042. Hit Factory

March 2022 | The Hit Factory is DJ Wawa, Clay Wilson, and their musical orbit of friends and collaborators. Their regular mixes and releases stand as a foil to perfectionism, commodification, and the music industry PR machine — two relative veterans of the music community reclaiming DJing and production on their own terms. This interview was recorded in a café in Brooklyn on January 7, 2022.

About the mix:

This mix was recorded at the Hit Factory with nothing but vibes in mind. This ain’t a mix to prove that we’re good or know how to beat match or anything like that. Just years and years of listening to music with the hope of gaining a deeper understanding of it along with ourselves. Let the feelings take over when you hear the music not the thoughts.

Where did each of you grow up, and how did that influence your sound or the way you relate with music?

CLAY WILSON:
I grew up in Syracuse. I don't really think that it influenced my music taste much at all. It's a place where you can basically enjoy college sports and there's not much else. It was not until going to college where I really was exposed to a lot more. I was looking for some stuff just being a nerdy kid, I was on the internet, but I wasn't into anything particularly deep when I was in middle school and high school.

DJ WAWA:
Long Beach is weird. Long Beach has people like Sublime and Snoop Dogg. And then that's your musical background growing up. Then you kind of go in certain directions with that. You'll have certain people go ska, other people go hip-hop. I went hip-hop. I was really into hip-hop in high school and middle school. My first record was a Ludacris record. Dance music is weird though, because dance music was always around that. Dr. Dre was making techno before he was making hip-hop, Dr. Dre made all these weird beats that have all these industrial twinges. G-funk is from a bunch of electro sounds.

Electronic music and drum machines and music of that kind has always been around. I didn't really understand it, I was just into it. I was into weird hip-hop culture and finding shit on the internet. I wasn't big on like, MySpace, I just used to download a bunch of rap mixtapes and listen to shit over and over again. I didn't get into music outside of hip-hop until I went to college and Hype Machine became a thing. Hype Machine was a real catalyst.

Both of you currently call New York home. How would you say that influences you musically? And I know you've both been here for a while, so how has that changed over time?

CLAY WILSON:
There's a never ending stream of people who have been doing it longer than you and new people coming in. And there's always some kind of exchange of what's popular and what's being cultivated. And then the kind of history lesson aspects of it.

The big thing for me is checking out what people younger than me are doing and trying to lean on people who are older and find out more about the roots of what we're all doing here. Like François K. and the guys who do the Paradise Garage reunions, and Soul Summit. There's a bunch of people who were going to Paradise Garage and other clubs in the city, like Justin Strauss.

DJ WAWA:
Even like 718 Sessions.

CLAY WILSON:
Yeah. Danny Krivit, Danny Tenaglia...

DJ WAWA:
New York has the craziest history of dance music, of DJing at least. It's where DJing was popularized. I like when Clay says, we talk about how Black people would DJ a lot, but we don't talk about Latinos DJing a lot. There's a lot of like gay Latinos that were like the basis of New York house music, New York block party music, Masters at Work and all this stuff.

CLAY WILSON:
And freestyle before that. Also, Paradise Garage had a huge crossover with Japanese music. New York has always been that cliche melting pot city. And I think a lot of the New York sound is the way that everybody blended together, especially Paradise Garage era, it was just the hot records. There's that legacy of like, it doesn't really matter where it's coming from, what neighborhood or what people. It's just, is this a hot record that works on the street? Then it all gets mixed together somehow. That feels unique.

DJ WAWA:
When you're going into record stores and stuff, like when you go to A-1 or the older record stores that carry house records from that era or tracks from that era, you really feel the depth of the New York dance scene and how long it's been around.

There's a lot of ties, even going upstate and randomly ending up in like, the Avalon dance club room, which was something that the gays of the early dance club culture, when they were sick of discos in New York City, would build discos upstate. So during the summer they had some place to go to and party while they were in Fire Island or whatever. And seeing like a bunch of women DJ, young thems and femmes DJ there, and just being like, "This place was built 40 years ago literally for this purpose."

New York dance music is just kind of always tapping you on the shoulder, like, I was here before you and I will be here after you.

Lately it's been cool to watch everyone kind of grow and mature. We talk about AceMo all the time, because everyone talks about Ace all the time. Because Ace is like, a kid in the neighborhood, but also is now one of the most in demand DJs on earth. And it's not just Ace. Watching Wyatt (MoMA Ready), Kush Jones and Swisha, Liv (livwutang), Miah (ADAB) do it. Watching Russell (Russell E.L. Butler) have like, their second ascension.

It's really interesting to watch artists grow up and develop and how their scene changes. Their scene, not the scene. And the scene changes along with them too. I was watching that Boiler Room for Wyatt and Ace when they were doing 160 and it's like, "Oh, you guys are like Rashad and Spinn now. You guys are super teamed up, you guys have good vibes. Everyone really likes you. And you're really helpful. You're doing this really fast music, but you're crossing it over to everybody. Everybody's super into it." And it's wild to watch that start.

And then there's all these younger people like Devoye, Donis, Rose Kourts, cry$cross, and EscaFlowne, and even watching JADALAREIGN ascend over the last like two years, it's just been exciting. There's a lot of people around, and a lot of nice people to talk to.

How would you say that the prevalence of streaming over the last year and the pandemic in general has affected the music world?

DJ WAWA:
Streaming is cool, expressing yourself however you want to is cool. A lot of people who are doing well in real life right now, it's because they were relentless with the streaming. Even someone like Elise who built their own platform off of trying to stream all the time. There's a lot of different ways to succeed in different avenues. You just have to believe in what you're doing and do it. You can't question it all the time or complain about, "Why is this not happening for me?" You kind of have to throw that out the window and just keep on moving.

CLAY WILSON:
I think it's just reality that careers are not really being made by journalism and labels the way they used to be. So you have to be blasting content constantly if you want to make that jump, and stream it if that's how you're going to do it, whatever. I have no problem sitting at home watching a stream, my friends are on and I'm doing nothing. I would rather see my friends play than do nothing. I don't see any negative to it.

DJ WAWA:
Especially in the absence of shows, it keeps people remembering that everyone's a real person. Maybe when you're on Spotify you kind of just click around like, "This was just made." But when you see someone doing the thing and it's presented with a flyer, and Venmo, and like, this is our work, we're expressing ourselves in our work for you... then it's like, "Okay. This is a legitimate art show."

Every DJ show, every night it's a legitimate one-time art show. The people who are playing are only going to play together on that night, and they're only going to play the music that way, that one time. So streaming is just the virtual version of those art shows.

This is a bit of a rewind to back in the past: for each of you, what was the first music experience, or just any memorable music experience, that really stuck with you?

DJ WAWA:
I've been thinking a lot about that Josey Rebelle closing set at Sustain-Release, which is just hard not to think about if you were there. That Rashad moment that she put me through–just a full swing of emotions in the middle of an eight hour, gauntlet set. Especially because I have just the Juan Atkins thing that I'm doing all night next week and I'm just kind of trying to channel Josey. "How does someone make you feel so much when you've been listening to them for so long?

CLAY WILSON:
There's a few, but a pretty early one, I saw Ras G play right before the super proto-punk band Death from Detroit. It's like a black punk band that was arguably the first punk band. Weird pairing, but also made a lot of sense and kind of exposed certain threads of like, this shit is all just kind of the same, the dance music or sample stuff in reality has a lot of ties to previous music, like jazz and rock. It kind of broke open some of those walls of dividing music in a certain way, thinking less about a genre division and more of the pure feeling of things that comes across physically.

I wish there were more lineups like that, more creative in a way that makes sense.

CLAY WILSON:
Yeah. It can be really hard to try to book eclectic shows and it's often just a disaster.

DJ WAWA:
It's also like what you were saying earlier, people have to compromise. A lot of lineups are a bunch of people compromising.

I guess that connects too to the commodification of dance music, because I feel like at a punk show or certain kinds of shows, people will go out and it's like, "Oh, I'm going out just to be surprised and hear new music." And then there's the band that has a bunch of hit singles and everyone wants to go out and see them play those singles. Now a lot of dance music is kind of like, "Oh, I signed up for a techno night and I want techno. And if I hear one breakbeat I'm going to go completely rigid."

DJ WAWA:
It's weird to see people being so rigid about their BPMs. The 120 people are scared that everyone listens to 160 now, and 175, and they're like, "No one's ever going to listen to 120 again." And then the 175 people are like, "You have to take us seriously as a dance music culture."

People will always love 120. They just will also love 175. Dance music was club music in 2010, but we were into it in a different era and then it broke apart into this techno and house thing. Which is cool in a way, because everyone got really into the history of dance music and the origins of where it came from. Everyone did a lot more research, but it also made everyone very rigid, like, I only listen to this, I won't listen to that. Now we're kind of opening back up into a time where people are interested in a more diverse range of BPMs and sounds.

The pandemic was long and a lot of people going to dance clubs are new. I've heard one of the Bossa bouncers being like, "70% of these people are new. I've never seen them before." So I feel that. These are all people that have never really gone to clubs and never really gone to parties.

We've been partying for a long time. We've been to dope ass big parties that made us have all these feelings and stuff, and come back to this kind of like money grab situation, which is cool because we get to DJ a lot, but also doesn't really feel the way it once felt. We're all a little bit older and we're reckoning with all these people that are really excited about this new age, but they're excited because they haven't known anything before.

Everyone's scared that their moment is never going to come or that it passed them already. That's the anxiety of the trauma of this entire situation. Maybe you had a bunch of gigs, and then one day all the gigs stopped, because everything stopped. Everyone's scared for their position or the music that they like, but everyone's just going to keep doing their thing and not be so distracted about what they're getting at the moment. Even though that's really hard to say, because people want results for their work, and they deserve results for their work. Everything about this is super complicated.

CLAY WILSON:
I think also the pandemic aspects of it all came as the algorithm funneling was really pushing. That's a bad combination. The algorithm funneling of shit is fueling more of that rigid thing. It's like, "I like this music because it tells me that I like this music," if you're not thinking about it. Not to do the old head thing, but it's much different going to a record store and just putting stuff on and being like, "Does this sound cool or not?" versus being like, "Oh, these are the related artists to the artists that I like."

That was the thing that was building up, and then getting hit with like the pandemic resetting crowds and scenes, it's not fun times.

DJ WAWA:
Yeah. I put stuff out in March 2020. And then the world shut down and it's like, "Oh, I'm losing all this opportunity and I don't know how to get it back." It's a traumatic situation, but the only way to deal with it is to stay focused and keep pushing yourself forward.

I didn't start buying records until we moved into a new place six months ago, which has catalyzed a whole different way of DJing, and thinking about music, and collecting music and playing music. You have to keep rolling with your own punches because it only does yourself a disservice to slow down.

That's kind of what the Hit Factory was about too. We just weren't putting out enough stuff. It just kind of made sense. It was like, we both make music, we're in the same house, we're cool. When we moved in together we didn't know how cool we would be.

If you were explaining Hit Factory to someone who has no idea what it is, how would you explain it?

DJ WAWA:
It's a way that we can talk seriously about music, and a place where we can shed our own anxiety about how we release music and art into the world. It's a place where we can kind of feign confidence, whether we have confidence in the moment or not. We can at least put it out with confidence that we're just doing it ourselves. And that we believe in it.

CLAY WILSON:
I don't think that there's a huge concept to it really. It's just like, "Let's do some shit." Partially to hold each other accountable to finishing stuff, but beyond that it's kind of like, "What did you make this month? Cool. Put it out." It's anti all the shit we were just talking about of like, I'm a techno person, I'm a house person, or whatever. Just make music and it is whatever it is for that month.

DJ WAWA:
We're not proving ourselves to anyone. We've spent years going out, going to parties, hanging out, releasing music, releasing mixes, making things, working on ourselves, looking at computer screens. I've spent too much time proving myself. Now, it's just a place where we can kind of leave that kind of idea about music at the door. We talk about music a lot as a practice and a craft.

Last year when I got really into jazz music, and Clay brought me some jazz books, we were just listening to jazz in the house and just talking about the idea of music making. I was reading a book where someone was like, for six years, all I did was work on the violin. That's how much dedication takes to work on music and to try to get better at something that is such a personal endeavor.

We talk about Ali Berger so much, who's relentless in his dedication to making music, and just releases stuff on his own. It just flows out of him and he tries to catch it with a bucket. Not just tries, he's dedicated to catching it with the bucket, and makes sure that he's dedicating time to it. That is super cool and removes all this internet ego and social media ego away from this thing, because it's just like… music.

CLAY WILSON:
Yeah. It's almost like journaling as opposed to being like, I have to make a record so that I can release the record to fill my press quota for this quarter or something. I don't really think that's how a lot of great music was made. It's self expression ultimately, and a lot of people get stuck in the public perception before they even finish the music.

DJ WAWA:
Finding music that you connect with and sharing it with larger groups of people, that's a really cool music thing. Sharing things, creating a bridge through eras because of music. Because you understand the DNA of this goes to the DNA of that. Music is very cool outside of the things that make it frustrating. Which is a lot of the social media aspects and stuff, and that's because social media's frustrating in its own way for its own reasons.

When we're absent of that and we're just talking about the music that we're into, the drums that we're into, the rhythms that we're into, the artists, and eras, and stuff. And we're just sharing all that stuff. That's what it gets really crazy and really ethereal. And that's when it gets really fun. When you're just thinking about this new record that you got that's from 1988, and that you're about to share to this new dance floor, that's what gets really interesting.

How would you say that the DJing, production, and releasing aspects of Hit Factory tie into each other?

CLAY WILSON:
It's just like, shit we're doing in the apartment.

DJ WAWA:
That's the whole thing. That's what the Hit Factory was originally. It was just the idea of, we live in the same place and we make tracks here. We're just making hits.

CLAY WILSON:
I think there's some separation between the DJing stuff and production stuff, because we're not really necessarily making tracks with the intention of putting them in a set, but maybe. Doesn't mean that we won't play them, but yeah. I don't know. That's all we're really doing most of the time. It's one of those two things.

DJ WAWA:
I think our home is more music studio than home at this point. Which also kind of goes into it. There's not much to do in the house so I play video games, work on music, and eat and chill out. It's kind of just always happening.

There's moments when we're in the same room for a second where we just catch up, and just kind of share what we're thinking about, how we're feeling, what's going on, where we're at in our processes of what we're making, what we want do for the next thing, what are our ideas. And this is kind of just part of living together.

It's cool because I feel like we've all known each other to different extents and in different ways for a while, but I also wouldn't have necessarily immediately been like, "Oh, yeah. You two are a perfect collaboration." It makes sense that things like that can be the most interesting and push you in different ways.

DJ WAWA:
Yeah. Clay is super diligent. Clay went to school for jazz music. He is someone that works on music several hours a day. He's expressed that if he doesn't work on music he feels weird. I am much more of a procrastinator and I have discipline issues. So watching him is really nice, and seeing the way that works is really nice, but also it's green, because I know that I can do things my own way and it's not that big of a deal.

Living around people that do things that you also do, that you can talk to about them, really can be a catalyst for the things that you're trying to figure out yourself. Because it gives you more perspective and someone to really bounce your ideas off.

Living with Russell has been that too. Russell's been a huge catalyst for everything over the last six months for me personally. The way I think about things, the way I change, the way I DJ, the way I produce, everything. When you're just sitting around and everyone's working on something, and everyone's making changes here and there, it kind of just helps. Not because you do stuff like them, but it helps you feel more confident doing it in your own way, or it helps you feel like you're doing the same thing, you're just making your own decisions.

I just read the book Inner City Pressure, which at one point suggests that grime was one of the last truly local music genres: it came out of London and out of a very specific space and time, from people working in very specific ways, while now the internet has flattened things in a lot of ways. What do you both think is the role of "local" today? What is local now?

CLAY WILSON:
I definitely think that to some degree, geographic scenes are not really a thing anymore with the internet and the fact that things like fucking Boiler Room exist. The osmosis thing that happens naturally from being in the house with somebody, the same thing happens on a bigger level when it's just like, everybody's sitting at home, seeing what the big people are playing. And that eventually kind of dilutes itself into a sound that maybe in the past, what's happening in New York, versus Berlin, versus like Colombia isn't all going to be the same. And it kind of is now.

DJ WAWA:
Yeah. That's the Bandcamp-ification of the USB a little bit too. There's this weird thing that happened over the pandemic where everyone started to buy shit on Bandcamp. Bandcamp is just like any other music service where enough people will gravitate towards certain things. And when I started going out again, people were playing a lot of, not the same songs, but songs that were like, "Oh, I own that..." There's only one Bandcamp that everyone in the world is going on and buying tracks on. And everyone's kind of going to the same places.

CLAY WILSON:
It's a little bit just getting promos and just playing off the promos. Everybody's on those lists.

Totally. And I guess since Bandcamp's discovery features are so terrible, a lot of what people are finding is through these other social media apps anyway, all the same algorithm funnels.

CLAY WILSON:
If a release starts to get enough popularity then they're going to direct other people towards it, but you don't necessarily know that all your friends already bought that record.

DJ WAWA:
I think it's more beneficial to think of the pandemic as destroying the local in a kind of way, because then you can kind of be like, oh, I can get people to pay for my music all over the world. Because it shouldn't be local. The music and the identity, I think the people who did the best have created this identity, the music that they create or the mixes that they create, where it's like, "I am this person, you need to pay me. I'm the person who deserves the money for the work that I'm creating." It doesn't matter whether they're in New York or Colombia.

During the pandemic, I was calling friends all over the world, because I couldn't see my friends close to me anyway. So it didn't really matter. Local feels like this weird thing. Local feels like who's available to go to the clubs around you.

CLAY WILSON:
Maybe it's just that local is a really hyper-specific small group of people, the people you interact with in real life outside of the clubs can influence you in a certain way locally.

DJ WAWA:
It's hard though, because being local kind of sucks if you are a musician and performer. Because it gives a license for all the local venues to kind of treat you like shit because you're not one of the traveling people. It's about these people who are the big international headliners, but it's like, "But I've worked here before. We have a relationship." How many times have you booked them? Local is a funny word, locals should be more important. We're saying it doesn't feel like there's enough clubs because the local music scene is not super healthy.

CLAY WILSON:
All of the great clubs of the past were built purely on residencies and local people. There's a few people that get those local talent slots now, but it's not like it used to be where it's like, "If we're going to open a new club, we're going to find someone local to be the big figure that carries and defines the sound of your club." It's like, "We're going to open a club and book stuff that will make money." Which is a whole different approach and it doesn't really validate you as an artist. It's just like, "Here's your 300 bucks. And see you in six months."

DJ WAWA:
And here's your 90 minute set time. You're just a time slot. I collect and buy records in New York City. I love it here, I've been living here for a long time. I've DJed in a number of places. I feel like the clubs need to have residencies or have these kind of things where they continue this working relationship with local talent and local talent buyers outside of the club's talent buyers. Yeah. It's rough.

CLAY WILSON:
I think there's a big difference too, in that historically talent buyers weren't people who were seeking a career as an artist. There is a certain crossover now that blurs the line because being a talent buyer can be used as a vehicle to further your career as an artist, where in the past the talent buyer was purely about, "what does the scene enjoy, and can I bring in things that they will like, but they maybe don't know yet?" It's not just networking to get gigs, which is kind of a normal occurrence anywhere now, not just New York specific.

DJ WAWA:
As the great 2Lanes said, people that are throwing parties that book themselves, it's a pandemic in itself.

CLAY WILSON:
There's a certain conflict of interest there.

DJ WAWA:
It's complicated because it's like, it's dope to be a local DJ. I like being a New York City DJ sometimes, when I'm taken seriously. It just feels like time changes over and people change over. And dance music in New York City is especially weird right now, because in a scene that doesn't change often, a lot of people changed. New bouncers at places, new bartenders at places, new things at places that just, for the people who've been here a long time, just make things a little bit weirder.

It's hard to grow with it if you're not trying to put in the energy every day to be a part of it and learn it all the time, and do the work again. Your relationship changes to going out, because you're older. I was saying this last night, post-pandemic people our age are going out way less. Not like we're over the club, but I don't have the energy to go out Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday to Bossa like I used to.

CLAY WILSON:
We finally found out what it feels like to sleep.

DJ WAWA:
I'm really happy for all these young people that have come to dance music and found a place to be themselves, because I think dance music is also, forget the genre or the BPM stuff. People are just going to where they feel most accepted and the most free. It's the same thing that happened when we were learning. I went to places where I felt the most accepted and the most free. A lot of those parties are just 175 parties right now where it's like queer kids, trans kids, people that don't feel good in society, you can go to a place and feel better, and feel like they're accepted and feel free.

Young Black kids, young queer Black kids, in a world that isn't built for them, can go to a place and feel free and feel good. It's like super dope. It's not like this intellectual conversation or academic conversation about people are not into this or not into that. No, people are just trying to, as always, go out and feel free. Go out and dance.

Very well said. There are certain new things where I've been like, I probably wouldn't personally want to be at this musically, but I'm glad it exists, I'm just not the audience for it.

DJ WAWA:
We're not the cool young hot hip people anymore. There's a whole new crop of cool young hot hip people that look kind of like us that are doing the same thing. The bartenders that you used to love kind of love you a little bit less because there's other people that buy more from them, that tip them more.

Things have changed a little bit. And it's just a re-evaluation of yourself and club music. Especially if you want to do this forever. I think we want to do this forever. Not necessarily Hit Factory or anything, but we want to do dance music forever. We want to do our thing forever. It takes re-evaluating and moving with the times differently, because you were always going to get a little older, or you were always going to lose energy. So how do you compensate for that? How do you get back to dance music? You can make stuff more. You can DJ more. You can shout out people's stuff more on the internet. There's a lot of different ways that you can be a part of the scene without having to personally put yourself in there, that benefit other people. There's a lot of conversations you can start. There's a lot of ways you can be a positive member of the community, of society, of dance music, your community, your friends. There's a way to have a positive effect on your homies and the stuff that you love and care about.

You don't have to spend $20 at every show. There's a new crop of people that are down to do that. Shout out to the new people. There's new people that are there to facilitate, but as an old head there's still guidance. And every once in a while you get to say something that means something, because you have experienced some shit, and you know what it feels like. I think that's the nicest part about getting a little older. I feel like randomly my influence means a little bit more every once in a while when I say some old head shit, because it's like, "Oh, man. I was there."

I've known you (Alyce) from the internet, from Twitter, for at least 10 years now. It's been a long ass time. From 2012 to now, a lot of stuff happens. And being able to have that, being able to be like, people aren't saying that donk music is bad, or people aren't not into serious dance music anymore. People are just more into club music. I can say that because I remember club music, and I remember going into house and techno and then just seeing things circulate.

The most important thing is just keep on doing it, and find ways to show it to people that they can see it and believe in it and receive the message that you're trying to spread. Dance music is mad chill. My favorite thing about when I discovered dance music was the fact that you didn't have to be on one label. You can be on like nine labels and it didn't matter. And that's still one of my favorite things. You can just release 12 things in a year. It doesn't dilute from your audience or anything. It's like people are going to like this thing more than that thing, but that's the thing you can just really make music and release it all the time. And it just kind of like, it's just more about being focused on that part of it. But what excites you about it, what are the fun things?

Yeah, I always think about, is it still fun? Is this serving me in a good way? Am I getting something positive out of it therapeutically?

DJ WAWA:
I can't say I've been to a good party in a minute, but I've talked to my homies and had really good conversations and heard some really good music, and heard people share really good stuff with me. People have made me really excited by their work, and their work ethic, and all this other stuff. The physical realm of dance music is going through some things right now. Some growing pains, some wake up calls, some other stuff.

CLAY WILSON:
I think for a lot of us also though, having this three years almost now of time out of it, you kind of start to realize what's important and what's not. And a lot of that shit that we used to think was important or just tolerate without thinking about it much is kind of like, I don't really care anymore. I'm good without that shit.

I haven't really been to a good party in a while, but it's like, maybe we weren't going to good parties before. And we were just doing shit that made us not realize that it wasn't a good party or we were ignoring the fact that it wasn't a good party or whatever. I think about that Jeff Mills interview all the time where he's like, I've never been to a good party. If he hasn't been to a good party, he's probably been to more than anybody.

DJ WAWA:
That's why getting people over to DJ and just hang out is super important.

CLAY WILSON:
Even before COVID stuff, those have always been the most fun things. When you get some friends and go rent a house somewhere and play music with each other and get fucked up, and you're not in a crowd of random people. Intimate moments with friends sharing music is always going to be better than a party.

Published March 2022.

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