Things to Do in Miami: Machinedrum at Floyd September 30, 2021 – Miami New Times

For the past 17 months, people the world over have had time to re-evaluate their paths in life. But for Travis Stewart, who produces and performs music under the moniker Machinedrum, the downtime was just a continuation of his journey, looking at his life from a different point of view.

While meditating, Stewart has often felt that he was experiencing not his physical self but rather an awareness of his physical self. He could see his body sitting on the couch, hands on his knees, wearing the exact outfit he had chosen for the day.

That out-of-body experience inspired his 2020 album, A View of U.

“People that are creative have this unique opportunity to have those experiences,” Stewart tells New Times. “When I’m in flow when I’m making music, there’s this sense of being out of your body where I’ll finish a session or walk out of the room to take a break, and it almost feels like I’ve walked out of another dimension. I’ll listen to what I made, and it’s almost like it was a dream.”

Much of the work Stewart considers his best are the tracks he’s produced while in this meditative state. Other than 2016’s Human Energy, he has never decided on an intention to make music in a certain way. Machinedrum albums come to fruition in the process of an out-of-body experience. Without a roadmap, Stewart creates without inhibition.

The spiritual mindset he developed through meditation is one of acceptance. It’s accepting every piece of music for what it is and accepting that a piece of music may not belong on a particular album. But that attitude of acceptance doesn’t diminish his connection to a piece of music. That mindset can reinforce his connection.

When Stewart was forming A View of U and his more recent EP, Psyconia, he revisited many of his earlier productions. He had recently moved into a home in Thousand Oaks, California, and he’d just come off producing Zoospa with J-E-T-S, a collaborative project with Detroit-bred musical polymath Jimmy Edgar.

“Every time I move to a new place, I feel like there comes with it a couple of years of intense creativity where I’m writing a ton and really soaking that initial inspiration of being in a new space,” Stewart says.

During this time, Stewart took a different view of his past creations and was inspired to repurpose them. Some of the creations came from Human Energy sessions. Some came from the sessions for his 2013 LP, Vapor City. Others were individual products of the inspiring time in his new home.

“I was sitting on all these songs, and I started looking at them from a different point of view,” Stewart explains. “Instead of thinking about them as timestamps, I started thinking of them as great songs. Some may be eight years old, but I still love them. It was an amazing opportunity to revisit some of those older sessions and bring them into the future.”

Stewart is particularly excited to bring the music he made from those older sessions to Miami, where he’ll be playing at Floyd on Thursday, September 30. The city played a crucial role in the evolution of Machinedrum.

“I have a deep love for Miami. A lot of my roots musically go back to the electronic music scene in Miami in the ’90s and early 2000s,” he says. “I always feel like I have a lot more freedom of what I can play down there. People like freaky music [in Miami].”

He recalls a series of parties called Infiltrate that took place in Miami during Winter Music Conference, serving as a response to the inundation of mainstream sounds during the week. Noise, breakcore, jungle, and footwork were among the styles highlighted at the events.

“For the longest time, Miami was one of the only places you could get away with playing more experimental music,” Stewart says. “Having a place to go to where you didn’t have to wonder if you were being questioned. You didn’t have to wonder if people were judging your music in that way.”

Revitalized by what he saw in the city, Stewart challenged himself to produce more obscure and distorted sounds.

The first album Stewart made as Machinedrum was released by Merck Records, the Miami-based label that specialized in heady East Coast variants of electronic music. Other acts under the imprint included Tycho and his sample-driven LP Past Is Prologue and Jimmy Edgar, who released music under the alter ego Morris Nightingale.

“I have a lot of friends that were a part and are still a part of that music scene to this day,” Stewart says.

Despite not having played in Miami in more than two years, Stewart is confident Thursday’s crowd will be able to connect with his music — and perhaps see themselves from a different perspective.

“I could make an immersive interactive installation to help people get into that mind space, but I really think that’s unnecessary,” he says. “Playing in a venue, leaving your worries and your problems at the door, losing yourself, and sharing that experience with other people. Especially after going this long without people being able to do that regularly — I think it’s going to be even more impactful.”

Machinedrum. 10 p.m. Thursday, September 30, at Floyd, 34 NE 11th St., Ste. B, Miami; 786-618-9447; floydmiami.com. Tickets cost $15 to $25 via eventbrite.com.