'Still in My Arms Compilation' / Interview with Moopie
Moopie on Music, Mixing and Still in My Arms: Compiled By Bayu and Moopie.
For Melbournians, the name Moopie is as elusive as it is mythic. DJ and A Colourful Storm label-head otherwise known as Matthew Xue holds somewhat of a cult status in the Melbourne underground. Famous for his brand of sleek and moody techno, Moopie plays at park parties and festivals alike. Though primarily known for his DJ sets, widely regarded as the stuff of legend, Moopie is equally prolific in the curation of his label, releasing a milieu of forgotten gems and leftfield experiments. I sat down for a socially distanced chat with Matthew to discuss his DJ practice and the new compilation that is out on his label Still In My Arms: Compiled by Bayu and Moopie.
What was the first record you ever bought?
In terms of a musical document, it would have been some cheesy CD single that was in the Top Ten or Top 40 at the time that I would've found browsing in stores like Sanity. I became aware of music being electronic probably in my mid-to-late teens, and from then, I was checking out dance music for a long time on digital retailers like Beatport before going into specialist record stores. I remember seeing reissues of classic stuff by Ron Trent and Carl Craig as well as a lot of unexceptional tech house records.
So I’m assuming it was only later that your interest shifted to techno?
I didn’t really have any ideas of genres but was really into people like Justice and the Ed Banger guys who came with Daft Punk to Australia in 2007. Looking back now, I guess you could call it a second wave of electroclash or something. People like Mr. Oizo and Sebastian I found really interesting because they had the intensity and energy of live music but were just performing as one person on a laptop.
Was it around that time that you started DJing?
Around the same time. I would’ve been 18 when I started practicing and getting into it.
Right. I’m curious what the Melbourne scene was like back then, were you going out to see music?
I think an important thing is to be aware of who is defining what a scene is, as it's often used as an objective tag. At that age I was just excited to be going out to listen to loud music in dark spaces. Upon reflection, after being involved in music for a bit longer though, I think perhaps people at that age weren’t aware of as many things as they are now. Lots of young people these days have a whole world and history of music at their fingertips and I think a lot of them use that to their advantage.
The fact that now there’s more awareness around music of a wider range and music culture in general?
Yeah. Especially in younger people. Speaking to a lot of young people that I meet at gigs – they’re super clued onto things, which ten years ago, would have taken older people much longer to discover.
I guess back then, the music discovery process would have been a lot more arduous. What type of resources were you using to find new stuff when you were first getting into electronic music?
Probably the same as now, to be honest. Mostly online. When I was getting into electronic music, I was very aware of things like P2P file sharing, blogs and websites like Hype Machine. This was also during a big three or four years where a subculture called blog house developed, which had amateur remixes and re-edits of popular songs in that noisier vein of what Ed Banger were putting out. I grew up with the Internet, so that very much was and still is a part of my musical discovery.
Given that the internet is the main way of discovering things for Australians, do you think that local record stores are still important resources for crate diggers and DJs?
I think it really depends on what you’re looking for. Many record stores, secondhand stores and op shops have lots of surprises around Australia – stuff that’s not documented online. If people have the time and the energy to look for these things, they’re all there and on offer. I’m sure you could go to a secondhand store in a rural town and find something interesting. It might not be electronic or good - for lack of a better word – but it’s still documented and I think that’s important.
Speaking of a lot of the obscure gems you seem to find, your Inner Varnika set from 2018 aired on Skylab Radio not long ago, and it’s the first time people have been able to hear it since it was performed. It’s pretty widely regarded and talked about still. I’m curious how you went about curating that set.
Inner Varnika is a unique case for me as that year was the fourth time in a row I had played. With any kind of party or setting, you familiarise yourself with the context and the environment in which it operates, so by then I was very comfortable playing there – it came more naturally than when I first played there in 2015. In terms of curating sets, I like saving songs for moments in which I think their potential can be maximised. In a festival setting – a big, wide open space with a clear sound system - some songs just work better there than they do in clubs.
Could you give an example of a track?
Lorenzo Senni's “Makebelieve” comes to mind. But one step before the songs themselves, I try to think about the set length. When I’m given the set length, I work out how many songs I’ll need as I don’t like overpacking my USB or record bag. That’s an important step for me because I don’t like having too much to scroll or look through. In that Inner Varnika set, all the songs I packed were relatively high energy.
So what you look for is that sustained high level energy?
Not just high levels but working with energy in general, yeah. Obviously it depends on the festival itself and what time you play, but usually you can get a pretty good idea of what you can get away with by the time you start.
How do you know what exactly you can get away with? Is it ever planned or is it mostly intuition?
You can plan as much as you like but it really depends on the moment itself and how the crowd is responding, as well as the kind of energy that you’re trying to work with. You can prepare all these high-energy tracks, but if no one’s feeding back off them, there’s not really any encouragement to keep playing them. So it can backfire as well. It really does depend on what’s going down in that particular moment.
You famously closed that IV set with a vocal snippet of The Fall’s Mark E. Smith reading football scores.
Mark E. Smith had passed away a short time before Inner Varnika that year. I came across that clip the night before my set and thought it was pretty funny and surreal, which I think is what I like in general about music – and the world, I guess. I thought having him reading the football scores on national television in England would have the potential to freak people out a bit and catch them off guard, if executed correctly. His voice is so iconic, too.
In another interview about some of your favourite mix CDs, you said that an important piece of musical advice you took from a Blackest Ever Black mix was to “place just as much importance on what you leave out as what you leave in”. How much does this inform your style?
Blackest Ever Black is an important label for me, because five to ten years ago, getting deeper into electronic music, it was great to be reminded that such a broad range of music from different genres and eras can be compiled and sequenced so well. In terms of the process of compiling a mix or preparing for a DJ set, it’s important to think about what you want to play, but also about what might not necessarily fit. Sometimes if there’s a song and I feel like it’s not the right time to play it, it’s okay to save it for the next time in which it might work better.
In terms of figuring out what tracks to play at what time, do you still listen to a lot of mixes in order to build that feeling?
I think my listening habits are quite varied and are always changing over time. Right now I’m listening to a lot of albums. I used to listen to a lot of mix CDs because I thought they were quite an important way to show what DJing was about and what could be achieved. The Optimo live recording I mentioned in that interview is really cool – their attitude of playing such a diverse range of music and working with energy and intensity rather than being genre specific – that’s something I really appreciated and still do.
I get what you mean about not being genre specific. You tend to mix quite fluidly between genres; those boundaries don’t really seem too limiting to you.
But at the same time, I don’t want to be too contrived, either and play a funk record in a set for the sake of being different. I guess what was interesting about the Optimo guys playing electro with AC/DC was that it was less to do with the shock or surprise factor, but more about the sustainment of energy. I think that’s more important on a dancefloor.
Let’s talk a bit about your label, A Colourful Storm. Why did you choose to start your own label instead of moving into production like a lot of other DJs have?
I don’t think the choice is one or the other. When you’re interested enough in something like music there’s the potential to try all different aspects of it. I certainly tried to muck around with production during university but just found that it wasn’t for me. That said, I did learn a new skill set and still play a lot of my own edits of tracks in my DJ sets. Also friends’ edits - we’re always passing each other things that we think could suit each other’s sets.
Are there any friends, specifically in the Melbourne scene, which you’ve developed alongside?
Bayu has been a friend of mine for a number of years now. I guess he’s more renowned for playing in bars but he’s great at playing in clubs as well. I think our musical tastes and trajectories have developed in an interesting way – they’ve gone through many trends and phases. We can be very open with each other about what we like and don’t like.
I understand you guys played a B2B set at Echo Flats festival in NSW right? What was that like?
It was cool. We used to play back-to-back a lot in bars - long sets that could sometimes go for seven hours or more. But very rarely did we get to play back to back in a club or festival setting, which for me are the most exciting places to DJ. The sound at Echo Flats was amazing and the organisers put a lot of emphasis into sound quality, despite it being a smaller-scale event. A lot of the more “minimal” tracks sounded really good. I think that’s usually a good indicator of a sound system's quality - giving clarity to and bringing out the songs that are more stripped back.
Is DJing in clubs distinctly different to bars?
Yes, definitely. DJing in a bar is almost pointless in terms of musical engagement. I get that it adds a level of human presence in a social venue, but musically, it's almost like playing a Spotify playlist with a human face behind it. Having said that, there is always the potential of discerning audience members listening to the music, which is always appreciated. In a club, there's obviously more expectation from the crowd who is there to primarily engage with music.
Speaking of extended sets, you did a couple of six and seven hour sets last year for Alien Werkshop and Divinations respectively. Was there a specific plan to how you went about those sets?
An extended set does give you a lot of opportunity to be more patient and play tracks which probably wouldn’t fit in your normal one-and-a-half to two-hour set. A lot of mid-to-late 2000s minimal house or minimal techno songs that would probably sound a bit boring in a two-hour set suddenly have the time to breathe. Ricardo Villalobos' songs, for example - there’s definitely room to play those tracks in a longer set.
Is playing those older tracks an intentional stylistic decision for you?
I just love music from all eras, to be honest. If I focus on mid-90s UK tech-house or German minimal music from 2010 in the same set, it's not so much intentional as just being reflective of what I'm into at the time. But there's plenty of new music in there too. I think it’s good to be diverse, even within the constraints of four-to-the-floor dance music.
I can definitely see that diversity extend to the releases you put out on the label, as most of it can’t necessarily be classified as dance music. Who was the first artist you released on your label?
That was a reissue of a 7” single from 1982 by an artist called Denial. I guess you would loosely call it minimal-synth or synth-pop. It’s a cover of the Mamas and the Papas’ “California Dreaming”, but sounds like it was made in a bedroom. That whole style of music was really popularised by Veronica Vasicka’s Minimal Wave label, who actually just put out a tape of unreleased recordings from the same artist. That was cool to see.
A lot of the reissues on your label tend to be forgotten gems and discarded obscurities that you bring back to the surface. What’s been the process with releasing the new compilation, ‘Still in My Arms’ with Bayu?
It’s important for us to not forget that we're first and foremostly discovering and sharing music rather than releasing a record for the sake of it. As music lovers, we’re constantly looking for music of all kinds and sometimes it’s nice to create your own thread and narrative through them. In the compiling of Still In My Arms, we were looking for the more introspective and 'loner' tracks from an era of IDM that can be very noisy and cluttered. I guess with each compilation we do, we try to find a niche that we can explore - but what's most important is the feeling that the tracks evoke and if we can relate to them. If we can find enough songs evoking a particular feeling and think we can tell a good story with them, then it’s worth it.
How important is telling a story to you?
I guess that’s ultimately what it’s all about: the start, ending and what’s going on in between. Though it’s often more spontaneous than how it’s reflected upon or perceived from the outside. Even from my own perspective, I often reflect on what I've released through the label and try to justify what has happened or what is going on. But I often can’t find the answers either.
Interview and words by Adam Hollander
Header image taken by Young Ha Kim