AWmusic

It started with an email. The title line mentioning a remix of ‘The Night Starts Here’ by Stars, a band I’ve been in love with since I first heard the song ‘Look Up’ a couple years ago. The second thing that caught my attention…. the word “remix” (if you’ve read my pieces, by now you’ll know how much in love with that word I am). Download complete. Let’s see what iamxl has to bring to the table.

This is a man born with music in his blood. A man that, from his childhood, has taken an exploratory approach to the creation and manipulation of sound. At the age of ten he started producing mixes using two tape decks, with a microphone line in – mixing, blending and sampling. A DJ before ever being aware of DJ culture. A suburban white boy gaining serious influence from the old school hip hop and gangsta rap. As a young teenager he and a few friends were able to start a show on all access TV displaying some of what they were into… until the day the word “shit” was played, causing a quick cut to dead air and thus canceling that project, but never allowing this to become a deterrent from the music. A few years later, still under the legal drinking age, he gained a job as a busboy at a bar and quickly realized he was busting his ass for scraps of money while the resident DJ was making much more and having fun doing it. From that DJ he got his first real start, learning the tricks and sometimes filling the slot if needed. This began his path, knowing he wanted to move a party and make people dance.

He has been doing so ever since. A pioneer in Vancouver’s club scene, he was creating the mash-up style mixes way before the term had ever existed. Realizing crowds had such a wide variety of tastes and forming a way to cater to all those in one outlet. After holding down solid residency in major spots around Vancouver he decided to take it to Europe for three years.

We met up last week over some beers and I was lucky enough to gain some first hand insight into cultures surrounding the dance movement in other areas of the globe and how they differ from the bubble in which we sometimes live in Vancouver. It seems as though we have a dance scene, but at the same time we don’t really, nothing like what is going on over there. A DJ/turntablism culture that has become so immersed in their everyday lives to the point that somehow everyone seems to have a hand in it. For iamxl, jumping from one market where he was in booked solid in top slots to another where he, like so many others, was virtually unknown became a real eye opener. It brought him to a point where he took a step back to immerse himself in the scene again as a patron to the music, something he had almost lost – giving him that outlook from a crowds perspective, realizing in order to grow musically he had to see everything again through their eyes. Finding a market for his style and learning to adapt himself to what was happening at the time, while still being able to blend his own form into it.

From this he understood the true appreciation for music. A realization that people didn’t want to hear the same tracks over and over. Europe is so open to new sounds and elements due to not only commercial radio input but also the influx of pirate radio – new songs flooding the airwaves almost daily, making it about the discovery rather than the same old shit all the time. This is something we have to latch on to in North America, instead of radio stations driving the same 20 songs at us to the point of insanity. To hear something new and upcoming we have to dig and scrape our way through blogs in order to find it, almost causing an elitist attitude surrounding the discovery of unknown artists, rather than trying to project them to a wider audience. They become hidden to the mass population. The remix has become another huge part of iamxl’s development as an artist. Music is almost coming full circle and elements of old are becoming a constant in the development of something new. There can be just as much originality in taking an old track and blending a new form into it as trying to create a new sound all together.

In his production, he tends to take elements of all genres to see what he can make out of them. Although he said a lot of the music he creates he wouldn’t play live, he has an appreciation for the varying styles and hopes to be able to put his own spin on things. A love for music as a whole, he wont limit himself in creation. In fact, a remix of John Lennon’s ‘Woman’ received a feature in Rolling Stone and was downloaded 60,000 times in one week and even prompted an email from Yoko Ono about it. Another remix for a Deadmau5 song ‘Faxing Berlin’, which blended vocals from a rock/pop group Fever Marlene, reached #7 on the Billboard Dance charts.

Back in Vancouver now, he reflected on the crumbling of the scene here, rather than the growth. Vancouver is becoming more limited in where to play and the representation the dance scene (well, basically any scene other than top 40 bullshit) gets here. A fight for everyone trying to achieve their own status. He wishes we could be more like the scene in Germany, where everyone is trying to progress as a whole and in order to do so will lend a helping hand to anyone, knowing that the only way to really grow is to build it as a collective. Otherwise we will kill anything that can happen here.

As far as I’m concerned, iamxl is the epitome of music culture wrapped up in human form. The desire to just produce and get a new and developing sound out to an audience seems to be his main goal, shying away from the pretentiousness that’s sometimes associated. He want’s to help not only himself, but also this entire scene… always looking to the future and it’s potential. That’s really refreshing to know.

Many thanks to iamxl for sitting down with me, helping me to understand the man behind the music. You can check out more of his tunes at his myspace and website iamxl.com and be sure to grab some of the DJ mixes he’s offering, including his most recent ‘Vancouver 2010 – Spring Promo‘.

mp3’s:
Stars – The Night Starts Here (iamxl remix)
John Lennon – Woman (iamxl b’more remix)
King T – Bass (iamxl remix)

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