Salute Breaks Down DJing in the U.S.
shot by David Feigelson.
This October I was blessed with the opportunity to attend Porter Robinson’s Second Sky Music Festival, featuring a collection of acts curated by Robinson himself. salute (a.k.a. Felix Navo), up and coming producer hailing from the U.K., followed DJ Potaro as the second act and kept the crowd moving early in the day. salute has made a name for himself by producing electronic music ranging from club bangers to R&B chillers, and I got a chance to sit down with him and talk about performing in the U.S., his creative influences, and time travel. Check out our conversation below, and be sure to listen to salute’s newest EP, Ultra Pool.
David Feigelson: First of all, congratulations on being here and a great performance. How are you feeling?
salute: I wasn’t expecting that level of energy for this time of day. My set was like twenty past twelve, and I was expecting it to be very chill, but people really showed up. I actually hadn’t prepared anything for today at all. I didn’t know what I wanted to play. Then during soundcheck I was just like fuck it, I’m gonna play a whole set of just my stuff.
DF: I loved the PinkPantheress flip, that was crazy.
salute: Ah thank you very much. I made that last year and just put it online, and now in the past few months it’s kinda taken on a life of its own. Loads of people are playing it, which is really cool to see.
DF: How do you go from putting sets together like this to making records?
salute: Well, I think the best way to approach it is to not really have a plan at all. Almost all of the projects I’ve put out have kind of just happened. With my DJ sets, I never prepare. Whether I’m playing for thirty minutes or five hours, I don’t ever plan it, I just play.
DF: Do you ever get nervous you won’t know what to play?
salute: No, you know what, I actually used to plan everything to a T, and it made me more nervous because I was like ‘what if I mess up this part or that part, it’s all gonna fall apart.’ I feel way more at ease when it’s just open and I can read the crowd and see what’s happening.
DF: How often do you have to adjust/change vibes based on the crowd?
salute: Oh, all the time. I’ve been DJing for nearly a decade and reading crowds is something you just learn. I also feel like DJ culture in Europe is very different from DJ culture here. In the US, I feel like DJing is a showcase of yourself, like a performance, whereas DJing in Europe is way more about reading crowds and playing what you think they’d like. In Europe I play a lot less of my own music, because I use my DJ sets to contextualize my own production. Here in America, I make sure that it’s more of my own, original stuff.
DF: Do you have a preference between performing here and in Europe?
salute: Well, I’ve only done a handful of shows here. I love both for very different reasons. I feel like here, because the U.K. sound isn’t really that big, the people who appreciate it really appreciate it. Like I was playing in Denver last night and people were losing their minds. In the U.K., people go crazy as well, but because everyone is playing that sound, it’s not so much of a novelty.
DF: Growing up in Vienna, what sounds were you influenced by? I also understand that you underwent a transition from doing softer, more R&B influenced stuff to more club type stuff. How did that happen?
salute: So, the kind of music I was influenced by has a lot to do with my older brother. He was super into R&B and rap. He’s thirteen years older than me, born in the eighties, so growing up in the nineties I would just listen to him listening to 2Pac and stuff like that. But in Austria, people love techno and house, and obviously in other parts of Europe as well. Although, when I was younger, I didn’t have as much exposure to dance music. The music became a lot more dancy when I turned eighteen and started going out. I moved to England, and started going to clubs where they were playing like garage, dubstep, drum and bass, and stuff like that. The more I lived in the U.K. and immersed myself in dance culture, the music became a lot faster, a lot harder. It’s a product of my environment I guess, just like how my music was different when I lived in the south of England. Now that I live in the north, in an industrial city, I go to these dingy warehouse clubs, and I listen to that music a lot, so that’s had an impact on how I produce as well.
DF: Last question, unrelated to music. If you had a time machine, where would you go?
salute: Damnnn that’s so tough. Well, the good person in me would want to go back and stop a really major atrocity.
DF: You can let the not so good person in you out too, don’t worry.
salute: Ahh. Do you know what? I’d go back in time, and ask the first person who milked a cow, what the fuck they were doing.
edited by Sha Frasier, Editor-in-Chief.
