Subbacultcha magazine – Issue 04 by Subbacultcha

Hopelessly Devoted to Music and Art â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Subbacultcha quarterly magazine Summer 2016

Photo 2 by Kasia Zacharko

Editor’s note

Dear reader, In music, collaboration has and continues to be a tool of political resistance for subcultures. We did not have to look long to discover collectives who are fighting discrimination and marginalization and countering them with a new modus operandi. They are DISCWOMAN levelling the playing field for women in the electronic scene, SMIB manifesting a creative force that propels them way out of Bijlmer, and mobilegirl speaking for emancipating online collective Sister and Stockholm-based underground platform Staycore. But collaboration can also stand for boosting creativity and getting yourself out of a rut — Julien Ehrlich and Max Kakacek came together from broken-up bands and broken-up relationships to start Whitney, a seven-person group now rapidly rising to fame. For Bristol’s Young Echo, cooperation has led to an experimental collective steering away from the insincerity of clean digital productions dominating electronic music. As for ourselves, we look back on the Art Department’s residency programme we started a year ago realising how much it means to share your platform with others. Think about it. 03 3

Contents

For your consideration

The Art Department

Text by Floor Kortman 60

mobilegirl I Am Your Babyfather

Interview by Mateusz Mondalski Photos by Kasia Zacharko

by Mateusz Mondalski

SMIB

I Saw God and It Was Lit

Text by Roxy Merrell Photos by Gilleam Trapenberg

by Deva Rao 71

24 Authentic Exoticism Discwoman

by Jo-anna Kalinowksa

Interview by Zofia Ciechowska Photos by Cait Oppermann

34 Young Echo Collective story by Young Echo Photos by Campbell Sibthorpe 42 Whitney Interview by Jack Dolan Photos by Wessel Baarda 52

On Ne Change Pas by Pete Wu 75 We Visit You: MARY GO WILD 77

Photo by Gilleam Trapenberg 5

Colophon

Subbacultcha quarterly magazine Issue 04, Summer 2016 Front cover: Georgy Dendoe (GRGY) shot by Gilleam Trapenberg in Amsterdam, Netherlands Back cover: Bao-Tran Tran (mobilegirl) shot by Kasia Zacharko in Berlin, Germany Editors in chief: Leon Caren and Bas Morsch Editor: Andreea Breazu Copy editor: Megan Roberts Art director: Marina Henao Advertising and partnerships: Loes Verputten (loes@subbacultcha.nl) Contributing writers: Zofia Ciechowska Neven Devies Jack Dolan Jo-anna Kalinowksa Floor Kortman Roxy Merrell Mateusz Mondalski Deva Rao Koen van Bommel Sander van Dalsum Pete Wu Young Echo Contributing photographers: Wessel Baarda Robert Glas Cait Oppermann Campbell Sibthorpe Gilleam Trapenberg Kasia Zacharko Contributing artists: Hannah Carpenter & Goof Kloosterman Timo Demollin & Rutger de Vries Iris Donker & Katinka van Gorkum Julie Héneault, Margaux Parillaud, Ursula Marcussen, and Line-Gry Hørup Otto Kaan Hannah Polak

Printer: Drukkerij GEWADRUPO Arendonk, Belgium Distribution: Patrick van der Klugt (patrick@subbacultcha.nl) Thank you: Francesca Barban, Ida Blom, Jan Pier Brands, Robin Buskes, Pia Canales, Alex Christodoulou, Esther Crookbain, Irene de Gelder, Daniel Encisco, Patrick James Foetisch, Saar Gerssen, Rose Guitian, Sascha Herfkens, Karolina Howorko, Maarten Huizing, Laura Huppertz, Lola Ju, Ilias Karakasidis, Robert Lalkens, Niels Koster, Loulou Kuster, Crys Leung, Flora Nacer, Melanie Otto, Randy Schoemaker, Bart Staassen, Orla Tiffney, Aglaya Tomasi, Marilon Tresfon, Jan van der Kleijn, Ilse van der Spoel, Luuk van Son, Annemijn von Holtz, Valérie Vugteveen, and Sandra Zegarra Patow Subbacultcha Office Dr. Jan van Breemenstraat 3 1056 AB Amsterdam Netherlands Contact: editorial@subbacultcha.nl © photographers, artists, authors, Subbacultcha quarterly magazine, Amsterdam, June 2016

Subbacultcha We are an independent, Amsterdam-based music and art platform devoted to emerging artists. We organise progressive shows, make print publications and curate art exhibitions. We are supported by our members, who for €8 a month, have first-hand access to everything we do. Sign up online and we’ll love you forever subbacultcha.nl

For your consideration

Subbacultcha quarterly magazine

For your consideration Recent finds from our editorial team Label: DUNNO Recordings

When in doubt, listen to DUNNO Recordings. The Warsaw-based hub curated by Lutto Lento and music journalist Filip Lech is your directory for outsider house and cinematic off-kilter sonics. Over the last two years DUNNO published works by Polish conceptualist Wojciech Bąkowski and Heroiny – an alter ego of synth wizard Piotr Kurek. This month they’re putting out an LP by Polish composer Andrzej Nowak with tracks from 1987-1994 and a new 7” single by Lutto Lento. For fans of 1080p, Music From Memory and Proibito.

Music: Less Win Copenhagen-based Less Win may be attached to post-punk, but their new album TRUST reflects an instinctive drive to reach beyond the conventions of the label. It feels more personal and honest but it still cuts deep. Steady rhythm is all but abandoned as they dive head-first into a whirlwind of weighty vocals, distorted guitars and seething anger. Drenched in feeling and violently swinging from one emotion to the next, Less Win exudes a sense of introspection not often seen within the contemporary punk movement. soundcloud.com/lesswinmusic Music: Gaika

soundcloud.com/dunno-recordings Music: Cassy Catherine Britton, aka Cassy, may well be a renowned DJ having played at the likes of Berghain and Tomorrowland, but her return after a six-year hiatus brings along a debut LP, Donna. The record marks a distinct evolution in Cassy’s repertoire, replacing her carefree, dance-all-night attitude with an alluring mix of moody and melodic disco cuts. Her use of vocals heightens the sense of intimacy, cementing a personal connection between the listener and her own vulnerability. It’s not all doom and gloom, though; sinking into wallowing despair is deftly avoided with an eclectic fusion of Latin- and soul-inspired house.

Often adorned with distorted masks and heavy costumes, Brixton-raised producer and vocalist Gaika makes dark melodic music that flows with a pounding, earthy bass and his unforgettably seductive vocals. Channelling his South-East London upbringing, his music is an experimental cross-over between hip hop, dancehall and grime, all shadowed under a dark aesthetic that’s intent on expanding any motifs of what contemporary black British music is. Last year saw his futuristic mixtape, Machine, taking inspiration from how humanity is being digitalised, and now he’s back with the explosive Security for another politically infused, heavy release.

soundcloud.com/cassy-official

soundcloud.com/gaikasays

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For your consideration

Music: Sami Baha

Fondly labelling his music ‘Arabesk Trap’, Sami Baha draws upon his Turkish and Egyptian heritage as the basis of his tracks. Seamlessly blend that with a youth spent listening to Atlanta’s trap scene and what you get is a unique, rattling experience. His Mavericks EP, which debuts on Planet Mu, is permeated with the complex social conflicts of his home of Istanbul, where the record was largely produced before he left for London. Although only a small discography to date, his high-quality productions are characterised by Eastern melodies that don’t let up on a dance floor-ready depth.

Music: Lolina Lolina is the new moniker of grime-inspired artist Inga Copeland, who returns with an unconventional new sound filtered through a child-like delivery. Live in Paris is markedly strange, stringing together an awkward assortment of live recordings featuring both new and previously released tracks. The music never truly soars but plods alongside discordant synths and irrational basslines. Easy listening it ain’t, but Lolina doesn’t really expect you to ‘enjoy’ the music. Utilising angular soundscapes as a form of political manifestation, these tracks question the very nature of British identity and force us to confront London’s growing hostility towards immigrants. It’s fuzzy, it’s dirty – and most importantly, necessary. soundcloud.com/relaxinwithlolina Music: EATQS

soundcloud.com/samibaha Music: Elon Katz

The electronic ooze and vocal prowess of Elon Katz have left their irremovable smudges on pop music over the past few years. Under the pseudonyms White Car and Streetwalker, the Los Angelino channelled his own disrupting take on jacking house, techno and industrial. On his debut LP, The Human Pet, coming out on Powell’s Diagonal label, he simply goes by his own name, depicting a nearfuture dystopia with metallic compositions and his processed, dominant voice. If being a human pet is as arousing as listening to this music, then bring out the chains. soundcloud.com/elonkatz

Throw, like, eight kaleidoscopes, a litre of carbonated sugary drinks, a fistful of psychotropic substances and maybe a dash of physically manifested childhood whimsy in a blender and you get a wholly unrealistic (and presumably unappetising) beverage that doesn’t actually exist. Translate that into musical form and you emerge with something akin to EATQS (Ethereal And The Queer Show) and the duo’s newly released LP FAIRY SUPER CRYSTAL BLUE, except that it’s actually a real and delicious thing. Don’t take my word for it; go listen to it and give them money for it via the consistently stellar leftfield bizarro label Noumenal Loom. noumenalloom.bandcamp.com/album/eatqs-fairysuper-crystal-blue

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For your consideration

Music: Teen Suicide If you’re able to get past the admittedly sizable stumbling block that is their name, know that Teen Suicide is great. A product of head moper Sam Ray’s highly eclectic musical mind (see Ricky Eat Acid, Starry Cat, Julia Brown and more for reference), their latest full-length, It’s the Big Joyous Celebration, lives up to its title, belies that of the band and manages to outdo their excellent run of 2011-2013 releases, all the while maintaining their lovably scuzzy lo-fi approach and somehow taking their emotive guitar pop somewhere beyond both the bedroom and garage. teensuicide.bandcamp.com/ Music: Yung Skrrt

Music: Bonzai

Born in Indiana, raised in Ireland and based in London, Bonzai credits her colourful background as the primary inspiration for her unconventional approach to music. With her new concept EP, Sleepy Hungry, Bonzai documents the trials and tribulations that occur during the course of a single night. Her vocals, laced with soul, often drawl over moody, multi-layered backdrops. Mingling the glistening production of R&B with a lyric bite that edges on punk, Bonzai evokes the pleasures of the rave age in all its murky glory. One to watch for this summer. soundcloud.com/b_o_n_z_a_i Magazine: Hidden Eye

Just when you thought we’d hit peak ‘Yung’ usage, this guy comes along and chides you for daring to think the wave crested. But put your prejudice aside and you’ll quickly conclude Skrrt has something special going on – an irresistible flow and an uncanny ability to dispense subconscious-penetrating hooks seemingly effortlessly, and all that while frequently eschewing the archaic convention known as ‘words’ – he labels himself ‘antilingual’. While his recent output has tended toward something resembling verbal coherency (without sacrificing quality), self-produced debut mixtape Half Words is where it’s at, an unhinged collection of otherworldly, trap-tinged beats and eccentric melodic vocal turns. yungskrrt.bandcamp.com/album/half-words

A completely new magazine by people who know lots of things about lots of things, besides perhaps making magazines – we love it. Spawned from the unstoppable brain of golden-voiced Carson Cox (Merchandise/Death Index) in collaboration with golden-haired talent Jenn Pelly (Pitchfork), their first issue has a sweet pocket-sized format and features great interviews and disturbing art by Pelly, Cox, ZZ Ramirez (The Ukiah Drag), JS Aurelius (Destruction Unit), Shawn Reed (Night-People Records) and many more. hiddeneyemagazine.com Music: Honey This Brooklyn trio is sick. We’re allowed to spend 70 words on a recommendation and we could use those to tell you that the band features guys who used to play with Amen Dunes and/or Psychic Ills.

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For your consideration

Or we could tell you they are the perfect sum of what happens when the right people have the right idea about NYC rock’n’roll, if we knew what that meant. But the fact is that Byron Coley already said it best – these guys punch hard and straight. We can’t argue with that. Their record is called Love is Hard, and honestly, we can’t argue with that either. This Brooklyn trio is sick.

exorcising herself, while Fox produces his rhythms with an otherworldly speed and energy – their show is absolutely soothing and terrifying at the same time.

honeynyc.bandcamp.com/releases

Have you ever felt like there is something missing in your life? Before you say ‘yes’ to our rhetorical question, take a second to imagine what it is. Got it? Now, you may wonder how exactly we knew it was ‘traditional Zulu music videos on YouTube’ that jumped to your mind, but the point is: we got you covered. After you clear the living room of furniture, search for ‘imithente’, ‘sxaxa mbij’ or ‘sivimbe ngezansi’ and dance around ecstatically while also crying because what you have been waiting for all this time is finally here.

Documentary: Tokyo Melody

guardianalien.tumblr.com Misc.: World Music 101

youtube.com/watch?v=4hKM1qgSTVs Recently we’ve been obsessed with Tokyo Melody, a 1985 documentary about the recording of Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia by Ryuichi Sakamoto, currently on YouTube. The whole vapourwave fad is indebted to this album for its sound, and so is Oneohtrix Point Never whose music looks back on these groundbreaking ventures into the unknown parts of composition. We already care a fair bit about those who paved the way for popular music, but let’s appreciate them just a tiny bit more, as these artists aren’t earthbound forever like their work is. youtube.com/watch?v=Yv3Iqzpv3_I Music: Guardian Alien Not new but new on our radar is Guardian Alien, the ongoing project by ‘the best drummer in NY’ Greg Fox, formerly of the band Liturgy. Guardian Alien has known many formations, but its most recent reincarnation features none other than Eartheater’s mesmerising Alexandra Drewchin. Momentarily the duo is mainly active in the NY punk scene, so they might be a little hard to catch but if you do, oh boy. Drewchin sings with both angelic and demonic voice and contorts on stage as if

Collective: Apeiron Crew

Injecting new life into the electronic scene of Copenhagen, these newcomers mean serious business. Having established themselves as Culture Box residents, Courtesy, Solid Blake, Mama Snake and Smokey have honed in on their signature styles as DJs, exploring different strands of techno, electro, house, and jungle, with a distinct tendency for the hard-hitting approach. They’ve been gaining more traction recently with the announcement of Ectotherm Recordings, a label that’s meant to release local producers overlooked by international imprints. Apeiron Crew, we salute you! soundcloud.com/apeiron-crew

Interview

Underground Berlin DJ on the idealism of safe spaces in the electronic scene

mobilegirl Interview by Mateusz Mondalski Photos shot by Kasia Zacharko in Berlin, Germany

It’s a cloudy Thursday afternoon as I meet mobilegirl at the Five Elephant café in Berlin’s Kreuzberg. The long-haired artist shows up wearing all black and greets me with a friendly hug. Bao strikes me as a quiet person with integrity and self-contained character. She shares her name with a character from the Facebook stickers collection, which shows her as a playful digital native. The young DJ and producer from Munich has been rising to fame thanks to her eclectic sets, R&B edits and remixes on Montevideo’s Salviatek and Stockholm-based Staycore. The Swedish label has been making waves with a new dynamic clique of talented producers including Toxe, KABLAM and Mechatok. The array of mobilegirl’s inspirations is as hard to predict as 16

the results of a search on Google. Her recent appearances on Boiler Room and at CTM Festival suggest that mobilegirl is bound to blow up very soon with an independent profile of her own. For our interview we take a seat outside despite the chilly temperature and talk shop over coffee, croissants and delicious passionfruit cake. You play a wide range of genres from around the world including dancehall, reggaeton and even trance. You’ve also made subversive edits of R&B divas like Brandy and J.Lo. What influenced you as a listener? I grew up mostly with R&B. My cousin was my main source of inspiration. When I went to her

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mobilegirl place I would always check out her playlists. It was stuff like J.Lo and Ashanti and until this day I’m in love with that music. I guess I’m still stuck in that time – late 1990s, early 2000s. Later in my teens I started listening to a lot of commercial music – well, like a typical teenager [Laughs]. Eventually I got into the more experimental regions. I was super into M.I.A. Do you know her mixtape Vicki Leekx? M.I.A. is huge. I know Nguzunguzu co-produced Vicki Leekx. Exactly. So I really loved this mixtape and I saw Nguzunguzu on the artwork and thought, What the hell is this? Then I looked them up and started discovering this whole scene on my own. In my teens I didn’t have anyone to show me things. I also wasn’t really into music early on. I started producing in late 2014.

last autumn with a note from Ghazal saying something like, ‘Here is a little something for u. We all have one now.’ I wear it as often as possible but it also has to compete with my J.Lo pendant so... [Laughs].

‘We wanted to break out from an online idea into real nightlife’

You’re also a member of Sister, an online platform and mix series founded by Toxe to promote women in underground music. Recently you also threw your first all-female lineup party in Berlin.

How did you first come in contact with the Staycore crew?

The idea behind Sister is to support femaleidentified individuals in electronic music. I’m usually not a huge fan of anything that’s nonWith Dinamarca and Ghazal who run the label, organically separatist – consciously organised it was via SoundCloud. I just started making as this group is – but if it creates opportunimusic and came across the first Staycore mix, ties and a safer space for someone, I guess I really liked it and thought, This is the sort it serves a good purpose. I’m saying ‘safer’ of thing that I really want to be part of. Then and not ‘safe’ because if you huddle together we sent each other stuff. They were super people from a variety of backgrounds, you’ll friendly and just took me on board. We met always have different opinions and will probin Stockholm in May 2015 at a release party ably feel insulted at some point. I feel like for the SUMMER JAMS 2K15 compilation. I that’s something people tend to forget. As also met Tove [Toxe] through SoundCloud. for the Sister party, it was initiated by Linnéa. Timur [Mechatok] is a long-time friend of We put together a lineup of group members mine. We both grew up in Munich and we’re we know who live in Berlin. This ended up super close. I suggested Timur to Staycore but being Linnéa, Ziúr, Dis Fig and me. We wanted he’s super talented so there was no way they to break out from an online idea into real wouldn’t want to work with him. nightlife. We’d love to repeat this all over the world. I don’t think there’s anything like that happening right now. An international club I’ve noticed that you and the other members of Staycore all wear the same necklace. night that isn’t corporate? There are crews What’s the story behind this symbol? It makes like Janus throwing huge parties in different you look like an underground society. countries but the key difference with the Sister series is that each time different people would be in charge – giving them a chance to Ha ha, yeah. I think it’s a tribal sun – it repshowcase unique local talent. It’s all about resents our core and symbolises our conrepresentation. nection. I found it in my mailbox one day 19

mobilegirl

Interview

mobilegirl Your comment on insults in the Sister group sounded like a warning. Do you often encounter conflicts even within this ‘safe’ environment? Are female producers more judgmental towards each other than men? This is by no means a warning. That would imply I am suggesting that you stay away from this kind of environment. I talked about this with a couple of friends recently so it kind of blurted out. What I’m trying to say is: it’s very idealistic to believe that you can create a completely safe space that serves more than one person. I feel like what’s missing a lot is an understanding that people do come from very different backgrounds and sometimes it just requires conversation to sympathise with each other. It’s become too easy to shut out everyone who is not similar enough to you, making your comfort zone much smaller, and thus the frustration much bigger when you encounter a conflict. And yes, I believe women particularly are taught to judge each other more harshly and see each other as competition while men tend to support each other. With them it feels like this ‘passing on your wealth to your first son’ type of mentality; although the problem is more that women are more likely to get judged by both men and women. It takes a lot more work and assertiveness for them to be taken seriously.

with a melody but from then on it’s really whatever. Of course you can have a structural approach, too, even a pattern. When I write code for a website I don’t sit and spend most of my time thinking about whether I should add a photo of a puffer fish on the left part of the menu bar or not. Regarding usability it’s supposed to be there or, in this case, it most probably isn’t. What do you have in the works right now? A couple of tracks. I’m really slow but I want to release an EP on Staycore. They’ve been asking me if I still want to release at all. I kept myself too busy with other things but I definitely want to publish some new stuff. I just needed some time to get to know what I really want to do. The scene gave me attention right from the start so I missed out on the quiet exploration phase to figure out where I want to go soundwise. Spring got me really motivated to work on my productions. In one of the pictures here you’re playing with a cat. Can you tell us about him? His name is Mofo, he’s the best cat on this planet, you should follow him on Instagram @mozzarellafondue Ha-ha, nice. Will do.

What do you get up to when you’re not busy making music? I think most of the time I write websites. Do you enjoy it? Yeah, it’s fun – ‘fun’ as in interesting – and it’s super rewarding. I really like things that you can finish and then feel good about. You have a proper result and it works or not. For me it’s very contrary to the process of making music. Coding is very task-oriented. When I make music, when do I stop? How do I structure the process at all? I don’t have a very clear approach to producing. I mostly start 22

— mobilegirl plays at the Urban Outfitters launch party in Utrecht on 31 May 2016.

Field trip

SMIB スミブ

Text by Roxy Merrell Photos shot by Gilleam Trapenberg in Amsterdam, Netherlands 24

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SMIB

There’s a group of independent creators turning heads in Amsterdam: SMIB Worldwide, made up of KC, GRGY, Ray Fuego, GHQST, Tads Thots, Dess Finesse, Yung Nnelg, Myrto, and Larry Appiah. They’re an industrious collective dropping EPs, mixtapes, merchandise and clothing lines – all without breaking a sweat. They riled up devoted crowds at Appelsap festival and have become an act you can’t miss live or online – check out their beats on SoundCloud, Squad TV on YouTube, style on Tumblr – plus they’ve been known to venture into the local art scene. We had a lot to catch up on so we invited GRGY and KC, both representing SMIB on the music front, to spend a sunny afternoon at the funfair, ’cause really, what better way is there to get to know somebody? Sunday midday: We meet in the bright daylight in Westerpark. There’s a buzz in the air, the first signs of summer. That, and the classic cocktail of sounds that belong at a carnival – yelling children, electronic bing sounds and bad covers of yesteryear’s hits. GRGY is gleaming, there’s a glimmer in his eye. The kind of sparkle that gets people going. It doesn’t surprise me to learn that he’s unofficially crowned ‘the creative mind’ behind SMIB. He walks ahead of us, ready to take on some rides and get this day rolling. KC is on a different wavelength. He squints suspiciously at the crowds and the machines people are paying to get into. We walk past a ride that takes you way up, spins you around and gives you killer views of the city. KC turns his gaze downwards with sadness and shakes his head: ‘A friend of mine lost one of his sneakers in one of those.’ GRGY and KC, matched with iconic rapper Ray Fuego, produce and drop tracks under the yet-to-be-signed moniker Bummy Boys. Their signature sound blends dark beats, straight-up rhymes and Amsterdam street slang. Live they’re known to deliver amped-up hip hop with a rowdy punk sentiment. But just when you think you know them, you don’t. SMIB has pretty much become synonymous with genre defiance and enterprise. 27

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Field trip

GRGY was a misfit growing up. ‘I have the feeling that I was an internet kid without the internet. I always liked anime, crazy clothing, fashion and cool music. I was just being myself.’ ‘He was always like this,’ KC confirms calmly, ‘and Ray was always the same too, everyone knew him for it.’ We wind back time, start from the beginning. GRGY got into making music at 14 with childhood friend Larry Appiah, now acting as their manager, who downloaded FruityLoops on to his computer. By the time they were 17 they had grown confident, but GRGY never shared anything online back then because, ‘E-v-ery-one in Bijlmer was a rapper. So I just didn’t want anyone to find out I make beats, because otherwise they’d all ask me for beats. I just wanted to do my own thing.’ The collective started out small – a duo; just GRGY and Larry. ‘We started spelling words backwards, like a sort of slang. That’s when Larry came up with SMIB, that’s “bims” backwards, it stands for Bijlmer. Where we’re from.’ It was right around the same time that The New Originals (TNO) started out and Yung Nnelg got into rapping. The two collectives put their names aside and decided to record together. Then Eben Badu’s sweet-talking came into the mix. ‘He can just get things done by talking,’ GRGY grins. ‘He’ll tell you he has some crazy business he doesn’t. He got us into loads of studios and stuff, got us to hang out with De Jeugd Van Tegenwoordig, shit like that. And then he got himself booked for Appelsap. He couldn’t even DJ, didn’t have songs, didn’t have nothing. So he was like, “Let’s make a few songs and just see what happens.”’ The New Originals were booked as DJs, but GRGY jumped the fence and climbed on to the stage and the world witnessed his rap debut at Amsterdam’s biggest hip hop festival, Appelsap [2013]. Ray Feugo was in that crowd. After the show, Ray came up to GRGY to say he wanted to work together, gave him his number and told him, ‘I’m the best rapper from Holland.’ KC echoes, ‘No lie!’ and chuckles. ‘At first I was, like, “Okay, whatever,” but then two weeks later we meet up and he just freestyles all day and I’m like, “Damn! This kid is actually the best rapper I’ve ever heard!”’ And so their collaboration was born. ‘We made three songs when we first met up. One of them was ‘Beer&Pi$$a’, we put it up and within a few days we had over 1,000 plays. That’s when we all went to KC’s studio.’

Field trip

Together with Ottis Remix, KC built his own studio at home and took measures to get things going. As if it were fate, he had already been working with both GRGY and Ray separately before they met. It felt like it was all coming together. ‘That’s how Bummy Boys started,’ KC concludes. ‘After that we were just always in the studio making shit. We made a mixtape and that’s it! We started to do shows and now we’re here. It’s crazy!’ GRGY managed to get Bummy Boys booked at Appelsap 2014, and after winning over the crowds, things took off from there. ‘I knew all these people, because of Eben – people you’d never meet otherwise.’ Once he started making music with Ray and KC, he had this network ready to go. ‘I emailed everyone, “I make music now,” and because we believed in it so much and we got all these young friends who just rock with it, it just kind of got a buzz.’ KC shakes his head in disbelief: ‘I never thought it would go so fast.’ The crew we now know as SMIB Worldwide followed swiftly after that. It was a strategic move, KC explains, because ‘it’s easier to bring attention to what you’re doing that way’. I’ve been thinking of them as a collective, a syndicate of musicians, but it’s more than that. ‘It’s meant to be like a label, not like a boy band,’ GRGY tells me. SMIB Worldwide exists to promote the individuals involved and all of their widespread creative efforts. SMIB is their gateway – the stepping-stone for this group of musicians and creators to do what they want to do. They’re not waiting for things to happen, they’re making them happen, using everything they’ve got. ‘I believe that if you want to do something, you should just go ahead and do it.’ GRGY couldn’t have typified himself and SMIB better. Everything they’ve got to show for themselves has been the result of exactly that – just doing. Like the shirts and jackets sporting the brand ‘SMIB’, which started out as a gamble. ‘I used the last money I had, from working shitty jobs, and got jackets made, hand painted by Wessel Rossen. I didn’t care if no one bought them; failure wasn’t really in my mind, I was just, like, “People are gonna buy these.”’ GRGY called out that he was selling them after the show at Appelsap and sold them by meeting up face-to-face with whoever dropped him a message on Facebook, Instagram, email or came up to him at a show. When they sold out and he realised he could make money doing

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SMIB

‘It’s not just the Bijlmer. Everyone who rocks with it, is with it. So if you’re in Tokyo or anywhere in the world and you like it, then you’re part of it.’

what he loved and make people happy, he decided: ‘I just want to live like this for ever. I want to keep pushing it to the next level every time.’ His drive is unrelenting and infectious. True to his word, GRGY was up late last night launching his webshop (www.smib.jp) to do just that. And to cater to the blown-up demand. ‘We have, like, a cult following. You can’t really see it, but it’s there.’ They’re on point and driven in everything they do. In setting up this interview, they were very determined about not wanting to meet in the Bijlmer. I want to find out why. ‘Every single interviewer or photographer wants to go the Bijlmer, because they think it’s “edgy” or “ghetto”,’ GRGY speaks sternly, as KC listens attentively. ‘But it’s not “edgy” or “ghetto”; it’s just where we’re from.’ Turns out, the guys are all too aware of the narrative media outlets have dealt them, but they’re not interested in contributing to that stereotype. ‘We’re musicians, making music, and we want to talk about that,’ KC shoots straight. Truly a man of few words, KC only speaks when he’s got something to say. ‘I don’t want it to be about where we’re from,’ GRGY continues, ‘I want it to be about what we’re representing.’ Hence the title and their vision for the collective: SMIB Worldwide. ‘It’s not just the Bijlmer. Everyone who rocks with it, is with it. So if you’re in Tokyo or anywhere in the world and you like it, then you’re part of it.’ As the sun is setting and the temperature drops dramatically, I start to get a feel for their ambitions. It’s not fame or a lot of money, or even to establish something specific. It’s the way they want to live. ‘We want to do what we want, the way we want, and that’s not even hard to do!’ GRGY glistens. They want to create and produce, keep pushing themselves to the next level, support their friends and escape the humdrum of the 9-to-5. Through all of this, they want to create the feeling that ‘if we can do it, you can too, ’cause we’re all just people. We just did it, and people kind of liked it.’ GRGY beams as KC nods in agreement to everything he’s saying. ‘We want to bring everything that’s in our minds to life and in doing that, travel the world,’ GRGY muses. Industrious and inspired, armed with a seemingly limitless capacity for upping the game, I’d say they got this. Keep your eye out for these game-changers.

— SMIB play Woo Hah Festival, Tilburg on 02 July 2016. Ray Fuego plays Appelsap Festival, Amsterdam on 13 August 2016.

Interview

Feminist NY collective on tokenism and changing the system from within

Discwoman Interview by Zofia Ciechowska Photos by Cait Oppermann shot in New York City, USA

DISCWOMAN is a collective, platform and booking agency founded in New York by Frankie Hutchinson, Emma Burgess-Olson and Christine Tran in September 2014. It’s also one of the most powerful, genuine, motivating and fun movements sweeping across dancefloors in NYC and beyond. The team has organised events in over 15 cities internationally with 150 DJs and collaborators, all focused on elevating cis women, trans women and genderqueer talent in electronic music. It’s a golden spring Monday evening in Brooklyn. The city’s humming again with music from apartment blocks, car windows, squares and subway platforms. Christine, Emma and Frankie sit in their South Wil34

liamsburg studio, two gigantic DISCWOMAN posters proudly plastered across its humble perimetre. There’s an infectious warmth and enthusiasm that buzzes from them as they finish each other’s sentences, give each other props and speak about their love for each other and their mission. Coming from very different lived experiences, the three underline how important it is to have NYC as their base. It’s where people come to experiment with self-expression freely. It’s where they’ve found each other and their allies. It’s where they can push the music scenes they love to include more diversity in club culture. Now that their message is out at home, it’s time for it to travel the world.

XXX

Interview Tell me how DISCWOMAN came about. Frankie: I heard Emma play a dope techno track and here we are now a few years later. I remember the sound of that record and it bringing me back to times when I used to love dancing to techno. I then introduced Emma and Christine to each other. Christine: Frankie and I know each other from these WITCHES parties in Bushwick that happened four years ago at Tandem in Bushwick. DISCWOMAN started when we threw a showcase in September 2014 at Bossa Nova Civic Club to highlight all the talented women DJs we liked. We did interviews the day after. That’s when DISCWOMAN felt real. You’re based in NYC, but you partner with DJs and producers in other cities too. Are you strategic about where you set up a showcase, like previous ones in Mexico City, Philadelphia or Montreal? Emma: A lot of the time it’s organic. People will reach out to us and ask us to help plan a DISCWOMAN showcase in their city.

to be able to work together and be in agreement about these fundamental values. We’re here with the DJs and producers who are out there fucking fighting! C: We each come from a different lived experience. Coming together makes us push each other. I have grown so much in the past year and a half. The conversations we have push me to see the world differently and in a more appreciative way. I’ve really understood opportunities as a form of currency. We’ve grown so much because we’re able to spread our community to so many up-andcoming and established artists and have them connect with each other. We make sure that we create a very special environment at the events we run. It’s amazing that all that started from a conversation we had together.

‘Discwoman is not just a trend’

C: Enthusiasm is a big factor and – of course – resources. We need resources to be able What do you think helps you be good collaborto travel and run these showcases. But if we ators so you can pursue your vision? really believe in investing in these places, we’ll make it happen. E: Strong communication. We have to be very honest with each other even if it’ll make What is the vision you share together? someone feel uncomfortable or create a tense situation. It helps us solve problems efficiently. We know we have a deep foundation of love E: We share a lot of core values as a threefor each other so even if we say something some. We want to support people who are that might piss one of us off, we also know hustling for themselves no matter what level we deeply support and trust each other. This of education or exposure they have. If they want it really badly, that’s something we value formula has really helped us pull through. and we just want to elevate them. What has DISCWOMAN enabled your community members to do? F: We all agree that, for instance, women of colour and trans women need more attention. We understand the climate we’re in. With us E: Many get more exposure through doinherently reflecting different races, we auto- ing events with us. Others have said that we matically bring that to the table. It’s awesome helped them realise that they can participate 37

Discwoman in this scene. Hearing about us in the press has helped people see a path they’ve not seen before. C: We’ve had people say that they started their own collective in their city inspired by ours! It’s cool that we’re able to bring people together around a common cause. Confidence and perseverance are key here. Just keep on going. Sometimes it’s hard to feel that on your own, but when you have a network, that encouragement is stronger. There’s been a surge of pro-feminist messages in the music industry that aim to fight its systemic discrimination. What role do you see yourselves playing here? F: We want to keep on doing stuff, keep on travelling, set foot in Europe. We see our booking agency and merchandise as being successful now, but in the future there’s an aspiration for creating a bigger media platform for women to showcase themselves, even if they’re not booked by us. There are not enough opportunities for us to book all the women who are in touch with us right now.

working with women has done wonders for their careers. E: As an artist, I also had those ideas about what women can do and what’s professional. Seeing what we do or what people we interact with do has helped me break down those mental boundaries. I hope that that can happen to others. I don’t think there’s a feminist starting place where you suddenly get it all. It’s more about learning through exposure to new experiences and unlearning negative ones. C: The fact that now we have decision-makers in our scene who are looking at the diversity of lineups and saying that predominantly white cis male lineups are unacceptable is important and exciting. It’s becoming more of a popular discourse. Ultimately your goal is to have female-identifying and genderqueer DJs to be represented equally like men, so that one day their difference isn’t noticed when they play a set. They are chosen to play because they’re excellent, not because they’re excellent AND (gasp!) different. If we reach that state, where do you see DISCWOMAN going?

What do you need to book more of them? C: Time and money. We’ve been very lucky to propagate our message through media. We’re at a stage where we need to think about how we action the messages we’re spreading. The fact that we can showcase high-calibre female talent around the world proves that it’s possible. DISCWOMAN is not just a trend. F: Emma, who plays as UMFANG, is a prime example. When I met her before DISCWOMAN we laughed about partnering to book her. Now she’s on an awesome trajectory. We come across people who have anxiety around working with women because it’ll have a negative impact on their career. It’s what society beats into you. When we show that it can really work, and pay their bills too, that’s when we disprove it all. They realise that 38

E: If DISCWOMAN ever becomes irrelevant, we’ll evolve and do something else. We’ve talked about how having a gendered agency is necessary right now, but that might not be the case in the future. F: I mean, that’s the goal! If we achieve that state, we’ll have a MASSIVE party! What advice do you have for those who are following a similar mission to yours when they encounter criticism? E: Focusing on constructive ideas and solid facts to prove they’re blind to seeing the whole picture. For example, someone might say, ‘Women aren’t as good at techno.’ You can say, ‘Well, what about this woman, and this woman, AND this woman?’ You can’t argue with that.

Interview

Discwoman C: Some are against the all-female lineup idea because it can sometimes tokenise the group in a way that might disadvantage how they’re perceived. Some are more focused on integration. We think about that as we evolve. F: I just disagree with that argument, though. I think it’s more reflective of your relationship to women and what you think about that. Our parties are so good. There’s nothing tokenistic about them. The key is to just go and do it, not just talk about it. How are you bringing together such awesomely fun and diverse crowds at your nights? C: The artists we book bring in very different sets of fans to our clubs. Diverse lineups bring in diverse crowds. That’s where the fun lies. Juliana Huxtable, Honey Dijon, Katie Rex, to name a few, all have very unique fan communities, and it’s great to see them converge and that they trust us to put on these shows. Have you ever considered bringing all the DISCWOMEN who you’ve partnered with together? C, E & F: Oh my God, that would be so cool! Can you imagine?! We could call it DISCWOMAN WORLD, it could be a big festival. Maybe someone in Europe could give us a big field and a lot of electricity to do it?!

— discwoman.com

Young Echo Photos shot by Campbell Sibthorpe in Bristol, UK 42

Story XXX

A true product of their environment, Young Echo draw on the rich musical history of Bristol. Dubstep dread permeates the atmosphere of their eclectic 2013 debut, Nexus, with trip-hop running in the souterrain. Influenced by the sound system culture, they belong to a paradigm shift in electronic music, epitomised by the hiss and crackle of tape; they are unafraid to embrace the mechanical character of the apparatus in search of a more real, authentic sound. Given that the collective was also formed around listening practices and music sharing, with Vessel, el kid, Kahn, Ishan Sound and Amos Childs coming together for a series of online radio broadcasts dedicated to their wandering musical interests and leftfield experiments — broken electronics, boisterous dub, fiery grime, distorted dancehall, spoken word poetry, tampered R&B — it’s no wonder they’ve been penned as ‘a lateral study of Bristol’s musical heritage.’ Gradually adding new members — Bogues, Manonmars, Rider Shafique, Neek, Ossia, and chester giles — the group has also expanded sonically, often breeding in-house collaborations and offshoot projects like Killing Sound, asda, Zhou, Baba Yaga, or Gorgon Sound. Just as they map out the sound of Bristol, we wanted to map out their points of connection; this is their collective story, one member at a time. 43

Discwoman

Young Echo eventually led to us exchang- the material we were all writing messages and later on ing individually, material that didn’t necessarily work in a some MP3s. club environment. It’s become the space in which I feel I can § truly be myself and experiment with sound. Cris • Ishan Sound

§ Amos • Amos Childs

Amos introduced me to all of the others in the original crew: Seb (Vessel), Sam K (el kid) and Joe (Kahn). I think he met all of them through friends when he went to college in Bristol. I only met the other three when we got together to broadcast our first online show, spun out of our habit of sharing music with each other.

Over the past few years we’ve invited other like-minded artists to join the collective and it’s evolved naturally, expanding the spectrum of music that we work with as a group.

I already knew Alex (Bogues) from school and had been in a band with him and also done some (badly clipping) Dr. Dre style (I hoped) hip hop beats for him. I also vaguely knew Jack (Manonmars) at school as well, but I wouldn’t find out he rapped or even really liked music until later.

We sat in Seb’s mum’s house one Sunday evening and played some music we had been making or been interested in. It was stuff that sometimes wouldn’t quite fit the dancefloor or even with some of the output from our main musical projects. That was the end of 2010. The broadcasts were pretty shaky I suppose it was around 2007- back then and, for the most 2008 when me and Cris (Ishan part, have remained techniSound) were starting to get to cally rudimentary. know each other and make § music together – the very early beginnings of what would Joe • Kahn become Zhou. We would meet either at my mum’s or at his school if we could go into the Our early radio shows enabled studio where we would try and us to explore the musical dyexperiment, making tracks to- namics of the group and bring gether. We eventually got a to life what we felt was the few we were happy with and common thread between us uploaded them to MySpace. all as artists. That’s also where we stalked a few of the other guys’ pages (I I think it was really refreshvaguely knew them, they were ing for us to have a platform friends of friends), and this where we could showcase 45

Young Echo § Seb • Vessel

might be able to broadcast the show from there. This meant more space, more volume and, crucially, a live audience. Our ideas about what we might accomplish as a collective really began to form during The Sunday Sessions at F.A.G. Studios.

Amos brought Alex along to one of the first broadcasts. I remember him getting on the mic and everyone being really excited, and not long after, possibly the same evening, he § joined the gang. That’s when the group started to become this potentially limitless, flexSam K • el kid ible structure that could accommodate many different F.A.G. Studios were primarily musical approaches. used as rehearsal spaces for bands, so for the first time we Joe had a studio space at a were able to invite live acts as complex in north Bristol at guests on the radio show. For that time and suggested we one of my favourite shows, we had three different rehearsal rooms rigged up to a mixing desk with cables stretched across the corridors like trip wires. That night we had Ekoplekz, Giant Swan, The Naturals and The Big Naturals playing live on radio. We also had Jamal Moss playing there once. Some unlikely stuff happened down at F.A.G.

It was also around this time that we were approached by Rump Records to release an LP. They had released records by artists we liked so we started to assemble a tracklist. § Alex • Bogues Following the release of our first LP as a collective, we started receiving offers for live shows. It was around this time that Rider Shafique and Manonmars officially joined the crew, and by late 2013 we had a few shows booked across Switzerland and Germany for the summer of 2014. Ossia (Dan) had released music for most of Young Echo, and his presence at the radio shows always showcased a strong dedication to music in general. Neek (Sam Barrett) had worked with Joe for a while before the clique even formed, and much like Ossia, he attended the radio nights regularly and played some great sets. By the time we were preparing to play abroad, Neek and Ossia were fully involved and all ten of us travelled to play those gigs. § Jack • Manonmars The shows in Switzerland and Germany opened my eyes to what music is capable of. I began writing lyrics without any

Story

intention of seeing them go beyond the pages in my notebook. After becoming a part of Young Echo, I saw how positive people’s responses were, and it became clear to me then that this is the most influential thing I’ve been a part of. With both our live shows and musical catalogues, I think we allow ourselves the freedom to do more than one specific thing, and that’s something that can otherwise hold a lot of talented people back. Something Amos stressed to me from the moment we started recording together is how there’s no point in recycling what has already been done, regardless of how well you pull it off, or how much it inspires you. § Denzil • Rider Shafique Sam Binga and I spent a day with Joe (Kahn) at Redbull Studios in London, and we recorded a track together called ‘Original’.

We kept in contact and Joe later asked if I could vocal for ‘Prophet’, which features on his EP. It turns out Amos and Chris also did some production on the track, so when I was invited to Joe’s EP launch in Bristol, I got to meet the rest of the Young Echo guys. That night, I jumped on the mic with Bogues and Mars during the Jabu set. From then on, we kept in touch; I recorded some vocals for them and hosted some sets at their regular nights. A few months later, Amos and Joe asked if I wanted to join the collective, which I did without hesitation, making me the ninth member of Young Echo. § Sam • Neek I first met the guys through Joe, who I was already DJ’ing and making music with. I liked what they were doing with their radio show and after coming along to hang out a few times, I was asked to play a few tunes. It was refreshing for me to have

a place to play the weirder end of my record collection instead of just playing dance music like I was used to. On the eve of the debut album launch, Amos grabbed the mic to invite me as the newest member but I was nowhere to be seen. In fact, I was down the road from the venue eating a jerk chicken wrap in Biblos. When I got back, I accepted his offer to join the squad and Amos was almost crying tears of joy. § Dan • Ossia Joe (Kahn) is an old family friend of mine (Bristol ain’t that big) and I knew Sam Kidel from school, I’m pretty sure we also used to exchange tunes via MySpace back then. I used to hang out with some of the guys and I guess we were always on the same wavelength musically and socially. They formed Young Echo around the same time I was running events and starting labels. 47

Interview

Discwoman

Young Echo I was invited to play on one of their radio shows a few years ago, maybe in 2011, and from then on proceeded to latch on to as much of their music as I could and released it mainly on NoCorner label, but also via Hotline and Peng Sound. I have always been impressed by their talent and unconventional approach to everything, so when I was formally invited by the crew at one of the monthly Young Echo Sound events a couple years ago, there was no question that I would join the collective if they were to ask. Which they did in front of a whole crowd of people, like a marriage proposal in public or something. § Chester • chester giles I got to know Ossia from working together at Biblos. At that point, he was putting on the Peng Sound Dances, playing records in various places and was just generally on it, making things happen. I remember back then whenever we’d go somewhere he’d always have a bag full of posters for the next Dance that we’d put up along the way. He’d invite me down to the F.A.G. radio sessions, and I’d just shock out and vibe and it was really exciting. I was kinda blown away by finding this scene of people who just wanted to play whatever they liked, however they liked, making interesting music without prescribing to any 50

existing scenes or ideas. I got to know the others in the group and started hanging out a lot with Seb, Amos and Cris at Amos’s house. Their energy and approach to things had a great effect on my work and my writing, so I started recording bits with Seb and playing records occasionally at their nights. It was only a matter of time until it became an official thing as I was recording and making tracks with most of them. — asda’s The Abyss is out now on No Corner. Young Echo plays Somewhere Else at OT301, Amsterdam on 04 June 2016.

Discwoman

Interview

Secretly Canadian newcomers on embracing the great outdoors

Whitney Interview by Jack Dolan Photos shot by Wessel Baarda in Amsterdam, Netherlands

To fully understand Whitney the band, it is first necessary to understand Whitney the man. Whitney is a character that formed, a couple of years back, in the collective consciousness of two men: Julien Ehrlich and Max Kakacek. Both had just left successful bands (Unknown Mortal Orchestra and Smith Westerns), both were in the midst of breakups with girlfriends and both were toiling over projects that would never see the light of day. In this period of painful transition the duo would daydream about a simpler world inhabited by an old-school guy who they named Whitney. This vision inspired them to write some beautifully uncomplicated country music, and quickly the side project became the main 52

focus. They enlisted five friends from their hometown of Chicago and Whitney the band was born. Skip forward two years and I find myself sitting in on a rare acoustic performance by Julien, Max and keyboardist Malcolm Brown at s105, Subbacultchaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s very own venue. Those first two songs are now successful singles, with the album release and tour just around the corner. Fresh off the plane from Chicago and four men down, this performance is slapdash but undeniably endearing, with Julien offering coy apologies in between tracks. Afterwards we all sit down to discuss the merits of camping, bath-taking and the genius of Fetty Wap. Whitney the man is with us in spirit.

XXX

Interview That was a really fun gig. Did you guys enjoy it? Julien: It was pretty hilarious; very loose. It’s the first time I’ve ever played guitar live. How many other shows have you done? J: In terms of full band shows, our next show is our 69th. We came over and did around 12 shows throughout Europe. Max K: We didn’t play Amsterdam, I was pretty bummed about that, but we played Where The Wild Things Are, which was like a giant summer camp – really cool.

‘I’m a romantic and I’m just coming to terms with that’

I’ve heard you’ve personified Whitney and keeping him in mind helps you write the songs. How does that work? MK: That was something we used for the first couple of songs as a writing tool to get out of our own headspace. J: More and more, it was like this Whitney character became a reflection of ourselves and our own feelings of loneliness and wanting to be alone. So Whitney is a bit of a loner and he lives in the middle of nowhere? J: He’s a peculiar one, he’s an old soul. Whitney likes Asheville, North Carolina quite a bit. If he was gonna move to a city, that’s where he’d go. MK: He lives in not Chicago. I don’t think Whitney would like any of us. He wouldn’t want to party with us. 54

J: Whitney parties by himself. I think on the next record he might get a little happier, though. Right now, there seems to be a contrast in your music between the happy tone and the sad lyrics. Where does that come from? J: I did an interview the other day where this guy found about ten different ways to say ‘sad but hopeful’. We were in a weird transition when we wrote the album, leaving old bands and going through break-ups but at heart we’re pretty positive people. So it’s pretty sad content but it’s written in a happier way. So you’re generally happy people. What kind of things make you happy? What inspires the happiness? J: I’m a romantic and I’m just coming to terms with that. I’ve been falling in love with females mostly. I haven’t fallen in love with a dude yet. MK: For me, making a song that has depth is the thing that makes me most happy. I would even give up girls if that meant I could keep making good music. Malcolm B: When it’s the right time of day and you’re just the right amount of stoned and you listen to a really good song, that makes me happy. When you discover something about a song that you love. It seems like the songwriting process for Whitney is very natural. How did it all start? MK: We were just living together and made a song, I wouldn’t say as a joke but it definitely had some humour behind it. When we listened back, we realised we should make it into a real song. J: I think we were both involved in other projects post Smith Westerns and Unknown Mortal Orchestra and we were both working pretty hard on other albums that seemed

Whitney

almost too serious at the time. One morning me and Max made a song and it seemed like the perfect thing to be doing so we saw it through. That first song was written in 15 minutes and then the next one was written in 20 minutes. We were taking these other projects that never got finished, and this was like a weird vacation from that. It ended up being the thing that we loved the most. You guys live in Chicago but your music has a very countrified, outdoorsy vibe. Do you spend a lot of time out of the city or is it just where you imagine Whitney to be when you write? J: We take quite a few trips to the country but actually the bulk of the writing [for the album] got done during a really cold and sad winter. Chicago at that time of year is so ugly. First snow is cool but then beyond that it just turns to this nasty slush, the weather drops and there are Cheeto bags everywhere. You

wonder, What the hell am I doing here? When we were writing we were dreaming of more beautiful places. We recorded in LA and the vibe we had out there was something we hadn’t experienced in a long time, it definitely found its way into the record. MK: I’ve spent a lot of time at my grandma’s farm in northern Illinois. Even though we don’t live in those areas they’re quite a big part of us. When we were in Austin for SXSW we bought a ten-man tent – the biggest tent I’ve ever seen. Our plan for the summer is whenever we can to stay in the tent in a national park because it’s cheap and really cool. MB: Even if it’s just someone’s back yard, it’s nice to be able to bring our own shelter. J: We could spend 100 bucks on a hotel or we could just spend 50 bucks on hot dogs and chips and build a fire and camp. 55

Whitney

Interview What else do you guys get up to, when you’re not camping or making music?

Where are the other guys in the band at the moment?

J: We like lying in girls’ beds. Whenever we get home from touring, we go and see our girls and literally become like cave dwellers. We try to stay away from drinking sometimes. We just lie around and watch something like Parks and Recreation.

J: One of them is in bed with his girl, the rest aren’t.

MK: Our bass player is a passionate bath-taker. He loves taking baths all the time.

MK: You asked what do we do other than music; nowadays, we just try to find somewhere to sleep.

MB: We’re going to be out so much that none of us have apartments any more so we’re just hanging out at friends’ or family’s places.

J: It’s not creepy at all. Does he take it to the next level - candles, incense and all that?

Do you enjoy turning up in a random city every other day? J: I think we’re kind of addicted to it.

J: Yeah, and a 23-ounce beer. You don’t sleep with him on the first date, you take a bath. MK: Yeah he’s like, ‘Oh, it’s great to meet you, would you like to go take a bath?’ I used to live with him and you’d come home and he’d be in the bath with someone and I’d ask, ‘Did anything happen?’ and he’s like, ‘No, we just took a bath.’

MB: We were home the other weekend, the whole family was there. It was kind of stressful. J: We’d spent four days hiding away in girls’ beds and then Easter Sunday was the first

MB: I’ve walked in on conversations where somebody’s telling him, ‘No! I don’t want to take a bath with you!’ and he’s like, ‘Come on, man, just take a bath with me!’ Do the rest of you guys take baths or just him? MK: I just feel like after I take a bath I need to take a shower. J: You’ve just been sitting in your own stuff and it’s a bit fucked up. I feel funny when I’m taking a bath and my penis is weirdly buoyant and floating up to the top. I hate that shit. I have to tuck it in between my legs just to get through the bath. MK: I don’t have the patience to sit in the bath and chill anyway. The pages of the Playboy magazine I’m reading end up all wet. 57

Whitney time I saw Max and went to his family celebration. We drank three beers and then it was like, What do we do now? Let’s act like we’re on tour and go party.

What do you think Whitney would think of Fetty Wap?

In a recent live session you said you were fans of Fetty Wap. What appeals to you about him?

J: I don’t think that he would pay any mind to it until one day he found himself humming the melody and then he’d be into it.

J: I heard that he just straight-up freestyled ‘Trap Queen’. I think that’s tight. A lot of our melodies were like that where Max would just start playing the song and I would freestyle it and that would be the basis of the melody. MB: He also keeps it in the family. That guy who’s featured on 12 of the songs who nobody knows is just his friend. He’s definitely mediocre; the only reason anyone knows him is because he’s on the Fetty Wap record. I like that he could have spent huge money and got all the huge producers but he kept it all close.

[Long contemplative silence…]

MK: Whitney is more malleable than you think. There’s two songs that never made it [on to the album] which in our brains were when Whitney went to LA and did a bunch of coke and wrote these crazy overproduced disco songs. J: That song is still good. If Whitney is mostly an amalgamation of me and Max’s brains, then he’s definitely in tune to old stuff and new. My brain would be more new and Max’s would be more old. He just pulls the good stuff from both our brains.

J: Also the harmonies on ‘Jugg’ are so tight. Will we ever hear the coked-up disco Whitney? J: It will be released as a demo. MK: It kind of needed to stay the version that it was, but it didn’t sound anything like the rest of the album. J: It’s catchy though.

— Whitney’s Light Upon the Lake is out on 03 June 2016 via Secretly Canadian. They play OT301, Amsterdam on 22 June 2016, Down The Rabbit Hole (24 - 26 June 2016), and Lowlands (19 - 21 August 2016).

Discwoman

Featured artists

We wrap up a year of art residencies with an overview from the curator

The Art Department Text by Floor Kortman

On April Fools’ Day 2015, The Art Department – the sum of Subbacultcha’s artistic endeavours – started an artist residency programme claiming the office basement for its headquarters and turning it into a project space. At that point we had been organising one-off exhibitions for a few years; committing to a residency programme was an experiment motivated by my personal interest as a curator to dig deeper into the minds of artists – because their minds are fascinating and their thoughts outrageous. The residency was there to push them further along, giving them a space and time to develop new work; together, we broke new ground and ventured into the unknown. At its core, the programme was based on the idea that the most interesting things happen when artists move between different disciplines and experiment in various media to find their own visual language. Art is about communication but sometimes artists 60

speak in tongues, so in that sense my job as a curator was more like that of a translator. The residency was about allowing each artist(s) to develop that common language; what they actually made at the end of their stay was never high on my list of priorities, as making an art piece is merely a stepping stone for the next one and the one after that. Offering artists a space and some guidelines is usually the only thing they need. Subbacultcha was the perfect environment for a residency programme, as the platform innately embodies the urge to cultivate new talent. After 12 ambitious months and a nonstop work process developing concepts into exhibitions, we ended up with 13 artists, 15 presentations, ten events, nine publications and seven performances. Here’s a little summary of our time at Da Costakade 150. — Image on opposite page by Robert Glas Fotografie.

Hannah Polak

As with many of our residents, the first time I saw Hannah Polakâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work was at her graduation show at The Academy in The Hague in 2014. Her presentation with a fake sticky tree trunk and a giant weird popsicle did not really make sense until I actually met Hannah and she showed me the cotton-candy Disney world she inhabits. The artist investigated what it means to be a human being in todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s world, and although viewed through her rose-tinted glasses, Hannah still expertly crossed that line where innocence becomes cruelty.

Otto Kaan

Berend Otto and Guus Kaandorp are not your typical photographers, often resorting to building their own objects before photographing them. The duo set out for Italy in Berendâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tiny Fiat Panda in search for the spirit of Italian designer Giorgetto Giugiaro. Giugiaro and Fiat Pandas were the main themes of their project, as was driving around, making things difficult for themselves and constantly assuring me things were going to be okay. I was never worried though; the two have a reputation for approaching their projects in an unusual fashion, but always end up pulling through.

Timo Demollin and Rutger de Vries

Probably the most prolific residents we had, Timo and Rutger spent their first day of the residency building a rooftop installation. They were excited to be here. The two artists wanted to work together, but not make work together. So, as graphic designers, they ventured into a thorough investigation of Tetterode, the former type foundry that was then home to The Art Department and Subbacultcha. This led to a series of very informative and unique presentations in which the past met the future, and for their final exhibition, the duo made permanent interventions in the historical building.

Iris Donker and Katinka van Gorkum

Speak about visual language, these two have found it. When paired, Iris and Katinka bring out the weirdest in each other, and that can be pretty inspiring to watch. They crawled around our building in huge chihuahua masks and snail suits and turned our basement into a plastic, white wonderland. They even hijacked our attempt at a clarifying interview with affirmative retorts and circular reasoning.

Julie Héneault, Margaux Parillaud, Ursula Marcussen, and Line-Gry Hørup

These four came in with unprecedented focus and energy – they seemed so aligned I hardly felt the need to meddle. After about a week and a half of them murmuring in the dimly lit basement drinking copious amounts of red wine while their (giant) cigarette jar slowly filled up, they told me they were going to make a carpet. Saying yes to that was probably the best thing I did all year. Their completely idiosyncratic project Physical Culture was one of the most amazing transformations I have seen happen in the project space, and real tears were shed when it ended.

Goof Kloosterman

In collaboration with artist Hannah Carpenter, Goof Kloosterman made a very ambitious project involving about one ton of wood. Instead of just the basement, the two had access to both floors of our space on Da Costakade, which they took full advantage of. They even took part of their installation to Unfair Amsterdam for a live-stream installation and inevitably interactive mindfuck. While poking holes in our understanding of the spectator and the spectated by switching around roles and archetypes, their â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;white box / black boxâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; installation was smart and challenging.

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Point of view

I Am Your Babyfather by Mateusz Mondalski It’s the sweet smell of a spliff in a sunlit London park or the white light blinding you in purgatory as a heavenly harp resounds. Over the years, the mysterious Dean Blunt has taken his listeners to all sorts of places. The British provocateur enjoyed a prolific period as Hype Williams with his partner in crime – the equally evasive Inga Copeland. Their ethereal lo-fi albums brought them street cred and a notoriety for avoiding the press. Recently they parted ways. Dean Blunt founded the tongue-in-cheek hip hop group Babyfather with his new gang – DJ Escrow, Gassman, Lady T and Triumph ALLAH. In late February Inga Copeland self-released a new solo album, Live in Paris, as Lolina. Typically for her unconventional publishing strategy, Inga just posted it as a video of a live performance framed by Monopoly-themed visuals. In their own way, they both continue to confound. The cover for Babyfather’s BBF hosted by DJ Escrow sports a hilarious hoverboard covered in the Union Jack pattern. The vehicle stands proudly in the absurd setting of London’s skyline illuminated by the setting sun. Is Dean Blunt suggesting with this imagery the oft-debated demise of Western hegemony? Or is he just questioning what it means to be British today? Either way, the Hyperdub affiliate flaunts his artistry in approaching heavyweight issues in a casual way. It all starts with a lengthy loop repeating the sentence: ‘This makes me proud to be British.’ The Londonbased lyricist always glides between candour and irony. He’s like an ancient thinker contemplating the world in the wild outdoors, except instead of a tunic he goes for the blunt and baseball cap – his kind of essentials. With Babyfather, Blunt stays loyal to his trademark style; it’s a collection of dubby drafts, his feels about life which come and go like the cinematic ‘HELLS ANGELS’. What’s best

here is Blunt’s wizardry in selecting samples. At one point it’s a wavy soca beat, then it’s a cello loop as if recorded under the table at London’s Cafe OTO. BBF hosted by DJ Escrow feels like a pirate radio show where the hosts hang out all day, sharing dubplates, stories and weed. Dean Blunt chooses street hustle over gallery vanity but still enjoys gluing these worlds together. Every now and then an old-school Nokia ringtone irritates the ear. It’s probably Blunt taking revenge on the sort of fan who checks Tinder or Snapchat during his shows, half present, neglecting the artist. Babyfather is all about speaking your mind, repping your crew and finding your way through the urban maze. Verses like ‘Trust is a luxury I cannot afford’ sound like a DIY guide to getting by. A fight between lovers, a halting speedcar, emergency sirens and electric drills all reflect our everyday ordeals. ‘Deep’ with Arca is a funeral march with weeping strings that will tear you apart. Babyfather represents the simple everyman with a spliff sharing his version of the truth.

— Babyfather’s BBF hosted by DJ Escrow is out now via Hyperdub. They play at De School, Amsterdam on 02 June 2016.

mel k w e g

wo 28 sep LE BUTCHERETTES

ZA 02 JUL

BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE do 21 jul

KITTY, DAISY & LEWIS

VR 29 JUL

MARK LANEGAN BAND W0 28 SEP

LE BUTCHERETTES

WO 26 OKT

POLIÇA

VR 28 OKT

SEKUOIA

WO 05 OKT

WOVENHAND

tickets: melkweg.nl

Point of view

I Saw God and It Was Lit by Deva Rao Music is a portal to oblivion. Music is a privilege. Music is rapture. Music is guilt. I love music, to no avail. It is uninformed idealism and formerly warranted optimism. It is aspiring to cynicism, attaining it and wishing you could go back. Music is a cretinous mind, scorched lungs and sinking prospects – but at least the tunes are sick. Music is making a permanent coffee-table fixture of a tobacco-encrusted, half-read copy of Infinite Jest while also acknowledging the utter, boring predictability of a white-skewing, sophomoric, underachieving and ‘artisticallyinclined’ male owning and half-intentionally keeping that book on prominent display. It is acknowledging that acknowledgement and coming full circle to nowhere. It is enveloping 90% of all spoken statements in such irony and context-dependent “““meta”””-awareness as to render the speaker alien to all generally well-adjusted ‘straight and narrow’ humans. It is recognising the essential emptiness of that irony and the triteness of both that state of being and recognition of it. Music is like lit. It’s kicking back with the literati. Household all littered with art paraphernalia and aesthetically pleasing underground mags (e.g. Subbacultcha magazine, Issue 04). Music is a 128kbps Soundcloud-ripped Yung Internet-Induced Solipsistic Worldview mp3 on mother-effing blast. Hi-hats skittering, subs wreaking havoc, gloriously autotuned celebration of petty excess. It’s scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. Screen as conduit, better in tune with the infinite via an onslaught of user-specific content curated with clinical, algorithmically-pinpointed precision. Fuck yeah. This is it, this is living. Now we’re cruising. Dashboard hum, corneal interface. Neon grid extending ever and endlessly outward. Crosshairs tighten, then focus. ‘32 Mac DeMarco Tweets You Need

To Memorise Now’. Sigh, roll your idiot eyes. Click that shit. It is a mind addled to a point of blissful fragmentation by a potent blend of hyper-detailed electronic pop, near-illegal energy drinks and general neglect. Skip to Elysia Crampton’s edit of Diamond Black Hearted Boy’s ‘Tomorrow is Not Promised’. Shit is straight up transcendent. The best in audio divination. Literally just saw God for a second. It is vague tension, undefined, its contours ebbing from consciousness’s fringes as the next tune (Ana Caprix’s ‘FullBody’) fades and concludes. For a moment, silence. Sonic residue lingers, momentarily, before it too gives way to a nothing. A roaring blankness. Sputtering neurons, disarray and then… a dull awareness of more beyond. No matter, the life I lead is real enough. Author’s note: Wow, so who knows what all the above was about? Let’s bring it back down to earth and get hard-hitting with the line of questioning up in this column: has ease of access resulted in musical overabundance and thus gluttonous, numbing and increasingly undiscerning listening/consumption habits? Do streaming platforms cultivate that undiscerning state by relegating music to another in a list of algorithmically predicted, genredelineated ‘background factors’? Also, could it be that there’s more to life than underground music? Might the hours, sunk into trawling the bottomless pit that is the online music and content trough, conceivably have been spent doing anything else like pushups, mindfulness exercises and/or pushups? Does music have a role to play within a larger social and cultural sphere, might it not actually be the focal and only truly worthwhile aspect? The answer is in all cases no. Read on!

Point of view

Authentic Exoticism by Jo-anna Kalinowksa When the record arrived in the post I hesitated to put it on because the cover turned my stomach. It was an impulse purchase. Florian Meyer, aka Don’t DJ’s, affiliation with Berceuse Heroique and his ethnomusicological inspired mixes had repeatedly put his name on my radar and I’d been in a frivolous mood. A mood I momentarily regretted when I saw the pan flute with pipes descending into limp, veiny, phallic tubes that graced the cover. The design crosses between tribal and digital art in an abrasive and quite offensive way. It got worse. Opening it up unveiled an essay. A really long essay. I didn’t bother reading it until after. If I had read it the first listening would have been closed, more prepared for and, to some extent, ruined. Meyer’s Authentic Exoticism is beautiful and its production is as flawless as you’d expect it to be. Field recordings layer on top of tropical polyrhythmic melodies. A low hum of cicadas greets the jangles of the gamelan and foreign tones of panpipes. They all swell together to form a humid mirage of the Amazonian jungle. The tranquil patter that finds a comfortable home in the dentist’s waiting room because it suggests the very place your mind wanders off to as you await the call of your name. When the musical dream has ended my eyes glance over the essay. Meyer abruptly asks why we’re attracted to these exotic sounds. Are we trying to escape our lives? Are we trying to return to ‘primitive’ culture? One that we see as untainted by day-to-day engagement with technology, materialism and capitalism? Are we drawn to things we can’t have? By taking these ‘foreign’ chimes are we trying to spice up our otherwise boring existence? The distant image of water lapping on the shore as the recordings of birds sweep overhead is suddenly rippled with the ques-

tion: Is this cultural appropriation? Am I guilty of fetishising the exotic? Meyer is only playfully teasing us with this release. He’s intentionally lulling us into a trap where we’re forced to undertake a self-assessment. He claims that the ways in which we identify ourselves today go beyond national borders. The music in our ears, the tastes in our mouths and the films on our screens. There is no ‘cultural purity’. We’re all products of each other. Meyer builds the romanticised civilisation that we lust after only to shatter it sharply in our faces and tell us it doesn’t really exist. Instead cultures stem from one another, he says. We’re drawn to these sounds because of an ‘erotic attraction of a fundamentally inconceivable difference!’ We relish what we haven’t experienced and what we can’t understand. At once my mind flickers over my favourite artists and my heart weighs down when I realise none of them sound local – I can’t even auralise what ‘local’ would sound like if it isn’t the global music that is played around the city as well as in my own home. This music is our salvation from our corrupt world. We’re drawn to exotic sounds because they take us to an imagined reality where our natural surroundings aren’t brick walls built upon concrete foundations. Through Meyer’s words that means the city is trying to escape itself. It wants out of its own skin.

— Don’t DJ’s Authentic Exoticism is out now via SEXES.

Point of view

On Ne Change Pas Or how campy soundtracks have become cool again by Pete Wu A few months ago, I heard Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ in a trailer for an upcoming tentpole summer blockbuster film, the comic book adaptation Suicide Squad aimed at a young audience. A group of misfits with superpowers band together – amongst them Will Smith and Jared Leto – and make witty remarks about being bad, whilst Freddy Mercury’s angel voice warbles for ‘momma’. In that very moment, I realised a trend: this isn’t the first time anachronistic, campy hits have been made cool again for the silver screen. Of course, on the one hand you’ve always had directors like Cameron Crowe, Sophia Coppola and now Lena Dunham who use critically acclaimed contemporary music in their oeuvre. It’s like listening to the radio of the future: if you’re not a music snob, you probably won’t recognise any of the songs yet – but you will, retrospectively, in a few months. At the same time, Hollywood can’t seem to forget reigning queen of contemporary music supervision Alexandra Patsavas, who’s been responsible for the launch (some say, demise) of numerous indie musicians who have had their songs devoured by the mainstream audiences of Grey’s Anatomy, Mad Men and all the Twilight films. But there’s a new trend to turn to the past, to embrace the camp of our childhoods, the instantly recognisable tunes sung into hairbrushes in front of mirrors. Nobody’s going to say Counting Crows’ ‘Colorblind’ or Celine Dion’s ‘On ne change pas’ is their favourite, but it’s okay to mention the soundtrack of Xavier Dolan’s Mommy (which features ‘Colorblind’ and ‘On ne change pas’) to your mates in a non-ironic way. And this is a good thing; the timing is right, the millennial demographic is all grown up and

ready to re-embrace the Nineties. Using old songs from the childhoods of your audiences – it’s an old trick that delves into that sweet spot called nostalgia and that makes your product instantly recognisable and familiar; cue Jon Snow dying to a ‘Wicked Game’ cover in the last trailer of Game of Thrones, or the protagonist dancing to ‘Escape (The Piña Colada Song)’ in Guardians of the Galaxy. Of course, never ever forget what camp king Quentin Tarantino has brought to the world with his B- and Z-movie soundtracks filled with homages to his childhood martial arts flicks and spaghetti Westerns. Like a true avant-la-lettre Kanye West, Tarantino has been mixing blasts from the past with the contemporary cool. Cue Jackie Brown running through the airport on Bobby Womack’s ‘Across 110th St.’ or Uma Thurman dancing to Urge Overkills’ cover of Neil Diamond’s ‘Girl, You’ll be a Woman Soon’. I mean, let’s be honest here: how salonfähig was ‘Little Green Bag’ by The George Baker Selection before Tarantino blessed it with his Midas touch? It’s saying something that our generation has finally reached that point where our shameful past has become retro yet cool again – and we’re allowed to become our parents, replaying our childhoods over and over again. ‘On ne change pas,’ Celine Dion would say to that. And that’s totally okay now, music snobs.

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Subbacultcha quarterly magazine

We Visit You: MARY GO WILD A series dedicated to fine music establishments In a less than likely turn of events, the folks behind MARY GO WILD have turned their pet project from a book into a publishing agency, from a merch line designed for ADE into a carefully curated store at Zeedijk 44, showcasing products of the city’s nightlife scene. Always brimming with new ideas and initiatives, we’ve asked them to tell us about five things they like and know how to do best.

Vinyl Club

Books

Publishing house

Remember when you used to be able to sign up for a book club at your local library? The MARY GO WILD Vinyl Club is pretty much the same thing, but provides you with canonical listening material instead. Every month, club members receive an exclusive vinyl release, a must-have techno or house imprint, featuring both local talent and international artists. What you get is always a surprise, but the unique design (every sleeve is designed by hand!) and the quality of music are never left to chance. Our favourite so far is definitely the Frits Wentink EP, of which you can still grab a copy.

With the growing influence of electronic music and club culture, manifested in lifestyle trends and reflected in society, there’s also a growing number of (photography) books, magazines, compilations and even encyclopaedias dedicated to the subject. MARY GO WILD has read it all and has a tight selection of 80+ titles in store, available in English, Dutch and German. Comprised of recently published items, must-read classics and their very own publications, this collection is a great access point into the history of electronic music and nightlife. Compulsory reading: Nachtleben Berlin, Energy Flash and The Hacienda.

Following the wild success of MARY GO WILD, a 592-page volume covering 25 years of dance music in the Netherlands, it was clear to the editors that they shouldn’t stop there. In the basement of the store, plans were made for publishing several anthologies of intriguing journalism and historical photography based on pivotal events and key people in the history of Dutch electronic music. Keep your eyes peeled for new titles published in-house at MARY GO WILD: This Is My Church, a photo book by Rutger Geerling, and Multigroove, a chronicle of the pioneering dance organisation and its illegal underground events.

Photo exhibitions

Dedicated to dance

Photography and graphic design have always had a big impact on electronic music and vice versa. For every event, release or artist, a creative mind is brought into the process to design a flyer, logo or a visual style that tells a story. Photography, although not always widely appreciated on the dance floor, can have a unique way of capturing the energy of a producer or a crowd. Through a monthly series of exhibitions in collaboration with Fotolab Kiekie, the store highlights some of the most talented photographers and designers at work in the electronic scene.

It’s not by accident that the phrase-turned-poster ‘My House Is Your House And Your House Is Mine’ has become a staple in the MARY GO WILD collection. It sums up one of their core principles: everyone is welcome in the house community. It’s a safe space that values freedom of expression, and this is also the gold standard for the store on Zeedijk – a physical manifestation of house music, where all those intrigued by electronic music can come in and feel at home, enjoying everything house music and culture have to offer.

— Subbacultcha members receive 10% discount on records and photo prints available at MARY GO WILD until 31 August 2016. marygowild.nl

We Visit You

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