OFF THE RECORDS: WTCHCRFT

THE FOLLOWING FEATURE WAS PUBLISHED IN PARAGON BROADWAY’S NEWSLETTER ON NOV 14 2023, AS PART OF A NEW SERIES WHERE I INTERVIEW THE MOST IMPORTANT VOICES IN DANCE MUSIC RIGHT NOW: OFF THE RECORDS.

This Friday, NY-based techno DJ WTCHCRFT (Anthony McLean) joins us in our downstairs dancefloor for ESCAPE. We asked him where he’s at with his sound, his career, his community, and what he’s inspired by.

So, you’ve just come in from LA. Welcome home! How does it feel to be home?

I’ve been doing this for a while but I’m still relatively new to the international scene, so on the road I don’t feel very comfortable. I’m having fun, but I don’t feel like I can be loosey-goosey and be myself. I find myself thinking back to times when I’m in New York, when I’m at home with my friends, and that usually makes me feel a lot better.

Do you find that having that kind of community influences your sound?

In terms of influencing how I make music, or what I’m making, it really doesn’t influence it— I’m going to do what I want to do anyway. But It’s good to get feedback. You can send it to people, and maybe you go to one of their shows and they drop it while you’re there and you can see how the crowd reacts. Especially when you’re not the one dropping it, that’s always a treat. It’s fun to see stuff like that. I think that’s how community plays into it. It’s also just a level of support: you go to their shows, they go to your shows. But it’s not a transactional thing. I feel like some people, whether they know it or not, will try to get something out of it. So I’m always a little wary of that. Like, what does this mean to other people? I know what it means to me, but I don’t always know what it means to other people.

What does it mean to you?

I think it means showing up in all forms! Showing up in support, in solidarity. I don’t know, it’s so abstract. Because you could be in a community and not participate at all, in any meaningful way, but then what does it mean to participate meaningfully? I don’t know. I honestly have no idea. I think I just do what I think feels right. Like, talking to people about what they’re doing; their upcoming projects. Just being genuinely interested in what other people are doing, what other people are saying, and what other people think.

Are there any other people's projects you’re following right now that you’re particularly excited about?

I feel like the DJ I gravitate most towards here, in terms of mixing style and whatnot, are Devoye, Rose Kourtz, Jadalareign; obviously AceMo, Moma Ready, and Kush Jones. Those guys. And my DJ partner Kyruh.

Sorry Records is one of my favorite record labels. They’re one of the first record labels, in Brooklyn, that ever put out my shit, which is awesome. 

I would love to hear more about where you’re at with your sound right now.

I have so much music right now that I’m sitting on top of, waiting to be released. I have another EP coming out sometime early next year that I’ve been working on since last winter I think. It’s coming out on this label in Germany, Haven. I really respect them. It’s five tracks, which is the most I’ve put on an EP recently. I’ve been working on it so long, it’s got two remixes on it, too. One is my friend, this producer in Germany, his name is Keepsakes. He owns the label. The other one is my friend Valerie Ace. She makes incredible music, she’s this dope trans DJ from Germany. She also lives in Berlin. And then I have another EP after that, because I made so many tracks in-between. These past few months, I was just making music constantly. I don’t know where it came from.

Was there something inspiring you?

Honestly I’m listening to a lot of punk right now. You know Sonic Youth? Kim Gordon from Sonic Youth makes a lot of really cool… abstract… honestly it’s kind of like trap? Like, trap music? A little bit? It’s really cool, I think it’s really fucking sick.

I’ve been listening to this guy, and this is before the current political climate, but I was listening to this guy MuslimGauze. He’s been around since the ‘90s, and it’s straight-up just this British white dude who is, like, obsessed with the struggle for freedom in Palestine. It’s really funny— at first, I was like, is this kind of appropriation? but everything he does is so supportive and he doesn’t make any money off of his music. He died a while ago, but now his music is getting big again because of everything that’s going on, and every single one of his albums is insane. It’s very interesting. I’ve been listening to a lot of his shit. He’s got a lot of cool samples of old folk Palestinian songs but through an electronic lense. It’s very abstract and weird, but it’s very cool.

That’s very interesting. He operated out of the UK?

Yeah, which is interesting because there it was kind of illegal to party. That was a huge thing in Britain and the cops would put up posters like, if you see an acid rave, report it to the police. Meanwhile the poster would have cool graphics on it. Like, that’s going to make me want to go to the party. But they were shutting that shit down back in the day…

I feel like specifically techno was made as a very political kind of music. Underground Resistance; Stingray; Drexia. Drexia’s whole thing was an underwater Wakanda. And that’s fucking dope! It was always supposed to be like that. Kush Jones tweeted something recently that was like: y’all want the Underground but not the Resistance. At the beginning it was about resistance. It was about, “fuck the system”. Shit like that. I think a lot of that’s been lost.

I’m excited to further my career, but I’m also excited for things to not be as popular as they are. Particularly, the European really-fast [music]. Which I love! But they don’t know what any of this was about in the first place. First of all, a lot of them probably think that Europe created techno, which is SO wrong. It started in America, particularly with black and brown folks. If you look at Africa and some of the Middle-eastern countries, a lot of their music is based off of repetition and chanting. That’s techno! To the point where people still sample that, but they call it “tribal techno”. People forget that this started from black and brown people. It’s a form of expression, and it’s a form of resistance music.

Let’s talk about this! I also feel like punk is lowkey the wave right now.

No, absolutely. It’s faster and harder stuff right now. I think that after covid a lot of stuff changed. People were very excited to go out and they just wanted to hit the ground running, and that’s the kind of music that blew up right after covid. I feel like there’s a little bit of pushback from it now; it’s getting to the point where people are a little tired of super-hard, super-fast stuff. Not that people don’t want it hard or fast, but they want some more variety.

Paragon opened post-covid. Do you think Paragon is shaped by that harder, faster, more intense post-covid vibe?

It definitely is. I don’t think in a bad way, because there’s some variety. I don’t think there’s any other club in the city like it. Or any other club I’ve played that’s like it, really. Especially upstairs, that’s a space I’ve never seen anywhere. That’s like a club straight out of my imagination. With the stairs coming up and the DJ booth at the top. I always thought that’s what Miami clubs are like, but then I went to Miami and that’s not what the clubs are like. So, wow, I just came up with this in my imagination and they have it here. Upstairs, It’s really fun. It’s very isolated, but in a good way. Because your friends are behind you, and there’s people going off. Shit like that is really cool— really genuine community spots. You gotta really be about the music, and about the community.

I’m excited to play downstairs [at Paragon], it’s going to be sick. I’m going to play a lot of new music. That’s another thing I like about the basement [of Paragon]. When I go, it’s so many friends who come and hang out. And also people I’ve never seen in my entire life! Which is so sick. And I feel like there’s no pressure for me to play to the crowd. And I like crowd-reading, but I want to test out these new songs. I want to jump from a really hard song to a really groovy song! Back to a really hard one! Into, like, a whole hour of groovy! And then back to hard! You can’t do that everywhere. Some people don’t vibe with that. But every single time I play Paragon, I can do what I want. I can experiment, and try out new shit. And I know the crowd will be receptive. It’s so cool, you guys are down with the weird-o shit! You know that the beat is still there, you can dance to it. And that’s fun! I hate when people go places expecting this one thing.