The Desert Dwellers are a couple of guys named DJ Treavor (Moontribe) and Amani. The collective has expanded since they first wrote this track, and some of you may recognize their other work under the names Amani vs Teapot.
The connection here with the people involved is pretty interesting to me. I first read about the Moontribe in XLR8R magazine in the late 90’s. They had a special section in events in the magazine because they threw full moon parties in the California desert. This sounded cool to me, so I decided that I wanted to go to one of their events. I did some more research and then realized that on my college student budget, there was no way I was going to be making this trip. Too bad.
Less a year later I heard that there was a Moontribe party in Victoria. I was pretty certain there was some sort of mistake as these guys threw parties in the desert in California. It was pretty unlikely that they would choose to come to Victoria and hang out. I was wrong. Over the next couple years, I attended several Moontribe parties in Victoria with DJ line ups like DJ Brian (Hardesertrance, Psychotrance, Seed, Ritual Sounds), John Kelley (Funkydesertbreaks), DJ Treavor, Petey and more. It was all pretty surreal and I found myself designing the flyer for one of their bigger events that many people came up from California for. A bit later on myself and DJ Brian shared a residency at the Neptune Soundbar along with a couple other DJ’s. This resulted in us throwing a full moon party ourselves in the middle of the woods. Wild times to be sure.
In any case, work visas ran out and people who had moved up here from California had to move back. Sad but true. As much freedom as we claim to have in Canada and the United States, we are certainly constricted by the working laws of our two countries. Several years later, we have found a way to work together again – Treavor works at Ingrooves (Music aggregation service that distributes music to stores for Pacific Front Recordings) and runs Desert Trax as well as being a founder of the Desert Dwellers, Brian runs Ritual Sounds and records music as Seed, and we have all done remixes of eachother and pushed the music further despite being pretty far away. If you have a listen to these tracks, you’ll hear our distinct sounds from the past all come together in a condensed and very playable way.
- Desert Dwellers – Musiki Ukabili (Original mix)
- Desert Dwellers – Musiki Ukabili (Phokus and Seed remix)
- Desert Dwellers – Musiki Ukabili (AFK’s Moon Over Myakka remix)
Side note:
Myakka has nothing to do with the Moontribe or the desert, but rather is a pretty inspiring Florida State Park that Krishen took me to around the time that I did this remix.
