Sunday, March 28, 2010

Dr. Strangeloop


Paging Dr. Strangeloop…Strangeloop is the mad beat scientist of Brainfeeder. He goes beyond the normal beat/ambient work of Brainfeeder/La scene and pushes it even further into the ambient unknown.

How did you get into making music and how long have you been doing it? What can you recommend for people who want to get into making beats and other music? I have been trying to make music with garageband and have been frustrated with the controls. Do you have any programs you suggest?

Everything is music, I've always been into it in one way or another. Even modern physics is on that tip, the whole sha-bang is vibration, emanating into the infinite.

I think we're all making music all the time, neurological music, physiological music, we just have to tap into that and let it flow. I suggest moving away from a purely beat-centric view of the sonic universe, there is a whole universe beyond just beats.

Its not the tools you use, its how you use them. If you have a bucket and a stick, you can make some serious crazy stuff happen. hahaha.

What inspires your style of music? Your sound is pretty distinctly your own. While you can definitely hear the Brianfeeder/Low End Theory elements, your songs seem to be less inspired by Hip-Hop/Jazz. You seem to have a more experimental/noise/drum and bass style. Is that this is a fair description?

Philosophy inspires my music most fundamentally. I try to take everything in and just run with whatever I'm feeling. I do have a background in math-metal and noise-music, so your description makes sense ... and the first artists that got me excited about electronic music were Aphex Twin and Amon Tobin, some of which could loosely be describes as experimental jungle / drum and bass, so that was kind of my jumping off point.

If I've done my job right, the music should defy labels and descriptions, though I love trying to describe really obtuse music for fun : "Its kind of like IDM-ey experimental drill and bass, with some dubstep influences, avant-noise pop, touches of abstract musique concrete .... " hahaha, you can get lost in that stuff and stop actually fully listening to the music.

Your first official release, Are We Lost Mammals of an Approaching Transcendental Epoch?, is over 17 minutes long. Do you find making long songs easier than making short songs? The song has definite sections/movements, were these created individually and then placed together or was the song composed roughly chronologically?

The whole thing was created in three days, chronologically. Its kind of a conceptual record, not because I was trying to express a specific concept, but because something conceptual kind of arose out of it. I can see myself almost learning to make music the way I want to over the course of the album, it starts very naively and ends in what I feel is a more refined series of crescendoes.

It is still probably the most experimental thing I've ever made, and in part was about dealing with a lot of psychedelic trauma and overwhelm. The title, the style, the length, it all points to kind of overload of ideas and questions about our place in the Universe, and the future of our species on this planet. It is an expression of this, existential frustration, confusion, revelatory insights ... all put into a cannon and shot into space.

When is your new record coming out and what can we expect from it? Are the songs posted on your myspace page songs from the new album or are they something else?

I have a lot of projects coming out this year, but I can't yet be too specific about release dates and what-not, I've got to lock it all down first. I'm going to release a media-package of my science-fiction film 2010, a short / free breakcore album on SoSimple records called Self = Self^2 + Other, a series of remixes for Are We Lost Mammals ...featuring Shlohmo and Seven Saturdays, an ambient EP called Balance created with my friend Timeboy, and a full-length LP on Brainfeeder that I'm almost done with called Easy Listening for our Future Children. Some songs from these releases are on MySpace, but most have not been put out there yet.

You are an accomplished artist, how did you get into visual art? Do things that inspire your music also inspire your art or are they somewhat separate? I have heard that you will be doing Flylo's visuals at Coachella is this true? If it is true, what can we expect from the show?

To me its all patterns and philosophy. Visual art, sound, I'm still dealing with fundamentally the same desires, ideas, etc. I am semi-synaesthetic, and can very easily visualize music, and vice-versa. I think this is also a sense we can learn as a culture, and it should be taught in school.

I will be performing with FlyLo for Coachella, and you can expect some new shit. We will be utilizing some of the visuals works I've made for him in the past year, but we will be pushing it up a notch and adding a lot of new material, maybe some more of the music-responsive elements he has been innovating, maybe some more narrative elements as well. Should be fun :D

Thank you for talking to me!

thank you!


Strangeloop will be preforming Tonight (3/28) in LA at Brainfeeder with Kode 9, Kutmah, Jeremiah Jae and Teebs.

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