In collaboration with adidas CONFIRMED

Before Jonathan Castro was a graphic designer, before the festival identities and record label art and live visuals for artists touring through Europe, there was music. He grew up in Lima, in a small circle of people who were interested in sound from a radical angle. That was his first school, he says. Not just learning from others but figuring things out yourself, working within limitations because you had to, because you were broke and did not have access to the machines or the infrastructure. What came out of it was still interesting. That has stayed with him.

He has been living in the Netherlands since 2017, first Amsterdam, now Rotterdam, and the music world has remained a consistent thread. He has worked with record labels, toured with artists, and built visual identities for festivals. For a lot of people moving through that world, his work is somewhere in the background: the sleeve they picked up without knowing who made it, the visual language of a label they have been following for years, the poster from a night they still think about. Conscious or not, his fingerprints are on a significant corner of how electronic and experimental music looks and feels in this part of the world.

He is also a serious collector. Records are emotional objects to him, that carry memory in a way streaming cannot replicate. He talks about them the way someone talks about old friends: where he was when he found a specific copy, who he was with the first time he heard it, why he would never let anyone borrow certain ones. The physical object matters. The ritual of listening matters. Sound, for him, is a material, something with texture and weight that you translate rather than reproduce.

It made sense, then, when adidas CONFIRMED approached him to create a piece celebrating Amsterdam’s nightlife culture, that he did not reach for something straightforward. The result is No Fixed Landscape, a limited edition hoodie of which only 200 will ever exist, none of which will ever be sold. Available exclusively by raffle through the adidas CONFIRMED app, the piece draws on Amsterdam’s architecture, underground visual culture, and the electronic music scene that has shaped the city for thirty years.

The design references the Amsterdam School, a movement from the early twentieth century in which young architects built homes for social workers with expressive, almost baroque concrete work and intricate detailing. Jonathan was drawn to the way those structures created a contrast with the rest of the city, something simultaneously historical and strangely fictional-looking, the result of a set of ideas about what architecture could do rather than just what it needed to be. The hoodie takes those structures and transforms them into a new kind of landscape, familiar but abstract, recognisable without being literal.

“There is a context behind No Fixed Landscape,” Castro says, “but once the work is there, people can make their own connections with it. I like that it can feel somehow recognizable but still remain abstract. What someone sees or feels in it is probably more interesting to me than trying to control what they should take from it.”

We sat with Jonathan and his record collection to understand how he got here. What follows is a portrait of an artist through the music that made him.

The first record that made you feel something you could not explain.

Alice Coltrane – Journey in Satchidananda

“I remember seeing my friends made of colors and levitating. Then I started to listen to all these sounds that I thought I was inventing in my head: the record is so rich, there are so many different instruments and layers and frequencies. It’s a healing record. It kind of pushes you to kill the ego and really feel what is happening in the moment.” 

The record you would never let anyone borrow.

Zoviet France – Misfits, Looney Tunes, and Squalid Criminals 

“These guys make art with the records and always put so much attention to the details. I found it in mint condition and I was really surprised. I love my people, but nobody is touching this. This record is a gem for me. And the music is fantastic. It feels like a ritualistic trip.”

The record you put on when you need to get into a creative headspace.

Bobby Valentín – Rey del Bajo

“Every time I need creativity or energy I need to listen to this. It’s very fancy, very raw. My parents threw two-day parties when I was five or six and they always played salsa. So I grew up with this, it’s in my blood. Salsa for me is like water.”

The record that changed the way you see your own work.

Nocturnal Emissions – Spiritflesh

“Every time I listen to this record I try to bring it into my own work before I start. I think of sound as a texture or a material. I try to translate that materiality, the attitude of the sound, into images.”

The record that best describes life right now.

AX – Nova Feedback

“We’re living in such complex times. Wars, displacement, migration. Technology is moving so fast that everything feels increasingly intense, almost like constant feedback. But there’s also beauty in that noise, in the chaos and unpredictability of it all. And somehow, this record captures that feeling”

The record most people would not expect to find in your collection.

Chang Fo Ji – King Kong

“Normally people buy it, lay down in the grass and listen to Buddhist loop prayers. I think it’s very cool. I bought this one in Belgium, but I also have the original: I found it when I went to China.”

The record you had on while developing No Fixed Landscape.

Techno Animal – Versus Reality

“For me it kind of makes sense. It’s an amazing record: dubby, abstract, a lot of energy, very industrial. I was in the mood for this when I was building these graphic artifacts.”

The record by a local artist that deserves more attention.

Nancy Phantom – Released by FTC ediciones

“It’s an amazing band. They mostly jam and play whatever they feel in the moment, every time is unique and a different experience. Everyone should really listen to these guys.”

The record you put on at the end of a long night.

Tulio Enrique León – La pollera amarilla 

“Every time I put this record on it’s impossible not to open a beer and just dance. I have never seen anyone not react like that.”

The record that introduced you to a sound you had never heard before.

Anthology of Central and South American Indian Music

“When I listen to this, it’s unknown, but at the same time it feels kind of recognizable because of my roots.” 

No Fixed Landscape launches officially on Thursday 22 October at Solebox Amsterdam, from 18:00 to 22:00, with Jonathan Castro on the decks alongside Upsammy and Woody92. 

The raffle is open for adidas CONFIRMED members in the Netherlands, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain.