Running in a wool sweater
Fighting back against the cold grip of the long, dark winter (& some music while you read)
A friend in Spain floated the idea of an Aspetuck mix for his radioshow back in August, after we met for the first time a few months prior. I finally got around to recording it at the end of January & here’s the result below. As you listen, I’ll provide some context for this mix of mine & share some thoughts on the creative path I’ve been on for the past couple of months.
Joan Gila’s HOC Radio, for whom I’ve recorded this mix, is a treasure trove of fringe electronics, with over 200 mixes spanning across subgenres of ambient, experimental, downtempo, deep techno, dnb, halftime, drone & more. Joan is a kind, passionate, down-to-earth vinyl aficionado whose musical interests include collecting obscure & avant-garde records consisting of foley sounds, spoken word recordings, ambient & drone type stuff that he uses to weave together the most fascinatingly mind-bending sets. To get an idea of what I’m talking about, check this set here which he played live for us at one of our biannual Delayed getaways this past fall. He has a record label called Red Edge & is also in a duo called Binomi. For his HOC Radio platform, Joan invites talented friends from around the world who bring their A-game for him but he also makes such a strong effort to showcase his local Spanish scene to the broader world - a community that’s bursting at the seams with an endless amount of creativity & originality. My Delayed crew have played a major part in exposing me to the Spanish scene over the years, sharing stories of their friends & experiences in Barcelona, finally convincing me to make the pilgrimage over to the beloved Mostra this coming April. Joan is one of the main pillars of our platform’s connection to that rich musical ecosystem across the Atlantic & I’m grateful he was interested in having me involved in the mix series. As a result of all of that, doing a mix for him was something I wanted to do with the utmost care & respect. I’ve slowly combed through music in my head for months, searching for a tone that could strike a balance between feeling like me & also leaning into the eclecticism & open-mindedness that Joan embraces so well on HOC & with all of his creative pursuits.
With all that being said, I wanted to share some insights into my thinking around preparing mixes along with some of my day to day life happenings the past few months that have influenced me & as a result were weaved into the DNA of the mix.
I’ve always gotten a lot of ideas & mental clarity by taking long walks - through a stark landscape of trees & fields or just right through the middle of town, down to the Hudson River & back. It’s a major component of my creative process & always has been. A lot of the times, anxieties can be quickly squashed by some light exercise & the act of immersing oneself in nature. A lot of my best ideas pop into my head on these walks (a lot of my best ideas also pop into my head on the dancefloor but there’s less & less of that these days). Ideas like new track titles, new ways to connect different modules on my modular synth case, different ways of utilizing analog effects or guitar pedals, combinations of tracks to put together for new releases, styles & sounds to explore. Even this Substack post, as I write part of it while leaning next to a giant tree in a quiet, snowy cemetery a few blocks behind my house. These walks, this winter in particular, have been the main inspiration behind my mix for HOC Radio. A few times a week, I make my way down to the edge of the river & marvel like an excited child at these massive slabs of ice on the water, compressing into one another with an incredible amount of force as they drift along past me. It’s as if you’re witnessing the earth’s plate tectonics happening at an extremely accelerated pace. I decided I wanted to seek out music for the mix that made me think of this landscape & sounded the way it felt. Raw, spacious & inhospitably cold but at the same time so incredibly beautiful, awe-inspiring & still.
Back in early September, I woke up one morning & decided I would take a break from alcohol. At first I think I was just challenging myself, to see how long I could go without it, since I hadn’t been more than a few weeks without it in maybe 15 years.. As the summer began to fade & that pre-winter dread crept in, I really wanted to make some changes to give myself the best opportunity to face this winter head on with the happiest possible brain. The mental juggling between grieving the loss of my brother 3.5 years ago & becoming a parent at the exact same time has made winter a particularly challenging time, maybe it’s a bit of seasonal affective disorder too. Eventually though, I realized alcohol & I were just not going to be friends anymore at all. As I was entering my mid-30s, the anxiety I’d get from a hangover was becoming truly debilitating. All of the sudden, alcohol felt like one of the biggest things holding me back from being the parent, partner, friend & person I’m striving to be. The idea of giving it up it entirely had been floating around in my head for a while now. I’ve observed some close friends over the years who don’t drink & am grateful for the inspiration. As soon as I stopped drinking, I started walking a lot more than usual, as the craving to move my body quickly replaced the craving for a beer at the end of the day. Daily walks evolved into walks with intermittent jogs. A few months in, as I started to develop a happier brain & a new & improved cardio stamina for the first time in maybe 12 years, these regular walks have turned into almost entirely jogs which often has me asking myself, ‘who the heck am I?!’ It has been one of the more rewarding choices I’ve made in my life.
Now back to the mix -
When Joan first reached out about having me on HOC Radio, sometime this past August, my first thought was literally ‘what in the hell am I going to give him?!’ It was an intimidating one to think about, given the caliber of quality on the platform & my respect for so many of the artists he has brought on. I was in an odd headspace back then, going through a transitional phase & yearning for a new way of expressing myself as a DJ & striving to further evolve my Aspetuck project to make it even more me. I was very clearly at a crossroads, wanting to take control of my mental well-being as I approached my 35th year. 6 months is a long time to be thinking about a mix, for me at least, but this mix has kind of reshaped the way I’m thinking about mixes & DJing recently. It’s all connected to this recent journey I’m on, seeking a life involving more & more mindfulness as I get older. My approach to sets is shifting towards the act of gradually building a small pool of music & subconsciously letting the mood & tone of the mix work itself out in my head, over a long period of time. It fits well with my day to day life, as a stay at home dad where I can only focus on things in small chunks, something I’ve gotten very accustomed to in the past 3.5 years (I touched on this a bit in my previous post). This mix represents a new chapter & I hope you enjoy it - thanks so much for reading & for supporting my music & what I’m doing on this platform!
Tracklist:
Carla Boregas - Grafia Do Invisível
Ike Zwanikken - In The Holding Room
Upsammy - The Guest
Opiate - Possible 100301 Remodel (Alva Noto Remix)
Mr. YT - Morning
Egil Kalman - Subtines
Dettinger - Intershop 7
Deepchord - Vantage Isle (Cv313 Reduction Ii)
Hoch Ma Toch - Milrovian Pursuits
Doltz - Akatsuki (Doltz Remix)
Spiral Wrack - Rainglass
Pavel Miyakov & Lucas Dupuy - room
Material Object - Emerald
arovane - Ausser Welt
Palomatic - Flutter
System - Invade
Corell - A Look Inside
Artificial Duck Flavour - Removed (Infarct Mix)
Log - Out 2
Love Over Entropy - Guguy
Ripperton - Meteorythme
Mücha - From Pulses To Sound
populous - Bottom 01
Mikkel Metal - Untitled (Jan Jelinek’s Loop-Finding-Mix)
Lazzich - Shanti
Beau Wanze - Simple Men
Aspetuck - Don’t Be A Worm
Southfacing - Pathogen
Egil Kalman - Springar
The Persuader - Vatten
Such a beautiful post.. so nice to see the process behinds one’s creative endeavor.