Al is grabbing my shoulder, shaking me. Balloons people couldn’t quite hold onto are pshh-ing around in a nearly totally dark, sodden machine room. Hakken dancing legs are in the air, the strobe reflecting off old Nike TNs. Sixty people are jumping and dancing to a huge F1 rig at the back of the room, the jump up DNB is creating a thermal wall. You can feel the separation in temperature, a sweaty, warm, misty wall you can pass through, it’s almost like the fog you cross before a boss fight in Dark Souls.
I’m at Bass Slutz, some where in South London. Bass Slutz is a queer focused rave run by a group of my closest friends. Due to the sad reality that Jump Up raves may not be safe or inviting for queers, Bass Slutz aims to invert the hyper-masculine roots of Jump Up music and reclaim the genre for queer people in a space where queer people can safely listen to it. The people who attend Bass Slutz and its sister night Gutterring directly influenced the main ideas for the Latex Maid.
Their personalities, emotions, what they have to say and the music they listen to was crucial for writing the transcript and most of the people I talked to at this rave are included in what the Latex Maid has to say. I loved the idea of capturing the energies from these raves and injecting the personalities of its inhabitants into the Latex Maid. The music that is played is also a huge influence on the music that surrounds the piece. This music is a fundamental part of the personalities of the people included within the piece, therefore a mixture of Gabber, Jump Up, Hardstyle, Country, music by crack-pot conspiracy theorists and 2000’s tiny pop anthems are all present.
After Bass Slutz I really started to feel comfortable using music I didn’t like to build the surrounding audio. I started to feel like this was incredibly important to capture the people that are at the corner stone of its personality.
I also started to really think about why, deeply. For me the Latex Maid started to take on my own personal insecurities, not only with how talk or what music I enjoy but physical anxieties I have about body and gender. This was an important step in the growth of the Latex Maid, I started feeling an emotional call and response from the project – I take a bit of you now here’s a bit of me.