As You Like It & Fault Radio Present: Coast To Coast
As You Like It & Fault Radio Present: Coast To Coast
May 28, 2020
As You Like It kicks off a monthly Fault Radio residency dedicated to shining light on underground communities “Coast to Coast”. The initial installment features three local Portland artists, Strategy, Andy Warren and Sappho, and a San Francisco artist, Brendan Finlayson, who hails from Portland.
Each our nightlife communities are experiencing trying times. We hope to contribute to maintaining a domestic network, connecting us now and building toward a post isolation world. Take a moment and learn about each of the of our guests and join us May 30 on Fault Radio. Quality.
SAPPHO
Sappho is a music selector and soul reflector. Her dj'ing contributes to the soundtrack of the cosmic travels of nightlife. She relentlessly researches, expands on a narrative and exposes the listener to music they may have never heard but love.
Venmo: @Megan-Andricos-1
Interview:
1. Tell us about who you are as a DJ. What kind of music do you play and what inspires you?
I'm a dj who likes to have fun, engage my audience, dance like no one is watching, relentlessly research music and, sometimes, I'm a bit too much of a perfectionist and my best and worst fan and critic. Dj'ing is my passion and has been one of my true loves for the past 21 years that I have been honing my skills with beat matching and music curation. I really find a lot of joy in collecting vinyl records and have been enjoying this time while sheltering in place to really re-focus on getting back in the groove and simplifying things with just turntables and mixer at home.
Musically, I'm really all about keeping it interesting for myself and my audience. I've always been drawn to music that is melodic yet has an interesting and engaging rhythm structure. Eclectically, I draw from various genres including Disco, House and Techno but feel like throwing in curve balls of Rock, Synth and New Wave, Post Punk, Boogie/Funk and Ambient keeps it hella fresh and intriguing. I'm inspired by the unusual and the off the beaten track; what makes me most excited when listening and digging for new music is finding stuff that I have not heard before. I happily identify as a Queer DJ.
2. What local projects (events, crews, labels, and beyond) are you involved with?
Currently, my projects specific to Portland, are the crew NoFOMO who I collaborate with on live streams and have been an event producer and resident dj with for the past 3.5 years. Prior to COVID, we hosted Queer nightlife events monthly, where we focused on the Cosmic sounds of dance music and tried our best to create spaces where people could express themselves freely. Also, I am co-writing and co-producing tracks with Portland musicians Zip Zap Studios (Jon Damon Boucher) and Peter Marks. Peter and I are slated to be releasing an EP on the label Bottom Forty in July and Zip Zap Studios and I have completed about an LP worths of material which we are now dialing in for a hopefully a release by the end of the year. Outside of Portland, I hold dj residencies with UGSF in San Francisco, Bottom Forty in Seattle, and Backdoor in Vancouver, BC.
3. What makes your local scene special?
Having been actively involved in the Portland dance scene since first moving here in 2003, I've been able to watch our community grow (and especially flourish in the past about 6 years). I feel there is a lot of support and cross pollination and exchanging of ideas and healthy collaboration. We're a smaller scene here, being a smaller city, so most of us know each other.
4. What do you hope to see happen once we come out the other side of this crisis?
I hope to see a basic income for all, universal health care, and housing for every person who wants it. I would love to see the end of capitalism as we currently know it and a dismantling of the patriarchy. Am I currently hopeful that this will ultimately happen? Well, let's just say I want to dream big.
Andy Warren
Andy Warren is a DJ and an all-around record fanatic who has helped elevate the underground dance music scene in Portland, Oregon throwingconsistent, quality events for over five years
Venmo: @believeyoumepdx
Interview
1. Tell us about who you are as a DJ. What kind of music do you play and what inspires you?
DJing for me is a way of communicating complex emotions and connecting with people. I play a pretty wide variety of music in all kinds of different situations, but mostly house and techno. Clubs, living rooms, patios, warehouses, and the great outdoors. I try to consider the environment, audience and the mood of each moment when making selections, but also really enjoy taking risks and playing things that are a bit out of the ordinary or unexpected. Before I got into DJing, my interest in electronic music started in the world of 90s & 2000s IDM stuff like Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, Plaid, B12 etc, so I've always appreciated psychedelic stuff that has a lot of compositional depth. Lately I've been listening to a lot of pretty ambient and downtempo music to stay sane.
2. What local projects (events, crews, labels, and beyond) are you involved with?
I've been running the Believe You Me crew in Portland with my partner Robert Ginkgo for the last five years. We've also been doing a summer open air series for the last four years called "Your Sunday Best". With Believe You Me, we did tons of club nights for the first four years, but now are focusing on doing more underground one-offs, providing excellent sound, and getting more creative and elaborate with our productions. Our goal has always been to create inclusive spaces where our community can thrive and inspire each other. We've also always strived to build lasting relationships with artists who we believe in and who have great chemistry with our community.
3. What makes your local scene special?
I think what makes the Portland scene so special is that we have a very cohesive community with a lot of crossover and collaboration between all the different parties and crews. We haven't been influenced too much by the massively commercial global music industry. The scene is still all about the music, vibe, and community rather than politics, clout and financial success.
4. What do you hope to see happen once we come out the other side of this crisis?
I think its going to be quite a while longer before we can safely gather on dance floors again, and a lot could happen between now and then. Whatever ends up happening, we will get back to creating spaces and gathering to dance as soon as it is safe to do so. We will have to get creative and work hard at getting back to where we were, but it will definitely be exciting to get back to doing what we do after along break. Our community is totally capable of withstanding big changes and hardships, and I have no doubt in my mind that we will come back with a bang.
Strategy
Strategy, a human of Portland, Oregon, in the future autonomous bioregion CASCADIA, western North America. Schizophrenic like genre hopping all under one name: experimental, house, techno, ambient, and dub together.
PayPal: paul@community-library.net
Interview
1. Tell us about who you are as a DJ. What kind of music do you play and what inspires you?
As a DJ, I'm uncompromisingly eclectic. Different eras, divergent scenes, anachronisms and threads of all sorts end up woven together. I see DJs as being a channel for the desires of the dancers, the event curators, and typically play dance sets that will blend everything from disco, 80s, and electro to house, techno, UK garage and contemporary bass stuff, and music that doesn't fit neatly in a silo bubbles up to the top. I'm inspired by the dancers, by great sound systems, and most of all by the DJs and record makers who make me move.
2. What local projects (events, crews, labels, and beyond) are you involved with?
With my DJ and label partner DJ Broken window (aka Solenoid, aka David Chandler,) I have been doing a monthly residency and Portland's original retro arcade / barcode, Ground Kontrol- our residency is one of the longest-running in Portland at 15 years this year. I regularly join as a guest for Believe You Me, Your Sunday Best, and Spend The Night, and sometimes pop up at Holocene doing direct support for friends and peers appearing in Portland on tour.
3. What makes your local scene special?
The people, especially the musicians and producers, whose creativity is a never ending source of surprise. And, there's a spirit of inquiry in the community here that makes eclectic approaches welcome and possible.
4. What do you hope to see happen once we come out the other side of this crisis?
I think its going to be Where we can dance together again.
Brendan Finlayson
This mild mannered graphic designer is one of San Francisco's best kept secrets. Keeping his ear to the pulse and pushing vinyl with style. One of the original members of As You Like It, (albeit behind the scenes) and solid fixture on the Proximity crew. Brendan is no stranger to the understanding of what moves.
PayPal: brendan.finlayson@gmail.com
Interview
1. Tell us about who you are as a DJ. What kind of music do you play and what inspires you?
House and techno mostly but I’ll play anything if its trippy and/or pretty. I like stuff that tells a story,
2. What local projects (events, crews, labels, and beyond) are you involved with?
As You Like It and Proximity in SF. When I lived in Portland, I helped build Picture of Sound and design for a number of crews and labels from 1998–2006 or so.
3. What makes your local scene special?
I was born in Portland but grew up in a bunch of other places, so when I had the chance to move to where I was from, I took it. Having been raving for a few years before that, I started DJing in 1998 when a local DJ Ben, of Star bass Records gave me my first record for my birthday (DA Rebels - House Nation Under A Groove). At the same time I was studying graphic design at PNCA. Some of my first “clients" were rave promoters around Portland, Seattle, and Eugene. Eventually I found myself DJing at those parties too. Beat pusher (Marcus Knauer) and I started a crew called Picture of Sound, after a few years that folded, then I met a girl from the Bay Area. Feeling pretty burned out on the Portland music scene at the time and looking for better design job prospects, I moved to Oakland in 2007, and eventually SF. Not sure why I made assumption that SF's music scene was going to be like Portland, but I did, was very wrong, and pleasantly surprised at the health of dance music here. I will always think of Portland as my foundation, the beginning of my relationship with this scene, learning how to dance, a few lifelong relationships, my relationship with records, and the few record stores we had at that time (and how that relationship easily translates globally), where I learned design, DJing, and music production. It is the place where I learned how to find balance between my two main outputs in life, so I hold it in a pretty high regard.
4. What do you hope to see happen once we come out the other side of this crisis?
My hope is that in all fields of output, we learn from this, why and how it happened, not return to “normal”. Use that to educate awareness of our greater impact as a species. And use this experience to make better decisions about our long term physical, mental, and environmental health both as individuals and as a society. As hard as it is to think about now, we’ve beat something like this before. It was a fucking mess, but we did it.
interviews by Chris Zaldua and Jeremy Bispo.
