Alexander Powers, a.k.a Female Wizard, is an underground dance legend. After almost a decade of booth-based esoterica and organising the kind of parties where the walls shed tears, the experimental DJ is going on a power trip for Melbourne Music Week.
And who better than her to organise it?
“I’ve been involved in the underground scene for a really long time – but before I was a DJ I studied experimental dance,” she says on the phone. “And then when I was running parties, I wanted to bring these two worlds together and so a lot of the time there’d be these really bizarre dances that happened between sets.
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“And what I hope for Powertrip is that for the whole night [with] the music, the performance, the way you’re moving around the space, you’re getting lost and immersed.”
Powertrip is set to be the premiere experimental techno event of next month’s Melbourne Music Week, with a stacked line-up of similarly experimental artists, but Powertrip itself been around for a hot minute.
“Powertrip is a project I started a few years ago,” she continues. “It came out of two main desires: one being that I’ve been DJing for a long time, so I wanted to give back to the platform and to other DJs, and the second desire was to push a space where people could be really experiment in electronic music … just build a space for people to experiment and make breakthroughs in the form.
“I really hope people can just sink into this love and sink into this flow and music and frequencies and sounds and really just appreciate the broad spectrums of sound in a loud room. It’s one of the first times I’m playing my own party,” she says, laughing.
After the last two years, laughter seems a justified response.
“I’ve been DJing for 8 years, and I’ve had two gigs in two years. Now I’ve got six gigs in December … I’ve been waiting the entirety of this lockdown for this to happen. It was the only thing getting me through lockdown, knowing I’ll see people I love play and express themselves.
“I’ve been waiting waiting, waiting, waiting for this.”
When quizzed on which new artist from the Powertrip line-up she wanted to give a shout-out, Female Wizard was succinct: “Definitely Pancakedog. But basically, there’s a lot of new young DJs that should have had their come-up this year but have had to wait.”
On the immediate future, the Boiler Room superstar was more secretive.
“What I’m hoping [to do] is to release more music, release another album, but I can’t give you more on that. And I’m looking to expand the Powertrip label with some stuff in the future … I also can’t tell you about that.”
Those who venture to Miscellania can go knowing that the person organising Powertrip has given plenty of consideration into the clubbing scene during these last two years, as a form of expression as well as a larger cultural signifier.
“Yes, for sure [lockdown] has changed me a lot,” she said.
“One of the things that I was adamant about last year, when we came out of lockdown, was that I became disillusioned with clubbing and going out. I felt like I was there for the wrong reasons.
“But now I’m going out there and enjoying every minute of it and I’m more curious and more open and I’ve levelled up professionally, I’m way more organised and way more focussed and ready to take on this career again.”
Powertrip is on December 9 at Miscellania in Melbourne. Tickets cost $20 from the MMW website and are free for Aboriginal peoples. Female Wizard is also joining the Protopia Panel on December 11 as part of MMW.
