Lone wolf in club

>> DJ Granny' Ark finds her own space

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

"I guess I'm kind of a lone wolf in general, in regards to scenes and established pockets of society that don't intermingle," says Michelle Irving--Vancouver-based DJ, producer, videographer and cartoonist, who's spinning at several soirées here this weekend as DJ Granny' Ark.

A lone wolf, maybe, but one who makes her mark on each area she touches, from hip hop to loungey downtempo to booming techno to thoughtful, progressive electronica.

Her career on the wheels of steel began in the mid-'90s in Halifax, while she was studying at NASCAD. "The DJ thing happened by accident. I went to Value Village and picked up a suitcase record player that had a big R2-D2 and Wonder Woman on the inside, and grabbed a couple of 45s and an LP--just to have something to listen to. There were skips on this particular 45, 'Shake Your Groove Thing,' and they were right on the break. One day my friends and I were jamming out to this break with other instruments, and my roommate was like, 'Wow, that sounds great!' That got me to thinking about doing some more, making skips and things. It just grew from that, experimenting, really, not even thinking about it in a DJ context."

Half a decade later, she's at the Vancouver DMC. "I guess I expected a certain amount of that strange one-upmanship, that macho competitiveness. It's part of hip hop culture. But it was even more extreme than that, a bit of a mindfuck. But my whole reason for going was that I like the form of turntablism, and I have a lot of issues with what competition has done to that form, the conventions that have been established which don't really consider the power of content in that form."

Content plays a major role in Irving's music, elements drawn from outside the hermetic confines of the electronica genre. Expect the unexpected when she spins--an Arvo part passage over banging breaks, swatches of Morricone and (God forbid) Bob Seger.

"I grew up really loving classical music and studying piano since the age of eight. I was in Moncton, kinda isolated, and also, my grandparents were very Christian. They didn't agree with a lot of secular music, so I was forced to explore alternatives to rock 'n' roll."

At times Irving seeks out that inexpressibly sublime moment, that abstract flash where music leapfrogs the mind straight to the soul. At other times she's exploring the purely physical aspect of techno--what sounds hit you where? And then there's the spaghetti-western sound fragments...

"That's part of my obsession with the conquering of the West, all that baggage. Sometimes I try to contextualize it, sometimes the sounds are completely abstracted. For one performance, because I felt the audience might not be familiar with what I was doing, I decided to hand out a handbill that cited my sources. That kinda contextualizes where I'm coming from--you see samples from Morricone next to Buffy Ste-Marie, that kinda draws some lines" :

At Laïka with Soundshaper on Friday, Nov. 9, at Cloud 4 with Neerav, Iznogood and more on Saturday, Nov. 10 (info at 720-6490) and at Quartier Latin with Gordon Field on Sunday, Nov. 11