Borrowed CS is Playing Our Party in Wellington This Weekend

This Saturday, August 27, Borrowed CS plays alongside Le1f and George Turner at Meow in Wellington for Red Bull Sound Select. RSVP here .

"When I saw the big picture of how techno and house music slots into a greater musical canon, I really started to get into it," says Wellington-based drummer, electronic music producer and DJ Cory Champion. "I see it as jazz really, or at least as an extension of jazz. It's functional, artistic, and individual. There's a craft to it that can be mastered, and a greater, more subtle, control of expression that you gain with the more skills you have."

Since 2014, Champion has been putting this process into practice by exploring the common ground between jazz, house, and techno with his production work and sets as Borrowed CS. Along the way, he's marked himself out as one of the most talented young electronic music producers in the country.

Champion grew up in Paekakariki. He played drums at a young age, and by high school had become intrigued by recording and production equipment. "I would typically record things to cassette tapes or with free software like Audacity," says Champion. After high school, drumming led him to jazz school. Champion began to buy jazz records and DJ in lounge bars around town, joined psych/surf-rock trio The Dig, and started playing with local soul singer Louis Baker and dance-punk act Shocking Pinks. Jazz records led to soul, funk, and electronica records, and his session work saw him tapped to drum for future soul group Electric Wire Hustle. In his spare time, he'd bring his experience as a drummer to jamming on samplers, synthesisers, cheap drum machines, Ableton Live, and a four-track tape recorder.

"Drumming has a major influence on everything I do," says Champion. "Drumming requires balance and fitness not only physically but also sonically. Improvising sharpens your musicality, and with the drums, there are so many decisions that you're constantly making based on what you're listening to right then in the moment. Your ears become agile." As his agile ears were connecting the dots in his brain between jazz, house, and techno, he started meeting like-minded souls. In the process, Champion became part of a new wave that has—over the past few years—introduced house and techno to a younger audience around New Zealand. He began playing at club nights like Haven, Inky Waves, Strange Behaviour, Emergence, and Friendly Potential, and exchanging tunes and ideas with the DJs and producers associated with them.

In the club-night environment, he made more connections and drew inspiration from a bigger collective feeling. "If you look at the club space, it's a communal space as well," he says. "The space of the music is about this 'it' thing that is greater than the sum of its parts. People are encouraged to both feel it and lose it. Whether I'm watching or playing, great improvisation evokes similar ecstatic feelings to the best DJ sets I've been to."

If you're talking influences and inspirations, Champion has a few. Chicago-raised, Detroit techno DJ icon Theo Parrish's American Intelligence album comes up quickly, as does British electronic musician Actress' Ghettoville album. He also references Detroit producers Jay Daniel and Terrence Dixon for respectively providing him with a 3rd/4th generation techno perspective, and "The idea of R&B and soul coexisting with really dissonant futuristic techno."

While he was further refining Borrowed CS, Champion flatted with long-standing drummer, producer and DJ Riki Gooch. Gooch encouraged him to dig deeper into the history of local electronica. "Riki introduced me to a lot of key New Zealand figures from back in the day, and showed me so much amazing music—I really owe him a lot… It's been important for me to realise how deep many people around that scene were on imported dance music at the time a lot of that classic stuff was being made."

After releasing a few short projects on Bandcamp, Champion connected with Australia's 3BS Records in 2016. The link-up led to him touring New Zealand and Australia with their acts Mannheim Rocket and Hence Therefore, and put out a couple of releases with them. Later that year, he returned to Australia and turned a potentially bad situation into a winning opportunity.

"This time, I was at Strawberry Fields festival, playing drums with Electric Wire Hustle," Champion recalls. The band had left to come back to New Zealand, but Champion stayed in Melbourne, sticking around at the festival to see legendary DJ Moodymann play. When a storm hit the festival, he lost contact with his ride. Luckily, he ran into New Zealand duo Chaos In The CBD, who made some room in their van for him. "I was sitting next to Max Graef [from Money $ex Records]. I got chatting with him and played him the masters to Natural Infinity EP. The next day he got in touch and asked me for some music." The music Champion gave him became his recently released BC$ EP. Releasing vinyl records has long been a crucial rite of passage for techno and house producers, one that facilitates the leap from a national profile to worldwide touring opportunities. With several releases, adequate DJing and live performance time under his belt, and in his words, "A clear idea of where I am, and where I want to go," Champion is ready and willing to make that leap. Hopefully, it isn't that far off.

Listen to a sampler of BC$ EP via soundcloud , or purchase it here . This Saturday, August 27, Borrowed CS plays alongside Le1f and George Turner at Meow in Wellington for Red Bull Sound Select. RSVP here .