Alongside an exhilarating two-hour mix recorded live at London's UNFOLD, New York-based DJ, producer and writer Sister Zo speaks to Michael McKinney about her journey of continual self-discovery
Zoey Shopmaker has spent much of her life slipping between states: geographical, spiritual, emotional. It's a journey that's taken the New York-based, Kansas City-born DJ, producer, and writer best known as Sister Zo down all manner of winding roads, through periods of internal emergency and emergence, from studies in psychotherapy and formative experiences with psychedelics, to the booths of some of the best underground clubs you can name - Tresor, Nowadays, Fold, Basement.
To hear her tell it, Shopmaker is always on the move in one way or another, but when we speak to her over Zoom one afternoon in mid-August, she's sitting in the Bristol studio of her friend and collaborator Sam Binga. In conversation, she is joyous, generous, and thoughtful, fully willing to dive down blind alleys about dubstep, hallucinogens, the Brainfeeder catalogue, and karmic wheels. But our call is undergirded by concerns about identity, shedded skins, continual self-rediscovery, and a central question: how far would you go to change your life?
Speaking into the camera, eyes gleaming behind loose brown curls, she states it plainly: "Uncovering the truth of who I am, my authentic self, and trying to gather a deeper understanding of the forces that shaped my personalities, the wounds that I carry, and the karma that I carry - it's the most important thing to me."
Sister Zo spins and produces music that, in its own way, echoes this freewheeling-yet-deliberate energy - it is rowdy, rough, and dimly lit, liable to vault across oceans with the twist of a dial. Her material, which has featured on labels like Scuffed Recordings, Nervous, and All Centre, is as indebted to Bristolian dubstep as it is Detroit-borne techno; she works in conversation with the historiography of New York house and the shoulder-rolling grooves of UK funky.
Her latest EP, 'The Purge', released via Martyn's 3024 label, is a high-water mark in her discography to date, a combination of heavyweight sound system pressure and the leftfield soundscapes that got her into club music in the first place. But more on that later.