Nightlife Podcast: Mark Farina

Let’s talk about mushrooms. DJ/producer Mark Farina’s seventh installment of his Mushroom Jazz mix album series to be exact. He’ll be celebrating his latest release in Vegas November 3 at Eve Nightclub, and the Weekly caught up with him as he was signing a stack of the new albums for fans.

Listening to the album, which will be out November 9, there's great audio samples attempting to prove the case “for or against mushrooms.” What are those samples from?

That’s an old movie I found, the search for The Sacred Mushroom from the late ’50s, early ’60s and poorly made but almost comedic. It was really funny; they go in the jungle looking for this mushroom and stuff. I just tried to find some from old movies, some from documentary clips; some are just from old records and sort of went with a little mushroom-y theme to add as background. I always add weird little sound effects and stuff, and for this one, I tried to go with an all-mushroom concept.

Let’s talk more about mushrooms, specifically “mushroom jazz,” a style you basically created and coined. Was that a response to something like acid house?

It was more related to acid jazz of the early ’90s, that sound which came from the U.K. mixed with a lot of early ’90s East Coast hip-hop. That style, mushroom jazz, I learned mixing in Chicago. … Mushroom jazz seemed more organic than acid jazz, which was a little abrasive when I first heard the term.

Your live sets are very versatile and you’re able to play multiple rooms in the same club on the same night. What do you think you’ll bring to Eve here in Las Vegas? Something more like the House of OM at a higher BPM or more like the Mushroom Jazz albums since it is a tour in support of 7, which is a bit slower?

I think it’s going to be a combo of both. It’s a weeknight as well, so I can change different tempos and stuff. The last couple of gigs I’ve played have been more on the house-y basis in Vegas. … Mushroom Jazz is more around the 100 beat-per-minute range, whereas house is 125, so I like to go in between the tempos. … Anytime you play some downtempo stuff you can get a hip-hop crowd sort of into it that’s maybe not into house.

Check out the full interview with Farina including his thoughts on why it’s important for DJs to be nice to fans, his next artist album, a new downtempo record label and more in the Nocturnal Admissions podcast available for free download here.

Music featured in this podcast fromMushroom Jazz 7.