Calgary's Defunk releases first full

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In 2020, Defunk was a DJ and producer who toured North America steadily building a fanbase in the EDM subculture. He had no children. He was single. He lived from gig to gig.

Fast-forward three years and the artist, who was born Logan Anderson, is now engaged and has a two-year-old daughter and has given his sound a significant reboot.

He is obviously not the first musician whose life underwent monumental changes in the wake of COVID-19. Like a lot of musicians, Anderson – who has performed under the name Defunk for more than a decade – used the time for introspection. During lockdowns, he started writing and recording what would become The Voyage, a sprawling 14-track album that tells the tale of a “lone adventurer” who blasts into the cosmos to visit various galaxies and planets and comes home a changed man. While, on the surface, this might seem like the sort of otherworldly concept album that a prog-rock band would have released back in the 1970s, Anderson says the relatively simple tale is allegorical and meant to reflect his own disorienting, if more down-to-earth, journey from lockdown isolation and doubt to new romance and fatherhood..

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“He comes home with this new knowledge and with these new experiences having changed him into a new person,” says Anderson. “For me, the connection is that COVID was that adventure. It was the isolation, the chaos and having time to think about what I wanted to do. Coming out of it, I’m a changed person. In terms of specifics, I was a regular touring musician before the pandemic. I didn’t have children, I wasn’t married. When I came out of it, I was engaged, we had a baby girl. I took the time to reinvent my sound a little bit, to evolve. I changed drastically over that period and that’s what the album is about. It’s about that evolution during the COVID pandemic and how now I’m a new person bringing a new perspective and new sound. I think that’s why this album is so important to me.”

The Voyage, which came out Sept. 1, is Defunk’s fifth full-length album and the first he has released in nearly a decade. He has kept busy during that time, of course, releasing singles. His EP Empire came out in 2018. But the new record feels like a turning point for the artist. Not only is the album cohesive thematically, it also showcases Defunk’s continued efforts to broaden his heavy bass-focused electronic music to a more fluid concoction of pop, R&B, hip-hop, soul and, yes, funk. From the scaled-back, piano-based opener Departure, to the funky and pulsing Coming in Hot to the soulful and rhythmic shape-shifting closer Sunrise, the album benefits from Defunk’s elastic take on the genre. It also benefits from a number of collaborators. As personal as the album is, Anderson makes plenty of room for guests such as Victoria, B.C. duo Liinks, who add some silky pop smarts to the bass-driven Whiplash; Calgary’s artist Rusur, who offers some rhymes to the techno beats of Falls Apart, and electronic Washington duo Willdabeast, who join Defunk and American vocalist Lily Fangz for the funky Losing It.

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“I really wanted to focus on working with strong vocalists, especially in today’s age with everything being streamed and everything being so consumable and people’s attention spans are so quick,” he says. “I was really focusing on catchy hooks from strong vocalists. I’m a producer, I don’t really have any skill or training when it comes to vocals. That was something where I really wanted to rely on other artists.”

Anderson gave the vocalists the general concept of the album but allowed them to contribute their own lyrics.

“It was me writing the music and then handing it over to vocalists to have their own interpretation,” he says. “I didn’t do too much micro-managing. I obviously changed a few words and perfected a few things. But for the most part, I did leave a lot of the collaborators to really add their mark onto the music, which was a new experience for me.”

Born and raised in Calgary, Anderson’s early musical tastes leaned more toward heavy metal and punk music. After playing bass with a few garage bands, he discovered a new stream of electronic music that was gaining prominence in the early 2010s.

“I stumbled upon this new wave of electronic music that was surfacing that was more hip-hop influenced,” he says. “There was a lot of European, U.K. influence. It was heavy, exciting and energetic and it reminded me of some of the heavy, energetic metal that I enjoyed. It was kind of an easy switch. I poured my love of writing into that and I started to find a production program that would let me tinker around with some ideas. I just went from there and started to explore.”

From the beginning of his career, Anderson has put a focus on the U.S. market due to the size of its EDM culture. Along the way, he has performed on some prominent stages, including Colorado’s Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado, Michigan’s Electric Forest Festival and a number of appearances at the Shambhala Music Festival near Nelson, B.C.

Later this month, he will embark on a 12-city North American tour that will take him from Louisville, Ky., to Detroit, Vancouver, Portland, Las Vegas and Columbus, Ohio. Still, Calgary has a thriving underground EDM scene that has been booming for more than a decade, he says.

“When I started, I knew if I focused internationally and look outward it would help me in the long run,” he says. “It’s hard to start local and then build yourself up and expand outward. You go for the bigger markets. U.S. is a much bigger market than Canada. Even though Canada is a great market, we’re talking 10 times the population down there. There’s a lot more cities you can hit, there’s a lot more tourable states you can drive through. There’s more people to come out, more money to be made.”

The Voyage is available Sept. 1 on all streaming services.

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