Apart from all the blogging, we DJ quite a lot. We play the same sort of music that we post, so if you like the blog – you’re going to have a good time on our dancefloor as well. Also, the blog reaches out to a lot of people and attracts a crowd that likes what we’re about. That’s the sort of crowd you want as well, we promise.
We’ve shared the dj booth/stage with a wide assortment of artists/dj’s including the likes of Simian Mobile Disco, SebastiAn, Fluokids, Nadastrom, Tittsworth, Risky Bizniz, Thunderheist, Krazy Fiesta, Oxy Cottontail, The Glass, Dan M, DJ Suijinho, Audioporno, Kornel Kovacs, Fagget Fairys, DJ Dainja, Boody B, AC Slater, Sir Nenis, Sharkslayer, Pets On Prozac, Jamtech Foundation, Cousin Cole, Pocketknife, Casper C, Jess Jubilee, DJ Wool, Mumdance, Cobra Krames, Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, Ben Mono, Niyi, Renaissance Man, Sekta, Arveene, Solo, Spoek Mathambo, Bok Bok, WooBanger, Hot Pink Delorean, Femme En Fourrure, Solo, Tane Lee, Zebra & Snake etc.
You wouldn’t know it based on their interaction, but once upon a time Josh (J2K) and Curt (Autobot) weren’t a DJ duo. It wasn’t until their paths crossed in 2005 that they decided to join forces to become who we now know as Flosstradamus. Since then, they’ve been an unstoppable force in the electronic dance music scene and have amassed quite the discography, including collaborations with Kid Sister, A-Trak, Chairlift, and The Cool Kids to name a few. Known for their high energy music that can only be described a crunk electro, Josh and Curt are at the top of their game having just released their EP, Total Recall, on Mad Decent. I got to talk to Josh and Curt before their set at the Green Label Sound Showcase in Austin, Texas where we gushed about Travis Porter among other things.
How has your SXSW experience been so far? Curt: Awesome as always. Josh: This is our seventh year in a row. When we first started coming down, people would come up to us in the street and be like, “what party are you going to?” at 5AM in the morning and we’re still trying to rage. Now we see everyone and we’re like “man my knees hurt dog haha.”
Yeah I went home at midnight last night and ate Jimmy John’s…so how would you say the festival has progressed and changed in the last seven years and what do you see for the future? Josh: When we first came down, we were pretty much the only DJs playing this festival. This was before the electronic music scene had really blown up and that year we drove down and were playing with Matt & Kim. The next year it just seemed like there were mad DJ parties. It seems like now electronic music is dominating the festival and it’s been that way for at least the last five years for sure. Curt: On another change of things, it seems like there’s more people than there ever were. We were just walking down the street and it’s just crazy right now. It seems like there’s more people, more companies, just a lot bigger than it ever was.
Yeah I definitely feel like the vibe of the festival changes every year. This year it feels like there’s more multi-day parties and more unofficial showcases where bigger artists like you guys are playing so it’s more accessible. Do you think that’s a good thing? Josh: I feel like the best part for me has always been the stuff that you stumble upon and you get to see someone like The Dream playing to a hundred people; a situation that you would never in regular life get to experience. We just saw Mystikal playing ping pong and any of those kind of moments are amazing. Those are the things that you find off the beaten path in the dark corners of Austin, but that’s what makes this festival so awesome.
So who was playing on the other side of the table with Mystikal? Josh: Haha I don’t know actually, but he was really serious and he was quite good.
How has the reception to your shows been? Curt: Well this is the first time we’re doing a live set so we’re down here playing our own tracks and remixing them live and that’s been awesome. We’re test marketing here at SXSW and it’s been going off every time we’ve done it. We’re still figuring it out and messing up a little bit but it’s cool to do it night after night and get better.
You’ve recently released a new EP, “Total Recall,” can you tell me more about that? Josh: It’s one of the first releases where I feel like people are acknowledging it as our sound and there’ve been some comparisons to Araabmuzik. With our style as DJs, we’ve been playing euro music and trance anthems with crunk, Southern, and trap music forever-since we started. That was kind of the foundation of our party was to mix those kind of bouncy hip hop tracks with house, so I feel like these tracks on the “Total Recall” EP are for the first time a representation of our taste as DJs being put out as producers.
How much do you feel like the Chicago music scene has influenced you? Josh: When we first started our parties we would always play tracks like the Percolator or a Paul Johnson song and switch up to half time of that. I feel like with juke music too, there’s all these switches where it switches from 175 BPM to 75-it’ll just drop abruptly. And we do that in our production now. It’s all about building these tensions and then releasing it and chilling it out. And maybe even the buildup leads up to some crazy synth or some 808s or laidback bouncy music.
When I saw you guys DJ at the IHEARTCOMIX after hours mall party at SXSW last year, you played one of my favorite tracks in your set – Travis Porter’s “Make It Rain.” What other rap/hip-hop music are you guys into? Curt: Juicy J. We’re into Top 40 Southern rap, we always have been. In our set we play a lot of Waka Flocka, 2 Chainz. Josh: We’ll still drop “Make It Rain” in our set, it’s such a dope track. We actually met the dudes that produced that track, shootout to FKI, in the studio with Diplo working on a remix and those dudes came through. It’s crazy cause you would think that in those scenes what we’re doing and what they’re doing are totally opposite. But they had heard our remix of Major Lazer’s “Original Don” and they liked it. I’m just stoked that there’s people that made songs that I’m obsessed with that like our music cause I mean, I love Travis Porter man. I love that whole Atlanta bounce kind of sound. Just for them to come up and show us respect, it was dope.
So is there anyone that you would want to collaborate with? Curt: I’ve always wanted to work with Andre 3000 just cause he’s always ahead of the curve and everything he touches is gold. I feel like with what we’re doing right now we’re sort of into his world. Josh: I made up my mind that I would always answer this question the same until the actual collaboration came to fruition, so I’m sticking with Mystikal. Mystikal just got out of prison and I saw a video of him freestyling in Mannie Fresh’s lambo and he’s still got it.
Why didn’t you approach him when you saw him playing ping pong? Josh: You never interrupt a man in the middle of a ping pong game! He misses and I’m like “yo what up dog, let me give you my demo.” Honestly though, real talk, everything that’s happened to us in our career has happened 100% organically so if it’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen.
What do you think has been the greatest contributing factor to your success? Josh: Just longevity. Me and Curt are persistent and we get along really well and understand each other as individuals and as musicians. I know a lot of DJs that tour solo and are on the road constantly and they get mad lonely and bummed. It’s cool to have someone that’s got your back that you can actually hit the road with. I also think the fact that we’ve just stuck it out. I mean, we’ve been doing this for eight years and in DJ years that’s a long time.
What would you be doing if you weren’t Flosstradamus? Curt: I would be designing, making computer programs cause I have a degree in Interactive Multimedia. No matter what, I always want to be doing something creative but I’m very fortunate to be doing this. Josh: I’d probably just be doing dumb shit with my friends haha.
New York City native Chris Glover, aka Penguin Prison, has been getting kids dancing with his upbeat electropop tunes and adding some disco remix sensibility to tracks by Marina and the Diamonds, Eric Hassle and Goldfrapp. His debut album is out now and features the single, “Don’t Fuck With My Money,” a track whose lyrics and accompanying video coincided with the Occupy movement and helped catapult Chris even farther into mainstream relevance. If you ever have the opportunity to see Chris perform, do it. He has an undeniably magnetic presence and gets the crowd involved by actually getting into the crowd and jamming out on his guitar. I got to catch up with Chris after the All Things Gold SXSW Showcase in Austin, Texas where we talked about everything from songwriting, utopia and Lana Del Rey.
Did you know growing up that you wanted to be a performer? Yeah when I was little I knew that I wanted to be a singer.
Are you self taught all on the instruments you play? I took guitar lessons from when I was 11 years old until about 17. I taught myself bass guitar, drums, keyboards and making music on the computer like using samples.
How did you meet Alex from Holy Ghost! and can you tell me about your collaboration on “Golden Train?” I met him because I went to high school in New York City and he also went there. He had been giving me constructive criticism about my music and then I was like alright, why don’t we make a song together. I had already made that song “Golden Train” but the music was completely different. Alex stripped the song down to the vocals and we rewrote the instrumentals.
So how did you come up with the lyrics for the song? No one really knows this but it’s an abstract song about Native Americans. I was reading about Native Americans at the time and it made me want to write a song about it. It’s about the Industrial Revolution and how Americans killed Native Indians basically.
Would you say that all of your songs are somewhat politically or historically inclined like with “Don’t Fuck With My Money?” No not really. “Don’t Fuck With My Money” just kind of made sense with what’s going on right now with the financial crisis, but the song wasn’t originally about that. Some of them are political and some of them about society and how humans have all these rules that we’re supposed to live by.
So what does your utopian society look like? Well I think utopia doesn’t really exist but I think there are people that can get beyond inhibitions and act however they want to act. Everyone wants to act a certain way but sometimes we’re afraid to. I like to write about those kinds of things.
What comes first to you, the melody or the lyrics? Lyrics are the last thing that come to me, lyrics are the last thing for me. I sleep with a tape recorder next to my bed and sometimes I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and just come up with something, sing it into the tape recorder, fall back asleep, and listen to it the next morning. If it’s good, I’ll try to turn it into something, but there’s really not one good way to write anything.
When you do come up with a melody that you like, how then do you find the lyrics to fit within that construct? When you come up with a melody that’s very specific and then have to come up with lyrics to fit that it’s kind of difficult – like a puzzle. All of the syllables are already there so you either have to not be precious about how it is or just take a long time to fit the words into the slots.
How then do you know when a song is finished? Well I definitely know when it’s not done! When I get towards the end, I have a list of things I don’t like about it and then complete that list.
What do you hope people get from listening to your music? I hope that it makes people feel good, makes them dance, and makes them think a little bit.
As a remix artist, you’ve done tracks for Ellie Goulding, Starsmith and Marina and the Diamonds to name a few. Is there anyone’s music you’re looking to get your hands on to do a Penguin Prison rework? For some reason I like remixing female singers and working with female voices like Lykke Li. I really like the Magician’s remix of “I Follow Rivers,” so I’d say Lykke Li.
When you’re remixing a track, do you have a particular sound in mind? Not particularly. When I make a remix I just listen to the vocals and I don’t listen to the original song cause I don’t want to be influenced by how it sounds.
Can you tell me what it was like working with Lana Del Rey? I made a song with her, she came to my house. I’ve known her for a while through mutual friends and we made song called “BBM Baby” that’s very different from the songs she’s released. It’s sort of a pop song about her Blackberry Messenger.
Are there any plans to release the track? I don’t think so, I doubt it but who knows. I think it’s a good song it’s just totally different than her vibe.
Is there anyone that you’d like to collaborate with in the future? I’m interested in collaborating with lots of people and the idea of collaboration in general. Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes it’s hard cause people have different ways of working but I like hearing what people have to say about things and helping them.
Would you say you’re an extrovert or is stage presence something you’ve had to work at? I’m really an introvert, I’m a shy person but I just disregard that. I just look at the bigger picture and see that it’s not that big of a deal. Everyone has insecurities and everyone thinks people are looking at them or talking about them but no one is so there’s nothing to worry about.
Here’s a video with Joakim & Bambounou taking us through the process of their collaborative effort – the excellent and recently released “Fructose EP” on one of our favorite labels around – Sound Pellegrino.
The fellas from Botnek just did a mix for Kissy Sell Out’s BBC Radio 1 program, which they classify as full of “bleeps and bloops”. Simply put, but accurate.
Stream it below if you’re okay with looking at the weirdness that is Kissy Sell Out’s haircut. Also, Plonk EP is out now on DBR
