Rina Pavar interview: ‘Think less, be bolder’

When Side-Line spoke with Rina Pavar in 2023, live performance was still something she approached from outside: the studio was familiar territory, while putting herself physically at the centre of the music remained a challenge. Three years later, watching her open Saturday at Nocturnal Culture Night on the Parkbühne, in daylight and before the festival had fully gathered momentum, the change was striking. The restraint was still there, but it no longer read as self-protection. It had become part of the language.

That distinction matters because Pavar’s music is built around control in several senses. She writes, performs, produces and mixes her own material; her arrangements tend towards clarity rather than accumulation; and even live, the electronic architecture necessarily fixes certain parameters in advance. Yet the more interesting development is how she has begun using that control to create freedom rather than insulation. She speaks here about abandoning perfection as a useful measure, learning that a stage persona does not need to be a separate personality, and discovering that authenticity can emerge gradually rather than through some dramatic act of self-reinvention.

That makes the timing of this conversation particularly interesting. Her second album, “six”, appeared in March 2025, followed later that year by “REMIXES”, which handed her tightly controlled compositions to artists including Radondo, Kay-Chi, Skelesys, New Haunts and others. In August 2026, “too much” opened another phase: more direct, more emotionally immediate and, in Pavar’s own words, less subtle. Rather than presenting this as a clean break with what came before, she seems more interested in testing how far the existing language can stretch. The final answer she gives here may be the simplest description of that process: think less, be bolder.

Rina Pavar interview

Karo: I saw you at NCN only a few days ago, on the Parkbühne, and I was thinking about how peculiar the setting actually was for your music: an early festival slot, daylight, people still arriving and adjusting to the day. Does a situation like that require you to construct your own atmosphere almost against the surroundings, or do you prefer not to impose a predetermined mood on a performance at all?

Rina: Yes, that was really unusual. But I always take as much time as possible beforehand to rehearse and visualise the specific setting and the audience. I was familiar with NCN and the Parkbühne from a guest’s perspective, so I could easily imagine what my performance would feel and look like at that time.

I think this approach allows me to adapt more flexibly to the circumstances, including in my song selection and the style of my performance. Even though, of course, the core always remains the same, the details change with every performance.

Karo: When you spoke to Side-Line in 2023, performing was still relatively new territory for you and the studio was very much the place where you felt most secure. Three years later, I watched someone who seemed considerably more settled within the physical act of performing. What changed? Was it simply accumulated experience, or did you have to discover a different version of yourself onstage?

Rina: I think it’s a little bit of both. So far, I still don’t approach the unknown entirely without fear or hesitation. That’s why practice and experience remain the cornerstones of my self-confidence and my progress.

My stage persona has also changed over time. But through my experiences so far, I’ve realised that there’s actually no need for a “different” version of myself on stage. Rather, as my experience and self-confidence grow, more space opens up for me to enjoy the performance and let my authentic self shine through.

That’s why I take the time to discover and refine myself in this environment bit by bit and at my own pace, instead of artificially building something that I’ll eventually have to shed one day because it no longer fits.

Karo: “too much” arrived only a few weeks before NCN and has now been presented as the beginning of a new sequence of releases. Why was this particular song the right point of departure? What does it introduce that you felt had not already been said on six?

Rina: I think it has a completely different vibe. It’s more direct, more emotional and less subtle in terms of content, without going completely over the top. At least, that’s how I feel about it.

That’s why I thought it was the perfect choice for the first single. I’d actually included it in the NCN set, and the reactions were consistently positive. That confirmed my choice.

Karo: six contained a great deal of looking backwards: memory, relationships, places, decisions, versions of oneself that have already existed. I wonder whether your writing is changing now from processing experience towards something more immediate. Are you becoming interested in writing from inside an experience while it is still unresolved, rather than only once you understand what it meant?

Rina: For me, it always happens in a flexible and spontaneous way. When certain topics or approaches are important to me at the moment, they naturally take centre stage at that time. But things might look completely different again in the next project.

Karo: Because you write, perform, produce and mix your own material, almost every important decision remains with you until the mastering stage. That gives you enormous artistic coherence, but presumably also removes the useful resistance another person can provide. How do you recognise the moment when complete creative independence stops being liberating and starts becoming a blind spot?

Rina: That’s an important point. And I’ve often had to listen to all the things that can go wrong when you work on your own. That’s why I’ve found the following approach, which works for me.

First, I took the pressure off myself to be perfect, and for RINA PAVAR I decided to focus on presenting what comes from me as a person, regardless of whether it’s perfect, good enough, innovative, trendy, cutting-edge or whatever. If it brings me great joy and meets my standards for growth at that moment, then that’s good enough. This creates freedom and keeps me from getting stuck in a safe, rigid framework.

Furthermore, with every release, I set new but achievable goals for myself, whether musically, vocally, personally, in live performances or even just in terms of design. I sit down and teach myself something new or try to optimise processes and recognise patterns to eliminate blind spots as much as possible.

Karo: There is considerable restraint in your arrangements; individual sounds are often given enough room to become structurally important rather than being surrounded by layers simply because they are available. Is reduction something you consciously work towards? In other words, do you spend as much time deciding what a song can survive without as deciding what it still needs?

Rina: I think that’s one of the few things I don’t have to consciously work towards. When I’m producing a song, I actually have to force myself to add elements. I’m always surprised when someone tells me how clean or minimal the mix is. In my mind, I’ve actually “packed it full”, and I often think to myself, “Okay, there’s room for improvement here, and I should be a little bolder in approaching this aspect.”

But reduction, or perhaps “clarity” is a better word, is something that runs through everything I do. For me, it’s fulfilling to break down complex situations to their essentials, to distil the core, to organise, structure or simplify things. And that happens completely automatically.

Karo: REMIXES placed your songs in the hands of artists with very different instincts, which is almost the opposite of the control you normally have over your work. Was there a remix that revealed something about one of your compositions that you had not recognised yourself, perhaps because another artist emphasised a rhythm, mood or tension that you had considered secondary?

Rina: I’d almost say that’s the case with all the songs. Often, my favourite elements are highlighted but placed in a completely different context or emphasised even more. I love every one of these songs and am thrilled to experience my creations in a more developed and reinterpreted form.

Karo: Your collaboration with Kay-Chi on “Darkest Night” is interesting for a similar reason, because there you contributed lyrics and vocals to somebody else’s musical framework rather than building the entire environment yourself. Does writing from inside another producer’s world free you in some way, precisely because you are not responsible for every element of the finished piece?

Rina: It’s definitely a challenging yet enjoyable situation. I really enjoy not having to take full responsibility for everything. At the same time, though, I often put pressure on myself to do the parts that I work on perfectly. After all, I want to do the song justice and not disappoint the artist who chose me as a collaboration partner.

Even though it may seem overwhelming at first, and it’s not always easy to find my place on someone else’s song, I always look forward to projects like this. It’s fun, offers the chance to collaborate and is always a nice change of pace from working solo.

Karo: You also work visually, and I am interested less in whether your visual art “matches” the music than in whether the two forms make you think differently. Music unfolds through time, while an image confronts you more or less simultaneously. Does moving between those two ways of organising an idea change the way you compose?

Rina: The way I compose doesn’t change because of this. The approaches and the way ideas come to me are simply too different.

But painting is my balance to music, and vice versa. For me, it’s a kind of respite from the other and therefore the break I need to develop and bring new ideas to life. Music is often stirring, full of energy and, despite studio work, takes place largely outside. Painting is absolute stillness, tranquillity, grounding and complete isolation from the outside world.

Karo: Coldwave and dark electronic music have developed a very recognisable vocabulary, and recognition can become both an advantage and a trap: listeners know immediately where they are, but artists can also end up repeating gestures simply because those gestures belong to the language of the scene. Which elements of that vocabulary still feel central to Rina Pavar, and which ones have you begun questioning?

Rina: If I had to name one thing that remains an important, central aspect, or an indispensable element, for me it would be the melancholy in the sound and lyrics. These are still elements of my songs because I’m still drawn to them.

But to be honest, I don’t think about genre at all when I’m composing. I create songs based on the premise that “I have to like it” in order to maintain the greatest possible creative freedom.

Karo: Electronic performances inevitably contain structures that cannot be altered as freely as they might be in a conventional rock band, yet the person onstage is responding to something entirely unpredictable: an audience. At NCN, how much were you actually reading the people in front of you? Can their response change the way you deliver a song even when its underlying architecture remains fixed?

Rina: I can always feel the energy of the audience, and I try to respond to it as best I can. Even though the set is basically fixed, since it’s tied to a tight schedule, especially at a festival like NCN, I still always leave room within that framework to add or omit details, swap out songs, vary my vocal delivery, let loose and adjust the announcements to be longer or shorter depending on how the audience reacts.

At NCN, it was great to see that everyone was fully into it even at such an early hour, and that really gave me power.

Karo: Your development so far has involved becoming more confident not only as a songwriter but also as someone willing to place herself physically at the centre of the project. At this point, what would artistic growth actually mean to you? Is it greater musical complexity, greater simplicity, taking more emotional risks, collaborating more, reaching larger audiences, or something that has nothing to do with scale at all?

Rina: I want to continue acquiring new technical skills and incorporating them into my compositions. When performing live, I’d like to experiment a bit more, both in terms of the performance and the look, as well as the instrumentation. It’s basically a matter of fine-tuning every aspect to bring out and strengthen the essence of RINA PAVAR even more.

Karo: Finally, looking ahead: “too much” has been announced as the first of a series of new releases, so we clearly are not looking at an isolated single. Without asking you to reveal anything that should remain a surprise, what is beginning now for Rina Pavar? And when we eventually look back at this next body of work, what do you hope we will hear in it that was not there before?

Rina: I do have an idea of what the “new” element will be in the upcoming releases. But since I’m always worried that listeners might not even notice it, I’d like to start by summarising it this way:

Think less, be bolder.

About Rina Pavar

Rina Pavar is a Leipzig-based German solo project started in 2019. Her own Bandcamp describes the music as coldwave and dark electronic music, while Cold Transmission characterises the project through driving basslines, vintage synthesizers, accented vocals and lyrics concerned with consciousness and personal experience.

Her debut album, “vivid night”, was released digitally on 1 November 2021, followed by the EP “things we hide” in May 2022. Pavar writes, performs, produces and mixes her own material; those credits are documented on both “vivid night” and her second album.

The second album, “six”, was released through Cold Transmission on 21 March 2025. It contains nine tracks and was mastered by Frithjof Rödel at Atomino Studio, with artwork and cover by Pavar and photography by yules_pictures.

On 5 December 2025, she released “REMIXES”, a ten-track collection featuring reinterpretations by Radondo, Kay-Chi, Zee Mon, Skelesys, Close Proximity, PJ, Sun’s Spectrum, New Haunts and Three Days Awake by Bent, alongside Pavar’s own club mix of “structured fall”.

Pavar also contributed lyrics and vocals to Kay-Chi’s “Darkest Night”, released as part of the Night Protocol EP on 27 March 2026.

Her latest single, “too much”, was released on 14 August 2026. Cold Transmission announced it as the first in a series of new releases, marking the beginning of the next phase of the project.