In the world of music, timing is everything. Be it a huge remix, a summer festival smasher, capturing the zeitgeist or your track dropping appearance in a viral set – these can be seismic. It’s something – real name Samantha Poulter – knows well: in 2019, dropped her breakthrough single ‘DJ Logic Please Forgive Me’ in his set; now, five years later, her debut album ‘Mother’ (March 22) arrives following the birth of her daughter and a mental health breakthrough. It is, truly, her time.
“After I had given birth, it felt more deliberate to want to create. I wanted to create something really seismic,” Poulter tells NME, huddled over a coffee in north London. When we meet in December, this is one of the first times she’s spoken about the record and its journey, a love letter to the house music scene that has kept her strong and creative throughout her life. It was recorded with her partner and longtime producer Tom McAllister in their Berlin home. “I wanted to prove to [our daughter] that I was working while she was around. This is something I can show to her when she’s older and say, ‘This is what mum and dad did’.”
Logic1000 on The Cover of NME. Credit: Jamie Salmons for NME
Though the timing within Poulter’s life is fortuitous, she insists it’s not a ‘concept’ record as such – not one song about sleep deprivation, you’ll notice. But even so, the lessons of parenthood seep into every song: this is a record full of bright-eyed wonder and of a creative duo entering a new phase of their relationship together. How else to explain opener ‘From Within’ and its sparkling soundscape, the confidence in ‘Heartbeat’’s groove or the pop-leaning collaborations with Rochelle Jordan (‘Promises’) and Kayla Blackmon (‘Self To Blame’). This album exists right at the moment it’s supposed to.
Now, Poulter and ‘Mother’ join the latest wave of disparate electronic producers imbuing their work with personal narratives, however subtle or blatant. Sofia Kourtesis’ recent debut – ironically titled ‘Madres’ – fused familial stories into big beats, while Yaeji’s ‘With A Hammer’ processed internalised anger and relationship dynamics. It’ll be a richly rewarding return for fans who’ve followed Poulter’s rise through remixes for Christine and The Queens and Glass Animals, 2021’s superb EP ‘You’ve Got The Whole Night To Go’ and collaborations with rising stars like Yuné Pinku. She now stands at the epicentre of a bubbling creative universe.
“When I entered motherhood I was like, ‘If I can create a baby, I can create something else that’s pretty awesome’,” she laughs, huddled in a puffer jacket the day after her NME Cover shoot. “It felt like I finally had confidence in myself.”
Credit: Jamie Salmons for NME
‘Mother’ is ready for this moment because its creator is, too. Poulter’s story is not a linear one, or without bumps along the way. In fact, the release of ‘Mother’ was pushed back a year into 2024 by Poulter’s decision while she managed her mental health; this “protracted” journey, she says, only makes her love the record more.
Born in the Sydney suburbs in 1986, Poulter’s first calling wasn’t necessarily music: she had interests and varied careers in acting, floristry, and retail, studied psychology and more before she became a recording artist. She points to work as varied as dubstep producer Loefah and Destiny’s Child as inspirations, and says “music has always been intuitive to me”. In particular, she became infatuated with house and electronic music’s power as “a unifying sound and scene”, one established in oppressed communities across the globe. She released her debut EP under the name DJ Logic in 2018, and updated her name to Logic1000 in 2019. Poulter then moved to Europe in 2020 – first London, then Berlin – and signed to Because Music, home to Charlotte Adigéry & Bolis Pupul and Parcels.
“If I can create a baby, I can create something else that’s pretty awesome”
Poulter’s rapid industry rise, however, is not her whole story. Poulter was diagnosed with schizophrenia, anxiety and depression, aged 25. Speaking to NME in 2021, she described the moment that a Forensic Order – imposed following a psychotic episode in which a car accident left her in a coma – was lifted as “the best day of my life” and “where my music journey started”. She has since been vocal in using her platform to help better understand her diagnosis and encourage others to speak up on mental health issues.
But even so, the confluence of a burgeoning career and entering motherhood would prove a challenge. “I went to [tour] the US only three months postpartum, which was a bad idea. I needed time to bond with Genie and to take stock of what had happened to my body and my physiology, and mentally what this change entailed.”
Travelling with Genie on tour entailed bringing a nanny, ensuring her rider had essentials for her child and organising logistics for several people. Eventually, Poulter toured without them, but still something wasn’t quite clicking. She paused live engagements for 10 months over 2023’s festival season to regroup.
Credit: Jamie Salmons for NME
Time away from the pressures of performing gave Poulter the opportunity to engage in intensive therapy; she says that it was a revelatory period. “I’d been in therapy before, but the focus was always on my schizophrenia,” she says. “I’m realising now that my schizophrenia is very well-managed and has been for many, many years and it shouldn’t be the focus of therapy as that’s a thing of the past.”
She continues: “I didn’t have that self-confidence and safety in the world for so many years. With my psychiatrist and my coach I addressed the root cause of things – like childhood trauma – that manifest in maladaptive behaviours as an adult. I addressed all that trauma that was preventing me from doing things on my own, like touring. I have a really strong understanding of why I turned out that way, and having that awareness is so healing. Knowing where it comes from gives you so much power and confidence.”
Her approach to touring and performing, in particular, were transformed by this newfound understanding. “It changed me – it was a total paradigm shift. I look back on the person I was before all of this therapy this year and it’s a very different person to who I am now. I was so scared and frail in my mind; I had no sense of safety or confidence or trust. Now I have all of those things, and I see good in the world.”
“I realised in therapy that this is actually my dream job – for many years I repressed that”
Now Poulter is gearing up to tour ‘Mother’ following its release, and she rang in the new year in her native Australia with a huge performance at Field Day festival in Sydney. “That breakthrough gave me the confidence to go into foreign places and back myself. I had so much self-doubt earlier.”
Poulter is also readying an accompanying podcast around motherhood with fellow DJ Heléna Star, an endeavour to spotlight resources and challenges in all industries for families. In October, she hosted her first ‘Therapy’ event in Berlin, a daytime rave to cater for shift workers, sober people, and parents at a reasonable hour. She’s also studied the role of a doula, a non-medical support role for pregnant people in their journeys.
Opening up the creative and personal community around her drives ‘Mother’ and its resonance. It captures, she says, both the highs and lows of her and McAlister’s personal relationship, as well as making spaces for the collaborators that enter, including Miami-based producer and vocalist MJ Nebreda and Melbourne/Naarm’s DJ Plead on the ambitious ‘Every Lil’’. She remains enthused by the world ‘Mother’ has created: “We put a lot of trust in our collaborators’ expertise and talents. I’m so shocked how well people understood what we’re after in their contributions.”
Credit: Jamie Salmons for NME
It’s these moments of invigoration that renew her creative hunger, and she points to advice given by Four Tet (real name Kieran Hebden) as crucial. “We were sitting in Pret before a show and he mentioned how shocked he was at his life, and what his career had enabled him to do and experience. This is someone who has been in the industry for so long and still had this innocence of someone who couldn’t believe what position he was in. He had this bright-eyed, not jaded disposition and that really stuck with me even if I didn’t realise it at the time.”
Heading into her album release year, Poulter is refreshed and ready to embrace all of life’s opportunities and celebrate her skills and responsibilities as a producer, performer and voice for change. “For so long I was in survival mode and so negative about everything and now I understand where [Kieran] is coming from. This whole life and career is such a blessing to have this opportunity; there are so many great things about this job that I didn’t realise but do now.”
She concludes: “I realised in therapy that this is actually my dream job: to perform as a musician. For many years I repressed that and told myself that I didn’t deserve it. It renewed me – I had that innocence again about how cool this life is.”
Logic1000’s ‘Mother’ is released March 22 on Therapy/Because Music
Listen to Logic1000’s exclusive playlist to accompany The Cover below on Spotify and here on Apple Music
Words: Thomas Smith
Photography: Jamie Salmons
Styling: Lucy-Isobel Bonner
Hair: Chrissy Hutton
Make Up: Molly Whiteley
