Playing guitar came naturally, and they quickly made a name for themselves as a young busker, singing folk music on the streets of Iowa City’s pedestrian mall. Through these performances, Sai discovered what it felt like to get paid to do something they loved. While Sai learned to play hundreds of Dylan songs on the guitar within a few months, they still didn’t know the first thing about the synthesizers that made Aphex Twin’s music so alluring. The next step in Sai’s trajectory was to find someone who knew how to make weird noises with machines. At age 19, living in Minnesota, Sai would find that at the Institute of Production and Recording.

While DJing around the Twin Cities, Sai and their friends started a small record label. In 2010, before Sai graduated, they were hired at BWN (SisterBoss,) and the rest, as they say, is history. When Sai isn’t mixing and twiddling synthesizer knobs, they’re in the garden, in the kitchen, or directly in front of the bass bins on the dance floor.