flyover 1: tabby
Opening sets can be rough. In a live setting, the soundcheck might bleed into your first few tracks. Sometimes there’s an issue with the lights, so you find yourself playing to a sound guy on a ladder. Otherwise, the floor is empty. There are probably a few people hanging around the bar, but they definitely aren’t there to hear you play. If you have friends who aren’t the “sorry I missed your set” type, they’re either awkwardly standing around the edge of the room, or worse, feigning enthusiasm as you bring the first kick drum in only to find the subwoofer isn’t on. You might start to wonder if anyone is going to show up, and you might blame yourself for the empty space. Do my tracks suck? Am I a shitty DJ? Do all of my friends hate me? Not once does it cross your mind that you’re playing Kitty Cat Klub on a Tuesday night.
Such moments of self-doubt seem completely foreign to Tabby. The Virginia-born, Minneapolis-based DJ is relentlessly confident, but with good reason; she knows her tracks slap. She cherishes the opportunity to “set the vibe” for the evening, and her opening pre-COVID Stay In Crew set is a testament to that wherewithal. Tabby feels that opening “gives you an opportunity to both play the slower, deeper cuts as well as being able to play more of a diverse sound than a set later in the night...while you might be playing to a much smaller crowd, you have the opportunity to start off much slower and bring up the energy. You can play a wider variety of sounds and create a narrative.” Her approach to opening follows the golden rule of DJing: play to the room. Even if you missed her set at The Aquarium in Fargo last March, you can still hear Tabby start out smooth and easy, building intensity as the night progresses and the floor fills. She wraps up her slot with a series of characteristically bouncy lo-fi house tracks, ready to hand the keys over to the next DJ. The vibe is set.
With Tabby’s penchant for opening in mind, I knew she’d be the perfect DJ to kick off flyover. During a pandemic, opportunities to play in front of more than a few friends in a living room are few and far between, but Tabby was down to shake off the rust and curate a phenomenally selected opening set. She sticks with what works for openers, starting with “What She Had,” a downtempo deep cut from Francis Harris’ 2014 LP Minutes of Sleep. Tabby values Harris’ genre-blending production. “He blurs the line between a deep house track and something more ambient and jazz influenced...the opening track hits an intersection between an almost danceable beat and an ethereal ambient sound that was a great place to open up the mix and prep ears for the journey.” The oscillation on that track, followed by Auscultation’s 100% Silk cut “Turn Down These Voices,'' which bleeds into Yaeji’s drippy, nostalgic vocals on Mall Grab’s “Mountain,” set the tone with algorithmically precise vibe cohesion. The mix itself also oscillates initially; the acid bassline from Urulu’s “Mushroom Valve'' makes you think we’re leaving deep house territory for darker dystopic techno vibes, until its sparkly synth riff and distinctly lo-fi house vocal sample kick in and guide us back to hanging plant utopia.
Throughout her mix, Tabby builds energy with tracks that sound like they were destined to play together. “I look for a set of tracks that both take you on a journey, but also flow into each other thoughtfully. I want tracks that sound different enough from each other so that the mix isn’t stagnant but still a cohesive progression of sound.” A third of the way through, she kicks it into high gear and doesn’t look back; the point of no return comes when the hi-hat on Armless Kid’s “Deep Energy” cuts out for a few bars. If that organ and saccharine stuttering vocal sample didn’t clue you in, the crash cymbal that relieves the hi-hat of duty definitely will. From there on out, we enter the Lobster Theremin zone. Tabby’s choice cuts from one of her favorite labels and its sublabel Lost Palms glue the rest of the mix together, but not without the help of heaters from Gnork and House 2 House. On “Blorp93,” Gnork contributes what might be the catchiest rave piano riff of all time. The vocals on House 2 House’s “Music Is” remind us more succinctly than I ever could of what this is all about: “many struggle to define what makes this music feel so good. The answer, quite simply, is soul. Music is to be felt.”
Follow Tabby on SoundCloud and IG.
Tracks:
Francis Harris - What She Had [2014, Scissor and Thread]
Auscultation - Turn Down These Voices [2020, 100% Silk]
Mall Grab - Mountain ft. Yaeji [2016]
Hidden Spheres - Beachy [2017, Distant Hawaii]
COEO - Clouds [2017, Lagaffe Tales]
Derek Carr - A Hundred Dreams [2019, Just Jack Recordings]
Urulu - Mushroom Valve [2018, Voyage Recordings]
YYY - 金344 [2018, YYY Series]
Paperkraft - No Other [2016, Step Back Trax]
Togethrs - Feeling Lovely [2018]
Armless Kid - Deep Energy [2019, Vertv Records]
COMPUTER DATA - Seele [2020, Lost Palms]
Dumbo Beat - The Big Sales Of Broken Watches (Fabrizio Maurizi Remix) [2019, Smoud Traxx]
Em-Wa Tanner - Numeric [2017, Dinsubsol]
Guy from Downstairs - Lamps [2020, Pleasure Zone]
DJOKO - Washed Away [2019, PIV Records]
Sweely - Stronger Than Me [2017, Lobster Theremin]
House 2 House - Music Is (1997 Version) [2020, District 30]
Youandewan - Cauliflower Wing [2019, Small Hours]
Funk Fox - Super Fine [2018]
Gnork - Blorp93 [2013, Blind Jacks Journey]
Subjoi - Joy [2020, Lost Palms]
Maruwa - On My Mind [2019, Lobster Theremin]
Raw M.T. - WWM [2020, Lobster Theremin]
