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Catch this lovely lady tonight [3.13] at Kremwerk. Let’s jump into our conversation on dBfest 2014, late late nights and her return to Seattle..

 

DD Hello there Avalon! Welcome to Disco Droppings, how are ya?

AE Doing good, chilling in Arizona right now having some family time, gearing up for a big weekend.

DD Now I first saw you play at Decibel Festival 2014’s dB After Hours over at Kremwerk, which also featured Scratcha DVA (with a surprise Kode9 b2b set), Lincolnup and Ben Tactic. It takes a special feel to hold a crowd super late into the night, and I was totally captivated by your DJ set. You had a very strong focused presence, and it’s always a good sign when you forget where you are and how tired you might be and just get lost in the energy. How did you feel about that experience?

AE I absolutely love those kind of late nights where you’re not confined to time, the energy curves into an infinite amount. I had a great time, got to go in a lot of different directions. Plus the craziness of dB fest and all the out-of-towners added a lot of extra spice.

 

DD I haven’t gotten the chance to play much outside my home base in Seattle. I’m curious about how your travels affect your mindset with music? Compared to when you were more stationary.

AE It’s definitely a challenge to asses the crowd/club/scene in a new city you’ve never been to before. Got to be extra on your toes while still bringing a cohesive atmosphere and idea to the night. Especially in Europe where an hour flight means a completely different culture, language.

DD Cybernetic Edits is a nifty little site hosting these free new remixes of yours. What drew you to these artists for your reworks? My eyes widened when I saw Technotronic!

AE Thanks! I play a lot of edits, and often have people come up asking what some weird version of a track I played was. And on top of that I’m not the only DJ who does it! This one’s got a Bananarama edit from Derek Opperman, and I’ve got some great stuff in the pipeline from other artists coming up. Some of the best moments I’ve experienced in clubs are special crazy deep edits/remixes/versions of big tracks. We’ve already reached the virtual trainspotting singularity with discogs/youtube/forums/etc, might as well make it easy and fun for people to snag some different cuts.

 

DD Feelin’ the sass in “Pressure/Quoi!”. What was going through your head when these tracks came together?

AE Pretty straightforward, starting with a strange sample and a kick drum. I made “Pressure” in about a night, never second-guessed any of the voices or sounds, and “Quoi!” I thought no one would like because of the goofy vocal sample, but I still play both nearly every show.

DD You make your return to Kremwerk on Friday, March 13th, how’s the energy gonna’ be this time around?

AE I’m so pumped to come back! I love Seattle, it was actually the first non-SF DJ gig I played back on Valentine’s Day 2014 I believe. As always, I make no assumptions and take every show individually, but I have good vibes in store ❤

Avalon Emerson – Facebook Twitter Soundcloud

– Jimi Jaxon

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There was a time years ago when I ignored the news. Overwhelmed, confused and full of fear, I’d just focus on my music. Abby Martin brought me back with her show Breaking The Set. She was a guest on Disco Droppings in 2013, and researching for that interview exposed me to so many issues around the world, from a perspective I wasn’t used to hearing. It was draining enough for me to just watch episode after episode and reflect. I was so impressed with her ability to soak in mountains of information, gather up all these people and organizations from many sides of the political spectrum, often voices rarely heard on a news program, and give them a platform to share their thoughts and energy.

It’s so clear to me that Abby has a huge heart for the world. Underneath all that frustration is a desire to see people truly come together. We are one human family, more similar than we are different, and that theme was reflected all throughout her show.

I don’t fully understand everything that was talked about on BTS. I’m no expert. Refusing to blindly follow anyone, and questioning more was another major part of her series. This is more about an individual taking their passions and doing something with it. Cheers to Abby for walking down her own unique path, traveling wherever she feels led. It’s not one person’s job to save the world. She’s made her waves, and I will continue to search for my ways to do the same.

 

– Jimi Jaxon

 

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For my first interview of 2015, I talk with Newaxeyes. We’ve become friends recently, and I wanted to share their mindset and energy both on the site, and at our monthly “Disco Droppings Presents” where they will headline this week. The band has donated some gif previews of their visuals, which you’ll see spread throughout the feature. Alright, let’s drop in..

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DD Whatsup Newaxeyes. I feel we have been drawn together for a reason. I connected with your diverse style, and willingness to push things. Happy to have you headlining “Disco Droppings Presents” at Kremwerk on the 19th.

NWXYS Thanks very much for having us. We’re thrilled to be a part of it.

DD It’s definitely been a trip for me, spending more time with your music. You guys have mentioned trances, how do altered perceptions play a role in your art?

NWXYS We generally seek to create sounds that reach the listener at a sort of pre-intellectual level, so that there’s less interference going on and the music can be taken in more directly. When we are at our best is when we feel more or less “entranced” and when we are letting the music happen in its own way, without the constant real-time analysis that can be poisonous to a piece.

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DD We’ve both been placed on a variety of music bills, where have been your favorite environments so far?

NWXYS We love to play with hip-hop beats people, psychedelic rock bands, modern composition types, performance art groups, harsh noisers, you name it. From the outset, we have always wanted to fluidly interact with a broad spectrum of styles and genres to carve our own chameleonic sound, so we’ve been happy to be invited to very disparate sorts of bills. Even better is that we tend to be received well by diverse audiences, maybe offering something atypical and challenging to the environment.

DD In addition to the music, I’m intrigued by your visual element. Tyler’s Instagram for example, definitely see an eye for catching things. And the logos and artwork you use work super well. Is this a group effort or do certain members of the band focus here?

NWXYS We all met more or less through our time at Cornish College of the Arts (Bret wasn’t a student but it sometimes felt like he might as well have been). Will was the only music student – Tyler was a photo/video art major and Jordan was in for graphic design. So it’s very natural for us to shape a visual aesthetic concurrently with the music. We’re lucky in that between the four of us we have the skill set to handle pretty much every aspect of the project. Tyler creates the majority of the photography and makes our videos. Jordan makes the logos, website, and most posters.

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DD Where have your most impactful inspirations for Newaxeyes come from?

NWXYS It’s all over the place. When we started out, we were listening to a lot of Oneohtrix Point Never, Death Grips and Demdike Stare – electronic-oriented stuff that tends to be simultaneously physical and cerebral. But we all have such eclectic tastes and personal influences that it would be difficult to answer generally. From a non-musical standpoint, we are all fascinated by data, the societal effects of the Internet, and forces of power and influence hidden from public view.

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DD Lastly, how would you describe your upcoming live set alongside Sphyramid, Raveghost, Dream Beat, David Comito and I?

NWXYS We have this super inconvenient habit of writing new material and reshaping old stuff until pretty much the day of the show, so that’s a bit hard to answer. We’ll be playing some bangers though. Being that it’s Kremwerk and Disco Droppings, we’ll possibly lean more heavily on dirty dark dance vibes.

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Newaxeyes – Twitter Soundcloud Facebook

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– Jimi Jaxon

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We are counting down to the next “Disco Droppings Presents” at Kremwerk. I’ve got performing artist Goodwin here to talk about his musical shenanigans. A personal favorite from the Motor night, you can see his live Techno set this Thursday. It’s a pleasure to join forces..

 

DD So with music, you started out more experimental. What drew you to Techno?

G So the strange but true story of my musical progression is that I was actually really into electronic music in high school during the 90s “electronica” wave. I started out buying stuff related to the Prodigy, Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk, etc. and progressed to some amazing (and some totally crap) compilations that really opened my mind. From there I fell in as resident nerd in a group of much cooler kids who were DJing at my friend’s house and just getting deep on all kinds of shit. I found jungle/drum & bass pretty quickly after that, and amassed a decent collection of 12″s while working and was still living at home with my folks. But by the time I moved to Seattle I had gotten a lot more interested in punk and hardcore music. Mainly because as someone underage I could legitimately participate in it and it was really pro-youth empowerment. And those elements were really absent from the, at that point, heavily commercialized Bay Area rave scene, or at least my experience of it. By the time I got to Seattle that sort of naturally led me to start volunteering at The Vera Project, and from there helping my friends do experimental pop, noise, and free jazz shows. So at that point my musical education started all over again, which was fantastic.

A lot of factors drew me back to House and Techno as I got more and more into playing experimental music. A few of my peers had been making “noise” music that referenced a lot of stuff in the Chain Reaction and Raster-Noton universes and while I love that music, it wasn’t the exact territory I wanted to tread in. Around this time re-discovered a cache of mp3s on my hard drive of stuff like Mr. Fingers, Model 500, Ron Hood, Frankie Knuckles, and Phuture and it all really drew me in all over again. And from there, these funny coincidences kept happening that kind of drew me further and further into dance music again.

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DD I see I see. We’ve both been encouraged by Dave Segal over at The Stranger. Your Ramparts EP was described by him as “tonally and melodically advanced”, quite the compliment! What’s an influence that you would give that same description?

 

G A really foundational influence for me is Juan Atkins, especially the Model 500 stuff. I think of any major influence of “GOODWIN” that’s probably who pops into my head the most as someone that phrase would apply to. So many of his songs hit it home for me even after so many years of listening to them. On songs like “Night Drive” or “No UFOs” especially, it’s really the totality of those songs that strike me. For me, every element in those songs is a hook and that’s always been impressive to me. There’s so much craft there. Other folks that I can think of right now are probably artists like Fela Kuti, Meredith Monk, Talking Heads, Steve Reich, Kraftwerk, and Curtis Mayfield. For me an important part to GOODWIN is making music that’s rhythmically dense with lots of interlocking melodic parts, and I definitely think about those folks a lot in that context.

 

DD Love it. I first saw you play at the Motor night in Seattle. Kremwerk hosts, and that vibe is one of my favorites currently in the club. What do you enjoy most about Motor? For people unaware, maybe you could also give a quick summary of the monthly..

 

G For sure. MOTOR is a monthly club night and label based in Seattle that was founded by Sam Melancon in 2012 and is now run by Sam and a collective of folks. I can’t speak for Sam, really, but MOTOR more or less evolved out of a tendency in the last few years for artists with backgrounds in experimental or drone or psychedelic music to flirt with rhythms from house, techno, italo, and other dance musics. I think what I like the most about MOTOR is how broad its scope of music is, and just how deep of trippers the general audience is. It’s people who are fucking enthusiastic about good somewhat strange dance music. I have to give it up to Sam and crew for just making a space for folks to come in and play in Seattle and be well received and have shit be done right.

 

DD So, going into performing, what’s your live setup consist of?

G It’s been pretty consistent lately, though I just had my laptop take over sequencing and drum duties for my ailing MPC. But generally it’s MPC or laptop on drums and sequences and then a Roland TB-303 clone I built, a Volca Keys, a Yamaha TX81Z, and then lots of FX boxes, both pedal and rack. Mixing and EQ and FX routing plays a big role in my live sets because things like delays can help add that rhythmic density that I talked about that earlier and modulation FX add that cosmic element a bit.

DD Well I am very excited to have you at the next Disco Droppings Presents. Till then!

G Hey thank YOU, man.

 

Goodwin – Twitter Soundcloud Facebook

 

– Jimi Jaxon