“The Magic Is in the Imperfections”: An Interview with gum.mp3 About His Latest Album “Wagenmuzik 2”

In modern music production, the difference between a clean mix and a memorable record often comes down to character. We sat down with gum.mp3, a rising underground producer from North Carolina and based in Baltimore known for blending raw club textures with emotional sound design, to talk about his workflow and how he used UFX DISTORT and LOFI all over his latest album to shape his signature sound.

Q: How do you usually start making a song? What can you advise for people who struggle with turning an idea into a complete song?

gum.mp3:

“I always start with the drums. It’s easiest for me to differentiate between genres based on their drum patterns, and working on the drum groove first helps me get a sense of how other elements might fit in and relate to one another. Crisp drums and a good bassline are always a sturdy foundation to build on.”

In this session, gum.mp3 breaks down one of his recent releases, showing how the track “Strip Game feat. Leon English” evolved from a rough idea into a modern genre-fusion production.

Q: How do UFX DISTORT and UFX LOFI fit into your production process?

gum.mp3:

“I work with a lot of software instruments, so LOFI and DISTORT help me conjure interesting textures and fill space on a song more interestingly as opposed to relying on a preset sound. I’ve never been the most pristine, high-gloss kind of producer, so these two VSTs really suit me. As soon as I load up a virtual instrument, I’m immediately playing with an effects chain to see what kind of textures are possible and I let it influence how I write melodies.”

This second video zooms into the micro level—how individual sounds in his album “Wagenmuzik 2” are enhanced, destroyed, and rebuilt using UFX.

Q: Your favorite preset is obviously the “Low End Fat” preset, what makes it so special to you?

gum.mp3:

“Trying to get a clean, thick bass every time is like an age-old producer problem. Low End Fat is awesome since, for me at least, I can run any bass sound through it and work it into something usable. It’s helpful for restoring sampled sounds or even just enhancing a software instrument. It’s like SpongeBob’s jellyfishing net, Ol’ Reliable.”

For gum.mp3, effects aren’t about extreme processing—it’s about controlled imperfection. The plugins become part of the composition process, not just post-production polish.

“I think people underestimate how much identity comes from texture.”

gum.mp3:

“Working on Wagenmuzik 2 really gave me clarity in regard to my career thus far. I spent a lot of time identifying commonalities between my new work and the work I made when I was just beginning, and trying to articulate a personal understanding of my own sound, which I think is more difficult than it seems. Genre-fusion and the aesthetics of sampling have always been important to me.”

“For Wagenmuzik 2, songs like “Final Flash” and the “Strip Game” club mix represent the nascent days of my career, whereas “Love Languages” & “DFAL” represent a more recent development in my work with a focus on breakbeats and classic rave sounds. Working on the project taught me how to think critically about my early work, and from it, I’ve learned to preserve and further develop a certain production framework and aesthetic sensibility.”

In gum.mp3’s workflow, character is not something added at the end—it’s designed from the very first sound. With tools like UFX DISTORT and UFX LOFI, imperfection becomes a creative decision rather than a flaw.

For Wagenmuzik 2, that philosophy defines everything: raw, emotional, and intentionally unstable sound design that turns texture into identity.