Strict Face @ Subvert by Small City

Massive thanks to Subvert.

RP: How’s life in Australia?
SF: Life in Australia’s been good, all things considered. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t low-key itching to get on a plane and go travelling, though. To where, I’m not exactly certain, but I have a few places in mind. I don’t really have any international tours planned out at the moment - it can be quite time-consuming and costly without a booking agent who can handle certain tasks such as obtaining the appropriate visas.

RP: Any big plans you’re hiding?
SF: I’ve always got new material in the works at any given time, even if I’m taking a slight break from working on it. There’s a new EP I’ve just received the masters back for, which should be good to go by early next year. I might release a track from it or whip up a Bandcamp drop before the end of 2023 if time permits. I’m not in a rush though - releases that come out towards the back-end of the year usually tend to be forgotten amidst all the holiday hubbub and I wanna make sure the whole thing’s good to go before I release it.

RP: You said the next EP might be the ‘angriest batch of tunes you’ve ever made’.
SF: ‘Angry’ might be an overstatement, but it’s definitely wrought with a tension of sorts. Claustrophobia or anxiety, you could say. The bulk of the EP was written between 2021-2022, specifically during the slow return to ‘familiarity’ within the social landscape and when masks were all but a guaranteed requirement to leave the house. There’s even one track on it that’s called ‘Casual Contact’ - I wrote it the first time I ever had to quarantine because I was a close contact of someone who had COVID at the time. If that doesn’t scream ‘period-specific,’ I don’t know what will.

RP: When’s the ambient record dropping?
SF: Remind me in a couple of years.

RP: How many CDJ/mixer buttons have you broken?
SF: I’ve had my fair share of having fader and EQ knobs fly off the mixer and valiantly trying to find them whilst blind drunk in a dimly-lit club. It’s probably happened too many times to count. Thankfully, I haven’t actually broken a CDJ function button - as far as I know anyway.

RP: Name your first ‘holy fuck’ experiences with electronic music.
SF: I was about 10 years old when I first properly came across Aphex Twin. Back when I was six, I’d taped an episode of Rage where Hole happened to be guest-programming and the last clip that made it to that tape was ‘Come to Daddy,’ but back then, I rarely made it to the end because I probably got bored or had other obligations. I was spooked enough to look up Warp Records later that day.
While it’s not technically ‘electronic music,’ the first time I really paid attention to Timbaland’s productions, around the same time, also re-wired my brain as a kid. That set the way for me to understand genres like Grime and Jungle more readily before I was even old enough to really hear any of it in a club context.

Not long after, I came across Wiley’s earliest productions (like ‘Eskimo’ and ‘Ice Rink’) and Dizzee Rascal's “Boy in Da Corner” - both of those blew me away. Age notwithstanding, I was living very far from where a lot of that music was spreading at the time, so it was more of a solitary pursuit, which meant I could get lost in its details quite easily. There’s probably a few other moments I’ve missed, but those three are the foundational memories I have where my interest in electronic music was piqued enough to jump right in.

RP: Anyone more underground or underrated that you’d like to namedrop?
SF: I’m a bit hesitant to say certain artists are more ‘underrated’ or ‘underground’ than others, but I do have to single out Big Ever, Davis Galvin, Jonny From Space, Noire, Sister Zo, Tammo Hesselink, Leonce and the All Centre label as constant mainstays on my USBs. The Hessle Audio guys will always have my heart, but I’ve also really enjoyed listening to any sets from OK Williams, Hipsters Don’t Dance, Jon K, Nick Boyd, Cormac and DJ Voices that pop up.