In conversation with: Juan Rico [Reeko, Architectural]

Who is Juan Rico when he appears as Reeko, and who does he become as Architectural? For more than twenty years, the Spanish producer has moved through the scene as a deliberately blurred presence: too restless to remain within linear techno, too refined to retreat into pure experimentation.

His path doesn’t follow genres or fixed definitions, unfolding instead as a meticulous, almost obsessive exploration of sound. From fractured techno to ambient, from the hypnotic depth of looping structures to the sharper edges of recent drum & bass incursions, Juan Rico has turned each alias into an open laboratory.
As Reeko, he etched the hard, hallucinatory imagery of labels such as Mental Disorder, Emergence and PoleGroup, shaping a body of work that defined a specific, dancefloor-oriented sonic language. With Architectural, he designed a completely different soundscape — more abstract and three-dimensional — where the pressure of the kick drum coexists with near-cinematic atmospheres.
The breaking point likely emerged around the Covid and post-Covid period, when the scene began to converge in a single, predictable direction, with lineups increasingly echoing one another. It was there that Juan Rico chose to push further: breaking away from the 4/4 grid, accelerating tempos, and allowing rhythms and influences usually kept at the margins to enter his vocabulary.

Palpebræ meets him now because, in retrospect, his path traces an alternative map of contemporary techno — a story of aliases in constant dialogue, risky decisions, and a coherence that only appears hidden: the commitment to treating every record as an opportunity to question the status quo once again.

Have a good reading and listening!

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☉ Before genres and labels, how would you describe yourself today? Who is Juan Rico, and how do Reeko and Architectural embody different facets of your musical identity?

“Reeko and Architectural are two projects created to express certain aspects of my personality. I am a lover of music in all its forms: I could have created thousands of projects for each musical style. Electronic music — more specifically, techno — is just one musical style I’ve chosen to channel specific moods and feelings. Juan Rico is just the person behind these projects (I have never liked describing myself.)”

☉ At what point do you instinctively know that an idea belongs to Reeko rather than Architectural, and vice versa? Is it an immediate feeling, or something that reveals itself over time?

“In most cases it’s an immediate feeling. It’s a matter of mood, which usually comes in phases. It simply happens: there’s never any internal debate about which project a record or a track should belong to. I know from the very beginning, because the direction is not the same.
At certain points, both projects have overlapped a bit musically. Depending on the period I was going through at the time, there were sometimes few differences between them. But the differences are instinctive. Most of the time it’s about phases, not specific days. That’s how I like to work.
When I started Architectural, there were moments when I forced myself to begin something for that project just to meet certain commitments, and it was a disaster. Now, save for a few exceptions, I usually just let myself be carried by each phase, for as long as it lasts.”

☉ You’ve previously mentioned René Magritte’s surrealism as a key influence behind Architectural. Looking back, which artist, movement, or reference played a similar role in shaping the early vision of Reeko?

“There were actually many different influences. Of course, the techno music of the 1990s was a huge inspiration, almost a revelation. It was truly terrifying; I had never heard anything that sounded so straight out of hell, not even genres like death metal, heavy metal or anything else like that.
But the main essence came from cinema, especially the horror genre. Growing up in a city like Oviedo, Spain, the 1980s were, in many ways, a dark, surreal, wild and creative decade. With the advent of VHS came the boom in B-grade horror films, so it was not uncommon for a child to sit mesmerised in front of horror films, whether on television or in the horror section of the video shop. The atmosphere of those films, the nightmares they provoked and the feelings they triggered became a powerful source of inspiration for me, without me even realising it.
I also remember when Twin Peaks was released in Spain. I watched it when I was nine. It was advertised as a crime and murder mystery series, but it turned out to be something much darker and more mystical. The atmosphere created by the great Badalamenti played a fundamental role (for me and many others) in shaping how tension could be created in a scene. I never fully connected with the plot, but I’ve seen it thousands of times and it still evokes the same feelings in me. It has one of the best atmospheres I’ve ever seen.”

☉ If we were to read your discography as a single, ongoing timeline of experiments, what would you say is the underlying thread that connects all its phases?

“The constant pursuit of provoking emotions in the listener is probably the common thread running through all my records. I think that’s why cinema has been such an important factor in defining my style, perhaps even more than musical influences.
One of the filmmakers who has inspired me the most is Michael Haneke. It’s curious because in many of his films he doesn’t use musical scoring at all, which creates even more tension and realism. It fascinated me that a director would break away from the traditional rules of film scoring, especially in tense scenes. All the creative risk and the emotions he managed to evoke inspired me on an emotional level. I simply wanted to achieve the same effect through music.”

☉ Many consider you one of the artists who helped redefine Spanish techno over the past two decades. Was there a moment when you clearly felt you were moving in a direction that didn’t resemble what was happening around you?

“Yes, in a way I’ve always had that feeling. During the early years, up until around 2005, I did feel I was moving in the same direction as the more underground side of the electronic music scene. But later I realized that electronic music has countless paths, and it never stops shifting. This has happened and still happens to many artists; I’m not the only one.
Sometimes it can be a bit frustrating, but in the end there are always people who truly connect with the music I make or with the ideas that inspire me, and that’s deeply motivating. Even today, I still find it incredible that there are people around the world capable of connecting with and understanding the concept of a record on such a deep level just by listening to it and reading the title.
That’s why I believe musical merits are extremely relative, and within the world of art it seems absurd to say that someone is ‘the best’ at something. It’s so subjective — each person looks for something different in art, and there will always be people who disagree with that kind of judgment because their artistic expectations are simply different.“

☉ Your work often balances meticulous sound control with a willingness to push ideas close to abstraction. How do you recognize when a concept has gone too far — and when that excess is exactly the breakthrough you were searching for?

“It’s honestly a very interesting question for any creator who wants to do something different. For me, music has to start from rhythmic and cyclical patterns that create a specific kind of movement; from there, crossing the red lines is always a victory. Whether the people who buy your music share that vision is another story. I think it’s about finding risk in the right measure, an equilibrium that varies a lot depending on where that work is meant to go.
In my opinion, an artist’s success is not so much about who has the best idea, but about who has the strength, the confidence, and the perseverance to defend it and carry it forward. That’s why so many talented but deeply insecure artists end up creating true works of art in their homes that never see the light of day. It’s not just art; it’s also a matter of confidence and a certain amount of risk in what you’re doing.
I consider myself a rather insecure person in general, and that insecurity also causes problems in the studio, but even so, there have been moments when I believed so strongly in what I was doing that I didn’t mind crossing a few ‘red lines.”

Juan Rico’s Essential Works:

☉ In this introduction, we frame the covid and post-covid period as a potential breaking point for underground techno. How deeply did that time affect your desire to rethink tempos, structures, and musical language?

“Well, everything stopped. The world came to a halt, and in Spain it was especially tough. I think it would have been almost impossible for that period not to be a turning point for anyone and even more so for electronic music, which was seriously affected. It was a very complicated time for me on a personal level in many ways, but also a deeply transformative one.
I felt a need to rethink my life, and in my case that also meant rethinking my musical direction. I distanced myself from people and projects that no longer resonated with me at all, and it was necessary to leave them behind. Unfortunately, not everyone understands or accepts that decision, because it can seem like a rejection, but it’s simply an evolution — an opening of the mind that pushes you toward projects and decisions I always wanted to pursue but, for whatever reason, never dared to.
That period forced me to realize that I didn’t need to pour all my creativity into techno as I understood it at the time, and that there was a whole world of new possibilities I hadn’t yet allowed myself to look at.”

☉ Alongside the evolution of your sound, the spaces you’ve performed in have also shifted — from large festivals to more intimate contexts. Do you see this as a consequence of your musical changes, or did those environments actively influence the way your music evolved?

“In a way, I think it has more to do with the fact that music and trends are constantly changing. Festivals stopped considering the kind of techno we used to make as something mainstream a long time ago. And so it returns to its original underground place, just as it happened in the ’80s and ’90s.
But this was already becoming clear. I remember the last time I played at Awakenings in 2019 with the Selección Natural project: it was obvious that the other artists were presenting a much more modern and current kind of techno than ours. You could compare the crowd at their shows with ours, and you could clearly feel that something in the music was shifting and that what was coming next was quite far from my own musical tastes.
So I suppose it was a kind of ‘adapt or die,’ but not necessarily adapting towards the musical direction that was emerging. I believe you can contribute more by evolving towards what truly moves you, but evolution is always necessary, even if it comes with its risks.”

☉ Your artistic identity seems to oscillate between two contrasting forces: one darker, more instinctive and confrontational; the other intimate, emotional, and vulnerable. When you’re producing, how do these forces interact within you? Is it a conflict, a fusion, or a kind of tension that ultimately shapes your sound?

“That’s a very beautiful way of expressing it. I’d say it is indeed the result of a conflict between forces, the pure concept of duality. I’ve always considered myself a very dual person; in a way, we all are, but in my case I’ve always been quite extreme in music. I can connect deeply with the most romantic, even overly sentimental song, just as I can resonate with something as harsh as industrial noise in the style of Whitehouse, for example. My inner world works in a similar way.
When I started the Reeko project, I pushed it to such a radical and extreme point that it became very difficult to move away from that without disappointing a lot of people. At the time I was a very insecure kid, and even though I tried with records like ‘La conjura de los necios’, I felt the need to make music without anyone knowing it was me without musical or artistic labels. Just me and that more emotional side, which in my early twenties wasn’t easy to let out. But I understood that it was vital to keep this project alive in order to take my creativity to more intimate places. The resulting sound may well carry something of that inner duality, yes, but it’s not something I consciously plan.”

☉ Looking ahead, do you imagine continuing to operate through multiple aliases, or do you feel that at some point there may be a need to reconcile everything under a single name — Juan Rico — beyond stylistic or genre boundaries?

“I think that, at least for now, I’m done with aliases beyond my two projects and my real name. With these, I feel I already cover every creative side perfectly, without the need to create more projects, at least at this moment. I’ve occasionally thought about bringing everything together under a single name, but in truth, I really enjoy having two distinct identities.”