Interview with Shane Aungst – DJ behind the Face The Beat 5 Megamix
The past weekend we launched a mega mix of “Face The Beat: Session 5” done by Seattle (United States) based DJ Shane Aungst. The 1 hour, 33 minutes and 21 seconds long mix features a total of 23 tracks (with the proceedings equally going to charity). If you were surprised by the quality of the mega mix, then it’s no coincidence as Shane Aungst isn’t exactly a newbie to the industrial scene. Also as a DJ he is rather prolific, or what do you think of the 168 DJ sets he posted on Mixcloud!
Time we asked Shane a few questions!
SL: Shane, you’re not exactly a newbie in the industrial music scene…
S: I would say my background in music started around 1984/85ish. I was only fifteen at the time and had found my way into a number of Seattle area post punk clubs during that time. I jumped head first into it all, the clubs, the chemicals, the music, all of it.
In the early 90s I met Michael Wimer at Musicland where we worked together. Mike had been working on music on his own and asked if I could sing (which I never had), we ended up with noxious emotion and I played with noxious from 1993 to 1999. We recorded a few albums, toured a few times and got to play with a lot of amazing bands from the 90s.
After leaving the bands behind, I DJ’d a number of nights around the Seattle area from around 2001 onward. I had a couple of nights at the Seattle club Noc Noc, where I was mainly playing a lot of goth top 40 classics back in those days. I also had this weekly 80s post punk night; I did that for over a decade plus a number of guest spots around the city. However around 2014, I started working at one of the top edm clubs in Seattle for about three years. It was quite the musical education for me. I was only working as bar staff, but I had a front row seat to all the top edm acts and producers and really got to listen and watch all the top names of techno, house, trance, etc.
It was during this time that I had a lot of inspiration and knew I wanted to take some of what these people were doing and translate it in my own way to industrial.
SL: How did you get the idea to make a megamix? It’s the first time someone did that for this compilation series actually.
S: I’ve always enjoyed the Face the Beat series and with the release of the newest Face the Beat session 5, I knew I would have a lot of good material to choose from and I just decided to do it.
This is actually the fourth such mix I’ve done, the first one started with Electrosound, it originally was going to be released as a compilation but the project fell through as an official release and I ended up posting it to my mixcloud account. I also did one for the Russian Dark Community compilation as well as well as one for Ray of Genius of Nefarious. Ray had asked me to do a remix a few weeks before he passed earlier this year, we had had been talking almost daily about the remix and life in general and it hit me hard when he passed and I wanted to do one for him and of course now this one.
SL: How did you get to choose the 23 tracks that are featured in this mix?
S: This was the hardest part as there was over five hours of music to choose from and I ended up with around ninety minutes of music. I just went through all the songs one night, and put aside all the ones that had the right feel for me. I’m a big fan of harsh electronic music and tend to play a lot of aggrotech, but for this mix it was the song “Burn (Feat. C0r3 C1ty)” from Purple Fog Side that really reached out and grabbed me and I built my sampling and the mix around that song.
SL: Where do you get your loops and samples of old school material from that you use in your remix sets?
S: In the last couple years I’ve become somewhat obsessed with sampling. I’ll dig through movies, TV shows, music, interviews, documentaries, beatport (loops), almost anything I can get my hands on as well as making some of my own loops and samples.
SL: You don’t really go for the easy way when you build up sets. What’s the basic idea when you start a set?
S: My whole work process is a bit chaotic and in my head. I spend a couple nights a week just working on sampling, its normally during this time that I find something I like and tend to spin off and play with whatever sample/theme I’m using and build on it from there.
SL: Do you always put that much work in it?
S: Yes and no, it depends on the project, but all the original mixes yes, but you will also find a lot of live sets, collection mixes (collection of edits/remixes I’ve done), but yeah its a lot of work.
SL: You are also working on own material? How is that progressing?
S: A lot slower than I had hoped, I’m always frustrated at my learning curve and I’ve been juggling a lot of projects, its something I still plan on doing but I’m just not there yet.
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