When Carlos Aguilar found his light in the darkness of night clubs, he became Concrete Husband; an artist moniker that represents the dichotomy between the ethereal romance of his Brian Eno-esque instrumental tracks and the industrial roar of his pulsing techno productions.

Born and raised in San Diego, Aguilar is a decorated flutist, spending his youth immersed in rigid classical training and becoming a two-time grand prize winner of the Musical Merit Foundation. The focus and accolades paid off, he relocated to Boston to study at the New England Conservatory, leading him to tour with the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra. In time, the nagging feeling of isolation from both the Eurocentric rules and roots of classical music neglected his Chicano heritage and queerness. Exploring the depths of his artistry had been looked at as an unwelcome act of rebellion by his peers and conductors.

In his latest album, Piel, Concrete Husband challenges how avant-garde and techno compositions can birth new definitions of contemporary classical music. The title track offers an amalgamation of styles that showcase his myriad talents, an instrumental soundscape that transforms into the percussive warmth of reggaeton. The music video follows suit with choreographed movement reminiscent of a Brooklyn warehouse where after parties, kissed by sunlight, become breeding grounds for community.

The artist meets with friend and fellow musician Eartheater, similarly a champion of the avant-garde. Having opened for her 2023 Powders world tour, the artists reconvene here for Document.

Eartheater: How are you?

Concrete Husband: Highly caffeinated. My body has been on a morning schedule lately. I’d been fully nocturnal, and had not seen the sun for two weeks. Now I’m the complete opposite. I’ve been making a lot of music, listening to a lot of music, and preparing for performances. I’ve been creatively constipated for months, and I finally can make music again, and it’s flowing.

Eartheater: I think that creative constipation is a natural thing that occurs after finishing a project, I embrace it. I’m like, Great, river’s a little dry right now, cool. Don’t you feel possessed when you’re inspired, though?

Concrete Husband: Oh fully, nobody exists. It’s the best feeling. That’s when I feel my most secure with myself, when I’m in a flow. People go to their coffee shops for breaks, I go to Bossa on mine because I work at night. Lately it’s just been, I go and twirl, and then I get home and there’s nothing.

Eartheater: I feel you. I will say a little piece of granny advice is to embrace the times when you don’t always feel like that. The most depressed moments of my life have been when I just needed deep rest. Of course, you’re a spring chicken, so you’re like, What are you talking about? But I mean when you’re not twirling, you’re not working, and you just need to rest and not do anything.

Concrete Husband: Girl, literally like that. The last two weeks my roommate was out of town, so I’ve been slowly getting back into making music. I’m on a three week break from performing, it’s just me and myself in my apartment. I’ve been watching America’s Next Top Model.

Eartheater: Oh exactly, I was gonna say crap television. It’s the best. That’s creative healing 101.

Katie Rex: How did you two get connected?

Concrete Husband: It was Christian Tokyo.

Eartheater: Shout out Christian Tokyo. I was desperately looking for an opener for my Powders tour, and I had been sent lists and lists of emerging artists. I loved everything I was hearing, but none of it was quite right. I really wanted someone that could play an instrument very, very well, that could create a magical atmosphere. And when I was told about Concrete Husband, I knew off the bat that it was him. I hadn’t even met him yet.

I gave you a ring, and we had a little FaceTime. I wouldn’t take no for an answer. Luckily, you were on board. The synergy between us was absolutely perfect. I still have fans hitting me up saying those shows were so special. Someone just hit me up from Warsaw; that show was particularly beautiful.

Concrete Husband: That was a fun time. Our music does live in this world of fantasy and whimsy. Seeing you perform was super educational, it helped me figure out how to blend my concert-hall-avant-garde-boy thing with something I can invite more people into. It’s non-exclusionary, and that’s what really made those performances special.

Eartheater: Do you think that concert hall stuff often has the vibe of exclusion?

Concrete Husband: Oh, for sure. People are more connected with things that are lyrical in general. I was so nervous before our first show in Berlin at Silent Green. I didn’t know if anyone was going to pick up what I’m putting down.

Eartheater: Meanwhile, the promoter of that show asked you to headline your own show after.

Concrete Husband: I just came back from doing that, it was so fun.

Eartheater: How did it go?

Concrete Husband: Fab. They really took care of me. I was playing upstairs in Kuppelhalle, and so the music started filling the room, and it went completely dark. I was playing processed flute from the balconies, came down, and ran through the crowd, playing on top of people. It was so fun, I’m ready to do more shows like that.

“I’m pulling people inward, versus exploding outward. That’s what this album also represents. It’s about my two ways of being in the public.”

Eartheater: I [thought to myself], Alright, this kid has the energy to tour and the curiosity. You have to romanticize the crazy hours, the exhaustion and all the curveballs that can get thrown and then be ready to ignite on stage. You have that and I’m so excited to see your career blossom. I feel like you’re already so massively accomplished, your potential is infinite. I want to talk about that in regard to growth. Do you feel this album is setting a new bar for you musically?

Concrete Husband: I think it’s creating closure. This album is everything I am in one project: the club boy, the techno boy, but also this dreamy, experimental, pop and avant-garde boy. That’s why the cover of the album is this dual sided being. I feel permission to grow even more now. That’s why I’m making so much music right now, because it’s like, Who am I now, post-this album? This album represented so much for me, the entire thing revolved around the tour, in a way. I performed the entire first half of the album when I opened for you, and then the techno section I made in between our European and our US tour, while in Berlin.

Eartheater: That’s what’s impressive about it, there’s a very deep, energetic thread between these two worlds. That’s something that’s really exciting to me. As an artist that’s very pulled from limb to limb in opposite directions sonically, I love to see the way that you elegantly balance all these impulses. It’s so cool. Maybe the way that techno summer felt, with the post-European tour winter inspiring the ambient, textural, soundscapes, informed the techno to feel more furious?

Concrete Husband: It was me tapping into my own dualities as a human. When I’m DJing, I’m ferocious. What was really interesting with the way the flute show has developed. It’s gotten progressively more still and introspective. I’m pulling people inward, versus exploding outward. That’s what this album also represents. It’s about my two ways of being in the public.

Eartheater: Is your album chronological?

Concrete Husband: I did make all of the non techno stuff first, and that was a very specific period in my life. In the first half of Piel there’s a text that says, ‘I just wish that I was, and I just wish that I could be, and I just wish that I was,’ which keeps repeating and gets cut off in different ways through the album. This music all came about when I first moved to Brooklyn. I was living in Jersey City alone during COVID. I was depressed, I had the worst breakup. I was left alone and had no job. I was freaked out, I didn’t know what to do with my life anymore. This is what informed the first half of the album. It was a way for me to find my center, find the beauty in my brokenness. I felt destroyed, and I just wanted to make beautiful things. The music came out as a form of fight to heal myself. Funny enough, the first half of the album in ‘La Primera Ves’ repeats, ‘And that was the first time I said, I love you.’ It’s the darkest song on the whole album.

The techno is cute compared to this one, it’s just noise and texture. I was in my studio after having moved to Brooklyn, just laying with COVID on my studio couch. I couldn’t get this microtonal cord out of my head. That’s why the outer parts of the first half are these beautiful, ethereal, subtly-microtonal pieces. I wanted to juxtapose the feeling. To say, No, I’m stronger than this darkness. The darkness does live in the center, but there’s so much more strength, and so much to look forward to. In making the second half, I was feeling myself. We were touring, all these hot boys talking to me. I was having a fun time and that was me being like, Oh, I am that bitch. So this album is chronological, where it’s like I went from being this broken little thing into somebody with more authority over myself and my world.

Eartheater: It’s the best feeling to get out of your head on stage and play the music for people. Then it becomes theirs, and you realize that it’s only partly yours from that point on. It’s so encouraging. One thing I’m curious about is, did you record anything after touring?

Concrete Husband: Yeah.

Eartheater: I love that. I feel like that’s the best way to record an album, is to record it after you’ve played it on tour. And unfortunately, the bigger you get, the more people want to keep things under wraps until the album’s out. But it’s so annoying because that is the best way to have the music teach you. The music tells you what it wants in those moments. That’s a really special aspect about this album, that the sound was informed from the energy on stage. What about the techno aspect? Would you go out and DJ at Basement and then go home and record what you play?

Concrete Husband: No, funny enough, when we went separate ways at the end of the European leg and y’all came back, I went to Berlin and stayed in Berlin. I was going out every night. I was going to Berghain, I was going to Tresor, I was going to RSO. I was listening, taking notes. Everyday I made a new sketch. It was my first time going to Berghain, it was my first time being a part of the club scene in Berlin. That was my second time in Berlin. The first time I went, I was playing at the Berlin Concert House, and then playing [Gustav] Mahler’s Symphony No. 9. It was a very different life.

Eartheater: You truly are a very special person in the music community for really bridging these two worlds—classical and experimental. It’s important. I know, the classical world is stuffy, but it’s so important to know the rules, or to have the privilege to know the rules before you break them.

Concrete Husband: I’m a big advocate for knowing your technique. Making this album sent my whole life into this new spiral, a new era of me being able to make music the way I want to make it and not having to be at the mercy of a conductor or a composer. I am the composer. I am the conductor. I am all of the above now, and I have creative freedom.

Eartheater: And do you think that’s something that drew you into speaking musically through techno, the solidarity you get or individuality you can have?

Concrete Husband: Totally. The thing about my classical music experience, especially when I was in college and when I was playing in the orchestra, I was lying to myself. I loved the music, I loved playing the flute. Everything in my life since I was a child was, ‘You are going to be a flutist.’ I never questioned it. As an adult I realized I endured a lot of traumas being queer, first generation [American], and Latino in these very elite closed off communities, where everyone around me grew up with money and privilege. I was a scholarship student, I lived with my music teacher. I clawed my way in there and fought for that. There was one time in an orchestra rehearsal, we were working on Beethoven’s Third [Symphony] before a tour, and the conductor said, ‘Can you just forget your heritage and play like a nice German girl,’ in front of a whole orchestra. You could feel everyone stop breathing. That’s a memory that sticks with me.

“I love romance. I love minimalism. I love emptiness. All of my sonic being lives in this non-existent purgatory.”

Eartheater: Do you remember an initial moment where you discovered this other world of clubs and techno? Is there a specific artist that touched your heart, or an experience that was the catalyst?

Concrete Husband: I was always like tiptoeing between the traditional classical world and the avant-garde world. I had a mentor, Claire Chase, who’s a MacArthur Fellow and a Harvard professor. She founded an amazing ensemble that’s vital to culture in the music world. The less conventional was always there. My introduction into nightlife was just going to the gay clubs. I started going to punk shows in Austin, and eventually they started playing avant-garde and electronic noise. When I started to travel in Europe, I gravitated to the clubs, which happened to be techno spaces. I was going to the club to forget, then going back home to practice Mozart. When COVID happened, I enrolled back in school, but didn’t sign up for classes on time. I got thrown into an electronic music production class. I was just like, Whatever, I don’t care. But, it ended up changing everything for me and was where I felt most free.

There was a collective of queer artists at the time that were throwing raves in Bushwick apartments that were getting raided by cops. We were just partying hard and being stupid. Then one day, somebody invited me to Basement. Honestly, Basement is the true pillar of my shift. I was really being educated on not just electronic music, but techno culture and history. That’s what unleashed my nerdy brain. As I’m preparing for my new set, I’m researching Berghain sets from 2012, learning about these other sounds and histories.

Eartheater: A venue called Basement, which is basically a concrete box; the best clubs are concrete boxes, right? Or labyrinths. It seems like the perfect natural environment for a Concrete Husband.

Concrete Husband: It birthed me. It really did. The concept of Concrete Husband, going back to how the classical music community wasn’t acknowledging who I wanted to be as a human, that’s why I created this name. I wanted to have a separation. I wanted to dream. You know, the first track I ever released was ‘Fuck Me in the Club,’ I hate that song now, but I remember my classical friends being like, ‘Don’t put that out publicly. What’s wrong with you?’

Eartheater: Glad you just said, ‘Fuck it,’ and did it. I get the ‘Concrete’ part, and then my inclination about ‘Husband’ is you really are someone that cares and that does things right. Am I on the right track there?

Concrete Husband: Yeah, more or less. I was making a lot of industrial music and industrial techno. So I was like, What is this harsh man-made material thing that I engage with? I have concrete blocks in all of my apartments. They’re decorations and people used to make fun of me for it, so that’s how I got associated with it. Concrete does represent that side of me and ‘Husband’—I’m such a fucking hopeless romantic. Like you said, somebody who’s going to take care of you, and who’s in touch with emotion. You can be powerful, masculine, and sensitive. Nurturing is a key word for me, and that’s where the flute stuff is. That’s where my twinkles and my hearts exist. I want to be a nurturing person, I love romance. I love minimalism. I love emptiness. All of my sonic being lives in this non-existent purgatory. Space that is hazy and allows for flexibility. It can be anything in a dark, fog filled room.