Approaches to Live Performance: With Ouri, Martyn Bootyspoon, and Yu Su

“Performing live is the only way to connect with your audience for real,” said Montréal-based artist Ouri at this year’s MUTEK festival. “Otherwise, you’re really just existing virtually.”

Her words set the tone for an hour-long conversation about approaches to live performance, moderated by Ableton’s Leticia Trandafir. The discussion ranged from the technical to the philosophical, asking why play live at all, what gear to use, how embodiment and gesture build trust on stage, and more.

The panel brought together Ouri, Martyn Bootyspoon, and Yu Su, who’ve each carved out a distinct path either through Montréal’s club scene, Vancouver’s ambient circles, London’s experimental music circuit, and beyond. Together, they revealed the nuanced, risky, and deeply human essence of live electronic music.

Why perform live?

Electronic music doesn’t need to be performed live. In fact, many music makers enjoy the relative security of the studio, where mistakes can be edited away and ideas refined until they feel complete. But for some artists, the stage offers something the studio cannot.

For Yu Su, the live setting offers intimacy: “When you make music, people want to see you perform your own song”, she said. “It’s more personal. In a live setting, everyone’s more attentive. There’s less chatting, less distraction. It’s a different kind of attention.”

Martyn Bootyspoon sees live performance as an opportunity to self-remix: “I love taking parts of tracks that aren’t at the forefront on a record; tiny motifs, background sounds, and bringing them into the spotlight on stage. It’s like dubbing myself live.”

For Ouri, the stage is both terrifying and transformative: “Going on stage is nerve-wracking. It’s the most horrible experience if you think about it. But then it can be magical. Skin-to-skin. You’re building a world that makes you feel confident enough to share yourself fully.”

World-Building

As Ouri suggests, a live set can be experienced as more than sound alone. It’s an opportunity to tell a story, through texture, dynamics, narrative, visuals, stagecraft, or any other kind of medium. In this context, performance becomes less about a sequence of songs than an invitation to step into the world an artist creates. 

Ouri spoke of her fascination with hypnosis and mind-control, building these concepts into her latest projects. Visuals have also played a key role in her world-building. “We’re creatures that react to light so much”, she said. “With visuals, you can really create drama.”

Bootyspoon described his sets as “labyrinths of sonic thought”, guiding the listener through abstractions rather than a single cohesive concept. “It’s almost like storyboarding the songs, taking your hand through these ruminations”, he explained. ”I don’t know if I’d call it world-building just yet.”

Embodiment

On the surface, our movements might appear secondary to the music, but to what degree can our physical gestures shape how a performance is perceived?

“When someone looks at you and can see the gesture that makes the sound, something happens”, Ouri suggested. “It builds trust.”

Yu Su, however, cautions against theatrics for their own sake: “I’ve seen sets where someone moves so much it’s horrible. Completely out of control. Sometimes, too much body takes away from the music.”

Bootyspoon framed it as a spectrum: “On one end you might have someone like Steve Aoki throwing cake while DJing. On the other, Jeff Mills meticulously operating a 909. Both approaches embody their music. The question is: what fits your world, and what will the crowd accept?”

Balancing Familiarity and Discovery 

Many of us know those moments when the energy shifts – when a performer drops a familiar tune and the crowd erupts. It’s a shared experience of recognition and memory unfolding in real time. You may know the recording, but hearing it live can feel like you're listening to it for the first time. It raises a question: how much rests on revisiting what audiences already know, versus offering something entirely new?

“For the artist, it can sometimes feel less exciting,” Ouri admitted. “But there’s always that one song the audience is waiting for. When you play it and they react, it’s so satisfying. I remember going to shows myself, and that was always my favorite moment.”

“I love when motifs from older tracks resurface in new ways”, Bootyspoon added. “It’s exciting to hear ideas come back transformed.”

The Tools of the Trade

Electronic live sets are often shaped by the instruments, gear, and technology chosen for the stage. In some cases, the choice of equipment might come first, guiding much of the performance structure. But for many of us, the opposite is true. First, we start with an idea we want to shape, before finding the right tools to realise our vision. 

For Ouri, it begins with imagining the entry point and arc of the performance: “What’s the first sound people are going to hear? How do I make it weird for two minutes? How do I break the silence, build the climax, and end the set?” The tools, she explained, often come later. 

Preparing a live set is also about sculpting the sound itself. “I have an EQ, I have a little reverb”, Ouri continued, “and I did so much research to find the right pickup for my cello. I always bring my own reverb. You should do this for most of your sources. Always have your own treatment to control everything on stage. You don’t want to leave that to someone else’s taste.”

For Bootyspoon, the relationship with tools is about finding a setup that feels authentic and personal: “I started with a sampler from the Pioneer DJ suite because it was already part of my world. It let me move easily between DJing and live performance, and now it’s become a mainstay.” Alongside that, he uses a Moog synthesizer as a key element in his creative process: “All the tracks I make on those two devices are very personal to me. No one else could replicate them exactly.” 

Yu Su takes a minimal approach, keeping things simple and contained where possible: “Everything’s written in Ableton Live, so it’s just about deciding which synthesizer I’ll use to improvise and change things. She recently incorporated Ableton Move into her setup as well, especially for its MIDI control features. “I love how small it is”, she added. “I can’t deal with big gear, so it’s perfect.”

Anchors in Performance

Many performers have a few essentials with them – tools, fail-safes, or props that need to be within reach on stage to help them feel grounded and confident in their work.

For Yu Su, it isn’t just about gear: “I usually open incense. I’m obsessed with scents. I always have different incense for DJ sets and live sets. It makes me feel great.” 

Bootyspoon emphasized control and subtle intervention: “Being able to nudge something in real time is really important. Even if the BPMs are synced, I like the idea of being able to drift a little, to create my own millisecond delay. And when things go out of phase, I want the control to nudge them back myself.”

For Ouri, it comes down to shaping space and texture: “It’s really nice to have a delay where you can control wetness, feedback, time, and filter so it’s not just automatic and boring. And I think a filter is the best way to carve space. It’s basic, but it works.” Alongside that precision, she values the purity of acoustic instruments: “I love electronic music so much, but the physical feedback of cello and harp is so grounding. I just love that.”

Transitions

A live set isn’t only about the tracks or ideas themselves, but also how one moves into the next. Those transitions, whether marked by silence, modulation, or sudden cuts, can define the energy as much as the material.

For Yu Su, it’s about building tension and release. “You can’t just keep going up and up. There’s only up when there’s a down”, she said. “Having moments of silence is always important, turning everything down to nothing, then slowly bringing it back. That tension makes the return feel bigger.”

Ouri approaches transitions as an aesthetic question, centered around tone and timbre: “One thing I’m obsessed with is how the tones of one track lead into the next. I want it to feel almost like an ASMR experience, focused on texture and aesthetics as much as energy.” 

Bootyspoon keeps it direct and tactile: “Honestly, I’m really into just muting. My sampler has this function where you can invert mute everything with a swipe, then re-engage it all at once. It’s simple, but really powerful.”

When Things Go Wrong

What can go wrong in a live set, and what happens when it does? For some, failure is not only inevitable but also part of the thrill.

Ouri embraces it: “I love failure. My favorite moments in shows are when the performance almost fucks up – like it’s about to go south and everyone leans in, then you make it to the other side. It’s like the Roman gladiatorial games, except no one’s going to die in front of you.”

She also spoke about the anxiety that can come with being on stage: “You just want to make sure that you’re ultra-present, but sometimes when you have nerves, it’s hard to stay there. I’ve had crazy anxiety on stage, where it would feel like time was speeding up and slowing down. I’d just think, okay, let’s get through this. And then there are moments where you’re able to slow down, look at people, and it feels so real and amazing.”

Bootyspoon takes a pragmatic view: “I try to have enough sound sources that if something goes wrong, I can lean into something else. I’ve had my fair share of insane jog wheel rescue missions, but I’ve managed to make it work most of the time.”

Yu Su admitted her worst-case scenario had already happened: a mid-set crash. “Then I bought a new computer”, she laughs.

Risk and Improvisation

A successful live set often depends on balancing preparation with spontaneity. How much is fixed in advance, and how much left to chance, varies with each performance.

Ouri likes to arrive with structure in place: “I really love to be prepared and have a lot of stuff locked in so I can ride the uncertainty of the present moment with low risk. But my dream is to go the other way – full improvisation. I’ve done this a couple of times with acoustic instruments, and I’d love to push it further.”

Bootyspoon came at it from the opposite direction: “I started out with almost no foundation, and that was probably a mistake. I’m not a super virtuosic player, so now I've built a sandbox of toys to work with. There’s a bedrock, but I can punch things in and out. It’s a safety net, but not a fixed waveform; it’s still versatile.”

For Yu Su, it depends on the context: “If it’s more of an installation setting, then it’s mostly improvised. If it’s something more structured, all the rhythmic bits are locked in and I add sequences and harmonics on top.” For her MUTEK set, which leaned more toward the dancefloor, that balance was harder to find: “Dance music is really difficult because the mixing has to sound good on a massive stage. I had no experience with that, so I studied how others did it. You need to be really good at mixing for it to translate.”

Mixing the Room

Yu Su’s comments resonate – mixing can make or break a live set. What works in the studio doesn’t always translate to the stage, especially when the acoustics of a venue are unknown until sound check. Bass is often the hardest to manage: few home setups can replicate the force of a club or festival sound system.

Bootyspoon takes a trial-and-error approach: “I’m a bit of a maniac, I own a SubPac at home, and I test everything on car sound systems, from a shitty Prius to a luxury SUV. I try to find the happy medium between those extremes. If it sounded good at home, I’ll still need to rebalance at sound check. That’s part of live performance, you have to engineer on the fly.”

Ouri’s method is about keeping things manageable: “I love to arrange everything into frequency groups – high, medium, low – so during sound check you can balance quickly. It makes everything easier.”

Across all approaches, one thing is clear: a sound check is essential. It’s the moment to take as much time as needed to tune the set to the room, because mixing decides whether the music lands with power or descends into a sonic mush!

​​A Final Word on Hybrid Sets

Hybrid sets are often seen as a next step for DJs moving toward live music performance. But what makes a hybrid set truly compelling?

For Bootyspoon, it comes down to originality: “It’s important to make it personal. I see some so-called hybrid sets that don’t feel very hybrid to me. As long as it’s something unique that no one else could do, that’s a step in the right direction. You could even just have a gong on stage, or mic up some other physical element. The term should be looked at critically, though, not just used as a gimmick.”

Ouri echoed the need for personal definition: “You have to find your own version of what hybrid is. The most exciting thing is finding ways to move between the digital and the physical, to give the audience that sensation.”

Bootyspoon added with a grin: “Who’s going to be the first person to blend a DJ set, cut the music, and do a poetry reading before dropping back into the mix? I'm not going to do it, but someone here could steal this idea – it’ll be a multi-million dollar operation, I'm sure!

Keep up with Ouri, Martyn Bootyspoon & Yu Su

Text by Joseph Joyce
Panel interview by Leticia Trandafir 
Photography by Bruno Aïello-Destombes &  Frédérique Ménard-Aubin
With special thanks to MUTEK