Four Electronic Music Producers On Craft, Career-Building And Maintaining Muses
This weekend, we're gearing up to produce a collaborative showcase with our friends at Fusebox Festival for a special edition of Exploded Drawing. Together, we're hosting six award-winning electronic music producers under one warehouse roof on Saturday, April 21 from 9:30 PM to 2 AM.
The show is free, all ages and a reflection of a four-month-long collaboration between three like-minded organizations, invested in the arts and community, with sets by Anna Wise, Linafornia, vhvl, Dot, SassyBlack and FreshtillDef, plus next-level visuals and art installations.
To celebrate, we've got four interviews, featuring Dot, SassyBlack, vhvl and FreshtillDef. Each artist walks us through their week, their process and the creative muses that keep them inspired and hungry. Read up below.
DOT
Whether providing cutting edge beats as part of LA beat collective Team Supreme, or fulfilling her role as founder of her own female focused music label Unspeakable Records, DOT is a champion for the often unsung female producer. Her music has been praised by the best in tastemaker media, including features in Pitchfork, LA Weekly, Okayfuture, MTV Brazil, C-Heads Magazine, Nest HQ, Rookie, LA Record, The 405, and more. Born and raised in Olympia, WA, Dot’s upbringing in the Pacific Northwest and background in classical music had a profound impact on her current aesthetics and influences. She moved to Southern California at the age of 17 to study classical music at the Conservatory of Music at Chapman University, which quickly led to her immersion in the LA beat scene and signing to Alpha Pup Records. Dot debuted her first live set at Low End Theory, the infamous hip-hop/electronic night at The Airliner in Los Angeles. She continues to tour regularly as a live performer, gracing the stages of world-famous venues including The El Rey Theater (LA) The Echoplex (LA), The Observatory OC, Output (New York), and Home Club (Singapore). When she’s not traveling, Dot holds down a DJ residency at the Ace Hotel Los Angeles. In addition to her solo work, Dot produces for artists including SZA (TDE) and Teri GenderBender (Le Butcherettes, Bosnian Rainbows), and writes original music for film and television (MTV and OWN).
1.) How would you define your creative practice and approach to making music?
I do my best to simply listen and write what I hear. The less ego involved, the better.
2. What's your ideal environment for creation?
I like to get away from big cities and be out in nature as much as possible. Going to shows and meeting people in busy cultural centers is endlessly inspiring for me, but I prefer a small cabin out in the middle of nowhere to process all of my experiences.
3. Walk us through your weekly play-by-play. Who are you working with, where are you going? What guides your professional tempo?
My weeks are varied depending on the number of projects I have in the air at any given time, but the usual flow of my day begins with meditation, followed by two to three hours of reading or theory study before launching into “work,” which consists of music practice, writing, producing music for myself or other artists, label administration, rehearsals, mixing/mastering, travel for shows, or any number of other responsibilities that come with managing your own career and a collective of other artists. I’m also an artist “coach” for a select number of producers and songwriters, and I meet with each of them two times per week to guide them through the process of creating and releasing a record.
Obsession with music guides my tempo. If I’m passionate about a project, then I usually have little trouble with finding the necessary time and energy to complete it no matter how much I have on my plate. Excuses cease to exist and I feel like my bandwidth is unlimited. However, if I take on work solely for the money or some other ego-based reason, then it usually becomes exhausting and I start hitting walls and burning out.
4. What currently inspires you (could be people, places, things, Instagram accounts—you name it)?
I love reading and try to finish one to two books per week. Currently digging into ‘Synchronicity' by Carl Jung, ‘The White Album’ by Joan Didion, and a few books by Marianne Williamson. I also recently read ‘Paths to God’ by Ram Dass, and the Miles Davis autobiography, both of which I highly recommend to anyone who makes art it some form or another.
5. Any music/artists you're listening to that we should check out?
I’ve been getting into the new Chris Dave and The Drumhedz record. And anything Anna Wise/Sonnymoon does is pure magic. I keep my current rotations updated here.
SassyBlack
SassyBlack is a jazz vocalist & producer based in Seattle, WA. This Goddess of “electronic psychedelic soul” & “hologram funk” explores sound through deep compositions. With roots in classical & jazz, her voice is comparable to Ella Fitzgerald & Sarah Vaughan while her production value is reminiscent of Roy Ayers, Pharrell & Herbie Hancock. Black has traveled the world having performed in Berlin, Barcelona, New Orleans, Milan, London, Brooklyn & beyond. Sassy has gained praise from The Fader, NYLON, Pitchfork, Noisey, Saint Heron, SPIN & many others. She successfully released her sophomore album New Black Swing June 23rd and is recently returned from touring North America & Europe in Autumn 2017. She will be releasing new music every month in 2018.
1.) How would you define your creative practice and approach to making music?
When creating music, I seek healing and some sort of communication. I am looking to release something that is wishing to leave my being or extend my being. I’m not sure how to define it event after 15 years of doing it because it always changes but the core of it is to heal myself.
2.) Walk us through your weekly play-by-play. Who are you working with, where are you going? What guides your professional tempo?
I am working with myself and my many personalities and spirit. I work with my guy and my intuition and we dance and play together. Typically begins with a drum pattern or something I’m humming. I use Ableton to build up the idea and sometimes being with my TASCAM app on my phone to capture the first though. My tempo is guided by gut more often than not these days and less and less by deadline. Unless I am working on an album or a project. If that is the case, I allow my creativity to flow within the confines of deadlines to create a different kind of special piece.
3.) What do you look for in creative collaborators?
Currently I seek safe collaborators that aren’t toxic. People who are secure or working to be secure in themselves and allow me space to be myself. Also people who respect my artistry and creative process and vice versa.
4. What are you looking forward to? In your own career? Or perhaps in the industry, at large?
I look forward to working with artists that I admire that hold a kind energy towards me. I also look forward to traveling more and producing more music for other artists. And scoring films, I would really like to do that.
5. When did music shift from a hobby to a profession for you? What did that shift look like?
I started taking music seriously at age 14 when I selected my High School based on its choir program. Music became my profession when I was 18 and I started performing in a band that came to me and asked me to sing. My voice always had value to me, but I knew my voice had financial value at that point. 8.
FreshtillDef
FreshtillDef lives in San Antonio, Texas and produces via her own imprint FreshMoon. Well known for destroying dance floors all across Texas since the early rave days till present as well as holding it down in production with past aliases in DnB, Trip-Hop & Experimental Music.
1.) How would you define your creative practice and approach to making music?
I sit down smoke some weed, drink some caffeine, open Logic and start gathering ideas. Usually I will open Omnisphere and start going through sounds and playing melodies until something sparks and I run with it.
2. Walk us through your weekly play-by-play. Who are you working with, where are you going? What guides your professional tempo?
As of right now I have a collaboration with Cesrv called Machina that will be dropping on my label, Freshmoon Records, at the end of this month! I'm mostly staying in the studio and focusing on writing new music. 160 to 175 BPM guides my professional tempo. ;)
3. What currently inspires you?
First of all my husband, Tony Mundaca. My family, friends, being healthy and being happy!
4.) Any music/artists you're listening to that we should check out?
Definitely J. Mundaca, MoonDoctoR and Dj Earl.
5.) What do you want to see more of in the music industry?
More equality, respect and empowerment for women!
vhvl
vhvl is the recording alias of Harlem-based beatmaker Veronica Lauren. Her tracks burst with bright, chiming melodies, and her heavily thumping beats ensure that her brand of instrumental hip-hop is atmospheric but not lightweight. She debuted in 2013 with a self-released digital album titled Myrrh. Her 15-minute track “Fvrfew” took up the entire B-side of Seat of the Soul, a split cassette with Ras Greleased by Leaving Records in 2014. While working on her next release, Lauren suffered from a spine injury, and was bedridden or wheelchair-bound for much of 2015 and 2016. After regaining the ability to walk in June, Leaving Records released her EVN EP in August of 2016.
1. How would you define your creative practice and approach to making music?
Everything I make is steeped in emotion, and I cannot create if I believe the work might be devoid of it. So, when I sit down to work, I call upon instances and occurrences which trigger emotional responses—the work grows from that.
2. Walk us through your weekly play-by-play. Who are you working with, where are you going? What guides your professional tempo?
I can’t say I’m a collaborative artist anymore—I don’t work with anyone, and am not currently working with anyone. I live in Brooklyn with my partner, I have a very normal day-to-day life: I work a day job, I have a ferocious kitten I care for (he’s a rescue), and that’s it. I have a very slow professional pace when it comes to music because my process is extremely toxic. My aforementioned manner of making music requires dark memorable experiences, and those create the tones which dictate my sound.
3.) What currently inspires you (could be people, places, things, Instagram accounts—you name it)?
Just life in general, and that might sound like a lazy response, but I don’t draw from people, places, or things outside of myself. I like to create within my own personal eco-system—I don’t like to be influenced. I rarely listen to music, if I intend to make any either, and that’s a serious rule I adhere to.
4.) When did music shift from a hobby to a profession for you? What did that shift look like?
I didn’t notice, it might’ve just happened—it was out of my hands. I was led one way, and I continued that way. I’ve been led many ways since, and I’m sure I’m viewed more as a hobbyist than a serious artist.
5. Any music/artists you're listening to that we should check out?
The group I listen to the most is Sales.
Are you based in Austin and want to catch these artists in-person? Don't miss our showcase on Saturday, April 21 with Fusebox Festival and Exploded Drawing. It's free, open to the public and all ages.