The Neighborhood, the Loft, and the Life
Getting to Antiserum required crossing to the other side of San Francisco — to Hunters Point, HP to those who know it, a waterfront neighborhood that has always existed on its own terms. On one side, the water. On the other, the housing projects. The block has character, to put it generously.
The building Antiserum calls home is a newly constructed loft complex that looks, from the outside, like a converted storefront. Step inside and take the stairs up and it opens into something unexpected: a huge open floor plan, flooded with morning light. The space is zoned Live/Work — which means Antiserum can produce music at 2am without a noise complaint ending the session. For a producer who runs on instinct and late nights, that is not a minor detail. It is the whole infrastructure.
We unpacked the gear, found the right spot in the room, and got to work.
From Bay Area Hip-Hop to That First Dillinja Mix
Before drum and bass, there was hip-hop. Specifically, Bay Area hip-hop — Living Legends, Souls of Mischief, the Hieroglyphics collective. Antiserum grew up deep in that world, and it shaped how he hears music: the attention to lyricism, the craft in the production, the cultural weight of it.
Then, in 2000, he went to his first rave. Heard drum and bass for the first time. And that was more or less the end of hip-hop.
What sealed it was a Dillinja mix — all Dillinja tracks, front to back. That was the record that grabbed him. Around the same time, Gridlock had just moved from Florida to the Bay Area, and seeing him play live deepened the connection. Two moments, back to back, and the direction was set.
“The first thing I ever heard was a Dillinja mix — all Dillinja tracks. That’s what really grabbed me.”
Vinyl at Warehouses, Then a Pivot to Production
Antiserum started where most DJs of that era started: playing vinyl at raves. Warehouse parties and underground events across the Bay Area, the kind of spaces where the culture lived before it had infrastructure or legitimacy. Breaky parties. Late nights. The music as the whole point.
From DJing he moved into producing — breaks first, then something unexpected happened. While working on a breaks tune, he and a collaborator slowed it to half-time at a breakdown and stumbled into the dubstep rhythm almost by accident. From 2007 onward, dubstep became the primary language.
By the time of this interview he was still deep in that 140 BPM space, though restless about it — constantly trying different styles within that range, not willing to stay locked into one thing.
“I find I can’t make up my mind about what style I want to go for — so I’m constantly trying different things within the 140 range.”
The Virus TI, Logic, and Making Something Memorable
A lot of people, when asked about the Antiserum sound, point immediately to the Virus TI synthesizer. He acknowledges it — the hardware synth has a distinctive character that sits at the center of how he builds a track. But the philosophy behind the sound matters more than the gear that produces it.
Antiserum makes music he wants to remember. Not just tracks that hit hard in a set, but ones where the melody sticks in your head on the drive home — where you’re still humming the vocal or the lead line days later. Dance floor-friendly and musical are not in conflict for him. Both are requirements.
The technical setup is deliberately stripped back: a Mac running Logic, a set of Adam studio monitors, and a handful of carefully chosen tools. The process starts with a centerpiece — a vocal hook, a melodic lead, a sample pulled from a film — then builds the drum kit, moves to bass, and mixes as he goes. EQ, effects, and compression throughout, not at the end.
Grace Cathedral, Bulgarian Choirs, and a Six-Year Day Job
Here is something Antiserum says most people have never thought to ask about: what he did for work before music became his full-time occupation. For six years, up until January of 2012, he worked at Grace Cathedral — one of the largest and most architecturally significant churches in California, sitting at the top of Nob Hill in San Francisco.
His role there covered almost everything except the Sunday sermon: counting collection box money, live sound, design work, operations. The space itself — the stone walls, the height, the acoustic resonance of a cathedral — found its way into his music in ways he admits he probably shouldn’t detail too closely. The track “Bulgarian Funk” features a Bulgarian women’s choir that he recorded inside the cathedral and wove into the production. The cathedral as studio. The institution as instrument.
By spring 2012 he had just made the leap to full-time. The morning we filmed, the Live/Work loft in Hunters Point was both home and studio — the structure that makes that life possible.
“Working at Grace Cathedral — I did just about everything except preach at the Sunday service.”
Collabs, What’s Next, and Five Bowls of Cereal a Day
At the time of filming, Antiserum’s collaboration history included Eskmo, 12th Planet, Alicia, djG, and Babylon System. He had recently worked with Noah D on a track with New Hem Generals — a project that pulled him back toward the hip-hop roots he grew up in. Future goals: working with the Bay Area hip-hop artists he grew up listening to. The lineage matters to him.
The interview ends, as any good one should, on something unexpected. Antiserum points to his pantry — stocked with six different boxes of cereal. Cocoa Pebbles. Fruity Pebbles. Lucky Charms. Five bowls a day. Whatever fuels the sessions, he has figured out the system.