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Music

We Caught Up with Danny Daze in Tulum, Where BPMers Go When Paradise Isn't Enough

Fresh from two sets in Playa Del Carmen, the Miami genre-slayer let us in on all his big plans.

Forty minutes south of the ever-churning marathon of dance music known as BPM is Tulum, Mexico, a sleepy beachside town that's a million miles away from the rest of the world. It's there, in the shadow of Chichen Itza and steps away from the softly crashing blue waves of the Caribbean Atlantic, that many of the performing DJs shack up for the week of BPM and get some much needed downtime just a short drive away from the frenetic energy of the festival.

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It was in Tulum that I found fIve-time BPM veteran Danny Daze, fresh from consecutive performances at Dusky's Canibal Royal showcase and ANTS, where he performed alongside DJ Sneak and Andrea Oliva. The Miami-raised producer and DJ has made a career of defiantly subverting convention and expectations, but he's always found a comfortable home on the shores of BPM. "I've played four times and I've been here five times. I've been to most of them" he says in his typically thoughtful, but street-smart cadence of speaking.

"This festival is honestly becoming one of the go-to's," Daze continues. "This has become a destination for people to come and do what we're doing here, having margaritas, relaxing. The way that we travel, this is a good place to just sit down and be able to have an actual conversation with people. That's what's very attractive about BPM. You can actually sit down and have conversations rather than having to scream over speakers. The difference between Playa and Tulum is that Playa is a free-for-all, you're gonna go out and dance, while out in Tulum, you're gonna try to be a little more calm. That's pretty much it. Look at this place. It's beautiful. It's gorgeous."

With his performances in the Riviera Maya completed, Daze is turning his attentions to the upcoming release of his Four EP, a collection of collaborations with artists plucked from various points in the experimental underground: Philipp Gorbachev, Deroboter, Drvg Culture, and 214 all make appearances. "These are guys that I've always felt need to be heard and maybe they don't have the platform," says Daze. "Guys like Deroboter, who I've known for 15 years. We used to breakdance together. He's now a computer programmer, but the music he makes in his spare time and doesn't release is amazing. And then this guy Drvg Culture I released on my label ten years ago. All the other guys, I've thoroughly enjoyed for a long time. Specifically because they're not DJing every single weekend, they bring a different aspect that they don't hear on every single track that's released. It's a very raw take on what they think music should sound like in a club."

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It may sound like an introverted move for the "Your Everything" star, but Daze knows exactly what he's doing. "I consistently tell myself to do the opposite of what it is people think that I am," he explains. "I like to challenge people. It's always been my thing. That's the way that I look at making music. That's why I think all of my music sounds different, pretty much every single track. It's made my career harder, 100%, but that challenge is what motivates me to keep going, getting people to understand the body of work."

That body of work is about to get a whole lot heaver. Danny's already on to his next ambition and it's not necessarily facing the dancefloor. He explains, "My next challenge is gonna be an album. That's gonna have to be a completely different way of thinking. I've been working on it for a while. You're gonna wanna listen to it while you're falling asleep, or while you're out here, by the beach. There might be two "dance records" on there. For me, an album is to show where you come from, not to show off dance tracks."

Further, the impending launch of Daze's podcast series will diverge even further from the ever-growing expectations placed on the fast-rising star. "It's called Sunday Morning," he explains. It's very influenced by experimental Miami labels like Schematic and M3rck. I'm going for a bit more of something that you would wanna listen to when you're coming home on Sunday morning. It's a bit of that trip-hop, downtempo feel, mixed with just beauty in general, but it's not just all gonna be downtempo."

The project gleans inspiration from Danny's nascent days in music, back to the topsy-turvy world of the millenial Miami dance music scene. It's Something I believe used to be part of the rave scene back in the day," he elaborates. "…A trip-hop room with incense and red beanbag chairs everywhere. I don't really think that exists anymore. I think people want that, but maybe there's just a romance that I have with rave culture. I'm trying to bring it back, somehow. I'm a raver at heart, in a very different way, though, where you get sunk into the music, not the build-up, not the drop. Now that the maximal has been forced so hard, people are diving back into depth and this podcast is all about that."

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Jemayel Khawaja is THUMP's Managing Editor and is, by now, 70% michelada - @JemayelK