In the Spring of 2000, Sovereign State was formed with one simple
purpose: To organize and promote electronic dance music
events with a strong focus on quality. Quality music, quality talent and
quality productions.
Their debut event, the 2000 DC Summer
Synthpop festival, clearly illustrated their
commitment to quality. An ambitious 2-day event held at the legendary Black
Cat, featuring 9 live performers and 4 DJs
was a raging success and still held by many of the bands as the best show
they've played to date.
The last half of 2002 brings a resurgence to Sovereign State with the start of
Burn. With some bigger items in the works for 2003,
Sovereign State continues their focus on quality while branching out to explore
more realms of Electronic Dance Music.
Spiggy
Spiggy, otherwise known as Ed, began DJing at the age of 17 in an undisclosed town in the midwest. He moved to the DC area in the summer of 1996, where he jumped right back into the action doing various spots, until forming Critical Mass with other DJ's in the area. The Critical Mass team brought shows into DC including Hanzel Und Gretyl and Faith & The Muse, before coming to an end. Shortly thereafter, Spiggy joined DC's godfather of industrial Mohawk Adam, and DJ Xian at rEvolution which took place at Ballroom. During his time at rEvolution, he began spinning occasionally at Tracks on Thursday nights (DC's longest running industrial night) with Mohawk Adam, and DJ Dan.
After a few months at rEvolution, and bringing to DC arguably one of the best bands in the electro scene, Apoptygma Berzerk, Ballroom would close their doors. After rEvolution ended, Spiggy continued to do guest spots at Tracks now and then until forming Pure Energy with Mohawk Adam, Xian, and Dan. Pure Energy was pretty much responsible for bringing SynthPop to DC. Some would argue that there was too much even (Is such a thing really possible?). Pure Energy was short lived unfortunately, due to the club wanting to charge way too much to the patrons in addition to being very unsupportive in attempts to make the night a success.
As mentioned elsewhere in the site, Spiggy has spent the last two years on a prolonged hiatus, refocusing his energies and
transcending from the status of a "push play" DJ. The second portion of each
evening at Burn will focus on his new sound: A fluid mix which, depending on his mood
for the night, starts with a house or trance base and keeps the synthpop edge
he's always been known for.
AO125
During his frequenting of both the now defunct Tracks and Capitol Ballroom/Nation, he met Spiggy and an almost instant friendship was formed... mostly over arguing about tastes in music. It was this very friendship which later led to his partnering with Sovereign State Productions.
In 1999, AO125 returned to his true passion for web design with Vivisect, an e-zine started by former college friends. At roughly the same time, he joined up with an undisclosed presidential campaign as a net admin as well as traveling digital photographer. In the fall of 2000, AO125 was invited to team up with Sovereign State Productions for the redesign of their website, as well as a t-shirt design for their Freefall event in Salt Lake City, Utah. With the rebirth of Sovereign-State, AO125 has signed on for another tour of duty and more than likely a stint in the DJ booth as well with some...well... you'll see... If its graphic, and it says Sovereign-State... you know where it came from.
