One thing that keeps electronic music intriguing is the endless evolution of new genres and sounds. Landing on our radar now is a fresh sound showcased by the legendary Australian bass music bush rave initiator, Jon Moreno’s release under his new alias, iLLUCID, for his debut on Grand Alliance Music. One listen through, and you will know why ‘Polarity’ is an instant classic for iLLUCID and why it will shape the signature sound of the newly minted label.
“’Polarity’ is: A reflection on the polarity of my past and present direction as an artist – paying homage my roots in glitch hop and funk, taking that classic “soul fueled” musical palette and combining it with my new found halftime/left field sound. To me this release shows my old fans that the sounds of my old alias “20Hz” aren’t completely gone, just reborn”, shares iLLUCID.
“This song is reminiscent of a Gramatik x Koan Sound collaboration, or maybe even if GRiZ and The Glitch Mob magically came together.” – Grand Alliance Music
Alongside the release we connected with the Perth based iLLUCID as well as the Grand Alliance Music’s label head, Will Glazier, also known as Willdabeast from Washington State. The insight we gathered about the sound design of halftime / left field music and the underground rave scene Down Under as well as the campfire-like story Jon shared about starting the biggest outdoor raves in the Australian bush and a brand new announcement from Will is plenty to sink your teeth into.
iLLUCID on the Record
What are some must attend Australian festivals or events?
This is a long list – every year I burn up through all my annual leave (and then some) to attend and play at some awesome events:
Over on the east coast there’s a flourishing scene full of incredible artists, curators and innovators. In recent years my favourites to attend have been Mushroom Valley, Earth Frequency Festival and very recently Esoteric.
All of them have been incredibly curated and had wildly diverse line ups. Australia, being so remote, is a blessing and a curse when it comes to festival line ups – we don’t quite get the star studded line ups you’d see at Shambhala or Electric Forest, per say, but in a way it’s a blessing – because it’s created this rich and diverse national music scene where local talent is a huge part of our big festivals and it’s a big part of why our music communities are so interconnected, despite being so widespread.
A sneaky up and coming festival that’s a real gem is Archaic Gathering in June, the guys there are really into something great and I can’t recommend it highly enough if you are looking to dip your toe into the Australian festival scene.
Here in Western Australia – it’s been a long time coming but we finally have some great events getting off the ground. Blossom Festival is excellent and a big part of the festival calendar, our own festival Rain Dance is coming into its 3rd year and is very unique in that it’s a 3 day bass music festival, something I’ve only seen in Sydney previously on a smaller scale.
In amongst that though there’s a rich culture of illegal bush parties which really are the driving force behind the culture and provide the roots where all these great festivals came from. In short – We are blessed with countless amazing events here in Australia and I’m very grateful to be able to share my music across such incredible artistic platforms.
For the novice in understanding sound design, can you please explain how you create your halftime/left field sound?
In short – you start with drum and bass, and you cut the speed in half. People will often ask, what is “halftime,” and then I ask in return if they can think of a drum-and-bass track that has a “dubstep” breakdown they love? Well, that’s halftime.
The fundamentals are similar, a lot of the sound design is there but because of the slower tempo your bass design has more room to breathe between beats, giving you a lot more freedom with sound design. The swung out beats and boom bap head nodding grooves draw a lot on hip hop too.
If you are looking to get into it – my recommendation is to watch a tutorial about making hip hop drum beats and grooves and then watch a tonne of videos on drum and bass (particularly neuro) sound design and make sure you LEGALLY download a big library of drum breaks.
Can you share some of the words from the vocals you are warping into ‘Polarity’? What are the final words being spoken at the end of the track from?
The vocal chops are just a sample I found that kind of fit the vibe, “pick up the mic” also weirdly resonated with me because this track is the first where I felt I’d really found my voice as an artist.
Weirdly – the outro vocal sample is from “Undercover Brother” which is the furthest thing from a profound movie but a really good laugh, after rebranding from an alias that was all about playing crowd pleasers it felt like it was a perfect clip to end on for my first big release.
I don’t know if watching the movie will make it more or less nonsensical but it is hilarious once given context.
Can you share a little about the beginnings of PuLp GLitchin’ Records and the rise of one of the biggest outdoor raves in Australia that you helped curate?
Ah wow. I don’t know where to begin and where the statute of limitations ends.
A few friends and myself started putting on bush parties (outdoor raves) when I was 16, at the time my place was a bit of a trap house and my weed dealer at the time moved in and was always trying to convince me to go to a bush doof with them but I had 0 interest in listening to Psytrance for 72 hours. I’d been getting into bedroom DJing and sending people my mixtapes but the replies were always the same – “sorry bro it’s a Trance party”
We had a music blog at the time under the same name – Pulp Glitchin which was an idea that came to us when watching Pulp Fiction. I got sick of getting knocked back for sets and when I was like hey let’s throw a bass music bush doof I was shocked to have so many people raise their hands to help.
That was the beginning of it all and it never really changed much. It’s always been about the music for me and I’ve always been good at asking the right people for help.
We did one and we were hooked, we did another and another and booked a bunch of interstate artists and eventually connected with some tour managers who couldn’t find anyone else in Perth who’d take shows.
The gigs got bigger and we booked bigger and bigger acts, we’ve had Mr Bill, Clozee, The Freestylers, Spoonbill, Skope/Malux, Father Funk and so many more play for us at these super illegal bush parties – it’s a spin out just to think back on.
Plus, the number of times I’ve gone to sign a contract and had to call the agent to tell them the venue address doesn’t actually exist, it was just a long list of directions to the middle of the bush with no fixed address, is also nuts.
We paid cash up front and if it got shut down, that was on us – so they trusted us and our shady gigs and what were once small bush parties almost became these fully fledged festivals we’d set up under cover of night hoping park rangers didn’t get there before the first 100 patrons so that by the time they DID find us they didn’t have the manpower to shut it down.
We always had this goal of going legal but without a ton of financial backing it’s HARD out there, we’ve lost way more money than we made but holy hell – it’s a bit cliche, but the friends we’ve made along the way, is genuinely the most enriching life experience that money can’t buy.
We got there in the end, we’ve been legal for a few years and just do the one 3 day festival – Rain Dance Festival. Pulp Glitchin went from a blog to an illegal party promotions company and is now a record label focussing on the music that is the lifeblood of the gigs.
Looking back some of the biggest parties we did were pretty close to 2k attendees, with no security, no medics outside of volunteers and in 10 years we never had a death or any serious medical complications. (Besides me actually – I’ve had 2 very near death experiences, both bug related)!
Those 10 years will forever be the golden days, and the lack of problems, fights or issues is why we push and push to build up and contribute to the scene here in Perth – I genuinely believe we have one of the most amazing audience bases around the world and the gratitude we receive from the people we’ve touched and connected with is the fuel for the fire that just won’t stop burning.
The label has been quiet for awhile, as we took a breather to focus on our own musical endeavors, but keep an eye out for a relaunch soon with some awesome new music and some really cool ideas that combine our passions for audio and visual art forms.
What are 5 tracks at the forefront of electronic music?
I have to list albums here and not just individual songs because context is key, no single song for me is at the forefront but certain bodies of work just demonstrate that someone really is ahead of the game. A lot of this is old stuff that you wouldn’t believe is as old as it is.
The Glitch Mob – Drink the Sea (the pink Floyd album of EDM in my opinion)
Edit – Crying Over Pros for No Reason (almost 15 years on and still ahead of the times)
Fabian Mazur – Dusk (Fabian is so far ahead of the curve with his sound, he’s a tastemaker, has exceptional groove and this album is such a mix of styles and genres but is still so coherent and unidentifiable HIS sound, something I hope to achieve one day)
Skrillex’ recent album – a bit of a cop out, but it’s undeniable and it’s probably been the most influential EDM album since Scary Monsters nice sprites.
And I’ve genuinely got to put Eputty’s upcoming album in here. The way the album ties together both dynamically/sonically and thematically is incredible. It’s a body of work that many established artists would lose their marbles too and to see it come from such a young artist and a close friend is a huge inspiration and I recommend everyone listen through once it drops.
Favorite instrument?
Can I say Serum?
Q&A with Will Glazier – Founder, Grand Alliance Music
How has your traditional music education helped share your current electronic music production?
Music has always been part of who I am, even since I was first crawling on the ground. It’s just inside me, an unavoidable beautiful, unsolvable and necessary enigma. It’s something that I could always count on, something that was always there, unwavering even when I was. I was always involved in it, yes, all throughout grade school in a formal setting and beyond. Regardless, anytime I returned to music, it would offer me an alternate reality to escape to/from, and this ‘otherworldly experience’ is ubiquitous and translates across many platforms and genres. This is the beauty and power of music and how its own language can help (hopefully) heal, nourish, fulfill or deepen our introspective understanding or allow us to relax, focus, etc. It’s what we need it to be and it serves its purpose accordingly.
This is how I see and experience music and why it’s so meaningful to me. So regardless of what style, classification, genre or approach, I think this kind of thinking allows us to appreciate, utilize, even traverse the boundaries in music much more universally. Although I studied music in school and throughout college and university in and out of the classroom, and eventually digging deeper into the theory, production, recording and engineering side of it, I could always seem to lean back in and appreciate and rely on these deep intrinsic feelings and values I’ve mentioned above.
That being said, the experience gained thereafter was absolutely necessary in being able to launch this label and therefore share this great music with you all, or at least to try to do so in an optimal manner. It’s a specialty curated process we truly believe in here, that first starts with great people, and then features their amazingly talented, unique and hopefully impactful music.
It’s just our jobs to try to take it there. But it was only through years and years of tangible work, failure, and experience (doing it ourselves or with others) to see how the processes were done (repeatedly). It’s my hope to see these songs go far. It’s tough to see them get released and essentially fade away into nothingness. There’s so many songs being released daily you have to find a way to do it right.
My time with Willdabeast and other touring acts, releasing on labels like Gravitas Recordings, Muti Music, Jumpsuit Records, Westwood Recordings, Otodayo Records and more, have given us so much insight into how to make a successful release and how to make and run an artist-centric focused label. Because hey- that’s what we are! This is how we approach it. How we would like to be handled and dealt with so hopefully it all works out, and it seems so far!
How did you discover iLLUCID?
Great questions. We have lots of ways to submit to our label on Grand Alliance Music but certainly the preferred method is on our Submission Forms which is via the Google system. It’s on our link tree, etc and soon our website will be launching to make it even easier, but this way all the information gets put into a spreadsheet and our whole team can instantly see, share, hear and organize it most importantly.
But, this one came from a different source. We often get recommendations as well, and of course we’ve been a big fan of what they’ve been doing down under so it was no surprise to hear some fire coming out of their camp, but this much was truly impossible to ignore. Our friends Dystracted helped line this one up, they’ve been a giant help to us here and as people, friends and just supporters in general. Just to help seaway into your next question they will be releasing their EP with us here in the Spring on Grand Alliance Music and it is truly something else. The way they keep leveling up is wildly unmatched.
Can you give us a peek into your vault? Who will be releasing music on Grand Alliance Music next? Can you please describe the direction of the new label?
Oh wow yes we have such an incredibly packed schedule ahead… I truly just can’t believe it. I mean I can but let’s put it this way, this label started as a fun project between buds, it was a way to help foster new music and draw out ideas or WIPs and encourage my friends to release and get some of their hidden gems out there and have them have a platform to do so. I started working with them hand in hand more, fine tuning mixes or encouraging them to submit to mastering (oh I have a mastering guy), realizing I have a couple art contacts too, it’s like wait a minute I have all these tools in play, are we maybe onto something? I think so!
In our short few months of operations since the start of the year, we have gone from just a few releases to an overwhelming number of emails a day. In a good way. It’s overwhelming and beautiful and absolutely shocking and incredible. The response and beauty and chaos that has ensued is just wild. So yes, do we have plans for you! Damn right we do and we are so excited.
We have our next few months planned out, if not even longer. This label has got its work cut out for us! But that’s okay we have expanded from a 2 team party already to a 5+ including several designers and creatives. This is the collective mentality and we’re so inclusive we’re still open and looking for more help.
So much of this is tentative so it’s hard to speak on, but also very much in the works because like I said our first step in this business idea is relationship building and making sure we are working with great like-minded people. So that much is sure…
What I do know is what’s immediately next and I will absolutely spill the beans just for you.
This is the first time I have said this out loud and you’re the only person to know this so far other than the artists and our team. Well I guess anyone reading it now too… Here goes, we have been diligently working behind the scenes to completely blow this label up. Again, in a good way. In the way you, I, everyone, sees it.
We feel we don’t want to JUST be confined into one genre or anything, we also wanted a way to expand not only on our sound but our collection as well. What better way than to RELEASE A COMPILATION. Due out next month or two so keep an eye out. IT’S PACKED. Just absolutely packed full of great tunes and great artists:
If we weren’t confident the Illucid ‘Polarity’ track was going to be a signature sound for us already, we truly feel this comp is going to put this company on the map. We have been working on it essentially since day 1. There are so many amazing artists and songs. In an attempt to open up how you think of our label, by spreading out our sound and style and even aesthetic. We have got some bigger names, a couple friends of ours, we have some people who haven’t released much music before and really deserve an opportunity. I’ve been working hand in hand with some of them just like how we started.
We really think it’s going to blow you away in it’s quality and variation, it’s here to take you on an incredible ride; it’s got chill music, it’s got hype music, it has 140, it has drum n bass made out of cats…..
This thing is 20 (ish) tracks of just pure flame. Ranging from domestic and regional artists to international. It’s something that truly speaks to us as business owners, music fiends and aficionados and people…on all levels. This has been hand curated by myself and our team and we are dedicated to bringing you the very best in bass music here.
After that, we already have several more singles and a couple EPs and some mixes planned as well, so the year is packed already but we’re still open for submissions!
