Go Break Sonic Barriers With Textasy at Floyd

In today’s realm of electronic partisanship, many DJs have discovered it can be a risky proposition to drop a track that falls outside of the specific genre audiences have come to associate them with. God forbid a house DJ slip a techno track into their mix or vice versa; we can't have bedlam breaking out on the dance floor. Frequent Miami visitor and techno specialist Nina Kraviz found herself on the receiving end of this variety of backlash in November 2016 after deploying a drum 'n' bass-tinted song during a performance in Melbourne, Australia. Having read complaints that her set was not “techno” enough, the Russian DJ/producer posted a polemic on Facebook reminding fans that switching between genres is essentially the whole point of effective DJ’ing.

Under Kraviz's framework and that of many dance music aficionados, Berlin-based artist Textasy is a DJ's DJ. As detailed in a February 2018 interview with DJ Mag, Textasy — real name Dustin Evans — discovered the joy of electronic music at a young age during his upbringing in Dallas, Texas. In addition to Aphex Twin and Warp Records, he also cites Miami Bass, the hip-hop adjacent genre that's heavy on kicks and elevated tempos, as one of his primary influences. Although the descriptor electro is regularly used when describing his sound, both Evans' DJ sets and original productions pull from a variety of creative wells, ranging from the old-school stylings of breakbeat and jungle to even new wave acts.

Textasy's eclectic touch will be fully audible during his DJ set at Floyd on Saturday, December 28. He'll be joined that evening by Miami's own Jonny From Space as well as Chicago-born and Orlando-based selector December Beaches.

The show follows on the heels of Evans' debut appearance in Miami earlier this year, which saw him play alongside local electronic acts INVT and Deroboter. Given his propensity for extensive sampling and genre-flipping, he's a comfortable fit for Floyd and the venue's more underground sensibilities.
Textasy’s production has a history of being as lovingly diversified as his DJ sets. Look no further than 2017's “Déjà Vu Bass,” which sets a heavily filtered sample of P.M. Dawn’s “Set Adrift on Memory Bliss” — which itself lists from the Spandau Ballet classic "True" — against a dance floor-ready breakbeat. “Déjà Vu Bass” contains one of the more audacious endings in recent dance music memory and concludes with none other than the iconic 20th Century Fox fanfare.

"It's fun to synergise different genres that wouldn't normally be put together," Evans told DJ Mag in 2018, adding he enjoys "coming up with different combinations and trying to create symbiotic relationships between genres that didn't exist before."

Evans' inventiveness might stem from the relatively slim electronic offerings he had growing up in Dallas. Although club culture has a long history and legacy in the Lone Star State, it doesn't possess the same infrastructure or accessibility as that of Miami, New York City, or the UK scenes Textasy drew inspiration from.

"In Texas, it's more challenging to be an artist, so you have to put your all into it," Evans said in the aforementioned interview. In a manner befitting of his home state's mythology, Textasy's output has seen him carve out an individualized lane of his own in electronic music, albeit one indebted to the trailblazers that came before. You can't move forward without knowing the past; if Textasy's distinctive productions and appreciation for his various sonic forebears are any indication, he's going to do just fine.

Textasy. With Jonny From Space and December Beaches. 11 p.m. Saturday, December 28, at Floyd Miami, 40 NE 11th St., Miami; 305-608-2824; floydmiami.com. Tickets cost $11.25 to $30 via residentadvisor.net.