I once bumped into Egyptrixx as I was getting off the subway on my way to a tutoring job. Recognizing him immediately as the disobedient-dubstep-turned-global-gutter-house DJ hailing from Toronto, I quickly tried to think of something nice I could fit into the two second time period before he passed me and got on the subway. Nothing came, sadly. However, a few months later, I got in touch with him through Mixpak to talk about his eclectic connections to music, Night Slugs, pho, overwrought heavy metal, grad school, and breaking down barriers in dance music.
2010 has already been a notable breakout year for Egyptrixx with the release of an outstanding EP, “The Battle For North America“, and all indications show that he’s just beginning to pick up steam.
Interview by Brendan Arnott (my text in bold)
Untold, who you recently played with here in Toronto, said something I really like: “I hope dubstep continues to be hard to pin down, disobeys its manifesto, gets called stupid names, gatecrashes other scenes, and spikes the punch, elopes, and has lots of children”. Do you feel similarly about your own music?
Egyptrixx: Haha, yes absolutely. What a great quote.
It’s quite comparatively easy and cheap to make electronic/club music right now. The software is cheap if you decide to pay for it at all, the distribution methods are largely digital and similarly cheap. These are pragmatic excuses to be experimental, of course there are intellectual reasons as well. It’s amusing to me that everything beyond the traditional guitar/bass/drums/piano configuration is considered experimental or electronic, because even those amplified instruments were considered alien and experimental in the 60’s when they first started popping up. Sonic experimentation is as much a part of making music as coming up with a clever way to say “I love my girlfriend, it sucked when she dumped me”.
Read the full interview below »
