Man Is Doomed - Escape to Europa (Kid Color Remix)

If you’ve been out in Wicker Park in the last year you’ve seen or heard the name Kid Color. A DJ with a mustache and rat tail, bouncing around happily in the DJ booth. Now Kid Color is gaining a lot more steam with the success of Metro’s One Night Stand, Rehab and now Tuesdays @ Buddha—he doesn’t seem to stop working. Hailing from Southern California, Kid Color’s “Daisy Age” disco vibe just wants to unite the dance floor. Having been taken under the wing of Dark Wave Disco and Curt from Flosstradamus, Kid Color is now coming into his own, with the formation of Yello Fever and now more solo projects than ever. I sat down with the newly legal drinker to talk about his upcoming original, his love for comic books, and of course house party hijinks.

BK: How’d you get into Djing?

Kid Color: I’ve always been into dance music of some kind, like my first cassette I bought was Ace of Bass. And I got the Jock James…I always loved to dance, and I’ve been collecting music forever. And then one time I went to a music festival and I saw this DJ Steve Aoki. And this was the first time I ever saw a DJ as an artist. He was having so much fun, and people were loving it. This was my junior year of high-school, and I just thought, “This is what I want to do.” And it just made sense because I had all this music already. I finally got turntables one summer and just locked myself in a room and taught myself. It was cool, it was a lonely summer.

I also did research on DJing and the history of DJing. It’s important to look at what’s behind in order for you to progress.

BK: Did you ever have any problems at gigs being underage?

Kid Color: Well, when I got my fake ID I was using it all over the place. I was stuck on my fake...I was so attached to it I even used it to get money out of the bank on several occasions. And at Double Door…I had never been there before, this was the first time I got booked. And being young, when I got booked somewhere people usually wouldn’t ID me, they’d be like “cool, come in.” But at this one I gave one guy ID and had another bouncer come over and they totally knew. They just said “this is fake.” And I was just tensing up saying “no it’s not! Not it’s not!” They took my ID and as soon as I finished playing they kicked me out. And it was raining that night.

"They took my ID and as soon as I finished playing they kicked me out."

BK: How’d you get hooked up with Yello Fever?

Kid Color: When I moved out here I just started DJing, and just doing house parties and clubs, and then I started thinking maybe I could throw a party. And I would always see Skyler’s name around, and I was thinking of other DJs to book, so I hit up Skyler. We never got that party settled, but then I guess he saw me at a show because he then hit me back and was like, “hey we should hang out,” [and then things led to another, wait that sounds like a date [laughs]. And then Skyler was talking to Jobot at the time, who’s also in Yello Fever. We’re trying to work on a system where all three of us can DJ at once. We’re working on original music, and JoJo [Jobot] is a genius when it comes to music. Her ideas are just awesome.

BK: You're going to school out here aren't you?

Kid Color: I was. I took this year off, actually. I went to Columbia, studied music business. Before I moved out here I was interning for this music magazine called Filter, and they were also a music marketing firm, and I was doing that for two years, and so I thought, okay, music business. But coming out here and I’ve been meeting a lot more people and learning a lot more just from DJing, rather than school. Not saying that the degree is worthless, but for me I work better out of the classroom. But I am going to go back to school and change my major to illustration, because I want to draw comics, or just write comics, I’m really into that.

BK: What comics have you been reading these days?

Kid Color: The one I got super into was “Fables,” have you heard of “Fables”? Basically it’s all of your favorite fantasy historical figures and anyone Disney made a movie about; all their kingdoms suddenly get attacked by this thing called the Adversary which is this evil power, so they’re forced out of their world and into our world, and they live in New York. And it’s them in human form…it’s hard without going into too much detail, but it’s…oh my God. I’ve also been reading “Y: The Last Man” In this one there was a freak accident and all the men and Y chromosomes die except one male and his pet monkey, who are trying to figure out why they survived…I’m really into “Lost” and all, so I geek out to all this kind of stuff. And just super hero comics—I love them.

BK: How did you integrate into the Chicago scene so fast?

Kid Color: When I first moved out here I lived in the Columbia dorms, in this apartment that I shared with my roommate. And one night we were like, “we should have a dance party.” So, at 10 o’clock at night we cut out pieces of paper that said “Dance party in 807.” By the end of the night we had about 30 kids dancing in the dorm, and it was really fun. The next week we did it again and it got up to 40 people. And then the week after that people started calling me the DJ kid, and we thought this one had to be big.

Moving to a new place, what do you have to do? You have to start your own party, or do your own thing. So for the last and final one we got up to 50 or 60 kids—and when it’s in a dorm room keep in mind people were dancing on the kitchen counter, they were going nuts. But I guess that night there was a fire on the floor below so all the sprinklers went off and they stopped our parties. But word about the parties got around, and it got back to the school and Columbia started booking me for different events. Columbia booked me with Floss and Chuck and Mickey from The Cool Kids, and then Curt [from Flosstradamus] texted me two months later and wanted to know if I wanted to DJ with them for the 18 and over party.

I think Chicago is a pretty accepting city, which is one of the main reasons I love it. When I saw the DJ scene out here I was like “that’s what I have to do.” I think it’s a combination of working hard, and I try to give off as much good energy as I can, and I think people really see that…I don’t know.

"That night there was a fire on the floor below so all the sprinklers went off and they stopped our parties."

BK: How did the name come to be?

Kid Color: Well, the first guy I ever saw that made me want to DJ become one was Steve Aoki. People don’t really know that his original DJ name was Kid Millionaire. So, I was like, “okay, Kid, I like that.” And my older brother always called me “Kid” growing up. And then “Color,” I imagined all the parties I wanted to play, and in my head it’s this party straight from Studio 54. I’m really inspired by the disco era, and I just imagined colorful. I like how one word can have so many different meanings behind people’s idea of it. 

BK: What live stuff are you working on?

Kid Color: I’m in the process of starting a live dance act, so people have something more to look at…But, then there’s the crowd that just wants to get drunk and dance, which I’m down with too.

Photo by: Matthias St. John

BK: How do you feel about Chicago now that you’ve been here?

Kid Color: Honestly, I love it. It’s my favorite city of all time. I used to go up to L.A. all the time, because like I said I’m from Orange County. And Chicago is so accepting and open-minded. And people say the weather here sucks, but whatever it only makes the summers amazing.

BK: What would you like to get into next?

Kid Color: I’m working on original music, which is hard because I’m trying to find a sound that I want to identify Kid Color with. But in the meantime I have a lot of my side projects. I’m doing some Disco House with Curt from Flosstradamus. In a year I would like to have at least an EP of original music that really sums me up and doesn’t have to be played in a club.

BK: What do you think partygoers are looking for these days.

Kid Color: I feel like people still love to dance, but also that the nightlife is looking for a little bit more. Personally, I missed Outdanced because it was DJs and live acts, and I loved that. I fear that it gets to the point where people are bored with someone standing behind a computer, but I do think people are searching for more. That’s why I’m trying to collab’ on music, and live performances. 

You can catch Kid Color playing this Friday (June 19th) at The Congress Theater lobby opening up for The Rapture and Hearts Revolution. 

Tigercity: Andrew Brady, Bill Gillim, Joel Ford, Aynsley Powell

Tigercity - "Other Girls" Live

Story by ILLson

Tigercity released their first album Pretend Not To Love and started getting attention all over the music community. Rolling Stone Magazine named Tigercity a band to watch; Andrew, Aynsley, Bill and Joel have been on the road ever since. Sharing their 80’s reminiscent synth-rock with vocals that have been compared to Justine Timberlake’s—but don’t you dare use the phrase “yacht rock” around them.

At this past Spandexxx DJ A-Cup of Moneypenny introduced me to the guys of Tigercity who were in town to play a show at The Double Door the next night. We chatted and ended up drinking whiskey until almost four in the morning, which Andrew and Aynsley later forgot. Inspired by 80’s legends Hall and Oats, Bryan Eno and lots of dark synth; Tigercity was originated by Joel Ford, who has long brown hair, perfectly straight and parted in the middle. He moved to Brooklyn and added Bill Gillim, Aynsley Powell and Andrew Bradley. Now on the road again we chatted and talked tour stories and the future album.

BK: Would you ever use the term “yacht rock”?

Bill: No.

Joel: Definitely not. [Andrew and Aynsley make sour faces shaking their heads]

BK: Why is that?

Bill: When we started doing what we were doing there was no yacht rock. Yacht rock was labeled by the guys who did the videos, which are fucking hilarious. But they were being made simultaneous to us…There was a resurgence of people’s interest, and suddenly everyone was into that kind of music from the 80s. So, for us it was ‘remember that sick Phil Collins song?’ Our music wasn’t ironic or funny to us, but the videos are fucking hilarious.

Aynsley: It wasn’t fallowing a trend, we were in our own bubble it just happened to coincide with this other thing.

Joel: But all the music labeled as that is awesome. We listen to Steely Dan in our van, but it’s not like “Hey,Andrew let’s put on some yacht rock.”

Aynsley: We do want yachts, though. If we could each have a yacht and continue to rock we would definitely do that.

BK: I was told to ask you if you had any good Andrew stories to tell.

All four start laughing.

Andrew: Are there any recent ones?

Bill: Well, you were the one who answered the phone when the prostitute called. 

Andrew: Oh. Oh yeah, yeah that was a good one.

Bill: We played in this grimy part of Pensacola, and we were staying in the Super Inn, not even the Super 8. We were telling the people who booked the show that we were about to go there. They asked us if we wanted to stay at their house, and we were like “Nah, we’re going to stay at the Super Inn.”

And they said, “Okay? That’s like hooker row.” So, we got there at 3:30 in the morning, and at 4 someone starts knocking on the door. Joel looked out the peephole, and it’s this chick smoking a cigarette, with not much clothes on. So we just ignored it and were kinda scared thinking, “Oh my God, hooker at the door.” She kept knocking for like 10, 15 minutes.

“Her pimp’s going to come break in our room and get mad at us for not having sex with the hooker.”

She finally went away, and then at seven in the morning we were woken up because she started knocking again, I guess she was desperate for work. I was the only one that woke up this time and was totally paranoid, thinking, “Her pimp’s going to come break in our room and get mad at us for not having sex with the hooker.” And then the phone rings and Andrew picked it up, and the hooker was like, “Hey who’s this? What’r y’all doing?” And Andrew just said  “LEAVE US ALONE.” And hangs up the phone.

Aynsley: In the past tours there’s been more absurd stories, but this one’s been relatively sober so it’s all of us being hounded by a hooker.

Andrew: I can say that I duct taped boxes of pizza shut last night.

BK: Wait, what happened?

Andrew: We got really drunk last night and ordered Chicago pizza, and it’s like 25 bucks per pizza. We (Andrew and Aynsley) paid for it, and we’re super broke. So, we just duct taped the boxes really intensely so no one could get in it.

Bill: I was sleeping, and from my bedroom all I hear is “Pizza’s here!” They went downstairs, and I hear, “How much is it...?Whaaaaat...?Well, what’s that...?How is it...?Okay, $60. Should we give him a tip?” They went upstairs and blasted Radiohead, and then I heard, “Fuck it, no one’s eating the pizza, someone else is gonna want the pizza. Joel comes here! Bill comes here! They’re going to want the pizza! We’re duct taping the pizza.” The next morning I woke up and in the refrigerator there are two pizza boxes duct taped together. 

Aynsley: Survival, man.

Bill: But tonight if I get drunk late night and want a piece of pizza I have to pay $10.

Andrew: You can have as much as you want for $10. You’re in. I’m going to be eating it for the next three days.

Aynsley: Food is the most important thing in the world.

BK: What was inspiring you going into the full length?

Joel: A lot of life on the road.

Aynsley: One of our most bad-ass moments was pulling up to a stop light and cranking Bryan Eno to compete with the dude next to us that was playing hip-hop. We won.

Bill: Yeah, we blasted “On Land” and were like, “Take on land, dude.”

Aynsley: And then proceeded to drive through the intersection and get lost, doing circles in around corn fields.

“…it’s those kind of situations that lay the foundation for a band to actually work outside of the music.”

Bill: It was ambient driving…For the last year and a half we’ve been driving around the country meeting random pockets of amazing people. We just stayed in Tampa with a woman who read an article with us where we said we were broke. And she said we could stay with her for three days. We thought there had to be strings attached. There wasn’t. She was the nicest person in the world.

Aynsley: I think it’s those kind of situations that lay the foundation for a band to actually work outside of the music. Those people are just as important as what we do in the studio or on stage.

BK: What was one of the places you thought you wouldn’t like but stood out the most?

Bill: Actually two days ago, Little Rock, Arkansas. (others nod in agreement) Our good friends from the band American Princes are from there, and they just put us up and showed us a great time for two nights.

BK: So, what’s next?

Joel: We’re working on the conceptual ideas for the new album now. We’d like to incorporate more ambient collage music.

Aynsley: If we could supply soundtracks for other people getting lost in cornfields.

Andrew: I got lost in a cornfield for about seven hours with no shoes…It…sucked. 

Bill: I had to pull rocks out of his feet with tweezers the next morning.

Andrew: I couldn’t walk until we had to do our next show. I came out of black out talking to corn stalks, and I was like “What the fuck?!?”

[everyone starts laughing and clapping]

Bill: I pick him up from in front of some lady’s house, leaning on her garbage cans.

Hey Champ - "Cold Dust Girl"

Story by ILLson

I first saw Hey Champ, made up of Saam Hagshenas, Jon Marks and Pete Dougherty, open up for Sebastian Tellier at Schuba’s; from just one show I could tell that their clean yet intelligent sound was going to become a staple of Chicago’s dance music scene. Since that December night, it feels like they’ve been beating on drums and bouncing on stages all over the city and beyond, recently getting off tour with Lupe Fiasco and about to start a Spring tour with The Sounds. I talked to the guys at their Chicago studio as they finished up recording their first full album set to release this summer. 

Boy Kings: Where does the name come from?

Hey Champ: Winning a lot of burgundy participation ribbons at field day. 

BK: What void in the music market did you guys feel you were filling when you started?

Hey Champ: We see ourselves as an indie-pop band that's not of afraid of electro-house production. Our goal is to maintain a live rock show that incorporates those electro elements without using them as a crutch.

BK: How would you describe your music?

Hey Champ: Dreamo.

BK: What music do you listen to for inspiration?

Hey Champ: Metallica, Ride the Lightning. Paul Johnson. Beatles, White Album. League Unlimited Orchestra,Love and Dancing.

BK: Seems like you guys have gained a lot of momentum fast. What have the last six months been like?

Hey Champ: Bling, cars, homes, bitches: how many ways can we spend these riches?...Not. We've made a ton a progress from first hearing “Cold Dust Girl" at Chicago clubs, to signing with Lupe [Fiasco], to finishing up our debut album, but on the other hand we aren't pampered rockstars yet (i.e. we broke as hell). 

BK: When are we going to see a full album?

Hey Champ: It's done, it's the best thing that all three of us have ever heard (laughter with abrupt cutoff punctuated with fingersnap), and it'll be out this summer.

BK: What’s the overall theme or sound of the full album?

Hey Champ: Expansive; the sounds of tomorrow, the music of yesterday.

BK: With baseball season coming are you guys Cubs or Sox fans?

Hey Champ: Cubs.

BK: When you’re not performing, what’s an average weekend night in Chicago like for you?

Hey Champ: Some of our favorite spots are The Burlington (coat factory and the bar), The Hideout, and Smartbar. A lot of weekends have also been spent nerding out in the studio, it's weird, the bigger we become, the less rockstar we get.

Photo via: Clayton Hauck 

 

Story by ILLson
Photo via: Will Phi

If you’ve been lucky enough to catch The Glamour live you know about their fun house party-vibe with influences of 90’s house and electro synth. The Glamour, which is made up of Richard Galling and Asher Gray, has not had as strong a presence in Chicago electro as they deserve. The two are reuniting this summer to reclaim the night scene, and drop a full album while they’re at it. 

They began DJing together in 1999 and that progressed into producing shortly after, and by 2007 they were a household name in Chicago and Wisconsin’s dance music scene. I caught up with Asher and Richard while they were DJing at MOTC in Milwaukee. Asher, with blondish short red hair that fans out to the sides, was wearing a black-t with a large graphic skull under a red cardigan. Richard had specks of paint on his shoes, and his long black hair,  parted in the middle, hung like an homage to Wayne’s World.

Even though they live far from each other at the moment and seem to be on different frequencies, they resonate when they come together. Richard finishing his MFA at Yale and Asher working on music in Milwaukee the last two years, The Glamour had to put together songs through email, and only doing shows over Richards art school breaks. But that is all about to change this summer when Richard moves back and the two are recording and playing live shows again.

Boy Kings: How did you guys meet?

Asher: Honestly, we met at a rave. I used to be a huge raver and Richard obviously…not necessarily a raver, but he was just into the music. 

Richard: I think there was a smaller community of people that were younger, not 18 yet.

Asher: I was 16 and Richard was 14.

Richard: There was just a tighter crew of younger people, and we saw each other around [Milwaukee] regularly. 

BK: What was the rave scene like in Wisconsin?

Asher: It was awesome back then. There were so many secret parties. 

Richard: It was the tail end of the scene in general. Before things got outlawed in Chicago and here. The party we met at…I don’t know if it was really a rave. It was in the basement of The Rave, which is a big venue here, but that got closed down because there was a lot of drug problems.

Asher: People OD’d.

Richard: Some people got shot. A lot of people died in a matter of two or three weeks. 

Asher: There was that going on in Milwaukee, and a lot of parties out in the woods. I would never go to the ones in the woods, but you would hear about them.

Photo via: Will Phi

BK: You have been tied to the resurgence of modern dance music in Milwaukee 5 years ago. How has it changed since then?

Asher: I don’t think we were pioneering. We were just doing what we wanted to do. We came from a house music background. We obviously like a bunch of other music…Like tonight, you give them some top-40s or some classic jams, and start layering in the shit you’re really into. Now it’s a little easier to get people going with the proper house and techno. But Milwaukee’s a really hard sell with that. There’s specific venues, but even then it’s kinda weird because you have all the older heads from back in the day that are all into micro-house. It’s easier now because people are more into dance music, but it’s not like Madison. Where you play a banger and girls are body surfing…it’s a little bit harder. Milwaukee is a working class town, people like their PBR, rock and rap.

Richard: Well, I think the thing is that when we were doing a lot of that stuff here, it was a time when Flosstradamus was doing their thing at the Town Hall Pub in Chicago. There was certainly a community of people that were mixing a lot of things together from different backgrounds. Some of them came from more of a rap background some came from house and some kids came from the rock scene. What was really great about that was how it got people into dance music, but “mash-up” is kind of a dirty word now. But now you can go and legitimately play electronic music, and people are into it. You needed that crossover period, and rightfully so it was interesting, it evolved into something else now.

BK: Where’s the Milwaukee/Madison scene going? 

Asher: I hope that it’s going in a more open-minded dance music oriented route. But it’s hard to say. I throw a monthly here at this little dive bar and it’s bananas. It’s spaced for 80 people, but they don’t even care. You can play Biggie or you can play Miles Dyson and they don’t even care, they’re just going nuts over the stuff. The music is getting more big club sound, but the venue for that in Milwaukee is the smaller places. 

Richard: But I think what’s happening too is because of the economy, there’s a pretty big lull right now. People will go out for the big names, but a lot of the smaller parties…I don’t know, just a weirder vibe, people just aren’t as hyped anymore. It has a lot to do with just the condition of the time. I think one way to cure that is to bring it back underground. And I could see that happening again.

Photo via Will Phi

Asher: I think it’s going more underground and disappearing from the big mainstream.

Richard: Well I think there’ll be the big room that’ll be the success events and there’ll be the much more kind of underground acts. It’s what happened to disco, that’s what happened to a lot of different types of dance music. It got really big, almost too big, and to rectify it these people kept going and other people took it somewhere else.

BK: What was the goal when you guys started?

Richard: I think we always wanted to make electronic music together. We have a lot of different interests, and we have a lot of similar interests. We’ve been making music together for almost 10 years. We were really young, and we made a lot of shit for a long time. I think that sincerity to music is important, there’s a lot of people now…I’m not going to say bad things…but there are people that don’t know the history and are just into it just to be into it. 

Asher: And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Everyones got to get into it in their own way.

Richard: It makes the scene bigger.

Asher: If a nuclear bomb goes off and Richard and I survive 10 years after that, we’re still going to be trying to play dance music somehow. It’s not going to matter if it’s super popular or if we’re making a lot of money or any of that. It’s just a passion for that type of music, that has really kept us going. The songs that we’re creating now I think we wanted to make when we first started, but we didn’t have the means to make that stuff. 

Richard: We’re pretty much self-taught producers. A lot of it is trial and error and figuring our stuff out. I think now we’re at a pretty good point where we can actualize what we want to do.

Photo via: Clayton Hauck

BK: Your lyrics have a lot of humor to them. Where do you get the inspiration for your vocals?

Richard: Well, I think there’s a break. I think a lot of our earlier stuff was about the time it was written in. (laughs) I’m not going to say anything about other issues. But “Kidz Night” and “Respect The Party” really represented the scene at the time and that’s what we wanted to talk about. 

Asher: Just reacting to the vibe. 

Richard: Now I think it’s hard to write songs that are like that. And now we’ve really returned to a lot to things that inspired us in the first place. A lot of the lyrics that we write now make reference to classic pop music or classic disco. A lot of that stuff is really quirky and humorous but also really tight and well thought out.

Asher: We’re more serious about it now, but still at the same time trying to maintain…we’re not trying to pretend that we’re from the streets. It’s dance music after all, so the main goal is to get people on the dance floor to dance. But at the same time I’m not going to write a pop song solely because I want it to be a hit. I don’t think we think about it that much. We’ll work on a track and come up with the lyrics as we go. I don’t have a notebook of poems that I’ve written from my heart. But right now it’s go with the vibe and go with what we’re feeling in the moment.

Photo via: Will Phi

BK : How do you think your sound has evolved over time?

Richard: I think in a weird way we’ve returned to what we’ve always wanted to make. I think what happened was when we started to get a lot of attention…like I said, it was about the time, it was really about the necessity to make a track to get out so we could play it at the party that weekend. I think all those sounds are still with us, we’ve just started to focus them in a different place. 

Asher: Yeah, nerding out a little more in the studio, taking our time and not rushing things. Not that we rushed things before, but really working on the craft of engineering. I think there’s so many people that would agree that everybody started making dance music because they wanted to, and progressively got better at it. Out of necessity started acquiring all this information about engineering and mixing.

Richard: You just become more refined with it. 

BK: You’ve been DJing most of your shows recently. Are we going to see you returning to the live band format anytime soon?

Richard: Eventually we really want to put out an album, hopefully this year, if not, early next year. I think with the live thing you have to have enough shows in a row, kinda tour it out to have it make sense. When we did it was a one-off thing. It was a lot of fun, it was just a lot of work, because we had to practice for a while. It’s a little bit easier if you’re doing it consistently for a period of time. It’ll definitely happen again, though. I think it’s a matter of time. We have a lot of new material as it is right now but wherever it coalesces. 

Asher: I feel that there is a push to do a live show, even if you’re not a live band. If we’re playing out of town, we’ll dedicate a part of our set to playing our own stuff, and I’ll go out and do lyrics or instrumental versions of our songs. But it’s not a truly live performance.

Richard: Back then we were, though.

Asher: We did one show in Chicago two summers ago, and it was totally live. We had our guitar player, my sister did backup vocals. It was awesome, but if we were to maintain the ability to do a live show anytime we wanted Richard would have to live in Milwaukee. He doesn’t right now so it’s just tough to get together and practice. You can approach The Glamour from a band perspective or you can approach it via a DJ perspective. We just figured instead of doing a half-ass live show, we might as well do our DJ set, which we’re really proud of and passionate about.

Richard: That’s what most people do anyways.

Asher: And do some vocals to give people a flavor for the live aspect. 

BK: And you said you were working on a full album. Tell me about that.

Asher: I think we’re pretty close to having enough tracks to do an album. That being said, two months from now we might not. 

Richard: I finish up school in like two months, and there’s a good chance I’m moving back, and between now and then we’ll work on a lot of stuff, we’ll work on a lot when I get back. We’re shopping a lot of material around right now, talking to a lot of people about it. I think it’s good to overshoot it. By the end of the summer if we have 18 or 15 tracks, and then we cut it down to 10 just so that we have a really good tight album. 

Asher: A cohesive story.

Richard: Yeah, because what makes sense for an album is different…

Asher: It’s different than making one track… 

Richard: You don’t do banger after banger. 

Asher: I feel like an album has to tell a story even tough we’re not writing narrative songs, the album has to move along in a certain way.

Photo via: Will Phi

BK: Besides the album what have you guys been working on? 

Richard: We’ve been doing a lot of material. We both have little side projects too that we’ve been working on. 

Asher: When Richard’s not around, when he’s at school, I’m going pretty much full time doing my solo DJ set. And I just started up this other little project with my friend OCD Automatic from Madison and another guy from Milwaukee that goes by Double Drop. We’re doing a little trio called Culture Culture (laughs), and right now it’s just for fun. But it’s going to be an all Ableton, total masturbatory, (laughs) nerding out. We’re going to use three separate computers…it’s all for fun. I’m excited to do that and make songs with Richard, and he DJs on the East Coast. We don’t like to limit ourselves to The Glamour, and I think it keeps things fresher.

Richard: A lot of our production has gotten a lot better…I don’t want to say we both have big egos, but we both have big ideas about what we want. When we come together now, as a result of having these side things it’s much fresher and more pure, not to be cheesy. I feel like a lot of what we’re doing now is a lot less forced and more focused. 

Asher: Over the years we really learned to work as a team, as a duo. But if you heard our solo tracks you wouldn’t think The Glamour

We went on to talk about Asher’s classical Irish musical training to accompany his pronounced red hair. Richard trying to push for an Irish set,  saying, “one of these years.” He said that Irish music is dance music at its core.

I’d never been to Milwaukee before, but was tempted to pronounce it “Mila-Wau-Kay” every time I heard it said, since watching Chris Farley say it that way as a limo driver in Wayne’s World possibly 223 times. But despite me confusing every person that said Milwaukee in my presence I think I’ll be returning soon—especially come Cubs season.

 

The Golden Filter - Solid Gold

New York City’s The Golden Filter released their first single “Solid Gold” in February, and it already feels like an established classic. Their underground new wave sound is bringing back imagination and mystery to music. Golden Filter releases close to nothing about themselves or their music, forcing listeners to fill in the blanks and create their own story. Leading up to this interview all that was for certain was that they currently reside in New York City and not much else. I spoke to them after sound check at Chicago’s Sonotheque. Trying to avoid the booming bass, we had to conduct the interview through the coatroom window.

Penelope (vocals) pulled her blonde hair behind her face, which is not exposed during the shows, to reveal extremely large tortoise shell glasses and a tight smile. Stephen (keyboard/percussions) wore a long scarf wrapped many times around his neck and still hung to his hands at both ends, and Lisa (drummer/newest member) listened most of the interview in her ankle exposed jeans and t-shirt. Every once in a while someone would try to get me to check their coat, but that didn’t stop them from talking about the reason for the band’s mystery, coffee and even the unheard of upcoming album.

Boy Kings: How did you all meet?

Penelope: Well, I’m an Aussie. I moved to New York after traveling for a bit. It’s really not that exciting. I would love it to be more exciting, but we were neighbors.

Stephen: We’d chatted for a while about photography, films and whatnot. After a few months Penelope said, “Oh yeah, by the way, I can sing. And I was like “Oh…really cool.”

Penelope: And Lisa was our neighbor--drummer as well--like our own little posse.

BK: How long have you been making music together?

Stephen: In this project we’ve been making music since June.

BK: I have to ask, how come so much mystery?

Stephen: It’s just the way it happened. [laughs]

Penelope: But I don’t know. Society is spoon-feeding everyone, everything. It’s a bit clichéd and I just wanted, personally and collectively…

Stephen: You look on MySpace and there’s a band that played the night before and there’s a hundred photos uploaded to their gallery. And all these posh, super exciting photos…

Penelope: And that’s all cool and all, but I guess it’s a rebellion for us against everything being in your face. Let’s bring it back a little bit, and get people to use their imaginations.

Stephen: Plus we like taking photos and being creative about it.

Penelope: It’s very much about you have to create the story in your own mind. Maybe some people create too much of a story.

Stephen: There might be a little bit of when we started to release “Solid Gold” to blogs we weren’t actually sure if people would like it, which is completely insane to think about that now. But back then it was like I don’t know about this, should I do it.

Penelope: The mystery in relation to the name. The name was pertaining to photography essentially, like 1970’s hazy romantic. And it was mysterious in that romantic kind of way. So that’s where the name came from, to tie into the whole “Should we do this? Will it be liked?”

Stephen: Ever since then it’s evolved, and we decided let’s not release any photos and don’t say too much.

Penelope: Living in the moment.

BK: What’s your process like when you’re putting together songs?

Stephen: Each one’s different, but we have a general goal or a sound we like.

Penelope: And despite the fact it is electronic we try to tone it down to something organic.

BK: What was going through your mind when putting together “Solid Gold”?

Stephen: It was written in two days, there really wasn’t much to think about. It was just like let’s put together a song really fast. Because we had written songs before this project. But that was writing the music one day, writing the lyrics that night, and recording it the next day.

[Guys start standing around the coat check, making uncertain eye contact with me and slowly taking off his coat, waiting for a reaction from me.]

BK: I’m not actually running the coat check

BK: What’s normal life like for you guys in New York then?

Stephen: Drinking coffee.

Penelope: Searching out the best coffee beans you can buy.

Stephen: It’s not that we go out and party every night. I don’t.

Penelope: Well, it comes in phases. Depends on the season.

Stephen

BK: You said that you were brought together by film and photography. What film and photography inspires you the most?

Penelope: Movies…David Lynch, anything that’s a little crazy is good for me. And photography, David Hamilton, the 1970’s. He was a little controversial on one realm.

Stephen: A lot.

Penelope: He was very embraced by the French because he did this whole romantic, blurry semi nudity.

Stephen: But that’s the whole golden filter joke, “Oooh, the picture is through the golden filter.” The other thing about photography is that you [Penelope] and I were both photo minors in college.

Penelope: If I had another life, and had enough time in my life, I would do photography. I chose music, I had to make a choice.

BK: Your music reminds me of the 1982 film Liquid Sky.

Lisa: That goes back to what you were saying, how everyone has their own imagination. You attached this music to that movie, and someone else might attach it to another image.

BK: What do you want to accomplish with your music?

Penelope: I don’t want to come out with a cliché…I’m really good with clichés. It’s about reaching out to a bigger sphere of folk. To inspire others and the imagination thing.

Stephen: More of the imagination with me. Basically the goal was to make songs click and let people say what they want about it. Escapism.

Penelope: And not just through here [the live shows] but the mind concept and you can start going into the visuals. And go off on another tangent.

Stephen: We also set out to make the vocals more imagery-esque, which is why there are foxes and stuff.

Penelope: It was a very visual, deliberate choice of words.

Stephen: As opposed to a song about love.

BK: Are you excited about touring?

Stephen: We’re excited…our next show is in Paris.

Penelope: We get two hours of recreation in Paris. Search out a good coffee. [laughs]

Stephen: Three days in the UK and four shows which is crazy.

Penelope: We fly into London, drive straight to Paris, and that’ll be exciting too. Just crossing over the channel and getting on to the European mainland, and start spreading out the whole energy. And then Presets--oh my God--I get very patriotic. I was in Australia in December and saw them headline the Never Everland Festival in Brisbane. I was told by family members, “they’re really big here now,” and they’re fucking huge. Jesus, even my dad knows the Presets.

 

Lisa

BK: How did you get linked up with Dummy Records?

Stephen: It’s not like it was our only option, but we really liked the visual magazines.

Penelope: And the other artists. The other offers weren’t getting who we are, and what’s the point?

BK: So what is the point?

Stephen: The music, that’s it.

Penelope: It’s about let the music do its thing and you do the rest as the listener.

Stephen: Not prejudging by what we look like or what label we’re on.

Penelope: No box. You either like it and it moves you and that’s cool.

BK: Do you have anything in the works for an EP or an album?

Stephen: Single number two coming soon. We’ve actually finished 90% of a full length…Barring we decide to do more.

Penelope: There is a full album, which almost has a home and will come out.

BK: Are we going to see Chicago added to your song “Favorite Things” after tonight?

Lisa: It’s already one of my favorite things. I love Chicago, always have.

Penelope: I need to learn about Chicago.

Stephen: I’ve honestly not had good things here. I’m hoping that this time isn’t my best time here.

The coat-check line had built up by this point and Golden Filter flipped the roles and began asking me where to eat and thrift while in Chicago. But some mysteries should never be published.

The Golden Filter - "Solid Gold" Teaser