Having worked close to a decade behind-the-scenes in the music industry has given SIFON a strong deep sense of the connective tissue electronic music can provide for communities around the world. Originally from Barcelona, SIFON, real name Greg Menendez, spent a number of years in Berlin and London attuning their ears and lending their heart to the European music industry before relocating to Naarm/Melbourne end of 2022.
In the last year, SIFON has contributed mixes with collectives Maricas (Barcelona), Radiant Love (Berlin), Butter Sessions (Naarm) and played sets at HÖR in Berlin, Nitsa in Barcelona and Miscellania in Naarm. With a strong focus on the emotional responses music can deliver, their mixes juxtapose camp and tongue-in-cheek sensibilities to create epic musical narratives that effortlessly blend styles and genres with a generous amount of heart in the mix. What they call “High Camp Fantasy Groove”.
SIFON’s debut EP will launch their new label with the same name: High Camp Fantasy Groove. Containing 6 tracks, the two main sources of inspiration behind the record are their constant research for camp samples in electronic music and the video game soundtracks that have accompanied them growing up as a queer kid in a small town. Fantasy RPGs like Final Fantasy, Zelda and Kingdom Hearts became a gateway to escape reality in a similar way queer dance floors did in their twenties. SIFON unites them in this project.
DJ Mag UK reported the record as “hyperactive techno rhythms meet dystopian atmospheres on the escapist debut EP from Melbourne-based SIFON,” describing the track ‘Deserted 4ever’ as it “swells like the main title to an epic, cyberpunk blockbuster.”
As a label, HCFG will emphasize conceptual releases and music that displays storytelling. Focusing only on digital formats, each release will pair its sound with visual content. For the first instalment, SIFON collaborated with Australian visual artist JW Vigers, who also happens to be their husband. Together they have created a narrative for the record with “visualisers” for each track, presenting each of them as a playable character of this record’s party. On the cover artwork, Vigers uses 2D and 3D techniques together to emulate the format of video game packaging.
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Feature photo by JW Vigers
