An interview with Touch Sensitive.
The one-and-only Italo king, Touch Sensitive, returns with In Paradise—a luminous journey through sun-soaked Italo disco, soulful piano house, and nostalgic electro-pop that feels both timelessly familiar and refreshingly forward-thinking.
Released on August 22, 2025, this second studio album brings together an extraordinary cast of collaborators, from Larry Dunn (Earth, Wind & Fire) to Connie Mitchell (Sneaky Sound System), alongside Sydney’s vibrant creative community.
We caught up with Touch Sensitive to explore the eight-year odyssey from Visions to In Paradise, diving deep into the creative process, collaborative spirit, and the quest to capture that perfect balance between garage-jam spontaneity and “blissed-out perfection.”
In the 8 years since your last album release you’ve been touring the globe, playing live shows, and releasing singles and remixes throughout this timespan. Was the touring an influence on what went into this album? And were the songs assembled across the years, or was it a more recent creative streak that resulted in the album?
It’s a culmination of all of these things, but the initial sessions for what became the record happened over two intensive weeks split between Studios 301 and Sentir. Originally the idea was to project a bunch of visuals and improvise to them, but I quickly realised the depths I’d need to go to in order to make it work properly – and that my living room couldn’t accommodate my dreams.
In total, there were maybe 32 tracks that came out of those sessions, and they sat on my computer for maybe a year. Occasionally I’d pull them out at parties here and there, or during sessions I’d attempt top-lines over them, but it wasn’t until I hooked up with Tony Buchen that the condensation started to clear. I got stuck in a loop, and instead of going deeper down the rabbit hole, I invited Tony in and he helped me dig my way out… which was actually being true to the spirit of the original concept of the record – a collaborative process.
Comparing the sound of your albums – 2017’s “Visions” and 2025’s “In Paradise”- Paradise has an overall faster tempo, often a major tonality, and gravitates a bit more toward live instrumentation. Was this a conscious change in direction, with a specific goal in mind? Or was it more of an organic outcome of what you were making at the time?
Yeah, there were a few factors at play here. I was feeling like everything was sounding the same. For example, I’ve been using the same clap since 2017 when Flume gave me “Fat As Fuck Claps” and I put them on everything! laughs So I wanted to get away from that. Sure, there’s a billion clap samples, but all the claps on the record are real ones recorded in the room with the people that played them, except for “The Breeze,” which is the final appearance of “Fat As Fuck Claps” – and they’ve since been deleted.
Second, there’s a fair bit of emphasis on making things sound human via variations in timing and velocity – so reverse engineering things to be a bit shit. The computer is perfect, so “In Paradise” is about exactly this, because we now live in the future and it’s too easy to let the computer do the work for you and end up with computer-like results. When computer grid-timing technology was new, it would have been crazy exciting, but I wanted to explore a road that was ambiguous as to when it was made. I think on the entire record there’s maybe one riser, and it’s literally a factory preset from the Oberheim that was warped to be in time.
So in summary, I guess I just wanted to make something that felt real – like an actual record done to tape with musicians and all the fancy gear.
The strings arrangements, and the drums and percussion, are phenomenal. On the drums/percussion, they work so perfectly with your bass-playing. Can you share a little about how you’ve been approaching the rhythm section when making these tracks?
Bass and drums were all tracked live except for the Linn drum ones – “On The Ice” and “In The Heat Of The Moment” – and really not much thought went into them at the time. We just jammed until I felt we got enough of a particular vibe for me to cut up into something. For example, “Maze In My Mind,” when we did it, was maybe a few minutes long and felt pretty throwaway at the time. Then later on I tried to replay the bass and improve the sound, and for whatever reason couldn’t beat it. Demoitis maybe, or just the spirit of what went down in the room to the tape was part of its DNA and couldn’t be messed with. So for better or for worse, that’s what’s on the record.
However, “Club Med Anthem” I did actually replay the bass because the original one legitimately sucked. Most of the percussion was done later in the picture by Mauro Refosco, so he was playing to what was already on the tape.
You’ve brought some amazing personnel in to contribute to the album – was this a hit-squad you picked out specifically for the project, or did the collaborations evolve as the album came together?
The core players are just some of my favorites that I’ve been playing with in various bands, gigs, or sessions for a while. For example, Bret, who played guitar on a bunch of stuff, is my childhood friend and we grew up listening and discovering all the things you do, so it was important to have people that knew and shared the vision and understood the style and the vibe. Nothing was really a point of contention – we were just laughing at how ridiculous some things were. But the goal wasn’t to make a pop record, which I felt like for a while was the answer to all my problems…
The synths and equipment you use are an important aspect of how you make music. Which items were the go-to workhorses in this album, and were there any one-off bits of gear that came your way during the process?
In the tracking stage, I’d say the duties were split between Memorymoog, Rhodes Chroma, Minimoog, and Jupiter 8, but I think the star of the show was the Synare 3. I found a pair still in the original boxes with sequential serial numbers, and fair to say they made it onto every track. All the disco bombs and white noise rezzy snares are the Syndrum.
Then later I was bringing an H3000 from Sydney to LA for a mate, and in return he let me use it for a bit, so I took it into Tony’s and it’s literally on everything. So much so that when it was time for me to return it, Tony had no choice but to buy his own – it’s that good! laughs So the H3000 is on a fair bit, mostly for chorus. It’s a magic box. The plugin version is cool too, but you don’t get the transformer hum and buzz – sometimes maybe the loudest thing in the room besides the Memorymoog fan. At times the studio got pretty industrial with all the noise pollution.
Of all the songs on “In Paradise,” which one did you most enjoy making, and why?
I think “Robot Love Song” was the most fun for a number of reasons. The Linn Drum was triggering the ARP on the Jupiter, so I was doing that with my left hand, and with my right doing the bass line on the Moog. Harry “not Harvey” Sutherland was playing DX7 and Rosario Ferraro was on drums, and we just did it in a couple of passes. At the time we were pissing ourselves laughing, but then it got funnier when Ross did all the disco tom stuff on the Synare.
But the song that went from moth to butterfly was “Love To The Limit,” primarily due to the fact that it started as just a cool jam but didn’t really go anywhere, to having strings, amazing vocals from Connie Mitchell, and a Minimoog solo from Larry Dunn from Earth Wind & Fire. So in terms of process, that one wins, and it was kind of in the 11th hour too.
And for my own curiosity – my two favorite tracks are also some of the most contrasting cuts on the album. “Club Med” feels like a day-party at Pikes Hotel, and “Riverside Drive” is a slick, low-slung bass jam. Can you put us in the room when these were made – at the initial spark, and when it really started taking shape?
“Club Med – Bret and I had discussed the chord progression before and said we should do something like Chic, but it was too close, so that’s one that I redid the bass to move it away from a straight-up Bernard Edwards thing. It’s still in there, but I landed on that ascending bit which took it out of that, so the original jam of that was actually pretty bare bones.
“Riverside Drive,” again, yeah that was just a jam. Originally it was 17 minutes long, and every time I went to edit it I couldn’t – I felt like it was being disrespectful. But yeah, Oliver Thorpe plays pedal steel, and at the time I thought the Mu-tron bass and the pedal steel would be a cool texture. Maybe there’s a track already out there with this combo, I don’t know, but at the time it felt fresh. There’s also some Memorymoog and some Crumar Orchestrator.
Really nothing at the time was given too much thought. I had the luxury of all this great gear and an awesome team, but I didn’t have and still don’t have the luxury of time. It was all very “let’s try this quickly then move on,” but had there been too much time to think, who knows…
We’ve already ordered it on vinyl.
Get yours here while the first-pressing is still available:
Touch Sensitive / In Paradise LP Vinyl
