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A Conversation With: brothel.

It’s been a really exciting few weeks for us fans of the Wave movement. On 9th Feb, the brilliant Wavemob released their mixtape, Wave 001, which is an exciting and pioneering collaboration of some of the very best talent on the scene. The tape received a great response, reaching the number 5 spot in the Bandcamp electronic music chart. Kareful gave us an insight into Wave in his interview with The Archives and the sound was also discussed by DJ Plastician in his insightful interview with IDJ Mag (in which the Lucid Steps blog gets a little shout out too!). What’s more, the Survey London night at Phonox in Brixton this coming Wednesday,which sees Plastician himself take to the decks alongside Wavemob members Kareful, CVRL and Skit, has been gaining some serious hype on social media. The event promises to be a big moment for the Wave scene - it's a chance for the sound to really gain some club exposure - and it will also my first opportunity to hear Wave live, which I am very excited about! I will have a full review of the night along with pictures to share with all those wave fans who can’t make it, so watch out for that on the blog!

As the movement starts to gain some recognition, it seems the interest of a few big producers has been perked too - yesterday legendary duo Chase and Status tweeted Plastician implying they may have been inspired by his promotion of the scene to start dabbling in Wave!

Plastician later posted the comment on Instagram.

It’s nice to see support for this sound growing, and it’s no surprise that respected taste maker Plastician is at the forefront of it; he regularly uses his Tuesday night Rinse FM shows to showcase the newest and most exciting elements of the sound - I highly encourage anyone who wants to keep up to date with the scene to give these shows a listen!

Today I’m going to use the blog to shed some light on brothel., a USA-based artists who I’ve been a fan of for a long time. A couple of nights ago I spoke to brothel., who makes creative trap and hip-hop influenced tunes and has a huge Soundcloud following. For me, his sound has a particularly Wavey vibe about it, and I wanted to find out how he became involved in the sound and his thoughts on the movement. For those of you unfamiliar with brothel., check out his Soundcloud here, I promise you won’t be disappointed. If you’re looking for a taster track, a personal favourite of mine is the brilliant glasscoffin, featuring sidewalks and skeletons. As brothel. explains in the interview, he gives away all of his music for free via Soundcloud, and has not yet released an EP or any music for sale. It seems this guy is still really in the process of defining his sound and therefore everything that’s come from him so far is imaginative and exciting. I have no doubt that he will a producer to watch as this movement grows. Speaking to such a friendly guy was awesome, and as my first interviewee from the US, brothel. seemed humbled by the support for his music from the UK. A transcription of our conversation can be found below, I hope you enjoy reading!
***

Hey man, good to speak to you! First of all, can you tell me a bit about yourself?

Sure, I’m 22, my name’s Marcus, I’m from Fort Collins, Colorado, but I was born in Kansas in a really small town of like, 5000 people, if that. Other than making music, I BMX and uh, chill with homies.

Cool! Alright so how long have you been making music for?

Ah, it’ll be two years in March. Well, I’ve only been producing seriously for two years, but I’ve always been around music and been in bands here and there growing up, and always played instruments, and one day I just bought some software and was like, ‘yeah let’s give it a go and see what happens’.

And have you always made the kind of music you’re making now?

Um, not really. I just recently got into it when I first got on Soundcloud, I was kinda introduced to a bunch of underground trap. But before Soundcloud I was really into like Witchhouse and darker stuff. I used to be really into like 8bit and like Chiptune for a while. I got into Crystal Castles when I was in high school, from there it kinda fell into You Love Her Coz She’s Dead and stuff like that and I dunno, it just turned into trap I guess.

So do you consider the music you’re making now to be trap music?

Um, here and there. I guess it’s like trap-based music. To be honest I’m not really going for like a certain sound, it’s kind just like whatever I feel. Last year I guess I was making trap beats, and I guess as I like progressed as an artist, I’m now able to just express more of how I feel through music, rather than going in like ‘oh I wanna make a trap song’.

Yeah I understand. Recently music with a similar vibe to some of the stuff you’ve been making has become known as Wave music. A lot of the artists at the forefront of the Wave movement are from the UK. I’m sure you know all about this; do you see your music as similar to Wave?

Uh, yeah I can see it. Especially with my newer type of music, like I never really put a name on it so I never knew what to call it. But I can totally see it being like Wave, with my lower respaces and stuff like that. And I think this year it’ll probably be more like, Wavey kinda stuff. At the moment I’m trying to get out of my comfort zone, and just see what works and what doesn’t work.

That’s nice to hear man! Okay so, do you play sets in the USA often in clubs?

Ah, no not really (laughs). My first show is on the 22nd March at Hodi's Half Note in Fort Collins. It’ll be really cool because the spot I’m in in Colarado, most people are really into dubstep, so it’ll be cool introducing these people to the Wave movement, and trappy kind of stuff.

Do you go and see electronic music live at home?

Yeah I’ll go to Denver here and there, there’s a venue there called Cervantes, where trap and dubstep artists will play. There’s Club Beta which is also kinda cool.

Okay cool, and do you see your kind of music really becoming club music? There’s been some speculation about that among other artists I’ve spoken to.

Um, that’s a tricky question. I guess at the moment I can’t really picture anybody listening to my music (laughs). I guess because I listen to my music so much when I make it I forget that other people are even going to hear it in a way, I’m just sort of making it to make myself happy. I have had my music played out live by bigger artists, and I guess I can picture it being opened up at a venue. I dunno, at the moment I’m not into making the sort of banging trap you usually get in clubs. I’m trying to make more emotional stuff.

Ah okay man. Now, with your Soundcloud you seem to have a certain aesthetic look you try to achieve – a lot of whites and images of marble statues. Is there any significance to this?

I guess the way I look at it is like, white never really goes out of style, so that’s really the idea behind that. I kind of wanted the images to blend in with the Soundcloud background to make the whole thing look clean. I like my Soundcloud to look like my BMX bike; very clean and simple.



Yeah man, that’s cool, I think it adds something to your sound to have a themed Soundcloud appearance since Soundcloud’s so integral to this kind of music. Who’s the girl in your Soundcloud icon if you don’t mind me asking? I’ve always wondered!

Um, it’s actually this chick that I found on Instagram (laugh). I think she’s like a model or something, she’s definitely big on Instagram anyway.

I take it she knows you’re using it?

(Laugh) yeah I told her a while ago, I was like ‘can I use your picture for my Soundcloud?’ and she said it was okay, that was like a year ago, so. It’s just a picture with a clean background that fits the aesthetic of my page, that I liked.



Ah I see! Okay so, tell me about Amstergang. Are they a collective you’re part of?

Yeah, that’s Apex Rise’s collective. I’m very stoked that I’m part of that! It’s crazy, Apex Rise hit me up last year around like December or something. I got a message and I was like ‘okay, this is probably a fake Apex Rise account, why would he be messaging me?’ And I opened the message and it was actually him and I was shocked!

Ah that’s so cool man! And have you guys made tracks together?

Um, me and Styn have, and me and Myth. We’ve done two tracks together. And Apex Rise will rap over a couple of my instrumentals here and there and we’ll release those under an alias.

Do you have any bigger collaborations with the collective in the pipeline?

Well I would love to do a big brothel/Apex Rise collab, just because he’s crazy good. I can see some things coming out in the near future. I am in the works with Styn right now again and Myth, so watch out for that.



A lot of your Soundcloud tracks seem to be collaborations. I guess you particularly enjoy making music with other producers? Who has been your favourite to work with?

Well last year I was making a bunch of solo tracks and beats, and the better I got I was like ‘right I need to collab with people’, and I gave it a go and it actually worked and I got a lot more recognition from that than solo songs. And I think now I just want to incorporate my music with other people’s to create something different, you know? I think that’s really fun. I would say probably divine is the guy that I have the most fun with, because our styles are so similar. So when we make tracks they get done quickly, and aren’t stressful at all they’re just super fun.

Yeah your track PAIRPLAY with divine (listen here) is brilliant, I can definitely see how that collaboration works well! Okay, I’ve noticed that you use a lot of samples from games and things in your music, is there any significance to that?

(Laugh) everything I’m doing with music right now is just fun. I’m not looking for anything outside that at the moment. And when I get in a happy mood, a bunch of old influences will come to me. I used to make 8-bit music, so when I’m happy and enjoying what I’m making I’ll just flick through a bunch of 8-bit samples just to twist it up a little bit. Last year I was experimenting a lot with silence in my beats, like cutting the beat out and bringing it back in from just total silence, and now I like to throw samples in where those silences used to be, to keep the listener interested. I think the game samples can do that.

I like it man! I think it gives your sound an intimate feel, like when you recognise a sample that maybe not everyone would get, I think it’s cool. Do you have a Bandcamp page? I couldn’t find it, am I being stupid?

No, I don’t have a Bandcamp. I need to, I’ve been slacking on that. Part of me wants to get a bandcamp, but at the same time, I don’t know if I want to sell my music yet, like I don’t know if I’m at that stage. If people want to buy it, donate, that’s cool, I’m not going to argue, but at the moment I feel like I might as well just give it away for free and keep people listening. With the free download comes the follower on Soundcloud, right, so I think that’s a good exchange right now. It’s also easier than me having to approve permission for everything; because I’m giving my music away for free I’m pretty much giving them permission to do whatever they want with it; if they want to put it in a Youtube video or whatever, they can, they don’t need to ask, as long as they give me credit.

So have you not thought about releasing an EP at all? Can we expect anything from you soon?

Ah, an EP is in the works right now. I’ve got two mix tapes I’m working on with two guys I’m not going to say too much about, but they’re going to be pretty sick. Also, my release for Trap Door comes out in March. That’s another one with divine actually, so yeah we had some fun with that one. We actually made it around the same time as PAIRPLAY. I think that one’s being released through Itunes and Spotify as well.

Ah that’s really exciting!

Yeah I’m stoked on that, it’ll be my first release like that. Also I’ve always looked towards the Trap Door channel, ever since I got into this scene, it’s just so sick.

Yeah man, a lot of artists I’ve spoken to on this scene have mentioned Trap Door as an inspiration.

Yeah totally.

I saw Kareful posted a photo of all the people he plans to make music with over the year, and your name was on this list, is that in the works too?

Oh yeah that’s going down. I just know that’s gunna be really sick. I started talking to him last year actually, and for the longest time we’ve spoken about making a track together and it hasn’t happened yet, but recently I was just like ‘yeah let’s do this’, and he was like ‘yeah I’m down!’ (laughs).

Yeah man, that’d be an amazing collab! Do you have any plans to come to the UK?

Um, I know this year for sure. I already have in my mind that I wanna go there, I have actually had a few booking offers over that side of the world but it’s expensive to get there and stuff. But I would really like to come to the UK because I feel like most of my friends making music are over there. Myth and I have talked about it, I’d really like to play a set with him, and I’d definitely like to play some stuff with Kareful.

Yeah man, you should make it happen! Alright, is there anything you’d like to add?


Um, just that I have a lot of collaborations that will be released this year that people should look out for! I’m pretty much just making music with all my friends in the scene right now. 

You can listen to and purchase Wavemob's mix tape Wave 001 mentioned at the start of the article here. You can also find a link to the Facebook event page for Survey London on Wednesday 24th March here. Follow me on Soundcloud here, to keep up with the latest and most exciting tracks the Wave movement has to offer.

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