The Mix 021: CRRDR

How did you begin your journey as a DJ and producer?

I’ve always liked music and since 2015 I started to be influenced by EDM and names like Skrillex, Martin Garrix, all this wave, and I was like ‘wow, I want to be a DJ and I want to make music’. Then I tried to learn how to produce, I was trying to learn from tutorials and everything, but nothing flowed. I was trying to mix, like on VirtualDJ and so on, but thought I will never be able to make a living out of this. I was telling my mum that I wanted to study music but she said that I needed to study something real, so I actually studied business. I graduated from that career in 2020 in the middle of the pandemic.

About halfway through my [career], I was very frustrated, I was very depressed. It was like I didn’t find myself in this path, and I started to go more into music. There was a subject at my university called Appreciation of Rock. Through this class is how I understood the music business and music as an art. I said, well, maybe I’m not going to make music any more, but I’m going to work in the music industry.

I was already very tired of everything, I had been studying and working. With the money I had saved I said I’m going to start, I took a course in electronic music production and sound design, and decided I was going to make music, at least as a hobby.

I have always been influenced by hip hop and rap, particularly from Colombia. There are many artists whose work I admire, and I’ve wanted to create experimental hip hop by fusing it with ambient electronic music. I feel hip hop in Colombia is quite stagnant, with few mainstream artists doing anything different.

My aim has been to bring something new to local music. I started creating IDM, ambient, and downtempo tracks. After the pandemic, I decided to release my music on Spotify. I realised it wasn’t worth having a polished product if no one could hear it, so I put it out there to see how it would develop.

Ultimately, I’m not sure if I’ll make a living from this or where it will lead. I just want to create and share my music.

Was it then that you started putting up events?

In 2021, I started organising events because I realised no one would invite me to play my music, which was very unique. There weren’t many spaces for it, so I decided to create my own. During the national strike in Colombia that year, I released some music and began managing collaborative spaces for various forms of art, not just music. I wanted to build a community around art, incorporating music, design, clothing, and more.

I aimed to fuse my hip hop influences with other disciplines and local brands. I organised my first event with a friend under the label I now have, Traaampaaa, which was called Mothership at the time.

We held our first event at a cultural house in Bogotá featuring a blend of hip hop and electronic music— a showcase with invited rappers and an open mic. Around 30 to 40 people attended, which exceeded our expectations. Encouraged and a bit naive, we decided to expand to Medellín, despite its predominantly mainstream party scene focused on techno, house, and reggaeton.

Our Medellín events were challenging; attendance varied significantly, from small groups of 10 to 50 people spread out through the different parties we put together in several days. This experience taught us valuable lessons about event dynamics and audience engagement. We adjusted our strategy, reducing the frequency to about one event per month and focusing on educating our audience about our sound.

By late 2021, I began developing my own musical approach, initially centered on live performances using instruments like the [Roland] TR-8 and [Korg] Volca. However, I eventually shifted towards DJ sets due to the logistical challenges of transporting equipment.

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What inspired you to blend Latin and electronic genres in your music?

In my DJ sets, I draw influence from post-club and deconstructed club sounds, along with reggaeton and downtempo elements. In December 2021, our collective organised a party where we booked different artists through [Colombian label] MUAKK, expanding the musical spectrum. I’ve always had a fondness for hardcore, tekno, drum ‘n’ bass, and gabber, although in Bogotá, the reception to fast music was mixed; sometimes it intimidated people. I’ve strived to balance catering to audience expectations while also innovating.

At this event, the artists we booked played at 150-160 BPM, and the audience danced enthusiastically throughout. It was eye-opening to see that fast music, combined with Latin rhythms like accelerated guaracha, could captivate people. This realisation sparked my exploration throughout 2022, blending faster beats with Latin influences, particularly guaracha. This journey continues to shape my evolving musical identity, challenging the notion that genres must conform to a specific BPM range.

What pushed you to move to Berlin, and what has the experience been like? I know the city can be quite tough, it was for me.

Yes, I moved here about three months ago. I came to study a Master’s degree in Digital Art. That was the excuse to have a visa for a longer time.

I came to Berlin last year and spent a couple of days there. I’m a believer of the signs that life gives you, quite a few friends told me to come back and that it would be quite very good for me. So when I got back to Colombia I started to organise my things and I decided to come to Berlin to study.

I wanted to have more things for my performances, like art direction, creative direction and so on, because the Master’s degree I’m doing is very focused on visual installation and visual art.

I think that the scene here is quite diverse. There are a lot of things to do, and there are plenty of spaces to do those things too.

Can you describe how the cultural and musical aspects in Colombia compare to the scene in Europe, particularly in regard to what you have seen during your time in Berlin?

Well, let’s say that people always look for something, but it also seems like in this moment people are starting to wake up. Because, in the end, there has always been a sort of Eurocentrism in a certain way, and Colombian culture is very whitewashed. It might be the case in South America too, but specifically in Colombia, I know there’s a lot of aspiration and classism. So, people always want to be like an American or a European without even knowing it. They only think that what is built or made there matters and is right. And that’s the order of things.

With techno specifically, the techno scene is always quite strong, and now with hard techno and such, a lot of people are very purist in that aspect. So, in the mainstream of the underground, which is techno, people only know one type of electronic music and people aren’t open to listening to other things. There are people who talk to me today, but when I sent them my demos before, they would just leave me on read. In the end, either people opened their minds to this genre or it simply became a trend.

Before 2020, there weren’t many spaces for other types of electronic music and people didn’t have access to it. I think there are many cultural factors because internet access in Colombia is a privilege. In the end, only part of the population has it, and that’s why specific types of music like electronic music can reach them, because what’s played on the radio is more traditional music, popular music, reggaeton, maybe some pop, but electronic music is very specific. So, it gets reduced to a niche, and then another niche, until you get to alternative, experimental electronic music.

Little by little, people are getting tired of the same techno sound and are opening their ears to something else. For example, from my personal experience, I got into experimental, alternative electronic music because I was also very tired of the dynamics of the techno scene, which is very classist, elitist, aspirational, and in the end, the values of what this culture truly represented were lost. It turned more into a culture of show-offs and such.

From my principles or values or what I was looking for in music, I wanted to find spaces where I could really go to listen to music without having to think about who is dating whom, or who is talking about whom, or who is dancing behind you. Now, I even feel that these things are starting to replicate in the scene here in a certain way. In the end, it’s something very cyclical and funny, but the point is that I feel it has been a progressive evolution of the music scene. I also feel that Colombia, in general, is behind in many cultural, musical, and industry aspects. So, I feel like this is it; little by little, a step is being taken to start showing people the spectrum of music as an art and not just as something that has to be only music defined by a genre.

I feel that maybe it’s also because there is a longer-standing culture of music consumption and partying in Europe, where people started building spaces a bit earlier. But I don’t know. For example, this particular scene and this specific music are something I constantly mention as being very pandemic-driven. It really started to gain strength after the pandemic, when people started connecting more to the internet and spending more time there, searching for or discovering things, or maybe just stumbling upon them by chance.

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I think this ties back to the theory of internet access. Here in Europe, there are many more privileges, including better access to connectivity and easier information sharing. This facilitates the construction of spaces collectively. I feel there’s a greater sense of community here, and people are more willing to build communities, which allows for a more progressive or faster evolution.

Additionally, people here can afford to organise an event and lose money without it affecting their month or year. This reflects a certain privilege in being able to organise events, throw parties, or build spaces. There’s also more support from the state. I’ve played at public events or festivals that are directly funded by the state, which is still very difficult to achieve in Colombia. Accessing such funding requires being part of certain circles, and not just anyone can do it there.