Todos guarden silencio… la puerta está cantando.
A decade ago, in the Palermo barrio of Argentina's capital city, the self-taught artist, illustrator, and ambient archiver Romina Malta had an idea: enshrine the connective tissues underpinning every millisecond of sound. In other words, craft mixes (bridges) with care and house them somewhere untainted.
As Romi’s design practice grew, visions of a sacred listening space became more HTML tangible. Her early inklings eventually gave rise to the ongoing sanity project door.link. She uses the public webpage to host mixes handpicked by herself and her loved ones, from husband Javi to Lykke Li. It's a devotional internet node. There’s no ads or algorithms or marketing funnels to crawl out of. Instead, the minimal-tech zone strives for a new internet by invoking the old one. An interface that does less. Not for the sake of user optimization, but to let the magic run unencumbered.
When music has room to breathe, it can augment, in Romi’s words, the emotional temperature. Inspired by eardrums dancing with vibrations in the wind, magnets tapping patterns down copper-lined wires, misremembered inspirations inventing new genres. The series is 174 mixes strong so far. I’ve attempted to Shazam at least that many times while listening.
After years spent memorizing liner notes in prohibitively costly record shops, browsing ferias de vinilos for later use in torrent search bars, Malta had crossed paths with terabytes of music. Teenage house parties introduced techno to her punk rock appetite; the titans of ambient music planted new discovery trees, and those trees grew new branches. Opinions formed, borders were ignored, the cost of mixing gear dropped. We now get to enjoy the aftereffect: an ambient garden. Ever-human.
Open a door and listen through it here. Enjoy door.link's first releases on Catalog — two EPs from Romi's longtime friend and inspiration Isabel del Bosco — here. Keep scrolling for the full interview. Thanks for reading, tuning in, and pressing play n_n
Siber: Longtime followers of your art and writings will recognize a theme of connection: how the space between things can create new openings.
Romi: Thank you for noticing. Yes, the space between things has always felt important to me. I chose the word Door because it suggests something open, something undefined. Not a statement, but a possibility. A door can be shut, slightly open, or quietly invite you in. It can separate or connect.
When I started this project, I was having vivid dreams… and in many of them, there were doors. Sometimes they led from one room to another, sometimes into unknown landscapes. But there was always a shift, in sound, in air, in feeling. Each door opened differently. Some creaked, some slid, some moved without touch. I never really shared that before, you know, they made me think about what it means to cross into something and what happens before and after that moment.
Siber: Has Door's interface remained more or less the same since its inception? It doesn't share the distinctive illustration styles you experiment with in your visual art, but it does have some cousins: black and white, lines as connective tissue, lots of open space.
Romi: Since the beginning, I didn’t do any complex design process. I just tested things until it felt right, and the frontend's remained the same. The goal was always to make something that doesn’t get in the way. Some spaces don’t need to say much to stay with you. Just showing what’s essential — the mixtape title and its duration — alongside open space can create a mood of its own. Over time, site functions have improved a bit, with things like smoother transitions and better responsiveness, but visually, it hasn’t changed. I don’t think it will. I always wanted Door to feel quiet and minimal. A lot of mixtape sites use strong visuals that match the music, and that approach works for many people. But in my case, I was more drawn to what could be said through simplicity.
Siber: People are Doors of their own, and part of door.link is getting to cross paths with those in your life. Be it regular guests like Sijya and Ando Laj, or one-off mixes from Lykke Li and Anthony Ferraro. I really love this through-line you have around superposition: we’re simultaneously doors, computers, flowers, packets of memories and feeling… ice and water existing at once. What makes someone a door, to you? Do you want to keep expanding the Door family?
Romi: Right now, as I’m answering this, I’m choosing my words slowly, carefully, trying to be honest about what’s inside me. I think that’s part of what I do, not just here, but in general: I try to pay close attention. I take care of the beautiful things — whether it’s a sound, a sentence, a feeling — so they can keep growing, so they don’t disappear unnoticed. And when you ask me what makes me admire someone, that’s it. That ability to pay attention. That’s the trait I notice most in others. It’s quiet, but powerful.
Someone who makes me think differently, even for a moment, ends up taking up space in my mind. People can do that, and it fascinates me. When something finds a place inside me, it’s taken me somewhere else. I’m sure that’s happened to you too, right? In that sense, we’re all doors, one way or another.
What’s cool is that door.link has brought some amazing people into my life. Since 2020, Door has really been… a door. For example, It led me to you all, the Catalog guys, people who put care and attention into what you do, every day. And that makes me think: all beautiful things somehow resemble each other, and they connect.
Siber: You recently invited Lykke Li to share a Door mixtape — another special entry on the road to the 200th episode. Do you hope to extend the door.link family further? Is this a forever thing for you?
Romi: Door will keep growing until it clearly no longer does. Lykke and I have worked together in the past, and it felt like the right moment to invite her. There are quite a few highlights in Door’s long list… What’s coming next? Only Door knows!
Siber: You've pointed to the work of the late John Cage on several occasions, even embedding excerpts of his words in your visual pieces. His predictions around electronic music production and its importance to a certain kind of sonic art rebellion have held true.
Romi: Yes, exactly. His book Silence came into my life over fifteen years ago… It was something a close friend (Isabel del Bosco) lent me, but once I had it in my hands, I knew I wasn’t going to give it back. Not just because the book is full of important ideas (like how to appreciate certain sounds or silences, how to notice an interval, or how an object should be placed in space) but also because it had my friend’s notes in it, folded pages, and a whole backstory that basically made it impossible not to keep.
Without going too deep into how the book changed hands, there was a part that really stayed with me, an excerpt from a series called “Percussion Music and Its Relation to the Modern Dance” published in Dance Observer in 1939. In it, he writes about percussion and its future, predicting the arrival of electronic instruments and machines that would do what we can’t. That struck me. I was fascinated.
But it’s not just how Cage thinks that inspires me. It’s how he writes. Sometimes I feel like, for him, writing a paragraph wasn’t so different from composing a piece of music.
Siber: You wrote once that “the challenge for people today is to distinguish the original from the replica.” How do you see that playing out in the realm of electronic and ambient music, particularly on the A.I. horizon? I think ambient music is among the most powerful forms of sound, and also the most prone to muzak, to ‘spa tunes,' to ‘background noise’ allegations. A close friend of mine, who's a life-long music lover across almost every genre, almost finds ambient music offensive. [Laughs]
Romi: Yeah, I definitely see that in people. Ambient music can be deeply moving, even transformative, and yet it’s constantly at risk of being dismissed as background noise. But maybe that’s part of its nature. It doesn’t demand your attention the way other genres do. But if you choose to give it your full attention, it can completely shift the emotional temperature of a space.
That’s what I find so powerful about it. Ambient music allows for multiple modes of engagement. It can sit quietly in the background while you work or rest, or it can be the thing you focus on, the thing that anchors you. At the end of the day, we’re the ones who decide where to place sound. One, two, three… or three, two, one. It depends on what you need at that moment. If it’s secondary for you, that’s fine. If it becomes the center of your attention, that’s fine too. There’s no right or wrong when it comes to how sound is layered into experience. And I think that flexibility is what makes ambient music so enduring.
Now, when it comes to what’s original and what’s a replica, I feel like that line gets blurrier every year, right? I’ve heard generative pieces that feel kind of empty, and others that weirdly feel very human. Just like I’ve heard human-made tracks that don’t say anything to me. So… does it matter? Does it really matter? I think humans will keep creating no matter what. That instinct isn’t going anywhere. And if there’s a challenge today, maybe it’s learning to listen differently, and quietly ask: where do I want to place what I’m listening to?
Siber: One of the earliest Door transmissions includes a sign-off from the Palermo neighborhood of Buenos Aires. If you read the descriptions chronologically, you catch glimpses of Argentina’s political currents, your appreciation for its beauty and disdain for its corruption, which is intimately familiar to us here too. Maybe relatedly, this journey entry you wrote struck me:
“Illusion of the image is a weapon of massive alienation, emanating from a system that seeks to anesthetize and control the masses through sensory inundation and cognitive fatigue. Authenticity and creativity are being devoured. Ugliness is now a collectible, pocketed asset as beauty fades amidst endless multiplication and replication. As soon as I publish an image it's dead to me.”
Romi: Sometimes, inevitably, we wake up shaped by wherever we are at that moment: the city around us, the mood in the air, what we’re carrying quietly inside. Maybe that slips into the way I write, but it’s not the point. The mixtapes are the core of it all. What I write alongside them is just a way of reminding people that there’s someone behind the site. Someone spending hours listening, collecting, digging through folders, thinking about flow, transitions, the shape of a listening experience. Someone preparing it for others, with care. I think that’s important. It’s just a simple way of keeping the experience human. You don’t need to read the text to enjoy the mixtape, but if you do read it, I hope it gives you a sense that there’s a real person on the other end. That’s why I share little notes sometimes. Not because they’re essential, but because they add a layer of presence.
Siber: The first thing you ever shared on Instagram was a picture of an Aphex Twin project; his work also routinely appears throughout Door mixes. What’s your personal music discovery tree? Which artists, technological improvements (to synths, recording formats, etc), or cultural movements do you view as the most influential?
Romy: Well… It started with CDs borrowed and burned, random folder downloads from peer-to-peer networks, long afternoons in record stores where I couldn’t afford anything, just reading liner notes and memorizing cover art. There was no algorithm pushing things to me. It was all slow, personal, shaped by mood and intuition… I grew up on punk and hardcore. That was the starting point for everything… I was 14? 15? when I used to listen to GBH, Damned, Crass, Pistols, Sham 69, Minor Threat, Circle Jerks… It was how I understood the world back then and, as a teenager, how I pushed back against it. Nothing extraordinary, pretty basic indeed!
Then techno came in. I went to a party. I lost it. My heart was beating like never before and my whole body was in sync with the music… wild, precise, like a metronome. Walked out ecstatic, and weirdly familiar with it, like it had always been around. Techno opened up another door, a whole new universe. From there I got into all kinds of electronic music, and eventually found my way to IDM. That’s when the classics came in: Arovane, Autechre, Boards of Canada, Jan Jelinek. After that, there was no turning back. The sound changed, but the intensity and the curiosity stayed the same.
When I think about technological improvements, the biggest shift has been access. I think about how home recording changed a lot … just being able to record, edit, and mix at home opened up new possibilities. It meant you didn’t need a studio, or expensive equipment, or approval from anyone. You could just sit down and try things. And suddenly, things that felt distant became available. You could experiment, fail, start over, and share your work without having to go through a label or a gatekeeper.
Henke & Behles did their part here, of course. But it wasn’t just them, it was the general shift: cheaper gear, open-source tools, second-hand machines, DIY setups. That mix of accessibility and independence completely reshaped how people approached sound. And it wasn’t only about the tools, but about a different mindset: one that allowed for imperfection.
That shift from high-fidelity obsession to lo-fi acceptance was just as important. At some point, the cleanest possible sound stopped being the goal. Suddenly, hiss, clicks, background noise — things that used to be considered mistakes — became expressive choices. They started to mean something. You could hear the room, the limitations, the setup. And somehow that made the music feel more personal, more direct.
Culturally, the most lasting influences have come from outside the mainstream such as ’60s minimalism, early 2000s netlabel scenes, Japanese ambient and pop, shoegaze, “random music folder downloads from p2p networks”, I don't know… also lots of British pop and rock. If I start listing things, it’s a bit of this and a bit of that… Actually a big tree… A FOREST… for sure.
Siber: You’ve worked with artists we love ranging from cehryl to Mk.gee on visual projects, and you’ve regularly programmed so many special music makers on Door. It’s really neat seeing people like Vanessa Amara, Sea Oleena, Hinako Omori, or Tujiko Noriko make repeat appearances in the mixes.
Romi: They show up more than once because their sound palette fits so naturally with the mixtapes on Door. I discovered most of them while digging through record stores or through friends’ recommendations. Tujiko Noriko, if I remember correctly, I actually found by mistake (!!!!) — through a random download on Ares??? Not fully sure… probably one of my favorite mistakes???? Haha.
Siber: You sometimes encourage only listening to a door.link mix once. What motivates that?
Romi: Hmm… I think it’s about presence. We’re so used to having everything on demand, looping things endlessly, but there’s something special about letting a mix live as a single experience. It keeps it fragile. It asks you to actually be there, just once, and then let it go. We’re surrounded by systems that encourage repetition: algorithms, playlists, cyclical behaviors. But repetition can numb us. Suggesting that someone listen just once is an attempt to bring attention back to the moment.
Siber: Door's releasing music for the first time, starting with two EPs from a longtime friend of yours, Isabel del Bosco. I wanted to ask how the two of you crossed paths, and what you gravitate toward...
Romi: We met… almost 15 years ago??? Not sure, we exchanged a few private messages on Tumblr... mostly about music and philosophy. It didn’t last long but it was enough to spark something. Since then our connection has only grown deeper. What I probably value most about Isabel's work is knowing where the music comes from — the source itself — and the intention behind each of IDB’s tracks. The reason this music exists in the world. It feels like total openness and devotion to inspiration, the kind that brings everything into being. A favorite song would definitely be "L’ordinateur." The first 35 seconds instantly take me back to a time in our lives when we used to go for late-night walks by the coast. Also, I really like the whole track "Moire." And "Hologram" starts with this strange sense of calm.
Siber: You’ve advocated extensively for ‘free’ time — "no podía encontrar un momento para enfocarme en mis disciplinas y exploraciones más íntimas... quería, en pocas palabras, no hacer nada." When you have it, how are you deciding to spend it? Are you working on music of your own?
Romi: Lately, when I have free time, I try not to rush to fill it. I let it stay open… sometimes that means drawing, writing, walking, or just listening without any particular goal. I’m not actively working on music in a structured way, but I think about sound often, about form, about how silence behaves. So maybe I’m circling around it slowly and every now and then, I do make music, but it tends to stay on my computer. Occasionally, something slips into a Door mixtape, hidden between other sounds, mixed in so subtly no one would really notice. And I like it that way. It feels honest, like sharing something without pointing at it.
Siber: Last questions... what's your preferred listening position, what are your three favorite ways to water your brain, and what's your favorite Yoshinori Sunahara record?
Romi: Listening: definitely in my living room, with the curtains closed, at the end of the day. Nothing really beats that. Lying on the couch, or sitting on the floor — sometimes in seiza, going through my records. Also any park or open space. Brain-watering: mixing music, buyin music, sleepin. And a Yoshinori record I cherish: Lovebeat. I have a story with this record. The thing is I discovered it a looooong time ago, back when I couldn’t really afford to buy it, so I listened to it on mp3 over and over again for years. Now I own it on CD and vinyl. It’s a masterpiece…. So I have Lovebeat on my computer, on my phone, on the turntable, and on my Discman.
Open a door and listen through it here. Enjoy door.link's first releases on Catalog — two EPs from Romi's longtime friend and inspiration Isabel del Bosco — here. Thanks for reading, listening, and supporting.
