“This fucking year, man, it’s wacky,” she sighs, before continuing with her anecdote: “Fast forward to whenever and I’ve been touring really heavy, even when I had a full time job. Travelling and borders has become something Avalon has continued to fixate on. It was a good career, so why should I become a DJ? I guess the decision made itself for me, for better or worse.” “I didn’t quit my job and I didn’t try to hustle to become a musician because I always thought that I shouldn’t be giving up as a developer. After finding somewhere for around 300 euros a month, she continued working in tech and releasing new tracks until a full-time career in music became a feasible option. So I was like ‘I’m gonna get out’ and was either going to move to LA, New York or Berlin.” In the end, Avalon found herself living in all three places.īerlin was, mostly, where it all began. Everyone had these crazy God complexes and it was just really bizarre. In San Francisco, when I was working there, it was just like, everyone’s just trying to make a billion dollars and doing it in these shitty ways. “Then and especially now, I feel like we’ve seen a distillation and furthering of the whole monster that has become like a big fucking, disruptive gross tech thing. Admitting her story of travelling and change requires some “nuance”, she delves into her discomfort around her previous placement. Suddenly finding herself with the means, the artist upped and left the industry. Starting out, the DJ set up as a product photographer and web developer in San Francisco. It also mirrors her deeply personal, emotive connection between music and location. If you take the time to listen to Avalon’s music, suddenly her sprawling sound makes sense. It ends up being a little abstract, sorry!” My process over the past few years has been trying to streamline the tools I use to translate an idea from my head to a finished product.Ĭonscious of her answer, she follows up with a sincere justification: “My answers are kind of meta, because I’m trying to answer in a way that’s truthful to all the different things that I do. It’s the same with my original music too. On a good day, I can kind of hear an idea in my head. I have a pretty strong vision with remixes before I even start. “Instead of trying to hack through a jungle to get something, I just say the remix isn’t working out and nothing ever comes of it. “I’ve definitely started remix projects without a really clear vision of where it’s going to go, and then it just doesn’t work,” Avalon admits. Usually, a few core questions are enough to paint some direction, but it doesn’t always cut it. “Is it going live? Is the song going to be something that I DJ? Is it gonna be a big festival song or is it going to be something more delicate?” “If we’re talking about my own originals, sometimes I start from a place of thinking about where it’s going to go,” she explains. Avalon pictures the placement and poses a few questions before figuring out the finer details. After all, how do you label a wide-ranging creative that incorporates everything from dreamy breakbeats to stretched-out experimental synths? When it comes to method-matching, things are a little more straightforward. Pinning a genre on Avalon sounds ridiculous. With the description, I’ve always had a little bit of a hard time, but I think I sit in kind of a weird place between club, Euro-centric kind of DJ things, and obviously a more ‘underground’ thing,” she tells GAY TIMES. “The description and the method seem like two very different things. Still, Emerson is graciously contemplative before answering. She doesn’t quite like it, but, in fairness you, shouldn’t offer a clunky question to an artist that expertly produces streamlined anthemic club sets. Thin metal wire glasses accentuate her face as she leans slightly closer to the screen which scrunches, slightly, at the first question. Avalon Emerson sits in a small off-white room talking about her latest collection of transformative, abstract techno pop beats, DJ Kicks.