We catch up with Efemmera, a killer selector with a passion for 90s euphoric rave anthems & one of the three masterminds behind Toronto’s On Earth parties.
So tell us a little bit about this mix, what would you prescribe doing while listening to it? And are there any tracks or artists you want to give a shout-out to in particular?
I recorded about 3 iterations of this mix - once in July, then in October, and my third and final, which is an elaboration of the set I played during RBMA in Toronto in October. I had a specific environment in mind: lots of fog (whether from machine or environmental), maybe layers, and a pinch of laser-induced chaos.
I find mixes kind of hard to focus on because there are so many great artists out there, but I find following a set “plan” helps — lately, I’ve been anchoring attempts at mixes around particular sequences of songs or in this case, playing tracks from friends, like the Davis Galvin one near the end.
You’re the Booking God for On Earth and you guys have been going for well over a year now with every line-up being fire. Can you tell us a little about OE, how it came to be? Can you drop a hint of who we could potentially expect to see on the bill in the near future?
Kate, Nat, and I all started talking sometimes in 2016 —- the beginning is kind of blurry but our first booking was in January 2017 with Container. For a while, we were managing one booking, sometimes two a month but after Simo Cell in August, we decided to take a semi hiatus but we’re going to be back in January for our two year with REEF boss, Darwin.
You have your own show on N10.as called Defiant Visions, dedicated to showcasing the talent and interests of POC identifying artists, DJs and dancers of the diaspora. Can you tell us a little bit about the motivation behind the show?
It was pretty much a platform I wanted to use to showcase local and not so local DJ friends music and whatnot! I left it open format because I didn’t want such a narrow focus. I’ve been programming it for about a year or so now and I’m still learning about different ways to go about programming the show.
How has the show grown along the way in terms of what you expected initially in starting it to what it is now/who and what is featured?
It gave me the chance to reach out to friends who weren’t necessarily putting out regular mixes at the time. The good thing about meeting new people through dance music is that you never really run out of ideas.
Where are you hoping the show will go in the future?
Because of school and balancing another radio show on Radio Quantica, I am scaling back in 2019/2020 by going bi-monthly. I am actually in the middle of figuring out a new direction for the show. I’ve been playing with the idea of doing something super focused like only playing songs from 1993, like the mix I did for Daisychain. It’s super narrow but I think the challenge will force me to be a better DJ in terms of developing mixes and looking for tracks!
You play a mix of everything breakbeat to electronic to dub to acid and beyoooond, what’s your favourite genre to play out and favourite mixing experience to date?
I’ve always had a hard time with genres and I tend to get bored pretty easily, so it can be quite chaotic when I play sometimes, you can sort of see this with the way I do my mixes. I like to find ways to go from one end of the spectrum to the other quite quickly, like going from more contemporary bass sounds to 90s trance.
Lately, celestial (your words) synths, trippy, shuffling basslines, and weird vocals tend to find their way into the sounds I play. I like to play a lot of older stuff because there’s just too much new much out there all the time, but it’s a lot of fun when you find songs from different eras that compliment each other perfectly. Oh, and I love edits and sounds that could only come out of a super futuristic pinball machine :~)
“I’ve always had a hard time with genres and I tend to get bored pretty easily, so it can be quite chaotic when I play sometimes, you can sort of see this with the way I do my mixes.”
What are some of your favourite music labels at the moment? And what/who first inspired you to start playing out?
Veronica Vasicka’s Minimal Wave will always be my number one — she was the first DJ I saw during my first week in Helsinki and it was a complete coincidence that my first night out in a new city would be a forever hero of mine. I am a big fan of Nous Klaer, Violet’s Naive label, and Holding Hands.
Where else can we catch you spinning in the not too distant future? Do you have any other big plans or projects for the remainder of 2019?
I am back in school full time now so that’s taking up the remainder of my 2019. I think in 2020, I’d like to focus more on getting better at doing mixes and fine tuning the direction I’d like to take for my n10.as show as well as On Earth’s Radio Quantica monthly.