flyover 7: icarus redux

Voices inside my head…echoes of things that you said.

I recently sat down with my friend Sarvesh Ramprakash, who DJs as Icarus Redux, to talk about his flyover set. The mix is a re-recorded take on his July 2021 set at The Great Beyond, a techno festival in Franklin, Minnesota. Some quotes were edited for clarity. As always, Cameron Seibold provided the photography and artwork.

Jacob: What is the first thing you have to tell me about this city?

Sarvesh: Um, it's undervalued when it comes to...not just its perception in American club culture and electronic music culture, but globally as well, which is ironic given the amount of music produced [here]. It's not just Prince...it's a whole gamut of artists.

Jacob: Wrong. The correct answer is: This city was made from the original music. It is not a counterfeit; this is the real one.

Sarvesh: (laughing) I literally thought of that. I didn't know whether I should have referenced it.

Jacob: I was listening to DJ Koze’s DJ-Kicks mix last night because I couldn't bear to get into Paprika. And at first I was like, your flyover mix has some things in common with Koze’s, in that it's not a conventional dance music mix. Ultimately, you do take your mix in a different direction. Yours is definitely a cleaner version of your Great Beyond mix. What did you set out to do with this mix?

Sarvesh: Sure…can I give it to you in terms of the background? Or do you want a direct answer to the question?

Jacob: Whatever you want.

Sarvesh: I guess I should just be brutally honest and say I've intermittently had my fair share of mental health problems, mostly because of stress, life, and a bunch of other things.

One of the things that cropped up over the last couple of years were bouts of transient psychosis. What that manifests as, because I'm an auditory-minded person, is auditory hallucinations. I have snippets of conversations that don't ever resolve to anything, but that I’m convinced I can hear, up until the point where I realize they have access to things that only my brain would have, and it doesn't actually make sense otherwise.

At first, this was really disorienting. With time I learned to distinguish what was real from what was not real. As time went on, and as I was preparing for other mixes, I started to realize that what I was really doing when I was having these little moments of hallucination was quizzing my own id, except it manifested as an external set of voices. It [sent] me down a really interesting pipeline of thinking when it comes to [putting] together an unconventional mix.

The setup for this was this Far Away mix that I was trying to do, which was a very personal [and] political mixtape about Minneapolis ravers, George Floyd, and a lot of artists who I deeply care about who passed away recently.

What [starts] to happen at the intersection of diving deeply into a body of work [and] your own mental health is, you can sink so deeply into your own research that it starts to manifest in really odd ways. [For instance,] you'll start dreaming, and your musical idols start talking to you in your dreams.

It got really heavy…the long and short of it is that when I started setting aside time to set up this Great Beyond mix, I thought to myself, “how do I capture the full gamut of this weird…psychosexual bullshit or psychological drama?” How do I represent it in an auditory form that remains somewhat true to what I actually experienced, while also [making it] composed of [mixed] music, and not just kind of a mishmash of found sound that's experimental, but not danceable in the festival setting?

Jacob: I'm glad that you brought up mental health and your struggles with psychosis as you began thinking about this mix…and [as] you tried to translate [your] experience into mix form. I think it comes through crystal clear, especially in the first half. Maybe this is too on-the-nose or too obvious, but the KC Flightt track, “Voices” is really the centerpiece of the mix.

I think if we look at the first third of the mix, before it really becomes [a dance mix], that's where it's at its darkest. It's really heavy, it’s really hard. It's a challenging listen…I think you really took us there.

Sarvesh: That was the intent, right? Because the process of dealing with a sudden mental health issue of any kind, whether it's depression, anxiety or whatnot…in my case, it was psychosis and auditory hallucinations. There is a process of initial shock, where it seems incomprehensible and almost at the edge of sanity.

Then there is a period where it starts to get coherent, and it starts to have an internal logic. Even though it's strained logic...towards the end, it may even lead you in positive directions.

There's a term that I was thinking of when I was doing my own research and going down the Google rabbithole. It's called pronoia. It's an inverse of paranoia. Paranoia is when you're convinced that there are outside entities that have malevolent beliefs or ideas about you. Pronoia is when the outside entities have good intentions for you and you perceive them as seeking to improve your life. That's something that I found echoed in my own experience. [My] periods of psychosis have gotten further and further apart, but any time I have anxiety, it comes up [again], and it's something that I have to contend with. These days, it's more positive than it used to be. Sometimes it was…debilitating.

Jacob: What do you think caused that turn from paranoia to pronoia?

Sarvesh: [I started talking about it earlier, but] the way it turned for me was [via that] sudden ability for me to quiz my own subconscious, and have it respond to me.

What that entailed [in] the first incomprehensible period was a lot of plumbing my own insecurities and past failures, or anything that was on my mind that I [felt] dejected about, and just hammering away at it. You [could] call it rumination, you could call it any number of things [from] a mental health standpoint, but here, it was being manifested as an open conversation. Imagine inventing your own therapist chair and therapist, then having that dialogue with them. Eventually, you run out of embarrassing things about your past that you can hem and haw about. It starts to get to the point where you're like, we have to move forward with this and see what can be done with the skills and abilities that [we] have.

In a weird way, this is an ability [that] has to be harnessed for good, you know? That's kind of the way I took it. And that's what shifted it from a purely paranoid thing to a more pronoid thing…

Jacob: It's pretty incredible that you were able to put your own mind or an extension of it in a therapist’s chair, have these conversations, and have them be productive. Speaking from personal experience, I know you do eventually run out of [new] things to hate about yourself and things to ruminate on, but that doesn't necessarily stop a person from continuing to do so indefinitely. What did that turning point look like for you?

Sarvesh: I would say it was really more of a shifting of emphasis. An important component is decreasing the number of negative thoughts that you have about yourself or ruminating [less] about things that you feel embarrassed about or dejected about or sad about. And yes, you do eventually run out of them, but you do have to counterbalance that with things that are affirming about yourself. We don't even have to have a heady conversation about delusion to understand the idea that affirming good things about yourself is a huge component of your self-esteem. That's what really turned the tide. It was affirming things about myself that I knew to be incontrovertibly true, regardless of delusional ideas or thoughts or things [that] may have been said [by others] or perceived [by myself].

Jacob: And you were able to do this entirely without conventional therapy?

Sarvesh: Yeah, well, [I was] financially precarious and in-between jobs, dealing with other medical issues, and was unable to commit to conventional therapy. It's something that's on my mind, of course, but because of that, music became central to how I processed emotions.

The same can be said for that Far Away mix, because I sunk so deeply into it. [With these mixes] I'm [not] playing music anymore. I'm speaking my voice through the music. Playing tracks that echo my emotions, as a way of getting them out. [The therapeutic process of doing that] inadvertently turned into the research that turned into the mix.

[With] the Far Away mix and the flyover mix, [the latter] is almost the making of documentary of the [former]…the experience of derangement that was caused in the process of the [Far Away] mix is what I [unpacked] and put in polished form in the [flyover] one.

Jacob: I remember leading up to The Great Beyond, you [were] looking for music with prominent vocals, but not necessarily songs with lyrics, but [for tracks] where voices can make up the melody, make up the beat, [or] something like that. If you had to put together a brief artist’s statement about vocals within the flyover mix, what would you say?

Sarvesh: If you think about classic house music and stuff that has deep vocals, there is a communication of intense emotion. It can be vague. It can be a little abstract, but it is still intelligible…I wanted to communicate emotion without having it be on the nose. That's almost like a design challenge at a level, right? Because you can now use vocal samples that are chopped up or spliced in weird and interesting ways, and they can still communicate a tangible emotion, whether it’s loss, forlorn disillusionment, whatever...music is incredibly expressive even without intelligible lyrics. That's almost a personal ideology for me…I found that a lot of music that I enjoy tends not to have lyrics, [which is] ironic, because I grew up singing.

That was kind of the operating principle by which I was picking and sequencing [tracks] and figuring out energy levels and structuring what the mix was. What it stood for emerged as I took the rough pool of tracks and started to cue, shape, reorder, and figure out what works with one another harmonically and so on and so forth.

Jacob: What did your process of digging for tracks specifically for this mix look like? I remember you stating your intent [for the Great Beyond mix] relatively early [in the process] and asking for input from others.

Sarvesh: I had the idea of combining a bunch of these pseudo-vocal tracks [or] whatever you want to call them, because I noticed [them as] a pattern in my own existing library prior to this mix…like, I had a couple of tracks here and there. One of the [tracks] that kicked it off for me was one by Trancesetters called “The Secrets of Meditation (Remix).” It made it to the Great Beyond set, but the re-record did not have it. It's kind of the spiritual center [of the mix], because it has Konnakol, which is an Indian onomatopoeic vocalization of syllables. It's vocalization that communicates something, namely rhythm, but does not communicate [with] language.

So, I started first by digging within my own library…asking friends helped to a certain degree, but I wouldn't say it was exclusively what I was doing. I was also just digging online, doing deeper and deeper Google searches to find old Boomkat reviews and stuff like that. [I tried] to find literature. “Beatbox” was a term that I looked for…there's a beatbox cover of an Autechre song that makes its way in early in the mix…digging is an inexact science. You kinda have to stumble on music. And sometimes the algorithm just helps me out.

Other people gave me interesting breadcrumbs. They pointed me in the direction of tracks, then me digging for those tracks led me to the one that I actually would use. The Bjork track “Triumph Of A Heart” was one that came from someone on Discord. I would say the vast majority of the actual digging was [done by] me, but there were some kickstarts along the way.

Jacob: In addition to really going deep, you've got this massive catalog and an encyclopedic knowledge of the music that you're passionate about. How does that come together?

Sarvesh: I've always been interested in a lot of different genres of music. My personal principle is that every genre of music, no matter how cringy you think it is, probably has some redeeming music within it...you just have to dig deep enough and find it. It's ultimately a time bandwidth versus how much you care to do so, but you can find it if you want to. The other thing I remember reading was Objekt's “Art of DJing” in Resident Advisor. Obviously he went into great depth about how he organizes his USB and a bunch of other technical details, but one thing [he said] that struck me at the time is that in an ideal world, [he] would be able to play from 70 BPM to 150 BPM, no problem, [for] any set. Objekt plays a specific kind of music, kind of leftfield club constructions…and I'm sure the music that he has in those tempos are all capable of fitting into that overall sound.

I thought to myself “what if I do that?”, but I also dig backwards in time, and start looking at other genres of music, [and] not just internationally…there's all sorts of nooks and crannies within American dance music that are unexplored, from a Twin Cities standpoint [and] a US dancefloor standpoint..someone needs to dig them. There used to be a time and age where top-flight DJs would put out a [BBC] Essential Mix or a DJ-Kicks mix and there'd be an unreleased track [or one that] that nobody had ever heard of, and it would start off this flurry of digging, and suddenly an underloved [type of] music would become really important.

That kind of digging mentality is something that I've always had and want to bring to [my] DJ practice. It entirely informs how I look for music. For example, setting together this mix, right? Looking for tracks that have vocals but don't really resolve to any kind of intelligible lyrics is [both] an incredibly specific [and] broad ask. Any number of tracks in any number of genres can exhibit those qualities.

In the mix, there is a wide spectrum of genres: from anime soundtracks to Autechre, to 1970s weird experimental disco. I want[ed] to lay it all on the table because that's the only way I improve and become more well-rounded as a DJ, [by] establishing those odd connections between music that nobody else would think [of]. It's very rare to have actual new insights in DJing, and that's what I'm on the hunt for.

Jacob: I think this is our first flyover mix with a track from the seventies. And blending that with a YouTube video…

Sarvesh: That was the other thing too…I’ve been very content-agnostic about the source of audio, especially with [my] last couple of mixes. YouTube videos have made it into mixes, [so have] field recordings from India or wherever, [and] text-to-speech of academic papers and stuff like…

Jacob: All the sudden [it’s like] we're on TikTok.

Sarvesh: Yeah. And even when I played in Fargo, I opened with the dude hitting the mango Juul, like a meme, a literal meme…I think [you] can get really pretentious and chin-strokey about how you assemble a DJ set or whatever, but to get into that serendipity, [to] get into the fun of it, is to realize that not everything has to be about the highest fidelity fucking music possible going into the mix…if there's a coherence to how you [play] it, It will sound good, no matter what the content is.

Jacob: You're a transplant to the Twin Cities…I'm curious about how living in the Midwest has shaped your experience as an artist.

Sarvesh: It’s made a huge impression. I would say that prior to [living in] the Midwest, I would describe myself as “an east coast kid with west coast ideologies.” I grew up in the Maryland/DC area and went to shows in DC and Baltimore and started raving in those areas, but obviously did not agree with the kind of K Street, West Wing-watching crowd there, and that kind of put-together nature. I'm more chill, which is more west coast or whatever.

What I found [in the Midwest] is, there's a sense of community, especially post-George Floyd. I'll admit that there were times when I was on the fence because I didn't know very many people or whatnot. And sometimes the Midwest Nice gets to me. There are lots of little elements about Midwest culture and idiosyncrasies that kind of rub me the wrong way, especially when it [involves] tightly-knit scenes that can be judgey. But the immediate aftermath of Philando Castile and George Floyd was a huge catalyst, because I saw what the rave scene here does for itself and for other people, and I think that is very rare. I don't see that in coastal regions. I think that's compelling. I think that's a net good for rave culture in general. I wish it would happen more in other regions.

On the flip side, from a musical standpoint, I think there are lots of DJs here who have lots of interesting influences that they fold into their music. Yes, a lot of people here like dark, fast Midwest techno, but that doesn't mean that you're not getting edge cases bringing in, let's say, psytrance influences or breakbeats or all sorts of other stuff. From that, you get a less homogenous view of what can be done with the dancefloor. And that's all the more reason for me to stick around. I don't want to become a small fish in a big pond again…I'm pretty happy with the cost of living in the Midwest.

Jacob: Yeah, you can't beat the rent here, and I guess it's better to be a small fish in a small pond than a small fish in a big pond. How are things different here than on the west coast and the east coast?

Sarvesh: I think class divides become less of an issue and I find that [Minneapolis] has a lot more egalitarian of a dancefloor here than in other regions...in coastal regions, you have a lot more of a dynamic of wealthy, upper class or upper middle-class tech workers colonizing the scene.

From a musical standpoint, people are, they're a lot more open to mentoring one another. I think every city has a certain kind of competitive crabs-in-a-bucket mentality…in the Midwest I've found that people are a lot happier to just be like, “hey, you want to learn how to DJ or produce or whatever? Come over to my house, we'll pop a couple of beers and we'll talk about it and we'll see where it gets us.” It almost makes sense that, despite being a warehouse party person…I only picked up DJing in the Midwest, you know, from a mutual friend.

Jacob: Yeah. I wonder how many people Lanny has taught to DJ…he's probably the DJ dad of three or four people who get booked regularly at this point.

Sarvesh: Yeah. Huge, huge props to him.

Jacob: There's so much to unpack with the closing track. I know it's [from] a movie, but I still call it “the theme from Paprika” because that movie does straight-up have an anime intro…it’s so misleading about the direction the movie is going to take…it’s just the cutest shit you've ever seen, it’s one of the catchiest songs you've ever heard, but if you dig into it, it gets a little creepy. You realize, “oh, these aren't real vocals, these are synthesized vocals that sound really good…” I think it's obvious why a track from the film Paprika works with this mix…

Sarvesh: It was kind of a double synchronicity, right? On the one hand, Paprika is a movie about dreams and reality merging and causing horrific destruction that eventually resolves, which in many ways, mirrors the psychodrama that was happening in my head over a number of months…[but also,] the media that I was consuming was feeding back into my own delusions the same way I was exorcizing my own delusions by watching the media in the first place. It wasn't just Paprika that made an impression on me at the time. I also rewatched the David Fincher movie The Game, which is about games and gaslighting and trying to improve your life and a bunch of other stuff…

So the first synchronicity obviously is just the plot of Paprika and my own life. But the second one is the weird cyborg-ness of the voice. If my central conceit was that I was using voices that were unintelligible, but communicated some sort of emotion, finally, we have kind of the end-stage of that, where there's real lyrics happening interspersed and combined with totally synthesized ones that still communicate intent.

It's almost like the thesis/antithesis/synthesis…like dialectic happening over the course of the mix and concluding there…[the last track is] a very happy song. It's a song that [plays] towards the end of the movie, and it mirrors the overall structure of the mix, which is: insanity, coherence, and then eventual acceptance and happiness as you learn to come to terms with these voices and realize that they are just you, ultimately.

Tracklist:

Curd Duca - Touch [Mille Plateaux, 1999]
Caterina Barbieri - Fantas Variation for Voices (feat. Evelyn Saylor, Lyra Pramuk, Annie Garlid & Stine Janvin) [Editions Mego, 2021]
Todd Edwards Breakdowns [YouTube video]
Human Egg - Onomatopaeia [Lizard Records, 1978]
Marie + Scratch - Gnit [Luaka Bop, 2002]
(snippet) Iz & Diz - Mouth (Pepe Bradock's Unreleased Remix 2) [Classic Music Company, 2011]
Koreless - Joy Squad [Young, 2021]
Holly Herndon - Chorus [RVNG Intl., 2014]
Co La - Crank [Software, 2015]
Christian Kroupa - Pick Up Your Needle [unreleased, 2015]
The Field - Cupid's Head [Kompakt, 2013] (snippet)
Para One - Wake Me Up (Remix) [Marble, 2014]
Love Letters - Who Was Driving? [CGI Records, 2016]
KC Flightt - Voices (Original Dub Mix) [RCA, 1991]
Rhyw - Biggest Bully [Fever AM, 2019]
Dehousy - Break (Addison Groove Remix) [[re]sources, 2018]
Four Tet - Pyramid [Text Records, 2011]
Walt J - Reborn 1 [Dow Records, 1997]
LOL Boys - 123 [Palms Out Sounds, 2010] (snippet)
Helix - Dick Track [Night Slugs, 2018]
Björk - Triumph Of A Heart [One Little Indian, 2004]
Todd Osborn - Beatapella [Running Back, 2014]
Susumu Hirasawa - The Girl In Byakkoya - White Tiger Field [Teslakite, 2006]