BeatRoute Magazine [AB] print e-edition - [June 2018]

SILKQ
motion, energy, rhythm – and collaboration
It’s a gorgeous Thursday afternoon in Calgary,
and Harrison Neef, a.k.a. Silkq, is waxing
poetic about the struggles of being a club DJ
in 2018. Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon
drones along in the background, and every
so often, an espresso machine interrupts his
soliloquy.
“It’s harder than you think to find a 320 of
[Britney Spears’ hit] Toxic,” he laments, staring
off into the distance. Neef lets the absurdity of
the situation sink in for a moment, and then
loses his composure, letting out a laugh.
That same penchant for the atypical and
tongue-in-cheek bleeds into everything Neef
has been doing as of late. “For the past few years
I was writing about how I was feeling, and at
some point I just stopped feeling that way, like
weird and isolated,” he explains.
“I’m getting more comfortable with being
uncomfortable. I’m working on stuff that’s a
little more dancey and less lying-in-bed-crying.”
His authenticity is as disarming as it is hilarious.
Neef’s musical history weaves a twisted
web. After a brief stint in band camp, he
found himself hooked. “I started messing
with Garageband and recording songs on my
laptop microphone, using MIDI drums, just
to get ideas down. And that’s where my love
of eurodance and West Coast hip hop came
into play.”
He goes on to quote Enya, Nora Jones, everything
neo-Gothic, and gravewave as influences
in the same breath. Neef’s capacity for organizing
chaos proves fascinating.
“I’ll always have this vision of music being
structured like a rock song — verse chorus
verse chorus bridge chorus out,” he describes, a
leftover paradigm from his years of listening to
42 | JUNE 2018 • BEATROUTE
BY MAX FOLEY
bands. “I treat all the components as pieces of
a puzzle that fit into that structure.” Currently,
those puzzle pieces sound like iconic fragments
of genres such as punk, garage and two-step.
Neef’s attitude towards music is palpably
nonconformist. An exploration of his Soundcloud
page yields an incredibly diverse sonic palette,
as well as some comically self-aware tagging
–“‘Trapical,” “Witching Hour,” “Sad Dancehall”
being a few examples.
A series of fateful encounters in studio spaces
catalyzed this development. “Everyone’s sessions
kind of blended together. I’d be working on
something and then [Detroit transplant/drum
and bass veteran] Sinistarr would come by and
give me a bassline,” Neef describes.
These transient exchanges of musicianship
eventually led to one of Neef’s most fruitful
new partnerships with budding Calgarian
disco talent Liam Mackenzie, a.k.a. DJ Dine
and Dash.
“Liam came into the studio as I was about
to step out and showed me some cool
samples. Then I walked over to the CZ1 in the
studio and just riffed for about 20 minutes,
but at some point I guess he had hit record.
Collaboration has had a tangible impact
on Neef. “I’m the happiest I’ve ever been with
my music right now. Everyone just wants to
do stuff, and I was kind of tired of feeling like
I was at a job interview every time I ever met
someone. Right now, I’m just doing what I like
and sharing it with people.”
You can bask in Neef’s newest inspirations when
him and Dine and Dash join forces for Sled Island.
They’re playing the basement of Commonwealth
on Wednesday, June 20.
LET’S GET JUCY
JUSTIN MARTIN
Sled Island is, for good reason, a focal point
of the month of June and these past few
years they seem to have been booking more
and more great hip hop and electronic shows,
which I really love to see. In addition to all
those amazing shows, here are a few choice
bookings that caught my eye coming up this
month:
Lots of trap and future bass type things this
month, particularly at the Palace it would seem.
First off, Ekali’s Canadian tour touches down at
the Palace on June 7.
Next up we have Boombox Cartel, a duo
that has skyrocketed from their home in Mexico,
transplanted themselves to L.A. and into the
global bass music and EDM spotlights, garnering
attention from heavyweights like Diplo and
Skrillex, and attained bookings at festivals like
Shambhala, where they will appear this summer.
Catch their hard-hitting, genre-melding trap
stylings alongside Krane and Eclipse on June 8
at the Palace.
One of the more mind-melting bass music
producers going right now, the good Reverend
himself, coming straight outta outer
space, Bleep Bloop will rupture eardrums
and cripple sanities simultaneously at the
Palace on June 9.
Also on June 9 is future trap artist Ghastly,
over at the Marquee. I was always more into the
Haunter evolution of that particular Pokémon,
but that’s just cause I thought he looked cooler
and I could draw him easier, and Gengar was
too bulky.
Hold Your Colour, the 2005 album from
Australia’s Pendulum, especially its tracks like
“Slam” and “Tarantula” were some of the first
drum and bass tracks that yours truly heard and
that, for better or worse, catapulted me on a
BY PAUL RODGERS
PHOTO: BEEDEE
trek into the jungle from which I’ve never really
returned. Catch these absolute, bloody legends
at Commonwealth on June 14.
Each summer, the 403DNB crew take a brief
sabbatical to rest up for the following season.
Before they do, however, they tend to put on
one final show and go out with a bang, and this
year, they’ve outdone themselves. On June 15
they have secured Dom and Roland. His career
stretches back to the late ‘80s West London
rave scene and since then he has pioneered the
dark and punishing tech-step style of drum and
bass, released seven studio albums and created
the infamous “tramen” breakbeat. Catch this
timeless innovator at the Nite Owl.
Rusko had a pretty crazy year last year. One
of the most important names in dubstep,
having co-created the globally influential FabricLive.37
alongside Caspa, Rusko announced
that he was battling stomach cancer just over
one year ago and would be unable to make
his scheduled shows for the remainder of that
summer. Then in late 2017, he announced that
he had beaten it, which makes his performance
at The Palace on July 1 all the more reason to
celebrate and get your “Woo Boost” on.
One more for Canada Day celebrations,
if dubstep ain’t your bag, comes courtesy of
those fine BassBus folks, who are putting on
a free party alongside MarketSpot YYC in
the parking lot of the Max Bell Centre with
house music sensation and longtime pizza
aficionado Justin Martin.
Many thanks as always for sucking my
words up into your eye holes. Here’s hoping
that through that process of ocular osmosis,
some ideas begin to gestate that then give
birth to wonderful dance floor experiences.
It’s just science.
JUCY