Total Freedom Won’t Let You Dance

Photo by Aaron Brown

As an artist, DJ, and conceptual party-maker, Total Freedom (aka Ashland Mines) has been integral to some of the most exciting things to come out of LA’s underground art and music scene over the past few years. Hailed for a seamless ability to unite a huge spectrum of contrasting sounds, his repertoire spans minimalized R&B refixes and Middle Eastern pop samples, to obscure narrative soundbites and elements of trap, UK grime, and Kuduro. His now-infamous LA party “Wildness” is cited as an inspiration for Venus X’s GHE20 G0THIK phenomenon, and the subject of a new award-winning documentary by co-founder Wu Tsang. He’s also one of the lesser-sung forces behind the “record label and movement” Fade to Mind, the American sister imprint of the UK label Night Slugs, home to artists Nguzunguzu, Fatima Al Qadiri, and Kingdom. As an avid collaborator, Mines is core to an expansive creative family, as demonstrated last summer with his New York-based exhibition Blasting Voice, where he invited nearly 30 friends and artists to perform, including Gang Gang Dance’s Lizzi Bougatsos, Blood Orange Devonté Hynes, and multimedia collective Thunderhorse.

We caught up during his unofficial tour of Europe, on the back of his event Breakdown for the Tate Modern as part of their Charming for the Revolution series, to talk dance prohibiting parties, religious upbringing and falling out of love with the internet.

You’ve become well-known for your parties in LA. Can you tell me a bit about Wildness in particular?
Wildness was really 100 percent focused on environment. The party was built around a specific location in this bar and the people that worked there. Musically, I would say we would try to just be as disorienting as possible, like playing music from wherever and mashing it all together, trying to obscure power points and make it so you don’t know who’s leading and what’s happening.

Is the effect of disorientation important to you in your music and events?
That was specific to that party. While I do enjoy trying to do that—a lot—I’ve always tried to have a different goal every time, you know? Like right after Wildness, I did another party called Grown, and it was really the opposite: no dancing allowed whatsoever.

How did you impose that rule?
I mean, it was obvious. It was a classic house night, but you were supposed to understand the environment was just not for dancing. If people tried to dance I would just turn the music off until they figured out what was going on. Since then, I’ve done lots of one-offs and have a goal for what kind of experience people are going to have.

What’s your role as part of the Fade to Mind imprint?
I would say I’m a family founding member. Kingdom, Prince William, and I run the label. It was Kingdom’s initial idea to get something going in the States for artists he cares about. I guess that was about a year and a half ago; it’s really new.

Outside of your own events, how do you find LA nightlife?
The thing about LA is you can show up there and have a really horrible time. It’s all suburbs. Fun is a different thing there; it’s way chilled out. The bars close at 1:45, at 1:30 they call last orders, by 2 everyone’s out, and no one complains.

For your parties too?
Yeah, they have to. Except for the party Grown, where people aren’t allowed to dance—that was at an illegal jazz club, and actually she’d been open for like 28 years and she finally got shut down by the cops.

Photo by: Discobelle

It seems like most of your events and music are collaborative in some way. Is that important to you?
Definitely, I hate doing anything alone.The thing I did this summer, Blasting Voice, was all based on solo performance and it was just so I could understand what that is. I found 30 different people who wanted to do that and just watched them, you know? It was weird. Like, can I be educated?

So you didn’t do your own solo?
No, I didn’t do my solo. But before that, I had never toured by myself—I had toured with a noise group a long time ago, and I toured with The Claw, a band I forced my best DJ friends to make.

What kind of music is it?
It actually came out of another party called The Table, where four DJs stand at a table in the middle of the dance floor, all playing simultaneously.

And what does that sound like?
Well, when the DJs all get each other, it sounds great. We went on tour opening for Gang Gang Dance and sold CD recordings as our merch. People saw that CD and thought we were a band or something, so then we started getting bookings through that. So anyway, I’ve been on tour with other things, just never accepted the idea of just traveling to play music by myself, because I always wanted to be doing stuff collaboratively.

There’s a really broad range of influences in your music. What were you were listening to growing up?
Well, I was raised in a Christian cult where you were supposed to be really proud of being different. As a kid it was like, “You’re different and it’s better that you’re different. The world’s a terrible place…” There was a lot of stuff we couldn’t listen to, like rap or metal, anything too edgy, even normal pop music was not okay. But if it was something that they didn’t get at all, it was okay—indie music or experimental stuff was below the radar of what was acceptable. I feel like that, for whatever reason, has really influenced my appreciation for strange things. Also, being a kid that grew up in the 90s and just being obsessed with being “edgy”… I really need to get over that.

So at what point did you get into more electronic and bass music?
I didn’t even know what house music was. I mean, I lived in Chicago and I was always buying records like Mr. Fingers and stuff, but I didn’t even know that that was house music. I DJed a lot then, but I would DJ in a way that I was trying to make people dance, but I wasn’t thinking about that kind of electronic music.

What part does the Internet play in your music?
Oh my god, so much. I mean, obviously. There was a point when I started realizing it was a crazy source and you can dig anywhere in the world and find anything. When I found (the music sharing platform) SoundClick, I just died, I couldn’t believe how much good music was on it. I could just spend all day digging through these teenagers’ files, finding all this American shit that I wouldn’t have heard otherwise. That really threw me off a cliff and got me really excited about stuff. Me and Nguzunguzu were on the same tip at the same time. We’d share stuff, remixing things that we’d find.

Have you found any gems lately?
Really, I have stopped digging for music. There are enough people doing that. I still have this ridiculous catalog to source from. That and music that my friends make is basically all that I play, and then female versions of rap songs on the radio. Maybe it’s just a phase. I wish I still had the energy. I mean, things are always evolving and there’s loads of cool new stuff.

I guess the speed that things come and go online can be exhausting…
Also, I feel uncomfortable with the world’s appetite for the next thing. People’s various new genres can be taken into the machine like that, and it won’t kill it, but it’ll transform it in some way. So that’s part of not digging so much and focusing on what people around me are doing. I love music so much that I hope I’m always involved in it in some way, and mark my words, you’ll still see me in like 10 years’ time, still trying to be a DJ. I’m sure but I’ll be more embarrassed about it then. That actually will be edgy—you know, with a cane… That’s been done, though. Grandma DJs is, like, done.

Mines will curate the second edition of Blasting Voice this summer in LA, with a second accompanying LP on Teenage Teardrops, and Fade To Mind’s next releases include a mixtape by the Mines-discovered singer Kelela.