Listen to DJ Exit Sense’s Manic Mix “Certain Stimulants”

“Certain stimulants, only when used at low (therapeutic) concentrations, unambiguously enhance cognition in the general population”

Listening to DJ Exit Sense’s mix feels like a demolition of reality, like being shapeshifted into a sphere and played on a pinball machine. Ecstatically woven by careful hands, it moves between dream-like moments and harsh lucidity. The masterful use of pop culture references – some familiar, some obscure – mimics our unstable reality, an “apocalyptic hellhole where dialectic battles never end” as the artist describes. The mix is deceptive, too multi-textural to be classified. It’s terrifying, harmonious, sludgy, effervescent.

Exit Sense is a persona as difficult to pin down as the mix itself. Besides giving live performances and continuing to work on mixes and collaborations, they’ve just completed their BFA. Although Miami-based, their domain seems to be their online cave, where they lay bare outsider theories, surreal fantasies, clever humor, and edgy eroticism on the walls. We received this gift from Exit Sense at the end of last year, and now pass it on to you to enjoy at your at own risk.

Tracklist:

1. Cardi B - Pop Off
2. Yasunori Mitsuda - Gato’s Song
3. Royal Trux - Solid Gold Tooth
4. Yasunori Mitsuda - Lavos’ Theme
5. Kota Hoshino - Sunbeams Streaming Through Leaves on the Hill
6. Bubblegum Octopus - Egg Beam <<>>
7. Bungalovv - Furcula
8. Bubblegum Octopus - Deathworld
9. Nunu - Heels
10. Aby Ngana Diop - Yaye Penda Mbaye
11. Paul Valéry - La jeune Parque lu par Yvon Jean
12. Kazumi Totaka - Dark Rooms
13. Bob Ostertag - Sooner or Later
14. Get Face - ???
15. Grovestreet - Cunt Horror Redux
16. Kota Hoshino - Buying Goods at Palmira
17. Kamixlo - Paleta
18. Plath - Telik 12345
19. Get Face - Unscathed
20. Małgorzata Sarbak - Paweł Szymański** - Through the Looking-Glass
21. LOFT - Yes
22. Miss Exit - Being for the Benefit of Miss Exit!
23. Portraits of Past - A Known Place
24. SCRAAATCH - Closer
25. Impaled Nazarene - Apolokia
26. Impaled Nazarene - I Al Purg Vonpo / My Blessing (The Beginning of the End)
27. Luc Ferrari - Presque rien avec filles
28. WWA - No Reason
29. Conlon Nancarrow - Sonatina for Piano** - Allegro Molto
30. Loose Joints - Is It All Over My Face (Male Vocal)
31. Royal Trux - RTX-USA
32. Chants - Amethyst Dust
33. IVVVO - Self-Rape (I Don’t Care Mix)
34. Keiji Haino - C'est parfait
35. B.YHZZ - REDU
36. Bubblegum Octopus - Meow Flute
37. Thoom - حركت السكوت (No Speech)
38. Miss Exit - Calvino Interlude
39. Iancu Dumitrescu - Hazard and Tectonics
40. Christian Death - Romeo’s Distress
41. Cecil Taylor Unit - One Too Many Salty Swift and Not Goodbye

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What’s the process of making a mix like for you? What inspires the layers you put together?

I feel that my art practice comes out of my incessant urge to run away from the constraints of identity. I feel safer when my identity is harder to pin down. This process is very introverted.

My love of music is nerdy and my practice involves an indulgence of judging certain sounds to be more joyful than others as well as more useful for my vision. I’m like a pirate in a music discovery adventure. For the past several years I’ve compulsively downloaded many different kinds of music. This indulgence is the foundation of my mixes and its ingredients. I also pick up cues from other DJs. Mhysa has left such an impression on me with the use of sound effects in her Thot Fantasy series. She’s certainly a big influence on my mixing.

I pick a couple of sound effects I like and I play them with a MIDI controller. I look through my library of music. Through sensory overload I find intensity and I’m able to arrange enough elements which differ from each other to find balance. I like to hear the music I love in twisted new ways I’ve never heard before. I need for each mix of mine to pursue a different form, a self-contained environment of its own. For this mix I wanted a meticulously sloppy sound. I made it out of a desire to make something even more stimulating in its sensory overload than anything I’ve previously listened to. It seems that I’m becoming more tolerant to music and more prone to overthinking and that I need for music to have more and more layers of stimulation to distract me into a trance.

Are you an artist outside of music? What other forms or concepts do you like to work with?

I’ve put together videos and webpages that are like mixes, made of appropriated imagery. I usually prefer to collage and appropriate using material I already love. I apparently derive joy from curating and remixing other people’s creations. However, recently, I’ve been painting portraits, combining acrylic paint and ornamental craft.

Do you see your art as political?

There is only so much that sound and image can change. Yet I believe sound and image, like drugs, hold the potential to activate some beneficial responses, if on a small scale. And maybe when I share these drugs with communities whose political concerns align with mine, they will discover new uses for them.

What’s something something you’ve been thinking a lot about recently?

How much more useful would I feel if I were more confident my practice came not from the love of the art or art-making but the love of something greater? Does love need to be a sort of way? Can’t love proliferate secretly through art?

Perhaps it is needlessly perfectionist to fret over the definition of love or whether my love is clear to others. Perhaps there’s nothing wrong with the possibility that the best organization I can offer the world is that of a sonic drug, of a sonic hug. Meanwhile, I’ve also titled my mix with the vague enough hypothesis that it can stimulate some useful answers in addition to its offering of joy.

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Follow DJ Exit Sense on Soundcloud