On the heels of her full-length album FUTURE SHOCK, Dot embarks on a new, even more fearless chapter.
When I last spoke with Kate Ellwanger–the producer, engineer, vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and entrepreneur who performs under the moniker Dot–she was deep in the world of House music, finishing her full-length album she’d go on to release in August of this year.
Constantly evolving, she has since begun experimenting with faster BPM’s incorporating Jungle and Drum and bass into her live sets. After being invited to perform at Louis The Child’s Alter Ego Festival where artists choose a style divergent from their usual offering, Dot decided to play an all Jungle set later incorporating the new genre in her main stage set at Elements Festival in Pennsylvania where crowds flocked in the pouring rain. “I'm mixing in some faster BPMs, a lot of breaks. It's very late 90s, early 2000s, kind of rave culture influenced. Definitely very UK inspired,” says Dot. “I think for a while I had impostor syndrome about experimenting with Drum and bass or Jungle. I felt like, ‘Oh, I don't live in the UK, so I’m not allowed to make a ton of UK House. That's not my thing.’ But I finally gave myself permission to lean more into that and kind of follow my heart. A lot of it is very heavily inspired by gaming, like old PlayStation music. I was obsessed with so many of these games as a kid, so it’s been fun giving myself permission to lean into it a little more.”
After her festival run, months of album promotion, and a change in management, Dot is now back in the small town of Ketchum, Idaho–where she’s been based the past few years. “There's been a lull with traveling and I've just been out here in the mountains kind of resetting. I needed a few months to go back to the beginning and figure out what the next direction was gonna be.”
Thankful to be surrounded by nature, Dot is honest about the toll the seclusion of mountain life can take. “In my personal life the past six months or so have been super tough. And as beautiful as it is to live in this mountain town and have access to nature, it's really hard for a lot of people who live here, especially women. Depression rates in women are a lot higher, statistically, in mountain towns like this.”
Feeling depleted and isolated, approaching her next project felt insurmountable. “I put out an album this year, and there were aspects of it that I love, and I'm super proud of, and there was a lot that happened with the release that I was really disappointed in. Coming off of that, it was so hard for me to feel like I could make music again. I was really grappling with the idea of fully quitting this year.”
No stranger to the art of endurance, Dot has been pursuing music professionally for over a decade and competes in mountain races such as the 54-mile ultramarathon in Bryce Canyon she recently completed. She has a B.A. in Music from Chapman University, a Master’s Degree in Music Production, Technology, and Innovation from Berklee College of Music, was part of LA’s Team Supreme, and started Unspeakable records in 2014 all before her breakout album Life Support in 2021–for her to even contemplate throwing in the towel is a sobering reminder of just how difficult a career in music can be. “I was feeling like, “I don't need to keep going through this cycle, because it's so hard. And I've been doing it for so many years.’ So it's definitely been a bit of a darker period this year. It wasn't even writer's block, it was despair feeling like, ‘What can I possibly say right now that doesn't feel derivative or like I'm following this formula.’ Some good that came out of that was giving myself the freedom to explore new genres and not feel like I'm only locked into House.”
Attempting a breakthrough while still feeling hemmed in by her usual process, she afforded herself a chance to reconnect with her musical roots and go back to the basics. “I've been going back to the piano, and playing jazz standards again, studying harmony again, and transcribing Bill Evans solos–going back to my roots as a pianist, and not even thinking about Ableton or anything digital, just playing the piano. That led me to start sampling the piano, and start working some of that back into my production.”
Finding her footing and regaining a sense of creative energy, Dot once again finds the spark to keep going. Her new song “Begin Again,” –track eight on HIGH FREQUENCY Volume 2–embodies this journey. “It's hard to get that energy and that momentum to start again. This track is really representative of how that feels.”
The sound of piano invites the listener with a comforting ease and beautifully romantic quality before the beat hits, steady and unassuming, introducing Dot’s ethereal vocals singing “feel your love again.” While the track builds, it ebbs and flows creating waves of sound that eventually crash into an infectious dance break. “That's a lot of resampled piano, from crappy iPhone recordings, not even using any nice microphones or anything to record it, it's very off the cuff,” says Dot. “I'm trying to capture this moment of finding the inspiration to take those first steps again, towards a new direction, or into a new project or a new chapter.”
Unfiltered and raw while still exemplifying Dot’s impeccable attention to detail in her engineering work, “Begin Again,” exudes both the magic of playful creativity and the excellence of studied perseverance.
Kickstarting her creative resurgence, Dot has multiple new EPs in the work and says she’s interweaving her more recently explored genres with both her House mainstay and piano background. “I still have one foot in House and one foot in Jungle and Drum and bass,” says Dot.
As she tackles yet another climb up the proverbial creative mountain, Dot’s fans and community fuel her on the hard days. “Personally I'm still kind of in a bit of a depression, just barely starting to find my footing again with being consistently creative and making things,” says Dot candidly. “The weight of the professional obligations every release cycle gets heavier and heavier. I'm willing to carry that weight, because I love music so much, and I love my community so much. I want to keep going, if not just for me then for them.”
Carrying the weight of the increasingly intricate complexities required to build success across creative output, touring, promotion and the added layer of web3, Dot says her web3 community has been invaluable. “One of my saving graces this year has been working on getting this new web3 label and collective off the ground called PORTAL Music. We just did our first collaborative mixtape that just dropped.”
The project started as a week-long challenge where producers made new songs daily based on guidelines and creative challenges. The best tracks were then minted on the genesis mixtape, introducing PORTAL as it blossoms into a vibrant artist and collector community and onchain record label. “I haven't had as much funding this year–most people are in the same boat–but we still managed to pull off an amazing artist retreat back in June, out here in Sun Valley. We put together a showcase as well, here in town. And so much of the community came through to support.”
Encouraged by the response, Dot has started to play warehouse shows in the nearby city of Sun Valley and continues to look for ways to connect IRL with both her local and online community. “It's been really nice to figure out this year how to bridge web3 and all of these online experiences with more in person events and doing them at locations other than LA or New York.”
Focused on utilizing web3 as a community building tool as she fearlessly forges ahead with her music, Dot continues to inspire as a leader, innovator, and creative force. “I think it's really beautiful to see how people have gotten creative to explore web3 as a community building tool, first and foremost, and find new ways of rewarding collectors and rewarding fans bringing them even more into the fold or into the creative process in some ways. I think that's really special to see and that's why I'm still here and why I'm still active.”
Collect Music NFTs from HIGH FREQUENCY Volume 2. “Begin Again” is the eighth track to be released from HIGH FREQUENCY Volume 2. “Begin Again” is dropping via Sound at 2pm PST on November 21, 2023.
Collect and add HIGH FREQUENCY writing NFTs to your digital library.
Article by Wallace Morgan for HIGH FREQUENCY, NOISE’s weekly newsletter. Subscribe for more.