Growing up in Memphis as a kid bent on electronic music is a little like growing up in Alaska with a taste for durian fruit—no one finds reason to have distaste towards you for your preference, it’s just so outside of the norm that it becomes easy to feel alienated.
Although I figured I’d have to move away from the Mid-south to get knee deep in a conversation about all that clicks, ticks, glitches, and goes “bump” in the night, I was more than pleasantly surprised when I sat down with a pivotal figure in the Memphis electronic scene, Brandon Thornburg. Thornburg has played an integral role in the development of electronic music in Memphis over the past few years.
Throughout a great portion of the past two decades, Brandon Thornburg has been tagging up the local electronic scene with his stellar taste and refreshingly current marketing ideas. Thornburg started his journey into live music fresh-faced in the early ’90s. He’s bounced around in the scene over the years playing gigs of varying styles. He was a contributor, along with other music bloggers Rachel Hurley, Mark Richens aka Handsome Mark, and E.J. Friedman, to one of the country’s very first popular MP3 blogs, the now defunct Scenestars.net. He worked in and out of the Memphis circuit until an opportunistic chance would have him leave to live in Spain. The founder of a (then) little-known party called ELECTROCITY, Taylor Dawson, reached out to him after he arrived back in the States.
For those not in the know, ELECTROCITY today is on the forefront of Memphis’ electronic scene. It began only two and a half years ago as a small party that featured a fresh sound to the 901 area and quickly grew into a voice for the desire to have electronic music in Memphis. We discussed the idea that people had been trying to make electronic music happen in Memphis for years, but no one had gotten it quite right just yet.
“People tried the same thing over and over again, and there was no real uptake on the music they were playing. We brought in some stuff that was new, and people seemed to like it. For me, it’s like the tropical rhythm, Latin-influenced stuff—mostly influenced by Mexican rhythm.” Armed with unfamiliar tunes, Thornburg, Dawson, and a fast-growing list of skilled DJs quickly put to use the world wide web as their primary marketing tool. This tactical use of the internet soon acted as the jelly to their showcased music’s peanut butter.
“[We were] using social media by personally contacting people, and even word of mouth on the street. We also used photographs and video—there’s a video for every party.” In a small number of months, the savvy marketing and unheard-of tunes showed beneficial results, and the crowd eventually grew from a few dozen people to several hundred loyal attendees at much-needed bigger venues.
ELECTROCITY began to survive on its own merits, and Thornburg, with the aid of fellow ELECTROCITY DJ Matthew Ladner, started to focus on their current endeavor: the label Voodoo Village. Thornburg has brought his knowledge of the scene and keen sense of taste to the table once again. Acts from Memphis are featured, but their roster extends past any geographical borders—including to those who are native to New Orleans and Alaska.
If you’d like to see Thornburg in action, be sure to make yourself available this Friday (1/27). He and the Voodoo Village crew will be is showcasing today’s release of label artist Marceaux Marceaux’s (ELECTROCITY DJ Matthew Ladner) EP Spurr at Mollie Fontaine’s Lounge. If you’re familiar with ELECTROCITY, and it’s not your cup of tea, you still need to make it out, as the evening might not play out as you’d expect…
“[The Mollie Fontaine’s show] is a smaller event, so we can get away with more, and we want to play some more of the original music. We want do some things that we can’t get away with doing at ELECTROCITY and some stuff that just makes us happy.”
Over the course of the conversation I had with Brandon Thornburg, my idea of the role that electronic music has played in Memphis evolved from that of an ignorant child to a sleeping giant waiting to be woken. It was more than refreshing to talk to someone who helped plant the seeds of a movement that could one day define our beloved city. As we ended our exchange, I asked if Voodoo Village would pledge loyalty to any sort of dance genre, to which Thornburg explained, “We’re not trying to marry ourselves to a style. I don’t want to be put in a rut. I want to do everything that encompasses the kind of dark playful feel that we have. It’s an aesthetic we’re going for, and everything that we release would touch on that.”
