Updated 2 years ago
meets Mubali
April 2005
by Ari Davidov
This is Mubali’s first “interview,” and I’m convinced it won’t be his last. This up-n-coming artist is fast becoming a force to recon with, and we couldn’t be more thrilled that it is so. As Ghreg on Earth recently demonstrated in New York, the San Francisco psytrance vibe is defined by the combined virtues of purity and maturity. What sets Mubali apart; however, is his versatile, relentlessly heavy and down right mad-trippy sound. Known to venture between 142 and 150+ bpm during his sets, Mubali just refuses to take prisoners. The drive, the intensity, the excitement of something totally fresh, it is all there for the willing and able… are you ready for the intense trance-dance experience?
So what’s going on Greg, where are you, and what’s happening all around you?!
Hey, how’s it goin? I am at work right now, just starting my day. Not too much is happening right now. All of my bosses are going to a conference in Florida, so I will have the office to myself. Yea!!!
Just so we get to know you a bit better, you’re originally from Vegas, moved out to Monterey….
Yep, I spent the first 10 years of my life in Vegas, and my parents separated. I moved with my Mom and siblings to the Monterey Peninsula and have been here ever since. Did all of my Junior High and High School here in Monterey and still haven’t left yet. Monterey is a beautiful area, just not that much nightlife if you aren’t into the bar scene.
I understand you played violin as a kid? So I guess you felt early on in life that being a music artist/performer was your calling…
I actually played Viola for about 7 or 8 years in school. I was a product of the arts in school, and will always be an advocate of having the opportunity to learn the arts at an early age. I was raised around many different types of music growing up. My mom was a big Soul and Funk fan and played a lot of music for us at a very early age. When I was 5 I used to wake up at really early hours and play my mom’s copy of Kool & The Gang’s Celebration at full blast. Growing up I was always a big fan of instrumental music, but I never thought that I would be able to actually create music till a couple of years ago.
Tell us a little bit about your impressions/experiences in the trance movement in your home region. How long have you been involved with this or that in the SF psy community?
The California Psy community is incredible. I actually was first exposed to Psychedelic Trance by Michael Liu with Illumination records. At that time I was a drum & bass dj and wasn’t too hip to trance. I went down to L.A. and went to my first all psytrance gathering and was completely blown away. I was introduced to D.J. Hidro-Ponik from San Diego and was infected by the aggressive side of psychedelic trance.
That night there were a bunch of incredible acts that to this day, I still go out and try to catch occasionally. It was at that show that I had a personal religious experience and completely tranced out. Leaving that party, I had decided that I wasn’t going to be playing d&b anymore and went searching for psychedelic trance.
Up north, the SF scene is phenomenal!!! The energy that the city provides really has helped maintain the psychedelic community here. There are tons of local artists, a plethora of incredible djs, and great gatherings both indoors and outdoor year round. I have been a psychedelic trance dj since 2001 and if it weren’t for the trance community here, I wouldn’t have had many of the opportunities that I have been given to hone my skills as both a dj and a producer.
My closest friends and I have been throwing smaller multi-genre gatherings here on the Monterey Peninsula for those who don’t know about the SF parties or can’t get all the way to the city since 2000.
I have been fortunate to see a large variety of artists perform here in Northern and Southern California and am really thankful to all the people that have gone out of their way to make these events happen for the community.
All in all, the California Psytrance community is a really strong, diverse one that really supports their local talent as well as being persistent in bringing international artists here. I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world!
What can you tell us about your crew at this time? Both you and Ghreg on Earth are now releasing music on different labels… what kind of collaboration is going on now between the members of MoE?
The Mistresses of Evil are wonderful people that really had one goal in mind, to promote the type of music that they love very much.
They really enjoy the darker end of psychedelic trance and I think that they just really wanted to let the world know the type of artists that were doing their thing in San Francisco. In that, they have totally succeeded and they still continue to do so.
They are working on their next compilation, Trauma Trance and they are really going to push the envelope with this one. In the end, the M.o.E.s are just 3 people that pooled their own personal savings because they believed in hard psychedelic music. That got other labels to pay attention to the artists that they had put out and thus got some of the artists to release their music in multiple places.
They really are not in the music for money at all, they just wanted to promote the SF sound to the world and kinda kick start the other labels into paying more attention to San Francisco and the United States as a whole.
Most of the SF artists that released on the Mistresses’ first comp Lhiannon Sidhe (pronounced “Shee”) have released music elsewhere since then. That’s one of girls’ true intentions. They weren’t in it for glory or novelty or money or anything selfish, and that’s why they are one of the true fans of the music.
Your latest tracks are: “M.o.e.” on the Lhiannon Sidhe comp. and ”Shake Lasta” is on the Mushy Mystery comp. What is your next release and when is it coming out?
I should be having quite a few different tracks coming out within the next few months. I will have a track on Insomnia Records in Russia (Skilled Awakening). I have one coming out on Trishula Records’ next compilation as well (Information Insemination).
I will have a collaboration track with Ocelot coming out on Manic Dragon later this year. Quasar (Fractal Cowboys) and I have a collaboration track that should be coming out on a local SF label sometime this year and I just got informed yesterday that I will have a track coming out on the newly resurrected Acidance label sometime this year … I am working on my debut album for Trishula Records that should be out around Octoberish…
Where have you played in the States lately and through the years? What are your impressions of the whole trance thing happening in the US?
So far I have been fortunate enough to play all over California, I’ve played at Burning Man in 2001, Portland, Oregon and Austin, TX. I am tickled to death to see psytrance popping up in places like Cleveland, Chicago, Seattle, Florida, Nashville, and the South as a whole. I think it really is another step toward uniting our community from just a local community to a national one. I really encourage anyone who wants it bad enough to start a scene in their town, start with local djs and build a community.
I notice that in the general global community we in the United States are kinda one of the last larger countries to really get the trance community going and that is something that I would like to see without it going the route of how Raves went in the past few years.
What also really excites me is to see how different cities like the different substyles of the music. I think that really adds diversity to the music and to the scene as a whole. My personal dream is to see a predominantly US artist and dj based festival with performers from around the country.
I have noticed that a lot of the larger shows have relied on big name international talent to spread its popularity, and this is good, but at the same time sometimes the national talent gets overlooked outside their state or general area.
Have you played and/or traveled much outside the US?
I haven’t been able to play or travel out of the US yet, but I should be going to Europe in the Fall to promote my album and see Europe. I am really looking forward to getting a chance to travel outside of the country. I really am a travel fanatic, but I haven’t had an opportunity to go very far yet… When I come to Cleveland in a couple of weeks, it will be my first time in Ohio and my first trip that far east in about 10 years…
A bit about your studio work, can you tell us your take on the creative process and approach in developing your tracks?
Well… For me it really depends on my mood. Each time I get in the studio I try to explore different concepts or apply knowledge that I acquire through different web forums. What usually really inspires me is some sort of event that is happening in my life and finding a way to express my feelings through the sounds that I create. I tend to start by spending a lot of time on my bassline and percussion, then I try to spend just as much time on my sound design for leads and the psychedelic sounds that add to the feel of the track.
Then I like to go back and start adding different sound effects and some atmospherics to really give the song a 3 dimensional feel to it. Lastly, I go over the track to check how each part flows and to make sure that each sound is clear and crisp. Usually every song I write doesn’t end up where it starts out at.
Those who have witnessed the mayhem you lay down when you play; all say yours is THE heavy one… what spurs you to consistently explore the dark side to such an extent?
I have always been a big fan of the more intense side of psychedelic trance, sometimes the more intense side isn’t really dark. I really just try to make my music as psychedelic as possible, while keeping the dancefloor in mind while I am writing each song.
When I started as a dj, I started out playing melodic progressive trance during the whole SF Cybertrance movement. During my short stint with that music, I actually began to dislike that style of music because it was a little too fluffy for me.
I then moved to Jump Up Jungle (Aphrodite Style Jungle) and really dug the polyrhythmic aspect of that style.
Funny enough, once Techstep started getting really big in the US, I started moving away from drum and bass because it was too dark for me at the time. I am a big bassline fanatic, but not only do I like the intensity of the bassline but I loved how there was a semi melodic quality to some of the other styles of drum and bass…
Also over the years I was introduced to hard dance music and really enjoyed a lot of aspects of that style and ended up incorporating some of that in the music that I do now.For me, the darker side of the music has a sense of intensity that I really enjoyed from both hard dance and industrial music but it lacks some of the obvious melodies that are used in some of the more melodic-full on psy. Because of the Cybertrance movement back in the late nineties and early turn of the millennium, I developed a general aversion to writing music that was heavy on the melodic aspect.
In the grand scheme of things, I don’t think my music is as dark as a lot of the stuff that is getting released nowadays. But I am a fan of the intense trance dance experience and try to balance my intensity with heavily psychedelic sounds. I really try to make unique music while still keeping the dancefloor in mind because I was a dj before I began writing music.
Personally, the intense sound of your music takes me back to some of the Russian psy, do you play any of that stuff during your dj-sets in addition to your own material?
All the time!!! I am a big fan of the intense Russian sound and tend to play Russian music in my dj sets. I also am a big fan of a lot of the heavier sounds that are coming out of England, Israel and France.
Likely none of us have heard your Live PA yet. Please give us a preview of what you’re going to be doing in addition to your dj set.
I have a lot of new material to play as well as several collaboration tracks. I like using a few software synthesizers to play live riffs and sounds as well as drum loops and prerecorded synthlines that I can play on the fly to add more and more layers on top of what ever else is going on. I do admit that I still am learning on performing live and I tend to try to do new things each time I play out.
My live set is continuous and you barely get a chance to rest during the set. I really like my live sets to be very similar to my tracks, relentless. I don’t want to be one of those press play and mime live acts, so I try to devote a lot of energy into making sure my live set is the best of my ability.I spent a lot of time watching artists do their live sets and that really formulated what I wanted to do and not do for my live sets. One of the best lives I have seen and that really assisted me in what I do for my lives now is Scorb. That man is amazing live.
So this is the first time you’re playing in the Mid-West, correct? What comes to mind when you think of your upcoming gig in Ohio?
Yeah, this will be my first time in the Mid-West, and I am really excited to see how the crowd is going to be and what they are going to be into. I will be spending a bit of time before my set checking out how they respond to the different acts. I am really looking forward to spreading the SF sound to the Mid-West and turning some of the local djs onto some of the unknown SF artists. I also am really interested in hearing some of the local performers and taking some of their music back home to play in SF. I wholeheartedly believe that these are some of the first steps to uniting the United States psytrance scene, and that can bring nothing but good to everyone here.
Thank you Mubali!
Thank You!!! Hope to see you guys on a dancefloor soon!
Mubali’s web page: mubali.tripod.com
More on Mubali’s Ohio appearance at www.goaheadproductions.com
