Mixpak 024 is brought to you by New Jersey’s DJ MikeQ, a pioneer of the new generation of Ballroom DJs that’s been steadily bubbling up from the underground NY scene and making waves worldwide. Producing tracks and remixes in the vogue fem style, MikeQ has put his magic looping touch to Chelley, Egyptrixx and Willow Smith to name but a few, and heads up his own production company, Qween Beats. His Mixpak FM offering is 90 minutes of brash, club-driven sounds, jumping between Ballroom and Jersey club. It includes tracks and remixes from Vjuan Allure, DJ Jayhood, DJ Tameil, Kingdom and more, alongside tracks from his forthcoming EP on Fade To Mind, released on November 22nd. It will be sure to get you (trying) to vogue.

[For a more comprehensive look into the Ballroom scene, read the XLR8R feature from earlier this year]

You can subscribe to Mixpak FM via iTunes, subscribe with an RSS reader from the Mixpak FM site or download this mix directly.

Mixpak FM 024: DJ MikeQ

Mixpak FM 024: DJ MikeQ Tracklist

The Soul Shaker
Audio Ball Ha
Walk For Me
Back It Up
Back It Up 2011
Tenderness
Bounce Like Me
nuCunt
Get Back
That Bitch Right Thurr
Super Hair Ha
Gurk That Shit
Let It All Out 2012
Vogue Bitch
Moment 4 Life
Stalker Ha
Deep Inside
Ha Dub Rewerkd Rmx
The HA Dub Rewerkd
Ice ICe Bay (Dance)
My Bad (MikeQ Ballroom Rmx)
Baby Got Back
Baby Got Back 2
I Whip My Ha (ReEdit)
Left, Right
Hot In Here
Poison
Count Da Pussy
The Master Blaster
Dig Where Im Comin From
No Habla Ingles (Americano)
We No Speak Americano Ballroom Mix
Slangin Dis Dick/PussyDrive U Crazy
The Pump
Bring It To The Wall
Cunty Rendezvous
Get Da Patty Cake Goin 2
Mizrahi Ha
Sexy Walk
The End
You Just Cant Take It
Liberation Front (MikeQ Remix)
Drummers Pump
Push It
10,000 Screaming Faggots
The Elite Blast
Guernica – Saxo
Lift U Up
Work
Done (MikeQ Remix)
She Will

It’s been a good run for genre-defying producer Subeena, from taking part in the Red Bull Music Academy, to co-running Immigrant (later Imminent) Records and getting a 12″ released on seminal label Planet Mu. Now Subeena is releasing the third record on her very own label, Opit, later this month. The four-track EP features two originals (and vocals from Subeena herself), along with some superb remixes from Ghosts on Tape and Egyptrixx.

Mixpak caught up with Subeena in London to ask about her new sound and how the label was working out. Press play on the preview and read the questions after the jump.

What have you been doing since you last released a record yourself?

I released this guy called Milyoo, from the States. That took some time. It always takes me a bit of time to do that cos I do it all myself. That came out in the Spring and then I started preparing this new record ages ago so I’ve just been taking my time, I’ve been finishing off uni, I went home [to Italy] for two months where I made some more tracks.

You started up your new label Opit early last year. How is that going? How have you found the transition from your old label to your new one?

Pretty easy. I wasn’t really sure I wanted to start a new one that quickly but then I had a couple of tracks that I wanted to release so I sent them to Jackmaster asking if he might want to consider them for distribution and then he offered me a PND so it just went quite quickly.

Did it work out as you were expecting?

To a certain extent it has. I’ve come to a point now where i need to wait and see how I want to carry on doing it cos I don’t really want to switch to digital only but on the other hand it might be an option that I should at least consider.

Who else is going to be on the label?

Well for the moment it’s me, Milyoo and for the remixes Egyptrixx and Ghosts on Tape. I’ve got a couple of people I’d like to release but i need to work out how I’m going to do it. One of them does make amazing music and we’ve spoken about maybe releasing something but it’s like ambient, beatless stuff so I’ll have to first decide what format is going to work.

How do you go about picking people you want to release?

I know it sounds a bit simplistic but literally anything I like. Although I particularly like releasing people who are at the beginning, who haven’t had many releases, stuff that’s not just straightforward club bangers, stuff that’s harder to sell on vinyl because that’s the music that struggles to find a label. It’s probably cos I had the same kind of problems. You’ve gotta start somewhere. People always seem to take longer to decide whether or not to release that stuff because it might not sell but I like to release people who are right at the beginning of their career and haven’t had 10 vinyls out already. It’s nice to find someone to grow with.

So how was it starting a label at this point, when the market isn’t great?

Well maybe financially it wasn’t the greatest moment. And vinyl isn’t really selling as much as it used to, or so they say. Then again if you’re not in it for the money, as long as you cover what you spend then it’s fine. Especially if you’re releasing other people, if you can’t give them much financial gain at least you can offer them exposure. It might get them more releases, more gigs. For me it was probably the best moment in terms of the attention I’d got from the last few records cos maybe if I’d waited another 2 or 3 years I would have got less attention, people wouldn’t remember about what I did.

Your sound has changed a bit for this new record – why have you decided to use vocals this time around?

Because I’ve wanted to for quite a while. I’ve been trying to sing for years, but not very successfully up until now. I tried to be in a band for a couple of months, but it wasn’t a great idea! I’d given up, i was like ‘I’ll never do it’. I’d had some specific myths in terms of what I thought you could do with electronic music, so i thought ‘no way am I going to put vocals in there’ and I guess you just get bored of doing the same thing over again and I do really enjoy singing so I was like ‘ok let’s try it’. So I’ve been trying hard to make the transition from not having them at all to having them dry and more song-like. These aren’t really like a song, the vocals are in the background so I’ve been going slowly towards the whole singing thing. It also has an effect on the rest of the track, it means that the instrumentals are not more simple exactly but have less melodies and there’s less going on in some tracks.

Are you going to sing in Italian?

I don’t think that’s going to happen!

Do you think adding vocals could change your audience?

I guess it depends on how you use the vocals. If they’re in the background and work as an instrument then it probably won’t change too much. It’s more a matter of worrying whether people who used to like my stuff before will still like it, but if i’m trying to attract new people there’d have to be more of a song. I don’t think I’ve got anyone new out of it at this stage.

How did you go about choosing your remixers?

I liked both of them already; I really liked the tunes I’d heard by Ghosts on Tape so i did kind of want to do something with him anyway. I loved what Egyptrixx was doing and he’s been quite helpful, I like his attitude towards music so it was nice to work with him as a person really. It was interesting to see what they were going to do with this vocal stuff.

What’s your production process? How do you go about starting and finishing a track?

I’ve got a really simple set-up that hasn’t changed in a long time. I just have a laptop and sometimes a midi keyboard and speakers, a soundcard and that’s it. I’ve never thought about how I start really, it’s more that I try things out rather than having an idea already. I always tend to play around and see what sounds good. I mixdown my own stuff, I really enjoy it to be honest. I don’t know how it sounds but I’ve had a couple of decent mixdowns where the mastering didn’t really change much. I enjoy it and I’m not too bothered about it sounding killer at the club. It’s just cool trying to get your stuff to sound good. I like the mentality of having the minimum and trying to use it as best as you can rather than having 24 controllers and 48 VSTs.

How long does it take you to finish a track?

I can finish them within a day but it takes me a while to actually get into production mode. So that’s why I make most tracks at my parents house [in Italy], so i’ve got some time to get in the right mindframe and then it just takes me a few hours because I can really focus and get loads of things done.

So do you have to lock yourself away?

I kind of do. I do make tracks in London as well but less than i do at home just because i don’t have many days off and even if I take a couple of hours off it’s not really enough for me to start writing something. So if I’m in the right mood I’m really quick but it’s the whole preparation bit before.

If you take yourself away to Italy, does that change how your sound comes out, in terms of being influenced by your surroundings?

I don’t really go out much there. It might be the case but i can’t really tell. Maybe i should lock myself up in London and switch off my phone for like 2 weeks and see what happens.

People would probably call the police and interrupt your production process! Where do you feel you fit in category-wise now, everyone is always calling you cross-over and you got grouped into the dubstep category, a bit erroneously maybe?

Well I did really like dubstep for a while, I did put on a dubstep night, I knew a load of producers that were doing stuff back then, it was a community thing really and when I was releasing stuff back then there were only like 3 or 4 girls producing in the whole scene so I guess that’s why I got stuck in that category.

Your name always gets dropped along with Ikonika I guess. But your sound is completely different.

It is now yeah. I was trying to make dubstep for a while but it didn’t sound very good. At first I used to get booked for dubstep nights and then I wouldn’t play dubstep and I think it was creating some confusion. Generally it’s over now. If people call me for remixes or to get tracks done, they know my latest stuff but every now and again I get the odd follower on Twitter called ‘super dubstep follower check my dubstep beats’ and your mutual friends are Skream and Benga.

So what do you listen to now?

I don’t like many things. It takes me ages to find something I like and when I like it I listen to it over and over again cos I know how hard it is to find something I like. I found some tracks by this guy called Caural that i quite like, i like this other producer called Samoyed who’s one of the people i was hoping to release, and there’s this German producer called Jan Jelinek who also produces under the aliases Gramm and Farben, who I quite like…and some of Lukid’s stuff. I don’t have massive influences or one particular artist I’m following, just one off tracks. It sounds really pretentious but I’ve been listening to a few of my tracks a lot lately….

And so will we.

Subeena’s latest, Opit 003, is out at the end of October, via all the usual and specialist outlets.

The only thing that’s nicer than the  that funky looking t-shirt is this new “Stag & Dagger” mix that Bok Bok just dropped on the blogosphere.

Much like following a long dark winding tunnel down into an alternate universe where everything is a thousand times grimier, this mix is both surreal and recognizable at the same time-  there’s a cast of recognizable Night Slugs crew showcased within, but all new traxx. It also finishes on an exceptional high note with a brand new Kingdom edit and a mind altering Girl U.N.I.T jam, one of the best things I’ve heard in months.

Bok Bok – Stag & Dagger Mix (Sendspace Link)

Tracklist:

Floating Points- Shark Chase
DJ Eastwood – U Ain’t Ready 2010 (Bok Bok Special)
Lil Silva- No Hooks
T Williams- In The Deep
Dva – New World Order
Lil Silva – Against Yaself
Altered Natives – The B*tch
Egyptrixx – Untitled
Tony Senghore – If You Came Here (L-Vis 1990 Vumpy Remix)
Dowee – Enigmatic
C.R.S.T – Dance (Mosca Remix)
Girl Unit – Shade On
Silkie – Unorthodox Daughter (Kingdom Edit)
Girl Unit – Wut

Club Infinity launches tomorrow night! This is the debut of Kingdom and Dre Skull’s new monthly with special guests Egyptrixx, Cubic Zirconia and Jubilee. This is the release party for Egyptrixx’s amazing new Night Slugs EP and it’s the official after party for Hard NYC. $10 at the door, $5 with RSVP.

Check this Kingdom remix of Ricky Blaze’s “I Feel Free” to get on the Club Infinity wavelength.

Ricky Blaze – I Feel Free (Kingdom Remix)

Kingdom and Dre Skull have teamed up with MeanRed for the new party Club Infinity which debuts April 3rd. Kingdom and Dre Skull will be playing alongside special guests Egyptrixx, Cubic Zirconia and Jubilee. This will be the release party for Egyptrixx’s Night Slugs EP and it will the official after party for Hard NYC with the T&B crew. RSVP for $5 admission.

I once bumped into Egyptrixx as I was getting off the subway on my way to a tutoring job. Recognizing him immediately as the disobedient-dubstep-turned-global-gutter-house DJ hailing from Toronto, I quickly tried to think of something nice I could fit into the two second time period before he passed me and got on the subway. Nothing came, sadly. However, a few months later, I got in touch with him through Mixpak to talk about his eclectic connections to music, Night Slugs, pho, overwrought heavy metal, grad school, and breaking down barriers in dance music.

2010 has already been a notable breakout year for Egyptrixx with the release of an outstanding EP, “The Battle For North America“, and all indications show that he’s just beginning to pick up steam.

Interview by Brendan Arnott (my text in bold)

Untold, who you recently played with here in Toronto, said something I really like: “I hope dubstep continues to be hard to pin down, disobeys its manifesto, gets called stupid names, gatecrashes other scenes, and spikes the punch, elopes, and has lots of children”.  Do you feel similarly about your own music?

Egyptrixx: Haha, yes absolutely. What a great quote.

It’s quite comparatively easy and cheap to make electronic/club music right now.  The software is cheap if you decide to pay for it at all, the distribution methods are largely digital and similarly cheap. These are pragmatic excuses to be experimental, of course there are intellectual reasons as well. It’s amusing to me that everything beyond the traditional guitar/bass/drums/piano configuration is considered experimental or electronic, because even those amplified instruments were considered alien and experimental in the 60′s when they first started popping up. Sonic experimentation is as much a part of making music as coming up with a clever way to say “I love my girlfriend, it sucked when she dumped me”.

Wow, that’s an excellent analogy.

Thanks!

When you talk about intellectual reasons to be experimental, I read that you’re finishing a graduate program now, correct? What have you been studying, and do you feel like your education informs the way you look at making music?

I just finished a Master’s degree in journalism, before that I studied neuroscience. That’s an interesting question, maybe school influenced my music in the process… how to start with an idea and end with a product. I’ve probably become a better songwriter since going to J school… more impoverished, anyway.

You’ve also been changing the way that you perform music live lately – I caught your live PA debut at Wrongbar a little while back, which sounded great. Can you talk a bit about how your live show has changed recently?

Well, when I started this project (basically out of boredom) two years ago, the intention was never to do the DJ/Producer thing. It only remained that way for so long because I was in school and touring, so I didn’t have enough time to really develop a live set. Being a DJ comes with different responsibilities/expectations, and basically, I just find a “live” set more fun, expressive and personal. It’s totally a work in progress.

The vocalist “Starving yet Full” from Azari & III was doing some vocals overtop that night… are there any plans to ever “formally” collaborate with vocalists?

Oh yeah, that was so cool. I’m working on an LP right now, there will be a few guest vocalists on it.

This is the LP that you’ve called a “vague tribute” to your Irish great grandmother?

Haha, yea.

Sometimes it feels like there’s an unspoken dichotomy in subject matter here in Canada where you can’t really write an electronic album about anything except something “dark & sexy”, y’know? Meanwhile,  other Canadians like Owen Pallet are making indie music coming from a “traditionally Canadian” farmer aesthetic… and because it’s indie it can kind of talk about whatever it wants without criticism, where dance music can’t. What are your thoughts on that?

Man, I could talk to you all day about my beef with how electronic music is covered by the Canadian music media…LOL.

In short:
(1) Almost all music is made with keyboards/midi/DAWs, so deal with that.
(2) Electronic music or music with a synthesized palette (however you want to define it) is/can be serious music too.

I agree with your sentiments, we’ve got a long way to go… but onto the next question.

Haha, yes…let’s not dwell.

You once called club music “participatory and democratic” in an interview, in the sense that it takes a whole room full of people to made a mood & establish a feeling. I like that idea a lot, and there’s a track on “The Battle for North America” that I really love called “Drive U Crazy” which is not only maybe your most pop-friendly and accessible track (in my opinion) but it’s also talking about “bringing back that feeling… that feeling that’s been gone for way too long…” This may seem like a daunting question, but… how can we bring back the groove, Egyptrixx?

Thanks! Ummm, well I’m not really advocating ‘bringing something back’, I think everything is in place to create something new. What I like about club music (like you said before) is that it (along with the right people and setting) can really provide powerful moments, euphoria or whatever.  It’s a very visceral style of music. I think if you present club music properly it can be very powerful. I’m not trying to sound nostalgic in that track. I didn’t even go to raves “back in the day”.

It seems like you’re suggesting that there might be something a bit dangerous about longing for that “return to a better time”, which I guess when you look at the way some of this “nu-disco” stuff stagnates pretty quickly, is understandable.

Absolutely, that sentiment seems disdainful of progress to me, like whiney grandparents. I’m happy to be making music right now, it seems like an exciting time.

I agree! It’s funny too, because there are also some changes that are a bit strange…  like the way that “mainstream dubstep” seems to be enjoying a big explosion of success right now. Can you ever imagine a future where that was taken one step further, and Night Slugs family & Egyptrixx were blaring in Ibiza? I mean, it seemed like there was a point where thinking about “dubstep” and commercial success in the same sentence was ridiculous.

Haha true, you can put the right acapella over top of anything and sell it to rich Californians…Well,  “dubstep” has come a long way…
…

As for the Night Slugs family, I think the sky is the limit really. It’s a group of really interesting musicians from completely different backgrounds. I’m excited to see what happens…

Your new forthcoming EP “The Only Way Up” is the next Night Slugs release- did anyone’s remix (Kingdom, Ikonika, Cubic Zirconia) really surprise you?

They’re all so good, I especially loved Cubic Zirconia’s, which they flipped into this really futuristic funk/boogie song. Tiombe (their lead singer) is a total superstar.

What can you tell me about Africa, the pre-Egyptrixx group?

Oh, Africa never really graduated past the basement stage. It was almost a pretty cool drone project, then it was nothing… yea, I actually have a new band right now, we’re just writing and recording some new material.

I mention it because through twitter, I see a lot of influence from noise stuff like Suicide and AIDS Wolf. I was wondering if you had anything that you’d personally define as a guilty pleasure.

Ummmmm….. I’m a real sucker for overwrought black metal. Also, I love Lady Gaga, but i dont know I would call either a guilty pleasure.

Have you ever watched Metalocalypse? It’s amazing for overwrought death metal vibes.

Haha absolutely, it’s so funny. My brother and I were “metalheads” in our tweens/teens, I think a lot of the satire in that show is so dead-on.  And the Dethklok music is legitmately good… Mermaider!!

What do you think labels need to do in 2010 to survive?

Well, it would be great to see labels start to really take advantage of the malleability of digital content, there really are endless possibilites. Splits, multimedia releases, formats beyond LP/EP- also, there is so much music being released constantly. Maybe finding the right balance between quanity/quality is key. I think the pressure is on the labels to prime the consumer sufficiently, instead of just drowning them with content.

Final question- Where can you get the best pho in Toronto? What are some of your choice dining places here?

Oh wow, GOOD QUESTION. Well, I’ve just recently been told by a reliable source that the best pho in Toronto is “Kim Asia”  (I believe it’s called) on St. Andrew. The Pho Hung on Spadina is a safe bet, although Pho Pasteur right around the corner is much greasier and more indulgent. But, i moved to brockton recently, so I frequent Phoenix now, at College and Sheridan.

Wow. Title for this interview is going to be…. Egyptrixx: Serious about his Pho.

TRUTH. Can I ask you a favor?

Sure thing.

Can you not use any “TRIXX” puns in your title? Like “Back to his old TRIXX”

Hahah, oh my God, no worries.

THANK YOU!

Cubic Zirconia has been busy readying their album which is slated to drop this summer, but before the album comes the singles and first up is “Josephine” which drops today along with four proper remixes from Greenmoney, Waajeed, DJ Sega and Egyptrixx.

They also just did a nice mix for self-titled which you can stream or download below. Make sure to read their full commentary on the track selection.

Support their new single Josephine out now on iTunes.

Tracklist
1. Egytprixx, “The Battle of North America”
2. DJ Gazzerto, “Cruel 22″
3. Fabio Lendrum, “Trouble (Drop the Lime Dub)”
4. Bok Bok and Greena, “Peanuts Club”
5. Kraftwerk, “Numbers/Computer World”
6. Kode9, “Black Sun”
7. Cubic Zirconia, “Josephine (Egyptrix Remix/DJ Sega Remix)
8. Luke Solomon, “Ghouls”/Claude Von Stroke, “Beats From the Grave”
9. Renaissance Man, “Lay Me Down (Sissy Knobby Remix)”
10. Michael Meds, “Jackin Drunk”