Our third No Tags guest is typical of the kind of artist we both admire: someone with reassuringly broad taste, a lifelong affinity with the underground, and a winningly self-deprecating sense of humour. The type of DJ who’d rather risk losing the crowd than play it safe with their selections; the type of DJ who gets a kick, even, out of announcing: “I’m kind of a bummer!”
That’s not how we see it, obviously. But CCL is a master of opaque moods and rhythmic chicanes – a real DJ’s DJ, who navigates a sprawling record collection with a combination of subtle technical wizardry and a penchant for just winging it, allowing them to smoothly switch lanes from 160 liquidity to the “hot, dark and horny” side of 100 BPM.
After obsessing over their recorded mixes for ages we realised we knew almost nothing about Ceci the person. Turns out, there’s much to tell – with past lives in Moscow, Rome, Bristol and Seattle, their life story veers from elite dance schools to cider-swilling student nights via stints as a festival booker, trainee coder and crisis hotline staffer.
Ceci’s current base is Berlin, where they run subglow, a residency at Ohm, and host the liquidtime show on Refuge radio. Their mix archive overflows with gems for Truants, Honey Soundsystem and Unsound, the latest addition being an emosh live set from this year’s Honcho Campout, which found a route from red-hot juke all the way to Mazzy Star.
We caught up with Ceci between two London gigs for an IRL conversation, touching on nerdy Rekordbox techniques, the politics of DJ collectives and the challenges of playing queer dancefloors.
Plus, scroll all the way down for a playlist from ‘The Wonked-Cave-Mind’, one of Ceci’s favourite Rekordbox folders.
Chal Ravens: So last night you were at this Wipeout soundtrack launch party? It's a cool game from the ‘90s, right?
CCL: It's a cool game from the ‘90s, and they reissued the soundtrack and had a bunch of people remix it. I'm not gonna lie, despite wanting to be a game nerd I never played this game. Actually this is the first time I've said that [laughs].
Chal Ravens: I have not played the game but I have listened several times to the NTS special [episode on] the soundtrack. It's The Prodigy and Chemical Brothers and Photek and all of this amazing, super-futuristic 1996 music.
Tom Lea: And The Designers Republic1 did all the artwork.
CCL: I've listened to the soundtrack and not played the game. I actually don't know why they chose a person who has never played the game! But I feel like all the people they booked play weirder, bassier music. Plaid played, and I played back-to-back with Simo Cell. And Simo is definitely a video game nerd. I feel like I've just outed myself as the outlier on this event! But it was still really cool. And I mean, the soundtrack I have listened to, and I think is incredible.
Chal Ravens: What sort of stuff did you end up playing?
CCL: I've played one B2B before with Simo Cell and it was for his residency night in Nantes where you play all night, back-to-back. We didn't talk about it at all and it went really well. I've actually come to this conclusion that it's better to not talk about it.
Tom Lea: Was there a specific back-to-back that prompted that?
CCL: Kind of. I feel like I used to be terrified of back-to-backs a few years ago. I was like, “I don't know what they're gonna do, I don't want to disappoint them – what if I have the wrong shit?” I just wouldn't say yes to that many of them. And then I played one back-to-back with Daniel [Fisher, AKA] Physical Therapy at [upstate NY festival] Sustain, and I feel like we talked a lot about what we were gonna play. I don't think we ended up really doing that. And then we played another set in which we just didn't have time to talk about anything and it just went so much better. We were like, “Why the hell did we do that?” It just feels a bit more natural to me when you just end up doing the thing. It's like having a conversation, if you prepare the questions too much, it's like...
Chal Ravens: Well, that would be awkward!
CCL: [Laughs] It's kind of a nice way for things to flow more easily. And then I feel like you don't get stuck on needing to do a particular thing and you're a bit more open. Actually, we both said this after, we didn't really have video games in mind necessarily but we had this visual of the video game projected on top of us and I was like, “Huh. Our music makes sense in this context. Right, maybe that's why they've booked us.”
Chal Ravens: So I think I've read all the interviews that there are with you. There aren't that many. There's enough that I could read them all. And one thing that sticks out is that you are affiliated with quite a few different places, you seem to have lived in a few different places. So I thought we should map out your story a bit and work out where you're from, where you've lived, and perhaps why you keep moving?
CCL: Wow. Yeah, actually, I've never talked on the record about this with anyone, but my silly little life...
Chal Ravens: You're a spy.
CCL: Yeah, I'm a spy [laughs]. My silly little life is like, kind of a long story. I still don't really know exactly where I'm from. But yeah, I guess suffice to say, my mom is American, she's from Chicago, and my dad is Italian, and they randomly popped me out in London, where we are sitting right now. So I was born here, and we lived here for a bit.
Chal Ravens: So you went to school here?
CCL: No, actually, we moved straight away, moved to America pretty much after that. And then my mom was doing visa processing for refugees so we moved to Russia, which was really random. Also, part of the reason why we moved there is that I got into a dance school called the Bolshoi2, and I was–
Chal Ravens: What! Whoa. Wow.
CCL: A child dancer. Yeah, very random.
Chal Ravens: Not just any old old dance school. How old were you then?
CCL: I was like six. And it's kind of a big deal because you don't really pay to go there, you just kind of get indoctrinated and then you're funnelled through the pipeline to become part of their company. So yeah, that was this era. I was on the professional dance track for a while. And after that, since my dad's Italian, we moved to Italy and I continued doing dance school there, and then I also went to regular school.
Chal Ravens: Was that in Rome?
CCL: Mm-hmm. And I lived in Rome from when I was 12 and I went to the academy in Rome and then I also did school on the side. And then my mom, when I was 16, moved back to America, and I was hanging out there alone and had a big epiphany in which I was like, “Fuck, I've been doing this thing for my whole life and I don't like it.” [Laughs] I also was alone, I wasn't living with my parents, so I was like, “Why am I doing this? I love dancing but I just don't want to do this as a job, and it's been kind of a given that that's what I'm gonna do.”
Chal Ravens: How old are you then?
CCL: Like 16 or 17.
Chal Ravens: And your parents aren't there, you're just at school there.
CCL: I mean, that's the other thing, that's kind of prime time for you as a dancer, because the age is like, I would have joined a company after then. And I was already doing stuff, performing for money. I would have just continued, probably. And at that point, I was like, “the fuck am I doing? This is not me.” I remember I was like, “I just want to be in a band.” I don't really talk about this because I feel really ashamed of this thing that I did because it seems very unlike me, it's like this ultra-femme art form, I guess, that I don't really feel has much to do with me now. And for ages I just avoided thinking about it, like, ugh, it's kind of weird. So at that point, I was like, “Well, fuck this,” and I had gone to the UK. This is when I started to go to raves and I was going to these parties outside Rome. I don't know if you guys know about Brancaleone3, it was a weird underground club in Rome – Donato Dozzy used to play there, it's like drum and bass kind of vibes – and I think I had a bit of an awakening about this kind of music. I was also visiting the UK a lot and I was like, “Well, fuck this life, I want to go do something else with my life.” So I applied to uni and decided I wanted to go to Bristol because I had been there before and it was very cool and had a good vibe. It was one of the unis that I got into.
Chal Ravens: What did you study?
CCL: I feel like I was very confused in the beginning. Initially I applied for a lot of performing arts-related things and then I was like, “Wait, no, that's too similar to what you just got out of, what if you end up on that same path?” And so I applied for PPE at Bristol and then I started doing it and was like, “Oh my god, everyone is a Tory on this course. This is scary.”
Chal Ravens: For anyone who doesn't know, PPE is politics, philosophy and economics, which is famously, particularly at Oxford, the subject that half of all of the government and people who work for The Times studied.
Tom Lea: The pipeline of the Conservative party.
CCL: Little did I know. It was infuriating. I think I went to a few lectures and I was like, “I need to get out of this, this is terrible.” But then one of the courses I tried was experimental psychology and I was like, “Oh, this is really cool.” It only exists at Bristol Uni as far as I know, or a few other places, and so I just switched to that immediately and it was so much better. It was just more scientific, more interesting, and way less Tory.
Chal Ravens: What counts as experimental in that course?
CCL: It's kind of psychology based in research and more science-based things. One of the things I did was neuroscience, and one of the things I enjoyed was computational neuroscience. So it's rooted in studies and a bit more scientific.
Chal Ravens: You must have had some quite good grades in all of your other subjects to be able to do this. Were you in fact a massive keener at school?
CCL: God, honestly, I must confess that I was, I cannot lie to you. I wish I wasn't but I was a very keen little bean. I think it was also the combination of, like, when I was in school I was also doing dance and I feel like that was my forced occupation, and so school was kind of fun. I also didn't really have any friends at school, or not many, so it was just like, this is how I'm engaging with this. And then at uni, I just thought it was really interesting and... god, I hate admitting this but I really liked math. Weird, awkward! But yeah.
Chal Ravens: Did you play an instrument too?
CCL: I remember when I was a teenager, I was like, “All I want to do, man, is just join a band and play guitar.” My parents were like, “No, you have to play piano.” Because my grandma was a concert pianist. I mean, she died and I never really understood this until I was an adult but they definitely had some penchant for me to follow some kind of classical pipeline of this variety. So I did piano but no other instruments and I also did this dance thing. So between that and doing school I just didn't really have any other time to do anything else. And then I left. Even now I'm like, damn, I really wish I'd learned another instrument, or one that inspires me a bit more. I could play piano in a very mediocre fashion, but I didn't do any instruments in a way that was cool and expressive or anything.
Chal Ravens: Well, now you play the CDJs of course, so that can be expressive in its own way…
Tom Lea: I'm aware there's a bunch more travelling and countries to get into, but were you going out clubbing in Bristol?
CCL: Oh yeah, definitely.
Chal Ravens: What era is this, what are these nights?
CCL: So I moved to Bristol in late 2007.
Tom Lea: Feels like a solid time.
CCL: I was there during a very solid time. I also went to loads of horrible things, like horrible student nights in which people are dressed in onesies and drinking cider [laughs]. I went to loads of terrible, horrible student nights because Bristol has loads of that, but I wouldn't be the same person if I wasn't there during that time. And I feel like I was really lucky. Actually it was mostly through people I didn't know at uni who introduced me to other [music]. I think I was shown the light, so to speak. I did start going to Subloaded4 and Dubloaded, which were at The Croft. I went to a bunch of the Bristol dubstep nights, I also went to loads of terrible uni nights at Motion, one of which I just remembered was called Shit The Bed.5
Tom Lea: I think I remember this.
CCL: Do you remember Shit The Bed?!
Tom Lea: I feel like I've definitely seen it in flyer packs from that era. Was it a dubstep night?
CCL: I think it had some vaguely, you know, what would be considered now credible music, but it was definitely aimed at students, and so by definition the vibes were variable at best.
Chal Ravens: I'm just looking at a few flyers here. Skream, Rusko, Sub Focus, High Contrast, Joker.
CCL: It wasn't terrible. But yeah, I did go out a lot during that era and I think I wouldn't be the same without it, I really did get the bug, and I feel like I was very obviously influenced by having been there during that time. And I do think it was a really cool time. I will say I wasn't a scene person. I just would go to stuff and I would feel like, “Oh my god, this is cool in a way that I can't really explain, but I really want to go back and something about the vibe was really cool.” But I didn't know loads of people there. I didn't know the DJs, I certainly was not playing at anything like that or honestly thinking about it. I was just going. I was a real punter. And also anonymous, that's the other thing.
Tom Lea: Had you started DJing then? Did you have decks?
CCL: I was a huge secondhand thrifter and I think that was how I first started approaching collecting music. I was really into secondhand shit. I had like 30 cameras that I would buy from shops and try and tinker with and fix. I actually lived across from Rooted Records6 in Bristol, and I would occasionally go in there. I'd always feel very much like, “This is not a place for you,” because I was just 19 and a baby and also didn't really see anyone else looking like me anywhere near this vibe. But yeah, I started buying records and I remember it was like, “What's she gonna do with them?” And someone had vaguely shown me how to do the mechanics of mixing and I was like, “Well, I would never be good at that.” Because it was just something that I couldn't imagine myself doing. It also just seemed… I'm such a clumsy person with my hands.
Chal Ravens: Yeah, so clumsy at the Bolshoi with your terrible hand-eye coordination, I'm sure...
CCL: Every time I say that people are like, “What do you mean, you can dance!” Yeah, I can dance, but I feel like I can dance with instruction, I'm not a natural, it didn't come naturally. I just felt really awkward and it wasn't something that would ever come to me naturally.
Tom Lea: So you weren't pulling any of those moves you trained in while watching Pinch at the Black Swan?
CCL: No... the Black Swan meets Black Swan! The dubstep ballet crossover, oh my god [laughs]7
Chal Ravens: OK, so it takes you a little while longer to actually start mixing, but you're collecting records?
CCL: Yeah, I was definitely buying stuff. Unfortunately I lost a bunch of the things that I bought from that era, but I found some of them and it was so random. That also speaks to what I'm like. But I still like the records that I bought. Some of it was like ‘80s boogie and freestyle, some of it was dubstep and stuff that we were listening to around that time, but I was like, “These things don't intersect.” Or I didn't think that they did.
Chal Ravens: Well, do you know what, Ikonika made them intersect, Joker made them intersect. I don't know if they're that far away necessarily, there's a certain colour going on there.
Tom Lea: But it's tougher from a DJ perspective as well. Especially then [in the era before CDJs were standard in clubs].
CCL: They weren't really intersecting then. Now I would like to think that I want to try and make them intersect. But at the time I liked really random shit. There was no rhyme or reason to what I was buying them for, because it wasn't like I planned to do this. It was more just, I liked secondhand things, I liked looking for stuff. It was just part of the whole other kind of thing that I was doing.
Chal Ravens: When you did start DJing, were there particular DJs that you felt you had a certain affinity with? Were there early inspirations?
CCL: It seems almost a cliche to say this, but all the kind of Hessle peeps at that time, just because of the way they were incorporating a lot of different genres, and I wasn't really feeling that from everyone at that time. There was a lot more, like, people staying in their lane. But that also was the time of the quote-unquote selector DJ as well, and the rise of the selector DJ, which was the thing, and I think that also...
Chal Ravens: That is you, though.
CCL: Yeah, I know, god. We can cover this later but I think we are marking the end of the selector DJ, for now. The trend will come back but I think that we're leaning out of it. I think people want a different thing, which doesn't mean I'm gonna stop what I'm doing, but yeah, things change. But I think that style of DJ definitely influenced what I wanted to accomplish.
Chal Ravens: I was wondering about Objekt in particular, because I know that you've played together and it seems to me like there's a lot of similar thinking going on, in terms of being able to play anything. I saw Objekt at Fold last weekend and it was a day party, and some of the things he was playing, they were just records. He played At The Drive-In, he played Madonna, ‘Ray of Light’. He played Arthur Russell. And when I saw you playing together – was it February? – I thought there was such a lot of conversation between how your styles were working together.
CCL: Oh, definitely. I mean, it's so funny, I think we've now established that I was at one of TJ's first gigs in Bristol. It was really funny. We didn't really know each other but we were both super young and I remember being like, “Oh yeah, this sounds like what I want to do,” but I was like, “Yeah, never happening. I don't know how to do that.” But we've since talked about that and there were not many people at that gig, it was at Take 5 Cafe at the bottom of this Indian restaurant in Stokes Croft. So it was really funny. We were both like, mega baby hour.
Chal Ravens: For me, TJ has this like… it's the blog house sensibility, you know? It's the fact that he used to play that kind of mashup stuff. I don't think he comes from any kind of genre purism that he's since had to mess up. Everything goes with everything.
Tom Lea: There wasn't anything to unlearn.
CCL: No, totally. I am realising now that kind of is my basis of understanding. And I think a lot of the DJs I looked up to, or had various awakenings to through that culture, and also Detroit and Chicago where it is like a ‘play everything’ vibe – sometimes I'm like, do I need to unlearn that? Because I'm feeling a lot of movement towards a more purist sound. I often am like, “Am I weird for being like this?”
Tom Lea: Are you seeing this at your own gigs, or just going out?
CCL: I'm just seeing it as a trend. I think that people are wanting a seamless vibe. That's what I think. Or I'm seeing people are really excited about that, and that's something I've never been excited about. You know, it's a thing in Berlin, I think, because people are playing really long sets and what they expect... it's like people are playing a set that they know is going to be listened to after in a controlled environment. And they’re like, okay, this is one contained world of sounds and it fits and it moves throughout it, and that's what it does. That level of focus is really impressive but I could never do that. I also don't really want to, but I've always been like, “How is that possible?”
Chal Ravens: I wonder if there's something in the idea of the beginning of the selectors phase, let's say 14 years ago or something, being a response in itself to this widening of all the music you could access, and the fact that suddenly, on YouTube and Spotify, everything's there. And now maybe you have a generation who are overwhelmed with all of the choices and actually enjoy this narrower focus. And actually, three hours of liquid would really be great, thanks, because I know what it is. Perhaps there's something about wanting to put the stabilisers on just to get some focus.
CCL: Yeah, I mean I think every trend in music is a reaction to other things that are happening. And I think even that selector phase was also a reaction to the minimal era where it was like, everything was modular. I was into that, too, I think some of the first records I was playing, when I was actually beat-matching, were those kinds of records. And I've also had a minimal phase, believe it or not. I can see how it is incredibly satisfying to delve into a vibe and it feels very deep and it's like, “This is the mood, we're keeping it.” I see the value in that, it's just not something I personally want to do anymore.
Tom Lea: It's interesting you make the point that people are playing as if the mix is going to be listened to afterwards. Because to me the idea of a constant mood – this is going to sound a bit odd, but there's a certain type of music I might want to work to, there's a certain type of music I might want to cook to or whatever, but nights out don't work that way. Club nights should have peaks and troughs, and to be successful they need those natural changes in mood. I always bring this up but one of the best moments I've ever had in a club was when [Local Action] did a thing at Corsica Studios years ago. Room two was getting quite hard and fast and Al Wootton came on at 3am and just played an hour of dancehall, and the energy it brought to that room, just dropping the tempo down 30 BPM...
CCL: God, I would have lived to be there. People being there for playing slow music is so rare these days, I cannot emphasise enough, because that is something I want to do constantly. And I even had this conversation with Simo Cell last night because we both live for the 100 BPM zone, and it's incredibly difficult with crowds these days to get people to be able to lock in. It's so hard to make people stick around for it that we feel anxious doing it, which is really such a bummer, because it is such a sexy zone and I don't understand why people don't think you can dance to it. People will literally stop, and I'm like, “This encourages the most sexy dancing possible, what are you… I don't understand!”
Tom Lea: And deployed well… it was like the crowd didn't know they needed it, but the minute he did it it felt like the tension in everyone's shoulders just dropped. It honestly felt like it gave the room an extra hour of energy.
CCL: People are always on at me like, “Ah, this tempo change thing is a gimmick.” It's a gimmick if you want it to be, but I don't think of it as a gimmick. It's not something I do to flex or anything. It's because I actually think we need a change in energy and I feel like I can tell people need it. When people are dancing to 140 BPM for two hours and I can see people are just losing it, I've always been like, “Okay, what different energy can I bring to this?” And there's a bunch of options but that is always one of them that I'm contemplating because it just shifts everything. And I think, actually, the act of doing that is incredibly sick.
Tom Lea: There’s also this received wisdom that a club night should either stay at one tempo or zone all night, or it should get faster and faster as the night goes on - which I really disagree with. Sometimes you’ll go into the second room at Corsica at 5am or whatever and just see two people dancing to gabber. And it’s like: if you just dropped the tempo back down and played a disco record you would probably fill the room back up, because that smoking area is still looking pretty busy.
Chal Ravens: I was curious about some of your USB organisation. Have you got any new Rekordbox folder names that you've been using recently that have been working for you?
CCL: Ha ha, oh my god. Yeah, I mean, I can tell you...
Chal Ravens: What’s been this year's most dug-into folder?
CCL: I have been refining my 100 BPM playlist and finding tracks that are driving enough to make even the most stubborn people dance. The line between people thinking something is downtempo and something is driving at 100 BPM is really hard. So I have a playlist called 100 BPM High Energy, which in my Honcho [Campout] set, which I just finally decided to publish, it's like... I mean, there's a playlist called Horny, Dark and Hard [laughs] which is exactly what it says. It's all 100 BPM and it's kind of the intersection of sexy, wonky and extremely danceable, but it's also pretty dark. It works when you've had a section of high energy, faster things and you want to go down there… I think that can be a really cool zone to unlock.
Tom Lea: How much do you prep for specific sets? Or are your Rekordbox folders more of an ongoing, amorphous thing and depending on the state of them when you're booked, that's what people are gonna get?
CCL: I have such a weird relationship with Rekordbox organization. A year after the pandemic my Rekordbox stopped working and I was such a Rekordbox-focused person for a while. It would just freeze when I opened it and I couldn't apply...
Chal Ravens: It's a great program, famously.
CCL: Yeah, I think it is a pretty cursed platform, but I lost the ability to update any playlists. Even for some high stress or high pressure gigs that year, like playing at Sustain, I wasn't able to update my playlist. I wasn't able to do anything, and that really taught me something. I kept being like, “Okay, you're not prepared, and you're gonna play worse sets.” But I kind of didn't. In some ways I sometimes played better, and that really changed my perspective. I'm not gonna lie to you, I still do a lot of prep. I have my nerdy ways, which I can go into, but I also feel like I prepare but it's more of a compulsion than a direct need. I often feel like when I'm super winging it, it feels really fun. I think there's a lot of infrastructure I put in place to feel like winging it is really fun. I've never been a person who would plan out anything. Obviously a certain amount of infrastructure is good so that you can find what you're looking for, but yeah, during this period I would think of tracks and just use search.
But it also reminded me of how I would play when I would play records, because that's kind of what would happen, I’d be like, “Oh, yeah, this one.” and I'm not scrolling. Scrolling feels like it cuts all of my intuition away from me, and it feels like I'm making a calculation more than a judgement based on my intuition. And often my intuition is really correct. I learned this a lot also during the pandemic. I used to buy a lot of record collections and I would just take records from them and sell them on, but a friend had bought a collection and they left it at my house for like six months. So I had thousands of records at my house and we just would play this game where you'd pick a record and you'd have to make it work somehow in the flow.
We would do this with friends or I'd do it by myself, and it's like, sometimes you just make shit work. You know that you need to play this and you fucking make it work. And you can do that a bunch of different ways by learning different creative ways to mix things. But that also is kind of a part of my philosophy. If your intuition is telling you, "you should play this," I think you should play it. And that also goes against this whole mood, vibe [type of DJ], because they would be like, “No, you have to find the perfect track that will fit exactly with the other record.” I don't know, man, I feel like I should play this right now. It's not going to be a perfect, seamless, techno beat-match mix, but I know that it can work and I'm going to make it work.
Chal Ravens: Are you into the [CDJ] effects?
CCL: I am into effects. I used to have the Eventide H9 which is like a crazy production pedal that you can apply a lot of effects [with]. I would do some very silly things with that, but then I realised it was perhaps too silly and a little gratuitous and sometimes I'd be like, “Oh shit, it has a mind of its own,” and it would really act out. I think if I play a super experimental set where it's not dancefloor-focused, you can do some crazy shit with that thing. But now I'm playing more dancefloor stuff I have another pedal which is a Boss Digital Delay. It's just a nice delay device. But I think I wouldn't get away with 90% of my bullshit if I did not have this pedal. It helps things really glue together. For example, in the 100 BPM zone they're songs, they're not dance tracks, they're not made to be played like, “I’m just gonna beat-match this blend, man.” It's not going to happen. They're not structured like that. I make edits of them to make them more playable, but you sometimes want to dovetail out of something and then play another thing into it, and that gives you a tremendous amount of creative freedom to do that.
Tom Lea: Can we get into the nerdy side of some of your Rekordbox tekkers? As someone who used run a Friday night hip-hop and R&B residency years back, seeing you say [in a Truants interview] that you converted everything to half-time on your USB, it was like: wow, genius. [If I’d thought of that] I would have never had to been constantly scrolling between 70 and 140 BPM at 2am, looking for potential half-time blends.
CCL: I've actually maybe abandoned that system, just because I have so much music at this time. But that was a huge brain-unlock moment for me. It really changed the way that I think about mixing as well. I started analysing everything that way and then I was like, “Oh, so much music can be mixed together, and I don't have to scroll and I don't have to think about it.” So that was a huge game-changer. Now I have so much music at that tempo that it does require me to scroll a lot. So now I designate what is double and what is half-time, but I kind of know in my own brain and I've now erred towards analysing at double-time because it makes it a little bit more accurate. And then I will put in parentheses “half-time” if it's half-time. So I've kind of done the opposite. Just because it's a little bit easier, energetically, I think to designate something as half-time than the other way around.
Chal Ravens: Of course, it will be a more accurate number as well.
CCL: It will be more accurate. So I've done the opposite now, but it really did help me figure out how all these things can be glued together.
Tom Lea: Let's go back to the CCL origin story. So what's next? You catch the bug in Bristol...
CCL: I caught the bug. And then, yeah, I had to get out of England for various reasons. I was really broke, working like three unpaid internships, and it was 2012, 13, and it was not a good time.
Tom Lea: This is still in Bristol?
CCL: I had tried to move to London but it was incredibly expensive and I was barely making enough money. And I don't know, I was very burnt out, I was working at many different random-ass jobs that were not paying me enough. And also I was in a lot of very weird relationship-related things and I was like, “I need to get the fuck out of here.” So my mom, who had moved to Seattle when I was 16, was like, “Why don't you just come visit?” And I was like, “Okay, I will come visit.” I went in December of 2012, took a flight there, ended up missing my flight back, and I was just kind of stuck in Seattle and I'd never really been there before. And I was like, “Wow, this place is so weird.” I didn't know a single person there. It just felt so different to the UK because the UK had such a huge underground electronic scene. I was like, “What is this place?” This is the grunge capital, lots of other cool things, but that wasn't really like... it was not what I was used to, I would say. So I moved there and I wasn't really expecting that I would stay. I definitely struggled through the first few years. I just felt so lonely, didn't really know anyone and had no reference point of what was going on there. But I remember at the time, I saw an ad on Craigslist that was like, “Do you want to work in the music industry? Come to this, like, cattle call interview…”
Chal Ravens: Doesn't sound promising.
CCL: Weirdly, it was – it was this venue in Seattle and they were hiring a bunch of staff and I ended up working there. It was a very multi-purpose type of venue, all sorts of different music. It's called The Triple Door. It's mostly sit-down shows but they also have upstairs jazz and all sorts of things. Through that I met the people who do Decibel [Festival] because they did an event there, and I got involved with that. And I also met a bunch of people who were doing music. It's so weird, because I remember one of the first things I went to, I was like, “Wow, this is incredibly cool and I've never heard of any of these people.” No one ever talks about this place, it's incredibly invisible in terms of what's going on there. One of the first gigs I went to, which my friend took me to, this guy called Black Hat was playing and he's like a noise techno artist and he was just playing this crazy gear, the most crazy music I'd heard, his eyes were rolling back in his head and he looked possessed but it was so sick. It was also so punk. I was like, “This is the vibe I've been looking for. How come no one knows what this is?” And it just truly is off the radar. It was really, really cool. So that's kind of how I ended up there.
Chal Ravens: What is Decibel, for the uninitiated?
CCL: That is just a very big music festival. It first happened in 2008, I think, and it was one of the biggest things happening in North America. They had loads of super underground electronic things, but also like Erykah Badu. It was really a cool operation. I got involved through some very cool women that I met from around this kind of time. It also was weird because I would never hear about this if I wasn't there but it was such a big thing there. And it brought a lot of people to that part of the world when that wasn't really a main stop-off point for anyone, because it's geographically incredibly cut off. That's the other thing. It's so far away. The closest place you can get is Portland, which is a tiny city. It's three hours away. In terms of America, I mean, the scale is insane. And to get to SF it's incredibly far, to get to LA it's incredibly far. It's just a tiny place in the middle of nowhere at the end of the day. I mean, it has a sizable population now, but it's hard to get there.
Tom Lea: So you're there, that's your first job in music – were you helping with bookings?
CCL: Yeah, I worked with people who did a bunch of the content for them, so we were doing streams and interviews and this kind of stuff. I helped set up the first Discwoman showcase there, and I think it was Jlin's first ever gig. I had been obsessed with footwork and I heard about her music and I was like, this person is so incredibly talented. I remember she told me after the gig, she was like, “That was my first ever out of town gig,” and I was like, “That's crazy, you're so good!” It was so cool. Working on that project helped me a lot. And then I also started doing bookings at Kremwerk and working there.
Chal Ravens: What's that?
CCL: I actually have no idea what its fate right now is, but it was this underground queer club in Seattle. It was one of the only places that had regular electronic music at the time, but also drag, and me and a friend started a night there which became the regular night, which is still going apparently? Crazy. It's called Research. Which is such a dorky name. So self important! I look back, like, what were you thinking?!
Chal Ravens: Were you also a social worker?
CCL: I worked at the crisis clinic, which is a kind of social work-oriented org that is a branch of the suicide hotline, which deals with crisis intervention work. It is social work, and during that time I wanted to also become a social worker and I applied for school and was working in order to be trained in that. So yeah, I was on that path and that's one of the jobs I did for a while. I got into it because I started working at the suicide hotline when I first moved to Seattle. I didn't know a single person, and my uni career was very academic and theory focused. I first started working when I moved to Seattle in clinical applications and research studies, and I just was like, this is so far removed from the people aspect. You're working on like a longitudinal study and I just didn't feel like it was going to impact anyone, or any of the things I was seeing in real time. Seattle has an incredibly large homeless population, and it has [been] undergoing an opioid crisis, so I was like, “Okay, I want to do something that's more direct.” I heard a lot of people had started working at the suicide hotline so I started working there, and there's an org around it that works with a bunch of the mental health agencies in Seattle. I was working on that for quite a while actually, almost the entire time I was there, in various roles.
Chal Ravens: Why did you move to Berlin?
CCL: So, I think it was the year 2019… and I was working at that social work job. I was one of the directors of New Forms Festival in Canada. I was also working on my own freelance projects and photo projects. And I was at that point DJing quite a lot. And I think I just experienced an insane amount of burnout, because I was working full-time, I was living in a geographically very cut-off place, and in order to do gigs it was just incredibly difficult. I think I just had a big realisation moment, like, “I have always wanted to do something creative.” And I had another feeling like I did when I was 17: I've just been doing the motions of something that in theory I really like and I really believe in, but I have an itch to scratch in a creative way. I've never felt like I've been able to do music or any creative thing as a job. It became more and more like, “Yeah, maybe that could be possible, and maybe I want to try that, even if it doesn't work out for me.” I mean that in a more general sense. I think I also didn't want to be employed by a person, I just wanted to do more work for myself and be a freelancer because that's kind of what I was doing. I mean, at first it was like, “Oh my God, you fucking idiot,” because the pandemic happened like three weeks later. “Of course you quit all your jobs to be a freelancer in a time when there is no work,” like, fuck. But actually, I don't think I regret it. I think it was necessary.
Chal Ravens: What did you do for that first year or half-year of the pandemic in Berlin? I mean, you obviously knew some people there.
CCL: Artists [were granted a] lump sum [by the government]. That's how I survived. I was incredibly lucky. If I was in America, that would not have happened. So yeah, all freelancers were able to get a lump sum. It worked. I have no idea why, but I'm not questioning it! [Laughs] It just worked out fine for some reason. I actually retrained during the pandemic, I was like, “Fuck, I'm never gonna work in this kind of work again,” so I retrained doing coding and UI design because I was so freaked out. And then it's kinda been fine.
Tom Lea: You tweeted about the C- mix series going offline earlier this year, and I quote: “It's crazy that an entire community, hundreds of mixes, music, content, comments can be gone in just a minute.” We're living in a period where the internet era of digital archiving feels like it's hanging by a thread. Everything is one unpaid hosting subscription or unpaid SoundCloud subscription away from disappearing. Is that something that eats at you the way your face is implying right now?!
CCL: It eats at me so much! Also because I do know that I am a mixtape DJ and I arose from this era.
Tom Lea: It's kind of your catalogue to an extent.
CCL: Yeah, it is my catalogue. And I think for us in Seattle, it's like, no one is gonna see you at a high-profile gig at which you're gonna get booked and get to play in Europe. Mixtape culture has been around for a really long time and it's something I'm also really nerdy about. But the difference was, back in the day, the DJs would make the mixtapes and they would own the content themselves and they would distribute it. Now we're being convinced that we should release our mixtape or whatever on other platforms, and then basically that platform owns your tape, whether you like it or not. I've been thinking about that because I've had several incidents lately where my archive has gone missing and then I've been like, “Oh shit, I don't even have a copy of the file anymore.” And this person has my archive and they could all delete it and I would have nothing to my name. I mean, that's pretty much it. And that would be really bad.
Chal Ravens: I guess there are scenarios where it's a live set that's been recorded by the venue, but you don't have that file until it appears on SoundCloud…
CCL: Yeah, or also, I've had several hard drive deaths. Things from a few years ago, I just don't have that file anymore. I don't have my Honey Soundsystem mix8, I don't know where it is. I hope it doesn't ever disappear, but it could.
Chal Ravens: For the record, the C- series is back up, is it not?
CCL: Me and a bunch of other people were like, “What? How can it just go away?” And I guess the person behind it ended up explaining that they were super broke and didn't have enough money to maintain the site anymore and they just wanted to delete everything and be done with it. We were like, “Look, we'll pay your nine euros a month to keep open your site, even if you don't want to continue it. This is an incredible archive.” And luckily Ian Kim Judd got involved and he's very interested in digital archiving and has taken over the project, which I feel really good about, because I think someone who has an investment in digital archiving as a thing is really important to be behind this kind of stuff. I also have been thinking a lot about platforms, and people soliciting content from people and then owning the rights to it. That is actually an expectation these days. So many events or festivals hit me up constantly, like, “You should do this for us.” I don't know if that tracks for me 100%. I'm down to promote and do other things, but I'm definitely feeling second thoughts about giving my content to people for unknown means, and whether or not I will ever get to have that. So now I just want to do my own thing.
Tom Lea: Nick Boyd made this exact point on our last episode where he was talking about Boiler Room, and I don't mean this to target Boiler Room specifically, but he was like, there is a decision you're making to give them your brand when you work with them. I think it's a thing that people just unconsciously do, and they don't think about the potential implications of that down the line.
Chal Ravens: I was thinking about when you played at Eris Drew's Temple of Dreams residency at Corsica Studios, two months ago now maybe? It's the most recent time that I've seen you play and I wondered about your reflections on that party, because I would like to open up a question about what a queer party really is. I'm interested in dancefloor affects, dancefloor vibes. You know, Corsica Studios is not historically a queer venue in any kind of way. Maybe you have some thoughts about what kind of dancefloor experiences you have had that have shaped your thinking about how to play in different zones. You could say a bit about what that set was like for you as a starting point.
CCL: I mean, I definitely enjoyed myself and I just love playing with Eris because she has so much energy, she's just a force of nature. Being in her midst just gives me an incredible amount of energy and inspiration because she is herself and it just comes across so strongly in a very beautiful way, in this musical embodiment. I think, in general, the way I play is just very different to what is expected at queer parties. I guess it's not the stereotypical music you would hear. And so I always feel like when I'm put in an environment where most of the DJs are playing more house, I often want to... I have been thinking a lot about this because I really admire people who just stick to themselves no matter what, and just do their thing, no matter what the audience is. But in these environments I also want to bring people in a bit, so that was definitely a way more house-y set than I would ever play and it was way more fun and way more party.
Chal Ravens: I'm gonna say, it wasn't that house-y. It wasn't like you'd brought the same kind of records. But you know, Eris will play garage and bassline, a lot of stuff that maybe you wouldn't necessarily expect to hear at that type of party.
CCL: No, exactly. Eris also has her own sound, which she describes as The Mystery9, which is really cool and less overt, I guess. But for example at Honcho Campout I played a side of my sound that I feel is incredibly me but also incredibly different than... I always know that in the beginning, some people are going to leave. Some people are not going to be receptive to it. I have to kind of suffer through that. And I've realised that I actually believe I should do that more than not, because otherwise I end up compromising too much and I feel like I've betrayed myself. There's always a middle section of things that I like that other people obviously will be there for. But I think a lot of the time, I can be kind of a bummer [laughs]. Because I'm not playing, you know, Panorama Bar house music.
A lot of people want to hear that, and I'm playing things that are of a tempo and of a mood that are maybe not overtly euphoric, because the things that I like playing are complicated. Not in a highbrow way, I just feel like I'm really attracted to moods that feel difficult to pin down. And that can feel really uncomfortable for some people, because it's not like, “This is euphoria!” It's like, “I don't really know what this is but I really like it.” And there's something about this – god, I hate this word, but this intangibility that I'm really drawn to. Bringing that into spaces where there's a precedent of like, “We're all experiencing euphoria,” and where that's 100% the vibe, can feel kind of like a bummer. And I know, usually at the start of my set, I'll lose people or it'll be difficult to gain their trust. And I've noticed myself being like, “God, I want to win people back,” or “I want to do something else”. But I realised the strongest point is just sticking to my guns and being like, “What do I want to communicate here?” Because if I'm too worried about what other people think, the whole point of me doing this is entirely lost, I think.
And in my opinion, that's why a lot of things sound the same, because I think a lot of people are just trying to appeal to everyone, and I don't think that's useful. I don't enjoy it. But at the same time, I do DJ for people, I DJ because I want to experience something with someone. It's not like I'm trying to alienate people. At Honcho I was like, “I want to play 160 BPM at this rave at some point.” I personally have never seen anyone carry that out on the main stage, or not recently. It's incredibly risky. And it's funny, in my recording, because I recorded the crowd noise in the beginning of my set – I almost didn't listen through to the whole thing because there's so many people casting mad shade on me! It's like, “This is not the vibe. Oh my god, what is this?”. Yeah, that's right – it's not the vibe. It's not your vibe right now, and that's fine. And in fact, I want you to leave if you're not going to be into it. I don't really care.
Chal Ravens: Can you explain a bit more about Honcho Campout? It seems quite a unique proposition in terms of both crowd and music.
CCL: Yeah, I think it's really, really cool. It's a festival in the woods of rural Pennsylvania, at which many queer people gather and dance to music. There's a cool intersection of different types of music and expression, and I just find the crowd really open-minded. And it's also just fun. It has a fun-ness. I was just listening to some of the recordings yesterday, and every recording is just like, “Yes, bitch!”
Chal Ravens: They keep a lot of crowd noise in the mix recordings don't they? I've got one, I think it's E. Molina, from a couple of years ago, and the crowd noise – it's people talking, it's people making comments, and it's all just so good. People should do this more, having actual narration on their mix.
CCL: I love it. And it's just like a lot of different types of types of people. I mean, I always know that even at this place, which is incredibly open-minded, it's a huge risk doing something that's like… I often want to do something I haven't seen someone do and I'm just curious, this morbid curiosity of like, “What would happen if I did this?” I wanted to do 160 BPM but make it sexy and gay and make it really fun, and make it so outrageous – because you see a lot of that happening in the house tempo zone. I was like, this could go so bad, because if people are not feeling that, it could be horrible, and everyone would leave. And then I want to try playing really slow – I don't know how this is gonna happen but let's try. And I think it did work out. It's kind of fascinating, I noticed so much in the beginning, people were like, “I don't know about this…” Actually, at the end of the set I was like, “God, I did a terrible job.” It's so hard to tell when you're there, even though everyone's yelling at you. I think I focused on the fact that a bunch of people left and that was what stuck with me, like, “Damn, you didn't keep those people.” I don't know, they were probably gonna leave anyway.
Chal Ravens: Maybe they just needed a snack, you know?
Tom Lea: I'm curious, how do you find the experience of playing festivals? Let's say mainland European festivals, and in the UK, especially? Because everything you're talking about with your DJing requires a bit of open-mindedness, a bit of trust from the crowd, and building that trust and connection. So how do you find the experience of playing festivals where the crowd isn't as open as a Honcho or a Sustain crowd?
CCL: It's hard. To be honest, I've rarely played any UK festivals, which is its own thing, I think that says something. People have said this to me, they're like, “We don't know what you're gonna do. It's scary. You're super unpredictable.” Which is true. And I kind of want to stay like that. I want people to be like, “I don't know what you're gonna do.” And I understand from a booking perspective...
Chal Ravens: I don't know about that though. Because people book, you know, Ricardo Villalobos or Objekt, and you don't know what they're gonna do, do you? There's something about that which is almost...
Tom Lea: Or Moodymann... there's a bunch.
Chal Ravens: Yeah, you don't know what Kings Of Leon track10 you might get with some of these people!
CCL: Totally. I find it frustrating because I'm like, “How come this selector DJ you trust, and you don't trust me? Why don't you trust me? Why don't you think I'll do a good job?” And I think to a certain extent, these people have been around enough where people trust them enough, and they're still gaining that trust with me, or the public consciousness is. I also agree that you have to earn your right to feel like that. You gotta earn your stripes to play Kings Of Leon at the rave. But to a certain extent I also feel kind of indignant. Why is it so hard to understand? I am also flexible, I will do a good job, but I'm not going to play a set of bangers just because that's the only thing that's required. I will always do mostly me.
So in answer to your question, there's a part of my sound which is objectively just fun and cheeky and sexy and weird, and I think the way that intersects can work in some festival contexts, and sometimes it doesn't. And sometimes everyone leaves. Over the last few years, I've had a few festivals where the person before me is crushing it, they're playing the best set and it's just not what I would play. And then I go on and I'm a huge bummer, because I'm not going to continue that vibe necessarily. And everyone leaves. I've had so many times where I'm like, "Oh my God, I'm so terrible at my job!" I can't make people stay. But then I interact with people like Lena Willikens – actually, she's one huge shout out. She also helped me define my sound early on because I remember we booked her for one of the first ever TUF events.
Chal Ravens: Oh, just quickly, what's TUF?
CCL: TUF was a crew of people... it was a big Facebook group that was vaguely people who are not men who are interested in music, and then it became an event thing and that became a bit confusing. It was definitely a product of its time, in the femme, non-binary, quote-unquote music collectives. I was part of the group and definitely was one of the people who was very involved in doing the events. But it also was very much a thing of its era, I think.
Chal Ravens: I do have one brief question about that, but maybe just finish off on Lena Willikens?
CCL: I remember we booked her and I just admired her so much, precisely for this reason. She never really doesn't do her. It's that conviction and bravery that allows audiences to become more open-minded. She's an incredibly empathetic person, and she does change what she does, within her own realm, but she would never just start playing tech-house because people didn't like what she was playing. I'm so happy that someone like her exists, because I think it encourages a level of patience that people are not willing to have if everyone's just like, “This isn't going well, time to play my bangers folder and give up.” Honestly, this is super lacking to me in the sphere of events right now. People want what they expect, and they're afraid of what they don't expect. I just find that incredibly frustrating.
I don't want to be babied. I don't want to show up at an event where I know exactly what to expect and it's gonna happen. What's the fucking point of that? I don't know, it's so boring to me. [The novelist] Elena Ferrante has a quote that's like, “I aim to veer away from what is expected of me, because I [think] more highly of the reader than to just divulge what everyone expects.” Several DJs who are much bigger and more established than me would be like, “You play your weird style now, but when people stop giving a fuck, you're gonna need to play to the big room.” And I've just been like, “No, fuck you. I'm not gonna do that. I don't care. I will still keep doing me.”
Chal Ravens: One of the biggest changes to dance music culture since we all got involved is that 10 years ago, when Tom and I were working together at FACT, there were no non-men DJs, really. I mean, there were a few! But then suddenly there was this moment, and we're really talking the last seven years, that's all it's been, and the pendulum has swung – arguably too far the other way! [Laughs] But there was this moment, and I gather this is what happened with the founding of TUF, and also there was that Colombian collective called NÓTT run by a DJ called Julianna, and female:pressure had done this before… but they made a spreadsheet. They made a spreadsheet to say, here are all the non-men that you can book.
CCL: There's one in the Pacific Northwest as well.
Chal Ravens: But you're right that we're not in that moment anymore, and I thought it'd be interesting to get a few reflections on the transition. We have made amazing strides in making space for some different demographics, but perhaps you have a slightly more nuanced take on that.
CCL: I mean, I think things always happen as a result of the need for a certain thing, and often the solution is not a permanent solution. It's temporary. And also it can feel a little tenuous, when it is to fill a void. So for example, in 2013, when this started happening, or a bit earlier, it was palpable. There were no... there were only cis white men, mostly, doing this as a profession, and there were a few other people, but it was mostly them. And so people, understandably, were like, “Well, there's all these other people, and we are not being represented.” So you kind of band together. And I think one of the benefits and one of the issues of this is that when you’re banding together in the absence of something, it leads to a categorisation which can then turn out to be a little strange.
When these groups started forming, it was like, “This is for women.” And then we were like, “Wait a second, that's TERF-y as hell – you mean women and cis women? Or you mean women and non-binary persons and cis women?” And then it kept getting broader and broader and it was like, “Wait a second, so we really just mean nobody who is a cis man?” Right, okay. And I actually do think, for a while, that was useful, because it was necessary because of what was happening. It did provide a really important space for people to connect, for people to learn and for people to make shit happen. From my perspective that did happen in Seattle through [TUF], and through many other groups who were incredibly influential in making that happen. But a lot of it was reacting against the fact that there's no space for us, and we're a bunch of different demographics of people and we're reacting in unison to the idea that there's no space for us. This is also what my issue with the acronym FLINTA+ is as well.
Chal Ravens: What's the acronym FLINTA+?
CCL: Female, lesbian, intersex, non-binary, trans and asexual, plus. And they basically mean non-men, but looping in a bunch of people's identities and speaking for all of them, I have some issues with that. Because you're basically just saying non-cis men. I mean, this is also why TUF ended, because this is seeking to represent a bunch of people but it's too vague in what its goal is at this point, because we've kind of moved past the need for this.
Chal Ravens: Yeah, the campaign achieved its aims, really, if you look at who is taking up space in various different scenes.
CCL: I do think it was useful, but I don't know [that the] concept is useful anymore. It was useful as an action, and for things to happen, but as a collective conscious or collective whole, I don't think that makes a lot of sense to me, just “the non-men in music”. That feels quite reductive to me in a way, this large group of people who vaguely are not men are all united in some way just by virtue of them not being men? There's loads of methods of expression in between that I feel are being ignored by being lumped in together.
And then it becomes more obvious that there's a hell a lot of white cis women who are taking up a hell a lot of space. We don't necessarily need this girlboss machine to come through and tell people that these people should be booked now, we've moved way beyond that, there's other people who are being left behind. And I think there's been a reaction to that, like the creation of Black Artist Database for example, and [B.A.D. founder] NIKS and all of these wonderful folks, which also came about as a result of that. I think people are reacting to different moments in time in which there is a need. It's good when something serves a need, but it also ends when it's no longer needed.
Chal Ravens: As a journalist I've really felt that these personal identities, and particularly queer identities, have been quite rapidly commodified. You see it in press releases a lot, sometimes it's in the subject line of an email, you know, “Queer DJ from this place.” Then sometimes it can be used as the hook for an artist's entire output or mode of being. And I think on one hand, if that's achieved certain aims, if it's made parties better spaces to be in or if it's made communities stronger, then that's good. But on the other hand, there's obviously this element of boxing people into these too big and vague categories, but also this thing where your very personal gender or sexual identity is kind of your brand, and you become a demographic...
CCL: Yeah, you're commodifying these super vague terms, which feels kind of weird to me.
Chal Ravens: And it makes you both easier to market and easier to market to, as well. Mat Dryhurst talked about this in a great talk from 201911, about this thing of the creation of new novelty all the time, which is part of the capitalist system, but it also means that you're constantly creating new demographics to market to, and I think that just feels really palpable at this stage. There's some cynical things going on with, you know, events in London that may have happened last weekend, where people are brought together to supposedly be under this huge banner. What is this banner now? Because there are other differences within those groups that perhaps are more important on a day-to-day basis.
CCL: I think being lumped in is something that I object to in general and find really uncomfortable. I don't know if I agree with all the things about this collective group that I'm being applied to indiscriminately. It can feel a little insulting because this is the thing you think I fit into. That's also why I have shied away from labelling my events as being a queer event or whatever. I think things are [queer] by action, not by label. And when things feel a certain way, that's how you know that they are, it's not by labelling something. I think FLINTA+ is a reaction to things, but I don't like it. I've spoken with many trans friends who formerly did identify as cis men and now are trans women and it's like, if you're barring a certain person from an event just by definition of of their gender biologically and how they are presenting right now, when I believe it can be such a fluid concept, that just doesn't leave a lot of room for people to feel comfortable and explore themselves.
And while I agree it's a reaction to cis gay events being like just men, I totally understand that, but I personally don't feel I want to be like, “If you're a man don't come to my event,” because I don't feel like I have the right to say that. I don't know anything about you and just because you've been singled out… and that's why I don't face-check anybody at my events. Everywhere in Berlin has a door and at many Berlin events you get rejected at the door, because a lot of people come and you have to kind of sift through. Mine is more about, are you here for the right reasons and what energy are you bringing into the space? [Rather] than, you look like a cis man and therefore I'm just gonna deny you.
Chal Ravens: Tom, should we ask our final question?
Tom Lea: We always ask people, because me and Chal are both so heavy on Letterboxd at the moment: what's a film you'd recommend to us and our listeners?
CCL: Love movies. Have been watching a lot of movies recently. There's a lot of hilarious queer and queer-oriented films that I've been watching. One that I watched recently is called Medusa Deluxe and it's about a hairdressing competition in London and it's a murder mystery. As an ex-performing arts theatre nerd, it definitely scratches a bunch of my buttons. It's super camp and kind of feels like a theatre production in a way that I really enjoy. It has a darkness. I'm always about the moods of films, and I think this also is how I become interested in certain storytelling devices in DJing, too. The subject matter is incredibly dark and the way it's shot is incredibly dark, it almost has a Gaspar Noé darkness to it, but the subject matter is so camp and so low-key silly and funny. It's definitely not the 100% best movie I've seen in my life but it really hit a mood for me.
Recorded at: SRP Studios
Theme music: Jennifer Walton
Branding: All Purpose
They say the eyes are the window to the soul, but what do you see when you look deep into someone’s Rekordbox folders? We asked Ceci for a nose around their USB and they sent over 12 tracks from a crate titled ‘The Wonked Cave-Mind’.
“I developed this playlist for tracks I don’t really know how to categorize other than they are made to mess with your mind; often, there is no clear ‘1’, tripped out, wonky, and deliciously weird in other various ways. When deployed correctly, potentially brain-melting. I have tried to build sets around them.”
Gombeen & Doygen - ‘7,000 Years’
hanali - ‘Gorge Out X’
Burning Head - ‘Santaka’
Roberto De Simone - ‘Secondo Coro Delle Lavandaie’
Arzach - ‘Just A Take’
Madteo - ‘Big Stack Attack’
Plaid - ‘Ops’
Solar X - ‘Speedball’
nisennenmondai - ‘A’’
El Irreal Veintiuno - ‘Tak ti´ uláak´k ´iin’
KAKUHAN - ‘MT-ZUC’
Second Woman - ‘100407jd7’
The Designers Republic: a British design studio known for their work with Autechre and more.
Per Wikipedia, “the Bolshoi Ballet is an internationally renowned classical ballet company based at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, Russia. Founded in 1776, the Bolshoi is among the world’s oldest ballet companies.” Huge deal. Chal once saw a production of Swan Lake at the Bolshoi; it was, in a word, trad.
Brancaleone is a cultural centre and nightclub in Rome which opened in 1990.
Subloaded and Dubloaded were the founding nights of the Bristol dubstep scene, launched in 2004 by Tectonic Recordings boss Pinch. Dubloaded was the smaller midweek night.
Shit The Bed was home to resident DJ Arsequake and typically featured such all-male lineups as this one from 2012.
Rooted Records, managed by Tom Ford AKA Peverelist, closed down in 2010.
The Black Swan is a Jamaican-owned, DIY-leaning venue slightly outside of Bristol city centre known for its fire pit and very loud sound system. Black Swan is Darren Aronofsky’s 2011 ballet body-horror starring Natalie Portman (five popcorns).
One of Eris Drew’s most demonstratively spiritual mixes is The Mystery of the Motherbeat. As she explained in 2017: “At heart, dancing with the Motherbeat is archaic nature goddess worship of the techno variety. My friend named the Motherbeat in 1994 in the moments after a rave, when we experienced all the ambient sound around us as an extension of the party. Specifically, she spoke through an air conditioner.”
Moodymann played ‘Sex On Fire’ at Field Day in 2017. Whatcha gonna do about it?
Mat Dryhurst put it like this in a 2019 talk for CTM: “I’ve said a million times, in this economy, unique niches (or unexplored corners) are highly valuable. If you are an artist whose practise speaks to a unique intersection, say based on genre, identity, or personal narrative, then you are an interesting proposition to advertisers, as you are prospectively establishing new territory to sell people stuff. Brands, as patrons, want you to establish new territory on their behalf, and be first to that party.
03: CCL, international selector of mystery