featured musician: DD/MM/YYYY MR: I’m listening to this compilation called Psych Funk 101. It’s really good, mostly Matt likes it. I like a third of it and it’s a compilation of more aggressive Thai pop. Also, I’m listening to Romantic States, which is Jim from Video Hippos, and it’s so much better than that genre of low-fi pop. TDB: I’ve been listening to a lot of older music lately, it’s weird. I think I’ve been listening to nostalgic music, and I’m not really a nostalgic person. I’ve been listening to Stravinsky’s Ebony Concerto, which is a really awesome jazzy piece for Woody Herman’s band. Then I would switch to something funny like RuPaul “Supermodel”, and then I would switch it to Pet Shop Boys, and then I would put on a Captain Beefheart song, and then I would look for a really good ambient track by Aphex Twin. I’ve been listening to the Aphex Twin ambient selections because it’s really good to draw and meditate to, and the other songs sort of perk you up and get ready for work. MC: I’ve been listening to a lot of Ray Charles, and Kanye West. JH: I’ve been listening to a lot of terrible house music mash-ups that I made at work. JM: How do you define something that is successful? What does success mean to you? MR: I think it changes because right now, I think we’re at a pretty decent level that I might have called success when I was younger. I think success is really having people appreciate what you’re doing, and maybe not needing to have a more formal profession that pays the bills. JM: A “4/4 time” job.
“Noise is important to us because it’s the last frontier in music right now”
MR: Yeah, exactly. Maybe if you could just make music, put a roof over your head, and people appreciated what you were doing – I think that would be success. JM: How do you work around artist blocks, in music or art?
MK: Just keep practicing and changing. Go on tour, forget about the songs, then try to relearn them and think about them in a different way. MR: Or, we just go outside for five minutes, and then we go back into the practice space. Sometimes it’s a whole other vibe where things are really flowing and we just needed some fresh air. JM: In another interview, Tomas said that pop music was like commerce and noise was like art, would you like to expand on that a little bit? TDB: I love dichotomies and distilling things into dualisms, I’m really obsessed with Gemini twins and mirror images and stuff like that, and all sorts of splitting up one into two. Like sexual reproduction, that’s pretty cool. 20
/ pulp / Arts Magazine