As the climate, laws, music, people, and the popularity of the entire electronic music enterprise has changed, Shambhala Music Festival has preserved and grown. How? It’s run by an enduring crew that comes back year after year. It’s become part of Western Canadian culture. And It’s centered around ideas that don’t lose value with time or trends; respect for the Earth and oneself; independence from corporate influence; reverence for higher powers; passion for good music.

The journeyman Matt Carey has been keeping a low but productive profile for several years on the festival circuit in the Northeastern United States. Yesterday, he released his second full-length album Xtra Curricular Communication, a grab bag ranging in styles from hip-hop to house to drum and bass and breaks. Questions about the nature of the world today are woven tastefully through the album.

We first found the British Columbia-based producer Puar through his collaborations with Vancouver’s bsd.u, and we had the good fortune to catch his set at the Grove Cedar Lounge (a side stage) at Shambhala Music Festival on the Salmo River Ranch in BC. He was playing his signature style of highly vocalized phonk, some lo-fi, and a ton of straight west coast bass beats evocative of the Lab Group.

Hailing from Toulouse, France, DLJ has spent the last two years producing a steady stream of top tier lo-fi content. A standout member of Retro Jungle Records, DLJ is a constant practitioner of musical cleanliness. His tunes are full of life and specificity, giving his catalog an approachable, well-rounded veneer.

JPOD aka JPOD the Beat Chef aka Jason is a fixture of the Western Canadian electronic music scene. This year from August 8-11 on the Salmo River Ranch in Salmo, British Columbia, Canada will be his fifteenth at Shambhala Music Festival. It’s only right that we end our “Shambhala Favorites” interview series by learning about the beat chef and how he first made his way to Shambhala.

Our next edition of Lo-Fi Sundays brings us to the city of Minsk, Belarus. Beasty P is a European beats producer who runs with the internationally acclaimed NINETOFIVE Worldwide Beatmakers record label. He’s packing a stereophonic quality to his dusty tunes that is in short supply in the lo-fi world, and has a clear skillset for flipping breaks and samples.