BeatRoute Magazine AB Edition November 2018

AEMCON
how do we want the world to see Alberta?
BeatRoute caught up with Isis Graham, just
before she and fellow Alberta Electronic
Music Conference (AEMCON) founder Andrew
Williams departed for the Amsterdam
Dance Event (ADE) — an annual pilgrimage
for the veteran DJs and promoters, both for
enjoyment and as an opportunity to network
and talent scout for this year’s AEMCON. ADE
is a major source of inspiration for Graham
who strives to bring that experience to the
people of Alberta. The caliber of this year’s
conference demonstrates how well she is
accomplishing that.
“This year’s event is probably three times as
large as last year and not just large in the sense
of size and scale, it’s like the quality and the
level of speakers we’re bringing are much larger,”
Graham says. “There’s more international
presence, the panels that we’ve chosen this year
are challenging content.”
Some changes were made following last
year where Graham observed they were
“overwhelmingly surprised and happy with the
fact that some of the conference rooms were
not big enough … we knew right away we had
outgrown that level of conference.” She adds,
“Last year was a lot of exploration, seeing what
Isis Graham: AEMCON co-founder
people were more interested in and we got a bit of a road map for the things that people preferred.”
As such, there will be a little less focus on technical arts on the program, and more on the business
side of the industry.
Aspiring artists who want to learn how to make money, and what to do with that money, have
tons of options for panels this year in which they can be in the presence of a huge range of industry
professionals, speaking about things like online marketing, building your artist team and the best and
worst of running a record label. AEMCON has brought in heavyweights like Chris Goss from Hospital
Records and Siofra McComb from !K7, as well as more boutique-size label owners like Sleeper and
Pezzner.
By PAUL RODGERS
Graham, despite being known as a house DJ,
says she is a “huge drum and bass fan at heart” and
explains that while there is an impetus of drum and
bass in their conference programming, there is less
of it in the nightlife than there was last year. In contrast,
there is less techno during the day but plenty
of it at night, including Discwoman DJs from New
York and Toronto and the live techno performance
of Octave One and their Exploring the Mothership
workshop, which is an exclusive performance —
the only time it will happen in North America.
Also brand new this year is the inclusion of video
game audio workshops, yet another way of demonstrating
the broad scope of creating electronic
music and sounds.
AEMCON showcases a massive amount of
diversity in terms of both genre and representation
of different genders, LGBTQ communities and
cultures. This is achieved by a huge level of collaboration
between different organizations around
the city. AEMCON organizers meet with numerous Siofra McComb: !K7 Label Group
promoters to determine “how they want the world
to see Alberta.”
“Every promoter gets to use their own ideas and
what they’re passionate about to put forward headliners,”
says Graham. “And then we go, ‘Great, how can we take those headliners and integrate them
into an educational platform that speaks to people that are on the other side of the learning curve?’ I
don’t think that there’s anywhere in the world that does this this way.”
By working with different promoters, and groups like Indigenous Resilience in Music and Afros in
the City, who are working to bring underrepresented artists to the forefront, a high level of genre and
cultural diversity is achieved, with acts like A Tribe Called Red and South Africa’s gqom king DJ Lag.
Graham says she doesn’t want the lineup to be the same every year. On top of the diverse array
of talent and speakers coming from across Canada and around the world, there is also a strong
contingent of Alberta’s DJs supporting the entire event, with new, up and coming artists being given a
platform to share their art.
Octave One’s Lenny and
Lawrence Burden, Detroit’s
dynamic duo, showcase
Exploring the Mothership
workshop.
“How can we take those headliners and integrate them
into an educational platform that speaks to people
that are on the other side of the learning curve?”
Chris Goss: Hospital Records
30 | NOVEMBER 2018 • BEATROUTE
JUCY