photos from MySpace

Kim Fowley will tell you who he is below, but as an introduction I should inform you that there is a biopic (biographical movie) coming out nationwide in April 2010 about The Runaways. Called the “Queens of Noise” either by manager-seer Fowley or one of his pals in PR or the press, The Runaways were a little too before their time (and perhaps a little too threatening to how serious rock fans wanted their music in the mid-late 70s).

Joan Jett, Cherie Currie, Mickie Steele (The Bangles), and Sandy West (who passed away from cancer in 2005) and other women played in the band which, besides “Cherry Bomb” and a cover of Lou Reed’s “Rock And Roll,” has never landed classics in the mainstream or punk rock canon. The passed along notions are that they weren’t talented (bullshit), that their catalyst Fowley is to be given all the credit for what went right (more bullshit) or what went wrong (etc.).

The fact of the matter is, I inherited a double gatefold single debut LP from my older brothers with weed seeds and dust stuck to it, because the young women pictured on the sleeve intimidated them more than entertained them. That would make do till I discovered the Sex Pistols, yet that eponymous first release still crackles with vicious fun now (despite where rock took off to).

And then learning that there are painted birds on the office hours side like Kim Fowley, who alchemize youth music to be a mercurial ride with the common sense removed. His perverted trash-art impulse transcends soundtracks for a prom or political rally or peer counseling session. His freakiness made me want to do more than just listen to the stuff but participate in likewise ways. Fuck Fitzgerald’s “American life has no second acts.” If you’re weird and willing to struggle, Fowley’s career can inspire you to create and perform no matter what. The Runaways are one of the bands he did that for, among others.

(The phone rings. My tape recorder is already running.)

Talk to me.

Kim… Mr. Fowley?

Who are you?

My name is Chris. I’m calling to interview you for the KEXP Blog.

All right.

And… I love your work. You’re magic; I don’t know what rock and roll would have done without you.

Thanks.

I first wanted to ask if you’d seen the movie and what you’d thought of it.

Oh. First let me go get a glass of water… please.

OK.

(…)

OK, so you started recording me immediately. What was the question? And use the entire interview, I know how to do these things. Everything I say, you use. Including what I said when my phone rang, and then you said, “Nothing would have happened in rock and roll without me.”

Absolutely. I wonder if you’d seen the movie.

I saw it. On a good day, it’s Rebel Without A Cause with music; and on a bad day, it’s a night time soap opera with some rock and roll music.

How do you think Michael Shannon did portraying you?

He’s a genius. He’s the new Christopher Walken. And I’m privileged that he was able to get enough of me to make it watchable. It transcended the printed page. He’s working with Martin Scorcese on his Broadway project, that’s what he’s doing now. This guy’s like John Garfield or Humphrey Bogart playing you. I mean, wouldn’t you like that?

So congratulations, Michael, you’re on your way to stardom.

To quote from the original BOMP! Magazine article about The Runaways, “They were everything great about teenage girls.” Do you think they achieved that?

I think that the idea was a good one. And it’s up to the audience to determine if it was achieved.

Do you think people have a pretty good idea about how the music business works? Putting things together by knowing the right people.

No. There’s a battle between art and commerce, labor and management. There always has been and always will be, and the public couldn’t care less. It’s made theatrical for them, i.e., “Sweet Smell of Success,” or “The Bad and the Beautiful,” these Hollywood movies that talk about show business intrigue and back stage ballets, et cetera. And all the intrigue from that point of view. There’s always a jury movie about the jury, movies about the Pentagon, movies about doctors and research scientists and all of that. There’s always a back story that is generally used, eventually. The product isn’t consuming product for information or doing it for a state of enlightenment, they’re doing it for escape and entertainment, from their own lives.

But that back-story has its own kind of aesthetics.

Well that’s you, you’re a rock intellectual and scholar and so you’re going to look at it from that perspective. But your fast food consumer just needs another burger and fries.

Kari Krone had written in BOMP! that you’d auctioned off groupie girls who came on stage during Runaways performances. And I know that you had a “Lesbian Slave Auction” last year during your shows with a group last year… oh, by the way, are you still performing with that group?

The Hollywood Sexual Underground? Now and then, it’s just performance art. But we have a new project that we’re doing performance on, Black Room Doom. It’s a female performance unit. And it’s performance art with women. It’s listed by “Black Room Doom Visuals,” and on My Space, it’s Black Room Doom. It’ll put a smile across your face.

Did the idea of auctioning people to the audience, did that start with The Runaways then?

No, it started in Biblical times… read the Bible!

(Laughter.) I love the fact that you’re attracted to female performers to work with, and I know you probably get asked this all the time, what is the particular energy about working with women?

Well, my mother was an actress, Shelby Payne. She was one of the two cigarette girls in The Big Sleep with Bogart and Bacall. So I saw Hollywood from an actress under contract with Warner Brothers. So I saw it from her point of view. And then my first major job in the business was working in the publicity, and press, and background music, media, for Doris Day’s production company, and I was the boy genius in the office. The two movies that I worked on were Please Don’t Eat The Daisies and Pillow Talk. I brought Bruce Johnston in as a songwriter, and stayed with him his entire career. He wrote, “I Want To Teach The World To Sing…” whatever that was, the Barry Manilow classic. (“I Write The Songs”). And then all those songs for the Beach Boys, I can’t remember all the titles.

You know what I like about Barry Manilow is that he put that medley of his jingles on that double album live set.

Right. He’s talented. And Bruce is a talented writer and I brought him to the Doris Day-Marty Melcher’s Arwin Productions. And I was lucky to have a mother in the business and my first major job was with the number one female box office star in the world, Doris Day. And then between that I worked at American International, with all the exploitation movies in the B movie genre. There was a record label called American International records, I was there every day and absorbed all that. So you put “female” and “drive-in exploitation movie” together, and you have the mindset of someone who was able to deal with The Runaways concept.

The Runaways seem like a good example of your concept of “The Hustle.” Did you describe what you do as “The Hustle,” or was that given to you by (BOMP! publisher/label owner) Greg Shaw or someone else?

Oh, I gave it to myself. Everything in life is a hustle, a scam. Including living and dying and breathing and eating and going to the bathroom, and sleeping. It’s all flaws that we have to maintain, and co-exist with, in order to be immaculate creatures of self-destruction.

Your “$500 Hustle,” described by a long-time personal assistant, if it were to be criticized, what would you tell them?

“I have a hard on.”

(Laughter.) I mean, getting five hours of advice from someone with your experience and insight for $500 is a pretty good deal, isn’t it?

Who gave you that number? That’s incorrect, by the way. It was actually a dollar a minute. It ends up usually about five hours. Big Boi asks me questions every day. And I charge to answer them.

Don’t you find people always want something for free in the industry, especially advice?

Everybody has a dollar, everybody has a minute, so — spend your dollar! I’m performing in Austin, at SXSW. Are you going to be there?

No, I’m not able to — but what are you doing, so I can let people know?

I’m doing a BMI SXSW movie music panel on the 14th of March. For Rhapsody I’m emceeing and jamming at Emo’s. And then Thursday they’re having the premiere and the red carpet, and then Friday another press conference. So I will be live and in living color. I’m going to be in Austin all ten days… when’s this article coming out?

Probably next week. Well, I guess the appropriate response is– any time you want it to!

Right now!

OK! I’ll ask my editor to do it as quickly as possible then.

Run it every day! Is this going to be on-line?

Yes!

Good. How many people read it?

I don’t know. I’m one of those rock intellectual types; I have no idea about things like that.

Could it be in the hundreds? Or the millions?

Oh yeah, sure, it could be in the millions.

Good! OK, what else? Keep going…

I loved hearing your 60s psychedelic hit “The Trip” in Guy Ritchie’s movie RockNRolla. I really liked that movie.

Thank you.

How did you hook up with Guy?

I never met him, he just found it somehow. One day I got an email, “Hi, we’re using this. OK, good.” He’s a genius.

He kind of reminds me of you as a filmmaker — combining exploitation with danger and irony…

He reminds me of John Ford! I think he’s John Ford with a lot of sleaze. I’m also Irish you know, I’m an Irish citizen. My dad’s from Ireland and my mother’s from Portland, Oregon. So I’m European with an American accent. And part of my education was there, and my university was there … so I look at Europe differently than you do, you don’t have a dual nationality and I do! (Ritchie) gets the “Yabbo” thing really well, you know. Football hooligan icon, he’s got it.

That seductive violent energy.

I guess that he would probably do good in a street fight.

How’s it going with the reissue of your past albums?

Norton put out stuff I did between 1959 and 1969, it’s out now, really rare stuff, called One Man’s Garbage: Lost Treasures from the Vaults: 1959-1969, Volume One. And then they put out Another Man’s Gold. I did the liner notes for that, there’s lots of stuff in there. Double album, vinyl and CD, The New York Times glorified it, 32 tracks, unreleased.

Greg (Shaw) was talking about you in the liner notes in Vampires From Outer Space, Volume One. You had originally placed The Runaways ad in BOMP! and actually got no response?

None, not one.

But you hooked up Joan with Cherie.

The Runaways movie is based on Cherie Currie’s book. It was then rewritten and adapted for the screen by the director. So there’s a thing called poetic license. And poetic license was used in the content of the movie. It’s an entertaining movie; it’s a coming of age movie. In that regard, it’s good. Well-directed, produced, edited, and the music and the visuals are good. You can sit there and watch it. If you’re in middle school! However, if you’re looking for a Nick Tosches overview, you’re not going to get it. You know who Nick Tosches is, right?

Yeah, he’s one of my favorite writers. I would have loved to see you work on a version of this story with him.

I never met him, but he’s a great writer. He gets into the blood and the guts, doesn’t he? So he didn’t write the screenplay. But you’re going to get a good teenage girl’s diary. And that’s what it is — a girl’s coming of age adventure 35 years ago.

If you were able to do it the way you wanted, say with Nick writing the screenplay…

It wasn’t my call. I have no desire to make a Runaways movie. I don’t even think that way. But I would have had Kenny Ortega direct it, because he was the one that staged The Runaways’ act. You know who he became — Dirty Dancing choreographer, This Is It director, High School Musicals. He was on The Runaways’ team. He’s not mentioned in the movie. But he was there at the beginning and he makes great youth movies; I would have Nick write it and he would have been the director. But it’s good for what it is. If you’re a teenager and you see it could be your Rebel Without A Cause. And if you’re a jaded guy like you, you’re going to say, “Oh, it’s a night time soap opera with rock and roll music.” OK! That’s all good. And every movie needs a villain, and I’m a good villain. And Michael Shannon plays me like a good villain. I think the dialogue they gave him though reminds me of Carrot Top. I thought for awhile that maybe Carrot Top would play me; I wasn’t happy about it. Nothing against Carrot Top. Imagine if you had Carrot Top define you on screen! No matter who wrote the dialogue you wouldn’t be jumping with joy. They got Michael, so I was fortunate. And of course eight of my songs I wrote, or co-wrote, are in the movie. And for the soundtrack album for the girls who played The Runaways are putting out, I have seven songs on that album. And I think Dakota is a really good actress. I think Christian Stewart is an amazing actress. I think her performance is astounding in the movie. I think Dakota, well, she’s playing Cherie the way that Cherie sees herself. As opposed to the way — she might have been. So Dakota once again has to do the printed page. I think Christian got Joan Jett’s spirit, but I don’t think Dakota got Cherie’s spirit. But she got Cherie’s pain and suffering. So from an Ingmar Bergman perspective, Cherie got that and Christian got Joan’s rock and roll celebration. of course, in collaboration Joan and I wrote a lot of songs, so I had a different relationship with her than I had with Cherie Currie, to whom I was Roger Vadim. And she was Brigette Bardot. With Joan Jett, I was George Martin and she was John Lennon. And that’s a big difference. I hooked up with Joan through Kari Krome. A lot of The Runaways people aren’t visible anymore; they went on to other life choices, you know.

I was going to ask you, is there a reunion in the works around the release of this film?

No, I had suggested it, and nobody’s interested. Because one girl died, and the remaining ones — wouldn’t it be great if we could get them, myself, the various technicians, roadies, and PR people, the team of people and agents and some of the co-managers, or managers before and after me, and after me — and everybody just gets worked up. “No, no, no,” the wrong way. If everybody realized we’re all over 50 now, and it might be a different perspective. But even at high school reunions the people who hated each other twenty or thirty years ago still hate each other.

Anyways, The Runaways wasn’t my career. So I had a career in rock and roll from 1959 to 1975, and that’s when The Runaways started. And when I completed my work, I was gone by late 77 or early 78. And that’s thirty-two years ago. I’ve lived in thirty-nine American cities, twenty-two overseas countries; I’m a cancer survivor; I lived with positional vertigo; a Polio survivor; I’ve had a lot going on in my life, and The Runaways is no more important to me than you reminiscing about your fourth grade classroom. Some of the songs are good, and some of the records are good, but it’s not the obsession of my life.

When I worked at a label, we would blow off steam after work imagining that bands we were working with would go on to be “the next Sonic Youth” or whatever. If you don’t remember that’s fine, but did you ever have any “Master Plan” specifically for what you wanted to do eventually with The Runaways?

I’ll tell you The Runaways story from Gene Simmons’ perspective. You know I co-wrote songs with KISS members, “King of the Night-Time World” and “Do You Love Me?” which appear on thirty-five separate releases. And what happened was that Gene asked what I had to do with The Runaways, after they broke up, and I said, “At various times I was producer, manager, publisher, co-writer, writer, arranger, cheerleader, shrink, road guy, idea man, strategist, publicist.” And he said, “Next time you have a good idea get people with brains to work with you on it.”

And that’s why Black Room Doom is more important to me than The Runaways. It’s a movie, and the premise is that a bunch of girls get together at noon in a recording studio, who have never met each other. And I say, “By the end of the day you will have recorded, and you will have danced and sung, and have pizza together. You will finish songs that you have played together, and then at 6 PM you will go home. And that will be your band experience. What do you girls think?” “Let’s try it.” And it’s a bunch of happy women. And girls. For that afternoon. And when it’s over, the movie’s over. Maybe all bands should form in one day and at the end of the experience just break up at the end of the day.

You think I’m kidding, but you go back to the early days of rock and roll, and there used to be people who would show up and play under a phony name, and sing together from other bands, and they all need $25 or $50 so they show up and sing and play. The drummer from one band would be the guitarist from that band; etc. And they would never play again. And they were called “One Hit Wonders.” Remember them? What if bands could be one hit wonders? What if you could form a band just for tonight? It would be a great night.

And I do other things like run a rock and roll workshop, and help a studio, and supply food to musicians and technicians and anybody’s who’s good to come in to make noise if they want to. I don’t care what kind of music it is as long as it’s interesting.

That’s the beauty of your career — you’ve given so many people the opportunity to do those things. To play.

That’s why I may not go to hell like I want, because of all the women there. But God may want me to go to heaven because I give everybody a shot.

photo by Kyle Johnson

by RJ Cubarrubia

These days, laptop musicians are big: they’re in rock bands, pop bands, R&B groups, behind rappers, and even DJ’s. Mashups have gone from a fun and rare adventure into sampling done by skilled DJ’s to a common and pedestrian event performed by countless computer kids. And then there’s Greg Gillis aka Girl Talk; say mashup, think laptop musician, and envision a packed grindfest for an audience, and he’s probably first in your mind. Although he admits he wasn’t the first, Girl Talk brought in a new age where sweaty yet intelligent dance parties are possible, where watching a dude press stuff on his laptop can make you go crazy, and where you can hear Ben and Jerry like concoctions of samples and grooves and still freak the night away. I caught up with Greg when he stopped by Charlottesville, VA for a quick chat about his recent Asia tour, the different effects of each sample across the globe, his creative process, his admittedly nerdy and academic background (he said it, I didn’t!), and more.

How you been, man? What’s going on?

Good, just been traveling a lot. I recently went to Asia and I’m getting back to things here in the States.

How’d the Asia tour go? A little over a year ago I was in China and back then, they hadn’t even heard of Soulja Boy; they just got that. Is it crazy going overseas and seeing the kids maybe react differently to your music?

Yeah, yeah. I played two shows in Japan and one in Vietnam and I had only played Japan one other time like four or five years ago, so it is an interesting thing because I want the music I make to be its own new entity and exist in its own way while it obviously references so much other different music. It’s hard to gauge what’s familiar there. Of course, a lot of pop music from the US makes it over to Japan, but it’s hard to tell. There are weird things that were hits over there and there are weird things that weren’t hits over there. So yeah, those two Japanese shows were fascinating. Just the concert etiquette over there is mindblowing in itself just because people out there are just out to have a good time but they’re also so responsive and polite. You know, if you ask people to put their hands in the air or clap, everyone does it. It’s not cool to stand there with your arms folded or anything like that. It’s cool and then, of course, it’s interesting; when I’m playing sets, I’m always changing little bits, like a big collage I’m always adjusting, and I have points in my mind, at least in the US, where it’s like, “Oh, it’s going to go up here and down a little here and then maybe up.” But over there, it’s impossible to really tell what people would really be feeling.

Definitely. Is there any place in the world that you get especially stoked on in that sense?

Obviously the places I play a lot, you know, like I’m from Pittsburgh, so Pittsburgh is always great, and I went to college in Cleveland, and also Morgantown, West Virginia. With all those spots that I’ve played a lot, it’s always interesting because I think the majority of shows I play, 90% percent of the audience hadn’t heard of me prior to 2006, which isn’t a problem, but it’s fascinating going to Pittsburgh where they did know me prior to that and they’ve kind of seen the arc of what’s been going on there. And that’s cool, because playing in an arena and playing these bigger shows are great, and I’ve been doing this for a while, but it’s still surreal. I think in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Morgantown, those places, it’s a bit easier to share how weird it is with the audience because they’re witnessing it as well.

You mentioned earlier that you build collages of music as you create your own works. When you find things that really spark your interest or inspire you, is it natural and it just hits you or do you find yourself digging for cool stuff?

It’s a bit of both, you know. I feel the process for me is very intuitive, so a lot of the eureka moments that are seemingly eureka moments don’t really result in anything. It’s like, “Oh my God, this keyboard solo is perfect and it’s going to work out great and I love the pace of this and it sounds great!” And then I’ll sample it, cut it up, and then it just won’t fit with anything. So that’s a lot of music; the majority of stuff I sample and cut up doesn’t see the light of day, it’s never in a show, it’s never in an album, but I just listen to music all the time, like anyone. It’s hard to avoid listening to pop music, even if you really wanted to, so stuff just hits me all the time and I kind of keep a running tab of it. It’s rarely like I need to seek it out mainly because I still have a list of 50 songs I want to get to and that list never really runs dry. But I’m always taking out small things and introducing new things in my sets and sometimes I’m like, “Man, I just don’t have ay 60’s music,” or “I wish I had more 90’s alternative,” and things like that. So when it gets to that point, I’ll definitely seek it out, going through my album collections and be sitting there and staring at it, hunting it down sitting next to the radio stations. So occasionally I’m on the hunt but it’s sort of a rare thing.

You also mentioned earlier how you always try to mix it up, mix and match parts with different sets and keep it fresh, but when it comes time to pick what’s on the album, how hard or how intuitive of a process is that? It must be weird to commit to one thing and say, “This is it. This is the shit.”

Oh, it’s very difficult, and being slightly obsessive-compulsive about it does not make it any better. There’re so many variations and it’s tough for me to make major changes and that’s why I’ve put out on album approximately every two years, only forty minutes of music every two years. Between shows, you’ll hear small things taken in and out and each set is performed differently, so even stuff you heard from another show and you hear it again, the beat may come in differently, the vocal track might be over something else, something might be repeated more or less, and there are many variations and something is always changing. Coming to the album, it definitely is like a Greatest Hits: here are some things that really stuck in the sets, here are the things I’ve been playing a lot, here are the best things. But also, when I start to assemble the album, sometimes there’re gaps, like sometimes I don’t have anything I played in my sets that I feel is appropriate, so sometimes I have to create on the spot. But I feel like the album, when I go into it, it’s like having 75% of the puzzle pieces and you put those all together and then you have to fill in those gaps and say, “Ok, I need to come up with something there,” and I try to keep things as diverse and eclectic as possible. There’s no real formula but in my mind there’s a system and even doing so many sets, it’s not perfect to me. But yeah, the decision making process is kind of shitty and it’s just tough, especially when you’re about to document it and put it out and it’s going to be the thing that everyone critiques and what people judge you on. Live, you can drop a one-minute segment that might fall flat, but that will be the end of that. It’s very fun for me to experiment in a live setting but on the album it’s a little stressful because you want to be progressive and experimental but simultaneously, you want something that’s going to be successful, so you have to find that balance there.

I feel that I’ve come across a good amount of people who say they love your live sets, but they’re not into your albums, and just as many people who say vice versa. Do you ever feel there’s a disconnect between your live show and your albums?

Yeah, it’s definitely distinctly different. I feel like when I assemble an album, I’m not really trying to make a party set, you know? It’s definitely something I feel people can enjoy and dance to but I’m trying to make an interesting album. I think that’s why it jumps around a lot and it’s very intense. When I make an album, I’m not thinking about something that people can just put on in a club and dance to. I would rather put together an album people can listen to for years and it’s very detailed yet still listenable, so there are different goals there. I feel like the show is more functional and I feel with a lot of bands, when you go see them, they’re not necessarily going to play every single one of their slow jams live, it’s a more social experience and you have to take that into consideration. Live, naturally, I’m a bit more free form because I can’t edit; I drop every sample by hand so I can’t be as specific as I can be on the album, but I feel like I’m a bit more blatant about things: I’ll play things out a bit longer, I’ll have more repetition, those sorts of things and I take into consideration that if I could even perform new music at the pace of an album, I wouldn’t necessarily want to do that because it’s like tonight you’re going to have a few thousand people, some of them might have a couple drinks prior to coming, and it’s a crazy environment. It’s tough to sit there and process, “Oh, is that a three second Aerosmith sample?” I don’t want that to be what it’s about; I don’t want people to be standing there scratching their chins. I definitely think the show is a lot more functional and that’s something that I aim for, and I think the album is something where the ultimate goal is something you can listen to with headphones, but I definitely understand why some people like the album more than the show or the show more than the album.

I know you studied Biomedical Engineering at Case Western and that’s kind of an unexpected background. Do you ever feel that because your music sounds like it probably came from an art school kid and yet you came from a different environment that your background had an effect on the way you perceive and create music?

Oh, definitely. I think it’s a tough thing to analyze because I started college around the same time I started this particular project. I had a history going back to high school of being interested in this style of electronic music with sampling; it’s something I’ve been doing since I was about 15. But also, becoming an engineer and studying that, it definitely trains your mind in a certain way and you naturally become more detail oriented. I definitely think that was an influence on the way the Girl Talk project developed. But simultaneously, I was into a lot of experimental music when I first started Girl Talk and I still am, but I wanted to challenge my world. I went to a university that was kind of “nerdy” and I studied engineering, which is obviously nerdy, so I was always surrounded by that kind of academic environment and I feel like a lot the aspects of Girl Talk, embracing pop culture, embracing partying, having a good time, and dropping your pretensions, were definitely a direct result of my environment. It was like I was studying this stuff, I was surrounded by these people all the time, and it was kind of a tense environment so I wanted to create something not for them, they didn’t even hear what I was doing, but I wanted to react to that and just do something that was like the opposite.

When Night Ripper dropped in 2006, you came onto a lot of people’s radar and got a lot of recognition pretty quickly and helped bring about more laptop musicians and your genre to recognition. What do you feel your position is in all of that?

There are a lot of contemporaries of mine as well as people who came before me and I think laptops naturally have become more integrated into music completely outside of anything I’ve done. With all the software now, you see rock bands using laptops, all sorts of bands using laptops, DJ’s and whatever. I grew up watching a lot of live laptop musicians and live electronic music in high school and in college and I think with the success of this project, people started coming out to the shows after Night Ripper and they’d never gone to see a guy play a laptop. This is like an abstract concept to them but I don’t even think they were thinking like this; they were just thinking that this was a show where “I don’t care what he’s playing. Is it going to be entertaining? Am I going to have a good time?” and that’s it. So I think people naturally became comfortable with that idea without it challenging them. They just went to the show because they liked the record and they weren’t thinking that they were watching a guy play a laptop. Maybe they loved the show, maybe they hated it, but I think in a lot of ways they saw that happen so when they see this rock band use a computer or this other band use a computer or this DJ use a computer, they are obviously more familiar and comfortable with that. Now, it’s been a few years since the success of Night Ripper so I think that idea of playing a computer live is something that’s totally legitimized and I’ve seen a lot of people maybe influenced by my stuff or doing their own take on it and it’s interesting because for years, of course many people existed before me and did it before me, but it was a very small underground thing, this idea of playing a computer. Now, after what I’ve been through, there’s a set forum; you can make your own mixes and remixes on a computer and probably get booked shows by being a laptop musician. It’s interesting seeing the younger people doing their things because they have this platform now to exist that wasn’t necessarily there and it’s not weird to try to book a show with rock bands who play a computer and it’s very exciting and I’m very proud of that.

Does it ever trip you out that now people say they’re inspired by you?

Yeah, I see it, you know? It took a little while; I feel like after Night Ripper and the success of that, I just figured naturally people were going to start doing the same thing, but it took a couple years. Now, like I see a lot of people. People hit me up on Myspace all the time or I hear about this act and it’s weird and exciting, you know? It’s specifically weird because I have my own influences and reference points and I feel the music I’m doing has a deep history; it goes back to a lot of hip-hop, a lot of John Oswald, Negetivland, a lot of tape collage stuff and I feel that a lot of people who are influenced by me have never paid any mind to any of that music, which is awesome to me. I mean, it’s cool to be ignorant about it because that’s the way new ideas are going to develop. When everyone knows the history of music, everyone’s kind of thinking in same exact way and I don’t know the whole history of music and my music is totally ignorant to certain people. So the people coming after me have a totally different reference point for their foundation of what they want to be like and they’ve never heard of the stuff I was really into to get into this sort of thing. That means they’re going to be approaching it from a totally different perspective and I think that’s very exciting.

Cool. Thanks, Greg.

No problem.

Girl Talk’s latest album, Feed The Animals , is out now on Illegal Art. For more information and to download the album, visit Girl Talk’s Myspace or Illegal Art’s website.

photo by Andrew Waits

Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part our Song of the Day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unreleased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJs think you should hear. Each and every Friday we offer songs by local artists. Today’s featured selection, chosen by Midday Show Host Cheryl Waters, is “Hands” by The Dutchess & the Duke from their latest album Sunset/Sunrise available October 6th, on Hardly Art.

Life changing events often make great fodder for songwriters and today’s Song of the Day “Hands” is proof. The life changing event in question for The D & D’s Jesse Lortz was the impending birth of his child which inspired a lot of the raw, soulful lyrics found on this album. Though their debut, She’s the Dutchess, He’s the Duke, was chock full of darkly honest subject matter, Sunset/Sunrise gives the feeling that you’re a fly on the wall of a confessional. The mood and tempo are stark, but the album overall has a fuller sound due in part to the different instrumentation (like the organ features on today’s song) and also the production that psych folk artist-turned-producer Greg Ashley (Gris Gris) brought to the mix. Lortz sought out Ashley to produce this record in his analog driven studio in Oakland. “This album was made for Greg Ashley to record.”

The Dutchess & the Duke are celebrating the release of the new album with two Seattle performances including a free, in-store performance at the Ballard Sonic Boom Records on October 7th at 6pm. You can also catch their official record release party at The Croc on October 9th with Meth Teeth and Dead Ghosts before they head out on a national tour with Greg Ashley which includes a special performance at Hardly Art’s CMJ showcase in New York on October 24th. For more info and dates, check out their MySpace page.

In the meantime, here they are performing “Mary” late last year, followed by an interview from before their set at Sasquatch this summer:

by RJ Cubarrubia

Five minutes into hanging out on Diplo’s tour bus, a minor crisis emerges: Major Lazer, his latest dancehall reggae project with fellow DJ/producer Switch featuring a fictional dreadlocked cartoon commando, is about to take the stage in an hour and the vest for his three-piece suit is missing. After some confusion, it turns out Major Lazer’s kind and hard working tour manager, Will, accidentally misplaced the vest in Vancouver, and unless a beautiful vest appears in the next 60 minutes, the signature matching suits of Major Lazer will be noticeably less sexy. But the news hardly phases Diplo; he calmly tells his manager they’ll just have to try to get a vest as best they can tonight, and if not tonight, they’ll just have to try to get a vest in San Francisco. After all, that’s just what he does: if things aren’t the way you like them, do work, make it happen yourself, and try to have a good time doing it. After covering so many styles, DJing countless shows across the world, and breaking plenty of fresh artists, you realize that this dude has probably seen it all. But no matter how much he’s seen and heard, his insatiable appetite for the freshest funks and his desire and urgency to share his findings and passions with the youth of today and tomorrow continues to expand. This commitment to the growth and evolution of dance and electronic styles is truly what sets him apart. 2004’s Florida, Hollertronix, and helping to break a little artist named M.I.A. were only the start; between his label, Mad Decent, his Australia based charity, DJ workshop, and studio, Heaps Decent, film work with his baile funk documentary, Favela On Blast, and upcoming television show on Current TV, Diplo is focused on finding the best and most fun sounds, samples, and beats from around the world, spreading the word, passing it onto the next gang of youngsters, and forever expanding the electronic encyclopedia of the next generation. After the vest issue was squared away, Diplo and I went to the back room to relax and talk about Favela On Blast, Major Lazer, our common Florida roots, what’s next for record labels, and expanding our foundations for the future of dance and electronic music. Basically, he does it for the kids. What more could you want?

First thing is, I’m sorry, I have to geek for a second; I grew up in Central Florida for 18 years…

Oh, yeah?! Where at?

Winter Park.

Really?

Oh, yeah. There’re a lot of people back home that are big fans and have been following your stuff for a while, but we can never figure out where in Florida you’re from.

Well, my mom and dad, they live in New Smyrna Beach, in Edgewater. I used to have a radio show at Rollins College [WPRK] and I went to UCF [University of Central Florida] for two years.

Damn, so then you moved up to Philly?

Yeah, there’s only so much you can do in Orlando.

Yeah, for sure. Hell, I’m here right now. So, we just had SIFF [Seattle International Film Festival] and they premiered your film, Favela On Blast…

Really?

Yeah, and people liked it.

Really? That’s awesome.

Was that your first time doing film? Was that your first foray into directing and stuff like that?

Yeah, the first time I’d done anything with film was this movie, but it’s just the beginning because while that was all myself and I invested in myself, I didn’t have anybody to help me and I learned everything through doing that film. I think it came out pretty well, it was just really expensive in the end to kind of have it as a hobby. But we’re doing a television show with Current TV that’s similar to the film, where we go to mad places with different music scenes.

I know that you’ve been into baile funk for a while, but how long did this project take and how’d you get into baile funk in the first place?

It took three years to finish the film, but I was into baile funk for about four or five years. The first time I was down in Brazil was in 2004, and that was over five years ago, and it was the first time I had ever really heard of anybody going down there and doing stuff with baile funk. There was another guy from Germany named Daniel Haaksman and he was doing compilations at the time, Favela Booty Beats. And I think going down there, me and him were the only two dudes who came back with a lot of music because none of the people I knew had any of that music; it was really hard to find, that music. And then I made the connections down there and just kept working on it. I got into it just, I guess, through word of mouth and I learned about the music in the scene. I went down there to check it out, really just on a whim, you know? I had no job; I got fired.

What was it like going down to South America exploring a cultural movement you’re only reading about and stepping into a foreign country and a foreign experience? What was it like to just be thrust into all of that when you started working on this film?

For me, I don’t know. I guess, at the time, I wasn’t really taking it that seriously. Now, I have a crew when I’m working on film stuff; I have a team of kids and it’s a little more professional. Back then, I was doing it like Indiana Jones style. There was a lot of trial and error.

Are you thinking of doing more film in the future? I know you’re friends with Buraka Som Sistema and when I talked to DJ Riot and Conductor, they compared the baile funk movement to kuduro.

Actually, for the television show, we’re going to Angola in September, hopefully, to do an episode. We went Jamaica to do a launch for Major Lazer and we’re supposed to do an episode there. But the show will be more when I cool down after the summer because I have all these gigs to do between here and Europe, and then when I cool down after that, the show will be the priority for Mad Decent and stuff and we’ll be able to travel and pick out the best places and invest a lot of time in it. So that’s the first big deal. The second big deal is with Major Lazer, we’re going to have a proper cartoon, so that will be cool too.

With Major Lazer, how did that come about? It’s a crazy thing, with that fictional character.

I mean we just wanted to make it funner. It’s kind of like a solo record for me and Dave. It’s the first time we’ve done some properly in, like, 5 years. It’s more like just to kind of give the record a context, you know? We wanted to do this reggae album and these songs and give them a context so they make sense since reggae is so disjointed and it’s not really album based, there’s not really a format for records like that. But we hope this kind of works out and people get into it and get into the art and stuff like that because we want to bring back the fun style, the fun stuff of Jamaican culture instead of that badman homophobia shit.

Definitely, I think that’s something a lot of people feel strongly about, in terms of Jamaican culture. Do you feel that there’s a way out of that anytime soon in Jamaican culture, when it comes to that attitude of homophobia?

Homophobia, we don’t cover that on the record. I mean, it’s one of those pillars in dancehall: you either talk about weed, homophobia, pussy, guns. There’re only a couple subjects to fuck with. For us, I appreciate the artists for what they do and they have their own opinions, but we aren’t interested in doing anything like that. I have loads of fans from the homosexual community, too. Those kids are the ones who really hold it down; even from the beginning with M.I.A. and Santigold, they’re the first ones who get on the beat and take chances and bring it to the maddest parties. They’re like the kids who are really the trendsetters.

I know you do some good stuff with Heaps Decent. How’d that get going and how’d that come to life?

Well, as long as I’m a white dude doing dancehall or baile funk movies, or whatever the fuck, I think it’s something important to do and it also gives people less ammunition to hate us. Also, I started this shit out when I was a schoolteacher before I was a DJ, so now it’s just important to keep developing and planting the seeds for kids so that when I do finish this shit, somebody else will have material to work with, you know? Like there will be more fascinating stuff that kids are doing and it’s always good to enrich what those kids have and do and stuff.

Twitter has been something that’s pretty big for you. A friend told me something about when you were at the Grammys, your Twitter was kind of geeking out at seeing some of those people. What’s it like being like in some circles they know you but you go there and you just blend in?

I guess I always live like two lives. I don’t even know how I’m in the Hollywood circles because I’m just like a dickhead who’s lucky to be around. I don’t even know how I got to the Grammys; it’s just ridiculous. Everybody there, they spend their whole lives to do something like that and we just kind of stumbled onto it. But for real, it’s more of a matter of being honest and more straightforward with it. You have to see through the smoke and mirrors, you know? I just do this stuff for all the kids who come out and see me and grassroots attitude is what keeps me going. Mad Decent runs on fumes; we just try to do what we do and push things forward. But we’re really lucky to keep doing things that are interesting while making money to get by, you know? I always wish I had more time to finish the things that I do, though, but we’re doing the best we can. I think that the new age, it is a matter of being savvy with multimedia and reaching the kids in any aspect possible because we don’t feel like, “Oh, I got to get my video on MTV,” because we can put a video like Blaqstarr and Rye Rye on Youtube and get a million hits and that Lil Wayne single that came out the same month only got like a hundred thousand; we just did it word of mouth. So even if we’re not selling records like them, we at least have the media and we know how to touch the kids, you know? And major labels catch up pretty fast but at least we’re able to do it and we always like trendsetting. We’re going to make some headroom and get to a point where we don’t have to be defensive to the major labels and stuff, because all those dudes do is bite our style anyway or take our artists or take what we do cool and make it commercial. That’s cool too, but we just want to keep it going, keep it fresh.

Yeah, word of mouth can spread so fast these days that you don’t even need a record label behind you.

Exactly. When kids come out to sign to Mad Decent for instance, I tell them right away, “What are you going to get out of it, really?” because you don’t need a label and if you want to fuck with us, we really only want to sign kids who really want to be part of the team and people who are really forward thinking. If they’re not, you know, we sign singles of stuff we want to push out there, and they’ll maybe make a little money on the publishing side, but kids don’t really need labels. All I can offer people, as Diplo, is that I can offer direction and help a bit with like working a record that way. Sometimes people need the help; Blaqstarr, for instance, he needs direction, he needs kind of like someone to be quality control. Otherwise, he’s out of his mind and crazy. But some people don’t; like, Rusko doesn’t need much direction, but I feel I want to break a dubstep sound in America in a way that it’s not like a gimmick. I want people to think like, this is music that is from 2009 and 2010, this isn’t just some shit that is regurgitated, you know? And it can fit in with popular culture, because some of the tracks we’re working on are really big with good vocals on them and things, so it’s not like crossing over, so to say, but it is like a way to inject tracks to have a widespread appeal in a new fashion. You don’t have to cheese out dubstep or you don’t have to put baile funk and put Madonna on top of the beat to break it, but you do have to give it a context to which kids can get it. Like, I’m not going to break Mr. Catra or some of the guys featured in our film. Some of those guys, they’re not commercial by any means; they talk about sex and food and shit but they’re still touring and promoting the records and doing things a baile funk artist wouldn’t give a fuck about. Like, I couldn’t really explain to the kids down in Brazil that this is how we’re going to do it to make this shit blow up because I can’t teach them about baile funk. They’re born in baile funk. Some of these younger kids, it’s something new, they’re same as me, they’re my generation. Baile funk was something they picked up when it was already formed and they just try to do something different with it. That’s what I’m talking about. I’m not talking about taking trends and co-opting them to give pop people credibility.

You’ve already mentioned the TV show, but what’s next for Mad Decent as a whole? You’re branching out into all sorts of multimedia and you just got a distribution deal with Downtown, so it seems like Mad Decent is growing, if not blowing up.

We don’t really have any money so it’s kind of like using somebody else’s money, like Downtown’s, to do as much as possible. We have to use someone else’s resources just to kind of put ourselves out there because there’s not like a backroom for Mad Decent. It’s pretty much just my money and people who work hard as fuck like Jasper [Goggins], Paul Devro, and it’s just a team of kids who love music and shit. With Downtown, we’re trying to take advantage of the opportunity, because those guys are always really crazy with the way that they change things. They take chances on records, you know? They had hit singles that are fucking weird, like Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” or pushing Santigold’s record when nobody else would fuck with her and they had success with that. The multimedia, it’s just a way to reach kids. I mean the only way I got to the Grammys is because “Paper Planes” got into a stoner movie. I thought the song was great but no one gives a fuck because there’s sort of a chain of command for people who listen to records and that’s something that goes on the back shelf for a major label. M.I.A. was ready to retire before that shit blew up, remember? She really needed a release and we just got lucky, so it’s all about just doing things like that and getting lucky. And like now, we’re at a point where we’re a big enough voice and people trust us to do things and we’re just trying to take advantage of it, man. I mean, it’s not easy by any means, but as long as we keep staying fresh, then I think we’ll be alright.

No doubt. I appreciate it, man.

Yeah, cool man.

For more information on Diplo and Mad Decent, visit Diplo’s Myspace page and the Mad Decent Website. For more information on Heaps Decent, visit their website. For Major Lazer tunes, tour dates, and information, visit their Myspace page.

interview by RJ Cubarrubia
photos by Chona Kasinger

If you were ever a teenager in the first half of this decade, chances are you met someone, laughed, cheered, made out, fell in love, got your heart broken, fell in hate, learned a few things about life, and did a little (or a lot of) growing up along with a lovely band from Omaha, Nebraska called Cursive. For kids my age, Cursive was a beacon of catharsis where singer, guitarist, and primary songwriter Tim Kasher emptied his rage and frustration with such chilling honesty that it made our awkward and painful teenage moments bearable; Cursive was our Bible, Domestica and The Ugly Organ were our Old and New Testaments, and Tim Kasher was our martyr. Six years and two releases later, living The Good Life with a few side projects along the way, Cursive is still hard at work helping the next generation cope with the growing pains of adolescent love and hate with their latest release, Mama, I’m Swollen. After their KEXP in-studio, I chatted with Tim about their recent appearance on network television, the progression of Cursive, and what’s next for him (marriage!).

You guys were recently on The Late Show with David Letterman. How was it, being on network TV for the first time?

You know, it was pretty weird. There are fairly simple benefits when you do something like that, where you run around and play music like this. Our older generations, like your family, don’t really quite understand what you’re doing, so when you do things, like when you end up in Rolling Stone or if you end up on Letterman, it helps validate what you’re doing. And I know it seems really strange to think of it that way, but you know, for your grandmother, it ends up being like now she understands. It’s like, “Oh, ok, I see. You’re one of those bands that I don’t listen to that plays Letterman.”

Yeah, it’s like, “You guys are making money! Wow!” That’s definitely a trip. Was it like a point of reflection, like, “We’re a band that originated in Omaha,” and now it’s all full circle?

Oh yeah, and we still get a kick out of David Letterman kind of being surprised, like at the end he’s like, “Oh, you’re from Omaha!” There’s definitely a lot of pride. I have a ton of pride for Nebraska in general and the Midwest in a greater sense. I feel more comfortable in Nebraska.

I heard you recently moved to California, though. Why’d you move and how do you like it?

I’ve been liking it fine. I did it because I’ve stayed in Omaha for so many years because of the band but it just got to a point where I didn’t want to stop doing the band but I didn’t want to halt all the other things I wanted to do with my life, which was basically just to go live different places and go explore different cities. I think I obsess over what I’m going to think about on my deathbed and I want to be able to have a rich timeline. I’m hoping to be fortunate enough to keep playing music and keeping up my life pattern and continue to live different places and doing different things.

Yeah, with all those other projects, what’s next for them and what’s next for Cursive?

For Cursive, this album is so new that the horizon is just, “What is the next tour?” and stuff like that. For myself, I’m working on an album that I think will inevitably have to just call Tim Kasher for lack of a better name. I guess, maybe I feel like it’s time to start doing, and start writing, what will take me to the grave.

Something that is very interesting to me is that for kids my age and in my generation, Domestica and The Ugly Organ were huge albums for us. How do you feel that you’ve progressed since then? How was that progression been for you and what is it like now that you’re older?

Yeah, it’s interesting to see the kind of the separation of the crowd now. Certainly The Ugly Organ was the biggest record, as far as how it was received, but what’s odd now is having done two records after that, we’re used to pulling out any Ugly Organ song and the crowd’s going to flip out. But you know, that album came out in 2003 or 2004 and now it surprises us that you’re playing in front of a whole new group of younger people who maybe haven’t even picked up Ugly Organ yet. So basically, there’s everybody: there’s like the kids who want to be the coolest, so they like Domestica the most, then there’s definitely the biggest base of people that listen to Ugly Organ, and then with the younger people, Happy Hallow is what they’re most excited about, and now we have a new record, some people want to hear that too.

So I saw you in 2006 in Charlottesville, Virginia and at the time you said you were visiting and playing the show because you had just started dating a woman from there. Are you still together with her today?

[laughter]

Yeah, she is from Charlottesville, and we’re getting married this fall.

Wow, congrats. Thanks, Tim.

Yeah, you bet. Thanks.

Cursive’s latest album, Mama, I’m Swollen, is out now on Saddle Creek Records. For more information, visit Cursive’s Myspace page and website.

interview by RJ Cubarrubia
photos by Brittney Bush Bollay

Vancouver garage-punk duo Japandoids consists of two friends making loud, catchy, and strangely accessible music that sounds like a punk rock summer soundtrack for kids who just like to have fun. Best friends David Prowse and Brian King play loud, fast, and hard, and their debut album, Post-Nothing, has been a word-of-mouth hit, leading to a proper record and worldwide distribution deal with Polyvinyl. Things looked grim earlier this year after Brian’s emergency surgery for a perforated ulcer forced the band to cancel their tour, but luckily the boys are back at it, with a full set of tour dates ready this summer. I sat and talked with David and Brian after their KEXP in-studio to talk about the surgery, the upcoming tour, the Vancouver scene, and more.

This was supposed to be a huge year for you guys, with the new album coming out around the world, and you had a lot of touring scheduled, but all of a sudden there was a medical emergency. What happened? What went down?

Brian: We left to start what was going to be a six-week tour and we played the first show of the tour in Calgary. The next morning, when we were still sleeping, I woke up in just an excruciating amount of pain. Luckily we were ten minutes from the hospital and Dave hobbled me to the hospital and a couple hours after that I was in emergency surgery, spent the next ten days in the hospital, canceled the whole tour, and that was April 24. I’ve just been recovering for the past six weeks trying to get ready to do take two of the same tour. I have to be able to rock out.

Definitely. What’d you do in the hospital? Did Dave come visit you or anything?

Brian: He did! I think I was actually… Well, he was there.

David: Brian was pretty high for the first few days.

Brian: I don’t remember the first few days, like, at all. I know he was there, though.

This tour this summer, this your first big adventure, right?

Brian: Yeah, we’ve kind of done one-off things. For a long time, we couldn’t, like, take a million years off of work and stuff like that because we didn’t have money to do that, so we would do one-off shows. Like, we played CMJ last year and we just went to New York and played a couple of shows. We did Pop Montreal and did the same thing, where we just flew to Montreal, played three shows in three days and came home. We’ve done it in Toronto and then we’ve toured a little bit around here; we played Seattle a couple times and stuff. This is will be an interesting adventure.

You self released two EP’s but you have a label behind you now, Polyvinyl. How’d you get with them? That was recently, right?

Brian: It was very recent, yeah.

David: They felt sorry for us.

Brian: They got a hold of our record and then they got in contact with us. Our record, I guess, is just floating around, and now a lot of people have heard it.

In your music there seems to be a lot of love but kind of some hate for your hometown. Do you guys love it? Hate it?

Brian: Yeah, there’s definitely like a love-hate relationship. I think that Vancouver, especially the music community, is… How would you describe it, Dave?

David: There are a lot of great bands in Vancouver but there’s just a lot of forces working against them. It’s very isolated; it’s hard to come down the West coast because of the border, and then it’s very far from the next major market in Canada. It’s like twelve hours to the next big city. And it’s Calgary, which is where bad things always seem to happen to us. And there’s no KEXP in Vancouver, that’s for sure. There’s just a lack of venues and there’s a lack of real support for all the great bands that are in Vancouver.

You guys are really good friends with a goofy name. Was the name just a spur of the moment thing where it just clicked, like putting together two names?

Brian: It was actually a combination of two names. I really wanted to name the band Pleasure Droids and Dave really wanted to name the band Japanese Scream and neither of us wanted the other name, so I just combined Pleasure Droids and Japanese Scream into Japandroids. At the time, I don’t think either of us really loved it, but it was something that just kept going.

David: Brian is the Dangermouse of band names, mash-up king.

[laughter]

Thanks, guys. I can’t wait to see you play again.

Brian: Cool, thanks.

David: Thanks, man. We’ll see you soon.

Japandroids’ debut album, Post-Nothing, is out now via digital download on Unfamiliar records and will be released worldwide on August 4 on Polyvinyl records. They will be playing at The Vera Project on July 25 as part of the Capitol Hill Block Party and then on August 8 for KEXP’s 7th Annual Summer BBQ at Seattle Center’s Mural Ampitheatre. For more information, visit Japandroids’ Myspace page.

Jeanine Anderson

interview by RJ Cubarrubia

Electronic icons The Crystal Method are true pioneers still kicking in a genre and culture where new and fresh has taken an online and often blogged meaning marked by technophilia. Their newest effort, Divided by Night, features guest vocals from people you wouldn’t suspect, like Matisyahu, Emily Haines, and Jason Lytle, and may be their most diverse album to date. Before their USC 12 show with The Prodigy and LA Riots, I met with Ken Jordan and Scott Kirkland in their dressing room at WaMu theater. Deceptively down to earth and extremely kind, they spoke with me about their latest album, their collaborations, their new Crystalwerks recording studio, the advent of blogs and internet culture, and an online fan chat they did while flying to their first gig of the tour.

At the beginning of this tour, on your first flight, you did a chat on Virgin Airlines. Who’s idea was that and how’d it go?

Ken: I’m not sure how that whole thing came together but there was somebody at Virgin America that was into the band and wanted to do some kind of promotion, you know? Also, I think our music is going to be on their flights.

Scott: Our first show was in Boston so they had a contest and it was pretty wild. We’ve flown quite a lot and to be able to stare at and have a live chat with someone was pretty crazy.

Ken: Yeah, it was actually fun. I’ve never been so busy on a flight.

Yeah, I bet it keeps you awake.

Ken: Yeah, it was great; everything is on the screens in front of you, you know, and one of the first things we saw on the screen was an advertisement for Absinthe. That was like our carrot, you know? As soon as we got done with the chats and interviews and stuff, we’re getting a bunch of Absinthe.

You got the good stuff?

Ken: Well, we were in the front row where they weren’t charging us for anything.

[laughter]

I’m from a different generation than you guys and something very big for us is the internet and remix culture and blog culture. With you guys being so established, what is your reaction to this new wave where mixtapes and tracks can be released and in an hour, it could be on someone else’s mix?

Scott: It’s pretty impressive. We always try to stay in tune with technology and the way things are going and I’ve been a fan of lots of blogs for quite some time. Yet, it’s amazing how well so many of them are doing and how much information you get from them. When we were DJing a lot, and when I had more time when we were working on the record and were at home more, I checked my various favorite blogs on a daily basis and you can see, “Oh, this band is coming out with a new single,” or “This person just remixed this artist.” It’s a whole different world than where we were at even 5 years ago.

When I think of The Crystal Method, the first things that come to mind are two huge records [1997’s Vegas and 2001’s Tweekend], not only for electronic music but music culture in general. Do you ever feel it’s a challenge with each new thing you release because you had those two enormously successful and important records?

Ken: Well, we’re always trying to make a better one, you know, so that’s always a challenge. It’s never a bad thing to have some success but we’re always trying to make a better record and that makes a good challenge for each record.

Scott: We’re also trying to not do the same thing twice. Tweekend was so much different than Vegas; we just wanted to make a different record and I remember reading a review that was like, “Oh, might as well call this one Vegas 2!” or something like that and I was like, “What?!” But at that point, people are going to have preconceived notions of what you’re going to do so we go on and just try to make something that we’re into that expands our sound and we try never to repeat ourselves. It’s amazing to find out how many people were turned onto electronic music by our music.

Your new record, Divided By Night, is very different and one thing you guys have been known for is awesome collaborations. This time, it looks like you reached out to some different people, like Emily Haines and Jason Lytle. What was your thought process going into this and saying, “Hey, we’re going to get some original vocal tracks from artists we may not be familiarly associated with”?

Ken: I think for collaborations we like working with people that other people wouldn’t think we would pair with. We like kind of going with opposite styles. Jason is just a really great songwriter with a great voice and it was a weird pick with Jason but we’re really happy with that track, “Slipstream”. But Emily, she could just sing over anybody’s track and it would sound great! Her voice is really good. That’s also one of the top tracks on the record; she’s just amazing.

With this new record, this is the first one you’ve recorded in your new studio, Crystalwerks? How was that? How was it to have that full studio in your house and how was recording this album different from The Bombshelter?

Scott: Well, The Bombshelter was actually a studio that was in a two-car garage that was attached to the house Ken and I first moved into years and years and years ago. Eventually both of us moved out and we kept it as a studio. This studio isn’t attached to any of our houses but it is the kind of place you feel comfortable going into every day. It’s very ergonomically friendly and there’s lots of natural light and creature comforts that allow you to show up every day and not worry about the little things. You just focus on making music. You can just go there and people will kick back and hang out.

Must be good for the collaborations.

Scott: Yeah, it really let us to not be embarrassed to bring people over to the studio. In our old studio, we used to have to record the vocals in this living room area. It was just bizarre what we used to put people through. I think people did appreciate the fact we did do all that in that studio and everything was self made. But Tom Morello’s amp in the kitchen, Rahzel in the other room… Just lots of weird stuff.

After this tour, what’s next?

Ken: We’ve got at least one remix we’re going to be doing at some point this year. We’re remixing another Doors track, so that should be fun. I don’t know; we really don’t want to take a big break from writing our own stuff so hopefully when we get right back home we can start working on the next album. But also, there might be some film stuff or video game stuff that we do as well.

Thanks y’all. I really appreciate it. It was a pleasure.

Scott: Thank you.

Ken: Oh yeah, no problem.

The Crystal Method’s latest album, Divided by Night, is out now on Tiny e Records. For more information on their album, their current tour, and more, visit their Myspace page.

While everyone else at Sasquatch was getting suntans, checking out all the great bands on the three stages and generally having a good time, KEXP’s own DJ Sharlese was stuck in a trailer behind the Yeti stage, trying to convince bands to come talk to her about any old random thing. Somehow she managed to grab John Vanderslice, Passion Pit, St. Vincent, Ra Ra Riot, Viva Voce, Vince Mira, Mad Rad, Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head and a whole bunch more. Here are the first of her unsuspecting victi… er, guests:

Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band:

Ra Ra Riot:

Champagne Champagne:

Dent May: