Crevette Podcast 05: Islas

#5 - islas

Islas scatters carefully selected vibrations, weaves together electronic gems, creates sinuous and surprising sets. Floating in the limbo between dance music, delay pedals, ASMR, spoken word, movie scores, and ambient sounds, Islas plays with the friction that exists when one record meets another, with the joy that erupts when sounds come together to create the previously unheard. Co-founder of the PLANET collective and Kiosk Radio favourite 'The Morning Show'.

#5 - ISLAS


Islas scatters carefully selected vibrations, weaves together electronic gems, creates sinuous and surprising sets. Floating in the limbo between dance music, delay pedals, ASMR, spoken word, movie scores, and ambient sounds, Islas plays with the friction that exists when one record meets another, with the joy that erupts when sounds come together to create the previously unheard. Co-founder of the PLANET collective and Kiosk Radio favourite 'The Morning Show'.


You named your podcast ‘March 11 2022’. Can you explain why and what mood you tried to capture?


I like to name recordings simply with the date they were recorded or first thought about. It allows me to return to them with some perspective on progress or marks that period in time. In this case, I re-recorded a set I played at Beursschouwburg (Brussels) on Friday 11 March 2022, as a warm up for Sara Dziri live. While I really enjoyed the moment (and I think everyone there did too!) I decided to do another version at home with the order switched around a bit. :) Big up to Paco who mastered the mix for me!

It’s a grooving, mid-paced selection with quite straightforward, utilitarian dance-oriented tracks. This is one facet of what I am playing at the moment, and I think I’m still on the quest for what might one day be my “style” and “technique”. So please bear with me.

Any tracks you want to highlight, a personal favorite?

The funny one with the guy talking about compressors in Ableton Live. It’s a silly track but really gets me dancing, it also has a ridiculously long break/drop moment that has a strong comic effect. Anything with loads of voice samples in it generally gets five stars from me. 


Can you talk a bit about your digging routine when looking for records? Where did you find the records in this mix?

Most of these are from Crevette actually. I love coming to the shop and just picking stuff out of the bins, mainly according to the graphic design. Anything black and white and nineties-looking usually gets a listen! Or things with animals on. I generally avoid records with references to female anatomy which seemed to be a thing back in the days…! I just realised all the records in the podcast are either black and white or red; I think I subconsciously colour-select! Some records are from Sono Ventura, another shop in Brussels. A lot of stuff I bought back then is slowly rising to the surface and getting played out more, as I get more dancey bookings. Then there’s a big slice from Discogs, but my spending online has gone down a lot in recent months. I used to have a well-ish paid job in an office where I could sit at my desk and check Discogs all day while I worked. It felt sneaky and unprofessional, so I loved it. Now that I work for myself, I strangely don’t feel so drawn to online digging.

Our aim is to be more vocal about (amongst others) getting underpaid as local DJs, not being considered as “artists” by the government, having no clear rights. (...) We aim to open a dialogue with each stakeholder involved in the whole process.

Tell us about the Planet collective you co-founded? 

Planet (www.p-l-a.net) was an idea that germinated almost two or three years ago but really took time to bring together and make real. We are simply a collective of friends who share a common interest in listening to and playing music. We combine this passion with a more “administrative” side that involves organizing each member’s bookings, doing a bit of promo, looking for platforms to share podcasts on, or curating lineups. We are also collectively investigating how artists—and more precisely, DJs—can be paid respectfully and legally in Belgium and beyond. We are still a bit shy about it, but our aim is to be more vocal about (amongst others) getting underpaid as local DJs, not being considered as “artists” by the government, having no clear rights, not paying social charges so not contributing to unemployment funds or pension funds etc. We aim to open a dialogue with each stakeholder involved in the whole process: venues, bookers, promotors, DJs, … in order to make some progress together. So our intention in the future is to organize talks, and eventually provide an online database of info/contract templates/rider templates, etc. for DJs and artists in general.

For a few months now, the weekend in Brussels starts on Friday morning, thanks to ’The Morning Show’ on Kiosk radio you started with Alex Sourbis. How has the experience been so far? 

Exhausting! For quite some time, I’ve been a listener of BBC 1xtra’s morning show, mainly when I had an office job and cycled there every day. I loved having a familiar voice natter away in my headphones to uplifting pop music in order to start things off the right way. So it had always been a bit of a fantasy to have a morning slot like that. I suggested the idea to Jim and Mickey from Kiosk during Covid, also as a way to revive or create a new community within the chatbox of the radio, to give people a place to have a laugh and connect at such a morose time, all with lovely tunes in the background. Then I asked Alex Sourbis to join, because it did seem like a mammoth task, and he is a very cheeky, salty gemini so perfect chat show host, not to mention he has an amazing selection of morning music that he was dying to share. We started off in March 2021, so it’s been going for over a year. We are getting more and more people to co-host because it is frankly very taxing to find appropriate morning music every week, buy it, sort it, and get up at 6am to go to the park. I really admire those who do it on a daily basis—look at Charlie Bones for example; no wonder he had a burnout! 

The morning show permanent team now includes my one and only chicagoan Dana Kuehr and the O.G kiosk boys Mickey and Jim, as well as Alex and I.  

I remember a guy who broke his TR-909 by throwing a shoe at it during an afterparty.

What initially got you into electronic music? Originally from the UK, stopping by France, now in Brussels, (how) have these places influenced your sound? 

I’ve always always been into music, but of course it began with the usual, run-of-the mill 2000’s teenager stuff. I eventually discovered John Peel and Annie Mac on Radio 1 and the independent record and book shop in Reading called Fopp that I would visit religiously every Saturday and buy one CD and one book a week. At that time it was all very indie/emo/lo-fi angsty music, like smog, cat power, the moldy peaches, broadcast. The closest I got to listening to anything electronic was probably LCD Soundsystem or Miss Kittin, or my Dad’s dreadzone CDs and Ministry of Sound compilations during neverending car journeys to holiday in Scotland. I later moved to Bordeaux, where I attended art school and many parties at Le Café Pompier, probably the best and most experimental venue in France. Everyone at art school was making loopy electronic tape music, but I wasn’t really interested. I remember a guy who broke his TR-909 by throwing a shoe at it during an afterparty. He was devastated but I had no idea what that machine even was or represented. I also remember a slight yet general feeling of disdain towards the club or DJ scene at that time, because it stood for the more “commercial” side of things.  

Then in Brussels, I fortuitously met Michiel Claus (with whom I would later run Basic Moves for while) and Wiet Lengeler (of Bepotel) when working at Beursschouwburg together. They took me to Fuse one night after our shift, and that was my first real encounter with club music.

I think this oblique approach to the electronic scene means I keep my interests broad, dispersed even. I am not into one specific genre or era or artist, and I am a total dilettante.    



Tell us about a record in your collection that is your sonic comfort food. 


Two very special ambient/downtempo albums by Japanese artists: 


Kaoru Inoue - Em Paz


And 


Susumo Yokota - Sakura



Perfect for listening to in the early hours, or in the evening, to relax to or to slowly build up energy. Simple as that!


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