Evissimax: It Takes Confidence To Have Fun

EVISSIMAX has spent enough time around electronic music to know how quickly pleasure can become something people feel obliged to justify. A track is too commercial. A selection is too obvious. A vocal is too playful. Fun becomes suspicious once seriousness starts behaving like a measure of taste. Her answer has been to move in the opposite direction. S.C.M., short for Silly Club Music, does not hide behind ambiguity, while b00tycall turns summer desire into something equally direct. Both belong to a period in which EVISSIMAX is becoming louder with her own voice, but their apparent carelessness comes from a much more considered place.

"With S.C.M and b00tycall, I think the playful energy comes from the worlds I imagine these songs existing in. Lyrically, SCM is basically about being silly in the club, having fun, being cheeky, being a bit of a diva and talking your shit. The production really brings that energy out too. I was in the studio with Luca Eck and we were figuring out what kind of vibe we wanted to create, then we heard this sample and were basically like, 'Okay, let's just do something silly. Let's not overthink it.' And b00tycall has a similar spirit, it's about summer flings, booty calls, hooking up, exploring your sexuality, and just having fun with it."

The songs are built around situations as much as sounds. EVISSIMAX tends to imagine where a piece of music lives before reducing it to its individual components. In the case of these two singles, that setting is deliberately removed from the grey reality outside it.

"Whenever I make music, I always think about: What situation does this song belong to? What world does it exist in? What does this moment feel like? And I think the world these two songs belong to is almost a utopian one for most since the world we're actually living in can feel so grim and grey.

"Being carefree is a privilege. Being able to enjoy the simplest things, to go out, dance, flirt openly, hook up, be loud and obnoxious with your friends, all these things that seem small and insignificant to some are actually such a privilege and inaccessible to most. These singles are an ode to appreciate these moments, however fleeting they may be."

The distinction matters. EVISSIMAX is not arguing that the club makes the conditions outside disappear. She is interested in what can happen during the temporary interval in which they are allowed to recede. For someone moving through the world as a queer Black woman, even uncomplicated pleasure can acquire a different weight.

"Sometimes I really need to dig myself out of the hole of what is happening in the world and not let it crush me. So it's kind of my little reminder to myself and to anyone listening: if you can, don't take it for granted. Go out with your friends. Have fun. Be loud. Be slutty without having sex, or do. Be queer. Be free if you can be free. Feel free if you can feel free. Enjoy your little bubble and appreciate the fuck out of it."

That insistence on fun also carries some history. EVISSIMAX began DJing with the intention of creating a dancefloor where social expectations could loosen, particularly for Black and queer people. At one point, however, her own understanding of what electronic music was supposed to sound like began narrowing.

"A few years ago, though, I went through a period where I became quite miserable with DJing. I had always approached it from this place, but I started falling into this very Eurocentric idea of what 'good' electronic music was supposed to sound like. My music and my selection were sometimes dismissed as being too silly, too commercial, whatever the fuck that means. And for a while, I actually let that perception strip away the intention and the love I had behind what I was doing."

Playing alongside Traxman interrupted that process. The significance was less about proximity to another artist than the question the experience forced her to ask herself.

"It made me ask: Who am I actually doing this for? And why am I doing this? And honestly, I realised I don't really care if someone thinks my music is too silly or superficial. I know the intention behind it. I know the resistance behind it. I know what it means to me and what I want it to mean to the people on the dance floor."

Silliness, in that context, stops functioning as the opposite of substance. EVISSIMAX places it within a much older function of nightlife: people gathering long enough to recover something that everyday life keeps taking from them.

"The world we're living in is sooo fucked, and it's even more fucked up for marginalised communities, for Black communities, queer communities, trans communities. We're living through some really dark times. And for me, one of the most powerful forms of resistance is being able to come together as a community and enjoy ourselves anyway.

"For those two, six, twelve hours that you're in a club, I want the outside world to disappear for a moment. The only thing that matters is that you're having fun, letting go, dancing, being with your people, and recharging. Because eventually you have to go back out into that horrible world and deal with all the bullshit that life is going to throw at you the next day."

There is conviction here, but little interest in prescribing how everybody else should approach a dancefloor.

"So yes, I genuinely think we need to be more silly in the club. We need to let go more. We need to appreciate people who are trying to create moments of joy, especially now. And if that isn't for you that's completely fine. But I don't think we need to belittle people for wanting to have fun, or for making music that allows people to find joy. For me, that joy is not separate from the politics of the dance floor. It's part of it."

S.C.M. emerged from precisely that kind of permission. EVISSIMAX had previously remixed Luca Eck's Run For Me, but the two had barely interacted until an Instagram Live around the release. When they eventually met in Berlin, making a track was not initially the point. They exchanged unreleased music, talked about what they had been listening to and found themselves in the studio without a particularly fixed destination.

"At some point, I played them this song I'd recently saved, the silliest, dumbest accumulation of sounds and they were like, 'This is so silly,' and we were like, 'Okay, let's make something silly.'

"We had actually started going in a slightly darker, more serious direction, and then we heard this sample and completely changed course. We were basically like, 'Wait. Scratch that. This is silly club music.' And somehow, that became the whole concept."

The song was completed in under two hours. Its speed says something about EVISSIMAX's relationship with creation more generally. She trusts the point at which excitement appears and is wary of what can happen when an artist keeps touching an idea after that point.

"I really trust spontaneity in the studio because I'm generally someone who follows my gut. I don't have a specific checklist of things that need to happen for me to know that something is right. I either feel it or I don't. And when I do feel it, I'd rather follow that instinct wholeheartedly than start intellectualising it and trying to make it into something it isn't."

The same principle determines when a track leaves the studio. Collaboration requires trust in another person's perspective, but completion remains visceral rather than technical.

"I've actually been in the studio before with producers where I've said, 'I think the song is done,' and they've been like, 'No, I think we should do this, we should change that, we should add this.' And I can definitely be a little stubborn sometimes, so I'll be like, 'No. I think it's ready. We need to get it out.' And honestly, I've never regretted following that instinct.

"I think it can be very easy to overthink a song. You keep working on it, stripping things down, adding things back, constantly putting your hands on it because you're trying to reach this idea of perfection. But for me there isn't really a specific point where I think, 'Okay, we've added exactly enough elements.' It's more instinctive. When I feel like a song is ready to be out in the world, then it needs to be out in the world."

There is also an acceptance that records do not have to represent their maker indefinitely. EVISSIMAX allows them to belong to the version of herself that made them.

"I also think holding onto something for too long can almost make it rot. You have to let it go, let it breathe, and give it the life that it needs in that particular moment. I might listen to something I made three years later and think, 'Oh, that sounds rough,' lol. And then maybe a year after that I'll hear it again and think, 'Wait, this is fucking amazing.'

"I think I have a pretty healthy relationship with my music in that sense. I let it exist as a snapshot of who I was at a particular point in time. It doesn't have to be perfect forever. It just has to be honest to that moment and then I let it go."

What is changing now is the amount of herself she can place directly inside those snapshots. DJing allowed EVISSIMAX to construct narratives through other people's records. Writing and singing have made the relationship less mediated.

"I've always loved words and expressing myself through them. When I was younger, I used to write a lot of very emo af poetry, which I never thought would come in handy in my life lol. Once I started DJing I also found a deeper appreciation for music and I just felt that I also wanted to use music making as a further form of self expression."

Her songs are not conceived as a hierarchy in which the vocal sits above the beat or the artwork illustrates the music. EVISSIMAX thinks in worlds, with each element contributing to the same imagined reality.

"Writing and using my voice has helped me understand myself on a deeper level and given me the confidence to bring those ideas into reality. It's also been a really healthy way for me to process and let go of things I've experienced.

"There's also a big fantasy element to it. I've always been a daydreamer, and as a kid I would spend hours imagining different scenarios and worlds. My songs are like a multiverse of what I wished things looked like, or how I wish I had handled certain situations, or the person I want to become mixed in with the reality and my genuine feelings about them."

b00tycall occupies a particularly uncomplicated corner of that multiverse. Initially intended for PRESS X, it felt too different energetically and was given its own summer moment instead. The premise is deliberately familiar: desire appears, somebody makes the call, and nobody needs to manufacture a grander narrative around it.

"The song is about the energy of summer flings, hooking up anywhere, with anyone, any gender, you know just living it up. And talking about people that let their egos sometimes tell them that just because you're hooking up there might be more situation on your end, that they should get a grip, it's just a secret rendezvous lol. So I just wanted to bottle up those thoughts into b00tycall."

Behind the humour is a preference for saying things plainly.

"Honesty is extremely important to me in general, so naturally it's also important to me in my music. One of my favourite quotes, and basically a mantra I repeat to myself constantly, is: 'Closed mouths don't get fed.' If you want something, you have to say it. People can't read your mind. So assuming things without first having the courage to ask is so detrimental."

Sexual confidence, in EVISSIMAX's telling, does not require perfect execution. Awkwardness can remain in the room.

"I also find it very attractive when someone is confident enough to ask what I like, or tell me what they like so I don't need to assume. And it's definitely something I had to work on, building that confidence to say what I think and like without fear. And I also think when you give yourself grace to be a bit awkward and imperfect in bed and in life, it's so hot."

Rejection is possible. So is being misunderstood. Neither is enough reason to retreat into ambiguity.

"I express myself as honestly and as rawly as I can. People might love it, people might hate it, but I don't want to overthink it. I just want to express myself in the way that feels the most genuine to me and just have fun, in general. It takes confidence to have fun."

That line also explains why EVISSIMAX's apparent stylistic contradictions rarely feel contradictory to her. Her sets can move through ghetto tech, tribal rhythms, techno and other forms of club music because genre is not the organising principle. Emotional force is.

"I think my emotionality is inherently physical because I feel everything very intensely, so that's why I also feel it very physically. And intensity is what I think ties my music in general together, whether it be my discography or DJ sets, rather than genres or anything else. Everything is intense, sadness, rage, sexiness, euphoria, that's also what Evissimax represents in a way: a surge of intensity across all the different emotions I can possibly feel."

S.C.M. and b00tycall catch that intensity while it is smiling. The next project will move elsewhere within the same emotional range. EVISSIMAX is becoming more confident as a vocalist, songwriter and lyricist, but confidence does not appear to be making the work more predictable. If anything, it gives her greater permission to change direction.

"I think that confidence is going to come through more and more in my future projects. I definitely want to keep pushing my songwriting and showing different sides of myself. With my next project I'm definitely going to show a more emotional and vulnerable side of myself, but it might not necessarily be expressed in the way people expect. But like I said, always expect the unexpected from me."