A deeply personal exploration of liminality, temporality and memory…
Under his Acharné moniker, Sydney producer Deepchild explores the realms of uncertainty and loss via an immersive live set of 100% original material ahead of his upcoming performance at Sydney’s Club 77.
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How has isolation life been treating you? How have you been keeping productive? I work full-time as a music producer (for Neu Music Studios) and hours most certainly haven’t reduced as a result of Covid, although my focus has had to ‘pivot’ pretty radically from Sydney based work to taking on more overseas contracts (and grant applications!). Shortly before the borders closed I was in L.A. on the back of some beatmaking work for Sample Magic / Splice, and this sort of work has remained pretty steady - expanding into more synth sound-design work of late. A lot of time is spent doing real ‘grind work’ pumping out musical ‘content’ for music software companies (eg designing multiple 808 kick drums to sound like Kanye West!) but I’ve always found that the more I take on heavy-volumes of composition work for others, the more ‘magic accidents’ arise for my own artist projects. It’s been a strange time, but a really fruitful one. I’m frequently in the studio for 6 days a week, but have been trying to pull back a little for the sake of sanity and sunlight.
You spent quite some time living and working in Berlin. Can you give an example of how that city supports and nurtures music/arts that you’d like to see implemented in Sydney? I was based in Berlin for about 6.5 years, and then subsequently in London for a shorter stretch. Both are wonderful but quite different cities. Berlin’s affordability and cultural plurality tend to give rise to a naturally rich ‘substrate’ of arts practice. I feel that if a city really wishes to nurture arts/music culture, the abiding necessity is actually to provide a base-level of affordability.
Most humans are innately creative and curious, and a fertile arts ecosystem tends to arise when basic economic, health and social needs are met, and public ‘commons’ (from housing to parks) are fostered. It’s more difficult in a city like Sydney, where meeting these basic needs provides difficult for so many, and those who are fiscally rich tend to be time poor with less room to foster an arts practice. My short answer? Provide a living wage, de-incentivise property ownership, nurture and develop public space, parks, galleries etc.
How did you decide to approach your Lazydaze mix? Was there a concept behind it? My Lazydaze mix is comprised of all original work under my ‘Acharné’ moniker, rather than a ‘dj mix’ as such. Acharné is an audio project exploring liminality, temporality and memory, and in many ways is an experiment in creating an experiential space to sit with uncertainty and ‘unknowing’.
For me, personally, its certainly a project which found its genesis in saying farewell to Berlin (over 5 years back) and more recently in saying farewell to my father, who died 10 days ago from complications related to Alzheimer’s disease. The Lazydaze mix is most certainly an exploration of all of the above.
I know this year has been such an awful one for so many, and I feel both fortunate and extremely privileged amidst the sorrow. And yet...producing a mix which speaks to this moment of deep, ambiguous new universal grieving felt worthwhile (if for no-one else, certainly for me!). There are a few tears in this one, and I hope a few moments of grace.
Are there any particularly special tracks or moments in there for you? I love working with dialogue, with smeared excerpts from moments in documentary history. I’ve continued to include snippets from documentaries like Paris Is Burning - and these little reminders of the deeper legacy of Black/Latino/Queer culture never cease to humble me
You’ve got a special gig coming up at Seventy Seven this month. What can we expect? I’m really excited to be working with my friend Elizabeth Maniscalco (Elizabeth Rose / Brux) on this one, and I’m mostly excited to hear what she can teach me about her take on silence, meditation and the ambient experience. We have opened up the floor to audio contributions from attendees responding to the question ‘what does the quietest voice say?’ and I admit I’m intrigued to hear what stories people have to tell.
It’s a quiet Sunday chilling at home. What’s your go to music choice? Bruce Springsteen, Radiohead, Sampha, 6LACK, Burial.
