Interview: Celestial Trax

The Slice is RBMA Radio’s in-depth look into the artists shaping the New York scene (and beyond). In a recent episode of the show, host Harley Brown welcomed London-born Celestial Trax. The producer – known for his surreal R&B, sinister ambience and footwork-tinged bass mutants – has made his home in New York for a few years now, and in this excerpt from The Slice he talks about the impact the city has had on his music.

When you first started making music, did you start out making electronic music?

No. I played guitar, and went to London College of Music. I listened to metal bands when I was a kid, punk bands when I was a little older.

What are some of the names of them, if you remember?

Oh my gosh, I do but... [laughter] I don’t know, I quite liked messing around with electronics, but when I was in bands everyone kind of hated it.

How so?

Well, I’d play something to these punk dudes and they’d be like, “What is this”? Then I kind of started off doing more DJing, and then when I moved to New York I started listening to and making more club music.

What are some of the first records that you DJed with in London?

In London, I’d probably play more grime, like Rinse stuff, Dizzee. Even with that I’d like to keep it quite interesting, make it different. But that’s what I do I guess.

So it’s cool that you started out listening to Rinse, and now you’re putting out records with them and have your own Rinse radio show.

Yeah, it’s pretty dope. I mean, it’s funny too, because I was moving to New York and they hit me up like, “Do you want to come to the station and do some stuff?” And three months later I moved out of the country. At the time I was a little bummed out – I made all these plans to go, and obviously I couldn’t not move at that point.

So you planned to move to New York before they reached out to you?

Yeah, it happened at the same time, autumn of 2013 or something.

You listened to Rinse before you started your show on there. Do you hope to have the same impact doing your show on listeners as it did on you as a listener?

That’s funny because I was making it for a little bit, but I actually decided not to do it on a regular basis. I hated talking. [laughs] It was really stressful harvesting all the tracks. The first few times I did it, it was fine and exciting, but it soon became, “I don’t really have any time to make music.” People would send me mad music and it was great, but I decided that I’m not going to do it on a regular basis. I’m just not a radio DJ. I’m going to do a show at the studio for the first time in September. But beyond that, I don’t know. I’ll do it every now and then.

How did you get connected with all these people like Cunt Mafia and Quay Dash? Did you meet them when you were sort of looking for people to be with? I don’t mean that in a romantic sense [laughs], more like a crew.

It’s one of those funny things where I guess it’s the same as a relationship, where if you’re really looking for it, looking too hard, it won’t pan out. In this case, you keep putting work in and these things will happen naturally if it’s meant to be. I started hanging out with the PTP guys like Geng and...

Purple Tape Pedigree.

Yeah, soon to be rebranding to PTP actually. But yeah, they had a radio show at the time, a weekly show.

What was the platform?

BBOX Radio in Brooklyn. Show was called Fresh Out The Box. It was really cool. He was playing rap and all other kinds of stuff. And they had guests every week, guest mixes, and I didn’t know anyone, so I’d just go hang out at the radio station every Thursday and through that would just meet a lot of people. Lots of traveling DJs coming to play in New York would come by. So that was nice, although I’m not much of a schmoozy person. Networking doesn’t come that naturally to me.

“Current Events” with Dai Burger just came out recently, but you recorded it about a year ago, right?

Yeah, we recorded this at Mixpak Studios about a year ago.

Why have you let this one sit around for so long? Was there just not a right time to put it out until now?

It’s difficult to put out music as it is. When there’s so many people involved it just takes time. Labels have their own schedules. I was talking to another label in the UK that was interested in putting it out, but then they wanted to, like, wait for a year, and wanted to make an LP basically, and this was at the start of this year, and we were like, “Nah, we wanna put it out now, in the spring.” And even then it’s taken so long. It’s a lot of contracts and just emailing people like, “Did you sign the contract yet? No, okay... Can you sign it?” and two weeks later, like, “Did you sign it yet?”

Is there an LP in the works?

Me and Orlando Volcano [a 2013 RBMA alumnus], we want to do more of these EPs. They’re just a bit more easy to manage. This is Volume 1, and we’ve got ideas for the second one. I don’t know. When I make something, I don’t really want to sit on it for two years. Especially for this kind of music, I want to make it and put it out fairly quickly. You kind of lose momentum, you lose interest in a track. That’s a bit harsh, but once you make something you have a lot of momentum behind it, a lot of energy. When it doesn’t come out for 18 months, you kinda feel like… Electronic music moves so quickly. A year is a long time.

Were you aware of ballroom and bass stuff before you moved to New York? How did you encounter those sounds first?

I moved here almost three years ago. At that time, I was into grime, but I wasn’t really familiar with ballroom. I had heard those sounds – Qweenbeat, MikeQ, the heavy hitters – but when I moved here I went to this RBMA vogue event in 2014 and I was blown away. I’d never seen anything like it. That was an influence on me for sure. But I try not to think about different styles too much and just do my own thing. It sounds a bit corny, but... I don’t listen to much instrumental club music at the moment.

What do you listen to?

Nowadays, I’m trying to listen to older music. ’70s. Jazz. Experimental music. Metal. Just different things. I find them more rewarding musically. I’m just going back and listening to things I enjoy listening to, and not worrying about keeping up with the newest trends. At a certain point, everything felt a bit samey and I was a bit disillusioned with the scene a year ago. Since then, though, I’ve felt really good about it.

So you became disillusioned when you felt like you were listening to things to keep up?

It’s manifold. I had a tough year last year on many levels. Lots of personal shit. My living situation was kinda terrible. Through that, I had a kinda mini-nervous breakdown. [laughs] No, not really.

You can’t live in New York for any period of time without having a mini-nervous breakdown.

Exactly. And so I was listening to things that made me feel good and kept my mind off the hectic club culture stuff. It’s not always the most emotionally rewarding stuff. You want to hear it at a club, sure, but it’s not necessarily something you want to hear when you’re going through some shit. [laughs] I was going back and listening to Slipknot and things that meant something to me, revisiting them, lots of different things. Alice Coltrane. It was a bit all over the place.