DJ Python on Miami Culture, Anti-Revivalism, and Locking In

This is a free post from Larry Fitzmaurice's Last Donut of the Night newsletter. Paid subscribers get one or two email-only Baker's Dozens every week featuring music I've been listening to and some critical observations around it.

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Moving on—huge fan of DJ Python here, his sound has always been hard to pin down and extremely engaging, sometimes you hear someone's music and you just know they are thinking different in general and that's certainly Brian Piñeyro's case. His BBC Essential Mix from last year was quite possibly the long-running series' best installment in years, and I've been mightily enjoying his debut EP on XL, i was put on this earth, which just dropped last Friday. Brian hopped on a call last month while staying at a friend's place in Los Angeles (he typically resides back here in Brooklyn, relatively close to where I live no less) and we had a great time getting into all things DJ Python and his personal history in general. Check it out:

Talk to me about the sound you're working with on this new EP.
I feel like I went as far as I could with the idea of using tresillo and dembow rhythms in stuff that's not super-duper rooted in where those rhythms are more commonly used. Also, I feel like there's so many people doing it, and people from Latin America are finally getting some shine, that it was my time to exit doing that stuff. I did stuff with Ana and Ela, and I was enjoying doing more song-y stuff, so I wanted to keep trying that out for this EP. I'm still making more dance-centric—or, not dance, because I don't even know if I make dance music—instrumental stuff, but I just really enjoy singing, so I'm gonna try it as well and see what happens. This is the first go-around with it.

Talk to me more about what you enjoy about singing.
I write a lot of poems and stuff, so I was like, "This just makes sense." I view it as another texture. The narrative hook of the song, people can zero in on it if they want, but the sounds are usually the palette of emotion that I'm trying to get through more so than exactly what I say. I also didn't want to just become a features-heavy artist—but I still do want to release songs. There wasn't too much thought behind it.

It felt pretty natural, because I've been recording songs since I was like really young, when I was in a lot of bands. It's something that I'm not unfamiliar with, it's just that the DJ Python project was so specific for a long time, and my goal with it was—for better or for worse—to have these rhythms become quintessential to dance music as a whole. I was like, "Why aren't these rhythms incorporated the same way breaks are in drum 'n' bass, jungle, and hardcore?" I just wanted to spread it, which to me is neutral, but to some people it could be offensive, and to others it could be positive. But it's just a sound thing.

Now, my interest with music is really mixing tropes, because I'm not really gifted. I can't tell you what a note is. I've never technically trained in anything. But I do consume different types of music. I used to DJ a lot of downtempo stuff, and I've always loved that type of music. I see the function in it, but I hate revivalist music, to be honest. Maybe "hate" is a strong word. I just think it's lazy to hear a sound and copy it exactly, and very few people push anything forward. So, right now I'm trying to step into more downtempo songwriting, but I want to use tropes that aren't usually used.

I want to go back to what you said earlier about people potentially taking offense to your incorporation of Latin rhythms. Is that something you've personally experienced?
Sure. Not a ton, but a lot. I mean, whatever. I guess I'm American. My parents are first-gen immigrants, and I lived a very immigrant upbringing—with my uncles, aunts, grandparents. My grandparents owned a laundromat. Most of my family who are living here, besides my parents, don't speak English. So I feel very immersed in that culture, even if I was growing up in the States. I also lived in Ecuador for a while when I was a kid—but, you know, I am a white-passing dude, I do live in the States, so I have gotten criticism from people who live in Latin America. "What is he doing?" If someone sees me play, they might be like, "Why is he playing this?" But that's what I grew up with, and that's who I am.

At the same time, some people are confused or don't know where it comes from too. Some people might be doing the same thing and are upset that an American is getting a shine over it. My first press release on a DJ Python record, I just deleted everything and made it say, "The first deep reggaeton record." It was very cheeky, but people ran with it, which is just funny to me more than anything.

I think genre is silly, and I try to not overstate what I'm doing. But in my sets, I'm really trying to weave together a certain type of narrative, because UK Funky was already doing this.

That's extremely true.
When UK Funky came out, it was just merging those rhythms with grime, using them in a club setting that wasn't Latin America or the Caribbean islands—and I'm very aware of that. I love UK Funky. I feel like this lineage isn't really spoken about because it's not happening in the West. Also, I am ignorant as to whether UK Funky people were talking to people in Jamaica, or were they just evolving from grime and thinking the same thing: "Why aren't we using these other rhythms?" Music was made off of just shared files and floppy disks, and that's why so many of those samples are so rinsed in all this music.

You mentioned being in bands as a kid. Tell me more about that.
In elementary school, I was in a punk band, and same thing in middle school. I really liked punk and hardcore until middle school, when the Ricardo Villalobos FabricLive mix came out. That's when Soulseek was popping off, so I'd find a lot of music through their biggest rhythm chat rooms. I also got really into drum 'n' bass. I kind of just liked everything. I started getting into, like, Boredoms and, I don't know, I guess more indie music.

When I moved to Miami, I lost my CD collection, so I just started record shopping. At that time in Miami, it was very culturally devoid, and it only had one classic rock shop. There was this really old gentleman who lived 50 minutes outside of Miami who had one of the biggest jazz collections, so he put me onto free jazz. There was this place called Tobacco Road that had jazz nights, so I was in free jazz, noise, and experimental bands. I tried to make dance music, but I didn't understand the concept of sampling, so I just had synthesizers. I was trying to make jungle and I was like, "How do you program this?" So I was just making weird electronic music.

I've been super interested in music since second grade. I don't have, like, cultured parents or whatever—i just got into it on my own. In high school, I got really into Blogspots like Mutant Sounds.

Do you remember the first time you went to a club?
I was probably, like, 12, in Ecuador. The club was just called Minimal, and that's when I found out about Ricardo Villalobos. Then, in Miami, I was clubbing a lot when I was a kid. There was these really cool drum 'n' bass parties in this laundromat. Miami is culturally odd, so I went to a lot of very scene-y parties where people would just be playing, like, Justice and the Faint—that kind of hipster dance music, for lack of a better term. But I was clubbing when I was younger for sure. The first show that changed my life was when I saw Moomin play all night at this Italian restaurant in Chicago. It was all different kinds of people racially and age-wise, and I was like, "This is what it's about. This is what I'll be a part of."

The appeal of me starting to make dance music was the anonymity of it. I was like, "Whoa, this is just 12" with nothing on it." At that point, when I was going to a lot of clubs or warehouses, DJs were in the corner and I was like, "This sounds great." But now it's changed into something else.

Talk to me more about growing up in Miami and clubbing there. Nick León talked to me about that for the newsletter last year, too.
When I was growing up in Miami, i didn't really go to the big room-y stuff. But there was that drum 'n' bass party in a laundromat—it was very lesbian actually, too. There was also an abandoned racetrack that would have drum 'n' bass raves, and then I became friends with all these promoters who would just let me into clubs.

For me, the dance music scene was, like, Otto von Schirach and breakcore—he was around then, and he's still around—and a lot of bass and booty music. My cousin took me to a lot of like Miami bass, booty music, and reggaeton parties when I was a teenager. I think i went to Space, like, once. At that age, I couldn't lean into that stuff—I was very anti-that stuff, because at the same time I liked noise, I loved punk, and I loved underground dance music and the idea of scenes being transgressive and subversive. I never really wanted to be in spaces where societal norms are being accepted.

Miami was so small. I think right now it's, like, half a million people, and when I was growing up there was probably even less. So you'd go to house parties, and it would be a gallery show, a punk band playing, a DJ, and noise music. The scene wasn't siloed at all, because you just had to go to everything. In London, it's like that a lot right now, where scenes are pushing more—and you can definitely hear that within like the music.

How do you feel about the trend towards high-BPM stuff—trance, specifically—on the dance floor in the last few years? Is that something that's made an impression on you?
No, not really. I mean, I've always really liked trance a lot—the more progressive stuff, a lot of the Sasha mixes, Nathan Fake, all the Border Community stuff. It's all trends, right? It makes sense that people are looking for something euphoric at the moment to party to instead of something doomy.

Culturally, for a while I felt like, in New York, there was this reactionary turn to hipsters liking heteronormativity and whiteness again, and trying to embrace that. You know what I'm talking about—Dimes Square and all that bullshit. It's weird, and trance feels like that in the European sense, to me.

I really loved the Natural Wonder Beauty Concept record. Talking more about revivalism, I feel like trip-hop is in the air every few years, but you and Ana did something distinctly unique with that sound. Was that a one-and-done project or something you two will do more of in the future?
We're definitely going to do more in the future. Right now she's finishing her new album and I'm working on a bunch of stuff for XL, and then afterwards we want to work on more stuff together. The next thing we want to do is an acoustic singer-songwriter album. Working with Ana is sick. She's way slower than I am, which is
nice, and she has a different affinity for certain types of sound palettes than I do—way less digital than I am. She knows how to play chords, so there's that, which is game-changing.

You mentioned putting out records on XL now, which has quite a history of bringing strange and straightforward sounds in dance music to the forefront. Tell me about your relationship with the label's output.
I love the lineage of XL. It's been cool to work with them, they're very helpful and very adamant that I just do whatever. It's nice to have studios to work in, too. In the beginning, the stuff that I was listening to in high school was from XL, like Ratatat. It's an honor, and it's kind of wild and surprising that they wanted to sign me, because I feel like i'm pretty esoteric to a degree. But at the same time, so many people liked the last album that don't like dance music, which I thought was very odd—I feel like it's like a post-rock album or something.

Why do you think that is?
I think the emotional palette that I use is very different than most of dance music. The way I like to think about art that's good is that you have to be really talented to be able to focus on the feeling that is directly telling you what to do. But most art—specifically, cinema, literature, and music—is vaguer, because human emotion is extremely vague, and you're rarely left with one emotion. I start a lot of songs sad and end them happy, or the other way around. There's a lot to experience, and maybe that's why it appeals to more people—and maybe that's why it's post-rock-y too, because I feel like post-rock has this melancholic but also hopeful-type thing, huge falls of emotion.

There's always a lot of chatter about the state of NYC nightlife, and it feels like venues are closing a lot more than usual these days. I'm curious to hear your perspective on it.
Dude, honestly, I don't know. I'm one of the worst people to ask. I never go out, really, and I've been sober for, like, eight years.

Congratulations.
Thanks, man.

I quit drinking almost four years ago.
Oh, congrats man.

Yeah, it was funny, because when I quit, I was like, "I don't know whether or not I'm gonna enjoy going out anymore." But I do find myself enjoying club nights even more now.
Yeah, it is nicer. I just rarely go out because I do it so much for work. I mean, I'll go out and support friends, and I think there's still cool stuff going on—but I'm very tapped out. Most of my friends don't even make music. I do hope things are healthy and everyone's being nice to each other—that's all I can hope for. I do hear mixed things, but I feel like I'm a little too old to want to know what's going on.

Have you had any disastrous gigs recently?
All the time. I mean, "disastrous" just means "not well-attended," and that happens sometimes. But recently, actually it's been pretty good. Two years ago, the beginning of last year, places were really struggling, but I think everyone's kind of back now.

You still have a day job, or are you doing this full-time now?
I do it full-time. I was a data scientist for mad long—until two years ago—and I stopped because I was missing too much work while touring.

Do you miss the 9-to-5 of it all?
I miss the routine of life a lot, yeah. I do miss some co-workers, and I miss being around people who don't have the same interest as I do. But you can do that in other ways—like, I'll volunteer and stuff, and then you meet people who are super different than you, which I think is a huge part of living in a city. I never understand people who move to cities to hang out with people who are just like them. You're really missing out on diversity.

100%. You have all these people around you. Why would you not want to get to know as many of them as possible?
Exactly. We're doing different shit, thinking different ways. It's expansive.

I listened to your Essential Mix from last year a lot. I thought it was fantastic. As someone who's checked in with the Essential Mix pretty frequently over the years, you can tell when somebody's turned something in where they've really put some thought in putting it together. Did you feel intimidated while working on it? It really is an institution at this point.
It is an institution, and I felt like I couldn't just do a club mix. I don't know if that would've been interesting enough to stick out or feel super-duper important. I don't know if they were expecting me to do something different, but I just love music and I think there's cool ways to weave it together. So much music is connected historically in ways that we don't think about. I also wanted to do that that was, technically, a little bit different. Mixing jazz into things with beats is hard and laborious. I just wanted to play music that I liked and had an emotional feeling throughout.

But I went insane, bro. I didn't sleep for, like, two weeks making that mix. It took so long. I was so obsessed with making it perfect. My girlfriend at the time was there while I was making it, and she was like, "You're fucking insane." All I did was work on 15 minutes and listen to that 15 minutes over and over, get it to 30 and listen to it over and over. I'm really proud of that mix.