Take an Aimless Walk With Nina's Surreal Noisey Mix

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Take an Aimless Walk With Nina's Surreal Noisey Mix

Nina BC is part of the DJ collective Working Women and a key component of the energy behind the retail and events space Commend. This mix is a demonstration of her tastes for the dreamy and otherworldly.
MB
illustrated by Mikey Burey

Nina BC usually starts slow. Tuesday mornings, the New York-based, Australian-born DJ who tends to play under her first name takes to the digital airwaves of Brooklyn’s favorite shipping container radio station, The Lot Radio, greeting the day gradually. The opening moments tend toward misty synthesizers, the drawn out drawls of uber-DIY songwriters, or grayscale ambience—whatever that particular AM calls for—before slowly, as the clock ticks toward noon, turning to gnarlier territories: techno slivers, abstract polyrhythms, aqueous electro, 80s post-punk curios. The shows tend to be unpredictable genre-wise, but to my ears, they most often follow this rhythm, a tentative unfolding, a tempered exhalation to start the week’s worst day (it has always been my opinion that the famous cartoon cat’s malaise was misdirected).

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In a very classic radio way, her sets have become intertwined with the rhythm of my mornings—and judging by the incredibly active and (usually) supportive chatroom on the Lot’s website, it’s not just me—as essential for my Tuesdays as a first cup of coffee the rest of the week. In the streaming age, especially given the incredible abundance of great online radio in 2018, this is an incredibly rare thing.

In addition to her Lot sets, Nina also takes part in a couple of other important nodes of the energy of New York’s underground. She’s one-fourth of the DJ collective Working Women, a project that, per their SoundCloud, is “rooted in elaboration, uncertainty, and persistence,” which in practice means four friends (including DJ Voices, DJ Ashlyn, and DJ Nicely) trading unpredictable tracks with gleeful abandon. Or as Nina remembered a Boiler Room set in an interview with Vogue, “I giggled because we’re all like, on top of the mixer, gesturing so wildly and pointing at the CDJs.I guess a lot of people maybe see that as embarrassing, but we’re crushing that idea.” She’s also a key figure in the retail and community events space Commend, a veritable oasis on the Lower East Side that has a small but obscenely well curated stock of left-of-center electronic music and other attendant curiosities. They also host community events about things like how music can be engaged with “environmental restoration practices” (that one’s coming up on May 22).

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So even if Nina starts her mornings with slow music, that gesture belies a pretty busy schedule—which she was kind enough to take some time out of to put together a set for the latest entry in Noisey’s mix series. What she turned in is an hourlong set that traverses a good number of the moods she explores in her shows, from tentative vocal drones to jittery electro contortions, to warm house music and back again. You can listen to it here, and as you do read an interview that touches on the collectivist energy of her endeavors, as well as how she found her place within those communities.

How are we meant to enjoy the mix? What's the perfect setting?
I think this is probably a good walking mix. There are tranquil moments but also some rougher moments, some movement, so I think it's suited to traveling and thinking through things without any real goal or destination.

Is synesthesia a real thing and if so, what color is this mix?
It is, but I'm not very sensitive to it! This mix, to me, is quite textural, and murky, I think it would be like water against earth or seaweed or rocks or reef.

Was there any specific concept to the mix?
No specific concept, but the themes I had in mind were being lost and searching, and water. I wanted some of the mixes to be a little bit clashy at times, to crash into each other, and some to just invisibly melt in and out of one-another.

Do you have a favorite moment on the mix?
I really like it when the end of Riccardo Schirò's “Thru Low Tides” sputters and fizzles out all over the warm opening chords of Wilted Woman's “Accepting Motten.”

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Where did you grow up and how did you get into music? How did you end up in New York and what were the big musical signposts along the journey to where you are now?
I grew up in Perth, Western Australia. I started learning the piano when I was about 8, and singing in a choir where we learned the Kodály method, which is a music education approach from Hungary based in singing and movement. I went to a high school with a classical music program based in Kodály and studied singing. With our choir master, Ms Christmass, we sung a broad range of music, including Hungarian folk songs, religious choral music, madrigals and contemporary pieces.

After high school I drifted away from classical music and singing and started getting into dance music. There is a great cross-over between dance music and bands in Perth, incredible national and international bookings and also a relaxed, collaborative local energy (and a lot of talented people). My friend Andrew Sinclair started a record store (now also a label) called Good Company Records, and I was buying a lot of music from him. We did a night at the shop where Rok Riley, who is a legendary presenter on Perth's community radio station RTRFM and a beloved party DJ, helped guide a group of women around two turntables, and practice with all the records in the shop. I studied art history, and outside of school I was mostly seeing and searching for music with the same kind of investigative attitude. I also travelled around Europe and particularly expanded my knowledge in London.

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After university I was feeling lost and unsure about the next step, so I followed a Visa opportunity to New York, a place I had dreamed of and learned about but never been. I started working at Commend right when it opened in August 2015, and I met all of these musically like-minded people who generously invited me to party with them and play with them. I was still new to DJing but being thrown into this situation where I was just saying yes helped me overcome the anxiety of beginning. Becoming involved with the Lot Radio and Working Women in 2016 is where I started to really embrace DJing and commit to it.

Listening to your shows on The Lot, and to a degree on this mix too, it’s clear that your musical interests are pretty broad. Are there any characteristics or moods or sounds that you’re immediately drawn to?
My friends have always been my strongest guides in music—hearing a song through their ears, or through my ears through their ears, is such a thrilling, revelatory moment. When a friend puts on a record and you're not really paying attention until a few minutes in and you realize you're captivated by what's happening, that is my favorite thing. My friends have such unique tastes, and listening with them helps me to let go of judgement and embrace different sounds. There is definitely a certain mood I'm drawn to, though I'm not sure I can describe it properly, it's kind of intimate and un-serious. At the moment I've been playing a lot of down-midtempo polyrhythmic stuff and I've also been listening to a lot of music from Australia, because I get homesick, and that's a very distinct feeling regardless of genre.

Between your efforts with Working Women and at Commend, it seems like community energy is a big part of what you thrive on. Is that the case? How are you fulfilled by your roles in each of those broader groups?
That's definitely true! I've been embraced by people over the last few years who have an unfailing dedication to vision, who see the world perceptively and imaginatively and who seem to move mountains to bring ideas to fruition. These people are also extremely dedicated to community-building, are in a constant state of reaching out, sharing and bonding. Both Commend and Working Women are like that, and are made up of those people, though they're really different kinds of collectives. I think my role in both, in different ways, is rooted in the interpersonal and experiential, letting that be the guide and the living-out of the vision.

I know you’re pretty busy with both of those efforts mentioned above—I just saw that Working Women has some EU dates planned for the summer—but I was wondering if you had any other big projects in the works that you’re excited about, whether professionally or not. Basically, what are you looking forward to?
Reading more, writing more, and buying a synth!

Tracklist:
Eva Geist & Galina Ozeran - Notturno Crescente
Cucina Povera - Avainsana
Riccardo Schirò - Thru Low Tides
Wilted Woman - Accepting Motten
Villa Åbo - Separated Together
Elektroids - Time Tunnel
Natural Calamity - Stephanie Says (Asteroid Desert Song Remix)
The Monkey House (Absent Music)
400 Blows - The Return of the Dog
Kahimi Karie - Tiny King Kong
J. Walker - Salmon
Eric Copeland - Mixer Shredder (Machine Woman Remix)
Carisma - Encaje (Ana Helder Remix)
Beta Librae - Just Drift