Jack: Thank you guys for being on. Why don't we start with you, Quinn? I'll do my perfunctory question of what was your early experience with music - you know, it's a pretty big, wide ranging question - but how did you come to find that this is what you wanted to do? How did you come to find the scene of people and musicians? What was your early experience with that? Friends, family, whatever?
Quinn: I think there's two or three little moments that sort of are the big ones. One was sitting in the backseat of my mom's car, her playing tapes of Depeche Mode Violator, Cybotron Clear.
Jack: Wow. Damn, dude.
Quinn: Well, she's from Detroit, so she has a little history. And then Kraftwerk Autobahn. And apparently I don't remember it, but I guess I used to sing along to all these albums. I do remember singing along to the Depeche Mode album when I was a little older. So there was that. That's a big formative memory. Being in the car and listening to music, I think maybe for a lot of people, it just sounds so good and you're moving... And then another one was in high school, I had a friend whose parents were really invested in letting him explore his creative urges. And he lived in the shed behind their house and there were a bunch of guitars and drums. So a bunch of us would just sort of always congregate there, and we're learning to work on music together as a group and exploring whatever elements of noise and pop and all those, you know, we made rap tracks, we made rock. I think we were all just obsessed with music in general and then coming together and finding each other. They were sort of already a little crew and I'm not even sure how I ended up meeting them. It was sort of random, but that was a big, formative thing. And then the third one I would say is going to a party - this is later again, but a pretty formative moment - that me and Chris's mutual friend Morgan Louis and Chris and Alvin Aronson were doing called Pop. It was Providence, it was in a small club that was a club called Energy. And I used to breakdance at that club.
Jack: No way. Oh my God, I'm putting a pin in these things, too, and I have a couple of questions to ask you after this. [laughter]
Quinn: But I would say those three were major moments. There's others, too. Quickly I could just mention seeing Lightning Bolt play in a parking lot in the middle of winter in Providence. That was a really inspiring moment that sort of stuck in my head.
Jack: Do you remember where the parking lot was?
Quinn: Yeah, I lived in a building called Manhasset Mill, and it was right across the street from Fort Thunder. And it was in the parking lot in the middle of winter, and they were surrounded by cars shining their lights on them. And Chippendale - Brian Chippendale, who plays drums for the band - was in his underwear in the middle of winter. Everyone else is in full jackets and freezing.
Jack: And he's got the famous mask on.
Quinn: Exactly, yeah. I mean, there's other little things, but I feel those led to other, bigger chapters.
Jack: Did you play in bands, like, punk bands before you started getting into weirder stuff or what was your trajectory of then starting to play music out at shows?
Quinn: Yeah, bands. High school. It was a number of different little bands. Again, you know, with that group of people where we're playing in a shed. Always bands. Weird little tours that were sort of unsuccessful, cars breaking down. And then it started to become music projects where it would be myself only, after watching different noise musicians performing solo. I was like, "I think maybe I just want to try doing this alone or with one other person but still sort of the band idea where you're maybe going to perform with one person." You know, one person does the drums and the synths and one person does vocals and saxophone or whatever. But it was always, I guess, kind of traditional in that sense.
Jack: Do you remember the first time when you'd discovered the Providence DIY scene? Because Providence has a very venerated legendary DIY music and arts scene, of course. Do you remember first hearing about that or going to a first show? Was that Lightning Bolt show the first show of that kind that you saw?
Quinn: No, I used to go to Fort Thunder Halloween parties. They were legendary. I mean, that was going on when I was a freshman at RISD. And I remember Halloween was a big deal. You'd go over to Olneyville and you go to Fort Thunder and there's a guy wearing diapers and, you know, some dude in a full costume, it's a bull with a real bull head or something. You're 18 and you kind of can't believe what you're seeing. And it's all these older, weird people and, you know, some lady who's, like, swallowing fire and it's like, "Holy shit, what is this?" That was for me the first introduction, going to Fort Thunder for those big Halloween haunted house/wrestling match/shows.
[Young Male "Black Satin Fan"]
Quinn: So I went to RISD, got the BFA. Yeah, four years. Growing up, my mom's an illustrator and I would get home from school and Mom's always working on a painting or something, some type of illustration. It would just always be like, I get home, my mom's working until 10 or 11 at night on whatever thing that she's doing. And so I'm seeing my mom make this stuff and I'm thinking like, "Oh, I want to be an artist, too." You know, you see your parents doing something and you respond. Then I heard music and I just thought that that was a cool way to exist. But I was never planning on going to college. I don't think any of my friends went. And my mom kept pushing, "You gotta go to college, you gotta go to college." And at a certain point I went to pre-college at RISD. I think my mom was like, '"If you go, you know, you'll get an idea of what it could be like." And so I went and it's amazing to meet other people who are interested in sick shit and you're seeing it and inspired and you're like, "Oh, I want to make dance music" or "I want to make noise" or whatever the hell, you know? So I didn't even really want to go. I think I just felt pushed into going. I think I would have probably just ended up not really leaving or doing much if I hadn't gone. So I'm really thankful that my mom pushed me into it and she'd been sort of saving up forever to get me to go to college. It just sort of happened as a byproduct of my upbringing, I would say, seeing my mom as an artist working. I had to do some drawings to get in. You know, also it was so different then compared to what it is now and what it was along the way. It's changed so drastically. When I was there, it was very weird and was way less expensive to go. And so the type of people that were there, you know... I think Brian Chippendale or Matt Brinkman or maybe Jim Drain - I can't totally remember - were all seniors, I think, when I was a freshman. So I was seeing these really weird guys walking around.
Jack: Amazing. I mean, Forcefield is some of the freakiest people on earth.
Quinn: Exactly, so as soon as I graduated, I was drywall walling ceilings and I was repointing brick in mill buildings, in the mill buildings that I was living in, basically. And I met Christopher, C.F., Christopher Forgues. We were drywalling a ceiling together and I had been drawing comics here and there. This is the first year out of school, and I was also working at a bakery. So I'm working at a bakery, I'm drywalling ceilings, I'm repointing brick, and I meet this guy that I was like, "This guy sucks. He's so full of himself." [laughter] And you know, then they assigned us, he and I, to specifically drywall these ceilings that are 30 feet up. And we had to work together to figure out how to raise up sheets, 5/8 inch thick, which is extra thick drywall, up these scaffolding together. We figured out this way to rig it, to hoist it up, and one person would hold the sheet and sort of lift it up and then climb the side of the rigging, get it up, and then we'd hold it above our heads. One of us would hold it on our head and drill, and the other one was holding the other side. And we would get these sheets on the ceiling and it was an entire winter. And gradually, you know, we're sort of becoming friends. But this moment happened where I realized that I had seen his comics. I had written to him and told him, "I love these comics." And then I'm like, "Oh, this guy that I thought I hated, I actually really love. He's amazing." [laughter] So that was sort of a big moment. I was just sort of doing that type of work for a while, trying to make things, trying to draw comics, being influenced by Christopher, by Matt Brinkman, by Chippendale, Paper Rodeo, Paper Rad, seeing stuff from Massachusetts that was going on, just sort of emulating what I was seeing and trying to add in little bits of me. And then sort of re-getting into music in a different way where I'm like, "I could do whatever, I can kick a guitar or I can play drums, whatever it is that makes sense." And so here and there, there were little moments where I would do a drawing or make some little... Kind of nothing that exciting, but it was just sort of keeping me going and I felt inspired. Here and there I was hearing about club nights and I would go. I was the only one in the noise scene that was going to these nights. And I didn't know it then, but it was Morgan Louis and it was Chris, but we didn't meet. I was just going there to dance. And this was the same club that I used to break dance at, that now I'm just going to because I'm not even sure how, but I developed this love for club music. So at the same time I'm going to noise shows, I'm sort of emulating that and I'm seeing these parties that Chris is DJing, that Morgan Louis is DJing, being inspired by that and working through a series of jobs. I worked then next at a small metal shop that also had a prototyping department. So I was working, doing rapid prototyping, doing sculpting, casting, molding for Hasbro, still making very little money. And really it was a brutal existence, no heat, no hot water. I could pay rent and I had enough money to occasionally do fun things, but it still felt fun and transgressive. I could still go to shows and meet all these interesting people or go to a party at this club. And once in a while I could find a little crew of people that would go. So I'm bringing this group of people that were interested, but I think that they were interested in this almost ironic way, like, you know, I'm bringing Ali Dennig and a little crew of people. But I think that they were pretty quick to be interested in it. And it's funny because they're seeing Morgan and Chris and seeing this whole other world. It was sort of like that, where I was caught in between a few different worlds and never fully fit into any of them. I was always on my own tip, to the noise people I wasn't noise enough, I wasn't a dick enough. You know, I'm not starting fights, I'm not making enough comics. I was never accepted in any way, except by a few people, but I was always at all the different shows and just working and living in squalor really.
Jack: It's the Providence way, you know.
Quinn: Yeah, I mean, it was cool.
Jack: Well, why don't we switch over now to you, Chris, and start over. Same question, what are some of your early experiences with music and what was your journey of getting more into music and playing music as you got older? I know you grew up in Cleveland and then eventually you moved to Providence. So yeah, what was your journey with all that?
Chris: Let's see. I also do remember fondly driving in the car, listening to the radio, that was definitely huge. A lot of that was jazz, smooth jazz, and the '80s kind of quiet storm stuff. And NPR too. So kind of easier listening stuff. And then, I don't know, I think I got really into skateboarding and through watching skateboard videos, I got into all types of genres of music. I mean, it was kind of a history lesson in a lot of ways because I never heard a lot of bands until I saw them, you know, especially a lot of rock bands. So there's that. Also I was kind of a computer nerd, so I liked drum and bass, I liked electronica. I had a Windows computer growing up, a family computer, and we had Cakewalk Studio on there. That was the first DAW, I think, that I used. And then from there I went to Acid and Fruity Loops and Reason. And then by then I was super into production in general. And then through skateboarding, I feel I kind of veered towards the DIY scene, the punk scene, in Cleveland just by proximity. It's funny, all the skateparks and skate shops are on the west side and all the music venues are on the west side too.
Jack: Lakewood?
Chris: Yeah, Lakewood. And growing up, actually, I grew up in Cleveland Heights, and there's a music venue right down the street from my house called Grog Shop.
Jack: Of course, Grog Shop. I did sound there one time for a band on tour years ago.
Chris: Hell yeah. That place was just a stone's throw away from me, so I saw so many shows there. So many artists came through there by the time I was, like, I don't even know how old you had to be to get in, but I was 16, 17, going to these shows. I saw Boredoms.
Jack: Amazing.
Chris: Saw a bunch of different rappers like Antipop Consortium. I saw Prefuse 73, I saw Junior Boys there. I can keep going.
Jack: Please!
Chris: I saw Diplo there. Diplo was opening for Prefuse 73. [laughter] It was crazy.
Jack: Amazing.
Chris: There was Black Dice and even… I think I was aware of Lightning Bolt before I went to RISD, but I had never seen them yet. So I was still aware of Providence and what was going on over there before I went. And that was definitely an exciting aspect or moving to Providence, just seeing something a little more tight knit and local and raw. And Providence is bikeable, super bikeable, so you don't really need to have a car. It's sort of hard to get people together in Cleveland because it's so spread out. So Providence felt really cool and unique in that way. And you mentioned Mars Gas, I went to a party there once. This is 2005, I think. And I think me and Quinn realized that we were both at this party because there was ice all over the street and people were sliding on ice outside. Very dangerous. But what was I about to say? Yeah, I don't know. It was a cool time.
Jack: Was Now That's Class open when you were in Cleveland?
Chris: Yeah, Now That's Class was around. They used to have a mini skate park inside of there for a little while. I think Andrew Reynolds skated that once, at one point. Yeah, Now That's Class was there but it really bloomed once I had started actually DJing. There were a lot of cool dance events there in its later years. But yeah, let's see. I'm in Providence, I'm going to visit and everything's really centered around MySpace around this time. So even the band I was in with DJ Richard, he was in this band, me and a few other people, we had a MySpace page. And so everything was used to promote shows, people would post on a bulletin, and that was the online promotion. So Morgan Louis reached out to me through MySpace, he had seen that I had some kind of bloghouse related... I think it was Digitalism maybe, or Boys Noize, but it was a player on my page and he's like, "Yo, you're from Providence. You have good music taste. Do you DJ? Do you want to DJ my night?" And he was just really looking for more people to come fill in for him because he was doing Pop every Tuesday nights, every Tuesday, which is nuts to think about. That's so much, that's so busy. So that's how he found me, that's how he found Alvin. And that's how I met Alvin, he was a DJ at Pop. Then through that I learned how to use Serato. And that was the beginning of my DJ journey, basically, was that night, those Tuesday nights.
Jack: So you went to RISD, and what did you study?
Chris: Graphic design. I mostly did it because there was a good department there to go into. Because I would've been more interested in film before, but I just decided to hedge into design. I don't know, I was still hanging out with all the fine arts kids. There's kind of a weird divide at RISD where the design kids sort of stayed to themselves. But I was more into the fine arts crowd and just sort of doing my own thing, not really giving a shit about design at the end of the day. Yeah. [laughter]
Jack: That's funny. So you graduated, you got your degree in design?
Chris: Yeah, I graduated. And this is kind of where me and Quinn's stories converge because we have a friend in common, Greg Fong, who I had been in the same class with and he had been living with Quinn. He was moving out once he graduated, so I wanted to take his spot. And this was in not quite Olneyville, but South Providence. So that's where I went after I graduated, I moved in with Quinn and I was just freelancing, had a couple connections, but yeah, just trying to mostly make my own time and just figure my shit out.
Quinn: Technically, I think we had met not, realizing we had met, a few times.
Chris: Actually, you might have left when I was talking about this Mars Gas thing, the party with the ice.
Quinn: Exactly, yeah. That was a big moment.
Chris: But yeah, the Providence vibe, I never felt totally part of it, but a lot of it reminded me of Cleveland. Olneyville itself feels like Cleveland. It's just got this rusty, crusty thing.
Jack: Yeah, post-industrial.
Quinn: Old Americana kind of shit.
Chris: Yeah, it just felt real to me, you know.
Jack: You were DJing this night. Were you still actively making music?
Chris: Around this MySpace time, I was putting stuff up on MySpace and I had another DJ name. And also the night Pop sort of evolved into a different night once we changed clubs. So there's sort of a feeling of like, "Oh, this could sort of be a thing. I could be a local Providence DJ, producer, whatever." I was DJing in Boston a few times, but this is pre SoundCloud, too, so in a lot of ways it just felt real hobby-ish at that time. It was hard to turn something into something real. No vinyl, you know? I had no idea how to put out a vinyl or anything. I was just burning CDs and whatnot. So yeah, everything felt still like, I'm learning still, you know, learning about sound and at the time it getting posted on a certain blog was kind of at the top. You know, there was Fluokids, Palms Out Sounds, Asian Dan, who I think is still doing stuff now. But yeah, it was all about blogs and there was no money exchanged, it was just a really weird, awkward time. I'm kind of glad that I didn't succeed in that time because it just wasn't as... [laughter]
Jack: If that was where your success stemmed from, yeah, it'd be probably a different trajectory than you've taken today, for sure.
Chris: A lot of I guess you would categorize as "indie sleaze" I feel is what brought everyone together, that kind of disco, new wave...
Jack: Post-electroclash.
Chris: Yeah. [laughter]
[Young Male "Automatic"]
Jack: So now it kind of brings the two of you together. You guys were living together and met. How did you start getting into actually producing dance music and being like, "This is club music. This is actually really what I'm interested in now."
Quinn: I was in a band with this girl who's a classically trained pianist, and I was learning to use synthesizers in a really simple way, where I'm just kind of playing a repetitive four note pattern or whatever bassline. And I had a beatbox style drum machine at the time, it was CR-78.
Jack: Classic cha-cha box.
Quinn: I think I got it for $150 or something at a pawn shop. I still have it.
Jack: Yeah, those things are worth a lot now, I think.
Quinn: Yeah, I think they're a couple grand now. It's in a box in my closet somewhere. So we were into New Order and we were into Ashrae Fax, which was a big band from North Carolina that a lot of people were influenced by in Providence. It was just that sort of sound of synth and drum machine, maybe some vocals. Then from there, that was how I learned to produce using GarageBand. And then I went from there to learning the very basics of how to use Logic to record. And it was such a struggle and I was sort of emulating Giorgio Moroder stuff. And there were other bands, there's a producer named Lifelike whose music I was really into. I was really into Erik Prydz.
Jack: Oh yeah, of course. What was that big song?
Chris: "Call on Me."
Jack: The Steve Winwood sample.
Quinn: Yeah, yeah. And then I was just trying to make my version of it, really sort of ripping it off and not really wanting to but I was just listening to it and that was sort of all I knew. And, you know, trying to make it fun and trying to just make a few tracks that sounded good enough that maybe my friends could play them in the club. Actually, I didn't even really understand that that could happen. That was something where I finished one or two tracks and I played a show at Mathewson Street and the crowd liked it and I felt amazing. And I think then I recorded it, and then after I recorded it, I gave it to Chris and Morgan and Alvin at the night, I brought a CD to their party. And I think Chris played it and it was such a...
Jack: That night?
Quinn: At Pop. That moment, yeah. 5 minutes later, I think.
Jack: Wow, amazing. Just cue it up and check it out for a second and be, like...
Quinn: I think so.
Jack: That's cool!
Quinn: I kind of can't believe he did it.
Jack: That's legendary, like handing Larry Levan, or handing David Mancuso the Arthur Russell record and him playing it.
Quinn: Right, that type of thing. And I think that that's how I sort of got into it. And I think that it was Greg Fong who said, "You know, you gotta record this and give it to Chris. He'll play it." Or something like that. And so I spent a couple of weeks recording one song and it was really the best I could do. And then hearing it, that sort of set me up to want to do it forever. After that one moment.
Jack: That step of being like, "Oh, this is what it's for." Also, you know, playing it over a club sound system and people are actually dancing on the floor, you're like, "Oh, this is really interesting." And then the first time you hear that, you're like, "This works, this doesn't work, there's not enough bass," or whatever. It's such a different experience seeing people actually react to your music.
Quinn: The funny thing about that area, though, was all that stuff that I was listening to that I listed, that stuff was all so poorly produced and incredibly compressed, so just so powerfully compressed that it didn't really matter. [laughter] And so the best I could do, it wasn't that much worse than any of that stuff. And so I didn't really learn that lesson until much later. But it sort of just got my foot in the door, just the emotion of like, "Wow, that's my thing." Like, "Oh my God." And I'm hearing it and I'm getting to shuffle around self-consciously and just be at the club. [laughter]
Jack: It's like that meme: "nobody at this party knows that I produced this track," or whatever. You're, like, in the corner...
Quinn: Exactly. The first time I heard my own music in the club, when Chris played it, I just got to be there and see people dancing and I got to dance. And then that's still the rush, like, "Oh, I get to be playing it and people are dancing and I'm dancing."What a fun, cool thing you get to experience.
Jack: 100%. Chris, do you remember that moment when you played his track?
Chris: Yeah, I do.
Quinn: Oh my God. [laughter]
Chris: I think I might have it to video because I had a camera that I brought to one or two of those events. It's funny you mention the song quality because I feel like, yeah, the sound quality of everything used to be so bad, even in clubs and just shows. Our standard of sound was just very low at the time.
Jack: Yeah, was the club sound system not so good?
Chris: I don't even... Yeah, you know, it would be very close to just being overloaded and clipping. And a lot of times we were just, like... Oh, this was the crazy part, was that Morgan would have this huge speaker that he would roll around and we would use it for our monitoring, like the booth monitor.
Jack: Like a guitar amp or whatever. [laughter]
Chris: Yeah, he used to work for Newmark, so some kind of Newmark iPod speaker and it sounded just so harsh. I think I got tinnitus DJing with all that equipment. [laughter]
Jack: I feel at least the standard of sound systems I think in general has probably increased in the last 20 years.
Quinn: And production. You know, there was a really low barrier to entry. You could do such a bad sounding thing, but it would sound fine next to everything else. [laughter] And over a bad club system. So it sort of all worked out and made you feel you could do it. And now everything, the quality is so high, you're basically getting... Every drum machine already sounds so perfect straight out of the box. Really all you have to do is put the samples together and put a fucking rave stab on it and you've got something amazing sounding. [laughter] Really good sounding.
[Galcher Lustwerk "I Neva Seen"]
Jack: Quinn, you moved to New York in 2011?
Quinn: Yeah, Chris moved first, I think.
Jack: What year did you move to the city, Chris?
Chris: Well, so I interned at a place after graduating in 2009 in New York, so I was there for a little bit then. And then I kind of did this back and forth thing in Providence where I would stay in Providence and then work in New York. And I was basically doing that until I stayed there full time in late 2010, early 2011. I think Alex, DJ Richard, had already moved. I was trying to throw parties with a friend and Alvin and also Morgan were kind of in on it too. We would throw parties in Manhattan, little small things. He was Korean and so we found this spot in K-Town on the fifth floor of a business building and we would do stuff there. And we did stuff at this place in the Lower East Side called Stay, that had a little speakeasy basement. But so yeah, I was doing that and also going to Bunker parties, Resolute parties, also Dope Jams and Mister Sunday, when they were in Gowanus. Seeing all those parties made me want to get involved in music a little more. And I kind of just started going to those more and I felt timing wise there was this momentum with news and press, and I think they still had a lot of influence. I don't think they're as influential anymore, but they were huge in breaking a lot of artists and just because they were living in Brooklyn, basically, they kind of lumped everybody into "Brooklyn electronic music." But it was still cool to find each other, though. Back then there was still that kind of division between rock venues and dance parties. And I think a lot of the parties were taking place in the same type of places, but different crowds would show up. The Resolute and the Bunker parties were a little bougier, a little more European. But then there's 285 Kent or Death by Audio, places like that, where there's just kind of more PBR drinking kind of crowds. But I think all that is mashed up now. But then it was a weird divide and it was kind of hard to get one person to come to the other thing sometimes. It would take some convincing to bring someone to a Bunker party sometimes because they're just like, "I don't want to hear clean techno."
Jack: I moved here a couple months before Bossa [Nova Civic Club] opened and I lived down the block from it. So I remember going with, like, Danny Moore to the first weekend it opened being like, "This is the new place." And I was like, "Oh, that's cool, it's just this crappy bar that has loud techno." And whether or not I would say I like it or not, it was definitely an important place for a lot of people to go and hang out and meet and for those kinds of scenes to come together in a weird way.
Chris: But for us, before Bossa, there was this place Steuben Street.
Jack: Yes.
Chris: So did Eckhaus Latta live there or have their studio or something?
Quinn: They lived there first and then it became their studio.
Chris: Yeah, and then more people moved in and out. It was just a loft space in the Clinton Hill area.
Quinn: Navy Yard.
Chris: Or Navy Yard, yeah.
Quinn: That was technically where the first White Material party was. Alvin and a few other people built a DJ booth in that loft. And in that loft there were also shows, so you'd have a party that half the party would be a couple of people DJ and then there'd be a stop in the action and somebody would do a performance where they're pouring milk all over themselves and cutting themself and something pretty unusual, especially for New York. New York was not that weird at that moment. New York was pretty stale. And the weirdest thing you're going to see really was, like, the Strokes type shit. Just really traditional, almost on some troubadour shit, still playing guitar and singing. You're still seeing dudes with moppy hair playing and singing. To me, that feels so fucking old. It feels Elizabethan, or Renaissance bullshit. It's a guy with a guitar singing. And it's cool, I love that type of music, but it just felt like, "New York, where's the weird, where's the futuristic?" But that had all been stomped out, you know? The only things that were going were, like, Pasha. Just Godawful bottle service nonsense. It's the reason why people hate dance music in this country because they associate it... Well, there's a lot of reasons, but it's the worst of the worst, the last place on earth that you want to end up on a weekend. And that was all that was left. So then the way I see it is when I was going to Steuben Street, these are friends, people I knew, but they were bringing performance, they were bringing unexpected, they were bringing a little bit of the club, but the Loft. It was the reintroduction of anything could happen, the floor could collapse. And it did. And there's all kinds of wild stuff. I'm seeing a performance where someone's cutting themselves in the middle of the dance floor. And then when that's done, the DJ starts up again and half the audience leaves and goes outside to talk and the other half starts dancing. I mean, for me that was a pretty important moment, especially in New York. And, you know, not that I know everything, but...
Jack: Bringing a little bit of Providence to New York.
Quinn: That's how I sort of felt, yeah. It was cool to see it. And I think the reason why those parties were so popular is because it wasn't your bad club experience. It was a warehouse with all the weird, cool artists and designers. And the other thing that was going on there that was really big that I know influenced me was GHE20G0TH1K, and I think that those were also happening in warehouses. And I'm seeing that and being like, "This is similar to me, this is what I'm into."
Jack: Yeah, and if I remember from the parties I did go to, the sound was God awful at all of those parties.
Quinn: Oh yeah.
Jack: It was the worst possible, absolutely horrendous, ear splittingly bad.
Quinn: But it still somehow felt futuristic.
Jack: Totally.
Quinn: I mean, people could argue this, they could say the club music isn't futuristic at all. And I don't care. I don't care what they think. I mean, it still is transgressive to have a party in some weird basement and you're just listening to a loop of Britney Spears for 20 minutes. When I look at all this stuff, it does still inspire me. And I think it did inspire a lot of other people. You know, I know Telfar DJ'd at those parties. I know Venus X, Physical Therapy, Michael Magnan... Arca. I was playing shows with Arca then. I still look back on it and to me it still looks futuristic and interesting and exciting. And everyone from those eras has gone on to do their own little individual thing.
Jack: I remember going over, I think you guys were both there, to your place in Clinton Hill...
Quinn: Fort Greene.
Jack: In Fort Greene. With Ren [Schofield] before he played the Boiler Room with Pete Swanson on Montrose or whatever.
Quinn: Yeah, I played that Boiler Room too.
Jack: You played that! That's right. We went together, that's right.
Chris: It was crazy.
Quinn: Hellish, hellish experience. I remember I carried the PA in. They told me to be there at 1 in the afternoon and I got there 1 afternoon and nothing was set up. And this is a fuck you to Charles Damga. Fuck you. You never did your job. You never should have been involved in music. [laughter] And I don't know where you are now, but fuck you, Charles Damga. I carried the PA in that day. I was supposed to play my first Boiler Room, and instead of having a nice experience, I carried the PA in, sweating, and then I went back to my house, met up with Ren and then... Yeah.
[Young Male "How to Disappear in America"]
Jack: So then starting White Material in 2012, I think, if I'm correct. And then the first Galcher record - I did a little research earlier - it was the third release on White Material, if I'm not mistaken.
Quinn: No, you're right.
Jack: I'm curious about that era. [Chris,] this was your first physical release, as far as I know. And then [Quinn,] you started doing Young Male and then White Material with Alex. I'm curious about that because that's a critical point.
Quinn: So Young Male I started in Rhode Island.
Jack: Okay, so you were already doing it.
Quinn: It was an ambient project, I was making ambient music. I'd found a cardboard sign sitting outside of a mill building. And it said almost exactly this, word for word, on the sign: "Young male will pay you $200 to hit me with baseball bat 200 times and kick me in nuts 200 times. Come to yellow door and holler 'Germ.'" [laughter]
Jack: Thank you for saying that.
Quinn: So that's where the name came from, Young Male. And it was instant, like, "Oh my God, what an amazing cardboard sign." It was just cardboard with sharpie written on it. And I was making ambient music. I just kept that name and I started making pretty corny rip offs of Moroder and Eric Prydz. And then when I was hearing what Chris was making and hearing other stuff, hearing Levon Vincent, hearing Omar-S, all stuff that Chris was really introducing me to, I was getting more interested in minimal and in a Detroit type sounds. And then I was also going to GHE20G0TH1K, going to Bunker and being inspired still by rap and still by sort of a cross of all these sounds. And then I was going to Bunker and then I'd come home, you know, six in the morning, and I would have this urge to make tracks or try to recreate the feeling that I was feeling after seeing Marcel Dettmann play for 6 hours or seeing Sandwell District or Omar-S or Steffi or that generation, basically, of European/American crossover artists, artists who were both the U.S. and Europe and who also had a wide range of influences but were way more established. But I'm seeing that and I'm like, "I have something to say," is how I felt. And then I'm just like, "I'm going to try to make what I'm going to try to make." And the first White Material parties were at Steuben Street where I would play a ten minute 909 set. You know, take my shirt off, play 909, and then when I'm done...
Jack: I've seen you do that before, I saw you at the Fitness basement. 2013 I think?
Quinn: Yeah, exactly, exactly. But so then the rest of the party would be Morgan, Chris, Alvin, Alex, all DJing. I'd do a ten minute little thing, and the label sort of just came out of wanting to put out music and put out vinyl. I was getting obsessed with vinyl. I still had only barely learned how to DJ just using Ableton. I think I started trying to do that in 2009 or 8. And then watching Chris learn in his bedroom, learn on pretty difficult to use turntables and then was getting into getting really into vinyl. And Alex and I would take a 30 minute walk to Halcyon, in New York, to go listen to whatever the new records were that week. And through that I was like, "I love the connection to physical objects and I want to make something." And I'd always been a creative, artistic person, so it made sense. And then I recorded all this shit on Logic and took me forever just to make three tracks. And then put it together, came up with the name. The name for me was always, like, I'm thinking what's a way to describe a drug, some powder or something. And it was also an open ended thing, people could creatively misinterpret if they wanted. They could come up with whatever the hell they're thinking. But it sounded dangerous to me, White Material, interesting. And I didn't know that there was a movie that had come out at that time. Alex and I had been searching for names. We'd had this connection where we were just always listening to music together. And I was seeing all of them DJing and becoming more interested in that aspect and learning, them teaching me. It was Morgan and Chris, really, who taught me.
Jack: So then, Chris, you were, of course, DJing these parties and everything, and still producing tracks that you're playing out. Where did the Galcher Lustwerk project and name and all of these things that you're most well known for now, what was the sort of genesis of that?
Chris: So I think White Material had already started and I didn't have that name, but it must've been months later that I decided that that's the name I wanted to use for when my record when it came time. Galcher Lustwerk sort of came from... Well, I found the name as a captcha online, so it was a generative name, sort of like the Wu-Tang name generator, a similar situation. [laughter] And I was just super psyched on Drexciya and Dopplereffekt and, you know, "Sharevari," and just this kind of, like...
Jack: Trying to be European, this association.
Chris: Yeah, yeah. And I liked just how I was able to completely detach my other life from it. I sort of treated it as its own project, in that sense. I was also inspired by Omar-S and I was really into DJ Q and Joey Anderson and Fred P. Levon too. And so yeah, it was kind of just the zeitgeist of the time, I don't know. That was just kind of what I wanted to put out. And I think I'd given Quinn and Alex a batch of songs that they may have picked from because I was posting on SoundCloud all the time. And so there were snippets out.
[Young Male "Drug Deal Videos"]
Jack: I'm curious about the early stages of your modern life as musicians, what that experience of getting more and more attention and more and more offers, what was that like for you guys?
Quinn: For me, it was a dream come true and it was also torture. It destroyed relationships. It's only really the last few years where I've ever felt any amount of actually anyone liking what I have done or do. I think at that time it was weird because I certainly didn't deserve the attention, but I didn't not deserve it. I wasn't doing that much less than most people, and I was really putting so much effort into raising myself up and raising up my friends, just this little group of people. But the way that the media always told my story, without me getting to have any fucking say, was torture. The things that they said about me were untrue, the picture that was painted about me wasn't true. And it honestly soured a lot of the experience because here I am, I'm going up to some DJ that I was psyched to play with, and they're telling me I'm some piece of shit because a record is too expensive. For one, the step from obscurity to having a few opportunities was so tiny compared to what a lot of people experience. I went from getting paid $20 and that would be a big, big victory for me, to getting paid $300 to play in some shitty basement in Manchester where I have my gear and the basement's flooding and I'm thinking I've made it. But here, you can imagine, it was not all it was cracked up to be, but I was lucky to have any of it. And I think right place, right time, right moment, right sound led me there. That's just how I look at my own. There's some people where the talent, it's much bigger, and I think for me it was just always a struggle to finish anything. And so going from nobody caring at all, to being the laughing stock of of the Rhode Island noise scene, to then having a lot of those same people kissing my fucking ass, wanting to put a record out where they didn't care about dance music and they never did, but were like, "Whoa, you're getting attention." I was getting the wrong attention and I was still in a position where everyone... People did not like what I was doing for one reason or the other. And people in Brooklyn were saying weird negative shit. The people coming to the parties enjoyed it, but it was a weird feeling and it definitely left me... I feel I'm still getting over the chip on my shoulder that that left, whether it was some enormous magazine with a giant reach saying that what I'm doing is not good, or whether it was the scene in Rhode Island saying what I'm doing is not good. But here I am and most of them do not exist anymore. Most of them are not making music. Most of them have gone on to become whatever alcoholic, whatever miserable human that they always were. And I'm still doing this shit. And I don't know, it wasn't pleasant. There were moments of true bliss, playing on a boat in Croatia as the sun is setting and then getting to hear Chris play Sustain Release. That's still one of my favorite moments I've ever experienced. And people still come up to me who I meet and say, "Oh, Galcher Lustwerk, Sustain Release, second year," you know? So there's moments. It's a weird dichotomy of true misery and some of my best friends ever coming to be enemies. But then also it's like, "Well, I'm going to follow this dream and I'm not going to let go because some snobby Brooklyn asshole is telling me what I do is not good," you know? So it was weird. I wish I could say it was everything that I'd ever wanted, but it was hellish. And then moments were truly beautiful. Going to Europe for the first couple of times, I never thought I would ever go to Europe, you know? But then doing it and getting paid and making this music that so many people had told me was not good every step of the way, every fucking step of the way... And I still feel like I'm recovering.
[Galcher Lustwerk "See You When I See You"]
Jack: Just to continue, Chris, I'm just curious about what your experience was after the first record and becoming the internationally acclaimed star you are today.
Chris: I mean it kind of all happened so fast. I don't know, I really also wanted to bring my friends up with me. And then in a lot of circumstances that was impossible. I don't know, it was a combination of a little bit being selfish, but also not wanting to lose friends over shit, you know? So it felt just like life. Like, honestly, it just felt like I was living life and all this other crap was happening. I was anxious about the internet and self-destructive of my social media. And that was kind of how I manifested my distaste with everything. But I'm super grateful for all the traveling and the people. It's tight that we're all still homies, even though, like Morgan's kind of exiled in Rhode Island and Alvin's out in California. But yeah, it all happened so fast. And I just wish it were easier to correct the narratives that had been going around because it really did feel kind of just like a Gossip Girl type world at that time, SoundCloud, Facebook, pre-Instagram. There wasn't anything stopping people from just being assholes on a grand stage. So yeah, I don't know, I just felt like it all kind of went and I didn't really try and control it too, too much, you know? Just try to go with the flow of everything. I'm still trying to do the thing, you know, trying to make a living.
Jack: Exactly, we all got a job, man. [laughter] I guess before we wrap it up, are there any last thoughts or whatever that you wanted to include, set the record straight, etc., etc., before we sign off?
Chris: I wanna say fuck you to Charles Damga too. [laughter]
Quinn: Yeah, fuck you, Charles Damga. [laughter]
Chris: That's what I really do. I'm glad you broke the ice.
Quinn: I have a request.
Chris: Drop the Funkmaster Flex bomb. [laughter]
Quinn: That's exactly what I was going to request! An airhorn, or guns firing whenever... [laughter]
Jack: Definitely.
Quinn: I would just like to say that, for me, the real value and the thing that keeps me in love with the music is the other musicians that I've met. They keep bringing me back and they keep inspiring me. And when I think I've had it and I'm toasted, I go see Chris play, or I see Mike Servito play or I see, you know, you name it, some other person from New York or I hear somebody from here's mix or something. And it just keeps pulling me back. And I feel those people that I've met and the music that they've made, it's this weird, infinite source of inspiration. And that's been the real prize. Now I go out almost anywhere I go I get to go usually for free and I get to be re-upped. It's like a drug and it's like an endlessly renewable resource for some reason now. I'm not a young man anymore, you know? People always see me and they're like, "Oh, you're Middle Aged Male." [laughter] So I've been doing this for a long time.
Jack: The hate never stops, man.
Quinn: I feel beloved at this point! That's the cool thing. But the real prize with all of it is meeting these other musicians from around the world. You know, I've gotten to meet my heroes and have them tell me that they're there to see me, and then I get to be friends with them, and then I get to see them play into perpetuity. That never really occurred to me, that that would happen or was going to happen. And I feel it's this crazy blessing. And I still get to party, I party more than I play now and, and I love it. I wish I could accurately describe the feeling, going to party and watching Chris play, it almost makes me feel like I'm a kid again. It brings me back to those moments where I'm like, "I want to do this." And it happened last weekend watching Chris play.
Jack: That's beautiful. [laughter] Hell yeah. So in conclusion, fuck Charles Damga and your there's nothing more important than your friends.
Quinn: And the other musicians out there.
Jack: And other musicians.
Chris: I love you, Quinn.
Quinn: Love you, Chris.
Jack: Hell yeah, that's what's up. Well, thank you guys very much and I hope to see you guys soon.
