Not a newcomer on the electronic but making waves with his grooves on Get Physical and his recent releases, Jordan Postrel (m.O.N.R.O.E.) is sure to make an impact in 2018. We had the chance to catch up with Jordan at the intimate Vujaday Festival in Barbados. Having been Vujaday’s first year we asked what were his first impressions of the Island’s festival and what to expect from m.O.N.R.O.E. in the coming few months.
After settling down to chat with Jordan we began with a little small talk about his name and where it originated from which I now know is his middle name. I asked him about where the punctuation came from, as I thought it may be some kind of Get Physical thing… “No, it actually had nothing to do with them. It was just my thought process behind it, as it’s spelled so annoyingly and particularly, you’ll remember it.“ I asked about the small M and he added ”Oh yeah. That always fucks with people. I love it.”
We moved on to talk about the festival and what his first impressions of the island and festival were… “I like it. Everyone here has been super nice. I only got here late last night so I only saw that one other venue. This one I just got to, I think is amazing. I mean, overall, I think it’s done very well. I’m enjoying it a lot.”
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“It’s groovy, trippy, and slightly minimalistic. All the artists I’m friends with that make great music. A lot of upcoming artist out of Miami, there’s a bunch of new people coming up in the scene there that I wanted to help put on, and then it’s people who I consistently work with like Daniel Dubb, & Dance Spirits. Robert Babicz on it, who’s one of my idols for a long time, and I recently got to become really good friends with him, actually, because the Desert Hearts guys, I got to play with him at Burning Man two years ago, and Robert wound up coming to Miami a couple weeks later and stayed with me for a while so that was really cool.”
I went on to ask, other than the compilation what else can we expect from him… “I have a Desert Hearts release coming out with Daniel Dubb. It’s also very hip-hop influenced. You’ll know in two seconds when you hear it. I also have a single coming out with Desert Hearts, too, a separate one featuring my friend Realism.”
“I have one single that my brother and I have signed to Manjumasi but we’re working on the second track for them at the moment. Dance Spirit and I did an EP for City fox. I’m doing a vinyl release with my friend Taimur from Black Market and some other collabs with Holmar & M.A.N.D.Y.”
“I’m starting a record label with some friends of mine. I don’t want to give too much about it because it’s a little bit of a surprise right now.”
I asked Jordan to talk a little more about his brother and what we can expect from him over the coming months… “My brother’s name is Adisyn. I introduced him to all the Get Physical and Kindisch because we all work very closely together. Kennis is our sister label, and he makes more like dub-y, deep stuff. He’s really good at it, and, yeah, his first release did very well. He had two tracks in top ten, and we’re doing a bunch of stuff together, and it’s fun to have someone in the family who also has a very similar taste in music to you.” I went on to ask if he had toured with his brother yet… “Not yet. He just started doing stuff with his project so his music is like marinating right now, and he has a few more releases coming out, too, so hopefully in the next year, we could start doing more things together, and, when his profile builds, eventually we’ll do like a project together or something. So, lots of fun possibilities.”
Now that Jordan has spent time touring internationally I was keen to know if the travel had influenced his sound, and if so how it had evolved since he first began. “In the beginning, I was making more like heavy tech house tracks, and I like that, but I feel like that type of sound is changing a little bit. So, playing out at parties and playing in different cities, different environments and stuff, I’ve noticed that I”m kind of pulling back a lot more on doing such big tracks, and now keeping it more minimal and vibey, and just simple, fun and you can party a whole lot long to it. So, yeah, definitely refined my palettes.”
We went on to speak about his time in the studio. I wanted to know what his go-to piece of gear is right now and whether it was software or hardware he preferred? “Right now at the moment, I would say an Analog Rytm. I’ve always kind of toyed around with it, but working with the Dance Spirit guys, they got me really into using that machine recently. Besides that, I’m just a huge Ableton nerd, and then tons of outboard processing gear, which always varies. I think everyone should own a Moog filter.” With all this talk of gear and hardware, I was intrigued to know some of his early influences? Who got him into electronic music? “Well, I don’t know who was the first person to like get me into it, like introduce me, but the first experience I had is when I was like 15, I had a friend who told me we should go to Ultra, and I went there and I wound up seeing Carl Cox for like nine hours.”
I asked Jordan if you were to collaborate with any artist, dead or alive right now, who would you pick? “Right now? I really like Roman Flugel. I think he’s doing some really interesting shit, and who else do I really like right now that could be cool? That’s a hard question. There are so many people I like.” Ater putting him on the spot (and almost demanding an answer) he added “I’m trying to think who… Mihai Popoviciu, that guy is making some dope stuff.” I agreed with him, as he is a production machine!!! Jordan went on to add “Dude, he is in the pocket all the time.”
I wanted to know what advice he would you give to any new DJs, up and coming, that are beginning to break onto the scene… “One, don’t get caught up in too much purist bullshit. Like, have fun experimenting.”
“Don’t try to be too underground, but at the same time, understand what you’re going for, and just do what really you enjoy. Like, fuck everyone else.”
Before we went in our separate directions to continue on enjoying the festival I decided to throw in a couple of bonus questions. I asked Jordan if there was a particular venue that he had not played yet that he would love to play. His answer was very quick… “Panorama Bar. Oh, my God, That’s the Holy Grail for me.”
Finally, I asked for some of his favourite non-electronic artists/bands that he was really into right now? “I’m really into like more old stuff than a lot of bands contemporarily going on, but, I mean, I was a huge fan of the Strokes & interpol when I was a kid. Right now, there’s this one dude who I think is doing some pretty interesting shit with production. The song is not that new. I mean, I think it came out like a year or two ago. It’s this dude Dan Croll. You’ve heard of him? He made this song ‘From Nowhere’. This song is awesome. Like, the production on this thing is badass. I think it’s really good songwriting.
I thanked Jordan for his time and we went our separate ways to carry on with the Vujaday fun.
America Gets Physical, Vol. 1 – Mixed by m.O.N.R.O.E. is available now on Beatport.
