About Different Sleep

Rafael Alvarez, a.k.a Different Sleep, got his start in music production and engineering when he moved to Chicago in 2011 to study Music Business at Columbia College Chicago. He was swiftly recruited to intern at Slang Music Group by House music pioneer Vince Lawrence. Within a short period of time, he became an in-house producer/engineer for the studio.

Soon after, he launched his solo art endeavor, Different Sleep, which received critical acclaim from some of the biggest music blogs of the 2010s. His original music and remixes gained millions of streams across platforms and landed him releases with record labels Friends of Friends, OWSLA, Vagrant Records, Downtown/Interscope, and more.

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In recent years, Rafael focused his talents on supporting other artists and developing music for brands in the entertainment space. He built a client list ranging from Deepak Chopra to Nickelodeon.

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In 2021, he became the go-to recording engineer for Grammy Award-winning producer, Kaytranada. The standards and quality of his work led to recording artists like Zara Larsson, Sabrina Claudio, & Aminé, (to name a few).

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In 2022, he saw success as a mixing engineer for Korean indie-pop artist Su Lee's debut album. And as a frequent collaborator and record producer for breakthrough Latin artist, Chicocurlyhead.

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In 2023 he began engineering for international DJ/Producer Chris Lake, contributing vocal production to Chris Lake & Aluna's joint single "Beggin'". He is also credited as an engineer on "KAYTRAMINÉ", the long anticipated collaborative project between Kaytranada and Aminé.

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So far in 2024, he began working with the elusive Zhu on his fourth studio album, GRACE, contributing vocal production & engineering to 5 songs including the single "Settle For Less" featuring Sabrina Claudio.