“Music is such an abstract listening form, your mind needs to fill in gaps“
“Sabrina Spellman was mixing dope beats in the other realm, which she recorded onto her inherited heirloom tape machine, made with her carboot-sale drum machines and charity-shop synthesizers” So runs the legend and origin story of DJ Sabrina the Teenage DJ, the anonymous producer with a penchant for warping 90s samples into nostalgia-rich, tearjerking electronic music.
Several albums, hundreds of tracks and a 1975 collaboration later, her latest LP Destiny arrived earlier this year in all its 4 hour + running time glory. One of the most innovative and original electronic artists to emerge in the last few years, I was very pleased to welcome her to TPW for a chat…
To start off I’d like to ask something I hope you don’t take the wrong way – what on earth possessed you to release a four hour album?
Well, I wanted to beat Charmed’s length cause everyone prefers the longer albums (they’re more popular among listeners) compared to the shorter albums (they’re less popular among listeners) and I wanted to find a way to supplant Charmed as it was still very popular even after three albums released since lol! I also had a lot of songs finished and they all worked too well for me to cut them (I think I only cut two songs eventually from the album).
From a purely technical point of view, how long did it take you to make Destiny? And was it always conceived of as an album, or have the tracks just built up over time?
Well until around February it was going to be the second part of a three album set. I originally wanted to release three albums in one day, and Bewitched would have been one of them, but between last year’s heatwave and exhaustion I just condensed what I had into Bewitched, and all the better for it, I think. Destiny was originally going to be the second part of the set, but once I had the title track, I realized it needed to be its own huge album. Destiny is essentially what album 2 of the set and album 4 would have been combined, and album 3 of the set is still to be mixed (I have most of the songs for it lol!)
Also – a point of order. I’ve seen DJSTTDJ various referred to as “she” and “them” in different sources. For the record: is there more than one of you involved in the project?
Sabrina and Salem, of course! 😀
A common theme that runs through so much of the music I love is to do with nostalgia, which at times can be completely overwhelming, in both positive and negative ways. Why do you think that music can evoke this so powerfully?
I listen to mostly nostalgic music all the time, so it’s kinda normalized for me, and I guess that feeling or sound or whatever just accidentally comes out naturally, it’s never forced and it’s just a byproduct of my own listening I guess! I almost exclusively enjoy nostalgic tv shows, movies and video games and they inspire me by how they feel; the comfortable and exciting energy of something familiar is always far more encouraging to me than something that feels empty and hollow, void of color or closeness. I think music is such an abstract listening form, your mind needs to fill in gaps, just as 24 frames or low-res graphics make you see a more nostalgic version through your own projection. Music and books are the only one-dimensional mediums of entertainment and require the mind to add the other dimensions.
Pitchfork reviewed Destiny very positively, calling it “a celebration of the transportive possibilities of dance music.” Although this transformative quality is of course not exclusive to dance music, what is it about electronic music in general that especially appeals to you?
It doesn’t judge, there’s no rules or limitations (other than it’s made electronically?) and you can enforce your own rules and limitations to frame the creativity and work within that frame instead of spilling out onto the floor and all over the wall (or you can do that too). Other genres seems to be a little bled dry after all these years of superiority (real music, real musicians playing real instruments) and electronically produced music can sound like “real music” or sound like nothing you’ve ever heard in the “real” world, there’s just endless possibilities generally compared to other genres I guess?
Geeking out slightly now about personal favourites from Destiny: For Now and Forever, which is this propulsive, glistening house cut with a note of melancholy running through it, and I’m Taken, which is an extraordinary, celestial rave track that takes the album in a completely different direction. Do you have tracks on the album which are especially important to you?
So, so many! All I Can Feel meant a lot to me as I was very depressed at the time and making it helped me find some purpose in life (it has the Depression Euphoria sound I’ve talked about before, where you feel an overwhelming rush of euphoria through and because of the depression), Honey felt like a real contender to the Next To Me throne at the time (I dunno if anyone else agrees but I like it), Something New was mostly arranged and sitting around for about 6 months until it was mixed up and it just originally came together effortlessly, Without Crying/Without Hiding was kinda part of the “penultimates” and was a very emotional experience completing it. I Just Wanna Be With You, Slowdown and Vibrations were all demos I worked on for other artists who didn’t follow up so I finished them for the album (and I’m glad cause I’m really pleased with how they turned out).
Given the themes of nostalgia and memory that run through a lot of your music, how do you try and ensure it remains relevant in a modern context and not completely obsessed with the past?
Well, I kinda try to experiment with other sounds and styles, Vibrations and I’m Taken are kinda like the modern-ish 808-dominant branch of Hyperpop, but melded with slightly more nostalgic and classical Juke/Footwork and Drum & Bass/Jungle influences. A track like Brave was meant to be like an EDM track from 2012 but since very few are doing retro revivals as recent as 2012 it has a more “modern” sound to it. My new track Say What You Mean was meant to have the sound of a Top-10 track from the last ten or fifteen years (not too recent as there was no triplet grime-inspired melody or Millennial whoop), but most of the mixing and production was meant to be very chilled and ambient but with a strong house pounding power, none of which would be allowed in an actual top-10 song.
There’s a definite sense of humour in the music you produce. Why do you think humour, or being funny in music, is often disparaged in a way that it isn’t in, say, movies or TV?
I always think if something is funny as well as emotional, it makes it ten times more emotional as it makes you feel two types of emotion simultaneously. I also don’t take anything that seriously as I always anticipate the very worst possibility. I think maybe a lot of music people have always taken themselves a bit too seriously compared broadly to other mediums, I’m not sure why, maybe it’s because there’s less living through other characters and it’s more about the human person(s) performing the part?
People may be surprised that you rarely (if ever) actually sample your namesake’s TV show. Do you have particular favourite places to dig for samples?
Never actually sampled the witch tv show, lol! Actually, just Sabrina in Rome (German dub) on Homeshake or New Atlantic (can’t remember right now!). I’ll take them from anywhere, CD’s found at thrift stores, the formerly good Youtube, stock music archives, shop-pop enforced-listening shazams, podcasts, sample libraries, I probably have no one particular place I’ll go for them, just wherever a good sample appears!
Why is the CD your favourite format? Is this what comes with being a 90s-obsessive?
It’s perfect! It’s lossless, it’s a great sample rate and bit depth (not 48/24 but if HDCD had actually taken off :/), it’s indestructible if you’re careful with it (shame the blu-ray Durabis polymer coating hadn’t been invented for CD) and it’s a great length for most albums (not mine, but splitting them up is kinda fun).
You worked with the 1975 last year… are there other stadium-filling bands you’re hoping will pick up the phone and request a cheeky collab?
I wish!
2020’s Charmed, three hours. Now Destiny at four. Can we expect a 5+ hour project from you by 2026?
That’s the plan eventually! :p
Destiny is out now on all platforms
The Predatory Wasp 