Speak!
» Hating on cover art? Really? Speak! speaks.
Speak! released an amazing EP called Beautiful Sounds for Interesting People with Fantastic Taste via the Applebird blog for no fee and with little to no fanfare.
Considering the annoying amount of incessant buzz and contrived dramatics that get slogged about in the music industry, it is almost a shock to hear something top shelf come out of an ethos of music presented through merit sans press kit. With that in mind, I called up Speak! himself to question his methods of anti-promotion.
Let’s talk about the Beautiful Sounds for Interesting People with Fantastic Taste EP. You state on the site:
“No build up.
No Viral Videos.
No Cosigns.
No blog hype.
No cover art.”
Why so quiet about the EP?
Well you know, I’ve been saying it for months and months, people thinking (I’d) turned into Ted Kaczynski and I've just been saying be on the look out! It’s my fuck you kinda at what music has become. In order for people to give you attention you have to tip bloggers and appease the online community and everyone with a Xanga or LiveJournal. There are people putting out cinematic features to promote their release! I just want to put it out there, I’ve been recording music in my closet since I was 13 years old and I’m going to keep on doing it!
What bothers you about “build up?”
It’s not so much about build up that bothers me, it’s a business and you have to promote yourself. But I feel that the build up and the buzz and having a specific track to promote becomes all about the hype. After a while we don’t even realize that (music) has become so disposable and a lot of it doesn’t matter.
What bothers you about “viral videos?”
They’re cool, I’m not anti-viral videos at all in terms of advertising but it becomes a driving factor. It’s almost like you have to have videos of you taking a shit, or walking your dog and people want that. And that’s one of the things that bothers me is that viral videos don’t live up to the expectation of good music.
What bothers you about “cosigns?”
Nothing really, we all have artists that we like but in this era of hip hop and blog shit you need someone to step forward and say go add him to Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, etc. I think that you shouldn’t need anyone else’s signature other than yours. Putting your name out there, your art out there, everyone starts off with a blank slate. You should do it on your own merit.
What about “blog hype?”
It's music, everything’s gonna come with hype. Look at the Beatles hype in the 60s, look how it was here in America! It was like, The Beatles are coming! The Beatles are coming! (The hype is) coming too fast, a lot of it are kids who recorded it on their own microphone and then everyone scooping it up afterwards. The internet hype is good in the short term but then we have kids. Where’s Charles Hamilton now? He’s got a great beat but it’s too much too soon. It’s like that sense of entitlement, I got a blog post; I deserve it! I’m just interested in making the music. I want to put out another EP soon. I sent out a tweet about another release later this month and my manager gave me an earful, threatened to quit if I did, but for me it's all about getting the music out there.
And hating on “cover art?” Really?
I love cover art. Phillip Mao, he’s done some really good color illustrations for the album that we didn’t end up using. But I love good cover art! I love digging up the old 60s and 70s records and just checking out the covers, good album art is hard to come by. I didn’t want a lot of time to go by, I was stressed out, I was like I don’t have time to get this out. I was kind of fed up it was spontaneous and overnight, I was like here it is.
“Caitlin Said” picks up almost where you left with a similar note to “Jen Ballera I love you (since I was 19).” You do a similar effect with tone in how “Pillow Mints” swoops in smooth after “Larry, He Changed.” What is your take on the relationships if any between your tracks?
I tried to make them a bit cohesive. I think what I was trying to go for wasn’t going to be a full length, like a novel. I wanted to make them short and concise and a look at the different people coming in and out of my life.
I like the shifts in various production styles on the album. If you could get produced by any hip-hop or whatever pop producer, who would it be?
Oh man, beat-wise? There’s a lot of people I like, there’s a lot out there. AFTA-1 is one of my favorites and now I got a record coming out (produced) by AFTA-1! I’d like to work Jonah, a producer for Portland band the Blow. It’s some electronic dance-y kind of thing but extremely successful. I’d love to work with him. And maybe Phil Spector, get a shovel and dig him out of prison! Could you imagine the Wall of Sound treatment on a hip-hop record? Ha ha, also Edan, I’d definitely want to work with him. His music sounds like it’s coming off of a dirty tape deck. That’s the sound I’m looking for!
I love your choice of sampling big show-stopping classic numbers. What do you look for in the perfect sample?
I don’t know, it just kinda clicked. Like on “Persian Disco Cocaine Junk Yard” for example, I just thought of me high out of my mind and seeing into the future and I thought of the Jetsons and that’s how that sample happened. And like the lead in for “Jen Ballera,” I love the Marx Brothers so that’s why I went with “Everyone Says I Love You.” I just kind of want to show people that this isn’t just sampling for sampling’s sake, I reflect my personality and things I enjoy like the Jetsons and Marx Brothers.
What selections are in heavy rotation for you right now?
AFTA-1’s new album Form, we’ve been bumping that at the house, Little Dragon’s Machine Dreams, basically a lot of drug music! Get high and paint all night music. I always love Revolver, then there’s the new Brian Jonestown Massacre album Sgt. Pepper is Dead, we got the new Jeezy mixtape and a lot of people don’t expect me to like Jeezy but he’s one of my favorite rappers.
What influences do you hold tight to your steez?
I’m still trying to find who I am; my brothers are super gang bangers and if we were standing next to each other you would never know we were related. For my steez I would say DJ Quick but I like Iggy Pop, Freddy Mercury, Liam (Gallagher), people like Robert Plant. Being Rick Ross and Gucci Mane with all this ice and shit, I mean that’s cool but it makes ‘em look silly and they’re all like, I’m a rock star, I’m a rock star but man those guys have no idea. You knew the guys of Led Zeppelin were getting laid but it was about their steez and that totally goes!
Download the EP here.
Posted on June 16, 2010
