Rachael Williams is the booker at London venue Rye Wax, a community centre that is an independent record shop, restaurant, bar and event space part of The CLF Art Cafe. She also DJs and records as Ambient Babestation Meltdown, a conceptual performance art DJ project that’s part provocation, part comedy. Read more below.

How are you? 

I'm okay yeah, not too bad. It's kind of weird because lockdown has ended but it doesn't really feel like it. It's weird, like everyone's talking about the vaccination, and talking about what foreign festivals they're going to go to, and what club nights they're going to and I'm a bit like ‘oh I don't know’. I just feel really wary of getting too excited. I'm excited but I don't know. I don't want to get my hopes up.  

How has 2020 been for you? In as few or as many words as you'd like. 

It's funny saying as few or as many, because it simultaneously feels like the longest year ever and also like it's gone in the blink of an eye. My perception of time is completely screwed. I've also become really face blind, I really struggle recognising people I know in the street, mask or no mask. I just don't see them enough. And it's just made me really face blind. I don't know why that is. It's been a shit year that I've made the best of. That's succinct, I guess. 

You’re the booker at Rye Wax. How early did you start to notice things going funny there? 

We work quite closely with a radio station in Peckham called Balamii. They used to do loads of live shows and streams and things from the basement, and a lot of the artists started dropping out really early from like, February, so a lot of the artists just didn't want to come and play and they didn't feel comfortable and they didn't want to be in crowds. If you think a lot of the artists that they're booking are black and Peckham is predominantly black as well. That was probably actually a really sensible move. For our local demographic audience, not actually putting themselves at risk despite it being ‘legal’ then. And we obviously had difficulties with nights having to be cancelled where there were European or US artists, we were meant to have Doc Sleep and Gayphextwin play, and Gayphextwin was worried about being able to get home and travel so she couldn't play, so there were things like that that were happening very early on. In fact, I think like just maybe like a week or two weeks before first shut down Chrissy was on tour. He was just worried about going home. And he got all of his dates cancelled so I think it was really apparent to a lot of people from February that it was pretty serious. 

Can you talk me through what happened? Was closing something that was imposed upon you or did you take the decision to close? 

We decided to shut for safety reasons. Our last event was the last ever New Atlantis actually, which I think is really fitting, because we planned that for a really long time, it was going to be the last ever New Atlantis, and for it to be the last event in the basement is really fitting and really beautiful. Literally the last person to play was India Jordan, which I think it's quite nice. You know, if you're going to have one DJ as your last DJ to play then it should be someone as good as them. So that is kind of nice at least. So that was Sunday. And we shut in the week. Obviously, you know, the issue for a lot of venues was shutting before the government said to shut because that would affect your insurance. It's not like people weren't wanting to shut. They just didn't want to completely fuck themselves over. the government needed to put the mandate in for business interruption insurance. It all got really complicated but you can’t just willingly choose to shut, without completely ruining yourself. 

So, it put a lot of venues in a really difficult position of having to pick between the longevity of their business, and the safety of their customers. Which is not a situation anyone really wants to be in. It was a really stressful time for sure. 

There was a lot of miscommunication from the government, it was like, ‘we're not closing pubs, but you should stay home’, which means in theory you have empty pubs. So, you're paying staff. 

I read recently that in America, patronage to restaurants and bars is down, but incidents of sexual harassment are up. So it tells you a lot about the type of person that will still go out when you put a stay at home in order in place but you don't close businesses,

I think that makes nightlife even more unsafe. I thought that was really interesting because obviously that would apply here without us necessarily having those statistics, but it was interesting to read that from America. 

You mentioned longevity, have you been able to make any kind of plans at all? 

We were really lucky and we applied for the Arts Council Cultural Recovery Fund, we were awarded 100% of the money we asked for. I think it's really important to talk about this because a lot of people didn't really understand how that works. I filled out the application for it so I know what the application was asking me, what it entailed, and what you're asking for money for. So when people won huge amounts, it’s because that was covering their rent. That was covering their staff and costs – both of those are extremely high in London. So if you think about two of the companies that I think were probably singled out the most, both have offices in Hackney in London, which is incredibly expensive for rent. They also had really big staff base. So that's obviously going to push up really high into that list. And I think people just were very unhappy to see those large amounts going up but it really what it was the company were asking for. ‘This is the baseline amount of money we need to not fold our business.’ 

So, you got that grant, that was a boon for you. 

Yes, we're very lucky. We are currently working on ways in which we can reopen safely. Vaccine aside, I think we were looking at changing our business model slightly for a little bit. I don't think from a business perspective necessarily, putting all your eggs in the nightlife basket is maybe the best idea, just for the short term. We've always been a business that has had loads of things going on, obviously we've got the record shop, we’ve got the cafe. And, Rye Wax does really function as a community hub. So I think those are areas that we really want to focus on, just while clubbing to the type that we like to do can come back properly. And people are making plans. But, you know, a lot of people are making pie in the sky plans at the moment. You're asking if you're trying to get money from sponsors, you're trying to get money from government funding, you can't really make pie in the sky plans. They're not going to give you the money. 

Let's talk about Ambient Babestation Meltdown.  

When I was in my early 20s, I worked for a porn channel, in the office. I should really keep those two sentences together! I worked in the office but they would get me to do the voiceovers for the adverts on Sky when the girls weren't available, so I would put on my best sexy voice –"Call now and speak to hot single ladies". And obviously, you know, me being 23, I thought it was fucking hilarious, that someone would switch on Sky and be getting ready to have a wank and then hear my voice and that really put them off. Someone that knew me, obviously, not the general masses. Otherwise, I've not done a very good sexy voice. 

Then basically I made a joke to Sam Astbury who runs X-Kalay Records that I would perform at his ambient night and do my sexy voice over ambient records. And this is a complete joke, totally like, ‘aha, wouldn't it be really funny’. I think I said it to him at an afters or something. And then the next day I was on the next poster and I was like ‘Sam, you know I was joking’, he was like ‘yeah of course’, ‘so why the fuck am I on the poster then?’ Then I thought: ‘you know what, like fuck it, I'll do it. It was a joke but it will probably be quite funny.’ And then I had an idea to get a stranger on the internet to record me fake call-ins as if they were calling Babestation. The first ever iteration of Ambient Babestation Meltdown was a live performance. I was so nervous that I was downing red wine hiding under the booth just before my set, because I obviously had to stand up in front of a roomful of people, most of whom are your friends and do such a kind of niche off-kilter performance was pretty nerve racking. 

And it's also going to be kind of vulnerable doing it because you are trying to be sexy.  

You're trying to be weird, and sexy and funny, all at once. The project evolves quite a lot. That's how it started, just me doing stupid doing stupid jokes in a sexy voice over ambient records. And then you know, I had some weird records – I've got a record about Girl Guides singing from the 70s, I started layering that over Ron Morelli, and I had this nature documentary of Birds Of East Anglia and I would start laying that over Godspeed You! Black Emperor, so the sampling came about by me doing it live by buying weird records and trying to play them over the top of other records. And, obviously, now it's kind of expanded, because I've been finding really obscure films and just cutting the samples myself instead of buying weird records and layering them over the top. But it's been fun, I feel like it's a project that evolves naturally, by whatever I think is going to be really funny.  

You've been producing lately too. 

Yeah, I had a track out on a compilation around about May that I made at the Don’t Be Afraid studio. Benji Semtek helped me with that and was teaching me Logic, which is really complicated. And also, it is mad spending like three days straight in the studio Benji because he does veer off into theory, which I'm like ‘what what I don't understand’ and then four months later in another studio I'll be like ‘Ah something makes sense’. And I've been learning Ableton with my friend Joe Europe. I don't think I would have had the time really to put aside to learn production had it not been for the pandemic. So, again, really grateful for having time to do things that I should have done a really long time ago. It's really interesting learning production. I've also applied for funding from the Arts Council to go and study production, and to have singing lessons, not because I want to sing but I want to expand and improve my vocal range because I use my own vocals so much in my work, I think it is essentially an instrument that I play. And you know, I need to have some training in it for longevity and range. So I've asked for money for that as well I find out in a couple weeks whether I got that but fingers crossed. 

I'm 36 and I've been DJing on and off since I was 21 now, and it's taken me this long to get round to production. It never really interested me before. I don't know, just I wasn't bothered by it. I think it's because of Ambient Babestation Meltdown. Because what I've been doing is the DJ set of Ambient Babestation Meltdown is quite complicated because it's all four decks and I'm cutting in samples at really short notice, and I'm doing live vocals over the top. So, it is a performance. And it is technically complicated, because there's a lot going on, not because what I'm doing is complicated, if that makes sense.  

I think that has opened up in me an interest in production. It's made my Ambient Babestation Meltdown mixes so much tighter because I started doing them in Ableton, and doing production on the samples, and everything has been a lot slicker. even, just starting learning this year has already improved my DJ mixes and improved my DJing as well you know. 

You mentioned live streams. What have they been like? Have they been pre-recorded or have you actually been doing "live" live streams?  

They've been live. I did The Cause birthday, I played first, that was fun. I practiced at home quite a bit for that one. I've done one for Venue MOT and I did that back to back with Joe Europe, that was really fun. And weirdly the stream got corrupted, and there was overlaid this documentary about astronauts over the top of it. 

That could not be more could not be more serendipitous! 

I know, but that actually gave me the idea to rip that off for one of my mixes anyway, because I found some vintage space documentaries. I don't know what happened, it just picked up another signal, you can literally see footage of astronauts trying to climb into a spaceship over the top of me and Joe, I don't know what happened, it was mad. So I did that. I did two for Lockdown Live. I did one that was a panel talk, talking about women record collectors. and then I did a half hour vinyl disco set, which I wasn't very happy with because vinyl disco is really hard to DJ and playing for half an hour sucks. And I felt like I clanged, and it just didn't make me feel good about myself, but I think I'm probably being hard on myself. 

There's a Hessle Audio show when Call Super was on, and Ben UFO is on the mic saying "there's Call Super mixing live drums like it ain't no thing". because it's hard! There's no internal metronome or whatever you call it, just an actual person drumming. 

Exactly, all of disco is live drums, and I try not to overuse the filters on Pioneer mixers, and I was trying really hard not to do that and just sort of blend a bit better and it just wasn't working. It was one of those days it just wasn't working for me. I think I used to play disco so much that there was quite a lot of muscle memory. And I hadn't done it in so long and I just felt so rusty and so shit, but the other one I did, which I did as Ambient Babestation Meltdown, I put a lot of prep into prepping my samples and working out my set order and everything like that so it went a lot better. 

What was the panel talk like? 

Really good. It was me and Ariane V who used to work at Phonica and does Rhythm Sister; Poly-Ritmo, who works at Sounds of the Universe; and it was hosted by Scarlett O'Malley. It was really interesting, it was really nice. It's nice to talk about records. 

Do you have any sort of thoughts or opinions on issues around race and gender in dance music as exposed by 2020?  

So many isn’t there. A lot of a lot of stories about abusers have come to light this year, which I think has been really important. More women speaking up about that. I think there are going to be less opportunities next year, just general opportunities. Because of this year, what has happened is everything's rolled over to next year. So my concern is that we're just going to see the same old faces doing the same things next year. And it won't feel like anything's changed. We're talking about how much everything's changed this year where everyone's been honest and been able to talk about stuff. But realistically, what is next year going to look like? Is it going to look like the conversations we've had in 2020 have had a fucking impact because I don't think it will. 

Everyone has their whole lineups rolled over. Because of money. Because of agents and because of money. 

The artists who have become, not successful but known because of the work that they put in this year and next year, even if it is just online, are they just going to be ignored? 

I don't think they're going to be ignored, I just think there's, there's not going to be the space that we imagined is going to be there for them. It's going to be hard because everything's going to feel really tired next year, like everything's going to be like, oh, we're doing this again are we still doing this, I thought we'd moved on. but we haven't you know, I mean, maybe like 2022? we'll have that reckoning that we're all asking for, we all expected this year I don't know. Someone was saying that oh maybe all the artists who can't travel because of COVID – places like America are probably still going to have like quite a lot of restrictions, or people are not going to want to fly – maybe, that will create space for a young up-and-coming artist who should be getting booked this year, and I don't think that's going to be the case because people will be even more risk averse, less wanting to lose money, so what they're going to do they're just going to book someone from NTS, they're going to book someone that's been on Boiler Room, those power structures we have at the top aren't going to change. 

Right. So it'll be book local, but book local names not the local unknowns. 

No one wants to take a risk; they never did in the first place but it'll be even less so next year. And it's also only the people who've got deep pockets necessarily that have survived. And they're the people that are more invested in keeping the status quo. I sound so fucking jaded, I'm totally not as optimistic about next year as everyone else is. 

You're a booker right. 

Yeah, so they tell me. 

You say people aren't going to take risks. How do you see yourself booking people next year? will you be in a position to take any risks? 

We always worked with external promoters, so they would send me their proposed lineups. And what I've always done and what I will continue to do is push back against things that I think are boring, I think are overdone, I think that you can easily see at another venue. If someone pitches something, and I get that pitch from three different promoters, yeah. That means that pitch is going around to every club in London. So I don't really want to take a risk on that because why is someone going to come and see something in Rye Wax that they can go and see in two other clubs.  

Ambient Babestation Meltdown’s favourite music of 2020

This label: https://coldlightmusic.bandcamp.com/
e.m.m.a.'s album on local action
that basic rhythm ep on sneaker social club
Hunting Dog who releases on Grimalkin
More recently Wordcolour on Houndstooth

Ambient Babestation Meltdown on Twitter
Rye Wax