Closing out festival season with CCL

CCL has had the summer of a lifetime. Usually based in Berlin, the DJ/​producer is currently enjoying a pit stop in Tisno, Croatia, luxuriating in the satisfaction of having played at virtually every electronic music festival on the circuit this year.

Before this, CCL curated a stage at Honcho Campout in Pennsylvania. Here in Tisno, it was all about Dekmantel Selectors, where they played with DJ Storm. Next up: Doel festival in Belgium, followed by Draaimolen in The Netherlands, Sustain Release in upstate New York, Making Time in Philadelphia and Unsound in Kraków, Poland. Whew.

“It’s been one of the craziest summers ever!” We don’t doubt it.

A master of unexpected blends and melodic dubstep, CCL was born in London to an Italian dad and American mum. They named them Cecilia after their grandma, who was a concert pianist. ​“I only found out about that when I was older and she’d died, so it feels a bit eerie that I ended up doing what I do now,” CCL says.

Perhaps their taste for life on the road came from how much they travelled as a kid. They lived in Washington DC for a while, then Rome, where they went to school, before a stint in Moscow to train at the prestigious Bolshoi Ballet Academy. Finally, CCL moved to Bristol for university, earning themselves a degree in experimental psychology.

That’s where the record-digging began, which naturally led to an obsession with underground music. But CCL wasn’t done moving around: they soon relocated to Seattle, where they became heavily involved with running parties in the city’s DIY scene, before cutting their teeth as a festival director.

It’s safe to say CCL has earned their myriad bookings. “[I want my sets] to make people feel sexy, surprised, tripped out, mind-altered, engrossed, held and emotional,” they say. ​“Every year I get to listen to more music so naturally I evolve, which is so important to do. My scope broadens but my taste becomes more specific at the same time.”

This weekend, at Draaimolen, CCL will be hopping behind the decks at Eris Drew and Octo Octa’s Forest Stage, playing trippy, ​“ass-shaking, sexy, transcendent” tunes on a wall of 60 subs. ​“I want the crowd to feel things they’ve never felt before.”See you front left.

Not sure it’s that controversial, but the dance music world is anything but a meritocracy in many ways and I loathe that. Some of the best, most talented people will never get their dues because of the way this industry is built and continues to operate.

I have too many to count, but [I’m trying to] get rid of phone compulsivity, overthinking and comparing myself to others. In the process of kicking!

I love Sicilian food, I like going for walks and I hate music industry small talk.

The timetable for Honcho Campout festival.

I’m usually daydreaming about any number of things… probably what I’m going to eat next or humming to the latest earworm.

I think my first memory like that was listening to my mum play Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life in her red station wagon through fields somewhere in Michigan… I think I was five years old!

To be open and honest with your feelings right away, as soon as you feel them, rather than holding them in and letting things build up or being afraid to disrupt the peace. That’s totally changed my life and relationships this year.

I have a scar on my chin from rolling out of the top bunk of my bunk bed as a kid. I was a wiggly sleeper.

On an emotionally dark day of my life, a lovely person struck up a conversation with me by chance in a charity shop in Seattle and we had a really thoughtful, serendipitous conversation. I mentioned I was thinking of leaving Berlin because I wasn’t able to find stable housing. She had never been to Berlin, but we exchanged contacts and she DM’ed me after about how nice it was to meet, and shared an apartment from a friend she had found. I still live there now! Eternally grateful to this day for that angel and the kindness of strangers.

My pessimistic side feels like I don’t know if the world is saveable sometimes, especially not by artists… but if you have any kind of platform you should use it to share information and mobilise people, talk to people, be active in the community and beyond, use your influence and art to challenge and provoke thought and truth. Artists should contribute and build things versus just taking things.