What’s In Your Fridge is where the Straight asks interesting Vancouverites about their life-changing concerts, favourite albums, and, most importantly, what’s sitting beside the Heinz ketchup in their custom-made Big Chill Retropolitan 20.6-cubic-foot refrigerators.

On the grill

dwi

Who are you

My name is dwi and I am an alternative musician from Maple Ridge, BC. I started this project when the world shut down in 2020. Since then I’ve released an album, toured Canada and made lots of bizarre content. I am currently releasing new songs off of my next album set to drop this July. My songs are usually about the things I can’t control or the trauma I’ve been through. As dark and moody as that all sounds, I think people have been gravitating towards it because the themes are usually tangled up in catchy beats and melodies.

First concert

Weezer baby! It must have been like 2002? They were touring their fourth record, Maladroit, which is an insanely underrated album if you ask me. I was so excited, and I remember talking to everyone there about everything. It was the first time I realised you could be in a room full of people who all share one of your favourite things. I remember there was a moment where Rivers was tuning his guitar and the whole stadium was silent, for whatever reason I screamed ‘I LOVE YOU RIVERS!!’, and he just kinda looked up and said “Uh, okay?”

Life-changing concert

I’m a huge Radiohead fan, and I see them every time they come to Vancouver. My favourite time seeing them was in 2003 at Thunderbird Stadium. I remember the sun setting and everything just sounded and looked perfect. If there’s an afterlife, it’s probably something like that. Thom was also wearing an Atari shirt. So I bought an Atari shirt.

Top three albums

The Beatles Magical Mystery Tour  I think I heard this album when I was about 9/10 years old. I would lay in my bed and rock back and forth seeing shapes and lights. I still listen to this album from start to finish several times a year. “Blue Jay Way”, “I Am The Walrus”, and “Strawberry Fields Forever” are my favourites. 

Radiohead Kid A/Amnesiac  In many ways I feel like Kid A shares the same space that of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. They’re both revolutionary albums that had a follow-up release about 12 months later. I Feel like Kid A and Amnesiac are from the same sessions, so I like to think of them as a singular package. I remember hearing Kid A for the first time on CFOX. They were broadcasting it live from the BBC I believe…but anyway, same thing…I was entranced by it and was wildly rocking back and forth like a maniac, ha-ha.

Grandaddy The Sophtware Slump  This album is stunning, and unfortunately this band never got the break it truly deserved. It definitely did create some buzz when it came out and was hailed a masterpiece by the likes of David Bowie and Deftones. I first heard “The Crystal Lake”­­—probably my favourite track—on satellite radio in my dad’s living room, and me and my brother would just sit and wait for the alt station to play it. Conceptually this record is a lot like ‘OK Computer’, but it feels a lot more personal as it deals with addiction and other personal themes.

Favourite video

Björk “Human Behaviour”  My all-time favourite music video has to be “Human Behaviour” by the one and only Björk, directed by Michel Gondry. It’s the perfect imagery for that song and as an artist I feel like that’s really hard to pull off. It came out in like ’93 maybe? But it still looks good today. Timeless.

What’s In Your Fridge

Vegan Mayonnaise. For whatever reason this condiment has been haunting my fridge for a long time, in hopes that I choose it over it’s unhealthier/tastier cousin Hellman’s. 

Cheese Strings. My children live off of these things. The box they come in takes up about 74% of the fridges real estate. I am not allowed to indulge in them. I am only to pick up the plastic corpses they leave behind in every corner of the house.

The Dreaded Leftovers. Like me, once these purposeful meals gave joy and brought families together. But now, they lurk in the back of the fridge, watching their better replacements being stacked on top of each other, only to one day suffer the same fate.

dwi plays a Zoo Life release party at the Fox on July 8. You can pre-save the album here.