Moods 08: Miguel Senquiz
Senquiz's entry to music came early like most Moods mixers. But his world since birth was especially embedded into Southeastern Michigan's music culture. "My mother was a club and radio DJ in the 80’s," he noes, "so I always had records, met musicians, and went to concerts and festivals for as long as I can remember."
The end of the 90s then saw high school Senquiz getting introduced to techno via friends, parties, and family, "but I was new and didn’t really know what was going on." A switch flipped, however, when his mother dropped something off. "She was managing a nightclub called Industry in Pontiac, which is a city just north of Detroit. They hosted an event for Richie Hawtin, and afterward she left a stack of his CDs on my desk which among them included Plastikman’s Sheet One. I think that was probably the first time I heard techno that worked at a party and in my headphones, and really changed my perception of what that music was."
The second track on the mix harkens back to this 18-year old era of discovery: Burnt Friedman's "Hut Selector." "I first heard it in a recording of a set Pole recorded for Betalounge in 2000. It was the summer I graduated high school and at that time, my best friend and I used to hang out and have this [track] playing in the car, while we were working on projects, after we came home from a party. It was just on regular rotation. It has remained one of those mixes where you're like … WTF is he doing? I had no idea then if this was a DJ mix or a live set or both. When you asked me to make this mix I had so many different directions I thought about taking, but then coming across this track was that 'OH!' moment."
The rest of the tracks here fall into a similar space. Senquiz calls it a love letter to ~Scape Records, as the tracks are pulled from their discography from 1999-2010. "It's techno, house, dub, drum n bass, and jazz. It feels cohesive without being structurally consistent. You feel it more than hear it. It's gauzy and layered and unpredictable."
As he then launched into Ghostly International and Detroit to New York and beyond, Senquiz notes that the one thing tying the techno community together is humility. "I have definitely been fortunate to meet and have access to a lot of people at every stage of professional music spectrum and everyone (for the most part) has just been a human first. People who were nice and open to sharing their experiences made me realize just believing in yourself is all there is. Nobody really gives you a platform to grow, you give it to yourself."
TRAXXXXX
Pole (Tanzen) ~Scape54
Burnt Friedman & The Nu Dub Players (Hut Selector Version) ~Scape03
Deadbeat (White Out) ~Scape21
Jan Jelinek (Them, Their) ~Scape07
Pole (Uberfahrt) ~Scape54
Andrew Peckler (First Snow, Last Year) ~Scape11
Portable (Typhoon) ~Scape29
Groupshow (Dog Shoes to the Stars) ~Scape58
Kit Clayton (nia-ikala) ~Scape02
Jan Jelinek (Moire (Piano & Organ)) ~Scape07
Pole (Taxi) ~Scape54
ARTWORXX
Senquiz's mix is paired with Irene de Andrés' work from the series HEAVEN, Where Nothing Happens (2015) -- an ironic title, as her etchings reproduce pauses in time from Club Heaven in Ibizia. The island is where Andrés grew up, and echoing Senquiz's upbringing in the center of a scene, Andrés' work reflects moments and after-moments of club culture on her island. They're both taking moments of intensity and octane and flipping them on their head in order to show their origins, their history, and sometimes their brevity. The full series of Andrés' work is below.
For more of Miguel's work, head here.
For more of Irene's work, head here.