The fact that such an influential DJ on the international scene is coming to Chico is still a bit hard for me to believe. Combine that with all of the other things going on between now and Dia De Los Muertos you'd think we lived in a world class city. Of course we don't but DJ Lillyanne's apperance here is a powerful indicator that things are better here in the 530 than say 2003-2004.
I first caught Lillyanne many years ago in some of dingier dives of Hollywood (aka Kill City). I always remember her as part of a small group of folks trying to keep the light alive as Kill City got buried under tons of West Side epic trance rubbish, gabber from the OC, and drum & bass from the Glendale and Downtown lofts during the mid 90s. Grim times indeed. I stumbled across Lillyanne again some ten years later courtesy of a promo package that her and her husband Hawkeye sent me circa 2004. The package was to comemorate their Futurehouse party and Headinghome label. The white labels they sent have remained in my regular rotation ever since- a sublime mix of deep, dubby bass and dark SoCal pop. Also included was an amazing mix by Lillyanne on CD that established her at the top of DJs I consider worth a sh*t. I figured if all her mixes were this good than Futurehouse must be the dopest party around. Lillyanne plays lo-fi disco, space rock, house, techno, minimal, whatever it takes. The way real DJs used to do it. No wonder this summer Futurehouse hosted dance music pioneer David Mancuso.
In addition to killer summer parties on the Queen Mary (an ancient luxury liner permanantly moored in Long Beach) Lillyanne and her husband have played on nearly every continent and worked with nearly everyone in the business. This marks Lillyanne's first trip to the Central Valley. Does our local media even care, they've got every drunken hillybilly thinking that the jocks are their buddies down at the cowboy bar snapping fingers at the poor souls behind the decks while demanding crappy booty music like they own the guy in headphones. It's bad enough that the local scene has to give it away like teenage runaways due to lazy media types continually ignoring or flippantly dismissing the scene will gobbling down Switch's productions on the new M.I.A. like a whore gobbles DNA. (Generally most of the lazy sods were born in godawful provinical burgs with horrible names like Willows and Red Bluff so they never stood a chance anywhoo). And even though attendance is much stronger than most of the other events going on any given weekend in Chico we're still the oddballs on the outside looking in. My hope is that if you live in the 530 you'll come out and show some love, see a superstar DJ, and above all support all of the other events in the 530 with passion and outrage. One can't turn a blind eye when you are poking them in the eye with your middle finger.
Here are two great mixes from Lillyanne:
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