Gladstone Deluxe expands and lives through the rhythm.

Embracing humanity and experimentalism in electronic music, their practice is in part defined by interactions with the improvised self, dreams of sonic liberation, and the antagonization of frequencies culled from the colonial metronome.

When Deluxe and I first crossed paths, they were on an exit path out of Pittsburgh towards NYC, having spent years in the city’s electronic and experiential improv scenes, both as a versatile percussionist and as a member of the Uhaul Disco crew, who built a reputation throwing sporadic DIY extravaganzas. Eventually, after hearing a track of theirs on Titonton Duvante’s XLR8R Podcast, I connected with their EP Valkyries and played it the first time I DJ’d at Nowadays in September 2021. I was inspired to play the EP’s title track because Gladstone was in attendance at the gig, and it revealed itself as one of those tracks that completely saves your ass when you’re furiously scrolling through your USB trying to continue the story. Since then, some of the most adventurous millennial DJs have found Gladstone’s music in their crates; the ripple effect from “Valkyries” led to the artist’s breakthrough EP Spherical Intelligence, 4 cuts of hip-moving, cerebral electro on the newly minted label DATA DISK (itself an offshoot of beloved Pittsburgh labels Is/Was & Terrafirm).

One thing I’ve learned from our friendship since then is that Gladstone is unafraid to continue the story—and if they don’t know how the next chapter starts yet, they’ll figure out how to write it in their own words.

Their body of work encapsulates everything from scoring films about personal journeys through Hawaiian land to playing timbales for the NYC-based transgender salsa ensemble Las Mariquitas to staging collaborative A/V exhibitions deconstructing surveillance, black aesthetics, and policing, On top of all that, they were recently featured in a video for Moog (yes, Moog) freaking the freak on the synths masterfully like they do on their prolific youtube channel. Needless to say, their practice is eclectic, invigorating, and ever-growing.

Utilizing live performance, the fusion of organic and digital, and the patterns of recognition that pulsate through their vast compositional background, Deluxe’s practice provides space for deconstruction and rebirth. In their music, the spiritual and cybernetic collide in a chimeric fusion of combustible drum cadences and topographical modalities. Reverberations of pre-Columbian insight meld with the inescapable exterior influence of a world forced to adapt to the hierarchical interests of empire and capital—a world in constant flux.

All of this is channeled through Gladstone’s unique sonic perspective, which is expressed through autonomous mechanized anthems that range from electro-IdeaMusic to footworkable maelstroms to undeniably grooving minimal techno. It’s music that responds to dance music’s inescapably global conversation between technological advancement and cultural displacement under the guise of progress—an ongoing dialogue that transforms individual rhythm into a dance of possibility beyond the sum of its parts.

Ultimately, Deluxe specializes in shifting the paradigm, and the track premiering today—“Kite Strata”—continues on in this legacy, disrupting a haggard 4/4 framework into a dextrous blend of expression perfect for the fun-loving DJs & limber dancers among us. 

We’ve had the distinct pleasure of collaborating on music, events, and phenomena with Deluxe, through their involvement with Uhaul Disco and through electronic flourishes in free jazz ensemble Datamaster (whose tape release show I provided some totally effed-up DJ sounds for in between sets). I was happy to catch up with them, in between their busy life making art and petting their cat, to answer some questions about the inner machinations of Deluxe, presented in their own words for your reading pleasure.

What does this track mean to you? Does it have a story?

I think it’s about the sky, and what the sky represents to us as people. Our hopes and dreams are stored in the sky, our ideal versions of ourselves are up there, and that’s what we chase in the day-to-day. For me that ideal self that I’m chasing in the studio is a fully liberated self. A version of me that doesn’t care what people think, and feels completely comfortable walking around and being in the world in my skin. Moving unbridled with craziness and loving the instruments.

At one point, dinosaurs evolved into birds, and you evolved from Gladstone to Gladstone Deluxe. What is the Deluxe state of being like?

Deluxe is like when you try a new flavor of ice cream, wait a few seconds, and then realize you’ve discovered your new favorite flavor of ice cream. It’s the sensation that comes when your perspective shifts, and you realize the world is more than what you thought it could be. “This is it.” Deluxe is also about the balance of raw power and finesse. Like how shooting a basketball or hitting a tennis ball always requires some amount of physical strength, but also technique and subtlety.

Is the mind a terrible thing to waste?

I don’t know if we could ever be the ones to make the call, if a mind has been wasted or if its potential for good has been maximized. Although the daily-life practice of being in tune with emotional experiences and love for the fellow human seems to be something that’s fleeting, a lot of the best art that’s had such a force for good in the world was made by people who weren't in their “right” minds at the time. It’s pretty clear that we don’t really need it all that much to tap into something bigger than ourselves. 

As someone who's spent a lot of time in music-academia learning words that describe music and sound, I’m constantly wondering if it even matters that they exist. I’ve been in low-budget DIY spaces with community friends and high-budget studios with Billboard artists, and no one really uses the right vocabulary for things. It just doesn’t matter that much, because we can still communicate what we need to and make music that positively affects the world.

But on the other side of that token, what if we had a deeper relationship with sound through daily engaged listening practice, and spent more mind-energy into developing a vocabulary around sound? Would we have a deeper appreciation for our environment and one another? Probably. Indigenous cultures across the world and later Pauline Oliveros certainly thought so. 

Are any sides of this discussion wasting their minds?

How has your time living in NYC & the tri-state area been?

It’s been amazing! It was a big and risky decision to move to New York. But It’s paid off so much. I’ve met so many friends and artists that have impacted me, and received so many opportunities that I wouldn’t have gotten if I hadn’t made the leap to come here. Coming to New York and finding a community of queer people of color really gave me so much strength that I didn’t know I could have. For those that don’t know, I was in Pittsburgh for around seven years before coming here. Pittsburgh was a good place for me to begin my career as a young and budding musician and grow my chops. But there was a long period of time where I was ready to leave that beginning stage, and it wasn’t really happening in Pittsburgh. I’m not a super outwardly social kind of person so I had trouble meeting people in the scene, and when I did, most people didn’t really think my stuff was as great as I knew it was. I felt stagnant after a while, but since I got to New York things have been moving very fast (for better or for worse). It feels like my career really started when I made that move.

Picture this, you wake up from your alarm going off after a late night studio sesh. A cold sweat lays across your pillow, like supple morning dew. Igor Stravinsky was in your dreams and he says, “Well, I claim to be one of the greatest composers of all time, but I’ve never heard of Gladstone Deluxe.” What piece of yours do you play for him?

HAHA, I think Stravinsky would actually be very down with GXGXGX from my Purgatory 7 EP on Black Techno Matters.

Our paths crossed through the DIY scene in Pittsburgh through your being part of Uhaul Disco—is there anything from your time in Pittsburgh that’s stuck with you? What is your involvement with Uhaul like?

This was after I moved, but the first time I played Hot Mass is still one of the best gigs I think I’ve ever played. I spent the week before writing all new music, and put so much into the whole one-and-a-half-hour hour live set, and people really connected with it. Usually the producer’s life is pretty isolating, and it’s not so often that you get an opportunity to write music for a specific environment. But that set was for that dance floor and came from all the times I’ve had there, emotions that happened and inspiration that came there, and the people that I experienced all that with in the city. The set can be streamed on DETOUR’s soundcloud.  

Uhaul Disco started as a house party, and it was really a family affair. Justin (Johnny Zoloft), Samira (MIRA MIRA), and I have been close friends and musically engaged with each other for a decade at this point—we’ve grown as adults and come into musical maturity together. Even the things we do solo are basically collaborations because of all the jams and conversations we’ve had. Uhaul Disco is an extension of squad ethos. Samira and Justin are party throwing masterminds, and it’s really their brain baby. I don’t really have that gene, but I do what I can to help when I’m able. Our party in March was the first time I had taken the lead on curation and concepts for one of our events. It was really amazing to see all of that come into fruition.

You’re a part of the Las Mariquitas ensemble, which also features rapid pi movement alum MIRA MIRA and your Dendarry Bakery collaborator Mobéy Lola Irizarry—how has playing timbales in a live band like this influenced your practice? 

Well, the percussion pipeline from Africa to the Caribbean and America, and techno’s place in that, is something I always love to bring up. Many African rhythms survived through, and are the lifeblood of, ritual musics and resistance musics like bata, vodou and bomba, salsa, funk, and techno. The Belleville Three were listening to a lot of funk and fusing that inspiration with early German electronic music. They were Americans translating Afrocentric sensibilities that were prominent on the radio to an electronic context. All these musics use repetition, call and response, and drums in ways that have apparent African influence, but also, the dance associated with the music is arguably just as important as the music itself. I could go on about that for longer, but the bottom line is that I think salsa and the electronic music that I make (techno or other) trace back to the same root. Consistently playing live drums in a context where the dancers are relying on me continues to teach me about sound’s effect on the body all the time. Learning about salsa as a resistance music and practicing that on a deep level changes how I think about techno and what I’m doing in the studio.

Is percussion an extension of the subconscious?

In some ways yes. I prefer to think of it as something that tends to draw our attention towards things that are usually in our subconscious, but should be more foregrounded in our lives and general culture. With the body, percussion and rhythm can often be an invitation to calm the mind down, and be present with your body, explore it, and grow in your comfort in your own skin. The sound is invisible, and the only thing you can see is the other people around you experiencing the same thing. Loud, steady beats that everyone can be on the same page with have a tendency to draw a line between the body, the community, and the nowness, and teach us important lessons about what we are, and how time and space works.

What’s your dream dancing scenario to play a live set in?

I think it’s a mid-sized venue, around 150-400 capacity, with eight nice PAs, and some number of destructive subs. A dream I have always had is to be able to do a multi-channel, dance-oriented live set in at least eight channels, creating a three dimensional club experience. I’ve tried once or twice, and they were interesting but didn’t really work out. I didn’t have my live set chops to a comfortable point yet, and I also wasn’t as good of a programmer as I am now, so my ambisonic software that was doing the panning wasn’t as good as I needed it to be. It’s a hard thing to do, because simplicity lies at the heart of what makes a lot of dance music powerful and important. But there’s also so much that hasn’t been done yet in the dance/club space, playing with directionality is just one thing. I prefer midsize to large spaces, because you still have enough people for those transcendental communal moments, but from the performers perspective, you can communicate more intricate ideas than in a huge space.

Are there any routines that keep you grounded to begin or end your day?

Yeah, I do a lot of exercise. Rock climbing and yoga are two things that probably keep me the most grounded. I am training for a half marathon right now too, which has been kind of brutal.  Rock climbing teaches me a lot about the process of discovery. Yoga tends to keep my brain in a good place and manages anxiety. Both can have a lot to do with balance, and learning to be present in the body. I like cooking and reading too.

Any upcoming projects, releases, & Deluxe accolades you want to shout out?

For sure, this year has been a rollercoaster. Around last August, Moog approached me about doing some performances on their new synthesizer, the Labyrinth. I got the synth early and had a blast with it. The video finally came out recently and it looks great. I had the privilege of writing a piece for So Percussion, who were major inspirations of mine growing up as a percussionist. I performed the piece with them on stage, and I’m excited to share the documentation soon.

I’ll be putting an EP out on my bandcamp to go with Kite Strata, and my vault of unreleased tracks is pretty backed up right now, so I am going to be putting a lot of music on Bandcamp in the coming months. I’ll have music on VA’s for DETOUR and MISC this year, and have an EP slated to release with Fixed Rhythms in summer 2025. Las Mariquitas is also coming out with our debut EP sometime in the next year!