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Warped woman >>
Mira Calix gets in with the wrong crowd
by LORRAINE
CARPENTER
Mirror: Apart
from living with Ninja Tune’s Strictly Kev, what led you to DJing?
Mira Calix:
The impetus was just playing good music. I had lots of records but I
wasn’t a bedroom DJ, so my first time out was a crash course. I’m
not a technique freak, even all these years later. I tend to play a
lot of oddball records with effects over them, not 4/4 stuff that has
to be seamless and keep the party going. Jeff Mills I’m not, not
even close. M: The Susan
Lawly compilation Extreme Music From Women features your track “Too
Slim for Suicide.” Where did that idea originate? MC: It’s
something I came across on the radio, a little clip of one woman saying
to another, “Why are you depressed? You’re far too slim for
suicide,” and the other girl’s about to kill herself and clearly
doesn’t give a shit what she looks like. It’s quite an odd
track, but I actually wrote it before the project came about. Obviously,
it has political connotations, and it’s not something I normally
shout about in my music. The track landed on that record by chance,
but it ended up being quite apt. M: Okay,
what’s your take on the term “intelligent techno?” MC: [laughs]
It’s quite funny, that’s my initial reaction. There’s
a lot of other clever music that doesn’t merit the term “intelligent.”
Jazz, to me, is pretty mental, or look at Bach, is that intelligent
classical? I understand vaguely why the term stuck but it’s not
necessarily appropriate. Then again, I don’t have a better name. M: Was your
initial exposure to Warp the main motivation for making your own music?
MC: Before
Warp I worked in a record shop so I was loosely involved in this genre,
but my first love is guitar music. Loveless by My Bloody Valentine had
such an impact on me, in the sense that it made me re-evaluate music.
I’m a great fan of a lot of the stuff on Warp but the things that
strike you when you’re young really stick. I listened mainly to
people who used guitars as well as drum machines, keyboards and synthesizers,
so I got into more electronic music that way. It seems quite normal
to use whatever fits rather than drums/two guitars/ With Plaid
and Nobuzaku Takemura at la Sala Rossa on Wednesday, March 27, 9pm,
$15
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Her
music has been called otherworldly, unsettling, soft, dark and fucked
up, adjectives not uncommon for artists on the U.K.’s Warp label.
Like her polyrhythmic compadres Aphex Twin and Squarepusher, Mira Calix
(aka Chantal Passamonte) works a wide range of tools into sinister constructions,
from gentle piano and pixelated vocals to fuzzed-out, chaotic beat attacks.
Born in Durban, South Africa, Calix joined London’s Gucci branch
in ’91 as a fashion photographer, a post she soon abandoned for
DJing and pushing papers as a Warp publicist. Several EPs and an album
later found Calix working the tables (instead of the phones) on international
tours with her label-mates and bands like Radiohead. The Mirror spoke
to Calix about the good life.