flyover 4: lanny
After wondering for a few weeks if I had another failed music blog on my hands, I got the text message from Lanny I didn’t know I was waiting for:
“Went nasty with it.”
Flyover crew recently paid Lanny a visit at his Northeast Minneapolis home to chat about his mix, take some photos, and play some tunes. On a hot and disgustingly humid Saturday afternoon, it was a relief to feel the temperature drop by 20 degrees as we walked down the stairs to Lanny’s basement studio. Big speakers, a subwoofer, synths, machines, four decks, a mixer, plus his homemade record cleaning machine (made from a gutted turntable, a shop vac, and a model train transformer) greet his visitors and complement the wood paneled walls and comfy couches. In my mind, Lanny’s basement is a fun, happy, music-filled place, which made it all the more surprising to hear about the basement’s severe effect on his mix.
“I recorded a couple [of mixes] and they weren’t what I wanted. I was down here like ‘okay, I’m gonna do it again, I’m gonna do this nice mix.’ I tried, and I was just failing at the decks, ‘cos I’m in a basement recording a mix by myself and the mood wasn’t there. So then I got mad...I was laying on the floor, just like yelling ‘Ahh! I suck! What the fuck?’”
“But then I was like, ‘wait a second, I need a drink. I need to get in the zone. I’m gonna chill out a little bit and do something else ‘cos this is not working…so I very quickly was like, ‘alright, I’m gonna do a nasty mix, and it’s gonna be psychedelic.’”
“So I went through Rekordbox in 10 or 15 minutes, I picked those tracks, and I started playing...I think that’s what I needed to do, just like, be in a mood or something…[I needed] to be in a party mindset.”
Jokes aside, Lanny takes his craft seriously. His knowledge of dance music runs deep, and his perfectionist tendencies are evident in his approach to mixing. If the golden rule of DJing is play to the room, it checks out that Lanny couldn’t make himself play an upbeat summertime mix quite yet, as he initially planned. Yes, parties and shows are on the books again. Lineups are dropping, tickets are selling, and this mix comes out during a period marked by slight optimism that we’ll soon get to collectively damage our hearing again. However, we’re not quite there yet, and there are constant reminders all around us that the present and future is bleak and uncertain. A happy pre-recorded mix right now, especially before Big Parties start up again, would be forcing it a bit. It speaks to Lanny’s veracity as a person and DJ that he can’t lie to us like that.
Regardless of the vibe of the room he’s playing, Lanny has consistent and specific qualifications in mind when he’s digging for tracks.
“No matter what [mood] I’m picking, I’m picking something that has some groove and some swing…I enjoy some beatdown techno from time to time if everyone’s doing it and it’s in the right environment...but I’d rather hear and play something with that swung, weird, groovy bassline and trippy in-your-head kind of thing…I always want the groove to be leading it…one track groovin’ into another…always teasing that next groove and maintaining the last.”
His flyover set is no exception. Opening with a misleadingly optimistic breaks-forward Extrawelt cut, Lanny selects some acid, techno, and electro to kick things off. After going minimal for the first of two Terrence Dixon tracks, he brings in the heavier vibes that resonate throughout the rest of the mix. Sharif Laffrey’s “Sounds To Come” marks the point of no return, setting the tone for the real nasty cuts that pop up later.
Lanny usually tries to get crowds moving to unexpected tunes. “I kinda want to play the weirdest thing that I can get people to dance to...I want it to be weird, I want it to be fun, I want it to be groovy...like, you’re not into it yet, but we’re gonna get you there, we’re gonna get you into it.”
Thankfully, Lanny eases us into Mike Dehnernt’s “The March,” which, as Kerosine observed, "sounds like it’s happening in a tube." Its dripping and stuttering percussion is the mix’s most memorable moment until it’s upstaged one track later by Tama Sumo and Prosumer’s dusty Ostgut Ton cut “Play Up,” which features the nastiest vox in the mix. From there, Lanny brings us home with a hypnotic techno section, punctuated by the UFO organ on Aubrey’s “Stressed Squares,” as well as an iconic looping rave riddle featured on “Take A Shot.”
Since moving to Minneapolis in 2016, Lanny has brought his weird groovy cuts to basements, patios, bars, and warehouses. In a post-COVID landscape, he hopes to pick up where he left off by bringing out some of the tunes he discovered in pandemic isolation and continuing to develop musical versatility.
“I want to grow as a DJ. I want to be able to do it all…I’m trying to expand my horizons as a DJ, and within the last year, that’s what I’ve been thinking of…I can play boring tech-house all day and enjoy it, and I can listen to boring tech-house all day and enjoy it, but I don’t want to only do that…I want to be able to play the right dance music for [any environment].”
Lanny credits the Minneapolis dance music scene for welcoming him with open arms, and showing him what a loud sound system in a dark room can do for people.
“Before coming here—I’m from North Dakota—my musical friends were…nobody. The internet is what got me into music…I kind of knew before I moved here that I really liked dance music...but I had never been a part of a music scene. So, I kind of came here and asked around, and I found my way pretty quickly to an Intellephunk party on a Halloween, and I was like ‘oh damn, this shit’s loud.”
“When I moved here, I was like, ‘these people are really cool and really talented,’ and now...not only are they my peers, these are my best friends.”
“I’m super stoked on all of my friends. All of my friends are talented, awesome people...you can [say], ‘oh it’s hard to meet people in the Midwest,’ or whatever…not if you fuckin’ go to a party and talk to people. I think it’s really cool how easy it is to build friendships off the shared experience of live music.”
With that, everyone’s funniest friend Lanny extends an open invite: “no one’s gonna write you off in Minneapolis, because we need people to join our party scene…it’s like ‘Come To Our Parties, We Accept You!’ As long as you’re chill and you know how to handle yourself…come listen to the music and you will be welcomed with open arms.”
Tracklist:
Extrawelt - Ungerade [Furthur Electronix, 2021]
Justin Cudmore - Straight No Chaser [Unknown To The Unknown, 2018]
Russell E.L. Butler - Builder [Left Hand Path, 2018]
Sansibar - Mandate My Ass [Natural Sciences, 2019]
Terrence Dixon - Vertical Hold [30D Records, 2019]
Tazz - Unrestrained [Underground Quality, 2010]
Sharif Laffrey - Sounds To Come [Special Forces Records, 2020]
DJ Qu - Pressin’ [Strength Music Recordings, 2020]
Camin - Duct [Cong Burn, 2019]
Mike Dehnert - The March [Deeply Rooted House, 2010]
Tama Sumo & Prosumer - Play Up [Ostgut Ton, 2008]
Refracted - Uku Che [Oblique Music, 2018]
ESHU - Cesium [ESHU Records, 2014]
Exium - Trashflow (Jeroen Search remix) [Nheoma, 2019]
Aubrey - Stressed Squares [Solid Groove, 2000]
Zenker Brothers – Bias [Index Marcel Fengler, 2015]
Kalter Ende - Near of the Moon [Android Muziq, 2016]
DJ Hell vs. Richard Bartz - Take A Shot… [Kurbel, 1997]
Terrence Dixon - The Parkhurst [Thema, 2011]
Follow Lanny's SoundCloud