Hailing from the mighty north, we’ve got DJ Drexel the Code in the spotlight this week! His late night beats are well-informed and mixes are hand-crafted – you’re not going to hear anything like it anytime, anywhere else. Get to know him!

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DJ: Drexel the Code

Hometown: Helena, MT. Big Sky livin’!

Show title: Something lame that I came up with on the spot when the dudes at Programming came a callin’.

Show time and day: Thursday, 2-4AM, Fall 2015

Show description: Slick electronic music, slick enough to shine yo purrty lil soul with. I focus on genres and moods more often than artists…techy drum and bass, deep dubstep, Berlin techno.

How long have you been a DJ? Since I cut my hands on a pair of Technics in 2010. Big ups to Alistair for teaching me!!

Top 5 albums of 2015:

Commodo, Gantz, and Kahn – Volume 1
Breaking Ground Vol 4 off of Peer Pressure
No Drama EP off of Critical Music
µ20 (20 Years of Planet Mu) off of Planet Mu
Fokuz 55 off of Fokuz Recordings

What made you want to be a DJ?

Once I came to Eugene for grad school, I didn’t have anywhere I could play music for people. Every once in awhile I would take out my equipment and spin for myself at my house, but that’s only so much fun. Gotta have an audience so I can feed off of peeps’ energy, then send it back to them – feedback loop status. I would get invited by former students to play at their birthday or Halloween parties, but I don’t really play stereotypical “college party” “music,” so it was kind of a bummer…people just wouldn’t get into it. So now I finally get to spin the kind of music I want to without having to worry! Plus the timeslot I have is perfect for my friends over in Japan to listen on their commute home from work 😀

Tell us your favorite moment/memory as a DJ:

I’m certainly not a veteran DJ, but I’ve had so many good times playing music. For strangers at Burning Man or Montana’s infamous mountain parties, or for a close knit group of friends for an intimate birthday party. Nights and days, dawns and dusks full of great music, great speakers, and great people. Of all of them I have to say that every time I spin music with my older brother, it’s totally out of this world. We have pretty different tastes in music, but hell, we’re blood through and through, and it shows in the synergy of our sets. Nearly every track has our eyes lit up and smiles fit to burst from our faces.

What makes your show unique?

I try to spin live every week, either with my CDJs or with my slowly growing vinyl collection. Heavy lifting to get everything to the radio studio, maybe, but there’s just something magical about cranking up the studio speakers and dancing like a madman with such beautiful technology at my fingertips. I also try my best to have a totally new batch of music every week, which means I get to spend a couple of evenings digging around the internet for new releases, old favorites, unknown gems. I even diverted most of my alcohol budget to acquiring new music…and that was an awesome decision.

If you could play only one album on the radio for the rest of your DJ career, what would it be and why?

That sounds like a perfect description of Hell! No album (or song, or artist, or genre) is worth listening to for that long. Music is ephemeral by nature, meaning that it’s contextual; those contexts are born from my own life experience. I guess if I turned into a stone gargoyle, totally static, then I would think about giving a different answer.

How did you come up with your DJ name and/or show name?

Moving out here from Montana was a huge step in my life, and circumstances convinced me to pick up yet another nickname for myself (I have four or five now – my tombstone is gonna be packed. My old DJ name was Trench Dweller). There’s a small town near the MT-ID border called Drexel, and the look of those letters placed just so fascinates me. It became “Drexel the Code” for my show so as to evoke a certain neuromantic vibe. Cyberpunk and posthumanism are two sets of ideas and practices that influence my life every day, every time I put on headphones and listen to the music I love.

Dream guest to have on your show?

Probably Lucy, the label owner of Stroboscopic Artifacts. He did an interview for RA Exchange, and his approach to making music is fascinating. He has the vocabulary to describe electronic music (techno in his case) in both metaphysical and phenomenological terms. Interviewing him – thinking about it has my brain-mouth salivating.

Soundcloud:

Sample playlist:

Visionist – “First Love”
Future Funk Squad – “The Colony” (Evil Nine Remix)
Martyn nytraM – “Hellfire Club”
Dutta – “Changes”
Hyroglifics – “Visceral”
Klute – “Hell Hath No Fury”
Rumbleton – “Infinite Range of Awareness”
Kromestar – “Rhythm On My Mind”
Muk – “Ditto”
Bollocks Deejays – “Worth It” (Parakord Remix)

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Thanks, Drexel the Code! If you’re interested in being the next featured DJ of the week, contact music@kwvaradio.org.