beltran spoke with A2 Pulp about how he got into making music, where his wide range of musical influences comes from, and how Canada came together, with plans to release another album this fall, Sunrise and the Life We Live, under his own name.

Q: You have such a wide range of influences in your music across a number of different recording projects, from jazz fusion to downtempo to ambient techno. Is there anything you would pinpoint or attribute to having such a diverse palette for recording and just appreciating music?
A: First and foremost, I'm a music fan. If I have anything, I have great taste in music. I always have, and that's kind of the starting point, I think—a diverse selection of music in my record collection, as well as growing up, my parents listened to a lot of different music. I think I always had a great taste in music, and songs in particular, because to me, the songs are the heroes. There's great bands that do mediocre songs. So, the best songs of each genre, I suppose, made my playlist if I ever made a playlist back when I was a kid—maybe they were mixtapes or whatever. That all just kind of played a role in what kind of music I would make. There were no boundaries in my fandom, therefore there were no boundaries as a producer. I never considered myself a pioneer in anything. If I liked something, I just kind of joined the party, if you will.

Q: Could you take me through those early stages of getting into music and how that eventually evolved to you getting into Detroit techno and going to shows, and how all of that ultimately shaped you as an artist?
A: MTV played a huge role—the early part of MTV definitely. Alternative music was the instant light switch that kind of set the course. When you would hear things with alternative music, whether it be techno or industrial or Euro techno-pop or whatever, I just kind of, from those MTV roots, would gravitate that way. Having such a big music scene so close, it was easier. Let's say I was born in Seattle; finding Detroit techno wouldn't have been an easy task. Being in the middle of Chicago and Detroit, the music was on the college radio stations. It was in the record stores in these college towns, in Ann Arbor, as well as East Lansing. Being in a college town and being close to Detroit and Chicago is definitely the connection, or how you get kind of wrapped up in that whole thing.

My buddies and I would make it a point to go hear these DJs in Detroit, mainly in the early '90s. The guys who were making it happen were the Derrick Mays and the Kevin Sandersons of the world, Cybotron and all of that stuff—and all kind of coming from the Jeff Mills radio persona, The Wizard. He used to play at Necto. It's this connection from techno, pop, Kraftwerk, and all the industrial stuff, Skinny Puppy, of the late '80s, into Detroit techno. Spending time in Detroit was an amazing experience, driving down and going to the different clubs, [like] The Shelter, to hear Richie Hawtin. He was probably my favorite DJ of that time. He played techno, but he dropped in like Dee-Lite's "Groove Is in the Heart." He was an amazing, eclectic DJ as well, which you wouldn't know if you follow his purely festival career. He was fantastic, and I don't praise him enough, to be honest. I think the kind of dark Detroit techno moments really came when you went to go hear Derrick [May] or Marc Kinchen or Blake Baxter, those guys. They laid out a really, seriously intense experience. Those were the golden years of Detroit techno.

Q: With your most recent album, Canada, I've seen you mention it being '90s-centric and also having a U.K. influence. Is that in line with your Placid Angles moniker specifically, or is that just what you were feeling at the time you were making the record?
A: Most of Placid Angles have that feel, and they're all kind of '90s-centric in meaning. It's kind of my way to encapsulate that sort of production and package it. I did a Placid Angles record [The Cry] in '97, which was really well accepted even to this day, and there's only one way for me to kind of go back and do that and do it authentically, instead of just throwing a bunch of productions around on different labels under my name, or even another name. For me, it's just being inspired by labels like 4AD and Warp and just kind of blending all of it, like Cocteau Twins and Aphex Twin. So, put that together, and that's my kind of recipe for Placid Angles. I try to do something a little different every song, and some other influences may creep in there, but Placid Angles is entirely fueled by some of the feelings I still get when I think about '90s music or listen to it. I guess I'll keep doing Placid Angles records until I don't feel that anymore.

Q: Could you take me through your line of thinking about when to use what alias to record and how you determine how you're going to label a certain release?
A: I work with primarily three different labels right now. There's MotorCity Wine, which is kind of a Balearic world music/electronic world music outlet for me [that put out the Back to Bahia Anthology singles compilation]. I do this stuff for me, first and foremost, and I love Balearic, global, peaceful music ... so I love to dip my toes in there and offer my take on it. So, that is sort of the sound that I kind of have to do. I love it.

The John Beltran stuff, as people know from the '90s, the Ten Days of Blue thing, I just don't do as much anymore, although I just did a record for Music for Dreams, and that will be coming out later this year. It's in the vein of my '90s, ambient, electronic music/ambient techno or whatever you want to call it. That was a great outlet. To be honest, when they came to me, I'm always up for the challenge. So, “yes” initially, and then it settles in, I gotta do this album, right? They pay a nice advance, so there's that on top, you're like crap, not only am I committed to this, there's money involved, and I have to reinvent myself, at least subtly every time I do something. So, that's the challenge.

So, I've got the world music thing, I've got the Ten Days of Blue Thing, where people kind of expect that from me, and then there's Placid Angles. Those are my three major focuses right now.

Q: Canada feels like it covers a lot of ground, from techno to deep house to ambient; there's a lot of breakbeats. Was it intentional for you to have a wide range of musical influences on this record?
A: I definitely wanted to use all of the Placid Angles tricks from the last three albums that I had done before. I think something about the cover ties all of this music together. I think Ten Days of Blue did that. Artwork plays such a huge role in the delivery of an album. That first moment when you listen to it, if you saw the cover, it made sense. The visual part connects so well with the music. I really believe that plays a huge role. I could do this record and shift up the tracklisting, and I could give you another cover, and it would, to me, feel entirely different.

I definitely pulled from the older stuff, but I think it's way more articulated. There are garage rhythms in there. The ambient is probably some of the best that I've done. It's pretty well articulated. The female vocal colors are right on top. They're not hidden, maybe as much as some of the other records. It's Placid Angles to the max. It's been a while since I've held a record and said, "This is exactly what I was hoping for."

Q: You're big on emotion and feeling with your music. How do you translate emotion into your records, and has that changed or evolved over time?
A: When I was younger, like any young person, you're learning how to process life and emotions. Your adult brain doesn't start really developing until well into your 20s. When I think of myself writing music at 21 in comparison to how I write music now, it's immensely different. How I processed things then, I was kind of an emotional guy. I always have been, but it was different then. That's why a lot of times I say I can't write you Ten Days of Blue again. I literally cannot put myself in the 26-year-old John Beltran brain, emotionally. I was a different person, developing. I don't even think I'd have the patience for some of those emotions now. We know how to process as we get older; how to compartmentalize and do all these different things, and then you just kind of have to let it out.

I know how to kind of mimic some of those things musically, but even to this day, I don't feel my music as much as I did then. When I finished a song for Ten Days of Blue, it would probably make me cry back then in some ways, and I'd probably just want to go out for a beer after to celebrate it. Nowadays, it's a little more technical, maybe more logically, rationally and even just musically and academically, if you will, just knowing music better—deeper harmonies, things like that. I know something's working harmonically or rhythmically. That is kind of the master class of wisdom, and that's where age and time and experience give you that.

Over time, I learned how to process emotion. There's different kinds of emotion. There's melancholy, there's uplifting emotion that I got into with my Ubiquity [label] stuff—the more kind of Latin-driven stuff [on 2002's Sun Gypsy and 2004's In Full Color]. So I've kind of run through the whole spectrum. I guess that's life, and I'll continue to do that. I have my moments where I'm a little more introspective and will try to pull out the more serious side of life, and then there's times where I'm not serious, and let's just have fun.

Q: You've mentioned that the record you just recently finished up for Music for Dreams, Sunrise and the Life We Live, is in that Ten Days of Blue vein. Do you find yourself wanting to revisit that place where you were making that music?
A: I have revisited some of the techniques and some of the processes that I used—kind of a more minimal process—[on Ten Days of Blue]. Not a full album of that, but you'll hear different things on [the 2016 album] Everything at Once that might be kind of Ten Days of Blue-y—minimal arpeggios with minimal hi-hat rhythms and things like that. I have gone back; I just haven't looked at a whole project, and I wanted to model [Everything at Once] after it until [Sunrise and the Life We Live, which is] a little deeper harmonically as well as production. I think this is just a more mature version. As far as wanting to go back, I have; I just did it probably more a song here, a song there over time.

I love [Ten Days of Blue]. As we age, it's harder to feel the things or even remember some of the things we felt at the time, years and years ago. Music can be very nostalgic. It can take you right back to where you were when you heard something for the first time. The older you get, I'm 57 now, more and more I just feel more detached from the far past, but I think Ten Days of Blue will sit there, and I'll be able to feel that as much as anything when I look back on my accomplishments.

Martin Slagter is a writer and reporter with 18 years of experience in print and digital media. He also writes about Michigan-based music in his weekly newsletter Radio Amor.  

Related:

➥ "Herb Sundays 179: John Beltran / Placid Angles: The Michigan electronic luminary shares inspirations (and outcomes) for his sublime Placid Angles alias + the forever longing of Detroit ambient techno." [Herb Sundays, March 8, 2026]