Montreal, Canada<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m the woman behind alternative hip-hop project Hua Li<\/a>. I also program POP Symposium<\/a> at POP Montreal Festival, make educational videos for Landr Audio\u00a0and teach singing and piano. Sometimes I DJ, too!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Omodaka, Bilal, Kari Faux, Bbymutha, Remi Wolf, Deante\u2019 Hitchcock & Moodymann are all in high rotation these days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I love to dig for music, both IRL and online. I\u2019ve made some beloved discoveries in record shops and I also love to follow the links of artists online – combing through label rosters, listening to collaborators of artists I like, checking out the artists that artists I like follow\u2026 Sometimes I hand over control to the algorithms. Especially when I am preparing for DJ sets, I\u2019ll go through my Release Radar and the New Music Friday playlists. I like a lot of stuff on the Spotify Pollen playlist as well. Twitter is also a great resource for me – I follow a lot of publications and music journalists on there and artists also often tweet about stuff that they are passionate about. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When I\u2019m at home I listen to my record collection a lot. I like the ritual of flipping the record over, it feels like this little interaction keeps me listening more actively. I recently moved into a new place and had to confront my CD collection that I had been dragging around from apartment to apartment for 13 years and just keeping in storage. I\u2019ve since prominently displayed them and have been listening to those at home too, which has been so fun because it turns out I had great taste in the 90s and 00s. When I\u2019m out and about I\u2019ll reach for the streaming services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Sometimes I hand over control to the algorithms. Especially when I am preparing for DJ sets”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n I listen to music as much as I can! When I\u2019m at home I listen to my records through my studio monitors and I have a little listening\/reading chair that my dog and I snuggle up in. Sometimes I do very active listening and other times I just put stuff on in the background. Sometimes I do the incredibly dangerous thing of listening to music while I bike, which I do not recommend at all, stay safe kids! I am sad to say that now that I am 30, I have finally learned to drive and have lost some of my Montreal cred, but at the same time, I\u2019ve discovered that listening to music while driving is one of my new passions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t know that I listen to a lot of pre-release music intentionally. This happens for me mostly when my fellow artists share their tracks with me ahead of their releases. When I used to work at Art Not Love<\/a> Records and was editing for Bitchfork.ca<\/a> I had a lot more opportunities to listen to things in advance than I do now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My main frustration is that I would like people to buy my records more! I admit that I indulge in the convenience of listening to music on streaming platforms and I actually kinda like it. I like that we can share music easily now – I share a lot of pre-release stuff on private Soundcloud links so people don\u2019t have to download anything and I like that waveform thing that it has for pre-release stuff because I don\u2019t feel like I have to leave the peaks and valleys as surprises for the people I send music to privately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The great thing about physical formats is that those records are always in your living room for future reference! I have a couple of monstrously long playlists that I throw favourites onto that I come across on Spotify and Apple Music, especially for things I want to download later for DJ sets.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat are you listening to?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
How do you discover new music?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
What formats do you usually listen to? LP, CD, Cassette, Digital, Streaming Services? Why?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Where do you do most of your music listening?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
How do you find and listen to pre-release music?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
What are your frustrations with listening to music digitally? Any benefits?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
How do you keep track of everything you are listening to?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n