Submersion Aftermath: Mark Farina

At its core, Submersion Festival has no defined “home sound”; there’s no singular lane or style that fully engulfs the breadth of the festival’s musical vision. Both as a part of its appeal, and as a result of the palettes that craft each successive lineup, a diversity of sound and presentation is the fundamental characteristic that carries the event from year to year. High on our own list of desired acts, and standing atop a three-decade career, was Mark Farina, the prolific DJ & producer who’s remained an invaluable staple across the domestic and international touring circuits. A few days ahead of his appearance at Submersion, we had the opportunity to have a conversation covering a number of points that sat parallel to Mark Farina’s hour in the Saturday sun.

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A Quaint Conversation on the new Collaborative DOS Project

Individually, Ilya Goldberg and Random Rab have extraordinarily fruitful careers on their own merits, with the former both through his Lapa project and being Doug Appling’s right hand man in Emancipator, and the latter through a dedicated, double-decade approach to the Random Rab sound. It was only a matter of time before these not so disparate camps found themselves unified under the same banner, and this year saw the inception of their collaborative project, DOS. Consequently, and ahead of their appearance at Secret Dreams later this month, the Rust felt it necessary to have a quaint conversation with these artists on the nature of their collaborations, the inception of the project, and the lens through which they view their own musicality.

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Getting Acquainted with NYC's Edica+

Making a fast-paced break into the spotlight of NYC’s sound system culture and musical underground, the texas-raised and New York-based DJ and show-host Edica+ has already made an ample name for herself. Stretching from Reggae and Cumbia to contemporary bass music and beyond, her effusive influences and pronounced mixing fundamentals have made her a potent force behind the decks, showcasing ecstatic and expansive DJing in pure form. Tomorrow evening, The Rust and our long-time co-conspirator Sermon are slated to host Commodo, Ellis Delta, EasyJack, and Edica+ at The Meadows in Brooklyn, and in anticipation of the rambunctious evening ahead, we felt it necessary to get ahold of Edica+ for a brief primer on her influences, background, her experiences as a show-host, and her time with Dub-Stuy records.

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Exploring New Perspectives on Music and Photography with SMYAH

Across the pond, the pensive and surefooted Bulgarian creative Yavor Zografski has spent the last several years tightening the reigns around both his own musical project SMYAH, and the wider Sound in Picture label under his purview. Narratives covers a variety of styles and genres, with notable influences from IDM, jazz, downtempo, trip-hop, and ambient film audio. Founded in 2018, Sound in Picture features dozens of individual releases, all paired together with accompanying photographic art. Given the expansive scope of both Yavor’s personal musical output, and the approach to his particularly curated label, The Rust felt an immediate necessity to sit down with this affluent artist and discuss the genesis and direction of his dovetailing projects.

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Conversations on Community and Musical Exploration with Murkury

Over the past few years, the Asheville music community has become a hotbed for psychedelic and low-end centric electronic music One such producer, Alec Seifart is making waves not only through his Murkury project, but through his work with multidisciplinary organization The Undergrowth in the local Asheville scene in tandem. Taking his musical and communal efforts both on and off the stage into account, The Rust Music was delighted to have an opportunity to speak with Alec about where his Mukury project began, his experience with The Undergrowth, and the total vision for his musical journey.

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Conversations and Afterthoughts on Sunsetting the Craftal Project

With nearly a decade of considerable effort under his belt, the multifaceted producer Ian Mckenna recently announced the retirement of his storied Craftal moniker. Much to the surprise of his longtime fans and collaborators, McKenna recently publicized the resounding decision to seek out new musical horizons. Consequently, The Rust felt it as necessary as it is enticing to sit down with Mckenna for an exclusive one-on-one discussion about the future of his music and what his Craftal project was really all about. 

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Conversations and Explorations on Generative Visual Art with Actualize

Denver-based visual artist David Schunemann, or more familiarly known as Actualize Visuals has been diligently cultivating his most progressive body of work to date. Carefully collaborating and decorating stages across the country summer after summer, Actualize has become a household name amongst the wider fandom of digital visual artists and designers. Appropriately, The Rust took advantage of an opportunity to sit down and speak about the Actualize vision, perspective, and manifestations.

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Charting New Territory with Nikki Nair and n goes to infinity

In the context of electronic music, crossing the sonic Rubicon to unite formerly disparate genres and styles has become a mark of high composition. Sitting squarely within that paradigm is Nikki Nair, an Atlanta-based multi-instrumentalist, producer, and audio engineer with a burgeoning appetite for weaving new threads between even the most incongruent of BPM’s. In an effort to concentrate his new personal discipline and exploration in production and composition, he’s launched n goes to infinity, a creative label with an expansive focus on music outside the comfortable lines of the traditional wheelhouse.

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Getting Acquainted With The Thought Process Behind Thought Process

It is no small feat standing apart musically in a city like Denver, where there is a seemingly endless influx of prodigious talent and gumption. Consequently, the growing success of Thought Process is in large part due to the careful lines he straddles; the distance between conventional Hip-hop and broken-beat electronic music has always been relatively short, and yet he finds ingenious and pragmatic ways to explore and exploit newfound commonalities and compositions.

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not yes and Their Aversion to Formality and Formula

Amongst the incoming generation of artists having finally found their bite, not yes exemplifies the modern paradigm of electronic production; there are no hard boundaries, no clearly defined destinations, and unbridled compositional freedom. There’s a refreshing whim to their choice of direction, and the result is a fast-growing, dynamic catalog that takes us through virtually every space in low-end territory.

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A Brief Conversation With NYC's Blockhead

Across the span of the last three decades, Trip-Hop has gone from being the niche, extant musical trials of underground and bedroom producers to dominating a demonstrable slice of the global listening bandwidth. Blockhead is, by most measures, one of the most accessed, successful, and consistent names in the genre, placing him squarely in the center of Trip-hop's past, present, and future.

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Seppa - Interview + Boosted [EXCLUSIVE PREMIERE]

Amongst the growing list of boundary-breaking and charismatic producers, Sandy Finlayson’s Seppa project has remained a tenured and potent force at the very helm of the international bass music movement. Returning to the active listening rotation amidst an explosive revival of live music across much of the world, The Rust is proud to host the premiere of “Boosted”, the first single of the upcoming dual release package Boosted/Forked. As a companion piece to the “Boosted” premiere, we felt compelled to have a succinct dialogue with Seppa about his experience across the pandemic, his developments as an artist and a label head, and his own self perception in the face of his hard-earned success.

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Riffing on Influences, Songwriting, and Fresh Duff with Duffrey

Duffrey has become an unassailable pole-bearer for North America’s grassroots electronic music movement. At home, it feels like he’s in every state, every weekend, and for those of us fortunate enough to live in and around Denver, he always seems to be right around the corner. In celebration of our unveiling of his Return to Source EP, The Rust was given the opportunity to poke around his skull and clear the some of the fog around his passions, his creative process, the background history of the Duffrey project, and some of the lore to the infamous UltaSloth producer trio.

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Iszlai: Interview + Featherbed A/V Re-Stream

The eclectic producer and multi-instrumentalist Iszlai has been carving out a space for himself amongst the nebulous field of sample-collage music. In tandem with today’s re-screening of Iszlai’s Featherbed Sessions performance for the Rusted Rhythms A/V series, we took the time to peel back some of the opaque layers to his profile, and got into some of the details surrounding his craftsmanship.

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Phantasmic Visions Meets Elegant Harmony: An Interview With Adam Ovoid

Deriving his name from the rare Ovoideocystidiata mushroom, Adam Ovoid has captivated the underground bass music scene with his unapologetically squishy and surreal sound design. To get better acquainted with a long-time favorite of the Rust Team and the wider community, Adam graciously made himself available for a long-form interview, diving into the lifelong pursuit of his craft and his affiliate passions.

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A Dialogue With Desert Dwellers Ahead of Beyond Borders 4

Over the course of the last 21 years, Amani Friend and Treavor Moontribe have broadcasted a seemingly unending and constantly evolving mixture of psybient and psychedelic music across the globe. With their own individual roots stretching back well into the 90s, and the duo’s intrepid introduction to one another through the famed Moontribe gatherings in the American desert, their sound is an amalgam of virtually all shapes and sizes of dance-centric electronic production

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