Rye Wax Mix Series #1: Gateway To Zen

Rye Wax
Mar 16, 2016
7 min read

LISTEN HERE:

https://www.mixcloud.com/ryewax/rye-wax-mix-series-1-gateway-to-zen/

Welcome, true believers, to the inaugural issue of the Rye Wax mix series. A new sequence dedicated to the most intrepid recordings created by our favourite adventurers from across the musical milieu. We’re going to hear a lot of things along the way - unknown things from the far flung reaches of space and time, lost souls and new discoveries. By the eye of Agamotto, we implore you - Stay a while, listen!

For the first mix, we enlisted the help of Tom Whatmore, a member of the Techno cadre known as Gateway To Zen. As GTZ, they have presided over some of the finest sessions in the South East and have just returned from turning copious heads at Bloc weekender. Without further a fanfare, here’s Tom:

Hello and welcome Tom. Could you give the uninitiated a run down of who (or what) Gateway to Zen is?

I’m Tom Whatmore and I run Gateway To Zen alongside Charlie Leahy, Diskomo Oblast and Nick Craddock. It’s a club night born from 4 friends who love dancing to Techno but were feeling pretty jaded (no Sunday clubbing based pun intended) with most of the opportunities to do so in London. Seemed like nearly all the options were huge and expensive events with tons of massive DJs playing super short sets. We wanted to try and put on nights that were small, cheap and would get people down for the vibe rather than big names on the line up. So far it’s going pretty well and we have been lucky enough to have some fantastic DJs down to play, and great crowds down to dance.

And for those poor souls who haven't experienced a night with Gateway to Zen, what have they missed and what can they expect?

Techno is the guiding principle, but between the four of us and our various guests we’ve covered a pretty wide range. If you’ve never made it down then so far you’ve missed The Bells, 25 minute ambient records, a member of bar staff becoming infuriated with a Delia Derbyshire track (“This isn’t even music for fuck’s sake!”), 140+bpm acid electro rinse outs, hypnotic belters, 90’s breakbeat hardcore, deeply uncool 2005 mnml, The Bells, endless fist pumping, roof hammering, frenzied yelping, dance floor hugging, ecstatic pogoing, and also The Bells. The good news is that there is likely to be plenty more of all the above at our future parties. Except the angry barman, we don’t put on nights at that venue any more.

Bloc was this weekend, which is why we're writing these questions from the prone position under the bins behind Morrisons. You guys played the 7-10 shift Saturday morning, How was it? Any other highlights?

Think it went well thanks! It wasn't exactly a technical tour de force, but there was a really good energy in there and lots of people getting suitably wild all the way to the end. Can't ask for much more than that really. Big thanks to everyone who stuck with us. Also really enjoyed Ben UFO, Objekt, Jeff Mills and DJ Deeon in the pub on Sunday.

GTZ has garnered a lot of praise for it's inclusivity and safer space initiative. We feel like this should be obvious but it bears repeating as much as possible, what are your policies and how can people help?

In theory it is extremely straightforward, treat everyone there with respect, don’t harass people, try your best not recreate all the shitty social structures of everyday life. It does seem obvious, but it’s been “obvious” for a while and there’s still a pervasive toxic culture around the music and clubs we care about and are involved with. So it seems like merely acknowledging that the status quo sucks isn’t enough.

With a lot of smaller “underground” nights there’s often a tendency to think that it’s a “good” crowd and people being homophobic lads / groping women on the dancefloor / whatever other dickhead behaviour is just a problem at massive commercial clubs. Unfortunately that’s just not true and this stuff is everywhere. On the opposite end of the scale a few nights have recognised that there’s a problem but that they can’t actually magically create a space without it so have basically thrown their hands up and said “that’s just clubs for you ¯\_(ツ)_/¯”. Neither approach is very helpful.

The reason we’ve made our policy public and talked about it a fair bit is not so much in the hope that otherwise awful people will read it and decide not to act like a dickhead for the night, but more for everyone else. To the people who don’t experience the worse parts of dancefloor (and life) behaviour it’s a reminder that yes, this stuff is happening, even at your favourite night with your favourite DJ playing (yes at GTZ too). To the people who already know all too well about these things, I hope it’s a signal that if you’d rather not put up with that shit for a few hours we’ll try and help out as much as we can.

In terms of what your average attendee can do, try and support each other, check if people are ok and take them seriously if they aren’t, even if you don’t understand why they’re having a problem. Hardest bit: please consider your own behaviour too!

If you’re on the receiving end of anything that is making you uncomfortable or feel unsafe then you should do whatever you think is appropriate and we will back you up. If that’s ignoring them then ignore them, if it’s telling them to fuck off do that, if it’s not sharing a space with them then we’ll chuck them out. It’s tricky to have hard and fast rules because social interactions don’t really work like that, so I think the most important thing is to be flexible and do our best to resolve the situation how the person involved would like. Please don’t beat anyone up though, even if they are terrible.

Now that we know who you are, let's talk records, because what else is there to talk about? Which labels / artists are you keeping a keen eye on this year?

There’s absolutely loads of artists and labels I’ll always check out if I see a new release, but not really anything that I’d describe as buy on sight. If I think about the records I’ve picked up recently, the clear majority have actually been by artists I’ve never heard of, on equally unknown labels. There’s nothing as satisfying as giving a random record a chance and hearing something amazing. It does mean you have to work your way through a lot of rubbish, but frankly I was doing that already. It’s unavoidable. So at the risk of sounding unbearably trite and cheesy I’m gonna try and use my beady eyes less and my, errr, bat-like? (superior metaphors on a postcard please) ears more.

Tell us about the mix

It’s all coming from a Techno place (to my mind anyway), but none of it is really straight ahead, proper Techno bangers. So you’ve got ambient noises, electro, a few dubby bits, some pretty tough acid, bit of bleepy minimal, an STL record, sort of Tech House, all woven together in a vaguely coherent manner. Oh, and it’s all about 120bpm, because why not? I don’t think a single mix could even try and be representative of our whole night, so I just wandered off doing my own thing as usual. Was recorded in my living room with mostly vinyl, and a bit of Serato for tunes that are too horrifyingly expensive to own. PS Warp can you repress the early Autechre albums please, oh and Lifestyles Of The Laptop Café while you’re at it. Cheers.

Your next party is actually at our other favourite London club, Corsica Studios, on April 22nd. Any hints as to what to expect there? When are you next coming back to the basement?

Corsica studios is one of the absolute best clubs in London, but it loses a lot of the magic when it's so full you can barely dance. It's almost impossible to regulate when you have 2 rooms going but most people want to see whoever is playing in one of them, so when we were offered the opportunity to do a room 1 only night we obviously said yes. So the plan is to limit tickets to a comfortable dancing capacity all night, and then just do our thing. Techno, no nonsense, that soundsystem, room to move. Simple. (Tickets here)

Our next party is Rye Wax is going to be all the way on the 22nd July, and we'll have Errorbeauty down to play some serious electro. If you can't wait all that time you can check out a guest mix she did for our radio show last night here: https://www.mixcloud.com/RadarRadioLDN/gateway-to-zen-w-special-guest-errorbeauty-15th-march-2016/

Any shout-outs before you go?

Shout out to all the Rye Wax crew who have made running our nights there a real pleasure, the Make Me guys who are in the middle of an amazing bunch of nights at Corsica Studios right now (not just the ones they’ve got us to play at either!), the Siren crew, Universe of Tang, RCU, all the GTZ regulars, and anyone who has come and had a dance at any of our parties.

[mixcloud cannot be embedded here right now - we'll figure it out]

MIX: https://www.mixcloud.com/ryewax/rye-wax-mix-series-1-gateway-to-zen/

TRACKLIST

Lueke - Tape 5 [Antinote]

Stephan G & The Persuader - Kaos (Version 1) [Svek]

Patricia - Foie Gras [Spectral Sound]

Cub - CU1 [Cub]

Terrence Dixon - Building Blocks [Background]

DJ Hyperactive - Slow Moving [Drop Bass Network]

Stewart Walker - Amateur Surrealism [Matrix]

Jakosuodin - Venttiili [Pulssi]

Peel MD - Monster [Börft]