Part 1 (spoomusic.com, the label)

*Hi guys, what is spoomusic.com (genres that you work with) / since when exist / where are you/ which acts you represent

Ariel Gross: Spoomusic.com is an indie record label that caters music of various electronic flavors. I think the general term for the style on our label would be IDM, but other buzzwords that apply are Ambient, Synthpop, Minimal, Techno, and Space Funk. One aspect of spoomusic.com that I think is greatly appreciated is that we have built a foundation of free music. You can go to the web site and there are 26 albums that are available to listen to completely free. You can even download the majority of them in their entirety as high-quality MP3s.

Dave Benjamin: Like many folks out there, I think, we really don’t care for the term IDM, since it stands for “Intelligent Dance Music”. It seems to suggest that IDM is produced by an elite class of brainy musicians for an equally elite and brainy audience, in contrast to all other genres of electronic music (or “dance”, since all electronic music is, of course, dance music). In addition, as our own Neti Neti pointed out to me recently, the whole concept doesn’t make sense. The point of dance music is to shut your brain off and just move. Feel. Dance music is visceral. Intelligence just gets in the way.

DB: That said, everyone I know considers our band and label to be IDM. At some point, you just have to stop fighting it and accept it. It doesn’t matter what it stands for. What matters more is that people know what we mean, we can communicate with our fans, and they can communicate with each other. So, we grudgingly accept the term, though we prefer to call it “Intelligent Dunce Music” to obscure the fact that we are, in fact, elite and brainy.

*How’s working with someone called ANgR MgMT, i imagine him punching guys in the offices and making scenes a la Axl Rose…

AG: You know, despite his name, he’s actually a really wonderful person. He has punched me in the testicles a few times, but then again, who hasn’t?

DB: I cannot confirm or deny that I have punched that man, Ariel Gross, in the testicles a few times.

* Where comes that name sp00, from the Babylon 5 food?

AG: Well, this is a tough one. Dave said the name first, and I agreed. I think it may have been my idea to make the 00 into zeroes, which may have been a mistake, because when people Google for ‘spoo’ and not ‘sp00,’ you get that food from Babylon 5.

DB: It really just started out as a nonsense word. We wanted something short, since we had previously been going by our combined individual stage names of Ramenboy and Funkymuskrat, and this was just getting too tedious. I think there is a tendency to be very individualist with electronic music, since you really don’t absolutely need other people to produce a track. We had been working together for years when we finally decided to stop using our individual stage names and start focusing on a more collective concept. And I think the spoomusic.com label is a continuation of that line of thought; rather than just promote our own individual identities, it was time to engage the community and start bringing out other musicians under a single umbrella.

DB: “spoo” is “oops” spelled backwards, and we discovered this right away, to our amusement. It also rhymes with “groo”, who is a musician we both dig a lot. He wrote 4-channel MOD files back in the early days of the PC Demoscene, and his music had a great sense of humor to it. The connection to Babylon 5′s stomach-turning worm-food is completely accidental, but we think it’s pretty funny anyway (when we’re not afraid of getting sued).

* Tell us a bit about your catalog and some releases coming soon

AG: Well, right now we have about fourteen different artists on our label, and we’re always looking for more talented people to join us. We have several releases coming up, including a highly anticipated first compilation album. We have a bunch of our own artists as well as some really amazing guest artists that have released on such labels as m3rck and Phthalo. We also got the brilliant artist, Acampante, to create the artwork for the compilation album, which I’m really excited about. You can check out his work at miacampante.com.

* Are you really like Aphex Twin without all the talent?

AG: That was actually a catch phrase that our artist Insik Sate came up with. It’s a way of poking fun at ourselves, but in reality, our cup floweth over with talent.

DB: I think we all owe a debt of gratitude to the Twin. I consider him one of the “punks” of electronic music. By refusing to conform to popular styles, emulate other artists, or allow his art to be pidgeonholed, he has literally invented many radically different genres of electronic music. His unconventional ideas in music have been a major factor in the great diversity of styles we have today. And after all these years, he’s still going, and still putting out great beats.

* Have you meet him? (Aphex Twin)

AG: Nah, but I would love to. He is an amazing musician.

* According to UrbanDictionary spoo is:

“The male ejaculatory fluid, especially when deposited somewhere other than the woman’s vagina” any comments on that?

DB: Thank you for pointing this out. We could not find a better summary of our cause and purpose as a band, a label, and as human beings.

AG: Sure. Why does it have to be deposited somewhere other than the woman’s vagina? I think that it could be deposited anywhere and still be called spoo. Deposit it in your fish tank for all I care, spoo is spoo.

* Make yourselves a question, anything you want, and answer it.

AG: Ok, I’ll ask Dave a question and he can ask me one. Dave, how do you put up with that Ariel guy? Didn’t he one time cover himself in blue paint and call himself Papa Smurf?

DB: The great thing about our modern computer age is that we don’t have to be physically located in the same place to collaborate on music. On the internet, nobody knows you’re a Smurf. (Snorks, however, are a different matter entirely.) For you, Ariel: How did you turn into such a songwriting machine? Are you an android with an embedded expert system trained on Beatles and Rush albums?

Part 2 (sp00, the music duo)

* What does sp00 sound like? Give me one Biological/sexual/kids related/animal related reference.

AG: Biologically, we sound like hair growing. Sexually, we sound like someone licking your earlobe. For the kids, we sound like video game music with a hefty dose of funk. As far as an animal goes, we sound most like cats coughing up hairballs.

DB: We sound like the freedom rock blasted from the cell walls to ease the boring, mind-numbing drudgery of the daily and incessant replication of mitochondrial DNA. In other words, we put the funk back in your nucleus where it belongs. Animalistically, we are roughly 20% more tigon than liger.

* You music really makes me wanna dance, is that normal?

DB: This is a known issue, and though no solution is yet available, we are working to resolve the problem.

AG: Yes. It is also a normal reaction to remove your clothes and run naked through the streets while listening to sp00 on your iPork.

*You sound like you really have a good time making music, how’s that process? Who makes what?

AG: We both make everything, the melodies, the beats, the wacky sound effects. We do have a good time when we’re making music. One of our favorite methods of making music is what we affectionately call Hot Seat Tracking. This is where there are two guys, one computer and keyboard. One of us will start writing something, and then when the other person decides they have something to contribute, they say a key word such as “pickle” or “spelunker,” and the person who was making music has to stop and let the other person take a seat. There are no rules aside from trying to remember to save the song as often as possible.

DB: Another technique that’s worked well for us is to beat-match two computers together. One person will focus on beats and the other will do melodies. Sometimes we try to make a rule that each person can only play two tracks at a time, to avoid the “wall of sound” noise mayhem. We tend to break this rule. Minimalism is more of an ideal than an attainable goal for us. As complicated humans, we tend to make complicated music.

* Have you ever done remixes? To whom? Who do you wanna remix?

AG: Yeah, Dave and I both remixed the Pixie’s track called Where Is My Mind. We also both worked on a remix of a Terminal 11 track called Shelby. I’ve done a handful of other remixes, but I can’t really remember them.
DB: I’d love to do more remixes. This seems to be a subject we do much more talking about than actual execution, but we would very much like to collaborate more with other artists, to remix other people’s music and provide other musicians with source material so they can remix ours. We hope to do more of this in the future.

DB: By the way, if you haven’t heard it, definitely check out Neti Neti’s remix of “Rising Through Storm Clouds”. I love this piece. You can still hear elements from the original piece, but it’s so different from the original sp00 track. Very spacey and atmospheric.

* You have 6 records + 1 EP, right? Tell us a little bit about each one (concept, ideas, experiments when making it, etc)

AG: Actually, we have six full length albums, three Eps and a collaboration with the mysterious DJ Kluge available on our web site. Actually, the DJ Kluge sessions were interesting in that they are completely live with very little pre-recorded music. The three of us would just sit down, turn on three computers, and make music. Whatever comes out is what comes out! It is very experimental, and I am always amazed that the end result sounds cool.

* Best Hair Metal Band of the 80′s

AG: Does Queen count?

DB: I’m partial to Def Leppard.

* What’s the first thing that goes to you heads when you hear (or read, in this case) the word “VENEZUELA”.

AG: I immediately think of beautiful, lush, green foothills and palafitos. And of course, Hugo Chavez.

DB: COFFEE.

thanks!

Spoomusic.com:What other aliases have you gone by?

Insik Sate: none, just the one.

Spoo: If you were forced at raygun-point to choose another alias, what would it be? (pulls out raygun)

IS: honestly, I had hard enough time deciding on this one, so it’s tough to say really. at gunpoint? that’s pretty rough. i have nothing here, so just shoot me. i would really like a one sylable alias, but i feel like its hard to find one that’s not taken, so i resort to coining new words like “insik.”

Spoo: We’ll spare you the disintigration. (holsters raygun) What made you get into music?

IS: i was a lonely kid who taught myself how to play instruments to express myself.

Spoo: What instruments do you play? And are there others that you really want to learn?

IS: i play guitar, bass, piano, trumpet, and mandolin, and i would very much love to learn the drums.

Spoo: Mental note: no kazoo skills. What kind of music do you listen to?

IS: jazz, electronic (IDM if you will), indie rock.

Spoo: What inspires you to write your music?

IS: emotions.

Spoo: Surely you mean emoticons. What do you think is next as far as the future of music?

IS: the fact that i don’t know is what keeps it interesting, so i am going to have to dodge that one.

Spoo: Which artists would you like to collaborate with?

IS: bjork, but that’s a pipedream. i would eventually like to arrange a performing group fusing laptoppers and instrumentalists.

Spoo: Who are some of the people that influenced your music most?

IS: aphex twin, boards of canada, bjork, my college professors, and a bunch of jazz musicians nobody knows.

Spoo: Jazz musicians that we don’t know? Do tell!

IS: well when i was in school i played with alot of jazz kids; and ended up being heavily influenced by the other students. some names…..dezron douglass, dan voss, craig hartley, mike purcell, ray mcmorrin, jen hartswick, and andy moroz. then there was my jazz composition/big band professor chris casey. he is a really awesome musician and teacher. so yeah, that’s that.

Spoo: Do you plan the songs that you write, or do they just happen?

IS: they just happen, though sometimes i have to force myself a bit to sit down and let them happen.

Spoo: Subway or Taxi?

IS: subway dude, i’m not made of money!

Suddenly, with a bright flash, we were back in Spoomusic.com headquarters with no memory of the last three hours. Fortunately, our X10 camera that we bought off a spam e-mail got it all! Thanks for the interview, Insik Sate!

Spoomusic.com: Greetings, thanks for letting us dock on your craft. We know you both go by Abstractology, but have you ever used any other pseudonyms?

Andrew Pinaire: I use my real name sometimes, also Androne. I think thats it at the moment but i’d like to start a new project soon.

Spoo: What spectacular epiphany resulted in your desire to craft music?

AP: I recall listening to a certain heavy metal album when I was about 8 which gave me a lot of inspiration. It had a very unique sound. From there I started paying attention to things like tonality and timbre.Then I scrounged up a nice equalizer and started playing around ‘mixing’ albums I could get my hands on. After awhile I decided I’d rather mix my own music. I experimented with guitars and amplifiers quite a bit to limited success. About 7 or 8 years ago I was talking with Matthew about music and he showed me this keyboard with a sampler on it and some sounds he was making with it and I was intrigued from then on.

Matthew Blakely: Sonar and Radar.

Spoo: What kind of tunes do you listen to?

MB: Pings, snare rushing, beast kits, and basslines

AP: A bit of everything, I couldn’t really pin it down if I had to. Mostly to me just anything I find inspiring, or unique. Last thing I listened to was ‘A New White’ by Subtle.

Spoo: Where do you get your inspiration from?

AP: Some of it comes from childhood inspirations, for example my androne side project is based mostly on a fascination with old sci-fi films and the way the future was percieved in the 1950′s. Otherwise, with Abstractology much of the inspiration comes from sketches we make, kind of like a feedback loop, just feeding off of itself until it peaks out, and thats when the sketch is complete …by then it doesnt sound anything like it did originally.

MB: Life and death.

Spoo: What do you predict will be the future of music?

MB: Anti-music mobs destroying any sound producing device

AP: I would like to see surround mixes becoming the norm, but until then I’m reluctant to spend the time working on a surround mix. As for genres, who knows, everything flows around and gets mixed up, now and then someone comes along and changes the way you look at something and influence is drawn and things change. Right now there are so many independent musicians flooding the internet with fresh music that I have no idea whats really out there now, its great.

Spoo: Which naked and/or clothed artists would you most like to collaborate with?

AP: I’m working with a fellow now called WOK, I look forward to what comes of the collaboration. Aside from current projects, I can’t really think of any person I would like to collaborate with, but I have an idea in my head about what type of projects I would like to work on. I enjoy working with vocalists or traditional musicians but haven’t had much experience doing so. So I guess it would be some more traditional musicians. As Abstractology we have been working a bit with Paul Everest Tucker whom we plan to continue working with for at least a few more tracks. He has some classical piano training which offers a different perspective to our music and ours certainly to his. I don’t think he will be the same after working with Matt for awhile. Gone a bit strange I think…

MB: Ghosts.

Spoo: Which musicians have influenced you most?

AP: Much of my early influence in electronic music came from dj spooky’s early works, dj lloop, the orb, and so on. Anything textural really. Lately I’ve been inspired by a musician called Hecq out of Germany, I recommend everyone to get his latest release ‘Bad Karma’ on Hymen records. Beyond electronic music, and music in general, I’ve been influenced mostly by perceptions of the world, just in general, daily happenings and sounds and feelings.

Spoo: We shall add Hecq to our database of 3,052,980 artists that we will listen to before death. In conclusion, do you plan out your songs or do they just happen magically?

AP: A bit of both I guess. Generally speaking most of it comes from experimentation, but I wouldn’t say that the experimentation isn’t driven.

It was just then that we noticed that Matthew Blakely was not present. Alas, he had accidentally opened the airlock and was drifting off into space! Don’t worry. We rescued him, since we’re heroes. Thanks for the interview, Abstractology!

Spoomusic.com: So very odd to see you here, plummeting towards Earth like this. Anyway, ever gone by anything else?

ANgR MgMT: My first attempts at organizing sound into music were done under the moniker “Unknown Electronika”

Spoo: What was it that made you get into music in the first place?

AM: Aphex Twin. Richard D. James made me want to explore the art of sound after hearing the track “4″ from the Richard D. James album. At the time, I was into Korn and Pantera, and a friend played me “Come to Daddy” which piqued my interest. After that he let me borrow a couple of CDs, and voila, I was hooked. I picked up a copy of MTV Music Generator, and began to make REALLY bad trance music. Soon after, I found Rebirth, and ModPlug Tracker and away I went!

Spoo: What kind of music do you listen to?

AM: The kind that makes me feel good. Depending on the artist/track I have been known to listen to metal, ska, punk, pop, jazz, funk, gospel, “emo”, all kinds of electronic music, rock, hip hop, rap, symphony, classical, reggae, accapella, and disco. Just about anything that feels good!

Spoo: Does anything inspire you to write your music? Any particular emotion?

AM: For the most part, sadness. I lived a hard life for a long time (of my own choosing), and experienced many pains, many losses, and much sadness. I have often used music to alleviate those feelings, and also to augment them (human nature I guess). And sometimes, it’s just “I wanna track!!! NOW!!!”

Spoo: What do you think is next as far as the future of music?

AM: Music has been the same but different for thousands of years. As far as what I think (which is terribly irrelevant), I have a sad feeling that pop will continue to be king, and before you know it there will be naked people performing terrible rewrites of old songs (it’s almost there now!!). However, as electronics have entered almost all pop and R&B style music, I have a hope that some day, you can turn on the radio, and instead of hearing the crappy house/trance/dance music they’re playing now, you’d hear some good old Squarepusher and Aphex Twin. That would be sweet.

Spoo: We can only hope that pop music finally goes the route of naked artists. Speaking of artists… Which artists would you like to collaborate with?

AM: ZOMG, if I had the choice I’d collaborate with anyone I listen to. I could learn a lot from just about any of the electronic artists I call my favorite: Squarepusher, Aphex Twin, Venetian Snares, Chris Clark, Boards of Canada, Terminal11, sp00, Modem (been there, done that, doing it again soon!), etc.

Spoo: Who are some of the people that influenced your music most?

AM: My ex-GF Nina, as she is a source of great sadness. Also, my current GF Kimberly, as she is a source of great happiness. Kind of a balance… I suppose that my friends are often an influence as I sometimes make tracks entirely to hear them say “that’s badass”.

Spoo: That’s badass! Do you plan the songs that you write, or do they just happen?

AM: Both. I plan in a certain key, with certain sounds that I like, then the rest just happens.

Spoo: Thank you! We love you.

AM: No problem! I love y’all too!

As our parachutes opened, our interview ended. Thanks, ANgR MgMT! You RULE!

We caught up with Sir Katiie at the Secret Society for Feline Telepathy. You know how McDonald’s used to have those big play areas filled with plastic balls that you could jump into and ‘swim’ around in? Well, this place had one of those, but it was filled with kittens. We were swimming in a sea of Siamese when quite suddenly we were face-to-face with our dear friend, Sir Katiie.

Spoomusic.com: What other pseudonyms have you been known as?

Sir Katiie: None, that I know of.

Spoo: If you had to choose another alias, say, at knifepoint, what would it be?

SK: I have no idea. I’d probably get one of those online generators to come up with something for me. Something cool, like KLBAC. Yeahhhhhh.

Spoo: What made you get into music?

SK: It was forced upon me by my dad, who loves Gary Numan.

Spoo: Did your parents play instruments growing up? Please tell us you were in a family band…

SK: Sorry! No family band, although I did do a duet with my brother once when we were little! My mum used to play the classical guitar and my dad is tone deaf.

Spoo: What kind of music do you listen to?

SK: I mainly listen to solo violin stuff, death metal and new wave although my favourite band is Alice in Chains.

Spoo: Where do you get your musical inspiration from? Please tell us Crackerjack boxes.

SK: Boredom. It’s something brilliant to fill the time with. Also, other music inspires me, especially if it’s a really well thought out piece.

Spoo: What happens to music… IN THE FUTURE???

SK: I think the “brown note” would feature heavily in this.

Spoo: If you could play the brown note for anyone, and have them, well, react, who would it be?

SK: My boyfriend, Lambert, because it’d be hilarious.

Spoo: Are there any musicians out there that you would literally die for to collaborate with? Possibly meaning the death of your very soul?

SK: Anyone who’s willing!!

Spoo: Interesting. Who are some of the people that influenced your music most?

SK: Layne Staley, Gary Numan, Ian Curtis, Sp00, Mummy, Daddy and Lambert.

Spoo: You make us blush… and giggle… Do you plan the songs that you write, or do they just happen?

SK: It depends. Off my Wicked Child EP, Two Robots was extremely planned and took about 4 months of working on manuscript before I even thought about putting it into a computer. The rest seemed to just fall into place though.

Spoo: You say that you wrote the manuscript for Two Robots for months prior to putting it into the computer. Where do you get your experience in music composition? What instruments do you play?

SK: In school we got forced to study music theory and composition and it sort of stayed with me. I still study music theory and I probably should still work on composition. My main instrument is violin and I’ve been playing for around 13 years now. I also play (not very well) the viola, guitar, bass guitar and piano. I try and sing but it just doesn’t happen.

It was then that I was assailed by a rabid calico. I was treated later with seventeen needles into my stomach and a Flinstone Vitamin. I recovered simply to say thank you to Sir Katiie for the interview!

Spoomusic.com: Hi Mr. Neti Neti. We are so pleased to be able to interview you, sir. So let’s get right down to it. Do you have any other monikers?

Neti Neti: Reverberation Sound System, Mark Yuri, Black Sugar, Lemon Crush, djFilth, Neti Neti.

Spoo: What made you get into this crazy thing we call music?

NN: I’ve been told by relatives that I was quite drawn to vinyl records even when very young. Personally, my memories of the first 3-5 years of my life are frequently rather fuzzy and ill-defined, but I seem to recall being obsessed with watching the label in the middle spin. Music just happened to be a by-product of all this spinning-label business. Later on, I became increasingly distracted by other interests and stayed distracted until 1984 when Prince released the Purple Rain album, and I became obsessively interested in music to the exclusion of most other things…

Spoo: What was it about Purple Rain that did it to you?

NN: I distinctly remember hearing “When Doves Cry” for the first time on the radio. There was nothing like it, ever. We’re all overfamiliar with it now, but at the time it just cracked everything open for me, as did the album it comes from. The world was suddenly more colorful, and there was simply no going back to the mundane, ordinary, conformist approach that epitomized mid-1980′s pop radio.

Spoo: What kinds of music are you into?

NN: I hate it when people say, “I like all kinds of music”. Horseshit! I don’t think its even humanly possible to get to HEAR every kind of music in the world, let alone like it all. That said, I’ve been gravitating more over the past few years to instrumental and abstract musics. Not entirely, but it is taking up a bit more space in my life. I also like funk.

Spoo: What inspires you to write your music?

NN: “Writing” is perhaps not the word I would use to explain the tracks I’ve constructed. And “music” is possibly in the eye of the beholder. So far, a great deal of the inspiration has come about through the cheap-ass tape recorder I use to provide most of my source-sounds. That and DJing.

Spoo: So you DJ as well as produce your own music?

NN: I’ve been DJing for ages. Producing music is something I’ve just rediscovered in the past year or so.

Spoo: What do you think is next as far as the future of music?

NN: What makes you think it only travels in one direction?

Spoo: We don’t, you have answered wisely. Are there any lucky artists out there that you would like to collaborate with?

NN: I would like to do a remix exchange with sp00. I would also like to record a collaborative album with 7 seperate artists, but do not know yet when these projected events will actualize…

Spoo: The sp00 remix will definitely happen. Who influences the Neti Neti sound?

NN: William S. Burroughs, Marcel Duchamp, Oscar Wilde, Alan Moore, Robert Anton Wilson, Steven Stapleton, George Clinton, Miles Davis, James Brown, Sly Stone, Prince, J.G. Ballard, Grant Morrison, John Balance and Peter Christopherson, Philip K. Dick, Richard D. James, Two Lone Swordsmen, Monte Cazzaza, Don Bolles, Max Ernst, Alfred Hitchcock, Richard Bandler and John Grinder, Salvador Dali, Milton Erickson, Kenneth Anger, Eno, Sp00, the Sabres of Paradise, Cabaret Voltaire, Mad Professor, Carter Tutti, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Skinny Puppy, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, the Holland-Dozier-Holland production team at Motown in the ’60′s, Shriekback, Soft Cell, Mike Thorne, Phil Spector, Ike Turner, the Velvet Underground, the Stooges, Suicide, Primal Scream, the Jesus and Mary Chain, Terri Kass, Clem Clark, the Rolling Stones, Alexandro Jodorowsky, Michael 23, Justin Broadrick, Marianne Faithfull, sunnO))), the Cure, the Smiths, Jimmy Page (though I don’t care for Led Zeppelin, I just like the way he’d mic the room), David Lynch, Joy Division/New Order, Fad Gadget, Bauhaus, virgin Prunes, the Birthday Party, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Massive Attack, Laibach, ClockDVA, Tom Waits, Aleister Crowley, Richie Hawtin, Federico Fellini, Gary Numan, Ray Bradbury, and, oh, a ton more I’ll kick myself later for forgetting.

Spoo: Bravo on such diverse influences. Aleister Crowley?

NN: Aleister Crowley was a one-man engine of endeavor: Over the course of his life he was a mountaineer, world traveler, occultist, magician, organizer, libertine, author, publisher, publicist, drug addict, sodomite, gossip, book reviewer, charismatic public speaker, prankster, correspondant, and, in my opinion, a gifted hypnotist. (Some people are still being hypnotized by him now, but, trust me, you don’t want to meet them. They’re annoying.) Everything he did was larger than life, and he did it with a lot of style. I enjoy his sense of humor, and greatly admire his ability to communicate through writing on several different levels simultaneously.

Also, I should have included on the “influence” list Jim Thirlwell (a.k.a. Foetus), who has been a HUGE inspiration to me.

Spoo: We love Crowley, too. Do you plan the songs that you write, or do they just happen?

NN: So far, a little of both.

Spoo: Do you believe in the mothership?

NN: Yes!

Spoo: Is the Mothership a phsyical thing or does it exist outside of our third dimension reality?

NN: Both. The stone has been rolled away from the mouth of the tomb…

…And just as quickly as he had appeared, he disappeared. Thanks for the great interview, Neti Neti!

Spoomusic.com: Sup, bra?

Drex Rekker: It’s late, I forgot to take my Chantix today, I’m supposed to be finishing a Tracky Birthday remix, I didn’t eat enough, I can’t stop listening to these dubstep mixes, nobody’s home, I need to do my laundry, I wish I was at a beach, and I don’t have a job.

Spoo: What do you want?

DR: A pair of fantastic running shoes, a laptop, better whiter lightbulb designs, a job, the reformation of Pangea, a bedroom door, a closet, Siberian Husky, stacks of fill-in-the-blank airplane tickets, fresh juices, a racecar with air conditioning, affordable space travel, affordable health care, peace in the Middle East, non-toxic easily cleanable colored bubbles, drum sequencing skills, a waterslide, and a USB rice cooker.

Spoo: What’s your music about?

DR: It’s about maxing out the potential for music to make you smile… Make you smile so hard it hurts and you explode; like when you’re getting tickled and the assailant is giving you the “Say Uncle”, and your sides start to hurt, then burn, you can’t open your eyes, speak, the flames of hell appear in your eyelids, you can’t feel your lower extremities, your nervous system shuts down, no, just kidding. It’s about absolutely refusing to believe that anything crappy exists and just going nuts.

Spoo: You have been known to perform vivisection on stuffed animals. What is next on the agenda?

DR: Have the animals perform a vivisection on me, hand my guts out to the crowd as a “bonus” and then finish my set. Rather than me trying to find animal samples, they could simply sample themselves, then make the record that I’m undoubtedly less technically qualified to make than wild ducks and monkeys. They would likely make more tracks than I do as well.

Spoo: What are your favorite samples and sounds?

DR: Marimbas, glockenspiels, harpsichords, house drums, woodsticks, cows, dogs, birds, dolphins, bubbling sounds, electro bass hits, smacking my desk, Terminal11′s homemade claps, steven tyler saying “Cheesecake”, house drums, scratchy sounds, cartoon samples, takako minekawa singing, dubstep bass, clocks, farts, people speaking hebrew, groundhogs, the plastic tubes that make the wooooosh noise when spun around, ice cream trucks, matches being lit, paper tearing, really good whistlers, yodeling, Pansori vocals, trashcan lids, coins falling on a Casio SK-1 speaker, kittens, and sodas falling out of soda machines.

Spoo: What kind of music do you listen to?

DR: 60′s orchestral pop music and space ‘lounge’ music, rat pack crooner music, most everything on Phthalo Records, klezmer, yiddish folk music, Catskill resorts vaudevillian Jewish kitsch, Sonic Youth, cockrockdisco records, 50′s and 60′s soul music (Motown and Stax stuff), silly microhouse, Beige and all his projects, Cylob, Wu-Tang clan sideprojects, French kiddie-electronic goof off music, Miami booty bass, Proptronix records, Carl Stalling, Henry Mancini scores, old Bollywood soundtracks, German rap, The Persuasions, Yma Sumac and Esquivel kind of stuff, acid Techno, Otto Von Schirach, Korean Pansori theater music, classic Disney soundtracks, 60′s Brazilian pop music, ragga, backpacker hip-hoppers with senses of humor, Missy Elliot, 50′s vocal jazz, northern soul, Peggy Lee type stuff, and dubstep

Spoo: Who is James Brown?

DR: The godfather of “BLEARGBEHGARHRAH”. The grandmother of making gut wrenchingly bizarre and slightly discomforting aural guttural discharge into an art form that caused women in the 1950′s and 1960′s to lose their underwear. The undisputed blue ribbon winner of the international sweating competition. Actually that was Wilson Pickett, who I believed died from drowning in a tidal wave of his own sweat backstage in Manila. I believe James Brown may also be the proprietor of a fantastic line of barbecue sauces. The hardest working man in show-business, my mentor and estranged father, a man with a bad case of pinched leg nerves, a legend. Please go get “Live @ The Apollo 1963.”

Spoo: What do you think is next as far as the future of music?

DR: I’d like to think positively and say that it’s some kind of interactive music hat with electrokinetic Q-Tips that go in your ears to pull the music out of everyone’s heads and send it to a software interface to mix, sequence, tune, and master… But realistically, I think music is eventually going to be produced by a monolithic computer that configures tracks based on sellability and mass appeal… I think that’s roughly what’s happening now, but I think eventually, they’ll also be able to completely eliminate celebrities and their gabrillion dollar salaries, paying only electric bills for the machine. I don’t know though? I also hope that someone hires all the engineers at BlueMoon to finish making Sound Club. Or that there’s a major textile breakthrough allowing the manufacture of really, really, really cheap woodwinds, marimbas, or harpsichords.

Spoo: Which artists would you like to collaborate with?

DR: Libythth, Cylob, Dat Politics, Rip-Off Artist, DJ Assault, Gangpol und Mit, Safety Scissors, Senor Coconut, Otto Von Schirach, Terminal11, Soft Pink Truth, Secret Mommy, Global Goon, Dim Dim, Beige, Daedelus, About, Akufen, End, Blectum from Blechdom, Bogdan Raczynski, Exillon, Mochipet, Jean Jacques-Perrey, Ilkae, Milky Chu, Com.a, Herbert, Jacques Lu Cont, The Barry Sisters, Shoshana Damari, Nina Hagen, James Brown, Peggy Lee, Marvin Gaye, Esquivel, and Sam Cooke. Preferably all at once. Some of them are dead though.

Spoo: Do you plan the songs that you write?

DR: I can’t seem to get past the 4 second mark lately, so my new technique is to string together about 15 4 seconds loops and force myself to write seamless transitions between them, resulting in songs. When I’m not doing that, there’s no plan that happens before I start writing, but I do like to keep incredibly disorganized, incomprehensible handwritten notes while I’m working, usually on typing paper in a couple different colors of pen. I don’t like repetition in my own tracks, so I do my best to never repeat more than 4 bars unless there is a long, long dynamic melody over whatever is repeating, and I try to make sure that if you were to skip through the track, you wouldn’t be able to tell if it’s the same song. I fail quite often. When I write a melody, that’s the only thing I can hear in my head that I then plot, but usually only 6-10 notes ahead. My first wish for a genie would be drum-sequencing skills. My drums eat a bowl o’ dicks.

Spoo: What’s next?

DR: Erase my entire harddrive and start over.

Just then, Drex Rekker brandished his scalpel and we got the hell out of there. Thanks for the sweet interview, Drex!

Spoomusic.com: What other aliases have you gone by?

DJ Tek: tek, djtek, dr. spongebasket, and zorthax, destroyer of artichokes

Spoo: What made you get into music?

Tek: how can you *not* be into music? saying you’re not into music is like saying you’re not into food. or breathing. you may not make music your life, but at some point everybody has done a little dance when they hear a song they like. even though he was a wacko cokehead, there’s one quote from nietzsche that i couldn’t agree with more – “life without music would be a mistake.” (props to alice benjamin)

Spoo: What kinds of alien musics do you listen to?

Tek: again, i don’t really think that this question is valid. it’s all music. categorizing it just dilutes its power. ok, so you listen to “techno.” what kind? happy hardcore? trance? techno proper? is it the electro tweak kind? the harder german stuff? is it hooverfied or blast style? pretty soon the lines are drawn so finely that you can’t accurately describe a song without using a list of 47-plus adjectives. once you start subdividing music into genres, you start excluding yourself from being able to enjoy the full spectrum of the wonderful joys that music can bring.

Spoo: Are you trying to say that long strings of adjectives should be reserved only for Mad Libs?

Tek: well, i would prefer this, since describing a song as “fleshy gourd-based gel-powered scrotally fried rotten chunder box shavings” would be a bit over the top. however, describing what you did at summer camp in this way is perfectly acceptable.

Spoo: Where do you get your inspiration? Or, one might also ask, who is the wind beneath your wings?

Tek: i’m not really sure. sometimes inspiration just strikes at what seem like the most random times. once i was in a porta-potty at a monster truck rally and the bassline for what became lp’s song “now come home” popped into my head. true story. there are certain things that put me in a more musical mood – the lights from sausalito glistening off of san francisco bay, the smell of rain at dawn, ex-girlfriends, strong coffee, new toys…

Spoo: Do you think that you’ll ever play at a monster truck rally? Maybe dressed up in drag?

Tek: if the republican national comittee asks nicely for a change, i would consider it. although i do find it a bit strange that the rally would take place in mr. cheney’s garage. with the lights off. and he says he’d be the only attendee.

Spoo: What do you think is next as far as the future of music?

Tek: well, i see it going one of two ways, and i’m not sure which is most likely. in truth it may well be a fairly balanced combination of both. i think music will continue to move towards consumer-centric production. in much the same way that blogging has sparked a whole generation of localized, specialized, independent journalists, so will emerging technology allow each person to craft their own songs from those nameless melodies that i think pop into everyone’s head at some times. adding massive online social networks to the mix will have everyone sharing back and forth, exploring each other’s thoughts, dreams, fears, and ideas through music, and all without bringing bullshit copyright into the mix (KILL THE RIAA). i think spoomusic is heading in this direction with their label. either that, or equally driven by technology, music will become so entirely predictable and shaped by marketing that it will all be algorithmically generated. you plug in a couple of keywords, the computer grinds away, and voila! more top 40. incidentally, i am thoroughly convinced that this practice already exists, albeit in a rather limited way. the voice synthesis technology just isn’t there yet, but give it ten years and i bet production credits on half the billboard hot 100 will go to “intel pentium 12.”

Spoo: Which artists would you like to collaborate with?

Tek: ooh lots of them. check out my list of influences below. although i’d have to say more than collaborating with particular artists, i enjoy collaborating with particular songs. i’ve always been a fan of the remix, and when i hear a great song, it doesn’t matter who wrote it, i’m just compelled to shred it to pieces and re-freak the whole thing.

Spoo: Who are some of the people that influenced your music most?

Tek: 808 state. underworld. nine inch nails. dr. dre. micro.spy. ms. mary jane. mr. bud weiser. jon bon jovi (stop laughing, he writes great pop songs). the future sound of london. necros. purple motion. there’s more, but you asked for “some.”

Spoo: Do you plan the songs that you write, or do they just happen?

Tek: usually they just happen. i’ll be in the shower and inspiration will strike and i’ll hash out the skeleton of a track with my hair still wet. or i could be sitting in front of the keyboard noodling around and a cool hook will emerge from the noodlyness. i really don’t think it’s possible to “plan” a song, at least not beyond the concept stage, and even then the concept has to come from some place meaningful. music shouldn’t be formulated and refined and sterilized. music is a pulse. it should always come from the heart.

Spoo: Tell us more about you in the shower.

Tek: <gurgling, echoing> igm sigz foogt too, ig hag ong brugvbr… haha, no, seriously folks, that was professional comedy. an amateur would have responded to that question in a much more nonsensical fashion. there would have been puns involved. and cake.

And suddenly we were falling, falling… and SHNAP! Our security ropes were dangling us from the face of Death’s Cliff. Don’t worry. We got down. Eventually. Thanks for the interview, Tek!