Speaking with Simona

Dark techno queen Simona Castricum speaks to Kish Lal about her album #TriggerWarning40, performance as catharsis, and ‘90s rave culture in Melbourne.

Words Kish Lal | Photos Jack Shelton | October 2016

Simona Castricum pictured in Los Angeles, California, for Swampland issue 01. Photos by Jack Shelton.

Simona Castricum is one of the most vulnerable and powerful techno performers working today. On stage, she exposes raw emotions alongside banging drums, opening herself up with a braveness that is intoxicating. Within a career that spans twenty years—beginning at the height of the rave era in the ’90s—her most recent release #TriggerWarning40 is probably her most accomplished musical endeavour yet.

Throughout our few years as friends, I have come to know Simona as articulate, brave and wise. For this conversation, we met at her home in Melbourne. With walls covered in records and her studio set up against a stark orange wall—I couldn’t imagine a space that would feel more like her. She wore her signature lips, classically outlined in dark lip liner, and her bleached hair pushed back. Her presence and hospitality made me instantly comfortable. Much like her music, there was no holding back as we discussed everything from untangling the gender binary, catharsis while performing, and light bulb moments during karaoke.

When did you start making music?

Early 2000s is when I started making it and I started performing it 2002. I started DJing in the late ’90s.

How did you make the leap from DJing to making music?

Well the very first thing I ever did was throw a rave in ’96. Because I wasn’t confident enough to DJ on the main stage—I didn’t know what I was doing—and because I was organising events through university balls and stuff, I would sort of put myself on as a warm-up DJ. Then I’d have DJs booked for the rest [of the event]. So that was [my] entry into DJing. And then someone gave me a cracked version of Logic. It was just at uni, where everyone was giving each other versions of software. “Oh I’ll put Photoshop on your computer and InDesign and all this 3D modelling stuff. Oh I’ve got a version of Logic—have you heard of Logic?” And so I got a version of Logic.

Did you intend to start making electronic music before you got Logic?

Yes, I did, but I didn’t know what to do. I had played guitar. I learnt drums when I was five and I’ve been playing guitar since I was 15. I was writing songs back then but I didn’t really know how to do anything about it. So, by the time I got a version of Logic on my MacBook in ’99 I started to figure out sequencing and I started to figure out drum machines and how to create really, really simple tracks. Between doing that and learning how to DJ and then buying decks and all that kind of stuff, this home studio started to emerge, and this bedroom DJ career started to happen.

I was going to raves and these really big parties in the ’90s and by the time the 2000s came along, those parties started to get too big, too shit, too boring and too full of fuckos, basically. I would to go to them alone and I didn’t really know anyone. They were very cis, bro-centered and very heterosexual spaces, so the club kind of presented this alternative.

Meccanoid was this club that came about with the rise of electro-clash and electro. The great thing about this club and the great thing about electro clash was that it started to kind of fuck with the gender binary, in the same way that ’80s new wave was, and for me, as a kid of the ’80s, I really attached to that. I went to this club and for the first time I found a peer group in music. And finding that enabled me to have better conversations about music with other people that were making music or I could talk about the music I was making. Within a few weeks, I was doing warm-up sets and we were handing around each other’s music. Then within a year I played my first show at Meccanoid. It was at Pony, which is the old Boney. They were amazing and it was a really good underground club that was packed, monthly. And had a really good even spread of male and female DJs. It was probably one of the first clubs where women were so visible in DJing. You had Nic Toupee, you had Glitch who were amazing electro, techno, electro-cash DJs, and that’s where I met Kiti and JNETT. That was where I kind of found my feet and where I started.

Was there a specific moment where you realised making music was going to be such an important part of your life?

I think I always knew that I wanted to make music. I think I knew when I was four or five that I wanted to. As soon as I watched Countdown in the late ’70s I knew that I wanted to do that—I just didn’t know how I was going to get there. The music that I wanted to make and who I wanted to be on stage didn’t really come about until the last four years. So I’ve kind of spent maybe ten or fifteen years not really making the music I wanted to make or having to make compromises about how I would perform that, and having to present as male because that is what I was doing at the time. I was having a crack at that to see if it would work and it didn’t work. I always knew that I was going to do it but I always also knew that it was inextricably linked to my identity because of what I was actually singing about and what I was making music about. I always knew they were interconnected and the more I got into music the more I just wanted to fucking make it. I remember in the late ’80s when I really just took in the production quality of acid house and what I now know, in hindsight, as new beat and synth pop and EBM and industrial and techno. From ’86 to 1990, these four years of music just stayed with me. So I think they were really formative years in terms of that sound and that sound is what I carry with me.

Do you think you’ll make techno forever?

I’ve been thinking about that the last couple of weeks actually [laughs]. Am I going to make techno forever? Because I’ve been sitting here having to do these bios and I say I make “techno” but then I think I don’t have to say “techno” because I make more than that. Like I said, I play guitar and from when I was performing as Fluorescent it was kind of like this merging of guitars and textures and beats. For want of a better term, it was kind of somewhere between techno and shoegaze. Then I think, “Do I come back to drumming?” I’m still a drummer but I’m drumming on an electronic pad. So I almost don’t think its going to continue and I think the sound will evolve.

Even when I’ve played in synth pop bands and rock bands, the way that I’ve always written music has been in the structure of techno and that goes back to getting that first copy of Logic and understanding how sequencing works. My way of songwriting has always been very minimal, so even if it’s a rock track, even though it’s got guitars in it, it’s structured how I understand a 12-inch record to be. And that goes back to buying 12-inch records in the ’80s, it goes back to understanding how New Order was remixed in the ’80s or Depeche Mode or any of those things. There is always a big link between techno and pop and song structures like that. But the short answer is, no, I don’t think I’ll be making techno forever.

How long did Fluorescent last for?

Fluorescent finished up in 2009 and it was my project but I [worked with] different people with it. For the first couple of years it was my ex-partner, and then I started to collaborate with a few people that I met at Meccanoid, like [Nic] Toupee and Viva La Moore and then a couple of other friends of mine to sort of help me perform it. The records were essentially written and produced by me and then it was like, “Okay how am I going to perform these?” So that was between 2002 and 2009.

“We had access to real estate that was of no value to anybody, so we could just do shit in amazing places … the police hadn’t cottoned on and real estate agents weren’t trying to gentrify places like Footscray.”

I just wanted to say this to you, firstly, congratulations on #TriggerWarning40. It’s an incredible album. The name feels like a nod to social media, hashtags and the internet. Was this a theme for you when making the record?

The title is kind of like self-critique and it is just a really emotional record. When I started writing this record I was hoping it might have been a happier record than anything I had written before—but it wasn’t. What I write is autobiographical and [the songs are] almost like diaries. They’re pretty confronting songs, even for me. I guess I was kind of taking the piss out of myself for how often I go to social media to write emotional brain farts and this whole idea of, “Oh I should put a trigger warning on that.” Or if you write a whole bunch of stuff about trauma [then] people are like, “Hey, if you’re going to write all that shit about trauma you’ve got to put a trigger warning on it because if you write all that shit and I read it, you’re going to trigger my trauma too.” It’s kind of a comment about that. I guess it’s like, alright, well this album is full of that [trauma].

So essentially the title of the record is a trigger warning?

It is a trigger warning. The “40”, well, kind of documents a pretty shit year personally. You know, I turned forty, so it’s really literal. I’m kind of giving myself shit for the way I take to social media.

But do you find looking to social media to express yourself therapeutic?

I think it’s better to use the album than it is to brain fart on social media. I really wish I didn’t brain fart on social media because the album is a much more abstract place to cry for help and to seek catharsis because it’s open to so much interpretation. Whereas if you write shit on Twitter or any social media—and I’ve published a lot of things online, and take up a lot of space online and I wish I didn’t... But that’s where the title comes from [laughs]. Does that make sense?

It definitely makes sense. I understand taking to Facebook and social media to air your thoughts out, I do it myself.

I guess some other people might have that issue, it’s this impulsive instinct where we go, “I have to tell people about this” and even Facebook itself asks, “Whats on Your Mind?” Well I’ve got a lot on my bloody mind. What’s on my record is what’s on my mind.

What is it like performing the album?

It’s amazing. Oh it’s so good. So good.

So do you find performing the songs from it confronting at all?

Oh, absolutely.

And what’s it like being on stage and dealing with something so confronting and personal?

Well, it’s the best place to be. It’s the only place I’d want to be. But there are songs on that record that are kind of tough. One of the things about writing songs about your emotions or writing songs about sadness or trauma is that you can kind of duck those ideas down and six months later you’ll really realise that what you were trying to say back then has a completely different meaning or has a new meaning or you’ve recognised a much larger context. They’re kind of like time bombs. And if you realise that halfway through a performance, it can actually really affect your performance. If something to do with what you’ve written about reoccurs during the week, and then you’ve got to sing that song, it really affects you.

Alternatively, the music is sort of quite brutal and it’s quite aggressive, so when I am having a very shit week or if I am having a time when I’ve really got to get out some energy, I find being on that stage and having that feedback through the music, through the drums, through my mind is feedback of energy and aggression, which is really central to the music and the performance. It makes the performance just go exponentially into a whole different zone. So sometimes I can play the show and be quite calm about it [but] I don’t really enjoy those ones so much. [Then] there are times where I’m really pissed off. There was one time where my set got cut to ten minutes; I was getting misgendered by three sound technicians who were all hopeless, and I just absolutely lost my mind. All I wanted to do was play one song and fuck off, and just play that one fucking song and break everything. I was like, “I’m going to break these sticks”, because I just wanted to. It was one of the best shows I ever did [laughs] and there was someone taking photos and they showed me the photos and it was like... “Yeah!”

What were those photos like?

I just had this look on my face like I was actually trying to break those instruments. I think when I’m up there performing, that performance space is a space of catharsis where I process a lot of that emotion and get out a lot of that energy, get out a lot of that aggression. But I’ve been playing this record for maybe a year and a half and I’ve had to change the way I play it. I’m getting bored [laughs] [because] it’s a long time to play something. Considering the album only came out digitally four or five months ago and on vinyl a month ago, people are only starting to listen to it for the first time and now there is America and festival season, so I kind of have to come up with new ways of how to play it for those modes.

Are you planning on changing your show a lot for America?

Well, I’m not playing shows in America, I’m just playing DJ sets, but the festivals I’ll be doing, I’ll have to change the sets for them. So the way I played my launch at Hugs [and Kisses] is the way I’m going to be playing over the summer. They’re continuous sets and they’re heaps of fun. The show I played at Hugs is the way I’ve wanted to play for ten to fifteen years.

Oh, that’s amazing. How does it feel to reach that point of satisfaction?

It feels really good! It was a combination of drumming, singing, sequencing, DJing in a club at night for an hour and the music only stopped twice. And I played ten songs. So it was all about dancing, it was all about energy and being a club show. I was like, “Okay, how do I make this idea of techno pop kind of work in a way that is actually engaging for that 2 a.m. slot in the club?”

Yeah, that is a hard slot for live music.

Yeah, I used to play song after song after song after song, which was getting a bit boring.

Musically speaking what do you think your influences were for this record?

I wanted this album to sound more live. I wanted the way I drum to come through and those sounds of instruments I play live to come through. The idea of performance influenced this [record] a lot. But what influenced that performance was that I remember seeing Underworld play at Big Day Out in the early 2000s. I wasn’t expecting it to be really good to be honest because I had grown out of Underworld by that time. I did think Underworld were the shit in ’96. I thought Second Toughest In The Infants was amazing and that record made me think, “Wow, I want to start a record off like that one day.” So that was always in my head, and then I saw them at Big Day Out, not expecting it to be great, and it was one of the best live—actually it was the best live techno performance I’ve ever seen. It was amazing. But it was four people up there and I thought, “How am I going to do that?” [laughs]. So that influenced, certainly, the beginning and ending of this record.

I really like that and find it interesting how a performance can influence an entire album.

It’s really like I have been trying to nail these particular experiences that I’ve had recently. I remember seeing Derrick Carter in San Francisco three or four years ago and I just stood in front of him and thought, “What are those bass sounds you’re doing?” and all I did was focus on the bass sounds and the beats and how he was DJing, rather than just understanding it from a mix or understanding it from an individual track. Then two days later I was trying to take what I remembered and write that. I was kind of using those experiences almost like school. So I’d go home and do my homework—and that homework turned into sketches for songs, and those songs turned into this album.

I was also almost trying to lose the influence of New Order because I am so influenced by New Order [that] I’m almost influenced by them too much. I’m also influenced by Depeche Mode too much, y’know? I’ve got to try and leave that and I’ve been wanting to leave the influence of shoegaze and leave the influence of My Bloody Valentine and leave the influence of Curve. But you can’t shape those influences. They’re kind of like the sonic textures of [my] tracks like “Erasure” and “Ennis House Pool”, [those songs] still kind of have leanings back towards that and even the way I sing has leanings back towards that. It’s difficult to shake.

Those influences have been with you for such a long time. Your career now spans well over twenty years, right?

The first time I ever DJed at a club was in 1996 in Geelong for a student night, so if that constitutes the beginning—playing music at the club through amplified sound...

I think that counts, so that would make it twenty years then. What have been some of your highlights as a performer?

My launch at Hugs and Kisses was probably the highlight because I felt like, “Okay, this is how I want to do it,” in terms of how I want to perform. And the launch of “Still” which was really my first, well it wasn’t my first show since I had come out… but I think I had anticipated that moment of launching my first single and performing and I remember doing that and having this enormous high that I had never really had before. The sense of relief and there was such a [a sense of ] achievement. I had really struggled with the idea of performing as myself on stage, so to be able to do that was this huge milestone, I think.

What year was that?

That would have been March of 2014 maybe. The years before that were really difficult because it was all about persisting through opportunities I got that didn’t really work, or people telling me that I was shit. That was a lot of what I went through. There were people that were telling me I was good, but no one was telling me that I should keep going. I don’t think anyone tells people to keep going. But I wish people did. I had a lot of people close to me telling me I was shit and that I should give up and that my music was crap. Or, if I did get a review it was shocking. So I didn’t get much confidence out of things you would hope you could turn into milestones. Like, certain shows that you’re asked to play, some of them were really unpleasant experiences... So, yeah...being a part of things like LISTEN is a highlight because you always kind of dream of being on a label. Also, playing really awesome sets, like this DJ set I played at Pleasure Planet.

And what’s your experience been like with LISTEN?

It’s really good. Before, I was self-releasing, so the idea that someone is enthusiastic about your music as much as you are, and wants to work with you and make opportunities happen, and is going to put the amount of work in that you’re putting in—it’s really good. It’s a really good working relationship. One of the most devastating experiences is putting so much time and years of effort into a record and then it doesn’t go anywhere. You think you’ve mastered it well, then it goes on radio and it sounds terrible. And it has a public lifespan of about a week and that’s kind of crushing. So the idea of having a label behind you, it just means that you’ve got some kind of support—people around to tell you to keep going.

So you were around for what everyone affectionately refers to the “rave era”.

Oh the rave era, hmm, yes [laughs].

Well, I wasn’t around but I wish I was...

I wish you were too. What fun we would have had—shit! It was amazing, it really was. We had access to real estate that was of no value to anybody, so we could just do shit in amazing places and spaces—and we took over those spaces. So whether that [was] Shed 14 at Docklands, or forests—oh, it was such a time. We were going out and doing shit and it wasn’t regulated. The police hadn’t cottoned on and it was a time where real estate agents weren’t trying to gentrify places like Footscray, for instance. So Global Village, which is down by Maribyrnong, was this artist space that was a really old factory. Every Picture Tells A Story used to run raves out of there and then Hardware Records and Hardware would run all their parties out of Shed 14 in Docklands. Then you had all these other ones. The very first rave I went to was in what is now Bridie O’Reilly’s and it was an acid rave party. It was fucking awesome techno and that was about ’96. So there are all these places and this hidden history of rave culture around the city that I know of.

“Then the millennium came along and all of a sudden rock bands are massive, everyone has mullets and Jet have a billboard on CityLink and you’re like, ‘What the fuck just happened?’”

Do you sometimes have a cheeky laugh to yourself when you pass by an old rave site?

Well, yeah, every time I walk into the car park at 7-Eleven up here, I remember the first time someone asked me if I was selling drugs. Someone asked me, “Are you selling any acid?” and I thought, “Do I look like I’m selling acid?” And in hindsight, of course I looked like I was selling acid. I was dressed for a rave for christ’s sake. It was the first rave I ever went to so it was all uphill from there, or downhill... or, what do you say? It was all good from there.

There were thousands of fucking people and it was kind of normal and just what we did. They would have these really big front rooms and these amazing back rooms where they’d be playing techno just a little bit slower and then they were playing techno a lot faster out the front. I was always more into the backroom techno. And that was good, but around about the time ’99, then 2000 and 2001 came, by the time Two Tribes were doing parties at the tennis centre and raves were kicked out of Shed 14, and Docklands turned into apartments—techno and rave culture [had] became so popular that it kind of got overrun by fuckos and became about profit. This meant increased security, more fuckos, shitter DJs, more gatekeeping. The one thing through the whole era was a very small percentage of women DJing and how heterosexual those spaces were and how male- dominated those spaces were, so of course I didn’t make too many friends.

There were many queer events like Winter Days, which was a big gay and lesbian party which would happen at Shed 14, so that was kind of how gay and lesbian culture fit into rave culture as well. It didn’t really crossover. We would turn up to, say, Hardware parties but you couldn’t be outwardly queer. But then there was Earthcore and more techno hippy kind of stuff where there was a lot more playing around with gender and you could be yourself a little bit more. I found there was a little more space to express myself in a feminine way at places like Earthcore or places like Every Picture Tells A Story, but not at Hardware.

Well, we don’t really have raves anymore—there are a few parties thrown here and there but most of them get shutdown within ten minutes.

Oh yeah, they always get shut down. Now they’re onto it, whereas back then they weren’t. There was a couple of Prana raves and a couple in Parkville and it kind of happens and it’s great because I didn’t think I’d see that kind of shit again. But there’s a generation of people trying to make it happen. I didn’t go to the Cool Room, Frozen party but I wish I did. It looked really good. The kind of thing Pleasure Planet and other people are doing is really good. There’s a friend of mine who is really, really, really critical of the new rave movement. They’re like, “Oh they have no idea, it’s all completely different to what we were trying to do in the ’90s and it’s all about fashion now and this and that.”

We don’t know though, because we weren’t there.

Of course it’s new, of course it’s got a different spirit and of course it’s inherently retro but for me I’m just happy to see a resurgence in techno. When rave culture jumped the shark to Rod Laver Arena we didn’t want a bar of it anymore and when techno became so incredibly minimal and really boring we were like, “Well what do we do now?” Then the millennium came along and all of a sudden rock bands are massive, everyone has mullets and Jet have a billboard on CityLink and all these kids are wearing Ramones t-shirts and you’re like, “What the fuck just happened? Hey, I know I’m really sick of Jason Midro and Bass Station is giving me the shits and Hardware ain’t what it used to be, but come on—rock and roll as your first statement of the millennium? How did that happen?” I was sitting there in denial, thinking, “This is not happening.”

So it was just a huge shock?

For me it was. So electro clash coming back to the clubs was a good place to be. This idea of rock and new wave coming back. But what happened is that it completely changed DJ culture and the iPod became so ubiquitous that people just turned up to parties and said, “Well hey I’m going to DJ”, and DJing became incredibly sceney, more sceney than it ever was, and more broey than it ever was, but at the same time people turned up with laptops and iPods, which made DJing so incredibly accessible—to the point where it was too accessible—and then the dance floor started to get attitude. Request culture became really big. I was used to going on dance floors in the ’90s and not knowing what I was going to hear for seven hours and I wanted that experience because I hadn’t heard all this music and you would turn up to hear good techno. You had an expectation you were going to hear good techno but you didn’t know what fucking song you were going to hear. All of a sudden in the 2000s everyone has iPods and no one gives a shit about beat mixing or gives a shit about playing on decks or elitist bullshit and that kind of ruined rave culture. It was gone. And now in the past five years, it’s back.

How does it feel now that it’s back, in the small way that it is?

For me it’s really good. Like at my launch for “Still” three years ago, for me, I had been living in the closet three years prior. For me to come out as trans at thirty-seven I kind of feel that life I didn’t have, I can have it now. It doesn’t feel like I’ve missed out though, I’m not sitting here in my forties thinking, “Oh, I missed out”, not in the way you said you feel like you have missed out on rave culture. It’s one thing to be in that culture but another thing to be there and not participate the way you want to participate as the person you know you are, you know? But it was great. That’s the short answer.

I like the long answer better. Do you think if you could, you would bring back something from the rave days to today—whether that be the access to real estate, looser gatekeeping, or anything else?

Aside from the locations we had raves in, and the freedom—record stores. They are the things I wish were still around. They were the key to community outside the club and the raves and how we found out about music, and events. Like, rave flyers and posters were amazing. I have hundreds of them still in my cupboard. That is something a new rave scene will never be able to capture. Even if you have a Berghain party at a Newport Substation, or Cool Room rave in a Footscray warehouse, which is a great party in a great building, those record shops are gone forever. Slap, Hardware, Synesthesia, Central Station and the music they stocked left Beatport for dead. These places served for what Facebook is: they advertised events, sold local fashion and merchandise and sustained local economies. And that’s the saddest thing.

In terms of making music, right now are you exactly where you want to be with your production and performances or are there weaknesses you have left to overcome? Wait, I’m sorry, that sounds like a job interview question…

[Laughs] I feel like I’m being interviewed for college.

Shit, not my best work.

Well, I think my vocals could be improved.

I really love your vocal style.

I don’t really have a lot of confidence in my singing. It’s strange though because when you imagine your voice in any other way it changes the way you see your music. It’s like, I use my voice to kind of tell a story and use it as an instrument at the same time and I’m working with the imperfections of it.

And that’s what makes your music, your music.

But if it annoys the shit out of somebody, I understand, because it’s not beautiful.

That’s funny because I think you are a beautiful singer, whereas I’m an awful singer and never second guess getting up and singing “Like A G6” to a room full of strangers at karaoke... but it is mostly talking, let’s be honest.

[Laughs] Well it’s karaoke that gave me the confidence to sing actually. Everyone finds themselves at karaoke. I don’t know if karaoke is the key to the city but it’s my idea of a good time. Once I was at karaoke and no-one wanted to sing Toto’s “Africa” and I thought I’d have a crack. It was very difficult because there is a bit of a range in it. When it gets into the chorus it gets right up there and if you don’t have a falsetto or if you’ve got a shit falsetto—and I have a shit falsetto—and of course I took myself way too seriously to show everybody in a Bourke Street karaoke bar. So I decided to impress the pants off everybody in the room by showing them that I knew the alternative melody. So I sang the alternative melody, I found my pitch.

Really?

Yeah! I found my pitch and I went, “Fuck!” And then I started to write music in that pitch.

So Toto’s “Africa” changed the way you write music?

Well, it was certainly a watershed moment.

At least the “weaknesses” question wasn’t a complete loss. Let’s look to the future—what do you want to do with your music and what are your plans for the foreseeable future?

By mistake, someone said I should put in a submission for this architecture and feminism conference in Sweden in November and they said on it they would like performers. And I said, “Oh yeah, I’ve studied architecture and worked in architecture and I teach architecture and I’m also a musician and performer and I’ve got something to say about architecture and feminism.”

I wrote 600 words of bullshit and it actually summarised how I’ve been trying to write about creative practice as an architect. I wrote that I wanted to perform four songs that articulated experiences of isolation from space—from social space, from architectural space, from the city. And then, also the idea of performing on the stage as a space that gender non-conforming people have traditionally have felt safe in, I wanted to articulate that. And they said, “Yeah, we want that.” So, I’m basically doing a twenty-minute rave performance to articulate this incredibly profound experience of gender non-conforming architectural space—and they’re into it.

Also, when you asked me before if I’m going to keep doing techno—there are so many different ways to do techno. I kind of want to get back on my drum kit. I’m interested in how Fuck Buttons do techno. I’m interested in how KXP do techno. I’m interested in how The Field does techno. I’m interested in how the drum kit fits into techno. I think the next album will sound quite different. I’m thinking of pop and I want to try something else without disappearing up my own arsehole—but good luck with that.

This interview first appeared in Swampland issue one.