Hello, human race.
Presented before you, we have an interview with CYP2D6 in which he briefly reflects on the generation of his first EP, CYP2D6, and the human roots of creative mythology.
You can, of course, download CYP2D6 (and many other great albums, for that matter,) right here:
To learn more about the obscure movies referenced herein:
And listen to more stellar music on his myspace page:
And actually read the interview below these three little asterisk guys, here.
***
I am curious. How did CYP2D6 even occur in the first place?
I had been working on the [film] soundtrack to ‘Dark Island’ and I was getting really frustrated with it. They had really particular ideas about what they wanted. Soundtracks to horror films these days are a lot of synth pads. I like older, 80’s horror film soundtracks - they’re much more kinetic, you know?
I was using arpeggiators to keep a steady beat going, and I stumbled on a distortion effect I really liked. At that point, I didn’t even know which [percussion] instrument I was playing, I only could go by the sounds I heard. Actually, the whole [album] only took about twenty minutes to record.
It was a good change of pace to work quickly. I definitely build up things too hard and then I want to let it go or I want to destroy it.
Gosh, I always get upset when I hear about artists burning their early works.
See, I understand that, though. I totally understand that.
Ah, then again, I’m also worried my computer will die and I’ll lose everything I have on it.
(laughs) Yeah, that’s scary shit, man. Yeah, I know, I’m about to get a hard drive for my computer because I have all sorts of stuff in pieces.
Where did the name ‘CYP2D6’ come from anyway? I guess I know it’s a protein that breaks down toxins in the body…
Oh, it was always stuck in my head because of (a friend, who was incapable of making the protein) Erik Anderson, and I told so many people I was going to make CYP2D6. I told them I was going to keep it around as a glitchtronic moniker. Yeah, and so I’ve always had it in the back of my mind since I heard it and was looking for a good place to use it.
Where are you living these days?
Where am I living? Logan Square. It’s northwest of downtown [Chicago].
By bike, about 20 minutes. If you take the train, it’s about 30 minutes.
And in miles, it’s, uh, two miles? Wait, I can count this. I’m on 2600 and each block is an eighth of a mile… and downtown is, well, downtown is zero…. (silence) …I don’t know man, it sounds like two miles to me. How about three miles?
How do you go about building up the mythology of your various projects?
I think [mythology] is definitely taken from your life. [The film] Zerotrooper, at least, is cues taken from my relationship with Eric Lim.
I guess I don’t totally understand. Does your mythology overlay over your ‘real’ lives?
Yeah, it is overlaid over our real lives, I guess. But more than that, Zerotrooper F is the product of our overlapping perspectives, I feel. Perhaps that’s any collaborative art project. I know for sure, though, that Zerotrooper F is very specifically the result of that overlap. It’s something we’ve talked about for years. Since high school we’ve been making films, and we finally got around to making that specific story into film. Eric has always been this way - he creates his own universe out of pop culture that exists. And I felt that way for a long time, too, but I never really realized it until I met Eric.
Do you piece together your stories through preliminary drawings and writing, or to you kind of make it up as you go?
Well, I think I piece it together more than anything else.
Well, actually, I don’t know… not for recent things. Not for things I’ve done in the past year -DJOHNSMITH2000, Tycho Broham, or CYP2 - because those things are just a flicker of an idea around which I try to create as much as I can.
Ah! That really reminds me of CHIME [Collective] - take a blip of an idea and expand on it as quickly as possible.
Yeah. The more I play these days, the more I am grateful for having been in CHIME. You know, I’m not going to lie - sometimes when I was in CHIME, I was kinda thinking like, “C’mon, what am I doing, here? I wanna be a jazz jazz pianist, you know? This is just noodling for me.” That was just what I was thinking at the time, not necessarily what I feel about it now. How I feel about it now is quite different. It really did help me learn to let go - I still don’t do it 100%, but it was better for me than trying to join a standard jazz quartet.
Because honestly, jazz is dead, man. At least any jazz that’s played today - I pretty much think it’s ghost jazz. Or maybe worse than ghost jazz. I’m looking to the future. Jazz is not about being square, and I think pretty much everyone who is playing jazz is square today.
Thelonius Monk was punk rock, man. He was, like punk rock, defined.
So, no new jazz for you, these days. What have you been listening to instead?
Hmmm… Have you ever heard of Andre Williams?
No, what does he do?
This guy, to me, invented hip hop, and he doesn’t even know it. He was from the 50’s, with a really sweet, dirty bar-room jazz sound and a kinda bluesy, jazzy backup band. With really dirty lyrics, well, not like “Fuck, Shit, I’m going to touch your balls,” kinda dirty, (laughs) but more like really gross old man type lyrical content. He is a rapper, actually, and nobody knows where to place him. But he’s a rapper, honestly. He’s one of the first rappers.
That is an interesting assertion, at least. Is there anything else you’d like to say about your music or music in general?
CEEEEEEE-WHYYYYYY-PEEEEEEEEEEE
***
This has been Simon Piler reporting.
Good night, human race.
