flyover
an open-format music series featuring artists with ties to the midwest underground
flyover 12: TML
On a Tuesday night in November 2023, four Minneapolis DJs played at Brooklyn’s Bossa Nova Civic Club. We’re excited to present TML’s closing set from that evening. The mix is a dark and heavy beatdown that eludes classification. It’s full of sharp turns, hard techno, banging electro, and leftfield heaters old and new.
TML, or Peter Lansky for long, visits NYC regularly. “I try to go once a year to see friends and hear as much music as I can,” he said after his most recent trip last November, “and eat food.” That trip also presented Peter with the opportunity to close down Midnight Creatures, a recurring night thrown by Minneapolis’ Acme Collective at Bossa Nova Civic Club. Peter shared a bill with Minneapolis mainstays Byzarra, Llyynnxx, Ori The Ghost, and Acme boss Gerardo, who DJs as El Niño Indigo. Kanyon provided local support and played “one of the better live techno sets” Peter’s heard in years. His set as TML was recorded between 2 and 4 a.m.
About half of the tracks Peter played that night were brand new; many of them were released just days or weeks before the set. How does he stay up on new releases and seamlessly weave those new tracks in with the old?
“It's like a disease,” Peter said of his music discovery process. “Obsessive” is another word he used. A lifelong music lover, Peter first noticed symptoms in high school, symptoms that became overbearing when he started throwing parties and playing DJ sets. “There was a long time where that is all I was doing,” he said. “I got in the habit of going through large amounts of music every single week.”
On a Friday night in July 2015, Peter was double-booked at First Ave. Not long before LCD Soundsystem’s late-2015 reunion, frontman James Murphy rolled through Minneapolis to DJ in the Mainroom, and Peter opened. Upstairs in the Record Room, a Minneapolis techno crew called System flew in British Murder Boy and Downwards Records co-founder Regis for a heavy, heady club night. Peter was on that bill as well.
“That was a crazy night,” he reminisced with a laugh. “I played my first [ever] live set before Regis, and James Murphy was up there watching me. I was like, this is fucked…it was surreal because I was so nervous about this live set, but I had known James Murphy for a while, so he came up and watched, and I was like, I'm sure he's so disappointed in me [for] playing live techno.”
Peter recalls the night foggily. His partner Sarah was also there. “Sarah was drinking a Red Bull, and James Murphy yoinked the Red Bull out of her hand and was like, hold on, I'm gonna make you coffee…part of his [rider] was a coffee setup in the green room. He also had a champagne rider that he did not expect to be filled, but it was filled, and I was the only opener, so I drank so much super expensive champagne…I had to open Glam Doll Donuts the next morning…so my alarm was going off at 6:30. I fell asleep on the couch, and [Sarah] was shaking me awake…yeah, it was a crazy night.”
How did Peter end up drinking James Murphy’s top-shelf champagne in the First Ave green room after playing two gigs in the storied venue in the same night? To find out, we have to go back nearly ten more years, back to the founding of a party named for an LCD Soundsystem track.
On a Saturday night in September 2006, First Ave took a chance on Peter. They gave him the keys to the VIP Room (later renamed the Record Room) for a monthly dance party with a rock lean.
“Too Much Love” would be the name, a nod to the second track on LCD Soundsystem's first LP. Peter would DJ as Sovietpanda, the name of his music blog, in part to help establish an identity that emerged from the internet into the physical world.
It’s worth noting that LCD Soundsystem and DFA Records aren’t just a passing interest for Peter–by the time Too Much Love began, he was already enmeshed in a DFA community that he helped foster. Peter started the DFA Records Livejournal community in the early 2000s, and was on first-name terms with James Murphy and Jon Galkin, DFA’s founders, long before the first drink was spilled on the Too Much Love dancefloor.
At the height of the buzzy music blog era, Too Much Love supplied college-aged Twin Cities revelers and music junkies with a direct injection of floor-ready hits and remixes of old and new dance and rock tracks. Too Much Love quickly built an audience and took over First Ave’s Mainroom on Saturday nights, where it held a weekly residency for six years, before returning to the Record Room and wrapping up in 2014.
After establishing credibility and gathering momentum, Peter was able to book everyone from local DJs to international touring acts. “I booked a bunch of DFA folks and Tim Sweeney, and whenever, like, LCD or Holy Ghost! would come into town, we would have them [play],” he recalled. “But I [also] had Dustin [Zahn], Zak [DVS1], Steve [Centrific], and Silent Servant…Silent Servant played the best Too Much Love set ever, because he played the blog stuff and the DFA stuff, probably stuff you'd never hear him play, because he got the history of the party. He understood it.”
With a $3 cover that was liquidated to $1 with a student ID, Peter didn’t pay full rates for these acts. He often booked acts who were already coming to the Twin Cities for another show after making “humble offers” that artists accepted.
“I just wanted people in the room,” Peter said of the bargain bin door price. “I booked all these other DJs through word of mouth. We lucked out to have LCD and Arcade Fire in town on a Saturday…First Ave did get them limousines to all come down and play [the party]. That was during the first year [that] we were in the Mainroom. We also had Diplo that month, which was an accident, but those [bookings] helped with word of mouth around town.”
Word of the unique and intensely enthusiastic vibe of the parties traveled quickly. “[The] LCD and Hot Chip guys, when their friends were coming [from] overseas, they'd be like, if you want to go to this party, it's weird. They're a bunch of kids losing their minds to whatever.”
On Saturday, February 3, 2024, Too Much Love will return to First Ave. For the first time, the party will be held in the 7th Street Entry.
As for the new venue, Peter wants a more vibey atmosphere than a Mainroom slosher can provide, and the Record Room is long gone; Theory of a Dead Man rocked too hard in 2015 and brought First Ave’s intimate club crashing through the Mainroom’s ceiling. After repairs, First Ave did not reopen the room, leaving a massive hole in the Twin Cities’ underground nightlife that, nearly a decade later, has not been filled.
Peter hopes attendees don’t expect a rose-tinted cash grab for this round of TML in the Entry. “I'm missing clubs a little bit, so I was like, I'll do it in a smaller room. I'll play all night. It's not going to be a nostalgia thing. It's not going to be a throwback thing,” he said. “I'll play music from the time, but not just bloghouse…I want to make sure that people know not to expect, I don't know, Crookers remixes or something.”
Anyone who shows up to Too Much Love in 2024 expecting to relive their indie sleaze glory days might be missing the point. “Too Much Love, for me, even though we played old music at the time, was very much an anti-nostalgia thing. The best times are now, the best music is coming out now. I want to showcase new music, so I wouldn't want to do a throwback party.”
The Bossa set reveals avenues of sonic exploration Peter may take during Too Much Love 2024. “The Bossa party is what I'd been missing,” he said. “It's such a great place. It's small, it has a fog machine, it has great cocktails…I don't know why we don't have that here, but I love that place, and I was so happy when Gerardo asked me to play…it was a total blast.”
“We were talking about the disease…I don't know what compels me to keep doing this. [But] after that night, I was like, oh yeah, this is kind of what it is.”
Tracklist:
Florian Kupfer - Dereliction [Ediciones Capablanca, 2023]
Stenny - Onda [Ilian Tape, 2023]
Simo Cell - Whispers [TemeT, 2021]
Ron Morelli - Put Your Head On The Floor And Have Somebody Step On It [Bite, 2020]
Geeneus - Ja Know [Dump Valve Recordings, 2001/Bingo Beats, 2004]
L/F/D/M - Bang!
[Urban Kickz Recordings, 2022]
Mala - B [Self-reissued, 2021]
Surgeon - Box [Tresor, 1998]
Atrice - Backrooms [Ilian Tape, 2022]
DJ Slip - Track 4 [Missile Records, 1996/2016]
Privacy - Python [Klakson, 2020]
Regis / Female - Backlash (Mix 1) [Belief Systems, 1997/Downwards, 2020]
Vladimir Dubyshkin - I Decided To Fly [трип, 2018]
Rhyw - Sharknado [Voam, 2022]
Mosca - Laminar Flow [Rent, 2023]
Luca Duran - Ojos Cerrados (Laksa’s 3rd eye rolla’ Remix) [2023]
Major Lazer, J.Balvin, El Alfa - Que Calor (Cardozo edit) [2023]
Blawan - Justsa [Ternesc, 2021]
Deathplate - Untitled (Stable Mix) [2021]
Reptant - The Clique’s Clack [TRUST, 2022]
Stenny - Quadra [Ilian Tape, 2023]
Rhyw - Engine Track [Fever AM, 2023]
Ctrls - Sleepkillers [Micron Audio, 2022]
ABSL & Anetha - Boa Dormant [Mama Told Ya, 2023]
Guber - Wrong Ibiza (Ploy Remix) [宀 Music, 2022]
Talismann - Xilverback [Talismann, 2021]
Pariah - Squishy Windows [Fever AM, 2022]
hkkptr - organik [Silencer, 2023]
Privacy - Go [Klakson, 2019]
Pearson Sound - Cobwebs [Hessle Audio, 2020]
DJ Gonz - Further Trip [SELN Recordings, 2022]
Skanna - Heaven [Skanna, 1993]
No Spiritual Surrender - Spinning Circles [L.I.E.S. Records, 2019]
Dillinja - Deadly Deep Subs (Remix) [Deadly Vinyl, 1994/Razors Edge, 1996/Metalheadz, 2015]
Fischerspooner - Emerge [International DeeJay Gigolo, 2001]
Follow TML on Instagram and SoundCloud
flyover 11: tekk nikk
We sat down with Nikki Pfeifer, aka Tekk Nikk, to talk about her flyover mix, unseen realms, and her path to electronic music. Some quotes were edited for clarity.
We sat down with Nikki Pfeifer, aka Tekk Nikk, to talk about her flyover mix, unseen realms, and her path to electronic music. Some quotes were edited for clarity.
JF: Thank you for contributing the mix! I think it's really fun. To start out, could you tell us a bit about your musical background?
NP: I started being classically trained in piano when I was two. I played piano ‘til I was about 16. I also played violin. I was classically trained in violin for about eight years after that. I played trumpet, I played French horn…
JF: That's a ton of instruments.
NP: Yeah. Once you pick up piano, it's a really good foundation for other instruments.
JF: Why did you move on to so many different instruments after learning piano?
NP: I'm a taskmaster, and I love taking on a new challenge. I get high off of it…learning new things has [always] been a pattern for me…but I don't always hold on to the thing long enough to master it. I'm usually onto the next thing.
JF: So [with piano], you got to a point where you felt comfortable with your skill level and wanted a new challenge?
NP: Exactly…It's how I'm wired. I think it helps to know what our astro chart is, what our numerology is, to understand how we're wired. Instead of evaluating, like, what's wrong with me, it just helps you understand, Oh, this is actually how I am, and it's okay. I have a Capricorn stellium and [the number] five heavily influences my life path in numerology. Rapid change, death and rebirth.
CS: That comes through even in this mix, it's totally different from anything that we've heard from you before.
JF: Has creating, performing, and playing music always been an important part of your life?
NP: It got there eventually. In grade school and high school, I was in all the choirs. When I graduated, my older brother told me I have a buddy, he's got a studio. He'll offer you free time. You should go in there and start writing. So that's when being a songwriter became a thing in my life. I was a bit of a late bloomer, I was about 23 when I started songwriting.
After that, I was hooked. I started integrating into the music scene here and really enjoying the creative process. The people who I met in the scene…it was [all] something that I didn't have access to growing up in New Ulm and Mankato, very rural areas of Minnesota.
JF: What kind of music were you performing when you first started?
NP: More on the baroque-pop tip. Very piano-based. It's not what I'm into now.
[Later on,] I started seeking out electronic music. A former band member guided me towards electronic instruments, like the Dave Smith Prophet ‘08, which is a monster, way too much for anybody first getting into synthesizers to handle. But that Prophet ‘08 was monumental. I had it pretty much the whole time I did Devata Daun, and haven't turned back from electronic music since.
JF: Could you tell us a bit more about that project? Like, the sound that y'all were going for?
NP: Yeah. When I started writing those pieces, I found a really run-down Casio at Goodwill, and I loved it. I could harness the sounds specific to that instrument. I started writing on that and then decided that I had enough tracks to put a record together. [I started] asking friends [to recommend] a good progressive electronic producer in town, and they all pointed me towards Ryan Olcott. And then, he and I wrote my record, and we started Pytch Records. We had a very specific sound using tape deviant effects and slowing down, pitching down with a tape machine. At the time we were calling it lo-fi electronic and future R&B.
JF: I know that you really like R&B.
NP: I grew up listening to R&B, [and] it heavily influences the undertones of how I write, and even this mix…there are a lot of R&B and soul flavors within the lineage of garage.
I grew up listening to TLC, Boyz II Men, some early Missy Elliot, Keith Sweat, Bell Biv DeVoe…just some of that good eighties, nineties, early two-thousands R&B. Aaliyah was a huge influence for me, and I still carry [that] on…not only in music [and] writing, but I love the moxie that [R&B] carries. I very much embody that. It's got sass, it's sexy.
When I pick tracks [I want] music that makes me move. If it doesn't make my hips and head twerk, it doesn't hold my interest for very long.
JF: You were working more on production before DJing. Why did you decide to switch to DJing as your primary outlet?
NP: I was in a creative rut with production. I felt a little stuck. Writing live sets as Tekk Nikk, doing live hardware sets, I was feeling exhausted from that. Writing a set is like writing a record. I felt that it was a good time to put that on the back burner in order to take DJing to the level that I’ve wanted to for so many years…I've been intimidated by the level of DJing that happens within friends and the local circle. I needed to set that aside so that I could put all my energy into DJing and learn on CDJs, learn on mixers, and really, really devote that time to those machines.
JF: What are you vibing with right now?
NP: A lot of UK labels. Breakbeats. Like, if it's got a breakbeat, I'm already drawn to it. And then if there's some garage and UK bass, some grime in there…
I've been trying to put this mix together for the last like four or five months and just couldn't get my shit together. And then all of a sudden, right before, like a week before I sat down to record this, I was able to find these tracks within like a couple of days.
CS: The majority of it?
NP: Almost all of it.
CS: Oh, wow.
NP: Yeah. I had a whole different tracklist at the beginning of summer…I just have changed so much through that time that I was like, No, that's not what I want anymore…it just came together in a very short amount of time.
JF: Why do you think it went like that?
NP: I zeroed in on the sound. I figured out what I really, really like. At the beginning of the year, I had a gig where I played a dub techno set. Then at Communion [in Minneapolis], I played a microhouse set.
JF: Do you see yourself sticking with this sound for a little bit?
NP: I'm gonna change probably tomorrow. That's just my M.O.
CS: If there's a connection with your spiritual side, how does that affect the trajectory of your music?
NP: I feel very connected to the unseen realms, and music…we can't see it, but we can sure fucking feel it. It makes you physically wanna do things. I think there's so much magic that you can do with trying to embody how your persona is, how your spirit is, and then trying to translate it to a dance floor. You're trying to communicate through an unseen form of communication.
It’s all spiritual. I don't know. I think we're all drawn to electronic and techno because there's alien DNA in us. It's a familiar way to talk to each other.
CS: Space music.
NP: Space music. Yeah. Alien presence.
JF: What do you mean there's alien DNA in us?
NP: We're all from the cosmos. That's my belief. There are pieces of us from other places. This is just part of our existence on this planet.
JF: We're all made of star stuff.
NP: We've all had out-of-body experiences on the dance floor. It's something you can't even put into words, it's like you're out of your physical self at that point. And that's what music is. It helps you get there.
Tracklist:
SSA - Move Into Light (Set Me Free) [2022]
Boddika - Heat [Swamp 81, 2013]
Beatrice Dillon and Call Super - Inkjet [Hessle Audio, 2017]
Sister Zo - Don’t Test Me [Scuffed Recordings, 2022]
Pangaea - New Shapes In The Air [HADAL, 2015]
Klein Zage - Absolutely (Ariel Zetina Remix) [Orphan Records, 2019]
Steffi, CYRK - Lublaby (Original Mix) [Burial Soil, 2022]
Rhyw - Just in Case [Seilscheibenpfeiler, 2020]
KIMIKO - Turbo [2020]
Law - Get Right [SAFE.RAVER, 2022]
Liebus - Where’s The Cat [Holding Hands Submerged, 2022]
Yaleesa Hall - Zoe Price [Will & Ink, 2018]
Boddika - Basement [Swamp 81, 2012]
Villager - Rave Bender [Pretty Weird, 2022]
Cadans - No Connection (Broken Mix) [Clone Basement Series, 2019]
Spectr, Bakongo - Off Guard [Hotflush Recordings, 2021]
Nikki Nair - Startrack [Pretty Weird, 2022]
Atonism - Trayectory [Warok, 2021]
Syz - Bunzunkunzun [Control Freak, 2020]
Anna Kost - Cr 22 [Who, Whom? / Hotflush Recordings, 2022]
Mosca - Shut Everything Down [Rent, 2022]
Ayesha - Ecstatic Descent [Scuffed Recordings, 2021]
KIMIKO - Like Hot Butterfly [2020]
Nikki Nair - 1overf [2022]
Fracture & Sam Binga - Conditional [Astrophonica, 2022]
LCY - Milan [SOS Music, 2020]
DJ Stingray 313 - Reverse Engineering [WéMè Records, 2012]
Carl Gari - Fred [Mother's Finest, 2020]
Bakonga & Scuba - Over Again (Hassan Abou Alam Percussive Tool) [Hotflush Recordings, 2022]
Julianna - The Flying Soda feat. Zadig [Nuits Sonores, 2022]
Yung.Raj - Buzzkill [Daytimers, 2021]
Nasty King Kurl - Complicated [Mother's Finest, 2020]
Follow Tekk Nikk on Instagram and SoundCloud
flyover 10: hyperkarma
We sat down with longtime DJ Jennifer Waege, aka Hyperkarma, to talk about her flyover mix, 90s Minneapolis goth parties, and DIYing noise nights in Reno, NV. Some quotes were edited for clarity.
We sat down with longtime DJ Jennifer Waege, aka Hyperkarma, to talk about her flyover mix, 90s Minneapolis goth parties, and DIYing noise nights in Reno, NV. Some quotes were edited for clarity.
JF: Thanks for contributing a mix. We haven't done EBM before; I'm excited to go a little darker than we've had the chance to yet. What draws you to EBM?
JW: Ooof, well…that's kind of a big loaded question. I think that kind of music gave me my first real feeling of just really [letting] go on the dancefloor. I've always gravitated towards darker, more emotional music without really understanding why, and then it became about the sound. Before I was into EBM, [I was into] industrial, experimental, and straight-up goth rock. I've been DJing since 2003, and I've always [played] goth, industrial, darkwave, and EBM.
It wasn't until I started playing for [Minneapolis goth night] Dark Energy that I started to expand my musical horizons and find stuff outside of the traditional goth/industrial scene. Going to those early Dark Energy parties gave me a better sense of myself and the kind of music I like.
Now [I’m] digging into underground record labels and finding so much music out there that fits the feeling that goth/industrial music gave me when I first started listening to it…it's really exciting to find stuff that fits in your body and lets you let go. EBM and darker sounds in general [gave] me a better sense of myself, and helped me process things that I wasn't able to consciously.
JF: It sounds like it's aided a process of self-discovery.
JW: Oh yeah, definitely. The last few years especially, finding leftfield sounds that are EBM, new beat, and that hypnotic feeling of techno…it kind of created its own sound. It's been a wild ride.
CS: What were some of your formative experiences with goth nights?
JW: I moved to Minneapolis when I was 19, and I went to First Ave a lot. I went to dance nights like Sunday Night Dance Party, and they played stuff like Nitzer Ebb and Nine Inch Nails, but all the goth clubs were 21 and over. As soon as I turned 21, I [started going to] Hard Mondays at The Saloon. I didn't have friends that were into that music, [so] I decided to go on my own. It was a really scary experience. I was used to going out by myself [in] downtown Minneapolis in the 90s. But like, going to the goth club, it just seemed kind of dangerous. Like, ooh, what's gonna happen? Is there gonna be sex stuff going on in the corner? Because they did bondage scenes there. So I don't know, I just knew it sounded wild and different and fun and dark and weird, and I wanted to check it out.
[My first time at Hard Mondays], I remember hanging out at the far side of the dancefloor after I got a drink, a very strong drink, listening to the music [and] really liking it. Everyone was dressed beautifully and so different than [what] I was used to. Seeing people on the dancefloor being authentically themselves, and [noticing] the looks of bliss on their faces…I wanted it. But I was standing back there with my drink, just kind of shaking, like, oh my God, this is so good, trying to work up the courage to go dance. And then the newest Depeche Mode song came on, “It's No Good,” and I was like, oh my god, I love this. I was like, okay, you're just gonna have to go dance. I went out there and kind of swayed and looked around, like, okay, this is good, and [I] just let go. I had this moment of [realization] like this is where I belong. I was hooked, I [started] going every week, and went to Ground Zero on the weekends.
It gave me a sense of community, and it was my community for a very long time. It brought me to DJing.
JF: So you started DJing in 2003…what were some of your first gigs?
JW: I was living in Reno with my ex-husband, Jason Hollis. We moved out there so he could work with his dad, his family was out there. Reno is a pretty, um…not a very cultured place, especially in 2003 when we moved there. There were no goth nights; there weren't really any good dance nights. We spent a lot of time driving to Sacramento and San Francisco so we could go to shows and go dancing, [which] got cost prohibitive.
So we decided, well, let's just fucking do it ourselves. We started throwing noise shows. Jason was booking, promoting, playing, and trying to get everything set up. Someone [needed] to DJ between the bands, so we got two rack-mounted CD players and a two-channel Behringer mixer. I got busy downloading music and burning CDs. I put a lot of effort into curating my sets [and] picking music, but then it was like, well, what BPM is this? I knew I was supposed to try to match the music…I could tap in [the tempo] on the mixer and do my best. But there was no beatmatching going on; it was just tip-to-tail stuff. I knew early on what [I was] supposed to do, but had to learn on my own.
It was fun; it was exciting. For the next couple of years that we lived there, we were throwing shows as much as we could…[we booked] goth bands, industrial bands, power noise, ambient stuff, all the weirdo shit that was out there.
[Later on] we did a night called Interzone. We got the name from a Joy Division track. We teamed up with a couple of guys [who played] some of the better electronic music in town. They had great record collections of old new wave stuff.
I switched to digital DJing at that point…even [then] it was primarily a goth/new wave night, but I'd always try to push the limits [and] play some harsher stuff, some indie rock stuff…I can't play just goth stuff.
When I moved back to Minneapolis in early 2014, I thought we finally lived in a place where we don't have to throw the events anymore. We can just go out and have fun, you know? It started out that way, and then, of course, everyone I make friends with I meet through music. Talking about my DJing experience naturally comes into [the] conversation. Some people [found] out that [I’m] a DJ and asked me to play some events.
I was a little reluctant at first…I never got into DJing because it was something I wanted to do, it was something I did out of necessity, [because I] needed someplace to go and dance.
I think it was the Goth Prom people [in Minneapolis] who I eventually said yes to. Once I played that first gig here to a large crowd, it got me again. It felt fucking good.
JF: We should talk about the mix a little bit. You mentioned Pinkman is one of your favorite labels.
JW: Yeah, Pinkman [is] in there heavily. Them and brokntoys. As I'm [selecting tracks], I generally don't see what the label is. Every time I put together a mix, it's labor intensive. I listen to a lot of music when I'm putting these playlists together, and seeing that preliminary playlist that I put together, I was kind of shocked. Like, wow, it's almost all Pinkman and brokntoys, [but] they're two record labels that exemplify a sound. [All of the] brokntoys surprised me because I considered it more breaky, but I have been trying to like play more electro/breaky stuff.
I was happy to see that my tastes are changing…it's nice to know that it's not static. It can be easy to know what you like and just buy what you like, you know? For this mix, I was repeatedly getting hit with oh, this feels good for it.
Upcoming gigs:
Sep 02 - Dark Energy Vampire Ball, PNA Hall
Sep 23 - Technosferatu, Mpls
Sep 24 - ROK Eatery, St. Paul
Sep 30 - Stranger Gallery EP Release Party, Icehouse
Oct 08 - Surly Brewing, Mpls
Oct 29 - Constantine, Mpls
Nov 27 - Sanctum Festival, Chicago
Tracks:
Vltra Delta Drive - El Complot [brokntoys, Endless Illusion, 2019]
Benedikt Frey - Can You Feel The Pain [Crème Organization, 2015]
Identified Patient - OCTrax [Pinkman, 2018]
Lokier - Screws In Paradise [Pinkman, 2019]
Scarlit Port - VIRTUAL (r i t u a l) [Tripalium Records, 2019]
Alessandro Parisi - Cosmica 1999 [Charlois, 2016]
Annanan & Maroje T. - Confrontation In Terms Of Sexuality [Pinkman, 2017]
Poperttelli - Merditocraty [brokntoys, 2020]
La Mverte - Nigredo (Javi Redondo Remix) [Les Enfers, 2021]
Silent Servant - Solitude Illuminated [L.I.E.S. Records, 2022]
Ernestas Sadau - Riots In Jail Near Kaunas [Pinkman, 2017]
G String - Seductive Games [Pinkman, 2017]
Olivia - Dancing Snake [Pinkman, 2020]
Alessandro Adriani - Symmetry [Stroboscopic Artefacts, 2019]
Solar - 5 Seconds [Squirrels On Film, 2017]
Kluentah - Wanna Bang [Dischi Autunno, 2021]
Maenad Veyl - Sotto Gli Occhi di Tutti [Pinkman, 2018]
Exhausted Modern - The One [eidetic, 2017]
Pip Williams - ASBO Youth [brokntoys, 2013]
Foreign Sequence - Is This The Limit [brokntoys, 2021]
Peeping Tom - Outraged Keyplayer [Pinkman, 2015]
POLANSKI - Limbless Tree (Angel Attack Remix) [House Of Reptile, 2020]
Richard Sen - Song Of Pressure (The Asphodells Remix) [[Emotional] Especial, 2014]
Follow Hyperkarma on SoundCloud
flyover 9: encino
We recently sat down with Encino, better known as Tristan Hafner, to talk about his flyover set. Some quotes were edited for clarity.
Jacob: You're fairly new to DJing, right?
Tristan: Mm-hmm.
Jacob: When did you get started?
Tristan: I guess I was always on the periphery…in college, I started re-exposing myself to dance music…I listened to trance in middle school, but I never dove into it seriously. I was into metal, [which had a similar] energy to the dubstep and drum and bass coming out at the time, but I never dove into those…so it's only been about a year.
Jacob: How did you find that entry point, where you could start digging and finding tracks that ended up in this mix?
Tristan: I think my biggest inspiration, and probably the whole reason I got so motivated to get into electronic music, was seeing Petra [~~] play [last summer], and just the wide range of leftfield bass and new sounds [she played that] I hadn’t heard before. It blew my mind, the way she was able to piece together a mix that cycled through so many different emotions, moods, and genres.
I guess that was the type of music I sought out first, and that directed me towards labels like All Centre and Livity Sound. Then I dove deep into the leftfield/UK funky weird stuff. Prior to that, I was listening to tons of reggaeton and afrobeat, so I gravitated towards more of those equatorial, hot and humid sounds. Getting on Bandcamp was really cool…once I discovered how to navigate it, I could almost think of a track in my head and just dig hard enough to find the sound that I wanted.
Jacob: Does any of that influence come through on this mix?
Tristan: Oh, for sure…towards the middle there's a lot of dembow-style beats. I tried to keep certain motifs throughout the mix, like those drums and nature sounds.
Cameron: You spent some time in the global south..that probably had some say in the sounds that you were looking for.
Tristan: For sure. I spent three months in Colombia, sort of in my quarter-life crisis. I quit my job, went down there, and studied Spanish for a while. I got exposed to the nightlife scene there…I went to some clubs, but also just fell in love with reggaeton and the way [people] club there. There's such a…cohesive aspect to it…people go out, they're clubbing together, and they know all the lyrics…that inspired me to seek out that type of club music and energy.
Cameron: You mentioned you got into electronic music through trance, then dubstep and drum bass.
Tristan: Going back even further, when I was like five or six, I had this super hot babysitter named Sara, and she would play La Bouche on cassette in her Ford Taraus all the time. That was the first time I was exposed to dance music…the classic nineties club sound, Haddaway, that whole thing. At the time, I was mostly listening to alternative rock that my parents listened to…but there was something that hit a different note when I was hearing that [dance] music. Like, this is a mysterious pleasure. I had a little Walkman radio, and I would stay up super late in bed at night, just listening to KMOJ and R&B…that felt like, this is what I really like, the beats and the groove. And then, yeah, I think when trance was popular, when I was in middle school, I listened to, like, Paul Oakenfold and Armin Van Buuren…but never on a super serious level. Then I think the most I got into it was the dubstep wave, and drum and bass.
Cameron: Is that when you started understanding how the whole ecosystem worked? That's how it was for me with dubstep. It was like, Oh, this is a label, they have a cohesive thing, these artists are on this label and they're also on this label. Or did that come more recently?
Tristan: I think that came more recently. I think at that point I was just finding dubstep tracks I liked and listening to them.
Cameron: I feel like we have fairly similar tastes…my initial foray into electronic music with dubstep is hugely influential [to me]. The energy of dubstep really comes through in a lot of this new leftfield stuff. A lot of artists on Livity Sound were dubstep producers.
Tristan: Yeah, totally. Seeing some of those names pop up that I recognize from back in 2010 or whenever, I think it is definitely influenced by that. Dubstep, when it came out, it was such a new, different sound, and I'm sort of having that whole experience again.
Cameron: Totally. There's just so much magical stuff.
Tristan: Yeah. And it's a hundred times better now, because there's so much, and I have so many more tools available to find [its] really unique corners…back when I was into dubstep, I knew about FabricLive, and would hear [those] mixes, and then maybe look at a tracklist. There was no Bandcamp, no way [for me] to explore music at such a crazy-deep level.
Jacob: How did people do it before Bandcamp came around?
Cameron: Record stores.
Tristan: Yeah.
Jacob: Oh, right.
I didn't know about the dubstep connection, but it makes sense. As far as the leftfield sound goes, it's not like it just came out of thin air, it has a foundation in UK club music…when people talk genre-bending, it doesn't just materialize…it has to grow out of something.
Cameron: It's an amalgamation of everything that's come before, but especially this kind of stuff is tied in with, like, experimental Bristol, deep dubstep stuff. So, the joke’s on everybody, you're listening to dubstep again.
Jacob: It sounds like you grew up listening to a fair amount of music. Did you play at all?
Tristan: I was actually in a death metal band in high school. And then when I went to college in Duluth, I connected with people in the punk and metal scene.
Jacob: What'd you play in that death metal band?
Tristan: Guitar. We were a three-piece, just drums, me and a vocalist. It was mostly kind of thrashy metalcore. When I went to college in Duluth, I connected with people in the punk and metal scene. Then I met Matt [Cloudy Kid], and we started to mess around with hardware a little bit. I had an Electribe, a MiniKorg, and a Kaoss Pad, [but] I could never quite get the focus to produce tracks...
Jacob: Is production something that you're still interested in?
Tristan: Definitely. I want to save up some money to buy some sort of basic setup, but I'm not in a rush to do it because I'm having so much fun with mixing…I'm pretty content doing that right now, finding my style and my groove, but this process is definitely informing me of the directions I want to go.
Jacob: Do you know what direction you want to head as far as style or genre goes? Or do you want to find out when you get the stuff and see where the inspiration takes you?
Tristan: I think I'm still exploring the sound I want to go towards as a DJ…I do love the leftfield bass, and I wanted to use that to represent myself in this mix. But lately, I'm like…just kind of schooling myself in raw techno and house.
Jacob: Have you settled on a DJ name?
Tristan: I think I'm gonna go with Encino.
Jacob: What's the story behind that?
Tristan: I was trying to think of names, and I was laying on my couch…I looked over at [my] bookcase full of VHS tapes and I saw Encino Man there, and was like, that's kind of a cool word. I love that movie. I think it evokes the nineties…I've been really into nineties house and techno lately, and I [thought], “well, that's cool.” Then I looked up what it means…in Spanish it means oak tree. We had massive oaks in my parent's yard growing up that I always was mesmerized by, and it just felt right.
Tracklist:
Olof Dreijer - Echoes From Mamori [Montehermoso, 2009]
Knopha - Gym B [Regret Sound, 2020]
Big Ever - Otto [Incienso, 2021]
Via Maris - CU2 [Livity Sound, 2018]
Hydromantic - Pipe Phase [Lifetones, 2020]
Anunaku - Stargate [3024, 2020]
Syz - Myst [Only Ruins, 2018]
Manao - Estela [Saturnlove, 2020]
Logic1000 - Her [Therapy, 2021]
Photonz - Badagas [Naive, 2021]
Two Shell - Heart Piece [Livity Sound, 2019]
BFTT - Ofusc [Gobstopper Records, 2019]
Karima F - Crab Ride [Schloss Records, 2021]
Farsight - Flash Flood [Tropopause Records, 2021]
Roska, なかむらみなみ - Pree Me feat. なかむらみなみ (Hodge Remix) [Trekkie Trax, 2021]
Ayesha - Potential Energy [Scuffed Recordings, 2021]
Mani Festo - Eraser [Sneaker Social Club, 2021]
Barker - Utility [Ostgut Ton, 2019]
Tano - No Days Off (Coqui of Life) [In Armatura, 2021]
Mucho Sueño - Rendering [All Centre, 2021]
Cameo Blush - Red Tarn [Unknown-Untitled, 2020]
Sobolik - Iris [All Centre, 2021]
So&So - Water Feature at Night [Reel Long Overdub, 2020]
Follow Encino on SoundCloud
flyover 8: private guy
We recently sat down with Kajunga Records co-founder Private Guy to talk about his flyover set. Some quotes were edited for clarity.
Jacob: I won't do what I did to Cameron when I interviewed him and ask about how being vegan influences your approach to DJing. [Pause for laughs]. We can just skip that.
The first thing I noticed about your mix is that it’s straight-up techno. I don't think I’ve heard that from you before. Why did you take it in that direction?
Alex: I've definitely always had an interest in techno, but it wasn't until I moved to Minneapolis in 2013 that I started getting more familiar with it. It's a genre that I've collected, [though] not as predominantly as house, and [I] haven't given myself too many opportunities to DJ it…this is my first techno mix where I sat down and made a mix for the studio. It was a fun process to think about [how] Minneapolis is such a techno city [with] its own sound. I wanted to embrace that.
Jacob: I think it comes through in the mix. You have tracks by DVS1 and Heckadecimal on there, and there's a narrative woven throughout, even if not every artist on the mix is from Minneapolis.
Cameron: I think we're at this point with electronic music in general where just about everything is appreciated in some way, and we're all listening to such a huge, broad variety of [music]. I get super scatter-brained. How do you find your sound? And not just absorb the sound of whatever you're listening to that day?
Alex: I think my production is really informative. What I like to make, I often like to play. Over the last year or two, I've [made] a lot more techno, and the techno that I like to make is atonal, kind of deep…tone-derived melody in a sense, but dissonant sort of stuff…instead of industrial noise. You can hear it in the mix...it's pretty fucking deep. That sort of sound is definitely something that I'd love to make, and the production world is where I currently find myself more than in the DJ world.
Jacob: How would you describe your last EP? [Liquid Sun, Kajunga Records]
Alex: That's old-school midwest house. It has those downtempo tracks that have more of a deep Detroit mystery to them. Just like really psychedelic, effects-driven…the old-school hardware sort of sound.
Jacob: Whether it's techno or house, what brought you to DJing and dance music?
Alex: I've always had an interest in that style of music, whether I realized it or not. When I was six, I saw Mortal Kombat against my parents' wishes, and I was obsessed with the theme by Lords of Acid for years. I asked for that tape for Christmas, which I knew I wasn't going to get. I think my parents got me a [tape by a] Christian artist or something.
Also, “Can't Get You Out of My Head.” I really loved that track. And “Barbie Girl” by Aqua, so stuff like that [makes me] think I’ve always had an affinity for [dance music].
And then I discovered more in college with Justice and Daft Punk…French house really got me into it. I was lucky enough to have friends who were DJs, like [my] label-mate Jordan [Berndt]. He had been DJing since high school, [where] he was a year ahead of me. In college, we started hanging out more…he introduced me to his friends, DJs [who played] psytrance festivals. Eventually, we got more into underground dance music, and [were] invited to Movement in Detroit by another high school friend of ours, and the rest is history.
I think knowing people who were pressing their own records early introduced me to the right mindset for underground dance music…putting in the work and creating the community…it's really infectious when you see that.
Jacob: Who was pressing their own records?
Alex: Michael Gisi and Malcolm MacLachlan, who are Segv and Appian, respectively. They were running Sly Fox Records…I think Malcolm grew up in or near Detroit and Gisi met him in college at Ann Arbor, and just being so close to Detroit, having an electronic music scene there…I think it's kind of built into the culture of that city to do it yourself. It feels normalized, which is so cool and weird.
So Jordan and Michael Gisi were DJing in high school, and they threw a rave at Michael's parent’s house in the garage, and were just playing ravey, like Tiësto and Benny Benassi.
Cameron: This is in Grand Forks, [North Dakota,] right?
Alex: Yeah. So I was like 16 and they were 17 or 18. After they graduated, I didn't really do much, cause [in] Grand Forks…you’re just not exposed to that [muisic] at all. Even what I was exposed to was so…periphery…like seeing a random concert and then never hearing about that band again…it wasn't until later that I discovered dance music.
Jacob: You're not counting Tiësto as dance music?
Alex: [Laughing] Well, when I discovered that I liked dance music.
Jacob: When did y'all permanently relocate?
Alex: To the Twin Cities? That was in 2012-13. Jordan had moved down here, Ryan [Ryote] was living in Florida, and Matt [Cloudy Kid], was living in Stillwater, [Minnesota].
Jordan [and I] lived together, and then a year later, Matt and Ryan also moved into the house with us. Right around that time is when we started talking. [We asked ourselves] “do we want to do this ourselves and start making our own music and pressing our own records?”
I had an off-year after college, and it was just working. [I spent that] year exploring Ableton and what it can do. Jordan sparked [an interest in] DJing and producing, he was a year or two ahead of me with a lot of that…eventually I found interest [in DJing] myself too. That was at the first pre-Kajunga party house…on Van Buren and Western in Saint Paul…[that’s] where we formulated [the label].
By the Spring of 2014, we had lived there for about a year. Ry had moved back from Florida and was hanging with us a bunch. Matt was doing the same thing. They were going to Detroit, and we made a sampler of all of our early, early tracks. They just handed it out in Detroit to people. So there's a Kajunga Spring Sampler 2014 out there somewhere with printed stickers, CDs, and really cheap jewel cases.
After that, we moved into [DJ] Hell House. It was me, Matt, Jordan, Ryan, and Mitch. Mitch was our outlier friend. He's the one (who wasn't a DJ) who named DJ Hell House, which was, like, not a fond name from him I think. But he was extremely patient with us…I'm grateful that he put up with all of our shenanigans through that year.
That was the year when we were all like, “OK. Let's fucking do it.” For the whole year, it was [us] having critiques and bringing [our] tracks to the table, and basically, all of us saying “Yeah, they're not good enough yet.” I went through a lot of tracks before I found one where I learned the process well enough to understand what goes into completing a house track for me. That summer, we got the [first] record together and had a record release later that fall.
Jacob: Can you tell me about your experience living in that communal artistic setting? As far as the creative output is concerned, were there any tensions?
Alex: Creatively, it was amazing. Having even one of your creative fellows working alongside you in a studio space or a house is such a benefit.
I wouldn't say there was a lot of creative tension, cause we're all pretty open. We all realize that you really need critique, you need criticism of your work. We all know that we're going to be honest with each other and we ultimately have the same goal in mind. I really, really look forward to sharing tracks with the Kajunga boys and having them point out what I'm doing wrong, or what exactly they like about a track. Their feedback is so beneficial.
Jacob: I don't think you can get to a point where you have music ready to be pressed to wax without critique.
Alex: It's so necessary. It's hard. I learned that in art school. I always kept the mindset that criticism is good…you really need someone to tell you when your work is bad, especially someone [who] understands it.
Cameron: That was my experience in art school as well. It’s super important to have that peer critique from peers [who] you actually respect...
Alex: Critique creates language that helps make the music-making process easier. You invent language that takes your concepts [higher].
Jacob: Where'd you get your tracks?
Alex: These were all digital. I haven't been collecting wax too much for the last few years. I'd like to get more into it, but I just haven't been allocating the finances.
Jacob: It’s expensive.
Alex: I’ll buy records, maybe one a month or so right now, something that pops up that I really like. I shop predominantly on Bandcamp. When I'm searching for new music, I'll look all over the place. Whether it's Bandcamp, Beatport, Juno, Amazon…there’s shit you can't find anywhere but Amazon. It's fucking weird.
Jacob: That's, like, if you see something on Discogs that catches your eye, you might scour the internet for it…
Alex: I don't do that because I want to get nice, quality files right away. And Bandcamp is such an easy direct-to-artist. I feel good about it, and I get all the assets with the track, too. The track isn't called “www.whatever…”
Jacob: “YouTubeToMP3converter.com”
Alex: Yeah. It makes the music collecting process feel a little bit more immersive and kind of clean. That, in turn, helps inform my selection process… I wish I could memorize names and albums and labels and stuff really well, and I can do okay If I’m really actively like “Calamari. Oyster. Cult. Calamari. Oyster. Cult.”
Cameron: I think it's “Kalahari.”
Alex: [Laughing] Fuck! See? That's what I mean…having a visual [cue] of artwork along with it [helps].
Cameron: I only remember visually; I don't remember a single fucking track name. It’s just, like, “the purple one.”
Alex: Sometimes it's a weird name, like “Voxator,” and I'm like, I don't know what that is.
Jacob: So what I'm hearing is that [atonal techno] is, musically, the direction that you find yourself moving towards right now?
Alex: Yeah. I tend to just…let come out what wants to come out. Lately, it's just been techno. I'll do some house here and there, some more uplifting stuff, [but] techno [has] taken over. It's hard not to [let it], living in Minneapolis. There’s such a vibrant and distinct energy here. It’s the tonality. You hear it with Lonefront and Autokinetic, where it's so deep, but it's a primal, raw energy that speaks to my inner caveman. It just makes me want to dance and watch the shadows on the cave wall.
Tracklist:
Adam Arthur - The Bard’s Tale [Interdimensional Transmissions, 2021]
Arkajo - Tape 15 [Brotherhood Sound System, 2017]
K-HAND - Intuition [Acacia Records, 2015]
Pattrn - Stevia [TGP, 2021]
Zadig - The Mysterious Theory of Kelvin [Syncrophone Recordings, 2016]
Refracted - The View From Cal Companyo [Bitta, 2022]
Marco Shuttle - Danza Cinetica [Spazio Disponibile, 2016]
Keplrr - Convection (Desert Sound Colony Remix) [Control Freak, 2022]
Collin Crowe - Never Gonna Die [Lost Soul Enterprises, 2017]
Pascal Hetzel - Incognizance [Eye Teeth, 2018]
DVS1 - Delta Wave [Axis, 2020]
Rene Wise - Jungle House [Enemy Records, 2022]
Dold - Yalla [Arsenik Records, 2015]
Gianluca Caiati - Surrender (Substance Remix) [K S R, 2022]
Bidoben - Soft Milieu [Truncate, 2022]
Heckadecimal - Acid Tenders [Kajunga Records, 2020]
Oscean - Austraal [Tresor, 2022]
KGIV - Regulatory Capture [Eye Teeth, 2020]
Lloyd Stellar - Mars Underground [Specimen, 2020]
ÖLF - Onkalo [Shoganai Records, 2019]
Follow Private Guy on SoundCloud
flyover 7: icarus redux
Voices inside my head…echoes of things that you said.
I recently sat down with my friend Sarvesh Ramprakash, who DJs as Icarus Redux, to talk about his flyover set. The mix is a re-recorded take on his July 2021 set at The Great Beyond, a techno festival in Franklin, Minnesota. Some quotes were edited for clarity. As always, Cameron Seibold provided the photography and artwork.
Jacob: What is the first thing you have to tell me about this city?
Sarvesh: Um, it's undervalued when it comes to...not just its perception in American club culture and electronic music culture, but globally as well, which is ironic given the amount of music produced [here]. It's not just Prince...it's a whole gamut of artists.
Jacob: Wrong. The correct answer is: This city was made from the original music. It is not a counterfeit; this is the real one.
Sarvesh: (laughing) I literally thought of that. I didn't know whether I should have referenced it.
Jacob: I was listening to DJ Koze’s DJ-Kicks mix last night because I couldn't bear to get into Paprika. And at first I was like, your flyover mix has some things in common with Koze’s, in that it's not a conventional dance music mix. Ultimately, you do take your mix in a different direction. Yours is definitely a cleaner version of your Great Beyond mix. What did you set out to do with this mix?
Sarvesh: Sure…can I give it to you in terms of the background? Or do you want a direct answer to the question?
Jacob: Whatever you want.
Sarvesh: I guess I should just be brutally honest and say I've intermittently had my fair share of mental health problems, mostly because of stress, life, and a bunch of other things.
One of the things that cropped up over the last couple of years were bouts of transient psychosis. What that manifests as, because I'm an auditory-minded person, is auditory hallucinations. I have snippets of conversations that don't ever resolve to anything, but that I’m convinced I can hear, up until the point where I realize they have access to things that only my brain would have, and it doesn't actually make sense otherwise.
At first, this was really disorienting. With time I learned to distinguish what was real from what was not real. As time went on, and as I was preparing for other mixes, I started to realize that what I was really doing when I was having these little moments of hallucination was quizzing my own id, except it manifested as an external set of voices. It [sent] me down a really interesting pipeline of thinking when it comes to [putting] together an unconventional mix.
The setup for this was this Far Away mix that I was trying to do, which was a very personal [and] political mixtape about Minneapolis ravers, George Floyd, and a lot of artists who I deeply care about who passed away recently.
What [starts] to happen at the intersection of diving deeply into a body of work [and] your own mental health is, you can sink so deeply into your own research that it starts to manifest in really odd ways. [For instance,] you'll start dreaming, and your musical idols start talking to you in your dreams.
It got really heavy…the long and short of it is that when I started setting aside time to set up this Great Beyond mix, I thought to myself, “how do I capture the full gamut of this weird…psychosexual bullshit or psychological drama?” How do I represent it in an auditory form that remains somewhat true to what I actually experienced, while also [making it] composed of [mixed] music, and not just kind of a mishmash of found sound that's experimental, but not danceable in the festival setting?
Jacob: I'm glad that you brought up mental health and your struggles with psychosis as you began thinking about this mix…and [as] you tried to translate [your] experience into mix form. I think it comes through crystal clear, especially in the first half. Maybe this is too on-the-nose or too obvious, but the KC Flightt track, “Voices” is really the centerpiece of the mix.
I think if we look at the first third of the mix, before it really becomes [a dance mix], that's where it's at its darkest. It's really heavy, it’s really hard. It's a challenging listen…I think you really took us there.
Sarvesh: That was the intent, right? Because the process of dealing with a sudden mental health issue of any kind, whether it's depression, anxiety or whatnot…in my case, it was psychosis and auditory hallucinations. There is a process of initial shock, where it seems incomprehensible and almost at the edge of sanity.
Then there is a period where it starts to get coherent, and it starts to have an internal logic. Even though it's strained logic...towards the end, it may even lead you in positive directions.
There's a term that I was thinking of when I was doing my own research and going down the Google rabbithole. It's called pronoia. It's an inverse of paranoia. Paranoia is when you're convinced that there are outside entities that have malevolent beliefs or ideas about you. Pronoia is when the outside entities have good intentions for you and you perceive them as seeking to improve your life. That's something that I found echoed in my own experience. [My] periods of psychosis have gotten further and further apart, but any time I have anxiety, it comes up [again], and it's something that I have to contend with. These days, it's more positive than it used to be. Sometimes it was…debilitating.
Jacob: What do you think caused that turn from paranoia to pronoia?
Sarvesh: [I started talking about it earlier, but] the way it turned for me was [via that] sudden ability for me to quiz my own subconscious, and have it respond to me.
What that entailed [in] the first incomprehensible period was a lot of plumbing my own insecurities and past failures, or anything that was on my mind that I [felt] dejected about, and just hammering away at it. You [could] call it rumination, you could call it any number of things [from] a mental health standpoint, but here, it was being manifested as an open conversation. Imagine inventing your own therapist chair and therapist, then having that dialogue with them. Eventually, you run out of embarrassing things about your past that you can hem and haw about. It starts to get to the point where you're like, we have to move forward with this and see what can be done with the skills and abilities that [we] have.
In a weird way, this is an ability [that] has to be harnessed for good, you know? That's kind of the way I took it. And that's what shifted it from a purely paranoid thing to a more pronoid thing…
Jacob: It's pretty incredible that you were able to put your own mind or an extension of it in a therapist’s chair, have these conversations, and have them be productive. Speaking from personal experience, I know you do eventually run out of [new] things to hate about yourself and things to ruminate on, but that doesn't necessarily stop a person from continuing to do so indefinitely. What did that turning point look like for you?
Sarvesh: I would say it was really more of a shifting of emphasis. An important component is decreasing the number of negative thoughts that you have about yourself or ruminating [less] about things that you feel embarrassed about or dejected about or sad about. And yes, you do eventually run out of them, but you do have to counterbalance that with things that are affirming about yourself. We don't even have to have a heady conversation about delusion to understand the idea that affirming good things about yourself is a huge component of your self-esteem. That's what really turned the tide. It was affirming things about myself that I knew to be incontrovertibly true, regardless of delusional ideas or thoughts or things [that] may have been said [by others] or perceived [by myself].
Jacob: And you were able to do this entirely without conventional therapy?
Sarvesh: Yeah, well, [I was] financially precarious and in-between jobs, dealing with other medical issues, and was unable to commit to conventional therapy. It's something that's on my mind, of course, but because of that, music became central to how I processed emotions.
The same can be said for that Far Away mix, because I sunk so deeply into it. [With these mixes] I'm [not] playing music anymore. I'm speaking my voice through the music. Playing tracks that echo my emotions, as a way of getting them out. [The therapeutic process of doing that] inadvertently turned into the research that turned into the mix.
[With] the Far Away mix and the flyover mix, [the latter] is almost the making of documentary of the [former]…the experience of derangement that was caused in the process of the [Far Away] mix is what I [unpacked] and put in polished form in the [flyover] one.
Jacob: I remember leading up to The Great Beyond, you [were] looking for music with prominent vocals, but not necessarily songs with lyrics, but [for tracks] where voices can make up the melody, make up the beat, [or] something like that. If you had to put together a brief artist’s statement about vocals within the flyover mix, what would you say?
Sarvesh: If you think about classic house music and stuff that has deep vocals, there is a communication of intense emotion. It can be vague. It can be a little abstract, but it is still intelligible…I wanted to communicate emotion without having it be on the nose. That's almost like a design challenge at a level, right? Because you can now use vocal samples that are chopped up or spliced in weird and interesting ways, and they can still communicate a tangible emotion, whether it’s loss, forlorn disillusionment, whatever...music is incredibly expressive even without intelligible lyrics. That's almost a personal ideology for me…I found that a lot of music that I enjoy tends not to have lyrics, [which is] ironic, because I grew up singing.
That was kind of the operating principle by which I was picking and sequencing [tracks] and figuring out energy levels and structuring what the mix was. What it stood for emerged as I took the rough pool of tracks and started to cue, shape, reorder, and figure out what works with one another harmonically and so on and so forth.
Jacob: What did your process of digging for tracks specifically for this mix look like? I remember you stating your intent [for the Great Beyond mix] relatively early [in the process] and asking for input from others.
Sarvesh: I had the idea of combining a bunch of these pseudo-vocal tracks [or] whatever you want to call them, because I noticed [them as] a pattern in my own existing library prior to this mix…like, I had a couple of tracks here and there. One of the [tracks] that kicked it off for me was one by Trancesetters called “The Secrets of Meditation (Remix).” It made it to the Great Beyond set, but the re-record did not have it. It's kind of the spiritual center [of the mix], because it has Konnakol, which is an Indian onomatopoeic vocalization of syllables. It's vocalization that communicates something, namely rhythm, but does not communicate [with] language.
So, I started first by digging within my own library…asking friends helped to a certain degree, but I wouldn't say it was exclusively what I was doing. I was also just digging online, doing deeper and deeper Google searches to find old Boomkat reviews and stuff like that. [I tried] to find literature. “Beatbox” was a term that I looked for…there's a beatbox cover of an Autechre song that makes its way in early in the mix…digging is an inexact science. You kinda have to stumble on music. And sometimes the algorithm just helps me out.
Other people gave me interesting breadcrumbs. They pointed me in the direction of tracks, then me digging for those tracks led me to the one that I actually would use. The Bjork track “Triumph Of A Heart” was one that came from someone on Discord. I would say the vast majority of the actual digging was [done by] me, but there were some kickstarts along the way.
Jacob: In addition to really going deep, you've got this massive catalog and an encyclopedic knowledge of the music that you're passionate about. How does that come together?
Sarvesh: I've always been interested in a lot of different genres of music. My personal principle is that every genre of music, no matter how cringy you think it is, probably has some redeeming music within it...you just have to dig deep enough and find it. It's ultimately a time bandwidth versus how much you care to do so, but you can find it if you want to. The other thing I remember reading was Objekt's “Art of DJing” in Resident Advisor. Obviously he went into great depth about how he organizes his USB and a bunch of other technical details, but one thing [he said] that struck me at the time is that in an ideal world, [he] would be able to play from 70 BPM to 150 BPM, no problem, [for] any set. Objekt plays a specific kind of music, kind of leftfield club constructions…and I'm sure the music that he has in those tempos are all capable of fitting into that overall sound.
I thought to myself “what if I do that?”, but I also dig backwards in time, and start looking at other genres of music, [and] not just internationally…there's all sorts of nooks and crannies within American dance music that are unexplored, from a Twin Cities standpoint [and] a US dancefloor standpoint..someone needs to dig them. There used to be a time and age where top-flight DJs would put out a [BBC] Essential Mix or a DJ-Kicks mix and there'd be an unreleased track [or one that] that nobody had ever heard of, and it would start off this flurry of digging, and suddenly an underloved [type of] music would become really important.
That kind of digging mentality is something that I've always had and want to bring to [my] DJ practice. It entirely informs how I look for music. For example, setting together this mix, right? Looking for tracks that have vocals but don't really resolve to any kind of intelligible lyrics is [both] an incredibly specific [and] broad ask. Any number of tracks in any number of genres can exhibit those qualities.
In the mix, there is a wide spectrum of genres: from anime soundtracks to Autechre, to 1970s weird experimental disco. I want[ed] to lay it all on the table because that's the only way I improve and become more well-rounded as a DJ, [by] establishing those odd connections between music that nobody else would think [of]. It's very rare to have actual new insights in DJing, and that's what I'm on the hunt for.
Jacob: I think this is our first flyover mix with a track from the seventies. And blending that with a YouTube video…
Sarvesh: That was the other thing too…I’ve been very content-agnostic about the source of audio, especially with [my] last couple of mixes. YouTube videos have made it into mixes, [so have] field recordings from India or wherever, [and] text-to-speech of academic papers and stuff like…
Jacob: All the sudden [it’s like] we're on TikTok.
Sarvesh: Yeah. And even when I played in Fargo, I opened with the dude hitting the mango Juul, like a meme, a literal meme…I think [you] can get really pretentious and chin-strokey about how you assemble a DJ set or whatever, but to get into that serendipity, [to] get into the fun of it, is to realize that not everything has to be about the highest fidelity fucking music possible going into the mix…if there's a coherence to how you [play] it, It will sound good, no matter what the content is.
Jacob: You're a transplant to the Twin Cities…I'm curious about how living in the Midwest has shaped your experience as an artist.
Sarvesh: It’s made a huge impression. I would say that prior to [living in] the Midwest, I would describe myself as “an east coast kid with west coast ideologies.” I grew up in the Maryland/DC area and went to shows in DC and Baltimore and started raving in those areas, but obviously did not agree with the kind of K Street, West Wing-watching crowd there, and that kind of put-together nature. I'm more chill, which is more west coast or whatever.
What I found [in the Midwest] is, there's a sense of community, especially post-George Floyd. I'll admit that there were times when I was on the fence because I didn't know very many people or whatnot. And sometimes the Midwest Nice gets to me. There are lots of little elements about Midwest culture and idiosyncrasies that kind of rub me the wrong way, especially when it [involves] tightly-knit scenes that can be judgey. But the immediate aftermath of Philando Castile and George Floyd was a huge catalyst, because I saw what the rave scene here does for itself and for other people, and I think that is very rare. I don't see that in coastal regions. I think that's compelling. I think that's a net good for rave culture in general. I wish it would happen more in other regions.
On the flip side, from a musical standpoint, I think there are lots of DJs here who have lots of interesting influences that they fold into their music. Yes, a lot of people here like dark, fast Midwest techno, but that doesn't mean that you're not getting edge cases bringing in, let's say, psytrance influences or breakbeats or all sorts of other stuff. From that, you get a less homogenous view of what can be done with the dancefloor. And that's all the more reason for me to stick around. I don't want to become a small fish in a big pond again…I'm pretty happy with the cost of living in the Midwest.
Jacob: Yeah, you can't beat the rent here, and I guess it's better to be a small fish in a small pond than a small fish in a big pond. How are things different here than on the west coast and the east coast?
Sarvesh: I think class divides become less of an issue and I find that [Minneapolis] has a lot more egalitarian of a dancefloor here than in other regions...in coastal regions, you have a lot more of a dynamic of wealthy, upper class or upper middle-class tech workers colonizing the scene.
From a musical standpoint, people are, they're a lot more open to mentoring one another. I think every city has a certain kind of competitive crabs-in-a-bucket mentality…in the Midwest I've found that people are a lot happier to just be like, “hey, you want to learn how to DJ or produce or whatever? Come over to my house, we'll pop a couple of beers and we'll talk about it and we'll see where it gets us.” It almost makes sense that, despite being a warehouse party person…I only picked up DJing in the Midwest, you know, from a mutual friend.
Jacob: Yeah. I wonder how many people Lanny has taught to DJ…he's probably the DJ dad of three or four people who get booked regularly at this point.
Sarvesh: Yeah. Huge, huge props to him.
Jacob: There's so much to unpack with the closing track. I know it's [from] a movie, but I still call it “the theme from Paprika” because that movie does straight-up have an anime intro…it’s so misleading about the direction the movie is going to take…it’s just the cutest shit you've ever seen, it’s one of the catchiest songs you've ever heard, but if you dig into it, it gets a little creepy. You realize, “oh, these aren't real vocals, these are synthesized vocals that sound really good…” I think it's obvious why a track from the film Paprika works with this mix…
Sarvesh: It was kind of a double synchronicity, right? On the one hand, Paprika is a movie about dreams and reality merging and causing horrific destruction that eventually resolves, which in many ways, mirrors the psychodrama that was happening in my head over a number of months…[but also,] the media that I was consuming was feeding back into my own delusions the same way I was exorcizing my own delusions by watching the media in the first place. It wasn't just Paprika that made an impression on me at the time. I also rewatched the David Fincher movie The Game, which is about games and gaslighting and trying to improve your life and a bunch of other stuff…
So the first synchronicity obviously is just the plot of Paprika and my own life. But the second one is the weird cyborg-ness of the voice. If my central conceit was that I was using voices that were unintelligible, but communicated some sort of emotion, finally, we have kind of the end-stage of that, where there's real lyrics happening interspersed and combined with totally synthesized ones that still communicate intent.
It's almost like the thesis/antithesis/synthesis…like dialectic happening over the course of the mix and concluding there…[the last track is] a very happy song. It's a song that [plays] towards the end of the movie, and it mirrors the overall structure of the mix, which is: insanity, coherence, and then eventual acceptance and happiness as you learn to come to terms with these voices and realize that they are just you, ultimately.
Tracklist:
Curd Duca - Touch [Mille Plateaux, 1999]
Caterina Barbieri - Fantas Variation for Voices (feat. Evelyn Saylor, Lyra Pramuk, Annie Garlid & Stine Janvin) [Editions Mego, 2021]
Todd Edwards Breakdowns [YouTube video]
Human Egg - Onomatopaeia [Lizard Records, 1978]
Marie + Scratch - Gnit [Luaka Bop, 2002]
Koreless - Joy Squad [Young, 2021]
Holly Herndon - Chorus [RVNG Intl., 2014]
Co La - Crank [Software, 2015]
Christian Kroupa - Pick Up Your Needle [unreleased, 2015]
Iz & Diz - Mouth (Pepe Bradock's Unreleased Remix 2) [Classic Music Company, 2011] (snippet)
Para One - Wake Me Up (Remix) [Marble, 2014]
Love Letters - Who Was Driving? [CGI Records, 2016]
KC Flightt - Voices (Original Dub Mix) [RCA, 1991]
The Field - Cupid's Head [Kompakt, 2013] (snippet)
Rhyw - Biggest Bully [Fever AM, 2019]
Dehousy - Break (Addison Groove Remix) [[re]sources, 2018]
Four Tet - Pyramid [Text Records, 2011]
Walt J - Reborn 1 [Dow Records, 1997]
LOL Boys - 123 [Palms Out Sounds, 2010] (snippet)
Helix - Dick Track [Night Slugs, 2018]
Björk - Triumph Of A Heart [One Little Indian, 2004]
Todd Osborn - Beatapella [Running Back, 2014] (snippet)
Susumu Hirasawa - The Girl In Byakkoya - White Tiger Field [Teslakite, 2006]
flyover 6: mutual identities
Versatility and adaptability are crucial traits for proficient DJs. “Play to the room” is a cliche, but it’s still among the first things most lifers will say when describing how they do what they do. Arriving at a gig armed with tracks suited to the vibe of the party is no small undertaking, but the ability to depart from the plan if necessary is what sets the best apart. If they intend to keep raucous crowds of dance music fans happy, musicians who use machines and instruments instead of flash drives and wax also need to be able to improvise while playing and managing their gear.
If you’re familiar with Mutual Identities, you might know the duo's slogan: "an ever-changing sonic experience." A bold claim, but the Minneapolis band's music, eclectic and evolving, delivers on that promise. Originally formed in 2017 as a four-piece indie rock band, MI now operates without a drummer and vocalist, but still aims to fulfill the group’s original goal of making and performing “instrument-driven dance music.”
Today, Mutual Identities is Ethan Sanders and Nathan Graff. With gigs at Minneapolis dance music institutions like Communion and House Proud under their belts, they're used to playing big sound systems as a live act, sandwiched between DJ sets. These gigs come with clear expectations: the music can’t stop, and the crowd needs something to dance to. DJs and live acts alike need to deliver sets with narrative arcs and responsive energy flows. Since there’s no time to tune or gather yourself between songs, and no one in the crowd is interested in frontman banter, most bands aren’t up to the task. Time and again, MI delivers under these difficult circumstances.
These skills don’t develop overnight. Both lifelong musicians and multi-instrumentalists, Ethan and Nathan started playing in bands as teens. These days, they may find themselves performing in relatively unfamiliar settings, but they have learned how to deliver fun and thumping melody-driven sets that blend seamlessly with those from DJs on the lineup.
Their flyover set began as a rehearsal for another unusual gig: a friend’s wedding reception. Given their versatility, MI could emulate a Klezmer band or bust out a cover of “Electric Boogie” if they had to, but this was no ordinary wedding party.
Ethan [above, left]: “It was on a proper sound rig and stuff...it was bangin’, dude. It was so much fun, [it was in] a very intimate space...but it still had all the energy of a kick-ass dance party. That was the coolest wedding I’ve ever been to.”
Consistently funky, vibey, and dynamic, their flyover set is an improvisational hour with intentionality at its core, serving up 60 minutes of compelling "instrument-driven dance music."
Ethan: “It’s not just electro, it’s not just house, it’s not just this or that or whatever, and it gets really pretty, and really melodic, and things that I think sometimes people shy away from in club culture sometimes...we’ve just been playing instruments and writing songs our whole lives, that’s just the kind of music we make.”
Ethan: “Basically what we do is make grooves in every single key on the scale, then we just pick a note and go up a fifth in the scale. That’s how we jam because then when you go to the next thing, everything’s in harmony, so you can take the bassline out [while] the melody keeps going, and then lay down a new bassline, then drop that and make a groove on top of it.”
Bold, friendly, and boisterous, Ethan describes himself as MI’s one-man rhythm section. He works with synths, sequencers, samplers, and leads the live side of MI sets. Soft-spoken by comparison, Nathan uses a keyboard, synths, and samplers to drive the band’s melodies. Nathan found his way to dance music a decade ago via festivals, and decided to try his hand at production around the same time, and still produces dubstep as Coma Dose. Both members of MI are intensely passionate about music and deeply knowledgeable about the gear they use to create it.
Ethan: “Nathan has such a good understanding of the keyboard that he can play these beautiful and open chord progressions and stuff that add a layer to the music that...if the groove was just there, it’d be solid enough to keep a dancefloor person’s attention, but it goes to a different level when Nathan plays in his piano parts.”
The duo’s love for a wide variety of music and genres keeps their live sets and recordings fresh.
Ethan: “We’re not ever trying to arrive at any particular destination...allowing ourselves to not be so caught up with one particular thing, for better or for worse. I don’t think we specialize in anything, but we can do a lot of different things.”
Nathan: “We keep it open and it pretty much just happens. It’s not like we have full control, we’re just kind of like, ‘let’s see what we can do.’ [When it comes to] dance music, I do like it to be hard-hitting...Ethan introduced me to house music, and it’s really nice to make stuff that’s just vibey, [so] you can really just set into a groove.”
Nathan: “I kind of go back and forth [with genres], it’s nice to be able to go back and forth between things. We produce hip-hop stuff too. I like just doing everything...it’s nice to be able to take a break from something after it gets old.”
However, the rigid expectations of current MI gigs within DJ-centric ecosystems can be a double-edged sword, sometimes leaving Ethan feeling that MI is not yet achieving its full potential.
Ethan: “We knew when we started doing this that we don’t necessarily fit in with any kind of ecosystem that exists right now...I want to start a set at like 96 BPM and do vibey-ass R&B and finish at like 145 [BPM] breaks...Mutual Identities at its fullest would be that, this huge and ever-changing sonic experience.”
Given that MI’s load-in is more difficult than that of a DJ toting a flash drive and a bag of records, the duo is always looking to simplify their workflow. Their current setup includes nine components: a plethora of sequencers, samplers, synthesizers, plus a keyboard and a mixer. This can lead to difficulty in spaces more suited to DJs with USBs and vinyl.
Ethan: “Live hardware stuff kind of has this asterisk next to it all the time. First off, our goal is [to] shrink our gear, our live setup. Look at all this dumb shit [gesturing to their crowded studio], we bring all of this to every set we play. DJ booths aren’t that big…[and] this is a rock band’s worth of shit.”
Nathan: “That’s a lot to ask [of event crews].”
Ethan: “That is us at our best musicianship. One of our favorite sets this past summer, I brought my bass, and I was playing slap bass at like 132 [BPM] house, and it was really fun.”
Nathan: “It’s a lot to ask.”
Ethan: “It’s a lot to ask of someone…[it’s hard] to trust yourself enough that you’re gonna play a stringed instrument that well on a big-ass sound system like that.” The duo’s genre-defying tendencies, intense work ethic, and passion for their craft mean there’s always something new around the corner.
Ethan: “We are sitting on a plethora [of music]...some of it’s kind of like UKG house-fusion type stuff, others are just like 124 [BPM] house, we just have like a chugging techno track too.”
Ethan: “There’s a particular energy going on here creatively lately...I’m overwhelmed by the anticipation of where things are gonna go for all kinds of people. Before the pandemic, we were just an internet entity. We weren’t really playing shows...we didn’t have anything to latch onto at that point yet...now we’re kind of going to the next phase of what we’re gonna be doing...comparing our last EP, which still had instruments on it...compared to whatever we release next, they’re not the same at all.”
If you want to hear where Mutual Identities takes its ever-changing sonic experience next, keep an eye on the band’s Instagram and SoundCloud.
flyover 5: allen hz
“One of the things about UK garage [UKG] that needs to be made fun of is the artwork, because every release has some cartoon character on it. And it’s not just [the label] Timeisnow with the cartoon artwork, it’s every UKG label. It’s like, what’s that game? Cup Time or something? I think the scene is single-handedly keeping the rubber hose animation industry alive.”
Not one to mince words, Ben’s flyover mix is a fittingly sunshine-drenched up-tempo tear through contemporary UK garage. It marks his debut as Allen Hz, a handle he coined for his post-quarantine DJ sets and production. Prior to COVID, Ben produced house music and helped run Why Not?, a monthly open format dance night with co-conspirators Amy Pickett, Travis Stearns, Jim Frick, and Robert James. I recently caught up with Ben in his Northeast Minneapolis loft and studio. We talked about his turn towards UKG, the social and financial capital that powers its ongoing revival, and the genre’s slick new veneer that labels use to push records.
“It’s just cartoons, cartoons, cartoons...I guess it’s of its time right now, that whole aesthetic. I’m sure it makes it a lot easier for these label managers to put out records, because it’s like ‘let’s slap a Looney Toon on the record and call it a day, or let's turn these producers into characters and put that on the label’ or whatever...that’s why it’s so easy to find UKG now...it’s all self-referential...if you see the record cover, you know it’s UKG..sometimes you can hear this approach in the actual music, and not in a good way."
After months of digging, Ben emerged with new tracks and a deep historical knowledge of UKG, its influences, and its offshoots. With its roots in house music, the UK was primed and ready for the emergence of a faster, R&B-tinged variant. As with jungle, the Afro-Caribbean diaspora in the UK helped foster a vibrant scene where genres developed in conversation with each other.
According to Ben, UKG came “out of a party scene on Sundays where DJs played US and Italian house music sped up to cater to partiers coming out of raves and clubs from the night before. The UK producers took the spirit of these house records and added their UK spin to it.”
After quickly finding commercial success, a state crackdown on clubs in the early aughts killed the scene. Attention turned elsewhere; UKG splintered, it got darker, more lyrically focused, and offshoot genres like grime and dubstep rose to prominence. Throughout the ‘00s, UK funky and bassline took up the mantle. Recently, renewed interest in UKG has led to a proliferation of new labels, producers, and reissues spearheaded by a new generation of passionate 2-step connoisseurs.
Reissue labels like Dr Banana helped set the stage for UKG’s revival. By shining a light on older tracks, they’ve brought renewed attention to the genre and put the music in front of an online, international audience. Other labels facilitate critique and discussion among listeners, DJs, and producers of the genre new and old.
“What really sucked me in is the community-oriented labels like Shuffle and Swing or Kiwi Rekords. These label heads host groups on Facebook and Discord for people to share rare and new UKG records, as well as their own productions for feedback.” This organic rise in prominence allows larger labels to capitalize on the renewed interest in the genre. In 2017, a Shall Not Fade sublabel called Lost Palms helped popularize the fuzzy tropical sound of lo-fi house through releases by producers like DJ Boring and Earth Trax. In 2020, Shall Not Fade launched Timeisnow, another sublabel with a genre-specific lean. UKG is the focus, and the label both takes advantage of and helps facilitate the revival. “I think they’re making a lot of money on this genre. [UKG is] selling like hotcakes, and they’re like ‘okay, let’s keep putting out shit, more and more shit.”
As a dance music obsessive and keen cultural observer, Ben keeps tabs on the UKG revival. He painstakingly crafted a mix that highlights the tensions in the genre, blending many new UKG releases with reissues of tracks first released in the nineties. The mix itself focuses on the lighter side of UKG. Ben described digging for the mix (with lighter tracks in mind) as a distraction from COVID.
“With the pandemic...I really fell in love with that lighthearted side of UK Garage, because it helped keep my mood normalized a bit. It was like therapy I guess, [listening to] really catchy UKG music that gets stuck in your head. I would wake up in the morning [with] a melody in my head, and I’d be like ‘I need to find this melody’ because I’ve heard it within the past two or three weeks in a mix...sooner or later you come across it and you’re like, ‘That was it! That was the track that I’ve been obsessed with or hearing in my head for weeks.’”
“All About U” is one of those tracks. In this bouncy reinterpretation of Mýa’s smoldering 1998 R&B hit “It's All About Me,” Wilfy D chops up and lays out Mýa and Sisqó’s vocals over a 2-step beat and an understated piano melody. The track’s subtle bassline is in stark contrast to that of DJ Swagger’s “On The Block,” which could’ve been ripped from a Seinfeld interstitial.
Next, Ben goes darker; he brings in the reverb-laden dancehall toast on Main Phase’s “Nice ‘N Sweet,” which he follows not long after with busy and stuttering percussion on “Move 2 Me.” That Pluralist track features a dark, potent bassline and chopped Charlie XCX vocals, and is followed by Anz’s “Unravel in the Designated Zone,” a UK Funky track with a sour G-funk synth line. These tracks keep the mix in conversation with some of UKG’s offshoot genres. Only when the bass hook from Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” (famously sampled by A Tribe Called Quest for “Can I Kick It?”) comes in on MILq’s “Hybrid Vitality” does Ben return to the lighthearted vibes he opens with.
Throughout the mix, percussion is syncopated, plentiful, and in the foreground. This maximalist approach to drums draws Ben to UKG. “The percussion is very dense, but it’s all perfectly sequenced in a way that can create a groove...you can’t even place what is happening at once, it’s all happening so quickly...every percussion sample is cutting off the other percussion samples, but there are a million different percussion samples happening at the same time. That’s what fascinates me about the genre, the crazy amount of detail that goes into those UKG beats.”
Ben dug deep to piece together so many upbeat UKG tracks. In comparison to UKG from the nineties, he describes the newer stuff as “a lot darker, and it’s a lot heavier, bassier...and more focused on sound design.”
“There aren’t a lot of artists [who] are producing newer music [how] producers were making UKG in the 90s, which was a lot lighter and melodic R&B influenced...with this mix, I wanted to find those artists [who] are making that type of lighthearted fun danceable UKG music. It was kind of a challenge, because there’s a lot of darker stuff that’s being put out right now...it’s not just that warm summer sound, that sunny UKG vibe that I want to explore. I want to explore the deeper aspects...then there’s the sick, darker, sound system-oriented stuff. I have tons of that stuff that I really want to mix.”
He’ll have a chance to do that soon. Allen Hz makes his live debut at Bliss on Saturday, October 9th at Part Wolf in Cedar-Riverside, Minneapolis.
Tracklist:
DJ South Central - Really Got Me [Nice 'N' Ripe, 2000]
Peaky Beats - Delicious [Peaky Beats Records, 2019]
Tiago Walter - Dat Girl [JISUL, 2020]
The Heavyweight Kru - The Drea-MM [1999]
Interplanetary Criminal - Who On Da Mic [Timeisnow, 2020]
Zero FG - Knock Knock [Entity London, 2019]
PROZAK - Sunshine [Timeisnow, 2021]
Strickly Dubz - Realise [Strickly Dubz, 1999]
DJ Swagger - On Tha Block [Timeisnow, 2020]
Wilfy D - All About U [Vitamin D, 2020]
Main Phase - Nice 'N' Sweet [Dansu Discs, 2020]
DJ Swagger x DJ ÆDIDIAS - Don’t Call Me [Timeisnow, 2020]
Pluralist - Move2Me [Panel, 2020]
Anz - Unravel In The Designated Zone [OTMI, 2021]
MILq - Hybrid Vitality [Punchline, 2020]
Pinder - Forever [Instinct, 2020]
Moodswing - New Direction [Obstacle Records, 2019]
Soul Mass Transit System - I Cant Wait [Dr Banana, 2021]
DJ Swagger - Smartphone Love [Thirty Year Records, 2020]
DJ Perception - Groove Me [Timehri Records, 2021]
Jhelisa - Friendly Pressure (From Midnight Mix) [Dorado, 1998]
Follow Allen Hz: SoundCloud / Instagram
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]
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]
