Spacious
Spacious is a personal project and alias by which I perform and produce underground house music. I have multiple song releases on streaming platforms and have DJed at top venues in California, opening for artists such as Sofia Kourtesis, Mura Masa, Max Cooper, Justin Martin, Vandelux, and Dam Swindle. With each release, I make physical artworks in addition to music using mediums such as screenprinting and film photography to create a tangible addition to dance music.
OVERVIEW
I began playing piano and guitar and singing in bands at a young age and later began to DJ house music at age 18. Moving to San Francisco in 2020, I started DJing at venues and underground renegades on beaches. In 2021, I began exploring graphic design, motion graphics, film photography, and screenprinting for recreation and later began selling some of my prints. Long before the project’s inception, I titled one of these prints, ‘Spacious,’ to physically represent a playlist of house tracks I was curating. This was the turning point when I realized I wanted to start a project that blended an audio and visual experience into one.
branding
While studying in Amsterdam in 2019, I was inspired by how the venue De School combined the club and the art gallery, with a dark basement focused on pumping techno and upstairs spaces focused on experiencing visual art installations. This became the main inspiration for the Spacious project: Bridging the Club and Art Gallery.
Half of my visual work is taken from abstract geometry and shapes, leaning into sharp lines and typography generated digitally. The other half of my job is captured in nature, often from surf trips, hikes, and street photography. Balancing the two and adding a black-and-white lens allows the natural world to come into the club in a way that connects with the music. The audio experience in my releases is designed to balance analog and digital sounds of organic instruments, such as organs and pianos, intermixed with sharp house beats. When combined with my visuals, the experience represents the human experience.
Film grain, abstract shuttering animations, and ink bleed bring an organic feel to club music’s black-and-white ‘sharpness.’ Below is an excerpt of my visuals for live shows and social media touchpoints, featuring my film photography, graphics, and animation.
releases
Below are my first releases, showing the screenprints, track, album cover, and canvas animations. The visuals for each release were used on social media, ads, and visuals for live DJ sets.
“SHOW ME”
My first release was titled and modeled after the idea of showing myself and others that it’s possible to kickstart and release music and art independently. The visuals featured are the same graphics as my original screenprint in 2021, with the release of each technically spread out over 2 years.
“DISPARATE”
By this point, I had validated that I could release music independently and successfully released both the music and the artwork on the same day, bridging two Disparate mediums. I debuted the song in my DJ set at 1015 Folsom, opening for Mura Masa and Sofia Kourtesis, and sold 30 hand-made screenprints.
“ATTENTION”
The track was titled after putting attention and focus into growing the depth of creative work and investment into a higher level of sound design and visual art depth. The track was streamed worldwide and produced a limited edition of 20 screenprints, selling almost all within the first week.