DJ Tangela On the Ideal Pace of a Workplace Playlist
Introduction
Curating music for the club is very different to setting the mood at work. As a DJ, Talia Jimenez knows this better than most. In partnership with Desk Space, we ask her to take us through a playlist created especially for the nine-to-five.
Ask Talia Jimenez what makes music so important and she’ll return to one word: community.
“Music creates these beautiful spaces, community and connection between people,” says the Sydney-based DJ and radio presenter, better known by her performing name, Tangela. “If you talk to a lot of people who are into music, it’s for the collective community.”
Having the capacity to cherry-pick individual tracks to suit and create an eclectic mood is a skill Jimenez has spent years perfecting. Currently the host of Citrus on FBi Radio, she’s also the co-founder of D Street, a music collective which hosts events as well as a podcast series. Her different roles require an intimate knowledge of her audiences – and an ability to tailor tracks accordingly.
For example when performing to a live crowd, Jimenez spins energetic dance and techno music. It helps foster connections quickly – an important trait for a dancefloor of strangers – but it doesn’t work for every context.
“Too much fast dance music can be a little chaotic in my work,” says Jimenez. She took that to heart with a recent project that saw her curate a playlist designed for a work day, in partnership with Sydney co-working hub Desk Space – a collaborative workspace in Darlinghurst influenced by the creative landscape of Sydney’s music, arts and culture.
The result is a 44-track playlist designed to keep you productive when at work . “[The songs] have a slower BPM with … very atmospheric sounds to put you in a zone and focus you,” she says. It’s not without dynamic though. “We’ve also got a lot of house-adjacent stuff in there,” says Jimenez. “Which is kind of nice, because it can be hard to balance some more deeper, thoughtful sounds with brighter, up-tempo sounds.”
Jimenez’s job means she’s both intimately connected to her community, as well as in a position to broaden it while making new connections.
“I don’t know the breakdown of what’s in the playlist but I tried to really focus on a lot of local stuff,” says Jiminez. “It’s maybe 50 per cent Australian artists.” Two of those tracks – OK EG’s Ember and Valentina Mora’s Astrometric Effect ¬– make turning points in the listener’s journey.
“OK EG is a duo based in Melbourne and they make the most beautiful music, so that’s a real stand-out for me,” she says. “And Valentina Mora’s Astrometric Effect is an all-time favourite of mine. It’s got such an incredible atmospheric downtempo, which maybe lives in the dub techno kind of realm, but super, super stripped back.”
