Biography

Early years

The music started with the Beatles. As a kid he played the Beatles' 1962–1966 double album on vinyl over and over. The moment he knew he wanted to make music came with Survivor's “Eye of the Tiger.” In the video, every stab of that razor-sharp guitar riff lands with a crash cymbal, so he asked for a drum kit. It arrived that Christmas, probably a $59 special, and the first time he hit the crash cymbal it sounded like nothing musical at all.

He grew up in the 1980s making mixtapes off Casey Kasem's American Top 40 on a boombox, trying to time each recording perfectly to cut out the chatter before the song. Miami Vice was another turning point. It was one of the first shows to blend real music with moody, cinematic visuals; where other shows used cheesy cover versions, Miami Vice had the real songs. That combination of dark aesthetics and great music pulled him in for good.

Friends later introduced him to more indie and alternative artists, and he became a big fan of New Order and Depeche Mode, amazed by the sounds they created. Pet Shop Boys and Tears for Fears completed the core influences. A great song from any era or genre is still fair game.

The first keyboard

After high school, working in a grocery store, music became a huge part of his life, and listening wasn't enough anymore. He had to be a part of it. In the early 1990s he spent $2,000 on an Ensoniq SD-1 keyboard with a built-in sequencer and started writing simple songs with a few very basic chords. The rule was easy: if it sounded good, you kept it.

Until he was about 24, he believed in his heart that his career would be an electronic band like Depeche Mode. “I was probably a little bit delusional back then,” he says, “and probably still am today.”

A career outside music

In 1995 he went into real estate and later started his own brokerage. Running an independent company gave him room to create, whether that meant new business ideas, marketing copy, or anything else, and for years that was enough to satisfy his need to be creative.

He never really gave up music. He kept playing around on the keyboard and jamming with a friend who loved electronic music as much as he did, and the two dreamed of doing something with it. But the home-studio technology of the time wasn't good enough to make anything of real quality.

Back in the Day (2020)

In 2020 he turned 50 and decided it was now or never. He went all in on a digital audio workstation, chose Ableton, and started climbing its steep learning curve, reworking older songs and writing new ones.

The project was born as WitheringWithout with the debut single “Back in the Day”, released April 25, 2020. He wrote the song and believed in it but couldn't yet produce it himself, so he reached out to Norwegian synth artist and YouTuber Espen Kraft and asked him to turn the demo into a finished record. Espen handled all of the production and vocals. It's an introspective look back at a time when “everything was right and we were young and full of life,” described as synthpop, synthwave, and retrowave. Espen did a great job, and the song still means a lot to him. It's a little more synth-pop than the music he makes now, which leans toward a slightly harder edge, with sounds that are more atmospheric and dark.

He then commissioned UK DJ and producer Mike Jolly, whom he found through a gig website for musicians, for two remixes, released in May 2020 as Back in the Day (Underground DJ Remixes):

• Back in the Day (Mike Jolly Underground DJ Remix), 3:18
• Back in the Day (Mike Jolly Underground DJ Extended Remix), 6:32

“I listened to a few of Mike Jolly’s tracks on Spotify and I was really blown away with his style and sound. He took the single and created a beautiful driving EDM song that still has the magic from the single. I was really pleased with it from my first listen.”

Finding the sound

Over the next five years he spent hundreds of hours writing and producing, learning to get a polished sound on his own, without a professional studio and without collaborators pulling the music in a different direction. He sang on many of the demos, and his wife and friends encouraged him to release something with his own vocals, but he never felt they were good enough. So he made a rule: if the music is going out, it has to be as good as possible. That meant working with session vocalists. A few songs with his own vocals are still in the vault, and who knows, maybe they'll come out someday.

How the songs are made

He keeps a running document of words, interesting titles, whole lines, and emotional ideas. Some started as an exercise in collecting little phrases that trigger a feeling, like “water up your nose” (which became a line in “Chasing Wind”), “the smell of funeral flowers,” and, from the upcoming track “Picture Frame,” “you're like hose water in a wine glass.” When a piece of music really feels like something, he pulls out the microphone, opens the document, and lets things come out. Usually they need refining; sometimes they come out exactly right the first time.

He rarely takes one track from start to finish in a single run. He pushes a song as far as it will go, backs off, and works on something else, then comes back with fresh ears. Sometimes he hears what was great about it all along; other times the idea is right but it isn't going where he wanted, so he reworks it. Working on many projects at once is, to him, part of the fun.

Vocalists are hired through musician gig websites. He's been burned more than once by singers whose demos sounded great but whose paid sessions didn't work, and those songs never came out. He's also had great experiences, including one session singer who has now sung on four WitheringWithout tracks.

Featured vocalists usually aren't credited by name. Session singers often have their own projects in different styles and want their names tied to the brand they're building, not out of any embarrassment about the music. And no, the vocals aren't AI. Every vocal on every WitheringWithout release is a real singer.

Dance music for the clinically repressed

The tagline comes straight from the 1980s bands that shaped him: atmospheric, emotional, moody music. Neil Tennant of Pet Shop Boys would stand there, stoic, singing almost poetic lyrics over a dance-tempo track. That contrast between melancholy words and a dance beat is the heart of WitheringWithout. He was also a big fan of Electronic, the project that brought together Bernard Sumner of New Order, Johnny Marr of The Smiths, and Neil Tennant, and their single “Getting Away With It,” with its line “I've been trying to impress / That more is less and I'm repressed.”

To be repressed is to keep feelings, desires, or memories from being expressed. Men in particular have traditionally been taught to keep their emotions in, to be stoic, tough, and mentally strong, and he doesn't reject that. Music is his outlet, the place those thoughts and feelings get out. The goal isn't sad music that leaves anyone down in the dumps. It's music that explores the darker side. “There's nothing like a nice dance beat, a peppy song in a minor key, and some cool rhyming words,” he says. “I'm a pretty happy person, but I like exploring sad themes. It adds an emotional weight to music.”

Not every song is autobiography. An idea might start with something real, then get turned into a story, twisted, or changed around, and that, he says, is part of the fun of putting lyrics and music together.

Singles

WitheringWithout returned with a steady run of singles, moving toward a harder, 120+ BPM dance sound while keeping the dark, emotional lyrics:

• “Overreaction” (February 20, 2025)
• “I Would Die For You” (September 12, 2025)
• “Chasing Wind” (January 16, 2026)
• “Text Me” (June 19, 2026)

The themes keep coming back to the same places: loneliness, rejection, volatile relationships, all-in devotion, and restless searching. The stories behind the songs are on the Discography page, and the official lyrics are on the Lyrics page.

ADE 2026

As his production grew through experience, he set his sights on Amsterdam Dance Event (ADE), one of the world's biggest electronic music conferences, and joined its 2026 Lab on Track program. It's his first trip to Europe, and a deliberate step outside his comfort zone: a commitment to pursue music seriously, as a business and not just a hobby or an outlet.

Many people his age, including friends he went to school with, aren't into the music he loves. He still listens to what he grew up with, but his heart is in dance music: house, deep house, and trance. ADE is a chance to connect with people who share that passion, find collaborators, meet people in the business, and perhaps find a label interested in working with him.

“I'm not going to ADE to necessarily get something out of it, although I know I will. I'm going there to give of myself, to become a resource for other people, to listen to other people's music and encourage them, and to learn more. Hopefully there will be relationships established that continue beyond the event.”

What's next

Electronic producers pour themselves into production, songwriting, and arrangement, and the last thing most of them want to do is dig around on social media, but that's how the word gets out. The next step for WitheringWithout is promoting the music better and releasing on a more consistent schedule.

The quiet years from 2021 to 2024 left a deep catalog of finished and nearly finished songs, and several singles are lined up, including “Picture Frame,” with the goal of turning them into steady releases.

In his words

“There is something special about the perfect mix of music, lyrics and production in a great song that can bring joy, happiness and excitement into your life, and I hope that my music will do that for you.”
— Robert Kaetzel