Deep within the Fractal Forest at BC’s Shambhala Music Festival, you can hear (or more so, feel) the amount of funk and bass weaving through its branches, as well as through the bodies and souls of some of the festival’s 15,000 attendees.
The first night feels long, especially for the unsuspecting first-timers, with all of the festival’s stages open and in full operation until the early morning. Yet, as the children of the forest are going through a nocturnal adjustment, the forest is packed as the Funk Hunters wrap up, and welcome an enthusiastic Logan Anderson, better known as Defunk, to the DJ booth for his inaugural Shambhala set, around 3:30am.
Although he had to miss out on last year’s festival due to being at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre, he is no stranger to the forest, as he starts with a warm introduction, and almost immediately throws down a wide fusion of electro-funk, glitch, and drum & bass – as well as some classic rock & hip-hop throwbacks/remakes – until the sun starts creeping up the mountainside with the early hours of the morning.
Later that afternoon, I had the pleasure to chill with Logan, and gain some insight into his overall Shambhala journey, from both sides of the DJ booth.
Image courtesy of Shambhala
You’ve attended the festival 5 times, but this year is your first year as an artist. What’s it like, technically being a Shambvirgin all over again?
Every year I come, there’s something new to experience, and something new that you take out of it. It’s changed for me quite a bit, to go from someone that was a patron and bought a ticket the first year, to someone that then, over the span of five years, worked for some stages, volunteered, and finally PLAYING the festival that you’ve been admiring for so long – it’s nothing short of incredible to be able to come full circle and give back.
There’s a difference in the vibe/the experience between going to a festival and having fun, and going to a festival and being behind the scenes and working. You take something out of it, but it’s where I’m at in my life (that) I feel like that’s where I need to be. It’s more enjoyable for me to be giving back – to be happy working. I’m 28 now, so I can’t and I don’t want to party as hard as I used to. So with that, it allows me to have fun playing music and being inspired talking to artists, and meeting and networking, and talking with guys like yourself.
And the fact that you were a patron and are now on the other side – was it exactly as you imagined, or was it completely different?
You know, it is and it isn’t. You imagine […] the backstage as like, the craziest, most badass place in the world – red carpets, gold chalices, plates of drugs everywhere. Sometimes the green rooms and the backstages are just that – sometimes they’re fantastic and you party, but you kind of take the veil off of “behind the scenes” a little bit. It’s not quite what I expected. Usually, it’s a bunch of music nerds that are nerding out on music, and they’re just sharing their passion. They’re normal people, they really are. They’re normal everyday people who happen to be doing music for their job, instead of whatever else any of the other patrons are doing.
It’s crazy – I still feel like I get the most hype and the most enjoyment out of a festival being in front of the bins. I like going into the crowd, I like that feeling of being where you’re meant to be, because behind stage, there usually isn’t a whole lot going on… there’s wires and there’s texts, and there’s people working and drinking coffee. The backstage is definitely not as glorious as people imagine it to be. But that also comes with being in it for so long. You almost forget about the magic and what people aspire to be, but it’s a perspective thing.
Who had some of your favorite sets in previous years?
Some of the best sets that I’ve seen at Shambhala:
-Truth, from New Zealand – really, really, really cool. I guess you would call it “Classy Dubstep” – very low-to-the-ground, very beautiful music. They played in the Living Room (2014), so that was one of my favourite sets.
-I really enjoyed Odesza. A couple of years ago, they played (at) Shambhala. And that was magical, that was at the Grove – just beautiful, sexy music. Great time of the night. Everyone had a smile on their faces.
-Andy C is a big drum n’ bass artist from the UK that I absolutely love, and I saw him a couple of years ago. That was incredible. I saw Foreign Beggars, they’re a Hip-Hop group from the UK, and that was incredible as well.
-I saw Pretty Lights at the Pagoda a couple of years ago, it was amazing.
-I’ve seen What so Not, I’ve seen Bassnectar, those guys are all big inspirations for my music, I guess you could say.
-And then, there’s the Fractal Forest, where it all started for me, where I was like, “wow, funk is kind of cool.” Stickybuds, Featurecast, The Funk Hunters – those guys historically had some of my favourite sets, back when I just starting to get into it.
What was it like, playing right after The Funk Hunters the night before?
It blows your mind! Here I was, a couple of years ago, trying to message these guys for advice, and trying to get tips on how you do it – how you navigate the scene. And now I’m friends with them – like, it’s SURREAL. It really is surreal to be – not even in a very long span of time, a couple of years – someone who went to these guys, and standing in the crowd, blown away, and hoping to meet them one day. And now, I’m doing a collaboration with The Funk Hunters and Chali 2na from Jurassic 5, which is literally one of my favourite Hip-Hop vocalists in the world.
I think I’ve worked very, very hard over the last few years, and that’s gotten me to where I am, but it still never really sinks in. (laughs) You’re just awestruck that you could go, and you could go into the VIP/artists’ area, and artists like TroyBoi, CloZee, and Marshmello are just walking around, talking about music and being normal. It’s cool man, it really means a lot. It makes me feel super-proud. It makes me feel like I made some good choices and that I’ve made the right choices to get to where I am.
And I think especially with the Fractal Forest – I think that this is the perfect fit for me to play my first Shambhala gig. There couldn’t have been a better time, it couldn’t have been a better lineup, it couldn’t have been a better stage to bring myself into this festival.
In regards to your EP Stepping Out, how did that come to be?
I named it Stepping Out because I wanted to really push what I was doing, and step outside of my comfort zone. The last couple of big albums I did, Delights and Back to the Funk, I was working in a direction of releasing it with the Pretty Lights music label. That kinda fell through, but those albums were specifically made for that sound. It was supposed to be coming out on that label, so I geared a lot of my music towards that and for a while, for like basically a year, a year and a half, I was making music that felt very electro-soul – very Pretty Lights, very GRiZ, and that’s cool, I really liked that sound.
But Stepping Out was my first major release where I wanted to be like “no – I want to do me again.” I wanna go back to where I was, many years ago, where I was just exploring music and having fun. Not directing the music at anyone in particular, just having fun playing with sounds. I also brought a lot of my original inspirations of rock music, punk music, grunge music – that kind of stuff into Stepping Out. It was like a new take on it. It was really fun for me to mess around with that kind of guitar sound, that almost like rock-y, kind of blues-y sound.
What’s the greatest moment that you remember taking place at Shambs?
There’s always so many amazing moments. The first year that I came to Shambhala, being in the Fractal – I had no idea what funky bass music was. I didn’t even know it existed. It wasn’t house, it wasn’t dubstep – it was just uptempo remixes of awesome shit. It was so bangin’ and I did not know that music could sound like that; it blew my mind. That was a BIG, big deal for me back in the day – that first year at Shambhala, when I was just exposed to so much music that blew my mind. I was young, and I was partying all night, and didn’t sleep, so it was great! There was a lot to experience.
There was another experience I had, where I bumped into Stickybuds, and this was a couple of years ago – but he basically gave me advice to keep making music, and to go full time, to make it a career. He gave me a really nice, eloquent statement (to) “do what you’re doing, because it’s going really good for you”. And that little moment inspired me to keep going, because it’s one guy that I’ve been looking up to for a while, who’s telling me to keep pursuing it – and I did. It was great. And now, to see it come full circle, means so much more.
How do you describe Shambhala to someone who has never been?
It’s magical, first and foremost. I like it because I really like what they do with the artist lineup. They sell out their festival, and people trust the music curation to be amazing – to be fresh, to be ‘on top of it’, to be current, and also to expose you to a lot of new music you never knew. So, it sells out before they even announce the lineup, and people come here because they know that they’re gonna (hear) amazing music – the best of the best. Everyone brings their A-game here. You know, every festival you’re gonna go to has that sense of community; every festival you’re gonna go to has that sense of being yourself, so I’m not gonna be cliché with that.
But the stages themselves – the fact that they’re permanent is a big, big deal here. There’s not a lot of festivals that have permanent stages that build on each other every year. So that allows the stages to really become an integral part of peoples’ memories. And you come back, and you know what the Village looks like. You know what the Pagoda looks like. And you’re so stoked to go back and experience/reconnect with that memory, as opposed to festivals that have to build from the ground up every year, and their stages change and stuff like that. This land, the environment, becomes Shambhala. And I think that’s what I really, really like about it. It’s beautiful, it is warm, and then lastly, the people that it attracts. The Canadians, the Americans, the internationals… everyone is so warm here. Without fail, it’s always got a good crowd. And it all works in tandem – they’ll bring each other together.
It’s a lot of Canadian culture. It’s like the best parts of Canadian Culture, but it’s not just Canadians. There’s a lot of Americans here, there’s a lot of people from all over the world. I’m camping with a bunch of UK friends, and they love it. It’s a collective thing, but I think that this is the true show of how awesome Canadians can be. And that’s why I love it. It’s amazing. (laughs)
Defunk’s full Shambhala set is now out on SoundCloud – for those who were there in the Fractal Forest, re-live the funky madness! If you weren’t (or you slept through it), stream it here, or cop the free download and take the forest funk with you everywhere you go!
Stay tuned for the full Shambhala 2016 recap.
Interview & words by Christian Kwamie. Check him out on Twitter and Facebook.
