flyover 4: lanny

After wondering for a few weeks if I had another failed music blog on my hands, I got the text message from Lanny I didn’t know I was waiting for:

“Went nasty with it.”

Flyover crew recently paid Lanny a visit at his Northeast Minneapolis home to chat about his mix, take some photos, and play some tunes. On a hot and disgustingly humid Saturday afternoon, it was a relief to feel the temperature drop by 20 degrees as we walked down the stairs to Lanny’s basement studio. Big speakers, a subwoofer, synths, machines, four decks, a mixer, plus his homemade record cleaning machine (made from a gutted turntable, a shop vac, and a model train transformer) greet his visitors and complement the wood paneled walls and comfy couches. In my mind, Lanny’s basement is a fun, happy, music-filled place, which made it all the more surprising to hear about the basement’s severe effect on his mix.

“I recorded a couple [of mixes] and they weren’t what I wanted. I was down here like ‘okay, I’m gonna do it again, I’m gonna do this nice mix.’ I tried, and I was just failing at the decks, ‘cos I’m in a basement recording a mix by myself and the mood wasn’t there. So then I got mad...I was laying on the floor, just like yelling ‘Ahh! I suck! What the fuck?’”

“But then I was like, ‘wait a second, I need a drink. I need to get in the zone. I’m gonna chill out a little bit and do something else ‘cos this is not working…so I very quickly was like, ‘alright, I’m gonna do a nasty mix, and it’s gonna be psychedelic.’”

“So I went through Rekordbox in 10 or 15 minutes, I picked those tracks, and I started playing...I think that’s what I needed to do, just like, be in a mood or something…[I needed] to be in a party mindset.”

Jokes aside, Lanny takes his craft seriously. His knowledge of dance music runs deep, and his perfectionist tendencies are evident in his approach to mixing. If the golden rule of DJing is play to the room, it checks out that Lanny couldn’t make himself play an upbeat summertime mix quite yet, as he initially planned. Yes, parties and shows are on the books again. Lineups are dropping, tickets are selling, and this mix comes out during a period marked by slight optimism that we’ll soon get to collectively damage our hearing again. However, we’re not quite there yet, and there are constant reminders all around us that the present and future is bleak and uncertain. A happy pre-recorded mix right now, especially before Big Parties start up again, would be forcing it a bit. It speaks to Lanny’s veracity as a person and DJ that he can’t lie to us like that.

Regardless of the vibe of the room he’s playing, Lanny has consistent and specific qualifications in mind when he’s digging for tracks.

“No matter what [mood] I’m picking, I’m picking something that has some groove and some swing…I enjoy some beatdown techno from time to time if everyone’s doing it and it’s in the right environment...but I’d rather hear and play something with that swung, weird, groovy bassline and trippy in-your-head kind of thing…I always want the groove to be leading it…one track groovin’ into another…always teasing that next groove and maintaining the last.”

His flyover set is no exception. Opening with a misleadingly optimistic breaks-forward Extrawelt cut, Lanny selects some acid, techno, and electro to kick things off. After going minimal for the first of two Terrence Dixon tracks, he brings in the heavier vibes that resonate throughout the rest of the mix. Sharif Laffrey’s “Sounds To Come” marks the point of no return, setting the tone for the real nasty cuts that pop up later.

Lanny usually tries to get crowds moving to unexpected tunes. “I kinda want to play the weirdest thing that I can get people to dance to...I want it to be weird, I want it to be fun, I want it to be groovy...like, you’re not into it yet, but we’re gonna get you there, we’re gonna get you into it.”

Thankfully, Lanny eases us into Mike Dehnernt’s “The March,” which, as Kerosine observed, "sounds like it’s happening in a tube." Its dripping and stuttering percussion is the mix’s most memorable moment until it’s upstaged one track later by Tama Sumo and Prosumer’s dusty Ostgut Ton cut “Play Up,” which features the nastiest vox in the mix. From there, Lanny brings us home with a hypnotic techno section, punctuated by the UFO organ on Aubrey’s “Stressed Squares,” as well as an iconic looping rave riddle featured on “Take A Shot.”

Since moving to Minneapolis in 2016, Lanny has brought his weird groovy cuts to basements, patios, bars, and warehouses. In a post-COVID landscape, he hopes to pick up where he left off by bringing out some of the tunes he discovered in pandemic isolation and continuing to develop musical versatility.

“I want to grow as a DJ. I want to be able to do it all…I’m trying to expand my horizons as a DJ, and within the last year, that’s what I’ve been thinking of…I can play boring tech-house all day and enjoy it, and I can listen to boring tech-house all day and enjoy it, but I don’t want to only do that…I want to be able to play the right dance music for [any environment].”

Lanny credits the Minneapolis dance music scene for welcoming him with open arms, and showing him what a loud sound system in a dark room can do for people.

“Before coming here—I’m from North Dakota—my musical friends were…nobody. The internet is what got me into music…I kind of knew before I moved here that I really liked dance music...but I had never been a part of a music scene. So, I kind of came here and asked around, and I found my way pretty quickly to an Intellephunk party on a Halloween, and I was like ‘oh damn, this shit’s loud.”

“When I moved here, I was like, ‘these people are really cool and really talented,’ and now...not only are they my peers, these are my best friends.”

“I’m super stoked on all of my friends. All of my friends are talented, awesome people...you can [say], ‘oh it’s hard to meet people in the Midwest,’ or whatever…not if you fuckin’ go to a party and talk to people. I think it’s really cool how easy it is to build friendships off the shared experience of live music.”

With that, everyone’s funniest friend Lanny extends an open invite: “no one’s gonna write you off in Minneapolis, because we need people to join our party scene…it’s like ‘Come To Our Parties, We Accept You!’ As long as you’re chill and you know how to handle yourself…come listen to the music and you will be welcomed with open arms.” 

Tracklist:

Extrawelt - Ungerade [Furthur Electronix, 2021]

Justin Cudmore - Straight No Chaser [Unknown To The Unknown, 2018]

Russell E.L. Butler - Builder [Left Hand Path, 2018]

Sansibar - Mandate My Ass [Natural Sciences, 2019]

Terrence Dixon - Vertical Hold [30D Records, 2019]

Tazz - Unrestrained [Underground Quality, 2010]

Sharif Laffrey ‎- Sounds To Come [Special Forces Records, 2020]

DJ Qu - Pressin’ [Strength Music Recordings, 2020]

Camin - Duct [Cong Burn, 2019]

Mike Dehnert - The March [Deeply Rooted House, 2010]

Tama Sumo & Prosumer - Play Up [Ostgut Ton, 2008]

Refracted - Uku Che [Oblique Music, 2018]

ESHU - Cesium [ESHU Records, 2014]

Exium - Trashflow (Jeroen Search remix) [Nheoma, 2019]

Aubrey - Stressed Squares [Solid Groove, 2000]

Zenker Brothers ‎– Bias [Index Marcel Fengler, 2015]

Kalter Ende - Near of the Moon [Android Muziq, 2016]

DJ Hell vs. Richard Bartz - Take A Shot… [Kurbel, 1997]

Terrence Dixon ‎- The Parkhurst [Thema, 2011]

Follow Lanny's SoundCloud

flyover 3: kerosine

Kerosine spent the pandemic building an arsenal. After taking photos and designing covers for the first two flyover releases, the St. Paul via Bismarck DJ, producer, photographer, and bartender stepped into the booth with a newly acquired reverb pedal and a third deck borrowed from Sarvesh (a.k.a. Icarus Redux) to record his most thoughtful mix to date. Though he says it’s not intentional, he captures the many vibes of pandemic living in mix form. Moving seamlessly from sad, longing, atmospheric tracks made all the dreamier by the additional reverb to nightmarish looping vocal samples drowned out by static, this mix sounds like what the past 13 months have felt like.

If you run this theory by Cameron, he’ll tell you he just wanted to play the best tracks he’s found lately. Describing his selection process, he said it “was just like, these are the fucking tracks. These are the ones that are really hitting right now….I tend to look for tracks that have that wavy, Warp [Records] nostalgic type sound, with really melancholy melodies.” 

Not long after opening the mix with a hazy intergalactic vacuum cleaner of a track by Ghostride The Drift, released on xpq?, a label whose output Cameron calls “very weird experimental stuff...some of it is very dance-oriented but a lot of it is very dusty warped-out fucked up sounding stuff,” he dishes out dance music comfort food in the form of a newish Burial track that would’ve fit right in on Untrue if it weren’t snapped to the grid. The infamous London producer is one of his favorites. The track has “that chunky, synth bassline which is very cluby, but yeah it definitely has like a melancholy that only Burial can bring...that’s something I would love to hear out, people playing more stuff like that. Just a little sprinkle, not all the time...he’s just like such an iconic electronic artist and relates so much to the club experience. He talks about [his sound] in his interviews, like it’s about being outside the club...those sort of ringing in your ears aspects of the tracks.”

Though they aren’t in the tracklist, the influence of Boards of Canada, another Cam favorite, is evident throughout. Whether it’s the synths on Patricia’s “Apoptosis” or the earlier vocal sample that calls to mind a numbers station broadcast, unsettling dreamlike nostalgia permeates the mix. The nightmarish looping static from Lucy’s “Milgram Experiment” is reminiscent of BOC in spirit if not sonically. “That track in particular is definitely a lot more dark than the rest of the mix...I guess there is an aspect of like, at in-person parties, sometimes you do go through those points...you have those moments where things get kind of dicey, but you also have those moments of pure ecstasy and there’s kind of that contrast between that track and the next track.” Afterwards, Cameron provides some much-needed relief with “Heart Piece,” a blippy playful cut from Two Shell.

Though it’s been a rough one for a while now, and the current state of affairs leaves no reason for optimism, there is one thing to look forward to: we might soon be able to resume gathering communally in front of large sound systems. Hardly a weekend goes by without someone in the flyover pod saying “I want to stick my head in a speaker.” With that in mind, Cameron closes the mix with a sample from a video recorded in the early 90s of UK ravers still dancing long after the music has stopped. “I thought that part was funny and cheeky, and kind of lifted the mood a bit...we’ve all been there...it was a little bit of hope at the end. Like a ‘we’re going to get to do this again’ type of thing.”

 Follow Kerosine: SoundCloud / Instagram

Tracklist:

Ghostride The Drift - A1 [xpq?, 2019]

St. Vincent - Masseduction (Midland’s Mass Seduction remix) [Loma Vista, 2019]

Christopher Rau - Slu Terms [Smallville Records, 2020]

Waage - W7 [X/OZ, 2019]

Burial - Rodent [Hyperdub, 2017]

Leibniz - 32 MB [Molten Moods, 2019]

Jabes - Glass Censors [Klunk, 2019]

Graze - Ripley [New Kanada, 2014]

Keppel - Taken For Granted [Well Street Records, 2020]

Neinzer - Rassalin [Where To Now?, 2020]

Leonardo Martelli - Popolus [Antinote, 2020]

Robert Fleck - Set Point [Well Street Records, 2018]

Lucy - Milgram Experiment [Stroboscopic Artefacts, 2012]

Two Shell - Heart Piece [Livity Sound, 2019]

Pugilist - Acid Flange [3024, 2020]

Jonas Friedlich - Jazzersizzzze [RFR, 2018]

Appleblim - Vurstep (Shed Remix) [Boogie Box, 2018]

Ike - Kiwami Formed [INDEX:Records, 2020]

Arkajo - Untitled (Run Away With Me) [Aniara Recordings, 2019]

John Selway - Sliders [Gyroscopic Recordings, 1996]

Patricia - Apoptosis [2020] BOC

Syz - Metafauna [Pseudonym Records, 2020]

Savile - Talk Smile Bite [2017]

Silicon - 0% [Frustrated Funk, 2005]

Asmus Odsat - Tykaepyzo [Fever AM, 2020]

Peder Mannerfelt - A Queen [Voam, 2020]

PREMIERE: heckadecimal - thousands of baby spiders reverse hang gliding

Before a live set in June 2018, Josh Bestgen realized he left a power supply for his Avalon Bassline synth, the “heart of [his] setup,” at home. “I was annoyed, but I had enough stuff that I could still play, so I did.” Had the cord made it into his bag, that Heckadecimal set would’ve sounded a bit like his upcoming LP Spider Dreams. Luckily, Josh recorded a practice set beforehand, “so that’s what half the reease is based on...the other half is just sort of tracks from over the years, some recent, and some actually quite old.”

“Thousands of Baby Spiders Reverse Hang Gliding” is the uptempo seventh cut from the record. After tying up loose ends from the prior track, “Baby Spiders” gives way to a melancholy synth line, which stands in stark contrast to the track’s quick, stuttering hi-hats and muffled kick. Midway through, a couple of slippery dueling acid basslines take over and drive the energy up. “I used my Machinedrum to remix synth riffs and beats on the fly,” Josh said of his process. “It’s pretty fucking fun.”

Spider Dreams drops on Thursday, February 18, and is available for preorder digitally or on CD from Diffuse Reality Records.

Follow Heckadecimal: SoundCloud / Bandcamp / Always Human Tapes / Instagram

flyover 2: elysium alps

Friends of Jamie Larson wouldn’t describe him as “chaotic." The soft-spoken Bogotá-born, Duluth-raised, Minneapolis-based producer and DJ projects an outwardly calm, quiet, and collected demeanor, but is a genre-hopping time traveler behind the decks. As Elysium Alps, Jamie first made a name for himself in Twin Cities clubs and basements prior to the pandemic, and has continued honing his musical crafts since its onset. His flyover mix effortlessly jumps from trance to house to techno (Detroit, dub, and minimal), with a dash of oddball leftfield tracks thrown in for good measure. Though he leans on contemporary releases, Jamie’s eclectic listening habits allow him to draw connections others miss between dance tracks new and old. When asked about his listening and selection process, Jamie said that “for better or for worse, it’s sometimes hard to keep my focus on certain things…maybe that’s why I’m into so many different kinds of music...my brain just kind of flips over the course of listening....it’s this scatterbrained attitude towards listening to music [that] translates into the mix.” 

Unwilling to succumb to the chaos, Jamie possesses a well-practiced ability to sort, categorize, and organize the wide variety of tracks that come to mind as he mixes. After looking at the tracklist, you might be skeptical that he connects the dots between the dreamy 90s trance opening track “Epsilon Phase” and “Beauty,” a 2014 Mistress Recordings techno cut by the self-exiled Minneapolis antihero Doubt. But Jamie finds a way. “I try to challenge myself a little bit to see what works and what doesn’t...mixes that might seem kind of difficult in my head, I just test them out and see if they actually work. Some of these weird genre switches don’t make sense on paper or whatever, but once you [put them] in practice, they work...I try to put the genre stuff in the back of my head and find tracks that have a similar feeling.”

In one sequence, Jamie pairs Bakongo’s dark and menacing 2020 UK funky track “Anytime” with a cut from Terrance Dixon’s 2017 LP No More Time, draws a line to Claude Young’s 1997 Elypsia track “Prance,” then yanks us right back to contemporary UK breaks and garage with Nikki Nair’s “Super” and Two Shell’s “Oil Slick,” both released in 2020. After calling attention to ties between UK bass and Detroit techno new and old, he hammers home the point by dropping a Robert Hood remix of Dave Clarke’s “Wisdom To The Wise (Red 2), crystalizing the connection.

Fans of Jamie’s live sets might be surprised to hear him jump around like this. He considered flyover’s freeform online medium a chance to weave tracks that wouldn’t typically play together in front of a live audience. “I wouldn’t play this mix in an actual club, it just wouldn’t work...I wasn’t so concerned about it being as danceable, even though I did play a lot of club music, that wasn’t really the goal of it, it was to be a bit more open and broad as far as track selection.”

After nearly a year without gathering communally in front of large sound systems, plenty of internet mixes and live streams have surfaced in noble but futile attempts to fill the void felt by music lovers and obsessives the world over. Instead of adding another entry in this vein, like his stellar mixes for Kajunga Records and Hennepin County Disco Authority, Jamie decided to record a deeply personal mix, focusing on songs that remind him of people and experiences important to him. “It’s just something kind of intimate...it feels personal to me, this mix, and I hope that’s conveyed. It’s a mix where I was thinking about a lot of different things...like COVID, and being bummed that I can’t go out and see my friends.” Aware that internet mixes are often heard through earbuds or phone speakers rather than large sound systems, he sought to ensure that this mix is enjoyable regardless of how it’s played. “For this mix, and a lot of mixes I record at home, I do a lot of high pass filtering with the low end still up...it kind of has a punchy sound, so you can hear that whether you have low end or not, like it’s kind of more of a knockier sound than just straight-up low muddy bass.”

Also a talented producer, Jamie quietly slips a couple of his own unreleased tracks into the mix, hiding them in plain sight amongst the organized chaos. He sneaks in an edit of Seal’s 1991 R&B hit “Violet,” but if you blink, you’ll miss it. “Layer 42,” an Elysium Alps original, comes in towards the end of the mix, and is characteristically sandwiched between a 90s Fade II Black track that sounds like it could have been released yesterday (featuring a power saw synth and bouncy house beat), and an Adlas Answer Code Request cut that essentially was released yesterday. “It’s different from what I usually release under that moniker,” he said of “Layer 42.” “I took some field recording and used snippets from them as drums...that’s kind of a funny track...the hi-hats on that are actually crickets I recorded on my porch...you can’t really tell, they’re just super processed.” Though field recordings are a new addition to his production, they meld perfectly with his dreamy, ethereal, and genre-blending approach. It’s been a few years since Jamie released Wild Blue, his last proper record, but he’s still an active producer front. Demos and works in progress are floating online in burner SoundCloud accounts and DMs for those in the mood for a musical treasure hunt.

Tracks:

Chapterhouse, Global Communication - Epsilon Phase [Dedicated, 1993]

Ital - Ice Drift (Stalker Mix) [Workshop, 2013]

2Lanes - Fresh Vessel [2019]

Doubt - Beauty [Mistress Recordings, 2014]

Phyzikal Flex - Pandora’s Box [Magic Carpet, 2020]

Seal - Violet (Elysium Alps Edit) [2020]

Neinzer - Nabi [Where To Now?, 2020]

Talismantra - Warmth Reheated [C.S.M.F. Records, 1997]

Alex Falk - Lift [Allergy Season, 2019]

Herron - Billy’s Walk Home [Peder Mannerfelt, 2019]

Bakongo - Anytime [Roska Kicks & Snares, 2020]

Terrence Dixon - 4 [Lower Parts, 2017]

Claude Young - Prance [Elypsia, 1997]

Nikki Nair - Super [Banoffee Pies, 2020]

Two Shell - Oil Slick [Mainframe Audio, 2020]

Dave Clarke - Wisdom To The Wise (Red 2) (Robert Hood Mix) [Deconstruction/Bush, 1996]

DJ Deep - Fluorescent [Childhood, 2020]

Cobblestone Jazz - Hired Touch [!K7, 2007]

Rejected - For The People (DVS1 For Everyone Mix) [Rejected, 2011]

Fade II Black - In Sync [Fragile Records, 1990]

Elysium Alps - Layer 42 [2020]

Adlas - Arrival By Air [Answer Code Request, 2018]

Dj Frankie - أحلام جميلة [Radio Mars, 2019]

Le Dom - Hornet Express [2020]

Autechre - Basscadet (Bcdtmx) [Warp Records, 1994]

Mannequin Lung - City Lights (Mr. Hazeltine Remix feat. Divine Styler) [Plug Research, 1998]

Follow Elysium Alps on IG and SoundCloud

flyover 1: tabby

Opening sets can be rough. In a live setting, the soundcheck might bleed into your first few tracks. Sometimes there’s an issue with the lights, so you find yourself playing to a sound guy on a ladder. Otherwise, the floor is empty. There are probably a few people hanging around the bar, but they definitely aren’t there to hear you play. If you have friends who aren’t the “sorry I missed your set” type, they’re either awkwardly standing around the edge of the room, or worse, feigning enthusiasm as you bring the first kick drum in only to find the subwoofer isn’t on. You might start to wonder if anyone is going to show up, and you might blame yourself for the empty space. Do my tracks suck? Am I a shitty DJ? Do all of my friends hate me? Not once does it cross your mind that you’re playing Kitty Cat Klub on a Tuesday night.

Such moments of self-doubt seem completely foreign to Tabby. The Virginia-born, Minneapolis-based DJ is relentlessly confident, but with good reason; she knows her tracks slap. She cherishes the opportunity to “set the vibe” for the evening, and her opening pre-COVID Stay In Crew set is a testament to that wherewithal. Tabby feels that opening “gives you an opportunity to both play the slower, deeper cuts as well as being able to play more of a diverse sound than a set later in the night...while you might be playing to a much smaller crowd, you have the opportunity to start off much slower and bring up the energy. You can play a wider variety of sounds and create a narrative.” Her approach to opening follows the golden rule of DJing: play to the room. Even if you missed her set at The Aquarium in Fargo last March, you can still hear Tabby start out smooth and easy, building intensity as the night progresses and the floor fills. She wraps up her slot with a series of characteristically bouncy lo-fi house tracks, ready to hand the keys over to the next DJ. The vibe is set.

With Tabby’s penchant for opening in mind, I knew she’d be the perfect DJ to kick off flyover. During a pandemic, opportunities to play in front of more than a few friends in a living room are few and far between, but Tabby was down to shake off the rust and curate a phenomenally selected opening set. She sticks with what works for openers, starting with “What She Had,” a downtempo deep cut from Francis Harris’ 2014 LP Minutes of Sleep. Tabby values Harris’ genre-blending production. “He blurs the line between a deep house track and something more ambient and jazz influenced...the opening track hits an intersection between an almost danceable beat and an ethereal ambient sound that was a great place to open up the mix and prep ears for the journey.” The oscillation on that track, followed by Auscultation’s 100% Silk cut “Turn Down These Voices,'' which bleeds into Yaeji’s drippy, nostalgic vocals on Mall Grab’s “Mountain,” set the tone with algorithmically precise vibe cohesion. The mix itself also oscillates initially; the acid bassline from Urulu’s “Mushroom Valve'' makes you think we’re leaving deep house territory for darker dystopic techno vibes, until its sparkly synth riff and distinctly lo-fi house vocal sample kick in and guide us back to hanging plant utopia.

Throughout her mix, Tabby builds energy with tracks that sound like they were destined to play together. “I look for a set of tracks that both take you on a journey, but also flow into each other thoughtfully. I want tracks that sound different enough from each other so that the mix isn’t stagnant but still a cohesive progression of sound.” A third of the way through, she kicks it into high gear and doesn’t look back; the point of no return comes when the hi-hat on Armless Kid’s “Deep Energy” cuts out for a few bars. If that organ and saccharine stuttering vocal sample didn’t clue you in, the crash cymbal that relieves the hi-hat of duty definitely will. From there on out, we enter the Lobster Theremin zone. Tabby’s choice cuts from one of her favorite labels and its sublabel Lost Palms glue the rest of the mix together, but not without the help of heaters from Gnork and House 2 House. On “Blorp93,” Gnork contributes what might be the catchiest rave piano riff of all time. The vocals on House 2 House’s “Music Is” remind us more succinctly than I ever could of what this is all about: “many struggle to define what makes this music feel so good. The answer, quite simply, is soul. Music is to be felt.”

Follow Tabby on SoundCloud and IG.

Tracks:

Francis Harris - What She Had [2014, Scissor and Thread]

Auscultation - Turn Down These Voices [2020, 100% Silk]

Mall Grab - Mountain ft. Yaeji [2016]

Hidden Spheres - Beachy [2017, Distant Hawaii]

COEO - Clouds [2017, Lagaffe Tales]

Derek Carr - A Hundred Dreams [2019, Just Jack Recordings]

Urulu - Mushroom Valve [2018, Voyage Recordings]

YYY - 金344 [2018, YYY Series]

Paperkraft - No Other [2016, Step Back Trax]

Togethrs - Feeling Lovely [2018]

Armless Kid - Deep Energy [2019, Vertv Records]

COMPUTER DATA - Seele [2020, Lost Palms]

Dumbo Beat - The Big Sales Of Broken Watches (Fabrizio Maurizi Remix) [2019, Smoud Traxx]

Em-Wa Tanner - Numeric [2017, Dinsubsol]

Guy from Downstairs - Lamps [2020, Pleasure Zone]

DJOKO - Washed Away [2019, PIV Records]

Sweely - Stronger Than Me [2017, Lobster Theremin]

House 2 House - Music Is (1997 Version) [2020, District 30]

Youandewan - Cauliflower Wing [2019, Small Hours]

Funk Fox - Super Fine [2018]

Gnork - Blorp93 [2013, Blind Jacks Journey]

Subjoi - Joy [2020, Lost Palms]

Maruwa - On My Mind [2019, Lobster Theremin]

Raw M.T. - WWM [2020, Lobster Theremin]