Riz Maslen who performs under the moniker Neotropic, is an electronic musician and composer based in the UK. She began releasing records in the mid nineties, and has been highly prolific over the last 2 decades having put out many albums and eps on various labels including Ninja Tune and 4Hero. In this interview, we touch on how she developed her own style through experimentation and a DIY ethos, her early days at Ninja Tune and her touring experiences in the heyday of electronic music in the nineties. We also got into discussion around the challenges of working outside of your comfort zone, the connotations of being pigeonholed as a female vocalist in electronic music, and discovered some correlations between both of our experiences of making electronic music.

Neotropic Songs Featured

Nyolat Beautiful Pool Opium Den Love & Hate The Melancholy Whale Your War Fung Koo

Interview conducted by Christina Broussard / SciFiSol Music

Visit Femmecult online: www.femmecult.com

Coco Madrid is a Portland-based music promoter, electronic artist and fashion advocate who has been working in the Pacific Northwest underground dance music and fashion scenes for over a decade. In this episode we talk about her experiences growing up in the PNW rave scene, building and promoting successful events in Portland, Oregon and beyond, and making the foray into producing electronic music as part of a collaboration. This episode features music from that collaboration for her electronic duo called Artificial Sense Tapes. I interviewed her on a previous Femmecult episode about 6 years ago, but a lot has changed since then. We're so happy you can join us, thanks for listening!

Coco Madrid on Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/houseofcoco/

Check out Artificial Sense Tapes onlinehttps://soundcloud.com/artificialsensetapes/sets/artificial-sense-tapes-volume-1

In this episode of Femmecult Radio, I interview performer, filmmaker, writer and all around effective troublemaker, Jex Blackmore. She is well known for her confrontational performance art which are usually held in civic spaces. Her work addresses the links between moral religious rhetoric, sexuality, and political policy. She has often been the target of protest by the Catholic Church for her outspoken and confrontational work. She has also been called a tireless crusader for bodily autonomy, in that her work seeks to interrogate oppressive social institutions and ideas that undermine reproductive rights, and the freedom of women to choose what happens to their own bodies.

She has been featured in many publications including TIME, Vanity Fair, Washington Post, NPR, Cosmopolitan and Salon, and was featured in the 2019 documentary "Hail Satan?" Her reproductive rights advocacy has ranged from disrupting anti-choice rallies to debating the Westboro Baptist Church and her recent exhibition in Detroit, "Sex Militant", was listed as one of the best art exhibitions of 2019 by the Chicago Reader.

In 2020, her endurance film "An Undue Burden", that premiered at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, interrogates barbaric, abusive state legislation that forces women to wait 24 hours or more following initial counseling by abortion providers before receiving the procedure.

In this interview we talk about the importance of building supportive communities in hostile environments, the problem with moral frameworks that divide people, and the harm caused by oppressive systems require citizens to conform to ideologies that do not address practical realities of everyday life.

For more on Jex, visit her online: https://www.jexblackmore.com/

Music Credits:

Nikki - SciFiSol Music https://www.scifisol.net

Beats by Girlz is a non-traditional music technology curriculum, collective and community founded in 2012 by Erin Barra, who is an Associate Professor at the Berklee College of Music. The program was launched to empower young women in music technology by providing access to tools, guidance and role-support in order to develop their interest and career opportunities in music production and composition, and engineering. BBG has chapters all over the world, including NYC, Los Angeles, Berlin, Madrid and more. In this episode of Femmecult Radio, Christina Broussard (SciFiSol Music) is in conversation with three facilitators of the Minneapolis chapter of Beats by Girlz: Christine Hoberg, Christin Light and Tanya Leigh, all of whom are also accomplished electronic musicians. Please join us for this exciting conversation about how the collective functions to provide creative opportunities to their community, and the wonderful effects on the lives of those involved with the program. At the end of the podcast, we will highlight the creative backgrounds this episode's guests and more about what brought them to working with Beats by Girlz. Thanks for listening!

Gudrun Gut has been an activist in the underground music world since the late 1970s, and with a music career that spans 4 decades, she is a force to be reckoned with. Her expansive discography is comprised of some of the most engaging and influential work to come out of electronic music, and her latest solo album, Moment, was released in December of 2018 on her Monika Enterprise label. A prolific artist, she's dabbled in everything from post-punk to techno, was cofounder of the legendary band Malaria! with Bettina Köster, was an original member of Einstürzende Neubauten, and has directed 2 seminal record labels, Monika Enterprise and Moabit Musik. Throughout her career, she's been a staunch advocate for a gender equality and has fought for feminist ideals to great effect. Please join us for an intimate conversation with Gudrun Gut, where we touch on everything from her history in self-directed artistic motivation to the political importance of reigning in music industry gatekeepers to finding a production process that works in the moment, among other intriguing topics. (Interview conducted by: Christina Broussard of SciFiSol Music)

About the interviewer:

Christina Broussard aka SciFiSol is an electronic musician and visual artist, writer and interviewer, and founder of Femmecult Magazine. Her work spans genres of experimental electronic pop, darkwave and techno. She is a live performer, vocalist, and DJ, and is also ½ of techno duo, Camino Acid. For more information please visit her online at www.scifisol.net

Additional interview questions from Berlin-based DJ, Ava Delay https://www.residentadvisor.net/dj/avadelay

Songs appearing in the podcast:

Gudrun Gut - Cry Easy

Malaria! - Prophet

Malaria! - Slow Rotation

Gudrun Gut - Lover

Greie Gut Fraktion - Grossgrundbesitzer

Gudrun Gut - Musik

Emily Esperanza is a non-binary filmmaker and artist whose work questions the conventional narrative of storytelling to bring progressive ideas into focus. Their work has been screened at festivals all over the United States and has won many awards of excellence.

Their 2018 film Make Out Party was the official selection for several film festivals, including the Las Vegas Queer Arts Festival, and also won the award for most innovative short film at the 23rd Annual TWIST Seattle Queer Film Festival in Seattle, WA. Currently, they are working on a feature length film called LOTERÍA, drawing from experience producing films that explore themes of youthful rebellion and the celebration of underground culture. Our conversation gets into everything from the importance of presenting familiar archetypes and heros clothed in different skin to their experiences of developing and listening to intuition while on set. Please join me for this conversation with an innovative young filmmaker who uses their brilliant directorial eye to create works that have already been compared to many notable cult film directors of underground cinema.

Additional credit for material used in the podcast: Make Out Party (2018) and SPIDER AND FLY (2013). The song featured in the excerpt of MOP is 'Riot' by Glamour Hotline.

Anna Jordan is a trans-disciplinary artist based in Berlin, who focuses her work in the digital electronic realm as a painter, video artist and electronic musician. Her auditive work is released under her moniker, The Allegorist, for which she has 2 albums out now, and she is quoted as saying its format mixes all styles and genres and sets no limitations.. Her most recent album was released in 2018, on Detroit Underground, is called Hybrid Dimension I-- a full length audio visual masterpiece that features music videos for each track on the album. One of which is being screen at international film festivals, and is entitled Humandroid Lovers, so please find time to view that before or after the podcast to expose yourself to a beautiful example of her work. We are so excited to have her on the podcast in which she talks about her inspirations, technical aspects of her productions, and artistic motivations. Thanks for listening!