Editorial

JULY 2008/INTERVIEW/AFTA1
MAY 2008/INTERVIEW/TRUS'ME
FEBRUARY 2008/INTERVIEW/MICHEL BAUMANN FROM MANMADE SCIENCE
NOVEMBER_DECEMBER 2007/INTERVIEW/LUKE UNABOMBER
SEPTEMBER 2007/INTERVIEW/KOOL KEITH & KUTMASTA KURT
JULY_AUGUST 2007/INTERVIEW/JOE BATAAN
JUNE 2007/INTERVIEW/DANIEL WANG
MAY 2007/INTERVIEW/BENJI B
APRIL 2007/INTERVIEW/KEVIN SAUNDERSON
MARCH 2007/INTERVIEW/NICKY SIANO
FEBRUARY 2007/INTERVIEW/OSUNLADE
JANUARY 2007/FEATURE/DAVE LEE’S GUIDE TO ITALIAN BOOGIE
DECEMBER 2006/INTERVIEW/DAVE LEE
NOVEMBER 2006/INTERVIEW/MULATU ASTATQE
SEPTEMBER_OCTOBER 2006/INTERVIEW/WALLY BADAROU
AUGUST 2006/INTERVIEW/KARL BARTOS
JULY 2006/INTERVIEW/STEVE REID/PART II
JUNE 2006/INTERVIEW/STEVE REID/PART I
MAY 2006/INTERVIEW/JIHAD MUHAMMAD
APRIL 2006/INTERVIEW/MIKE MORDECAI FABLE RECORDS/PART II
MARCH 2006/INTERVIEW/MIKE MORDECAI FABLE RECORDS/PART I
FEBRUARY 2006/INTERVIEW/ERIC ROBERSON AKA ERRO
JANUARY 2006/INTERVIEW/ALAIN MION FROM CORTEX
DECEMBER 2005/INTERVIEW/CERRONE
NOVEMBER 2005/INTERVIEW/IMMANUEL FROM SOLAR

AUGUST 2008/INTERVIEW/SAMIYAM


You’re originally from Michigan but you now live in LA. What lead to this move?

I’d lived in Michigan my whole life and I’d just turned 24 and I needed a change; I wasn’t feeling all that inspired out there anymore and had been talking to a few people out here and we’d passed some music back and forth and it just seemed like the place to be. I came out a couple of times before I actually moved so I could get a feel for it and yeah, it’s been great. It didn’t immediately feel like home but lately I’ve started to feel really comfortable about being out here.


Yeah, it seems with most music related people that the tendency is usually to move from LA to New York…

Well I grew up in Michigan so I could use a break from the winters! It’s been nice and hot out here. Also I’ve been to New York a couple of times and I never really thought ‘this is somewhere I’d like to live’, not right now at least, it doesn’t really seem like the kind of place I’d enjoy living.


So was the fact that you’d hooked up with Flying Lotus and talked about doing the FlyAmSam collaboration something that inspired you to move out there or did that hook up happen once you got out there?

That’s something that we were doing beforehand actually; we’d heard each others’ music and just decided to start working on some stuff. Most of the stuff that we’ve made has just been where we’ve made sounds on a synthesizer and then emailed them to each other and then just rearranged them into something else, so before we ever actually met in person we had an album’s worth of music.


Is it true that you first met each other over myspace?

Yeah that’s where we first heard each others’ music.


You recently released Rap Beats Vol. 1, how did this release come about? Was it a collection of beats you had done over a period of time?

Yeah it really was, I was thinking about doing something like this for a while. I don’t know if you know exactly what I was doing with that but I started off just selling it hand to hand and over paypal and yeah, it’s just a collection of beats – it’s not a joke, most of the beats are like 16 bars then there’s a little hook and it goes back to the original part, so it really is just a collection of rap beats over twenty four tracks. Some of them are from recently and some are from a year and a half – two years ago; just a bunch of sh*t that I wanted people to hear and I didn’t have plans to use on anything else. After I’d sold a bunch of them hand to hand and over myspace Lotus had the idea to put it out digitally through his Brainfeeder label.


Most of the tracks on that are under two minutes in length. That seems to be the case with most beat tapes – is that just because they are ideas that you plan to extend at some point?

I don’t know, I think in some ways they are just supposed to function as tracks on a beat tape, I don’t know if people want to necessarily listen to these beats for 3 minutes you know? I mean I would sit around and listen to a hip hop instrumental for the whole track but that’s just me. It seems like it works for people to just get a taste of each track.


Moving on from instrumentals, have you got any plans to work with any MCs or vocalists as yet?

I haven’t done anything like that yet but there are definitely a few people I’d be interested in working with. Over some of the stuff I’ve done I could hear a nice vocal, someone singing maybe and there’s a few rappers I could hear sounding good over my beats.
I’m not so big on rap and hardly listen to any new rappers these days but I like Doom, I think he’s really clever and fun to listen to and I like Blu if you guys have heard of him, he’s from out here too and is really good. I’m into stuff where there are topics to the songs but that’s not really so common anymore in rap.


We could kind of hear Phat Kat on your stuff;

Yeah definitely, that was coming up! I guess I’d like the same guys anyone would like on their stuff, I’d like Phat Kat, I dig Elzhi, and I really like Guilty Simpson.


Speaking of those guys they all lead us back to one name of course - Dilla; you’ve said before that he’s your musical hero but if there was just one Dilla track that you had to name as your all time favourite from his massive catalogue would you be able to pick one?

Ah, no, that’s so hard! I’ve definitely had favourites but there’s also always something new, I know there’s more of his sh*t that none of us have heard yet so it would just be too hard to name one track from somebody like him.


You’ve recently signed to the Hyperdub label in the UK. How did this come about?

Well Lotus knows Kode 9, I believe they were in the Red Bull Music Academy together when it was in Australia and so they’ve been friends since then, and then not that long ago Lotus was over in London and they were chilling together and he played Kode 9 a bunch of my sh*t that he had with him on his computer and he really liked a lot of it so we started talking from there. It all happened pretty quickly actually.


Do you feel that an instrumental hip hop artist being signed by a predominantly dub step centric label is a sign as to what direction the music is taking? In a recent interview Flying Lotus name checked Mala of the DMZ crew as someone to listen out for as well, so do you think that’s a trend we’re going to start seeing more of?

I think dub step and hip hop have a lot of similarities in the sound, so it makes sense that we’re starting to see more fans of both. It definitely means a lot to me personally that Kode 9 is putting out this record because whether or not there really are people who are into to dub step and hip hop this is something completely different from what his fans would usually expect from a release on his label, so it is kind of crazy but to me it makes sense that there might be interest from those same fans.


Are you a fan of the dub step sound yourself?

Yeah I like a lot of it but it was something that I had to hear quite a lot before it started to grow on me, hearing it in the club I think makes it make sense real quick though.


The last track on your new release (Cheesecake Backslap) sounds a little bit different rhythmically than most of your stuff actually;

Yeah I guess, the drum loop for that one starts with a snare drum which is a little different than usual but still it’s in four-four time; all the tracks on the record are four-four, I just record it live and it depends on how I feel as to how the rhythms come out.


On June the 14th you appeared at the Brainfeeder festival alongside Flylo, Kode 9 and Ras G amongst others. How was that for you?

That was amazing, it was actually one of the best shows I’ve ever had the pleasure of being part of. The venue was really dope, it was just a big open parking lot and the sound was huge; the soundman was probably the best soundman I’ve ever worked with, he had that sh*t sounding sooo good! That night was definitely the stand-out of like a little mini tour that we’d done.


Were you surprised by the crowd reaction? Did you get inspired by the way people were responding?

Yeah for sure, it was inspiring to just be in London and see all these people going crazy for our music. It was also great to watch all these friends of mine play, some of whom I’d never seen play live before. I actually met Kode 9 in fact, we’d never even met in person until then so that was really cool, just to meet these people and then half an hour later see them playing live. Before that I hadn’t seen Mala, I hadn’t seen Rustie or Jose James, I hadn’t seen Danny Breaks who was dope; it kind of turned into a mini rave when he was on, there was just a lot of energy building, all the lights were flashing it really was like a little rave!


Mentioning Rustie actually, your sound, his sound, the sound that people like Dorian Concept out of Austria are all making, sound in places like samples from Game Boy and Nintendo – did the sounds from those games actually influence you as much as some records did when you were growing up and starting to get a catalogue of sounds in your head?

Yeah definitely! Some of those Nintendo beats had a lot of influence on me; a lot of that stuff is pretty much hip hop, you know it’s got a little loop and then the alternate part comes in then you’re back to the original loop.


Have you got a favourite?

As far as beats that sample Nintendo games I really like this beat that Madlib did, I don’t think it’s out actually, that samples one of the Pro Wrestling games and is really dope! As far as music from a game, I really like all the Megaman music, I can’t remember which one but one of them has a really dope beat during the introduction right when you turn the game on.