THE CARRY NATION: HOMECOMING QUEENS

The longtime audiophiles and nightlife scenesters, who’s monthly residency at Brooklyn’s Good Room cannot be missed, talk culture, party drugs, production and more in this smart and hopeful exchange. Read on to learn how AUTOMAGIC and AVIANCE connect with the dance floor, compliment on the decks and find the power to hook fanatic body movers across the world with their fearless, cutting edge style.

Will Automagic: Sorry that it took a minute to schedule this. Things were so calm and anything could happen at any time because we had all the time in the world on our hands and now it's really back to work.

Buds Digest: I’m sure. Stuff is probably piling up a little bit.

WA: It can be a little overwhelming to tell you the truth because we fell out of the habit of having to be on all the time, you know?

BD: And you all are in very high demand. 

WA: That was just beginning to happen. We were just beginning to have some real milestones, things that we'd been hoping might happen, like closing Panorama Bar, doing an Resident Advisor podcast. Some of the things that the world outside sees and says, “you're a valid DJ now.” Even though we'll always be misfits. We're never really gonna fit the mold but we were just beginning to get some of that underground – we're not talking about mainstream stuff – this is the underground stuff still. And then the world shut down. So we're like, how are we gonna stay alive? What's it gonna be like when and if the world even comes back. It felt like such a lucky break that Good Room had just started that relationship with the streaming company to allow for a video set up. Instead of scrambling in our rooms with wires, freaking out, trying to do our streams monthly. 

NITA AVIANCE: It was as seamless as going to work at the club at night. We would just step in, they'd flip a switch and it was ready to go.

WA: That was a stroke of luck that we're so thankful to Good Room for. It kind of helped keep me alive because I would've gone crazy without being able to play some music once a month.

BD: Do you wanna talk about your personal relationships to cannabis?

WA: I have a lot of funny stories from when I was 14, but I want you to start, Nita.

NA: Oh, my goodness.

WA: I remember one time when you decided to stop smoking, but I also remember how loose you were when you used to smoke.

NA: It's interesting…lord, how candid do we wanna be with this whole thing? I don't know. Weed is a drug that I've used on and off throughout the course of my entire life. I have used it solo to basically just cope with the day to day stress of everything and as well as enhancement for regular partying. Currently, I don't smoke weed because, like tobacco, it really started to affect my lungs. I was a smoker, a daily smoker. So, I’ve moved into edibles at times, but really on the day to day basis, I don't. It was something that I was using just to even get emails done in the morning. 

WA: I remember this hilarious period, Nita, when you decided that you were gonna stop smoking cigarettes because you were quite a [regular] cigarette smoker and you were like, “I have to quit smoking cigarettes, so my solution is: I'll just smoke as much weed as I used to smoke cigarettes.” That was hilarious. 

NA: That is exactly what I did.

WA: So stoned all the time.

NA: It's true. I literally was stoned like 24 hours a day. That's just me and my smoking journey as it pertains to my lungs a lot more than it really anything else, you know?

WA:  Aren't there a lot of people that we know whose marijuana use is productive? We know people that know the right amount of puffs to take before doing a musical take or a pass or something.

NA: We'd have these gym gigs, earlier in the career where we would go and play for a stretch at The David Barton gym at The Limelight. It was regular and it was always sort of a time to be alone and rehearse. I would get so, so blazed before, drink a red bull, and just put on the headphones and DJ for everyone, for no one, for myself, for the world. It was such a brilliant way to stay ultimately focused on the music and sort of block everything else out, which, as a musician, music for us is how we communicate and relate to the world. There's a lot of excess noise out there and that was really a way to just laser focus.

WA: Everybody's bodies and chemistry are wired so different from one another. There was a long period when I had a residency at Van Dam when Adderall was the thing. I feel the way some of my closest friends have talked about marijuana as a really helpful tool to focus. For me it was Adderall. In the early days, starting to DJ, when I would be like, okay, I'll smoke a joint and see what happens during this DJ set. It was like the opposite. I was scattered in such a way that was so freeing to me. I would be playing a deep cut from a Pink Floyd album, or whatever, and then there's no one on the dance floor. I've seen other people have marijuana do that focusing thing for them. Everybody's body is so different. 

NA: That's so very you and me, girl. That's how you and I complete the yin and the yang of this relationship.

WA: I'm not much of a pot smoker these days. It's so easy for me to just take one too many and start thinking too hard. If I get it just right, I'm right. But as a 14 year old…when you talk about “gateway drugs,” to me, it was like the perfect getaway. The gateway I needed. It was me and this other misfit girlfriend of mine – platonic girlfriend because I was obviously a little faggot – she would steal pot from her father and roll joints. We would go to the carnival and smoke in a porta-potty. I remember thinking that the ways of thinking about the world are maybe not as locked as I've been told all my life. So, I'm really thankful to marijuana for that. I was a young kid, but I think that's kind of when you start experimenting with things and it was a very good time for me to unlock my mind.

BD: I love how you two complement each other on the decks. Is there some intersection between the two of you that you know is going to create that compliment?

NA: Ultimately the two of us came together with the exact same vision of what a dance floor should look, sound and feel like. That sort of supersedes everything else that could detract from that. The more and more we go on in this journey with each other, I think we realize how different beings we really are. But it's that one singular vision and the trust we have in each  other that keeps it going and it’s what allows us to really stretch the possibilities of how we can achieve that. That was the thing, during the pandemic, because we were playing these really long sets for…

WA: Nine hours.

NA: Without having to maintain physical bodies dancing in front of us, we were able to test the limits of our musical…

WA: Repertoire.

NA: Just possibility of things.

WA: When we produce a record, we start bringing in a keyboard note or a vocal [track], sometimes up to 30 seconds before the note actually happens with a production setting we use called preverb. So, you begin to hear it before it happens. The same thing happens with DJing and within one set, but that can happen in the long run too. During lockdown we could play slow songs during the stream and then put that on the dance floor two years later when the clubs are open again. People's tolerance and ability to embrace that and feel the way we've stayed connected through this whole time is alive by the way in which we have preverbed that moment.

BD: It definitely feels like your live sets are a canvas for sure. You're really watching the dance floor and connecting with it.

WA: I’m short but I can still see over the booth!

NA: We come from there, ultimately. We were born on the dance floor.

BD: How has it been coming back. Are you still checking off underground milestones?

WA: As happens, whenever things come back, they come back hard and quick. You've become used to having a blanket around you on the couch and then you're suddenly thrown into the fire again. We, of course, have it within us, we have the strength and we have what it takes to keep up with all of this, but it’s suddenly a lot again. What we're having to do is stay in touch with our artistic tenderness and our togetherness to make art for our community and the people we love and people who wanna listen to us. We also want to stay in touch with each other's emotions and abilities within each and every moment to cope and to make it all possible, because it is a challenge for things to go like a roller coaster so far up and so far down – down and then up again. There's no way that anyone could say that's simple.

NA: In a beautifully cosmic way we realized that our last international gig before COVID was in Mexico City and our first international gig post coming out of COVID was also in Mexico City, almost two years to the day. It sort of completes this brilliant circle, the belief that we were able to pick up where we left off as artists and as a community and really process this all together, that we all really went through this globally.

WA:  Sometimes the world just serves you a platter of picture perfect symbolism.

BD: How did you two come together?

WA: Well, we shared a vision of the dance floor and how things should be, but I don't think we knew that until we had started spending some time together. That was another universe-handing-a-platter kind of a situation. When you asked me out to lunch, Nita, I was like, “what is she doing,” and then we quickly decided to make a record together. I think that we discovered how different we were, but how similar our vision for how things should be was. 

NA: We certainly admired each other as artists. 

WA: We had always admired each other as artists and we'd sometimes secretly go and hear each other and hide in the corner of each other's gigs. So coming together, it was a discovery process and reaffirmation of maybe something we had always wanted, but didn't know it was in the cards.

BD: I loved what you said about being misfits. Is that something that drew you together?

NA: When we were all together, carrying on in Mexico City, I overheard somebody say, “We're just a bunch of fragile weirdos, freakin’ it,” and I absolutely loved that. Aren’t we all?

BD: You get a great response in Mexico City. What is your connection there?

NA: Where do you even begin? There is something that ties us together on a global and cultural scale that we don't have as much with Europe. It's very close to home. I mean, we are neighbors to put it so simply. It's a huge city of the world. It was interesting to me to see a scene that was truly diverse when it came to gender. That was so inspiring and comforting to me, the fluidity of all that was possible and it seems to be ever-present without question.

BD: Do you find that scene out at the beach as well at something like Somos Festival?

WA: Somos was at a very private and secluded location, but the promoters had it within their power to make quite certain that they bring DJs from around Mexico and create opportunities for people from around Mexico to come so that it didn't just feel like a bunch of Americans partying on some beach.

BD: I loved seeing you play at Honcho Campout this past summer. What is your relationship with Honcho?

WA: They’re as dear to us as could possibly be. I admire them so deeply for having started [the campout] as a festival that was located in a place that was a male only community and that was sex focused. As they wanted to book more and more DJs, they began to listen to the community. They put every ounce of their strength and their selves into transforming it from that and into one of the most queer friendly, open and welcoming spaces that any of us have experienced. That was extraordinarily difficult. They faced a lot of challenges. They faced constant backlash, because it is impossible to please everyone every time, and they never ever stopped working on that goal and I admire them deeply. 

BD: Smoking weed definitely changed how I interact with music and dance floors. A lot of drugs do. One of my favorite moments from a Carry Nation set was candyflipping at Good Room while smoking a little weed.

NA: The candyflip is a classic combo and one of my favorites from back in the day, although I'm way more trepidatious these days. 

WA: You can’t separate drug use from the club scene, they go hand in hand, but I also really respect that there is always a sober contingency at our parties and that they make a point and dedicate themselves to partying that way. Everybody’s different. There's a magic chaos in the balance, everybody's different levels and amounts but when it all flows perfectly it sure can be magic.

NA: We’ve certainly spent plenty of time working in and out of sobriety, just to really change and better understand our relationship with drugs. The thing that really remains constant is the ability of the music to just transcend through everything. 

WA: It's the thing that is uniting everybody.

NA: It's the constant. It doesn't matter, sober or otherwise influenced. It works either way.

BD: Can you talk about your relationship to Good Room? They were recently worried about closing down. 

WA: They got so much love and support from the community. I think when people heard the possibility that it might be threatened as a place that we can all gather, people stepped up. I get the sense that the efforts that they're making and that the communities are making are such that they'll stay alive.

NA: Good Room is run by a team of people that are so invested in nightlife and the music and the culture of it all that it will prevail.

WA: It’s not within their DNA to let it die.

NA: The other thing that's amazing about Good Room is, as it’s evolved and we've evolved with it, it's sort of been a landing pad for a lot of DJs and a lot of parties that have been in this game for a really long time. There's something that feels fresh yet familiar, old yet new, you know, comforting yet otherworldly. 

WA: Having a residency at Good Room reminds me that it's very different from the way a lot of clubs in New York and a lot of clubs around the world operate right now. We started this conversation around the fact that the Carry Nation are a bit [misfitted] in the global scene, for any number of reasons. One of the ways in which we're misfits is that we have a very regular home base that we play on a regular basis. Very consistently in one place where people can come back again and again, maybe hear the same song we played last time, played in a different way. This develops a continuity. It doesn't sound like this should make us misfits, but the way the DJ world is operating right now, it is different from most of what's happening out there. If you want to hear the same DJ month after month, you'll have to go to another city and follow them. Sometimes I think [having a residency] gives people far away pause wondering “well, can they even come here?” For us, it's incredibly important to have a home. That, more quickly than anything, helps develop a united community, no matter what everyone's using or not you using on the dance floor. The consistency of togetherness creates that thread of community.

BD: It definitely feels like a monthly homecoming, really familial and amazing. 

NA: I love “monthly homecoming.”

BD: Your other regular nights are usually at Battle Hymn, right?

NA: It is getting back to a monthly thing. Being co-residents with Eli Escobar and Honey Dijon, they are long standing friends and collaborators in this biz’. It's such a pleasure to be able to constantly take the stage with them. Ladyfag, we've been nightlife family for a better part of two decades at this point.

WA: Since she hit town as a go-go dancer,

NA: As wild and crazy of a party as it is, it’s still family.

BD: You have these benchmarks you've made in the underground scene. Is there something that would really take you to a benchmark in the mainstream scene? Would that be something like playing Coachella?

WA: We would think carefully about… not like anything like that's gonna be presented, but…

NA: Listen, what is the mainstream scene anyway?

WA: Right. And thankfully the lines are being blurred more and more. There are a lot of people that we know from the underground that are on the Coachella bill this year. And that's wonderful. If something had an association that was really distasteful to us, like being abusive to our community or to a community that we value, then it’s obviously a no-go. But, rather than turn our nose up to anything that's mainstream, what we would do is go and fearlessly be ourselves.

NA: Do what we do. You're gonna get what you get.

WA: And if you don't like it, then it's just not for you, but we don't really compromise or pander.

NA: And usually though, once you get it, you're hooked. It's a gateway drug, really.

BD: What do you have coming up this Spring and Summer?

NA: We'll be back with Wrecked for our annual Get Wrecked and Carry pride at Elsewhere. We're happy to be able to get the exact same lineup that we had planned for 2020 that got canceled at the beginning of the pandemic; to pick up where we left off. I'm really looking forward to that.

Catch Will and Nita this coming season at Horse Meat Disco in London, Panorama Bar in Berlin, Block9 at Glastonbury festival and, as usual, their spectacular monthly homecoming at Good Rood in Brooklyn, NY.