№ 149 - Colombian Drone Mafia

Colombian DJ, producer, and TraTraTrax label co-runner Nicolás Sanchez, who also releases music under the alias Nyksan. Just a few weeks ago, he released the second Colombian Drone Mafia album, “Sueño en Flor” - a blissed-out ambient journey created solo and alongside artists such as María Vélez Gallo, AYLU, Tristan Arp, DJ Python, and Gibrana Cervantes. The record seamlessly blends drifting drone textures, field recordings, dub-tinted atmospheres, and cinematic sound design into something deeply immersive and emotionally charged.

The project’s first standout release, “Memoria”  from 2025, was made together with Gibrana Cervantes and explored themes of memory, landscape, and urban isolation through layered ambient compositions and manipulated field recordings. The album helped define Colombian Drone Mafia’s aesthetic: restrained, immersive, and rich in spatial detail. With “Sueño en Flor”, Nyksan expands that vision even further into a broader multimedia universe. The album’s vinyl format features a 24-page publication with a special visual language and texts by Philip Sherburne, Henry Bruce Jones or Nicole L’Huillier alongside conversations with artists like Raime or Felicia Atkinson. Compared to its predecessor, the new album feels softer and more fluid, while still rooted in dense atmospheres and slow-burning structures that fuse ambient and drone with the emotional weight of Latin America.

For EDWIN MUSIC CHANNEL, Colombian Drone Mafia put together a mix that translates the project’s artistic world into an absorbing journey that also brings techno textures and gentle kicking beats - or, as its creator describes it: “A mixtape to submerge. An appreciation of sound in both its texture and spirit.” On top of that, Nyksan was kind enough to share a short introduction, reflecting on what makes Colombian Drone Mafia such a special and personal project.

Q. Do you approach production differently when working as Nyksan versus Colombian Drone Mafia?

A. Nyksan is more club-oriented and linked with TraTraTrax these days. Colombian Drone Mafia was born out of a desire to pursue some of my more experimental interests—a sort of alter ego for my less expected work.

Q. How did your journey into music production begin, and what shaped your sound early on?

A. tried to play the guitar when I was a teenager, but it never really clicked. Then one day, I got a DAW, and I was obsessed. While trying to understand synthesis and buying my first pieces of equipment. Got fixated for a few years with Pure Data and Max/MSP, I just loved all the challenges it presented - and all the possibilities that came with that process. Now I feel I'm delving more and more into the electroacoustic world and the composition side of things, even learning to play some string instruments these days. In fact, the cello you hear in the mix is me playing.

Q. What was the main concept or driving idea behind your second Colombian Drone Mafia album, „Sueño en Flor“?

A. It’s an album about flowers, but it’s also about collaboration, since nothing blooms in isolation. It was super self-indulgent in a way; I brought in all sorts of collaborators, and we had full license to make the weird music we enjoy but rarely produce. I worked with one question in mind: How do you create a sonic flower? Of course, our responses varied as we each took an abstract approach in arriving at an answer. That abstraction created the kind of flexibility, the biodiversity you find in nature.

Q. Were there particular emotions, environments, or experiences that shaped the record?

A. Generally, it’s a lush record, one where I could delve into sound design and storytelling in a non-conventional way. Fluid conversations with the people I feel are part of the Mafia, within the music and the zine that comes with it. I was also going through a breakup in the later stages of the production of it, so it definitely got a taint of that… especially the last 2 songs on the vinyl, where I was trying to capture the longing, and its time-stretching properties.

Tracklist: 

Colombian Drone Mafia + Gibrana Cervantes - Memory is Redundant 
Colombian Drone Mafia - Drone 4
Cio D'Or - Amplitude Q XI
Colombian Drone Mafia - Rosa Mexicana
Colombian Drone Mafia - Adormidera ft. Gibrana Cervantes
Architectural - Silencio
Edit Select - Breathe In Exhale
Surface Access - Isolation Depth
Colombian Drone Mafia + Gibrana Cervantes - Bogotá
A. Brehme - Past Eroticism
Picture - Tyyyyy
Abdulla Rashim - Vestal Witness
Terrence Dixon - Untitled 1
Transient Waves - Paradise 
Paperclip Minimiser - II A2
Kevin Drumm - The Inferno
Slikback/Skrillex - Kixa
Reinartz - Empty Time (A Flowing Out)
Colombian Drone Mafia - Lirio ft. María Velez Gallo