Earlier this month, Lithuanian producer Ten Walls faced rejection from the electronic music community after posting a homophobic rant on Facebook. Festivals immediately removed him from their bills and his booking managers dropped him. However, his banishment feels like a small victory in the scope of a much larger fight for fair representation and treatment within the straight, white male-dominated electronic music scene.
Ashley Capachione is a Boston-based electronic artist (also known as BATHAUS) who is striving to make the scene more inclusive for women. While working with Discwoman, a collective that aims to unite women in the electronic scene and combat sexism, she has said, “We’re constantly talking about battling sexism, and hearing stories of other women in our community battling it, noticing that the percentage of women headlining or even being billed for electronic dance music is significantly lower than men… We decided we needed to create some visibility for women that are talented, making music, and DJing.” Capachione deploys that same desire for innovation in her music as well. She’s dabbled in experimental witch-house and curated her own sound/video art performances. Recently, she’s been working with more of a pop sound, and her latest single, “Darkheart”, is a heavy-yet-playful dance track that swallows you up in its foggy grooves. The production sounds sleek and the spacey, resonant synthesizers and punchy drums keep the song engaging from beginning to end. The syncopated rhythm and looped, pitched-down house vocals trap you in a hypnotized state, leaving you to wallow contently in an atmospheric stillness.
“Darkheart” was released earlier this year but reappears on the Unspeakable Vol. Two compilation, a compilation of all-female electronic artists, out last week on Unspeakable Records.
