Features and Reviews
Selina International Music Summit Conference - Rooted in Realness: The Ropes to a Successful Cultural Partnership with Gilles Peterson and Damien Bradfield
The lounge spaces of Selina in Mexico City’s vibrant centro seem to be fashioned from an algorithm for the connected backpacking digital nomad, decked out with inspirational quotes, brick walls, beanbags and loft windows. This boutique hospitality startup provides accommodation, coworking spaces and local experiences, spread across 40 properties in over a dozen countries. Raising $100 million USD in their recent Series C investment round¹, the Panamanian group is expanding to the UK to continue building and repurposing spaces into millennial communities. (…)
The conference kicks off the weekend; it features bona fide culture magnate and music expert Gilles Peterson, head of Worldwide FM, BBC 6 music host, musician and label boss, sitting across Damian Bradfield, who’s not only made a lot of our lives easier by founding WeTransfer, but did it with a welcomed focus on the arts, building user experience beyond basic functionality. The talk is well attended by an edgy attentive audience, most of them hopefully ready to absorb ideas and channel them into their respective projects.
Sampling as Satire: The Medium Shakes the Message
Since hip hop’s birth, samples of politicized words have resonated across genres, be it punk anti-establishment, jaunty new-wave experimentations, or EDM’s uplifting calls for unity. We even find producers quoting samples that plainly go against their values, and those of dance music as a whole. In doing so, they can reclaim, stylize, and expose a message to their own agenda. In the following examples, writer and event planner Lola Baraldi traces out music that gives political words a new meaning through distortion, cutting and pasting, amplification, and camouflage. These approaches, Baraldi argues, break out from traditional modes of social commentary and denunciation, often taking the shape of danceable satire.
shesaid.so MEETSSS Conference Review - Electronic Groove
The Portimão beaches have been ripe with musical activity lately. After housing BPM in September, the Portuguese coastline greeted the MEETSSS conference, a multifaceted weekend honoring women in music. MEETSSS marked the 5th anniversary of Shesaid.so waking and shaking the industry through mentorship programs, events, talks and content focusing on female perspectives and inviting all genders to the table or dance-floor.
International Women’s Day Special - 5 Underground Female Acts
In 1938, experimental German-American musician Johanna Beyer composed one of the first known musical pieces (and the first by a female artist) scored for electronic instruments, Music of the Spheres. We’ve come a long way since then, with producers and performers of both genders truly advancing electronic music in innovative, experimental and incredibly entertaining ways. In recent years, topics like DJ mental health and exposure to female-identifying artists have taken the forefront of industry-discussed themes. While there is still much work to be done, we continue to evolve and become more outspoken regarding the strengths and weaknesses of our scene, and the structural changes needed to make it an artistic arena authentically mirroring talents of all genders and parts of the world.
Red Bull Music Festival
For last week’s festival kick off, Triptyque, a night of glistening experimentalism unfolded within the evocative walls of Eglise du Gesù, in the company of three Canadian composers.
Within these saintly walls, we were welcomed by the gentle symmetry of subtle white spotlights forming a corridor towards three floors of creativity, with the organ majestically towering over the assembly. A varied roster of artists filled the vast interior, decked out with greenery for the occasion
Detroit Movement Festival
As the summer comes to a close and Stereo Montreal throws another promising Detroit Love evening, we’d like to take the opportunity to look back on a mesmerizing Movement Festival experience, one that kicked off a whole summer of blissful music in style.
For three stellar days, booming bass lines echoed between the Detroit river and downtown’s Hart Playa. They unapologetically resonated across five stages full of character, attracting people like magnets, featuring acts with talent and charisma. Facing them, a sea of dancers freely choosing what sound to catch next, before moving on to the furious frenzy of after parties – welcome to Movement, or DEMF.
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