TYGAPAW and Juliana Huxtable Want to See You at the Club This Summer

TYGAPAW doesn’t make music for passive listening. They build soundscapes designed to move the listener through an experience that feels like the coolest sci-fi nerd you know just got their hands on their first sound deck. Their latest album, Together You Gather All Power Applied out May 8, leans into a fast-paced, DJ-first sensibility, pushing rhythm to its absolute breaking point. Resisting the pressures of a trend-driven industry, they tell us of their music, “You can’t just consume it like junk food.” The six-minute collaboration with Juliana Huxtable, “Exorcise the Language of Domination,” served as this project’s catalyst—a high-BPM spiral that disorients before dropping you into the center of a queer club dance floor where you can finally enjoy. The pair first met where so many queer friendships begin—the club— which perhaps acts as a testament to the raw musical chemistry they have today. To mark the release of their third studio album, TYGAPAW sat down with Huxtable to unpack industry pressures, trans spaces, and the art of putting a crowd in a trance. — LUCIA BROWN

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TYGAPAW: Hi, Boo.  How’s it going? 

JULIANA HUXTABLE: Good. It’s been such a crazy winter into spring, but this summer’s going to be good. Lots of good stuff is coming out, including your album. 

TYGAPAW: [Laughs] Thank you for being a part of it. Our track is resonating. I’ve been hearing a lot of good feedback. 

HUXTABLE: It feels so good for it to be out in the world. 

TYGAPAW: I don’t even know how the format of this thing sort of goes. 

HUXTABLE: Maybe we could start with the soundscape. I’m really curious how you generated the sounds and where you were at in your imaginative headspace when you heard that. 

TYGAPAW: This album particularly has quite a journey of development because it wasn’t done in my standard way of songwriting or producing. There’s my DJ point of view, and then there’s my visual art and sound practice.  I always wanted to have the two worlds collide. So, they start with the synth that I really am obsessed with, the Roland JP 8080. It has all these very cool presets. The sound elitists were like, “Oh, no presets,” but I was like, “Fuck it. I ain’t programming this shit. These presets are fire. Let me go through them.” 

HUXTABLE: Yes!

TYGAPAW: So it started with the synth and all of the melodic layers. Then, I actually did the actual drum parts and the percussion last. Even the breaks were a last edition, because the track was created as a soundscape for the exhibition I was doing Upstate. I’m getting in a nerdy hardware talk, but–

HUXTABLE: No, I love this. 

TYGAPAW: [Laughs] These instruments are truly a huge part of the process of making this track. The LXR 01 also has some fire presets. There’s one that literally sounds like water droplets.

HUXTABLE: Yeah.

TYGAPAW: A drum kit that someone had programmed on a drum machine caught my attention. It sounded unusual, but I loved it. I thought it would pair really well with the trance-like synth pad sounds, and that became the foundation of our track, “Exorcise the Language of Domination.” Then I was like, “Okay, I’m making an album. Fast forward to a year later, the industry was like, “Oh, you’re not relevant if you’re not making an album every year.” And I was just like, “These little fuckers.” I was trying to dive into the craft. You know what I mean?

HUXTABLE: It’s like everyone needs to have a team of underpaid elves that spits out a new album every quarter so they can be in touch with whatever trend. 

TYGAPAW: The whole reason why I started was because I thought it was such a magical medium. It serves a purpose of regeneration and profoundly connects with your soul and your heart. You can’t just consume it like junk food. So as a producer, I always need to take my time. I always need to put so much intention into creating music. The pressures of the industry pushing and trying to mirror trends is bad. [Laughs]

HUXTABLE: One of the reasons I asked about the technology and how you were approaching this is because both this song and the album as a whole have a very distinct feeling. It interrupts everything that defines the present, whether that’s trends, aesthetics, or sound. It ends up feeling timeless, like it exists outside of what’s known. That’s what I want out of that experience, to be transported via dance music. We’re on a device for moving. 

TYGAPAW: Boo, you said a sermon. Sometimes it’s Prince. He’s like, “Wait, I hear Juju. I hear Juliana.” 

HUXTABLE: Prince is in the room. 

TYGAPAW: He wants you to know he’s here and he misses you. But thank you for articulating that so well because it is hard to be an artist like me. I don’t quite fit the mold of the current trends of music, especially in electronic music. I can explain why my music sounds outside of the restrictions of how techno is viewed under European lenses. I did my research when I really truly tapped into Detroit and learned about the pioneers like Jeff Mills and Kevin Saunderson. 

HUXTABLE: Exactly. 

TYGAPAW: That’s when things really took a turn for me because it really validated the sounds in my head. When you’re really starting to produce, you’re mimicking just by default because you don’t know what you’re doing. 

HUXTABLE: That’s how you learn.

TYGAPAW: And then as soon as I was introduced to ballroom, it was game over because the percussion and the dynamics took me to the dance floor. Going to art school truly helped to nurture that process, helped me to get some reference points. Then you truly start to develop your own way. As soon as you touch a key on a synthesizer or you trigger a hit on a drum machine, it becomes yours. I didn’t start off with new machines. I was starting with Logic, then I went over to Ableton which lets you work with loops and has a different approach to production that feels more like you’re painting.

HUXTABLE: More fluid. 

TYGAPAW: Those years of trial and error, discovering the origins of techno, that shifted. Then that’s how GET FREE materialized because I had the history and connection to the community, like ballroom. Let’s jump into how we started to create the landscape for how NYC nightlife is today.

HUXTABLE: Right.

TYGAPAW: The spaces that we created to then incubate the sound. All of our musical journey today comes from the actual practice of creating space. 

HUXTABLE: Absolutely. 

TYGAPAW: I’m so fond of your voice and your sound because that’s how I met you in the club. 

HUXTABLE: Stay in the club. 

TYGAPAW: Most queer and trans friendships start in the club. It’s funny how all those elements play into how my sound is today because I couldn’t hear without that journey, without New York City. 

HUXTABLE: There’s an urgency with which people come to club spaces. Historically speaking, there’s no public funding for it. Even this era is new because when we first started going out, everything was underground. 

TYGAPAW: Yeah.

HUXTABLE: Your album is really a shining example of this, the evolution of club space as it’s just a matrix of different dialectics of reference, synthesis, and experimentation. Some of that is via the way people dress or the influence of different sounds. The impact that Jersey, Baltimore and Philly club have had on dance music really cannot be underestimated.  What I find so often is people that were just straight up making Jersey club a well-funded, tasteful dance music festival. 

TYGAPAW: Do you remember the era of the colonization of Jersey club? 

HUXTABLE: Yes, and it’s crazy. Now, you have straight-up techno, which is great. But what I don’t like about it is when we look at these producers that are pioneering and act like they’re somehow beneath the beanie tote bag guy.

TYGAPAW: You speaking a word, Boo. Let me give a shout-out to the Jersey legends, DJ Tamil and DJ Slink. 

HUXTABLE: Slink don’t get the credit he deserves. He is such a fucking pioneer and has had such an outsized influence on dance music. Your album is really such a beautiful articulation of the synthesis of things that were happening in nightlife when we were coming up, but it’s also articulating something totally new. 

TYGAPAW: Because ultimately, people will view me as an outsider because I’m not African-American, I’m Jamaican. But at the same time, if you know the history-

HUXTABLE: Jamaicans are literally country Black people. The food is the same. Yes, there are differences, but the differences between Black people in California and Alabama are greater than the differences between Jamaicans and people from Alabama. No shade. 

TYGAPAW: I just came back from home and I was so grateful because my journey has been long coming from Mandeville to then landing in New York in 2002 and then going to art school and then finding my way to the DIY underground club world of Brooklyn. Extraction is literally about evolution and complete profound respect.

HUXTABLE: Should we go into our track?

TYGAPAW: Yes, because this is where I want to spill the tea. It’s really funny.

HUXTABLE: Yeah, let’s spill it. This is the time.

TYGAPAW: It was on a previous demo for a label that I was on before-

HUXTABLE: That could not take it.

TYGAPAW: These labels just completely straight up rejected them. If I wasn’t a strong person, I would be feeling some type of way.

HUXTABLE: When you played that for me and explained the context, I was like, “This is the fucking track. This is so now for me.” The tempo is unexpected for what that beat structure is normally associated with. Then you have the trance elements, which brings in this whole sci-fi thing.

TYGAPAW: It’s so funny because as you talk about sci-fi, which I’m a fan of, I always envisioned myself long-term scoring films. This song is very operatic in scope.

HUXTABLE: Yeah.

TYGAPAW: I did a whole residency for a year and I developed a techno opera. And so, this track is very unconventional, it works in parts. But I was like, “I need the ultimate storyteller.”

HUXTABLE: Yes.

TYGAPAW: And you sing seriously. We were touring for a bit, being on lineups together. What year was it, 2024?

HUXTABLE: Yes, the promoters were getting it right there.

TYGAPAW: I kept asking you, “Would you want to be on something?” I was so shy about it. I don’t know why. You were so gracious and sweet. It was more about coordinating the time for you to come in because you didn’t hear any of the music.

HUXTABLE: At some point, I’ll have to adapt, but I’m not like, “You send me something and I’m in another country, laying down vocals over the thing.” I really love the energy of collaboration. I want to be up in that studio because there’s something that’s really magical that happens from that extemporaneous energy. And we’re both DJs and DJing is an improvisational practice.

TYGAPAW: And we sat on my couch and just started to work. It’s actually how community works. Nothing beats the actual in-person interaction and immediate feedback. I can sense your body language and how you’re responding to the sounds. It puts me at ease. It’s like, “The track is now yours to play however you want to dive in.” That’s how I like to work as a producer. I like to give the artist who’s featuring vocally free range and trust.

HUXTABLE: Yeah.

TYGAPAW: I just witnessed your process of how you layer your vocals, how you create these instances of iconic moments in the track and your cadence is really unique and  beautiful. The additional effects added to your vocals to bring out the pacing and the style. It gave me goosebumps after that.

HUXTABLE: It was a very ripe opportunity for me to explore it as what I understand myself to be bringing to music. There are elements that are talk-singy, but I’m a poet first. There are so many ways in which we think about art making, language, the relationship between the political imaginary and unrestricted imagination that those two things don’t have to exist in competition with each other. In the Boomkat writeup, they described the song as the moment in the film where there’s an epic chase song and it really gave that.

TYGAPAW: It’s very cinematic. I’m really manifesting our music video for this.

HUXTABLE: It’s going to be sickening. It is an honor to be unto myself in your world.