How To Make a Track is a series that offers an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at how the world’s best producers make their music.

In this episode, we visit the Berlin studio of Hayden Payne aka Phase Fatale, a Berghain resident with a love of ’80s post-punk, industrial and EBM.

On his new album Scanning Backwards, released earlier this year on Ostgut Ton, Payne explores how sound has been used to try to influence human behaviour throughout history, from the soundsystems that power nightclubs to the mind-control experiments conducted by the CIA as part of the top secret MK-Ultra program in the 1950s and ’60s.

Payne shows us how his fascination with the effects of different sonic frequencies informs his music, whether he’s scanning wavetables on his Waldorf Microwave XT synth or using guitar feedback to create background ambience.

Scanning Backwards is available now on Ostgut Ton. Find Phase Fatale’s music at Bandcamp.

Watch next: Signal Path: Zoë Mc Pherson on mangling sound and multimedia collaboration