Moods 67: Tammy Lakkis
The Hamtramck-based sonic seamstress brings us back to finding CDs at Borders and playing "weird" music to your parents from the back seat of their car.
Musician, artist, and DJ Tammy Lakkis scores February as a lighthearted film with an edge. Brew up a pot of tea, prepare a craft, or travel along with Tammy and songs gathered from Ares.
“This mix is an attempt at embodying a feeling I’ve been wanting to capture for a while. Eerie, sexy dissonance, maybe. It started with the Juana Molina and Mohammad Reza Mortazavi tracks and I just built between and around them. I see this mix as something that exists cinematically. A pretend score for an unsettling movie. I think it captures how I’m feeling right now at the very least.”
~Tammy Lakkis
Where, geographically, did you grow up? Was it a single place or many places?
I spent the first 5 years of my life in Detroit before my family moved to Windsor, Ontario where we lived until I was around 15. Then we moved back across the river to Dearborn Heights. I listened to very different things between the different cities. Windsor was a very rock focused city. Dearborn heights brought me to like more pop, r&b, and more.
Can you pick one song in the mix and explain where you first listened to it?
I used to be obsessed with The Strokes. I heard their name in elementary school and downloaded a few of their songs on Ares (throwback to the early 2000s) and couldn’t stop listening to them. When their third album “First Impressions of Earth” came out, I bought the CD from Borders and listened to it for the first time on a drive with my family. I remembered feeling a little embarrassed when “Juicebox” came on, because it felt like a very weird thing to show my parents who liked Arabic music and old classics. This was a lot of my childhood: I would play weird music in the car and feel embarrassed about it, because it felt like a strange clashing of worlds.
Who "introduced" you to these songs? Was it a person, a radio station, a CD?
A mix of all of these things, but mostly friends and online browsing.
Where and when did you first hear techno? Who did it sound like it was for?
I don’t remember the first time I technically heard techno, but I remember the first time I vibed with it. I’d heard techno and house before and didn’t really have any strong feelings towards them. In 2015 I went to a Movement after party at the Masonic Temple, and Kevin Saunderson was playing. I was on the dance floor with friends and all of a sudden realized I was dancing, dancing in a way that felt real and personal. It was like a chemical reaction in my body and here we are today.
You've got the microphone. What do you want to say to the techno community?
Slow down, enjoy the little things, enjoy friends and family, do meal prep!
Tracklist
1. Moor Mother - Forever Industries B
2. Miyako Koda - Butter
3. Juana Molina - Malherido
4. Portishead - Half Day Closing
5. Fairuz - Tareek El Nahl
6. Zenit - Waiting’
7. Fiona Apple - Left Alone
8. Stereolab - Fuses
9. Esperanza Spalding - Cinnamon Tree
10. Jan Berrocal - The Eternal
11. Yasmine Hamdan - Hal
12. Massive Attack - Teardrop
13. Björk - Enjoy
14. Thoom - Large Fly
15. The Strokes - Juicebox
16. Mohammad Reza Mortazavi - Taken by the Wind
17. MJ Lallo - Ancient Mars
18. Sharada Shashidhar - Vexed
19. WWWater - Presence
We paired Tammy’s mix with a work by Shirin Towfiq, a multidisciplinary artist who explores the complexities of belonging and placemaking through archival research and intergenerational communication. Learn more about Shirin here on their site and more about the work “Thinking about Migration” here.
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