[Interview] VAULT:Unlocked – anabasine & Frankie Teardrop
* Pour lire la version française de cette entrevue cliquez ICI!
That’s it! The VAULT:Unlocked is finally on our doorstep and we had the chance to discuss the mini-festival and the nightlife in general with two inspiring artists who will participate. In the frenzy of the last promotional blitz of the event which will take place on Saturday February 29, we are very happy to have finally been able to chat with anabasine and Frankie Frankie Teardrop for a few questions.
Frankie’s expected return to Montreal will also be marked by a LIP at Résonance Café on Friday February 28, a great way to stretch your legs for the next day’s mega-rave. So now is the time to have your coffee and read this short interview, that we hope will convince you to attend this memorable evening!
You are performing at the VAULT:Unlocked festival at the end of the month. This festival is a totally NOT TO BE MISSED event for the Montreal underground scene! What will your performance energy and curation be like?
Danji: My dear friend dileta and I will be bringing our most infectious broken technoid bass bangers for the dancefloor! We haven’t gone back to back for a while, and Pascal has really been cleaning up at his recent sets – I’m looking forward to bringing some high octane groove to the VAULT crowd, reliably one of Montreal’s finest assortments of hard-dancing ravers!
Frankie: I am super excited for it as well, definitely not to be missed. I’ve been going through a huge adjustment period over in Vancouver since I moved here in November, I have really spent a lot of time thinking about what I miss over in Montreal and one major thing alongside missing such a tight knit community is the diverse music genres & high BPM sets. I always feel inspired by Diana (D.BLAVATSKY) who’s been doing so much for Mtl’s music scene so I will most likely be doing a set that is deeply inspired by them and their energy.
An event like the VAULT:Unlocked festival that is both communitarian and far reaching is necessary for the vitality of our DIY scenes, how do you see your role in this ecosystem?
D: I’ve been involved in various roles in DIY scenes for ten years now, helping run a loft space and collective (The Plant), booking shows, playing in a band (Slight), DJing raves and festivals, starting a rave crew (LAGOM/Enough Is More Than A Feast), doing radio on CKUT and n10.as, working as a sound engineer, helping run a small studio, and just participating and attending events too, of course! Everyone who spends time in underground scenes wears a lot of different hats, I think, and that can provide some kind of resilience to underground scenes, some capacity for an underground DIY ecosystem to adapt. And I think the vision and programming of VAULT:Unlocked is doing an excellent job at centering a huge number of local mutually-supporting organizations, scenes, artists, and musics. I just started a masters program where I’m researching how underground scenes interact with cities and government power, so I’m really thinking about this stuff a lot right now, and this festival has been really exciting to see take form.
F: I agree. I guess I have been in Mtl’s DIY queer music scene for quite some time now, I have met a lot of wonderful people through DJing and playing in bands as well as running Slut Island Festival and LIP. For VAULT:Unlocked I will both be DJing and speaking on a panel. I hope my involvement in the festival as a speaker and a DJ will be an extended invite and lure to all the queer ravers. I’d like for whatever knowledge and experience I end up sharing on the panel to both be inspiring and a tool for people who want to get more involved in event planning and DJing in the DIY scene(s).
© Photo: Rodolfo Moraga
To name only a few, police zeal, the difficulty of establishing sustainable rave spaces is a big obstacle Montreal after-hours communities face, how can the future of our night-life venues be preserved?
D: I don’t know the answer to these questions for sure. But I’ve been wondering if cooperative ownership of spaces amongst local crews or collectives might be possible. I also think it’s essential to organize against gentrification as artists, and to build solidarity around our communities, spaces, and neighbourhoods more broadly.
F: Ah yes, honestly this is an issue in any city. Until some rich sugar daddy understands the importance of sustainable rave spaces over condos and funds our sugar baby event planning dreams, I feel this will forever be an obstacle. In the meantime, the most important energy to hold is that curiosity within exploring the city deeply enough to find the perfect current rave spaces and to not let its potentially temporary existence drain that energy (this is why I’m such a fan of Diana and their crew #tunnelrave20194ever). The fuel to that energy must also fall in the hands of the whole DIY scene to actually show up and support these events when they are being held in these new spaces.
It is extremely exhausting to not only just run an event but to constantly be searching for spaces that may not even end up lasting the full night of your event. I feel I eventually reached my limit years ago after an extremely busy LIP that got shut down at 4am on Halloween at the notorious Durocher basement leaving me alone in a rotting swamp basement with a dozen creepy cops, not fun, especially when you’re doing it all solo. I’m not entirely sure how we can preserve after-hours venues as cops love to ensure that “all good things come to an end” but what I do know is we constantly need people with NRE (New Rave Energy) and an encouraging and supportive crowd to keep this on-going but necessary location scouting supported.
© Photo: Alli Hayes aka bunnie604
The city of Montreal is currently looking for a night-life commissioner. What do you think of this first step the city of Montreal is taking, and do you think they are going in the right direction?
D: The recent Night Mayor movement internationally has had some bright stories and some horror stories, so I’ll have to wait and see what happens here! I think there are good things that can happen through city policy interventions, so I remain cautiously optimistic. One concern, however, is whether new city policy is built as an economic development plan for nightlife and tourism, as it often is envisioned and described. I think this can inherently commodify and commercialize what the «allowed» direction of local cultural activity – it can risk sort of, gentrifying the underground, so to speak. I do think that de-coupling alcohol licensing from venue licensing could be a really positive step, for example. I’m looking forward to seeing who takes on this position and what their agenda and tactics will be!
F: Interesting! Let me know who that night-life commissioner ends up being and I’ll get back to you with answers! 😉
Thank you for your time!
© Photo: Rodolfo Moraga
- Introduction by William.