Eris Drew & Octo Octa: “Dancing is participatory, not spectacle.”

In a climate where the barrier for entry to international touring DJs has arguably never been more accessible, at least to those with money and time to do so, scenes thousands of kilometres away from the roots of dance music have never been more flush with choice.

Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand have become a lucrative destination for international artists to tour, often a far cry from the movements, landscapes and cultural identities of the places they visit.

As a result, with so many visitors at our region’s door, it’s tough to know who is truly building an authentic connection with the places we call home. The touring artists of yesteryear were arguably fewer and further between, so these relationships, connections and personal investment were made slightly more visible.

With the world even more politically divided than ever before, it’s these kinds of global relationships that feel the most real and authentic when people can connect through a culture that says more than just sound.

For Eris Drew and Octo Octa, that relationship with Australia is one they’ve forged over more than a decade of visiting, touring and experiencing.

In that time, the United States-based duo and T4T LUV NRG founders have woven themselves into the fabric of local dancefloors, where their appearances feel less like fleeting moments and more like an ongoing dialogue.

This weekend, the duo return to local dance floors once more, with an appearance hosted by longtime collaborators Astral People for the final of their Summer Dance season, alongside the UK’s Pangaea and trusted local selector Tangela.

Ahead of the visit, we secured a moment of their time to understand why making a global culture feel local has never been more important.

ED&OO: It’s an amazing feeling. We love touring in Australia. Eris was raised in the States, but she’s a citizen by birth and has family here. For most of her life, they were separated by distance, so touring in Australia means we get to reconnect with family, which makes the trips extra special.

Australia was the second big international trip Maya did in 2013 with her friends Magic Touch and Bobby Browser. Since then, it always held a special place in her heart.

ED&OO: The scene in Australia is really special. We’ve met so many organisers and artists that we deeply vibe with. We’ve also been lucky enough to explore Australia’s nature with friends we’ve made through the music.

ED&OO: The Sugar Mountain Boiler Room was bonkers because we had never done something together with that level of visibility. On our last visit, we went to Alice Springs and spent a magical week with our friend DJ Slumbi. That’s something we’ll never forget.

Maya played at Mercat in Melbourne on that trip in 2013, and it was one of the first nights she DJed outside of NYC (she was touring almost exclusively as a live artist at that time). It was such an amazing night in a really wonderful club. She’s thought back to it a lot over the years as an early touch point of what clubbing could be across the world.

ED&OO: We love returning for many reasons, not least because we get to know a sound system and the crew behind it. Understanding the character of the system and having good relationships with the sound team is really important to us. For the alchemy behind the decks to happen, the setup has to be isolated, stable, and feedback-proof, with loud, clear monitoring.

ED&OO: Maybe because we come from a DIY background and throw real raves and underground parties in the States with our custom sound system, finding peers who care about the same things is relatively easy here. We’ve been lucky to partner with many queer promoters over the last eight years of touring in Australia together. Through those relationships, we’ve been able to play very intimate events and also host vinyl workshops across the continent.

ED&OO: Rave emerged at the end of the 20th century to give us a lifeline. This is a critical time in human history for people to seek out actual lived experience rather than mediating our lives through dominant cultural ideologies and big tech. Dancing is participatory, not merely the consumption of spectacle.

ED&OO: The realities we’re all facing can make love and joy seem secondary, or like an escape. We don’t try to sell a false utopia. There’s a lot of life and pain behind that joy. Expressions of joy informed by the actual ups and downs of real life have a certain reverberation that can be felt as much as understood.

ED&OO: Without getting too intellectual about it, the drum is central in dance music, which means there’s a certain universality to it. It connects with something proto-cultural and pre-historical in most people.

But it goes further than that. Speech about queer and trans lives is being suppressed all around the world. And it isn’t just governments and religion — big tech is in on the action too. “Freedom of speech, not reach,” as they say. So if this music can transmit messages of acceptance and pride, that’s a hopeful thought.

ED&OO: It takes people making choices to collect together and create spaces together for any of this to work. The DIY artists and organisers we have met in Australia truly do resonate with our ideas of togetherness.

ED&OO: Two crates of holy wax and non-stop turntable action!

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