College Station, Texas, a Mecca of electronic music. Ok, not quite but it's well on its way to producing acts offer more than the usual bastion of soft-acoustic or emo oriented rock. Meet ilya y. rostovtsev (please don't capitalize his name, he doesn't like that), a TAMU student who not only is a fan of other genres, but someone who has actually gotten off of his ass and produced something rather than complaining about what the College Station scene lacks. Oh yeah, and on top of that he's damn good. For more evidence, check the MP3 blog or his website at http://www.xaemu.com/ilya. For now, peep this interview.

I know that you're an applied math major, and I know acts like Boards of Canada and Autechre talk a significant amount about the relationship between electronic music and math. Would you say that there's a relationship between the two in your music?

Actually, there are plenty of various connections between music and math. To be realistic, I doubt that it is possible to separate the two these days, since computers are used pretty extensively. However, my music does not make it a point to connect between mathematics and music. I have, however, studied it all plenty... As early as Bach, there were certain algebraic functions that enabled one to 'calculate' (rather than write) such impressive fugues. There are many ways to interpret tones mathematically... I've never been particularly interested in such operations, due to a personal distaste for process music. Most of my stuff occurs almost randomly, in a way that a folk artist would write things. There is no real "by-the-book process" yet I've started writing during the internet "DSP craze," so I kind of steered away from that bandwagon just out of principle. Out of the two examples you've provided, I think I'm closer to Boards of Canada when it comes to making music out of a concept (or an abstraction thereof) rather than Autechre, who actually code a physical implementation of math for their composition. I've always been trying to make music that sounds human despite the fact that it comes out of a machine. In that respect, I think I spend plenty of time teaching the computer to have 'human imperfection' rather than attempt to reflect on mathematical concepts. Last but not least, I have to admit that most of my track titles I've come up with in my math classes, by writing down something I'm looking at, or an excerpt of a prof's lecture...

Who would you say you're influences are? And beyond that how would you say that you stay inspired to make music in a place like College Station that doesn't really encourage anything outside of emo or soft acoustic rock?