STEPPIN’ OUT
ON THE STEPPE

>>Local DJ Sean Kosa reports back to
Montreal after a year in the mysterious and
misunderstood ex-Soviet state of Kazakhstan

CENTRAL ASIAN PERSUASION: Kosa in Kazakhstan

By JACK OATMON

If you spent any serious amount of time dancing to house music in Montreal over the past few years, you’re likely familiar with that gargantuan, sharp-tongued, ginger lug Sean Kosa and his funky finesse with wax. For some time, he was an indelible fixture in the seedy afterhours landscape, forever the friendly party animal and the clever, controversial conversationalist. Then he disappeared. Last November he surprised and, frankly, confused the hell out of everybody by relocating to Central Asia and taking up residence in, of all places, Almaty, the former capital of Kazakhstan. He’s working there for an import-export company, producing new and ever more interesting tracks and still DJing here and there, of course.

Given Kosa’s reputation as one of Montreal’s most consistently rockin’ DJs, and the somewhat mysterious, highly misrepresented image Kazakhstan has in our culture, the whole situation begs a lot of questions. I took the chance to query him about exactly what he’s doing there and just what the hell Kazakhstan is really like, before he returns next week for a brief visit and a whole lot of partying. One fascinating thing he reveals is the amount of shared music culture between here and there.

“Ten years ago, you relied on records to get your dance information,” Kosa begins, by phone from Almaty. “You relied on a good record store to get new releases from the U.K. or wherever. So other countries around the world would lag behind in underground music because, like here, you don’t get vinyl. So what I’m basically saying is that it’s sad but beautiful. I go to an afterhours club here, and I ask the DJs where they’re buying their tracks, and it’s places like Beatport. When I came, I expected there to be horrible music in every club. But the good afterhours clubs where they play underground music, it’s pretty much the same shit you’d hear in Montreal. Because of the greater availability of tunes, it spreads like that.”

Beyond Borat

Kosa says the presence of quality Western music is a two-sided coin. “A few weeks ago, I played at this place and one of my friends at home had hooked me up with a tune. I played it and everyone knew it. I had thought it was like a hot tip. Dudes were singing along to it and I was like, ‘Holy shit! That’s the Internet.’ There’s that positive side to it, because the music culture has disseminated to all these places. But the downside is that there’s a homogeneity to it. I’m here and I’m hearing minimal techno that they play at Salon Daomé [on Mont-Royal]. But I wish that I was hearing some fucking crazy shit from some locals. On the radio, you hear some pop tunes, like old Russian disco that’s fuckin’ cool. But at the club, it’s like Energy FM shit. And at the good clubs, it’s the same shit as at the good clubs in Montreal.”

He also stresses that the similarities only run so deep. The scene there may readily embrace the musical trends of the West, but Kosa says it does not emulate the associated elitism and attitude which are so rampant in Montreal.

“The difference is primarily that since afterhours clubs serve alcohol, the audience isn’t completely wacked out on drugs and catatonic,” he explains. “There’s no style thing. Most people here buy their clothes at the bazaar. There’s no fluorescent fucking headdress, no photo shoots. Which is refreshing. People are there having beers, a bit of dancing and some fun. It’s not like, ‘See me later on my Facebook profile.’ There’s a lack of hipsters here, which is amazing. I’d take that any day over half-mohawk-wearing people who are like, ‘I’m going to a photographer’s party tomorrow.’”

The similarities are also certainly not deep enough to encompass the full scale of lifestyle opulence in the West, something that Kosa says often leads visiting foreigners to be judgmental and condescending toward the country.

“There are people who come here from Europe and they’re super critical of it. They assume that it should be up to their standards. I live here. This is my home now. So my frustration is that there are people who live here and enjoy it, then there are people who criticize it based on a European worldview. It’s difficult in that respect. Like, ‘Oh, the service, the service!’ Or like, ‘I didn’t have any hot water today.’ Like, fuck, whatever. You’re in Kazakhstan. You’re not gonna get hot water every fucking day. The great thing is, though, when you don’t have hot water, you can always find vodka. To me, there’s nothing to bitch about.

“Well… there are plenty of things to bitch about—especially when you have food poisoning.”

Hummers and bummers

MIGHTY ALMATY: Kazakh architecture

Kosa continues to explain that the country is far more industrialized than Westerners often assume. Since the fall of communism, it’s been brought to a relatively stable free market by long-time president Nursultan Abishuly Nazarbayev—if he were to die, Kosa suspects, “This whole country could go to shit.

“Kazakhstan is a fairly highly evolved nation in terms of Central Asia. There are all the amenities that you can get at home, albeit much more expensive. It’s almost like hyper-capitalism. I would parallel it with the United States more than I would with Canada, in the sense that there are wealthy elites, there’s no social structure. There’s a lot of wealth. It’s sitting on one of the top oil reserves in the world. In Almaty, you see Lexus, you see Hummers, there are a lot of rich cars. But the middle class and the lower class are suffering, because there’s no socialist—i.e. Canadian style—structures in place.”

Kosa’s own tunes have taken on a more brooding, melancholic character since he arrived there, something he attributes to the time and space he now has to expand his ideas.

“I’ve been doing a couple of remixes, working on some new stuff. I mean, in general, I’m bored of playing bang-up bass music. I don’t want to offend people, but I’m really sick of Boys Noize-slash-Justice-slash-everything. For me, it’s kind of like the musical equivalent of a quick handjob. I’m really tired of the genre of Ableton house. I just want to make some decent, solid tunes. In Montreal, I feel like I didn’t make any new shit. It was just a beat with a bassline and some vocals. There’s nothing there. There’s no progression. The way I see it, I hadn’t made a new song in five years, until I got here and started making new ones. They were just tools to use when I played. If there’s anything about the new stuff I’m making, it’s that I have the time. I can make it a little deeper. I’m not DJing every night. I work in the day, then I go home and I work on music. That’s it.”

AT SALON OFFICIEL ON FRIDAY, OCT.
31, AT CIRCUS ON SATURDAY, NOV. 1,
AT SAPHIR ON THURSDAY, NOV. 6 AND
AT ACADEMY DANCEHALL
ON FRIDAY, NOV. 7