Self-taught, self-promoted and above all self-confident Edmonton-born DJ, beatmaker and microphone fiend myst milano. gets this year’s Osheaga festival underway on Friday, Aug. 2.
Last year, shortly after the release of their acclaimed sophomore LP, Beyond the Uncanny Valley, milano. wowed the crowd at FME with their electronic music savvy and rap star polish. Days later, the 28-year-old talent rocked the DJ booth at Piknic Électronik in Montreal.
Post-show, myst milano. talked about where they’re from, how they got here, and where they’re going. Back then, Osheaga 2024 wasn’t yet on their radar.
Cult MTL is glad we waited until now to share highlights from our interview so myst milano. can tell you their story in their own words.
Dawn myst
“My mom is a huge hip hop head and loves hip hop, dancehall and stuff like that. And so she was my introduction to hip hop and rap, and to loving rap in a way that’s more technical and more focused on the art of rapping, rather than just feeling the music.
“My mom was also listening to a lot of Crystal Waters. So, I always loved house music and gravitated towards anything with a four-on-the-floor beat. As I got older, it turned into electro and French electro. And then I got more into techno, and then more into Jersey club, Miami bass, and that kind of more syncopated sound.
“I feel like Canada was in general big on electronic music when I was growing up. When I was five or something, I think I heard a song (from Toronto dance music group) Love Inc. for the first time, and it really grabbed me.
“I’m just a music nerd. I love music history and I love genre because it’s like a neat package of the history and growth of music. Like if you look at dub and reggae, you can see the evolution into dancehall. And then you can see (that evolution) from dancehall into jungle, cleanly. And that gives you year markers, place markers, and I’ve always loved music that way.
Self-taught player
“I was always a musician. It was my art form, what I gravitated towards, and what I wanted to do. I started writing songs when I was six. Because hip hop was my mom’s thing, I kind of went toward rock music, listening to bands like Modest Mouse and other modern rock, radio bands. Then I gravitated more towards indie music, folk, punk and hardcore punk. I’ve always written music and wanted to be a musician. I started playing drums when I was 11, guitar when I was 15 and producing when I was 20.”
Edmonton roots
“When I turned 18 in 2013, Canadian indie music was a big thing globally. Crystal Castles, MSTRKRFT and Grimes were huge. And Purity Ring, who are also from Edmonton, were getting a lot of recognition. There weren’t a lot of venues, but there were house shows. There was this place called the Rude House. Purity Ring would come home for Christmas and play DJ sets at the Rude House, which would get shut down by the cops, and it was this whole thing.
“When I started, the scene was mixed. It was so small that everyone from different niche scenes — which would be their own separate thing in bigger cities like Montreal or Toronto — came together. There were these multi-genre, multi-art form kinda cabaret shows in these punk houses. I’d be rapping with a band, and then there’d be a comedy act, and then a performance art piece, and then a DJ all in the same night. That was the scene I came up with.
Taking on TO
“I went to Toronto on my way to New York once and I stopped there to do a recording session at Dreamhouse Studios when I was about 18. I liked (Toronto) and had it in my head that I wanted to live there someday. I was working a shitty waitressing job and had some money saved. My friends who had moved to Toronto six months earlier messaged me over New Year’s, wishing me a happy new year, and told me a room was opening up in their place. So, I sold all my shit and hit the road and moved to Toronto.
“It wasn’t easy to build a name in Toronto, especially as someone with no social capital at all. I knew one person there. People who come up in Toronto have high school friends supporting them. They have a support system and connections, and people who know people who know people. I didn’t have that, so it was really just me face-planting for three years, trying to figure things out. Eventually, I did, but it’s a big city, and people tend to stick to what they know and who they know.”
Push it
“For me, it was music or bust. Music is my favourite thing in the world. There’s nothing else I want to do. Nothing else wakes me up in the morning. Everything else makes me miserable. I’m only happy when doing music. I hate working a wage job. I have to get the fuck out of that. So, I just kept pushing and I knew that I had something special.
“I think there were enough moments of recognition and validation peppered into the face-planting, where I recognized I should keep doing this because I am connecting to people even if it’s happening slowly. I know that I have this path and I know what I’m going to be, so I just have to keep pushing.”
Electric attitude
“As a DJ, I listen to electronic music all the time. I know where the pocket is. I understand this music on a stripped-down level. I know how to find a flow wherever. When I started rapping, I started rapping over electronic music. The first song I ever wrote a rap over was a Com Truise song, ‘Cyanide Sisters.’ So, I got my start with weird, off-tempo electronic music and syncopated stuff. It just makes sense to me.”
Uncanny savvy
“Shapeshyfter, my last album, was weird. I was doing spoken word, Slint-inspired spoken word on a rap record. I don’t think it was palatable to a lot of people. It was more challenging.
“For Beyond the Uncanny Valley, I scrapped a whole album of beats that were aggressive and experimental. I just wanted to disconnect from the deep, dark, sad shit that I was doing and do something lighter, more fun, and that I could write to in a light-hearted, silly, attitude-y way that wasn’t depressing. People seem to be liking it a lot, so I’m just happy with people being happy with it.”
Skill life
“Being a queer person, queer rap sounds like the music I make. Not just queer rap, but rap geared towards queer people as well. Female rap sounds like the rap I make. It’s all very electronic and danceable.
“Hip hop has always been skill-based. The recognition you get as a rapper for the longest time was based on how good you were at rapping and what unique flavour you brought to rap music. I think men have lost the plot in that respect. There’s no desire to be skillful anymore. It’s about a vibe, which is fine.
“But I think that for women, and because of how misogyny works — like, people still don’t believe that I make my beats, or don’t believe that I’m capable of doing all the things that I do — I think there’s still a desire for women to prove themselves. We are still drawn to the skillful parts of rap music. And I listen to a lot of new rap, a lot of it. I’m not trying to shit on it, but something is missing and I think that women are filling in a lot of those gaps.” ■
myst milano. plays the Island Stage at Osheaga on Friday, Aug. 2, 2:15 p.m., individual single-day tickets $165, $320 Gold, $685 Platinum, individual weekend passes $395/$745/$1620. This article was originally published in the Aug. 2024 issue of Cult MTL.
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