An entrenched figure of the West Coast electronic underground, this is Mr Rogers first time in Australia.
“I’ve noticed there are almost two electronic scenes happening out here — I guess it’s kind of happening everywhere these days. It’s becoming more and more polarised I think, but I definitely think the underground festival circuit is my favourite place.”
Originally starting out as a psy-trance DJ, Mr Rogers branched out into the world of production, and he’s never looked back.
“Once I started producing, it’s all I really wanted to do I guess,” he explains. “It was kinda a strange style that I was working with, so it was hard to find other music that would really fit into my sets.”
The next step was cultivating an entire set from his own original productions. Now Mr Rogers is known for only playing his own material.
“The psy-trance that I did play when I was a psy-trance DJ was the fun, weird, wacky stuff, kinda mischievous, like quirky things,” he says by way of explaining the evolution of his very original psychedelic, funky glitch-ridden breakbeat style. “I do like to get up there and play 100 percent of my own stuff, for sure. It feels good.”
Now he’s ready to showcase the Mr Rogers style to the patrons of Earth Frequency. “I just really want everyone around me to be having a good time. I feel like that’s kinda the reason why everyone goes out in the first place, to have fun.”
With fun at the top of his agenda, Mr Rogers has no time for his own ego.
“I think maybe being a DJ or a producer has an 'ego' attached to it sometimes. And to me it seems like maybe some people just are afraid to do something fun; they would rather make sure that they're being cool. I don't mean to trash-talk any fellow DJs or anything, I just think there's a lot of ego attached with being a DJ.”
Mr Rogers Brings His Groove To The Earth Frequency Festival February 15-18. Earthfrequency.Com.Au