NYMPHYPNOTIK SEX TAPE exclusive

SPECIAL CREAM & BIG NICOTENE INTERVIEW

Please introduce yourselves
We’re Special Cream and Big Nicotene. We met back in 1993, when house music was reaching its initial heights in New York and Chicago. But we were 6 back then so had to settle for the playground over the Paradise Garage. It’s a deep, mystical connection.

Tell us about the mix and the night it’s promoting.
We’re putting on a party this coming Friday and wanted to put together a mix that would hype it up. Our mission statement is ‘trax without borders’ and the mix as well as each of the DJs playing on the night represent the desire to go beyond the limitations of genre in favor of vibes, while evoking no kind of audible disjuncture between individual cuts.  Basically, we seek to eliminate a sense of difference or otherness between music from different parts of the world and from different ‘types’ of people, to acknowledge that we are living in a moment wherein complementary sounds are being produced in Durban and Green Point, cross-cut by London, San Francisco, Toronto etc. On this mix we try to put this across immediately. The beauty lies in the fact that every track speaks to the other, a clap, a snare, a lyric, a shimmery synth, with no distinctions made based on generic convention. There are also a couple of older tracks on there, which slice through time as well as space.

Who’s lined up and why?
Altered Natives is an artist who embodies the kind of sonic limitlessness that we enjoy and admire. He’s created his own canon and the quality of his productions combined with his percussive singularity make him one of the best producers around right now. The entire Night Slugs label has helped define 2010 thus far for both of us. Bok Bok, Girl Unit and Jam City are each so incredibly unique, yet equally capable of stunning listeners to a spiritual level, every time. Due to their absolute and constant innovation, it’s challenging to find words that can articulate what the Night Slugs crew have to offer, which is immense and invaluable to say the least. We’re really exited about Lady Rocha ; a DJ from Huddersfield whose mixtapes promise a absolutely buzzing party set of funky in all its current permutations. Optimum is set to kill it this season – his Planet Mu EP is coming out exactly 10 days after Nymphypnotik and his set promises some definite hard hitters, but as a producer he also builds amazing hypnotic tracks out of key sounds from 90s house hardware fused with a 2010 club aesthetic. He bangs.

What will make it different from the others?
Nymphypnotik will take place in a West African-owned night club called Jubilee on 1 Peckham High Street, SE15 5EB. It is the first time Jubilee have opened their doors to this sort of event, and we feel very lucky to be involved in such an establishment, one that provides a kind of hub for the mostly immigrant locals in the area. The management are lovely and have been enthusiastic throughout the planning process. Part of the ‘trax without borders’ philosophy feeds in to clientele too. We didn’t want to have a party that catered to specific kind of over-fed listener, we wanted to have a party that was more in dialogue with parties of the pre-internet era, where euphoria staged in clubs was a lot more common, and the club was an innately physical part of life, a release rather than a source of tension. Jubilee is the prime spot for our ambition. No frills, no pretense, an element of risk sure but the rewards will be ten-fold.

What’s with the name?
The name of the night is a portmanteau comprised of both of us. Special Cream is the nymph bit.  The figure of the nymph in classical mythology incarnates the qualities of the music that moves us the most. Nymphs are beautiful, libidinous, ethereal, immortal and often hard to track down. I (Special Cream) always knew I’d make my own beats one day, since I was a little girl. My dream would be to express this succinctly in my own productions. This sense of ethereality and transience, no matter how hard a kick drum, no matter how much a snare smashes through a speaker, to maintain a kind of immortal or divine ecstasy, much like a sea nymph appearing for a 4 minutes, then vanishing. Obviously I have a lot of learning and hard work to do, but I’m also blessed to be surrounded by artists who I admire, just as much as I admire Horace or Sappho. Lol. Nymphmusic. The ‘hypnotik’ bit comes from Big Nicotene – its an attempt to describe whatever that thing is that locks you into a track, joins up your head and your guts. In short, sends you mad for a bit. Its traceable in big room bangers, chugging house and go wild rhythm trax. Its the quality that makes the moment you hear it a special/spiritual/trancedent moment – we want friday 17th to go on like that. For reals. So now you know.