> WHO?...
TAFFI LOUIS
Vancouver, BC, Canada
DJ
>>He has described DJ’ing as improvising an alternate universe film soundtrack for the movie version of right now. Vancouver’s TAFFI LOUIS has a tendency to hop eras and genre boundaries, pulling from spaces between indie dance, dark disco, new wave and Italo, then serving it all up in the grammar of house and techno.
>Raised mostly in Little Rock, Arkansas, in a privileged household while attending public schools in some of the poorest parts of town, TAFFI was sometimes the only white kid in his class, exposed early to a collision of cultures, sounds and perspectives, before the family moved to Canada’s West Coast when it was considerably more culturally homogenous than it is today, an experience that left him more interested in what connects musical worlds than in the boundaries between them.
>That outsider perspective carries into the booth. His very first DJ gig was a five-hour slot at a local bar with no ambitions beyond engaging a niche audience nostalgic for disco & new wave by expanding those with then-breaking sounds of nu disco & electroclash, turning that one-off night into the kickoff of a residency running over six years. During that time, other venues started coming to him, not just to DJ but even develop new ideas for events and find new audiences instead of chasing the same mainstrean crowd most of the competition was after already. The next ten years became an experiment in delivering peculiar niche events and inclusive parties: Truckerdisco, Roboteria and Thickset, crossing demographics, spawning imitators…. But most of all, creating audiences instead of targeting them.
>While taking a humourous, irreverent approach to self-promotion, TAFFI LOUIS takes his responsibilities as a DJ very seriously, in reading the audience and the energy they bring with them, factoring in the setting and the moment, mapping out the ebb, flow and momentum, framing melody and rhythm from each song as part of the next. Whether casual, warm-up vibes or textured tension and release, or thrust into decadent, seductive peak- and after-hours territory. Listeners are sure to experience eureka moments discovering forgotten and future favourites.
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