There is a party that never ends

"These days everyone wants to be a party girl. Kirsten Azan, however, is a rare original. Performing as Bambii, she has shaped some of the rave scene's defining recent projects, co-producing much of Kelela's Raven and featuring on Shygirl's Club Shy Room 2. Her debut EP, Infinity Club, pulled a striking range of collaborators with the confidence of a seasoned host and selector. We catch up on the heels of her Glastonbury debut, just days after the release of her sophomore EP, Infinity Club II."

"A lot has changed in the two years between. Namely, pop culture has taken heightened interest in the underground electronic music scene, resulting in a seemingly endless propagation of label-backed rave projects and corporate-sponsored raves. We've seen the good, the bad, and the ugly, though we agree not to name names-here, at least. Bambii puts it plainly: "They want to sound like the rave, but I know they've never been to the rave.""

"Any pop appropriation of a subculture is bound to lose some texture. But in the case of electronic music, created and upheld by Black, Latino, and queer communities too often overlooked by the mainstream, the whole is categorically dissimilar from the sum of its most easily aestheticized parts. This so-called underground exists not beneath hegemony, but in opposition to it, and top-down interpretations are therefore doomed to miss the mark."

Kirsten Azan performs as Bambii and released her sophomore EP, Infinity Club II, shortly after debuting at Glastonbury. She co-produced much of Kelela's Raven and featured on Shygirl's Club Shy Room 2, and her debut Infinity Club gathered a striking range of collaborators. She critiques mainstream pop's appropriation of rave aesthetics and calls out artists who mimic rave culture without participating in its communities. Bambii emphasizes that electronic music was created and sustained by Black, Latino, and queer communities often overlooked by the mainstream. She returns to the Infinity Club project committed to an ongoing exploration of the concept of infinity in her music.

Read at Documentjournal