flyover 9: encino

We recently sat down with Encino, better known as Tristan Hafner, to talk about his flyover set. Some quotes were edited for clarity.

Jacob: You're fairly new to DJing, right?

Tristan: Mm-hmm.

Jacob: When did you get started?

Tristan: I guess I was always on the periphery…in college, I started re-exposing myself to dance music…I listened to trance in middle school, but I never dove into it seriously. I was into metal, [which had a similar] energy to the dubstep and drum and bass coming out at the time, but I never dove into those…so it's only been about a year.

Jacob: How did you find that entry point, where you could start digging and finding tracks that ended up in this mix?

Tristan: I think my biggest inspiration, and probably the whole reason I got so motivated to get into electronic music, was seeing Petra [~~] play [last summer], and just the wide range of leftfield bass and new sounds [she played that] I hadn’t heard before. It blew my mind, the way she was able to piece together a mix that cycled through so many different emotions, moods, and genres.

I guess that was the type of music I sought out first, and that directed me towards labels like All Centre and Livity Sound. Then I dove deep into the leftfield/UK funky weird stuff. Prior to that, I was listening to tons of reggaeton and afrobeat, so I gravitated towards more of those equatorial, hot and humid sounds. Getting on Bandcamp was really cool…once I discovered how to navigate it, I could almost think of a track in my head and just dig hard enough to find the sound that I wanted.

Jacob: Does any of that influence come through on this mix?

Tristan: Oh, for sure…towards the middle there's a lot of dembow-style beats. I tried to keep certain motifs throughout the mix, like those drums and nature sounds. 

Cameron: You spent some time in the global south..that probably had some say in the sounds that you were looking for.

Tristan: For sure. I spent three months in Colombia, sort of in my quarter-life crisis. I quit my job, went down there, and studied Spanish for a while. I got exposed to the nightlife scene there…I went to some clubs, but also just fell in love with reggaeton and the way [people] club there. There's such a…cohesive aspect to it…people go out, they're clubbing together, and they know all the lyrics…that inspired me to seek out that type of club music and energy.

Cameron: You mentioned you got into electronic music through trance, then dubstep and drum bass.

Tristan: Going back even further, when I was like five or six, I had this super hot babysitter named Sara, and she would play La Bouche on cassette in her Ford Taraus all the time. That was the first time I was exposed to dance music…the classic nineties club sound, Haddaway, that whole thing. At the time, I was mostly listening to alternative rock that my parents listened to…but there was something that hit a different note when I was hearing that [dance] music. Like, this is a mysterious pleasure. I had a little Walkman radio, and I would stay up super late in bed at night, just listening to KMOJ and R&B…that felt like, this is what I really like, the beats and the groove. And then, yeah, I think when trance was popular, when I was in middle school, I listened to, like, Paul Oakenfold and Armin Van Buuren…but never on a super serious level. Then I think the most I got into it was the dubstep wave, and drum and bass.

Cameron: Is that when you started understanding how the whole ecosystem worked? That's how it was for me with dubstep. It was like, Oh, this is a label, they have a cohesive thing, these artists are on this label and they're also on this label. Or did that come more recently?

Tristan: I think that came more recently. I think at that point I was just finding dubstep tracks I liked and listening to them.

Cameron: I feel like we have fairly similar tastes…my initial foray into electronic music with dubstep is hugely influential [to me]. The energy of dubstep really comes through in a lot of this new leftfield stuff. A lot of artists on Livity Sound were dubstep producers. 

Tristan: Yeah, totally. Seeing some of those names pop up that I recognize from back in 2010 or whenever, I think it is definitely influenced by that. Dubstep, when it came out, it was such a new, different sound, and I'm sort of having that whole experience again.

Cameron: Totally. There's just so much magical stuff.

Tristan: Yeah. And it's a hundred times better now, because there's so much, and I have so many more tools available to find [its] really unique corners…back when I was into dubstep, I knew about FabricLive, and would hear [those] mixes, and then maybe look at a tracklist. There was no Bandcamp, no way [for me] to explore music at such a crazy-deep level. 

Jacob: How did people do it before Bandcamp came around?

Cameron: Record stores.

Tristan: Yeah.

Jacob: Oh, right. 

I didn't know about the dubstep connection, but it makes sense. As far as the leftfield sound goes, it's not like it just came out of thin air, it has a foundation in UK club music…when people talk genre-bending, it doesn't just materialize…it has to grow out of something. 

Cameron: It's an amalgamation of everything that's come before, but especially this kind of stuff is tied in with, like, experimental Bristol, deep dubstep stuff. So, the joke’s on everybody, you're listening to dubstep again.

Jacob: It sounds like you grew up listening to a fair amount of music. Did you play at all? 

Tristan: I was actually in a death metal band in high school. And then when I went to college in Duluth, I connected with people in the punk and metal scene. 

Jacob: What'd you play in that death metal band? 

Tristan: Guitar. We were a three-piece, just drums, me and a vocalist. It was mostly kind of thrashy metalcore. When I went to college in Duluth, I connected with people in the punk and metal scene. Then I met Matt [Cloudy Kid], and we started to mess around with hardware a little bit. I had an Electribe, a MiniKorg, and a Kaoss Pad, [but] I could never quite get the focus to produce tracks...

Jacob: Is production something that you're still interested in?

Tristan: Definitely. I want to save up some money to buy some sort of basic setup, but I'm not in a rush to do it because I'm having so much fun with mixing…I'm pretty content doing that right now, finding my style and my groove, but this process is definitely informing me of the directions I want to go.

Jacob: Do you know what direction you want to head as far as style or genre goes? Or do you want to find out when you get the stuff and see where the inspiration takes you?

Tristan: I think I'm still exploring the sound I want to go towards as a DJ…I do love the leftfield bass, and I wanted to use that to represent myself in this mix. But lately, I'm like…just kind of schooling myself in raw techno and house.

Jacob: Have you settled on a DJ name? 

Tristan: I think I'm gonna go with Encino. 

Jacob: What's the story behind that?

Tristan: I was trying to think of names, and I was laying on my couch…I looked over at [my] bookcase full of VHS tapes and I saw Encino Man there, and was like, that's kind of a cool word. I love that movie. I think it evokes the nineties…I've been really into nineties house and techno lately, and I [thought], “well, that's cool.” Then I looked up what it means…in Spanish it means oak tree. We had massive oaks in my parent's yard growing up that I always was mesmerized by, and it just felt right.

Tracklist:
Olof Dreijer - Echoes From Mamori [Montehermoso, 2009]
Knopha - Gym B [Regret Sound, 2020]
Big Ever - Otto [Incienso, 2021]
Via Maris - CU2 [Livity Sound, 2018]
Hydromantic - Pipe Phase [Lifetones, 2020]
Anunaku - Stargate [3024, 2020]
Syz - Myst [Only Ruins, 2018]
Manao - Estela [Saturnlove, 2020]
Logic1000 - Her [Therapy, 2021]
Photonz - Badagas [Naive, 2021]
Two Shell - Heart Piece [Livity Sound, 2019]
BFTT - Ofusc [Gobstopper Records, 2019]
Karima F - Crab Ride [Schloss Records, 2021]
Farsight - Flash Flood [Tropopause Records, 2021]
Roska, なかむらみなみ - Pree Me feat. なかむらみなみ (Hodge Remix) [Trekkie Trax, 2021]
Ayesha - Potential Energy [Scuffed Recordings, 2021]
Mani Festo - Eraser [Sneaker Social Club, 2021]
Barker - Utility [Ostgut Ton, 2019]
Tano - No Days Off (Coqui of Life) [In Armatura, 2021]
Mucho Sueño - Rendering [All Centre, 2021]
Cameo Blush - Red Tarn [Unknown-Untitled, 2020]
Sobolik - Iris [All Centre, 2021]
So&So - Water Feature at Night [Reel Long Overdub, 2020]

Follow Encino on SoundCloud