Significantly, Mumps, Etc signals a clear return to straight up rapping for the sometime MC; measured verses on tracks like Waterlines and White English bring an understated complement to their melodic choruses.
You get into this zone of thinking in rhyme like that; my brain was in that mode. If a lyric would come to me while I was walking down the street, in the shower or wherever, it would come to me in a rhyme form, and then I would carve it out. I was doing a lot of crossword puzzles all the way throughout, so it was like an extension of that in a way. Although barely into his thirties, Wolf muses on the idea of retirement on yearning lullabies like Strawberries and Distance, perhaps taking cues from his idol David Berman, who put his career to bed in after a 20 year run with Silver Jews.
I could foresee maybe not making music one day. Is this a balance he works hard to maintain? It also goes with the creative energy where everything is born such as our music. So there are 5 people in the band, I can just imagine how this makes your creative process so fascinating!
What would you say are some of the pros and cons of producing music with 5 people? The richness of the music is mostly because we all imprint different vibes to the songs as we co-create. Sometimes the song is born from a playful jam or musical conversation in the studio or someone brings an idea in which we all collaborate, each with their own unique sound based on our own musical experience which can be defined by what we listen to or the instrument we play.
I saw that one of the reasons I. M YONI united was to address gender equality throughout art. What are some of the ways the collective goes about addressing gender equality? We co-create with women in areas that are yet not very common for women in the music industry especially within dance music like production, composition, instrumentation, mixing, etc.
This way we learn about them and from them and we are able to act as a platform for their work. We believe that gender equality is very important within arts as through art we built societies. Overall gender has always played a role in arts mostly cause many of the work women do get lost or its credits went to men.
In the music industry to this day there are not enough women producing, not enough women mixing or even composing; we are still under the shadow of the male gaze and in order to see the whole picture, culturally wise, we need to have both. Who were some of the women who inspired you when you first started making music? Fortunately, we can name many: Susan Rogers: she was Prince engineer for many years, her work and workshops are an inspiration for sure.
Leslie Ann Jones: the first woman engineer to work at Capital Records. Her list of work is huge. Also, Diane Warren has many big industry hits under her name. And in Latin America the great Chavela Vargas who also was a revolutionary. I'm doing okay. I mean you know, on tour I don't sleep great. I've been trying to exercise, yoga.
I don't meet that many fans. I've kind of been in the shadows. Things have been pretty good, I think people are liking [the concerts], I hope. It's a fantastic album. I was just admiring some old Hymie's Basement on MySpace. For some reason while I was playing your stuff, Myspace started playing Foster to the People. Like it recommends similar artists….
No you know the Pumped Up Kicks song? I should certainly not be singing to you. I was listening to Alopecia and there's a lot of references — or it seemed like there were a bunch of references — to disease and I wondered how that — whether that was something that you realized or thought about. I thought about Crohn's disease and pestilence and of course alopecia.
There's a good deal of depression too. How did all the illness get in there? Well, you know I've dealt with a lot of that stuff so you know it manifests. I think about it and it seeps in. Yeah, hard times man.
Honestly, it's been some hard times. But coming out of this winter, which was really tough for me, I've sort of been reevaluating things and deciding to live and to work on.
It's been good. I'm doing good now. Did you know that you wanted to be a musician and rapper when you were growing up? I did not know I would choose it. I was kind of into visual art. That was kind of my thing. My brother was a musician. Your music works out personal issues often. Last time we spoke we talked about your father, a rabbi, and his passionate involvement in religion.
My dad is a songwriter also and he digs the records. He was kind of proud that he influenced my lyrics. He asked me if there was a song about him on the new record. But yeah, the lyrics have definitely affected my relationships. A creepy little stalker thrill. Is it healthy? But when they get it, I have some explaining to do.
It sounds like a Larry David kind of existence. Ha ha. I relate to that character. I found myself in that situation quite often. Uhhh :. I had alopecia on my neck and it disappeared when I started writing the record. Awhile back, I stepped in glass and the infection in my foot caused the hair in my neck to stop growing. Slug [of Atmosphere] told me what it was. We were in Baton Rouge and he was like, what the fuck is that? Dude, you have alopecia. I looked it up and he was right.
But the title is a personal metaphor.
0コメント