SEMATARY INTERVIEW (7.9.20)
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Tell me about where you’re from. What was it like growing up there?
I’m from the foothills of Northern California. It’s pretty cool. I didn’t like it when I was a stupid kid, but I like it now. I was bored; I didn’t like school or anything. I started making music when I was 11 on GarageBand, just messing around like kids do.
What kind of music were you making at 11?
I tried to make Deadmau5 type music because I was really into Deadmau5 as a kid—like dubstep and club music. It kind of evolved over time. I found Yung Lean and all that kind of SoundCloud stuff a few years ago when I was in high school. I went to high school with Ghost Mountain, and I was always telling him about the music stuff I wanted to do.
So you were spending a lot of time on the internet.
Yeah, that was my favorite thing to do: digging around, listening to different beats on SoundCloud and stuff. Yung Lean and Black Kray—those two specifically are probably my biggest “Oh, I could be a rapper too, look at these weird dudes” kind of deal. Definitely 2013, 2014-era Chief Keef also. Salem, the witch house group, too.
You sampled Salem on “Hollows,” and I was curious why you’re so into them. They were such a small, weird moment over the past decade.
When was it a thing, like 2011? I was like 10 years old, so I wasn’t even really there for that. I found it a few years after it was already dead and gone.
Being into that sort of music on the internet, and growing up in sort of rural-suburban Northern California, was there a weird separation between you and other people your age?
Yeah, it was a weird sort of cognitive dissonance of going to speak and seeing other kids hanging out, listening to whatever they listened to. I didn’t really have a lot of friends in high school. I would have acquaintances, but I would show them what I was listening to, and they would be like, “What the fuck?” So, yeah, it was weird but that’s how it goes.
So you’d been producing first and then all that stuff inspired you to start rapping or whatever we’re going to call it?
Yeah, like eight years of messing around producing, and then I realized I actually wanted to do music. But producers are treated horribly in the industry, and I didn’t want to be a producer because it didn’t seem very fun. I was like, “I should rap, all these guys can do it.” I was sort of secretive about it; I didn’t post anything.
You sample everything from black metal bands to Xiu Xiu in your songs. How do you decide where to draw from?
The black metal stuff, like the Rainbow Bridge tapes, I just hadn’t heard anybody rap or sing on riffs exactly like that. There’s obviously a precedent for it but not quite like that, so I just dug around and gathered all my favorite Lifelover songs. I’m gonna do the third Rainbow Bridge and then probably call it good on black metal rapping.
The next tape we’re doing—it’s called 100 Acre Wrist, like 100 Acre Woods [from Winnie-the-Pooh]—there’s not as many samples. Ghost Mountain played guitar on it a bit to change it up.
How do you feel like your production has progressed from those early days of messing around?
The vocal mixing on the new one is a lot better. It’s been pretty fucked up on all the tapes, but I think that’s part of the charm. We didn’t have Auto-Tune on the first two tapes, and we had a mic that I didn’t know how to plug-in so there were super bad frequencies and all that stuff.
Mixing isn’t really a huge thing in this genre. It’s more the choices you make more than if it sounds normal or whatever. Chief Keef Almighty So or Bang 2 mixing is what I aspire to.
Did you grow up in a religious family?
My family growing up was religious but, the past few years, they haven’t been as religious because their views have changed. But, yeah, growing up we went to church and stuff. I thought it was stupid.
I ask because that type of symbolism seems to show up a lot in your artwork and videos.
Yeah, it’s not really that deep or anything. It just looks cool and it’s kind of black metal-y. I’ve been on Tumblr and there’s a lot of that kind of stuff on there. Nothing wrong with a little sacrilege.
What’s the 2020 Tumblr scene like? I haven’t been on there in probably four years.
I think Tumblr’s cool. As I see, from my perspective, the wider internet—probably because I wasn’t there—but the 2013 internet seemed way cooler to me. It seems like it was more wild with crazy mixtapes and shit circulating. A lot of shit gets censored and taken down now and Tumblr seems not as much like that. It kind of is—they censor it all the time—but it seems wilder and more secret, so I like going on there.
I mean, all of it is big tech and big corporations.
My old Twitter got taken down a few months ago because there were these alt-right, Sam Hyde, Drain Gang, weird fanboys that were in my fanbase. I didn’t appreciate that at all, so I violently threatened them on Twitter and got deleted instantly. Twitter sucks.
I actually went on 4chan to see if they were posting about you.
Are they?
Yeah, there were a few posts. I love Drain Gang a lot but it seems like anytime you have some really internet-based music—I saw Laura Les from 100 gecs tweeted something recently—they have to make these statements to tell these people to fuck off.
I’m shocked that people like that are into my music because I feel like I’ve been pretty clear, in the lyrics alone, that I’m pretty far left to the point of violence. I’ve tried to distance myself from that whole Drain movement or whatever, not because I don’t like the artists or anything, but that whole fanbase I’m trying to avoid.
One of the things that drew me to your music was how much you talk about killing cops.
Yeah, “1312” is the most clear cop-hating song.
The violence against cops is one thing but there’s also just generally pretty violent lyrics in some songs. What does that bring to the music for you?
When I listen to music, I wanna hear super deranged, anti-society kind of stuff in it. That’s just something I like and listen for, so I like putting it in my music. It’s very cathartic to record stuff like that and better than keeping it in yourself because that’s never gonna go well. I would say making songs like that, and having people turn up to it, is intrinsically positive versus just being negative and feeling violent in yourself like a little bitch.
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