Interview: Group-Chatting with Stampeter

Stampeter - Connecticut DIY-Pop

Fresh off the release of the sad-punk outfit latest EP, "Too Many Boys", I met with the three members of Stampeter via Facebook Messenger to talk touring, workout playlists, and pineapple.

I just received your new t-shirt in the mail! Who designed them, and what made you/them decide on the Neon Genesis Evangelion theme?

Tom Fisher (drums): billie mae designed them and denny can explain why the theme was chosen.

Denny Notpuka (bass): i saw, u look so good in it! i had the idea bc we wanted to make shirts, I always rlly liked the look of those old gray fooly cooly shirts. our friend Billie Mae designed it we just sent them a frame from the anime to trace hehe, and Luca's friend Destiny printed it.
I love Eva, its one of my favorite anime tbh. Luca's seen it like halfway but they still loved Misato.

Luca Bartlomiejczyk (guitar/vocals): my friend Destiny Idalis Giusti printed the shirts, her company is De La Luna Creations.

What made you want to re-record so many older songs for Too Many Boys? How did you choose which ones to include?

Luca: well i just chose the best of the songs that we were actually playing live to record.
they were the most polished and my producer dawson goodrich felt that we could make them sound dif enough from the bedroom recordings to still sound good, but stick to what we already had in the sense of the concept.
there were only 2 songs that were already recorded but we felt they were good enough that they deserved to be polished.
the other songs on the album are just as old if not older, just never recorded until then.



How long had the live band been together before recording the record? How do you all meet?

Denny: the current lineup formed in March when luca asked me and tom to join, we've been writing new songs and makin it big full time yaknow?
tom drives half an hour to my house.
luca drives an hour from his house, or half from his school cuz hes a college boy.
we used to practice in my house but living with my grandparents. they couldn't handle the racket, so we practice at my uncles place that's a block down. he's always working and he's a contractor so he built his house but its like half complete so we just jam in the kitchen and be loud.

Luca: this lineup only happened after the record, before the record was devon covert on drums and jack dutt on bass.
but jack didn't even play bass on the album.

Denny: (devon plays in grass stains, a sick band our pals are in u should check out)
(promo for their new LP, tentative title "B. D. D.")
just putting that out there.



Besides Stampeter and Grass Stains, what bands around you are worth checking out? And what kind of bands in particular are coming out of the Connecticut scene? Did any artist in particular make you want to start writing/playing music?

Denny: i love this question!! always have thought of it in the shower.

Tom: uhhhh my favorite band for my entire childhood was coldplay and they got me started playing piano which got me into music as a whole and bands like teen suicide inspired me to write my own stuff.

Luca: for me personally i've been playing guitar and in and out of bands since i was 12 but what really brought me into this scene of music was meeting the people from my old band ellen degenerate namely judge russell from grass stains. he showed me a ton of music that i never heard of before and this underground scene that was new to me and i found it so cool that there was a whole hidden scene of music that i just hadn't been aware of. after that i started frequenting bandcamp and going to shows and stuff.
stampeter was not my first band but i think that having it be denny and toms first band experience makes it feel very new and fresh for me bc they bring so much drive and enthusiasm to the table and its really refreshing.
i would say right now that my main influences are bands in the scene who use powerful vocals/guitar and unique structures like hop along and two humans, bedroom pop bands like elvis depressedly and starry cat, folk punk bands like nana grizol and foot ox.
and i'm also trained as a jazz/blues bassist thru high school and that definitely influences the way i play.

Denny: what made me wanna start writing/playing/getting involved with music: when i was in 8th grade i stumbled upon pat the bunny's projects like ramshackle glory and wingnut dishwashers union, and they just blew me away by the lyrics and politics, it made me wanna find a scene (which i didn't find until like fresh/sophmore year lol).
i just found it really cool how someone from the area was singing about stuff that seemed big to my perspective, and was from vermont. how simple his music was (often just an acoustic and a very scratchy voice) but how much it spoke to me.
bands around us worth checkin out? hmm, DUMP HIM is from Western Mass and i really dig them, v cool punky punk but not punk punk.
Peaer was from Fairfield i think, they're making it big now but they moved to brooklyn but they still gig a lot here, I saw em on Friday
Prince Daddy & The Hyena is kinda localish, they're making it very big and i'm happy for them. we r opening for them. i'dd rec em if you haven't heard, and if you like a grinded version of weezer/btmi/green day with lots of weed jokes

Tom: two headed girl and carlos danger are the two best ones rn imo
also ice cream orphan is great



Tom, do you think Coldplay still influences your music in any way?

Tom: umm it's unlikely that they influence me too much besides maybe some song structures that i find inspiration in.

Is Stampeter your first band? What was the first show you played?

Tom: i did and kinda still do a folky lofi pop project called lifetime warranty. i started recording in freshman year and played my first show in the beginning of sophomore year.

Denny: stampeter is my first band, the first was at a pizza place we booked last minute bc our real first gig got dropped, and our second gig we were duped soooo...
it was good we were surrounded by pals.



A pizza place gig sounds ideal, to be honest. Doesn't get more Bandcamp than that. 

Denny: true the owner is super nice, i've been to a lot of gigs there. teen suicide even played there in 2015 hehe.
we played pool there a few nights ago.

What kind of pizza toppings do you usually order? How do you feel about pineapple?

Tom: i get cheese. i've never tried pineapple.

Denny: cheese, on that vegetarian wave ya dig? sometimes onions.
and i mean whatever, at that first gig toms friends from school got pineapple pizza and i got a slice bc i was really hungry. its okay. but it really doesnt compliment the pizza its just not a taste for me.

Luca: i love pineapple pizza fuck y'all.

Denny: easy i was neutral.

Luca: although i have to admit i don't usually get pineapple bc no one else likes it- my go to is olives and green peppers.



Where do you want to go with your music in the future? Do you want to keep improving on your new sound or do you want to try new stuff?

Denny: definitely improving, writing new stuff.

Luca: we've talked about this recently, our goal isn't really to get huge or anything but recently i booked TRextasy and they asked for $100 just to play and they also have been on bills with bands everyone knows like adult mom and stuff and they have audiotree sessions and that's like where i wanna be, i wanna be good enough to make a tiny bit of money and be a little known to the point where ppl love us in the scene and we don't have to beg for gigs but also that we can still get away with playing diy gigs.

Denny: in the future we're tryna play 1000 cap venues in long island with 311 and bon jovi.

Luca: short term goals tho, i wanna start solidifying new songs and putting out an EP this summer bc i'm so sick of playing the same songs ive played since i was 16.
plus denny and tom have been bringing some new songwriting to the table which i dig. so the songwriting in the future wont be solely centered around me.

Denny: the idea of fame gives me bad anxiety, i'm a v personal secluded person and its weird bc a lot of my identity in art is from my queerness which i'm not v open about sadly but i mean on a lighter note i'm cool if i can get pizza and no one recognizes me. if they do that's fine as long as its like a hello idk i sound pious.
fuck it just say hi to me whatever.

Luca: i've never thought about it too much bc it's so far out from where i am, not something i have to worry about now.
fame would be wild, but honestly if i had $$$ and fame i'd use it to donate a lot and buy a decent house for me and my girlfriend and our dogs.
i just wanna live a quiet life, and im very anxious about not having the money to do so bc im in such a strenuous career path.

What should I expect from the EP you plan to record? Also, where would you donate the money? And what kind of dogs?

Luca: i just wanna live a quiet life, and i'm very anxious about not having the money to do so bc i'm in such a strenuous career path. you can definitely expect a nod to the last album soundwise, but also a difference in songwriting and songs that are a little more punk than before.

Denny: like strong dog but longer.

Luca: now that i'm in college i'm so mellow but denny's songwriting is all angsty so there's gonna be some contradictions there. all my songs are gonna be about lifting weights and showing off my muscular physique.

if i could i'd just donate to lots of queer kids thru those tumblr gofundme's or to organizations that help queer youth, we want like five dogs of all different sizes and lots of plants maybe a garden.

So it's going to be a sad gym-core album?

Luca: im kidding about the gymcore.
imagine: i love my biceps baby, but not as much as i love you.

Denny: if u want gymcore check out fightsong.

Luca: no i've just been working out for like 3 days and i have this complex where i think i'm a fucking meathead now.

What music do you listen to when you work out?

Luca: straight up 2006 pop music.
jason derulo, beyonce, britney spears, like beat heavy pop music.
then for my cool down i listen to mellow indie  like pinegrove and ratboys.

Denny: at the gym i just listen to lil uzi vert.

What was the best year of your life, aesthetically or emotionally?

Denny: tbh? this year. last year was hell

Luca: from what i can remember this one, i mean my childhood was def better but out of my formative adolescent years definitely this one, i have a really great relationship, ive close to beaten mental illness, i'm starting to work out, i've been really trying hard at school, i recently quit my shitty job and im much happier working at the bakery with my mom again.
my only sources of stress rn are finals and sometimes my parents being controlling and stuff. they're kinda transphobic and coming out to them was a sad experience but now we just don't talk about it.

we're actually gonna be going on a small tour in july which i'm SO excited for.
we're doing like MA NY PA NJ, keeping it small rn.
over the winter break we're thinking of going west.

What's one piece of advice you'd give anyone reading this?

Denny: contrary to popular belief your pores don't have muscles that open up

Luca: i would say that uh the only way to make progress is to push yourself and work hard.
and not use ur downfalls as an excuse and instead overcome them as best you can, and you'll be proud of yourself rather than defeated thinking u cant do things, bc no matter what gets in ur way be it a disability or a setback it just means u need to work harder and go for what u wanna do regardless.
my mom taught me that bc she has physical disabilities that impact her in everyday life and she never stops grinding and tbh even tho im mentally ill, i dont either im always trying to get better and learn and do what i have to do regardless of the setbacks.

Never Stop The Grind- Muscle Milk

Denny: hm actually in general in life: know when to stop i guess.
be good to your friends, go vegetarian if you can.
i like that, luca.

grind hard play hard.

Interview: Chris Gelpi // Nemuri Winter Label Founder

Compelled by the otherworldly chilliness of Nemuri Winter's debut label compilation, I hit collective founder Chris Gelpi up with a few questions concerning the record and his past artistic ventures. Read my thoughts on Nemuri Winter Vol. 1 here and peep the interview below:

Could you provide us with some quick background info on Nemuri Winter? What compelled you to bring the collective together, and how did you go about doing so?

I think it was a month or so after I joined the Tsundere Fan Club collective. I started thinking a lot about running a sister group on the side whenever i got a little bit more of a following.  I jumped on the idea sooner when i did a physical release for See You in May 2016.

As far as the name goes, it's pulled from a wood carving by Hidari Jingorō called Nemuri-neko ("sleeping cat"), that looked a lot like my own cat.  I knew the sound I was looking for early on so I decided on Nemuri Winter as it sounded pretty spot on to that.

The group actually started in a Skype chat with Yen, just kind of kicking around the idea. Yen and I had some thoughts on who we wanted.  Enter Baku and ¿。. We added VALKYRIE, Acounta, and Ocha after that, but none of us were very active for the first few months.

I guess it was September that I noticed that the Soundcloud page was getting a bit of attention and was motivated again to make shit happen, so the rest of the members joined up pretty quickly and Vol. 1 started.

How would you describe the vibe of the Vol. 1 compilation? Who did the artwork? It's a very visually compelling release.

Thanks! When we started working on it I was expecting the compilation to be pretty moody or close to ambient honestly. We were all tossing around ideas on what we wanted to make for our tracks and a lot of us ended up going in different directions.  I didn't want to put restrictions on anyone because I knew that the people I let in already fit the sound I wanted without trying.  What i got from that was a pleasantly surprising mix of genres and energies that still captured the mood I had in mind without getting stale.  All that to say, I wanted sleepy winter vibes.  I wanted the thought of curling up with a book or a hot bath on a cold day.  I got all of that, without really saying it out loud to them.

That said, when i hit up Sarlis (sarlisart.tumblr.com) for the comp art, I actually straight up told her about the winter girl reading a book in her room without hearing any comp tracks first.  I gave her a loose mental picture and she delivered it perfectly.  We spent months looking for an artist we could vibe with and Sarlis nailed it all within a day. I wanted everyone to work freely and deliver their ideas of the collective aesthetic, so getting it all back in a way that came together perfectly is satisfying.

I respect that you all have input into the overall vibe of the music the collective put out! Do you have a group chat for the label that you use to communicate?

Yeah! we were using Twitter for a while but it was difficult to make important announcements for everyone to see since we all have different schedules.  We're on Discord now though and that makes it a lot easier to organize topics.  I wasn't sure what to expect from a group chat mostly, but the amount of enthusiasm from the others about the progress of the group is amazing.  we shoot the shit a lot but we're also crazy efficient because everyone is really excited to work on this

Your personal project, Daki, has had a pretty eventful year of its own. How often do you work on making beats? What tools and sounds do you use to do so?

This year has been crazy for me for sure. I've been on multiple hiatuses for spending so much time on this and being unable to pace myself. I started Dakihttps://soundcloud.com/dxki/tracks back in February as my first project making beats and in a recent total I think I counted 60 tracks this year. There was a while where I think I was posting material almost every other week. The original 5 tracks of Astral Drain were made over 2 or 3 days.  When things are clicking, I tend to stretch myself way too thin to get something out of it because I spend all of my down time feeling bummed about being in a creative rut. I think another huge contributor is that I don't feel that I know what I really want to work on. I get influenced by so many artists that I hear and I end up spending a lot of time trying to learn about composition in different genres. That's a lot of time spent analyzing and not really creating, so it doesn't help my moods. I'm hoping to find myself in 2017.. that feels corny as fuck to say.

 I actually have both FL11 and 12, 12 mostly for when people send me collabs (i'm the worst person to collab with btw). I'm so used to doing things in 11 and it does everything I need so I haven't wanted to go through with learning the 12 interface yet. I don't have many vsts that aren't stock other than a tape stop and a wow n flutter plugin for warped cassette FX.  In the few cases where I composed, I used Massive, Sylenth, Nexus and FL Keys (rhodes for a little lo-fi thing).  Other than that I collect kits.  I narrowed down my current collection to about 37 of my most used kits, so i'll be digging for more soon. I try to have as many options as possible and I'm going to be recording a lot of my own sounds for a future release.

Do you want to slow things down for 2017, or do you have even more material planned for the upcoming year?

My current goal is to do my best to make quality work: 1. I want to be more discrete about my plans and flesh concepts out more. A huge trend for me in 2016 was just saying "fuck it" and posting stuff, jumping accounts, deleting things. Just being indecisive in general. I also want to make sure I'm not shutting out my personal life. I'm getting closer to my late 20s and I have a fairly established life outside of the internet so I think it's important for me to keep in mind that this is an outlet, this is for fun, and getting caught up in the internet side of things, the numbers and all that, can take the fun out of it for me.

But I'll definitely still be working hard behind the scenes. I do have ideas for stuff I really want to work on as well as plans for Nemuri Winter and the other groups I'm in. It'll be busy for sure.

Could you give readers a history of your musical output? I first came into contact with your music thru the now-defunct Haunt Yrself Tapes. What have you worked on since then?

I used to front metal bands from 2007-2010. After that I spent a little time on some bedroom pop projects with GarageBand, Reason 4, and a little casio keyboard, tried playing guitar for a bit, and tried to start some small projects with friends that never really worked out.

Haunt Yrself was my first cassette label started in 2013. After that I worked on Ritual Tapes, doing close to 20 releases in 2014 and hosting a showcase in Los Angeles. From 2014 to December of 2016 I recorded and performed shows as a harsh noise/power electronics act.

I remember being pretty into the whole witchhouse sound back in 2011, and I got really into Balam Acab and Holy Other, etc in 2012. I guess that's kind of where my interest in production started. In the years following I got pretty into internet trap beats, though at the time I didn't know where to start or anything about the SoundCloud scene. I used to find stuff on Bandcamp and in 2014 I got pretty inspired by CHRSBRRY and FRCLN (who I'm in Tsundere Fan Club with now, oddly enough).

Finally in 2015 I started trying to learn beatmaking. I was watching a bunch of anime and stumbling on artists that sampled OSTs and it really drew me in to the whole SoundCloud scene.

Your output has spanned nearly every era of internet-DIY music since you started putting out material. How have your influences and listening habits changed over the years? How have they stayed the same, if at all?

I think overall my influences have stayed the same. qI find new influences all the time in whatever genre I'm learning about but I don't think I've ever fully dropped things that have really impacted me.  My listening habits are kind of obsessive in that I usually latch on to a style and listen to only that for weeks/months and then move on.  However, especially lately, my long-time love for the work of Phil Elverum has been leaking into my production.

I've always been into lots of variety though. Bedroom pop like stuff from Orchid Tapes, DSBM, J-idol music, noise-power violence fusion shit like Water Torture and Kuroi Jukai, new wave, xiu xiu whatever you feel like labeling them, dynmk-type stuff, vaportrap, lo-fi hiphop. I dunno, a lot of things have stuck with me over the years and even though it may not all come out in my music, it's played a HUGE role in how I listen to people I find online and the type of musicians I surround myself with, I think.

Do you plan on putting out any physical releases of your music? I know you've had experience putting out tapes in the past.

I think if I do, I won't be the one releasing it. I was pumped about releasing See You on tape, but I realized how terrible I am with mailorder now. The next EP I do will have a physical release through my friend Zack's tape label Shinonome Labs, and we're kind of discussing the idea of putting Winter vol 1 on tape to see what kind of response we get.

I used to love making crazy cassette packages, but now it's hard for me to make everything by hand and manage stock like I used to, while also working on music and working in general.

I really love the stuff that Shinonome has been putting out recently!

Yeah! Zack's been active in a handful of bands, Junpei Iori being his current main, I think, so he's got a ton of connects in DIY scenes all over the place. Almost a direct line to really solid but lowkey acts. I ordered the tape he did for his chiptunes project, and it's great to see him putting a good amount of effort and care into his physical releases.

What other labels have you been following closely?

This was more last year, but I was super into Aught \ Void and Sol y Nieve both catering to more noise, doom, black metal stuff but doing really great work on packaging.  inner ocean has a lot of cool lo-fi tapes. This has mostly been the year of collectives for me though though. Magic Yume was my go to on Bandcamp for a while. Yume Collective and Computer Ghost are also really cool.  Consul is insane for heavy trap stuff. Got to shout out Rareticuno and Akuma season. Ichigo and Divine Rights also have comps coming in the near future. Future Society just released a new comp. And obviously s/o to Tsundere Fan Club... Haremboys bout to do some stuff tho.

What are you into outside of the musical sphere?

Outside of music, I play video games a lot but I'm trash LOL.  I don't focus much on competitive gaming, so I don't spend a lot of time developing any skill.  I guess I just like to play for story or whatever.  I also really dig horror movies and slice of life/romance anime and manga!

Interview: Zack Theriot of Shinonome Labs

Founded just over a month ago, Louisiana-based cassette label Shinonome Labs has wasted no time springing into action. Over the course of October, the imprint has pressed three solid releases ranging in genre from cozy chiptune collages to prog-tinged math rock to char-grilled skramz. To find out what sorts of ideas and aesthetics were driving Shinonome forward, I shot a few Facebook messages to the Labs' resident mad scientist, Zack Theriot.

Did any particular event or conversation spark the idea to start putting your friends’ records on tape? How many cassettes had you planned to press in advance before kicking things off with Sakuragaoka’s All of It?

I guess what really kicked off the idea for a label was when I dug out my tape player after organizing my desk space in late September; I noticed I could probably try recording/dubbing tapes from my PC just by using an aux cable. I had a bunch of old church cassettes my grandmother gave me and started experimenting a little with that, surprisingly enough it worked out really decently. Around the same time I was wanting to do a physical Sakuragaoka release and also had an idea to try to book small acoustic shows at my house and call the space "Shinonome Labs" after Nano and Hakase's house from Nichijou, but then I realized that I'm bad at booking and then little bits of every ideal kind of mixed into an idea to start a small label. My partner runs a small music blog called Short Circuit Media (pls check it out!), so my plan ended up being to make just a small semi-esoteric tape label as a sister project to the blog. I took a lot of influences for the groundwork of how it'd be run by labels like Ritual Tapes, Girlfriend Tapes, Deep Sea Records, and Lo-Fi by Default. Just kind of a small thing, but relay personal and true to DIY and lo-fi ideals. At first I just intended on releasing the Sakuragoaka tape and just ask around about releasing other things by friends or by projects I admired and luckily a couple fell into my lap all in a short time so I've been able to stay decently busy. I really love it so far.



The trio of tapes that forms Shinonome’s current discography is quite diverse in terms of genre. What aesthetic unifies the music backed by the label? 

My aesthetic identity is mostly just to stay very down-to-earth, very informal, and very true to DIY. I want it to be really obvious that this is something I do in my bedroom for fun, it's never intended to be a business model. It's more of an expressive thing. And every release on the label, I feel at least, expresses the same ideals throughout. Like, all these artists have less than 200 Facebook likes. They're not very prolific, but I feel like have sounds I love and feel that need to be expressed and are deserving of release and audience. They're all recorded/mixed/mastered by the artists or by friends of the artists, same with the art or j-card design or even any small promotion or anything like that is handled mostly autonomously by the artist. And that's an ideal I've always identified with. So, even though all the releases may be of different genre or core aesthetic, they stay unified in that they're all grounded in personal, lo-fi, DIY music that stays true to itself and I feel that those qualities unify itself within the staticy lo-fi aesthetic I aim for with the label. The goofy little tagline I use "lo-fi, with love" kind of embraces that as well.



Where do you get your cassettes?

I get them from either tapes.com or duplication.ca
Duplication has a much larger selection of shell colors, but being housed in Canada means it has higher shipping rates and longer shipping times. Tapes.com is a little cheaper and better on shipping but is more limited in colors.
The clear variant of the Sakuragaoka tapes are actually just clear blank Sony tapes I bought from a Walmart in 2012 and found in my closet when I was searching for my player.



My order from your label came packaged with a few Pokemon cards and a sticker - what sort of inserts might customers expect alongside their tape?

I LOVE getting little nifty trinkets from mail orders, so naturally I really wanted to do little things like that when I started the label up. This is my major Girlfriend Tapes influence because I love their packaging and how every order comes with specific little items depending on the order. Every tape will come with a Pokemon card (because I also love Pokemon) and a sticker. Some tapes might have a coupon code for the webstore included to take off 30% of their next order or remove shipping costs or something. I usually throw more label stickers and 2 or 3 more cards in the package and also some other miscellaneous items as well, be it patches or buttons or some other random label/band stickers or something that I find lying around. I also include a personal thank you note with every order.



Where do you plan to take Shinonome in the future? Are any upcoming releases in the works? 

I plan to just keep making more tapes! I currently have a few releases in talks, some coming really soon and some still being completed ranging from noisy post-rock to twinkly emo to instrumental hip-hop.

Could you tell me about the creative process behind the Sakuragaoka tape? The collaged combination of vocal samples and chiptune tones is so cinematic, yet comforting.

Sakuragoaka actually has a really interesting history that mostly just boils down to: "I just kind of fucked around".

I like late 2014/early 2015 a friend made a weird hip-hop EP influenced by Wicca Phase in like two hours where his moniker was "beachsmoke". So a few friends and I kind of took that and made a jokey little aesthetic driven electronic music collective called smokeclan, where every member's name was a five letter word plus smoke. We had beachsmoke, ghostsmoke, glasssmoke, chibismoke, and I was hellasmoke. My plan was to make chiptune with anime voice samples kind of influenced by Slime Girls and the voice sampling The Brave Little Abacus does. The way I do it is, instead of doing it the correct way by using a tracker program like LSDJ, I write all my parts on a guitar and program them using a guitarpro tabber and then export them to midi and convert them to bitsynth sounds using this freeware program called GXSCC. It mostly starts as a drum loop and one repeating progression and then I add and remove layers to it and chop up a vocal sample from an anime and games I like and organize it in a way I find impactful and then mix everything. In February 2015 my only output towards smokeclan was Velvet (my three track ode to the Persona series) and then I never did anything with it for over a year until I started dabbling in making chiptune again around March. I was having a lot of fun with it, so I decided to make it dedicated project renamed Sakuragaoka since the smokeclan joke ran its course. During the summer I played one live show as Sakuragaoka and reorganized the two EPs I had out with some added interlude tracks to make all of it entirely seamless and that was the order I used for the tape so that way I could release all of the material I had all in one swoop instead of releasing the two EPs separately. It's honestly bullshit because I just make tracks one at a time when the mood hits and it only takes me two hours or so per track but I find it super fun.

What music outside of the Shinonome universe are you spinning these days?

My go to listening since June has been going back and forth between Friend Edit's "Your Favorite Songs" and Passing a Starfighter's "Duplex". Friend Edit is like The Killers type post-punk revival stuff and Passing a Starfighter was super good local Louisiana emo (rest in peace). It's gotten to a point where I have to listen to them in succession because they've both been such essential releases to me lately. I've also been rediscovering my love for Japanese alt-rock lately so I've been listening to a ton of The Pillows, Number Girl, noodles, Judy and Mary, Asian Kung Fu Generation, Bump of Chicken, Mass of the Fermenting Dregs, and Kinoko Teikoku.



What do you do when you’re not composing music and/or pressing tapes?

I mostly just watch cutesy anime shows and play JRPGs, which, if it isn't blatant, is where most of my naming sensibilities come from.  I've been doing a rewatch of Non Non Biyori lately because it's super comfy and really brings in the coziness of the fall season for me.
I've also been getting back into Runescape so anyone hmu if you wanna help me compete Shield of Arrav.

Also, if I can, I'd like to give a shout out to Cass Carlisle, Jonathan Hope, Conrad Gagnon, and Chris Gelpi aka Yung Daki aka Chris Chris aka DJ Yuri Fanfic for being my infinite inspirations and to all my friends for being my support.

Interview: Rei Clone

Rei Clone // Denton, Texas Shoegaze

What brought Rei Clone together as a band? Did you have a clear idea of the sound you wanted to strive for when first starting out?

Yes, we did have a set sound that we wanted to achieve. From the outset we were heavily influenced by 90's shoegaze like Slowdive, Chapterhouse, and mbv. When our violinist Nirmal joined we realized that we could kind of put our own twist on it though. We also knew from the beginning that we wanted female vocals in the mix so that was a factor in selecting members.



What was your first completed composition? Which installment in your discography are you the most proud of? How do you feel you've evolved artistically since your self-titled debut?

Our very first composition for the band was "Junketsu." That one was written and more or less completed before we had a final lineup. As far as which one we're most proud of, I can't speak for everyone (this is Zach speaking) but I think we're most proud of "Ready to Die." It's a simple song but everybody's individual contribution made it the uplifting and dense piece it is now. Artistically we've become more experimental from our first ep. Tracks like "Dreaming of Nagato" and "Facehugger" are examples. We try to have a balance of noise, punk, and dense layering on all releases but we try and experiment more with structuring and harmonies with each song. We also are trying to do more things with synth as of late. We sort of established that with "Sleeping Christian" and "Cat Planet Suicide" which both have some synth parts on them.

"Cat Planet Suicide" is such a solid cut! Very gelatinous. Rei Clone is pretty outspoken on the 'web about their love for anime - you're self-described "otaku shoegazers", your titles reference various series and characters, and you've even included a sample from K-On (I think) in the intro to "senketsu". Do you feel like anime influences your music as much as it does the band's visual aesthetic?

Abe speaking. That sample is actually from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, and yes, watching anime really inspires me when I write music.
I take a lot of influence from j-pop and j-rock, even though I don't think it is super evident in our music all of the time.



Hmm, I could have sworn I'd recognized that clip! I do see some of the J-rock influence in the density of the music and swooping chord changes. 
How does your sound translate to a live setting? What bands have you shared bills with that have really impressed you?

We try to sound as good live as we do recorded, though our live shows have their own special qualities to them. As far as our favorite bands to play with, the list goes on, but to name a few:
Smith + Robot
Bad Times
Whimper
Ghost Data
Big Hand//Big Knife
Better Now
Chris Lopez
Ringo Deathstarr
All bands we have played with/adore.

Also, when playing live, we really want an ocean of noise. It should really surround you.

How were you able to get in contact with Smoked Cheese Records about putting out Wet? Smoked Solid Dairy has been a favorite hardcore outfit of mine for some time.

Ive known Alec (ssd front man) since I was in high school. I used to write concert reviews for his website (txpunk.net). He has supported me ever since my first real project, Anger House. Once we discovered we both loved anime, it all exploded from there. I am very grateful for his support and friendship.


What series are favorites among Rei Clone's members?

Still Abe replying, I can't speak for everyone but:
Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
Beck
Kill La Kill
Steins Gate
Desert Punk
Evangelion
Dragon Ball
Cat Planet Cuties
Squid Girl
Seinfield
Ghost in the Shell
Akira
The list could go on

Seinfeld is essential 😎
Any plans in the works for future Rei Clone material?

Absolutely. We are very far from being done. We have more EPs and a full.length coming out in the future. Probably sometime next year. Touring as well.

Interview: Cincy Post-Punk Duo Amanda's Scanner

What course of events brought Amanda's Scanner together? What ideas or influences been a key factor in your music from the very beginning?

madge: nick joined as the guitarist of my first band, it was very punk and angry music as i had just been raped and was not doing well in school or with people in general. he helped me exorcise that experience, we would drink costco margarita mix and burn each other with cigarettes and write wretched fast songs. the songs were not my favorite but writing music with him was, and i fell in love with him. when that band broke up, we moved in together. nick sent me the first of the demos for amanda's scanner when i was on tour, so very far away, but the second i heard it it was like, okay, here we go again, the ball is back in motion, right? and it is time to be angry again. but precise anger. we have invited friends to play with us that share that emotion, in some way. intensity and a sense of urgency, maybe.

nick: as for the writing of that first song... We knew we wanted to do something kind of darker and less like, explicitly angry. So after a few glasses of wine one night and listening to a lot of death rock, and having somehow managed to set up my four-track, I wrote the bass line that eventually became the wash and we've just been trying to do things in that vein since. also, the name: we had a roommate named amanda who had a scanner. I said Amanda's Scanner out loud once and I liked how it sounded so reserved the bandcamp domain. Think that was before we wrote the first song... But coming up with the name was kind of an impetus for writing the music, or something like that.

madge: hahaha. at this point i am what could be called a Bitter Person, so lyrically i whirlpool around the same pain.

Does all the music for this particular project all circulate around the same sense of anger? Do your songs tend to be written at the spur of the moment to capture certain feelings?

nick: so far, the formula for writing the music has been to come up with a bass line that we base the structure around, programming the drums and then recording the bass on top. after that pretty much everything goes in the first take--guitars, noise blips, even vocals (which are written in advance but madge is a talented vocalist and has managed to nail everything on the first take)

The bottom of your bandcamp page notes that your two current single releases are from ENTERING THE FLESH AGAIN. Do you have a full album release planned for the future? Do you plan to perform your material live?

nick: we plan to keep writing music and to eventually release an album or tape or something... madge liked that name for the album so noted it on the release, (the two songs are really just demos but we wanted to put something out to encourage us to keep making stuff and to see if people liked it). we've had a band practice with a few of our friends and are hoping to play a show some time in september and to see where that takes us. but for now we're sort of planning to keep recording music at home and releasing singles, then maybe doing a tape compilation of those songs. we really just want to keep writing music and putting it out in whatever capacity or medium seems appropriate.

madge: we are planning on headlining south by southwest in 2017

I'm stoked to hear more material, I'm sure a tape release would have rad artwork! Who put the cover for "The Ball / The Wash" together? It's really intense and kinda futuristic. Seeing it browsing local bandcamp releases made me click on it instantly. What SXSW stage are you planning on playing? The Universal Studios Minions™ Pavilion?

nick: ideally every crowd we play for would be dressed entirely as minions madge made the artwork in like five minutes in a web based image editor. we really just wanted to put it out and the artwork was kind of secondary, but thank you for your kind words

The font you used was mind-blowingly punk.

madge: pixlr.com!

nick: olde english i believe

What kind of music have you been listening to lately? To what degree do you think it affects your Amanda's Scanner material?

madge: we've been listening to a lot of yung lean, his music is very honest and openly about his own mental breakdown. same with kanye... nick's consuming anything with electronic beats because he's teaching himself how to do that for amanda's scanner.

nick: when we first started writing the music, i had been listening to the killed by deahtrock comp and a lot of terror bird. but yeah yung lean as of late

That interview Yung Lean did with The Fader made me revisit his new music lately. Really beautiful and intense stuff 💕 What art outside the realm of music inspires you?

madge: iron chef

no but that's a tough one.. that fader interview is great. the climate of cincinnati is inspirational, though that word doesn't feel correct. inspirational should be a positive. on the 19th, it will be a year since the shooting of sam dubose. lots of my friends don't have money for food here while $1,500 a month studio apartments are being opened downtown.

What is the first piece of music you can remember listening to?

madge: my dad and i singing along to "bad to the bone" when i was 6

nick: i remember like singing puff the magic dragon with my mom on the way to a day care center when i was like 5 probably, too young to get the implications but thinking of it right now it's a pretty funny scene

 

Interview: Ricardo Stacey of Memory Number 36 Recordings

Ricardo Stacey - Founder of Memory No. 36

Your Bandcamp-based label, Memory No. 36 Recordings, has been brimming with new material as of late. What has inspired this resurgence of activity? Give us the scoop on some of the recent output! Is anything planned for the near future?

Yeah there’s been lots of new material coming out and much more is on the way for 2016. Due to various ideological and financial factors activity on Mem36 had simmered down quite a bit, but because of artists and labels that I’ve been exposed to lately I was hit by a wave of inspiration which got me to talking with wonderful people and putting out their work. A big part of this was the process of curating our second compilation album Traditions, Vol. II so while navigating Bandcamp and SoundCloud in order to assemble a team of artists I stumbled upon so many gems and began reaching out to them and inviting them to be a part of the label. Recently we’ve put out fantastic albums by Tominaga, sé luné, Airport and Lamusa just to name a few and on the way we’ve got new stuff from Maxwell Sterling, .ESC., Pregnant, Five Star Hotel, RAW SILVER and dozens more which I won’t disclose just yet haha. 

How would you define the label’s overall aesthetic? Has it evolved since its genesis in 2013? How has the sort of music you regularly consume changed since then?

From the beginning I didn’t have a clear vision for a specific aesthetic or genre which I wanted to work within so I’d say the label has been evolving over the years. The overarching theme has aimed at a shimmering, dreamy, hypnagogic type of atmosphere. The music itself has explored different territories but the main consistent characteristic has been synths and catchy beats working together in a pop-oriented fashion. See, the labels with which I was associating myself before starting Memory No. 36 such as Sunup Recordings, Ailanthus Recordings, Holy Page, and Lava Church didn’t seem to have a particular aim, they were just putting out what felt right to them in the moment and that’s the method I chose to adopt for my own label. Lately I’ve been consuming a lot more experimental electronic music and want that to be the main focus in the foreseeable future of the label. So I definitely plan on narrowing down the intentions of what Mem36 stands for. There will still be hints of catchy beats and dreamy synths here and there which I’m sure will please those who have been following us since 2013. I’d just like to expand the horizon and showcase some forward thinking innovators.
 

I first encountered Memory No. 36 through your bedroom-pop project Cassida Pax - have you worked on any music under other aliases? Which artists have influenced your sound the most?

I think that was the main audience for Mem36 in the early stages. People who were familiar with and appreciated my work as Cassida Pax who then decided to check out the label when I first announced it. During and after CP I’ve had several of my own projects most of which have been released on the label including .bleech, Brother & Noise, Fe Mora, Atlas Moan and Reality TV. I’ve set aside my own creative output for a while to focus on other things but I’m currently in the plotting stages of a new project called Pneda which I’m very excited about. I want it to be dancy/clubby but also highly experimental with a lot of samples strewn about. I’ve always had a wide range of influences. Everything from Throbbing Gristle to The Strokes, from Juan Atkins to Geneva Jacuzzi, from Blank Banshee to Lou Reed. I’d say right now what’s influencing me a lot is Yearning Kru, Fatima Al Qadiri, Arca, and in general artists that come from labels like Planet Mu, Software Recording Co., Fade to Mind, NAAFI and Houndstooth.
 

Your visual art is rad too, very post-human. What sort of ideas and motifs are blended into your work?

Post-Human is a very good way of labeling it. The concept behind my work has for the most part been to illustrate a future where humans are fully entrenched in virtual reality living and the joys and horrors which come with the ability of creating personalized synthetic environments, situations and sensations for our still terrestrial-based animalistic brain. And a big part of my work has also simply been to show people the marvelous imagery that can be created with 3D rendering software. In other words, allowing the artwork to exist for the sake of representing the technology which enabled the possibility of its creation in the first place without there being a higher concept behind it. And I’m happy to say that I’ve been able to inspire many to begin their own ventures in 3D art and they’ve gone on to surpass my own abilities and create really mesmerizing, breathtaking worlds. What I plan to focus on this year is showing an idealistic utopian sort of future where we’ve gone “clean and green” so there will be many abstract bio-mechanical life forms interacting with grass and trees and flowers. I’m also considering getting into video game design.

Could you name some other netlabels worth checking out?

Oh my god there are so many. Off the top of my head I’d say right now some of the ones to look out for are Visual Disturbances, Dream Disc Records, #weirdkids and Squiggle Dot. Those have really got my attention. VD and DDR put out some dark, challenging, conceptual works while #wk and SD are bright, energetic and effervescent. There’s just so much out there though. New labels pop up almost on a daily basis and most of them are incredible. 

Outside of your art and your label, how do you occupy your time? What are you into?

I’m trying to be healthier so I’m exercising a lot and while I exercise I watch videos on YouTube about philosophy and science. Also getting really into comic book mythology so I’m doing some research on that and buying a few comics which seem very interesting like Saga, The Wicked and The Divine and Sex Criminals. I’m also reading a book called Cyberspace: First Steps which came out in like 1993 and it’s a reflection on the capabilities of virtual reality for communication but also an examination of its logistics and architectural structure and how that affects the human psyche. Even though it’s over 20 years old it’s very informative and obviously very relevant to our world now.
 

Do you have a favorite emoji?

This is the hardest question by far haha. At this moment I’m obsessed with the eggplant lol.

Interview: Anime-core label Mecha Yuri

Interview // Thomas Chan, founder of Mecha Yuri

For those readers who haven't heard of Mecha Yuri, could you give a little background on the label and its origins?

back in 2011, i used to frequent an online forum mainly used for discussing nintendo games and cartoon network shows and junk like that. looking back, every member there was probably a bored pre-teen. we had factions, and me and a few other members who all shared the same interest in music decided to form a group called "HarmoniCanadianReckords" or HCR for short. our first release was an album simply named "Skype Sessions", where me and another member attempted to record a live album inside a skype call, occasionally adding another person to the call as a 'guest musician'.

later on, we began to collaborate more seriously, and the idea of an 'online band' took off in our heads. we would chat almost 24/7 over skype and exchange raw recordings through dropbox. the HCR bandcamp soon became a place for all of us to host different mini-projects, albums and eps under different artist names.

How did things evolve from HCR into Mecha Yuri?

somewhere in the middle of 2013, we decided that a rehaul was needed if we wanted to ever be taken seriously. we picked the name "mecha yuri" because it was a deconstruction of /mu/, the music board on 4chan: "/m/" being the 4chan board for mecha, and "/u/" being the board for yuri. "mecha yuri"

at first, "mecha yuri" wasn't all too different from HCR. it was only still the same three core members - Radical McKickflip, the OMNIPRESENCE, and myself - releasing on the label. over time, i decided to invite other musicians i knew either from real life (RLg) or various spots on the internet like tumblr, soundcloud and twitter (i know who you are and you are nothing, tekkaman, etc.) to release material on the label. after a few releases, like minded musicians noticed what we were doing and started to submit projects for us to release.

Do you have any specific criteria for the releases you put out on ur label? What sort of sound or overall aesthetic do you strive for with ur label?

i used to jokingly say to artists who wanted to release on the label that their music just had to be "anime". at first, we were aiming for an aesthetic that was inspired heavily by anime, japanese pop culture, and the "tumblr-esque" image edits you see on the internet.
anime is definitely still a huge influence on the artists on the label and the music we put out. for example, a few of our artists come from the "lolicore" scene; a genre which at it's roots is essentially anime-samples overtop of fast paced breakcore.

HIGH IMPACT SEXUAL VIOLENCE and Cute Fills, two indie rock bands who've released on our label also fill this "anime"-vibe: a lot of their songs are inspired by anime or manga. genre-wise, we're completely open to anything pop or experimental.

How do you come across the projects that you've put out music for? Do you actively seek out new stuff or do they come to you?

it's a bit of both actually! most of the artists we've released for are people i've met previously through twitter or past-compilations or whatever. a few artists, such as cute fills and mock off, i found through soundcloud or bandcamp and contacted personally to ask to release something of theirs. and on super rare occasions, i'll get a message from an artist who wants to offer something for us to release. this happened when Renjā, who i was already a fan of, messaged me out of the blue asking if we'd release their new album. i didn't even know that he'd heard of my label.

Speaking of Mecha Yuri's internet presence, I've seen a few online live shows that the label has hosted. How do you go about organizing one of those?

all of our online live shows were hosted through "tinychat", a video chatroom service. a little disclaimer though, the idea of an online show using tinychat came from SPF420, and the amazing shows they host. basically, all a musician has to do to perform is broadcast themselves through their webcam and microphone. planning is pretty simple: you just have to make a schedule and find people willing to play during a timeslot. all the artist - and the viewer - has to do is visit our tinychat URL. we've hosted a few shows this way, my favorite one being the launch party for the chao garden compilation we hosted with ecchiparty. sadly, i missed most of it, but the whole thing lasted over eight hours. apparently Bo-en and Clover and Sealife (formerly Space Boyfriend), two of my favorite musicians, showed up in tinychat to watch. and my friend goliad dunked some hoops during their set. bummed i missed that, haha.

Have you gotten the chance to see any shows irl?

totally! the last show i went to was teen suicide opening for Alex G right here at the Smiling Buddah in Toronto. it was a bit crazy because my friend rodrigo, who makes music under the name "RLg", played the same venue's basement after being invited by our friend MJ, who makes music as "Five Star Hotel" , who was on a mini-tour coming from Detroit. this summer i'm already planning to see death grips, yung lean and ryan hemsworth.

Hemsworth is so good!

OMG

i know right

Tell us a little about your own music!

heck yea! i've recently decided to change my artist name to "for airports". a reference to brian eno's "Ambient 1: Music for Airports" and the crazy nostalgic and sentimental feelings i have about airports and travel in general. i've only released two songs under that name; two tracks for compilation albums from The Worst Label and après-MIDI. i'm still working out a style for what i want my new music to sound like, but if i had to describe it i'd say something dumb like: "layered and atmospheric-feeling lo-fi pop built mainly around altered samples of my own guitar and vocals".

my main musical influences off the top of my head are Baths, who taught me that  electronic music production can be meticulous, melodic, emotional and beautiful and MEISHI SMILE, one of the co-runners of ZOOM LENS label, and one of their earlier projects "nono.". a dream of mine is to release a project on ZOOM LENS one day.

What sort of labels should fans of Mecha Yuri's aesthetic look out for?

definitely The Worst Label!! They're our closest net-label friends; a lot of artists who have released with us have also done releases with them and they're just super amazing overall. Canata Records is a great net-label based in Tokyo that I admire a lot. And we have a lot of close ties and similarities with labels like Pure Aesthete, AMBLIS RECORDS, Magic Yume Label, Hope Sick Cola and Senzu Collective.
 

Interview: Ian Wang of Ghost in a Sundress

Ghost in a Sundress is the ambient folk project of Ian Wang, a Manchester-based teenager who works in a pastel-goth pallet of dark, dreamy textures. His debut tape is out now via Little L Records.

Your new album feels very frosty and desolate, was it recorded during the winter? Can you tell me a bit about the album's creation?

That's definitely a mood I was shooting for, but in truth I was recording on and off throughout all of 2013. Iin fact, perusing through the old files, I started writing half the songs in summer. But, more than anything, making the record was just a slow crawl from one month to the next. I rely pretty heavily on looping in almost all the songs, so each one started from a basic musical motif which gradually blossomed throughout the year; everything was incremental. I was writing and recording in between schoolwork, holidays, etc., so I'd chip away at a song now and again until, bit by bit, it seemed like I had a finished product.

Which artists most influence your work?

This is tricky, because the stuff I was listening to at the time would've been very different to the stuff I listen to now. An obvious one is Department of Eagles: their song "Ghost in Summer Clothes" is where I got my name from (with "summer clothes" changed to "sundress"). I really admired that song's mishmashing of samples with recorded material, and their music has always had a certain eerieness and intricacy to it that I wanted to emulate. A lot of ambient music to contributed to that as well; Secede and Grouper are the two artists that come most obviously to mind. Increasingly, though, I've become an indie pop fan, something which you might here on tracks like I Fall in Love Too Easily. The rich complexity of a band like The Motifs, and the loneliness of Belle & Sebastian's earlier records, have been big influences.

How did you come up with the song titles? Is there a theme or story to the album?

I don't think there is a story or theme so much as there is an atmosphere. Listening to Impressions is more or less listening to me figuring things out, unsure of what I wanted to do musically. I didn't even know how to write a lyric, let alone string a narrative together. But, from the get-go, I had an idea of the mood I wanted to create with my music, which is part of the reasoning behind my name - something nocturnal, wintry, haunting, but with an undercurrent of frailty and compassion. "Heartbroken Ghost Choir Blues" more or less sums it up, though the EP as a whole is a little less maudlin than that. Otherwise, I just picked titles that fit the songs. I felt like it was more important to capture a sense of what the song felt like to me as an individual unit, rather than forcing some kind of thematic link between the titles.

Which song is your personal favorite off "Impressions From a Ghost"?

lt;"It Never Rains Around Here" is definitely the one I'm most proud of. I look back on that track and I find myself unsure of how I even managed to make it work; there are so many interlocking parts that I can barely keep track. It's definitely my most technically impressive track. That being said, "I Fall in Love Too Easily" has to be my overall favourite. Partly for personal reasons - it was the first time I figured out I could make pop music and keep it in line with the ambience and ghostliness I wanted to evoke, and the first time I realised that recording my own voice might not be such a bad idea after all - but mostly because I just think it's a nice pop song.

How did you get hooked up with Little L Records?

I was actually incredibly lucky to get on to Callum's label. Zack Stewart, a friend of mine who makes music under the moniker Bluelily (he'll also be putting out an EP with LLR later this year), showed Callum my music and we got in touch. There were some delays along the way, but Callum's always been incredibly open and dedicated and hard-working, and he always makes sure the artist gets the smoothest release possible. I never expected my first release would get this level of attention and it's entirely thanks to him. I really appreciate the work he's doing.

If you could collaborate with any artist, who would it be?

The Diskettes. They were a twee pop band from Vancouver who were around in the mid-2000s but, tragically, split up after only two albums. Bandleader David Barclay has gone on to be part of other projects, but The Diskettes had a way of painting these incredibly vivid scenes - beaches, campfires, seaside towns - through what were generally pretty plain-spoken pop songs. They never really did anything electronic the way I do, but there's a lot of creativity and affection in that band's music, contrasted with a sense of precariousness and a distinctly wintry mood, that I feel like would mesh well with my own music, particularly as I lean more towards the poppier side of things myself.

What do you enjoy doing besides making music?

I guess it would be cop-out to say listening to music? Like a good chunk of my generation, my free time is almost entirely wasted on the internet. I try and read as much as possible, both journalism and literature (and, ahem, wikipedia), but most nights end with me downloading pictures of cute animals or obsessing over my last.fm charts or having a marathon of Taylor Swift videos, or something like that. I'm also a dab hand at Minesweeper.

Interview: Falatek

Tell us about your project. How did falatek get started? 

My name is Gregory Falatek. I went with falatek as my artist name because that’s what everyone has always called me. I’ve been making music off and on since my senior year of high school. I left college after two years and started taking music seriously. I’d say falatek officially started after I dropped out of school. 

Your recently released EPs, "V i d o r r a" and "s o i r e e" both greatly differ in sound from 

"r a v i". The first is very intimate and features a couple acoustic tracks and the second is very sample-heavy. In what direction would you like to take Falatek in the future?

I love slow, relaxing music. But at the same time, I like making something that can get people out of their seats. With Soirée I wanted to create a small soundtrack for a night out in the city circa 1985. But with Vidorra I wanted to make something you could listen to in the morning/while you sleep. Vidorra was created during a two hour studio session. I have so many musical interests so I like to make each project for a new time of day or new set of situations. I don’t want people to be able to predict what I am going to give them when I release a project. I want my listeners to grow with me. I’m still conscious of people who have supported me for years and I keep certain elements of my music the same. I want you to know it’s me when my voice comes on a record but I definitely don’t want you to know what I’m gonna say. I really like how my sound is progressing. It’s still amazing to me because everything started from a very hip-hop oriented place.

You have some live dates set up for this winter. What's the tour going to be like? Have you played any other show before?

This mini-tour is going to be great. I’ve done shows in the past but only during college when I was making underground hip-hop type records. I’m excited to perform the wide variety of music that I’ve created over the past year. Now, I have a vocal processor and new microphone. I’m about to buy a vocoder and projector screen for the winter show dates. Some of the venues have projectors so I would like to have all of my videos playing in the background. I’ve been working with a visual effects artist from The Netherlands named, Hidden Behind Leaves (@RotterdamRonin). If you haven’t seen any of the videos, check them out when you can. I think they will add a great aesthetic to the shows.

The production on "r a v i" was really stunning, and made the album an immerse experience for me, especially the cosmastly beat. How did you choose the beats, and how did you go about writing songs for each one?

I appreciate the kind words. I’m actually releasing an EP in 2015 that will be produced entirely by Cosmastly. There wasn’t much of a selection process for the beats. I have a lot of beats on my computer and I was recording so many songs last month. I ended up grouping Ravi and Soirée as they are because I figured everything sounded best this way. 

What music are you listening to these days? What else do you do that's not music related?

I listen to all types of music. I like searching through soundcloud to find new artists. I can’t stop watching The Killers live performances. I need to listen to Modest Mouse every day. Young Thug. Grimes is amazing. I really don’t do anything non-music related at the moment. But I’ve designed clothes throughout my life so I want to continue doing that in the future. I’d also like to get back into painting because I did a lot of drawing and painting during my childhood.

Interview: venoSci

venoSci

Name: Aaron Gelblat-Bronson

Location: Chicago

Genre: Chiptune/Kawaiistep

I just witnessed your set live at Ecchi Party, which was a live stream of you playing at your birthday party. How was your big day?

The party was a ton of fun! I had three of my other friends perform as well! The first was Discipline Jar, who is a noise artist, Nobility, a rapper, and DJ Dustoff/ScreenSavior who played a righteous deep house set. The party was a blast with a lot of good food and all of my best friends there dancing and going hard.

Also I'm an adult now, which is still sort of weird.

How did you first get into chiptune music? Any particular favorite artists?

I first heard about chiptune from this old magazine called "Anime Insider" which Wizard used to put out. They talked about a group called YMCK, which made NES style music. I looked them up and instantly fell in love. After that I found out about other artists like Tugboat, Anamanaguchi, and I Fight Dragons. It wasn't until a friend of mine my freshman year of high school showed me his LSDJ cart that I really felt a desire to start producing.

My favorite artists right now are Knife City, Slime Girls, Space Boyfriend, Snesei, Shoujo Eyes, and the always fantastic Anamanguchi.

When writing a song on Gameboy, where do you begin? Which song are you most pleased with so far?

Typically I start with an Chord progression in the bassline or the countermelody. After that i just sort of look at the notes I picked and write all the other parts out. I typically start with more of a particular sound in mind than a melody, but it quickly evolves. Also having 9+ years of classical training (oboe, but now bassoon) doesn't hurt from the music theory department.

My favorite songs right now are Bonafide Cutie off of my new album or, strangely enough, my Justin Bieber cover because the crowd reception to the latter is really hilarious and fun, and I'm really proud of the breakdown in Bonafide Cutie.

Tell us a little about your newest album, Picopop and Pocky. Who did the artwork? Will it get a physical release?

Ok, story time: 

Acen is this big anime convention that happens every year in Chicago, and this year I showed up and busked along with Snesei, Shoujo Eyes, and Volcano Themed Bathroom from Detroit. We drew a crowd and I noticed that my songs I was playing were not as dance-y as the other guys tracks and I felt my songs didn't really capture the fun spirit of these conventions I have been attending (this was my 7th Acen). So, I set out to write an Anime-powered super up-beat dance album inspired by the new friends and memories I had from that weekend. The first song on the album, Milkis, was actually written the week following that convention. 

About a month later I met some people in a chat for a Zoom Lens netlabel web show, and the dug my stuff so they asked be to play at an Ecchi Party, which I did. After that show, I asked on twitter if anyone was interested in doing remixes of my old songs for my new album. Many of the artists I had played with that night were interested, so I emailed them some stems of my songs, and the remixes came into being.

The artwork was done by Lady Fiona Buchanan of Sealand (by way of Chicagoland). She is a close personal friend of mine and IRL anime thug.

Right now I have about 20 home made physical copies that I'm gonna be selling or giving away at shows, but If enough people show interest, i might do a professional printing of it.

What's the best live set you've played so far?

My best is probably my set at my "201X" launch party, but my favorite is the one I played on my Birthday!

the 201X show was very tight and well mixed but it wasn't as upbeat. This one, was super exciting and fun, and I was less worried about making mistakes (which notably, I did make several of).

What non-chiptune music do you listen to?

I listen to a lot of non-chiptune artists, but most of it is either electronic or dance music. or K-pop.

Right now I've been listening to Kors K, Die Antwoord, Grimes, Blood Diamonds, Porter Robinson, Diplo, R.I.O. , Spazzkid, Super Junior, Big Bang, Yelle, Starfucker, Kitty Pryde and Kyary Pamyu Pamyu.

Outside of music, what do you enjoy doing?

I play a decent amount of video games. Lately its been Melee/Project M, Wind Waker (again), and Mario 3D World on Wii U.

I like to go on hikes and explore. I used to rollerblade a lot, but I fell and hurt my arm recently so I'm staying off of those right now. I like to swim, I like to tell stories with my friends. 

I like to sleep and eat pop tarts and watch movies.

Interview: Martin Newell of The Cleaners From Venus

Martin Newell is the prolific and outspoken frontman of DIY-pop icons The Cleaners From Venus. Stretching over a thirty year period, his body of work is vast and consistently satisfying, from the humble homemade cassette releases of the early 80's to Return To Bohemia, a brand-new effort slated to be released on CD on July 7th by Soft Bodies Records. Also, considering the thorough re-issue project of Newell's early material, it's a great time to be a Cleaners From Venus fan, and it's easier than ever to dive into his colossal discography. I had the pleasure of sending him a few questions, answered below.

The new Cleaners From Venus music video, "Imaginary Seas", is a wonderful pairing of live-action footage and watercolor paintings. Who was behind the underwater artwork and what was the process of filming it like?

Jodie Lowther and Rob Britton must take the credit for this. Jodie is an animator, artist and filmaker, working very much in a the same tradition as The Cleaners from Venus have for many years now: with more inspiration than budget. If you treat financial and technical restriction as 'a cage to be brilliant in' you can get some very good results. I was amazed by how well the vid went with the track. We did a brief morning's filming up here with two phones and a camcorder. It was quite painless actually for such a beautiful end result.

 "Imaginary Seas" is one of two singles that have officially been released from your upcoming album, Return To Bohemia. What should listeners come to expect from this new effort? What is the significance of the album's title?

A Return to Bohemia? I had a bit of a bad year for health last year. Two eye operations and a freak seizure which almost killed me. As I was recovering, it occurred to me that perhaps over recent years, despite my alleged rock'n'roll life, I'd actually become quite grown-up and responsible. Lying around last summer in a dark room for a fortnight, I thought, "When I get out of here. I'm going to do what I used to, just record music and write songs..take some time off and be nice to myself. I'd become rather a workaholic, I suppose. I needed to get back to what I was in my early 20s...and yet with the guile and experience of middle age.

I wanted to make yet another of my 'front room Rubber Souls.' I always try to do that...but this time, I think I really have.

Captured Tracks has recently re-issued a great portion of your discography over the past few years, which is actually what led me to discover your music in the first place. What has it been like to look back at your body of work as a whole?

It's been an extraordinary experience. Captured Tracks have done a brilliant job. They're very good people to work with. They're a strange cocktail of friendly enthusiasm and ruthless efficiency. If I'd had a record company like when I was in my mid 20s, I could have conquered the universe. Looking back at the old records, I can't believe I did so much in what was, actually only about a ten-year period. Some of the tracks are clumsy, lo-fi and shoddily recorded it's true...but so many great ideas!  For a long time, I looked back at that period affectionately, but with the view that they were actually only the sketch books of a still immature artist. Now, I sometimes, think, " Wow. How can I get that back again?"  The truth is, it was the soundtrack of me struggling through life on a small budget, but with a lot of hope in my heart, If I didn't make it really big at that time, I think it's been a very good thing, because I'm still as enthusiastic as I was then...maybe more so.

Much of your earliest material was originally released on homemade cassette tape, a release format that has regained popularity in some circles in recent years. What was it like putting out your first few releases? What inspired you to start making music?

Well, when I was a 19 or 20 year old Glam rocker, I just wanted to make records, be a pop star and meet girls. Actually, I'd loved music since I was a very little boy and since first seeing the Shadows and a bit later The Beatles on TV before I was ten, I kind of knew that this was going to be the job for me. I'd made records before I started putting out cassettes. The cassette thing came about because having dealt with the people in the London music industry, I just thought they were a bunch of bastards and decided not to deal with them. I thought that maybe , with the invention of the 4 track portastudio, now I had a cheap means of recording myself, that maybe I could make my own records and just sell them myself. What we didn't have were the means of distribution or promotion. I still concluded however, that if I sold only one or two hundred of my own things, it was still better than selling two hundred thousand records and having to deal with those soul-less bastards. I thought at the time that DIY cassettes would destroy the music biz as I knew it. I wanted to be one carcinogenic cell on the carcass of that dinosaur. In the end, the Internet destroyed them. The music biz is only just beginning to reconfigure itself. Soft Bodies and Captured Tracks are two examples of new rather more human face of the music biz.  

 Do you approach songwriting any differently now than you do then?

I'm a sly old wolf of a songwriter. I've been writing songs since I was 14 years old and am absolutely at the top of my game. There are not many songwriters working today of whom I will say, "Yeah. I could learn a bit from him / her." There are still plenty in the past who scare me though.

I love song-writing. I don't think it can be work-shopped or taught, as such. You must listen to it. You must do it. There are some real twats out there making money from teaching songwriting and most of them, I could write off the table. It may sound arrogant but that is how it is. The fact that I am unapplauded in music biz circles is more to do with my unwillingness to engage with the Big Dinner and Awards brigade. I don't care about them. I don't respect them. Why would I care about their judgements. Who are they, exactly?

And then they (all your favourite rock 'rebels') smile nicely, say thank you and put on bow ties. Bow ties! The  sartorial equivalent of a swastika, the bow tie is.  The industry awards the industry. The mugs...

What music are you listening to these days? 

A load old old 1960s pop. Zombies, Hermans Hermits, lots of Hollies. Radio 3 Late Junction

Marin Marais..early baroque sort of stuff. Loads of continental songwriters. Jazz: Art Pepper, Stan Getz Vince, Guaraldi. Oh, and a really great merseybeat / doo wop band from Liverpool called The Chants. Check out a track called Sweet Was The Wine.  

Besides music, what else do you enjoy doing and taking in?

I got rid of my TV two years ago. It was like having a shit-pump in the living room. Now I just watch films and Family Guy, I just love that! So witty, inventive and strange. I cycle round country lanes a lot. Oh, I forgot I'm a poet and columnist for various papers Best of all at present I'd like to plug Mule TV. Google Mule TV/Facebook. I'm doing a year of trying to crash the Eurovision Song Contest. We're on show 4 at the moment. If they won't let me in, I'm going to hold my own on video and write and perform all the entries. That includes dressing up as German woman if necessary.

Check out another sample of the new record from the Soft Bodies Records Bandcamp page. You can pre-order the CD there as well: