Avalon Emerson

Avalon Emerson produces adventurous techno and house inspired equally by the vast deserts of Arizona (where she grew up) and the futurism of Detroit techno. Her tracks are expansive, sprawling, and inventively designed, yet they’re always grounded by heavy, propulsive rhythms. Equally renowned as a DJ, her sets jump between styles, tempos, and eras, as she utilizes effects pedals and creates custom edits. She showcased her creative approach to mixing with her 2020 volume of the DJ-Kicks series. Collaborating with Anunaku under the name A+A, she released the trance-influenced 060 EP in 2022.
Born in San Francisco but raised in Arizona, she moved back to her birthplace in 2009 and started to DJ at house parties and eventually at clubs. Soon after, she started producing music and began posting tracks online in 2012. Following a few self-released house singles, her first physical release came in 2014, when San Francisco-based Icee Hot released her “Pressure”/“Quoi” 12″. Two EPs appeared on Spring Theory that year, as Emerson began playing her first international DJ gigs, traveling abroad to Canada, Germany, and the Netherlands. In 2015, she relocated to Berlin and released an EP on the Dresden-based Shtum label. She regularly appeared at Berlin’s Panorama Bar, and stayed busy playing gigs at clubs throughout Europe, North America, and Asia. She released two highly acclaimed EPs in 2016: Whities 006 (on the London-based Whities label) and Narcissus in Retrograde (on Ghostly International’s club-focused sister label Spectral Sound). In 2017, she earned further acclaim for her spacious downtempo remix of Slowdive’s “Sugar for the Pill.” Whities 013 appeared in November of the same year. She continued touring and remixed songs by Christine and the Queens, Four Tet, and Robyn before producing an installment of !K7′s long-running DJ-Kicks series in 2020. 040, an EP for AD 93 (previously known as Whities), appeared at the end of the year. Emerson and labelmate Anunaku formed the duo A+A, and released 060, a throwback to turn-of-the-century progressive house and trance, in 2022. ~ Paul Simpson