Miami Nights

I would like to thank Mary's Coin Laundry for providing the adequate venue and caffeinated beverages for the interview and Jose El Rey for the Photo.

Jose- Diet Jupina exists… we have a six pack in the car, but that’s for tomorrow...

Billermo- Is that good shit?

Otto – its good shit man.

B - You know they make that in Hialeah, at the cawy bottling co.

J - we should go there!

B -  you should get sponsored by them.

J – Believe me I’m thinking about it.

B – So, I put this questionnaire together to talk to you to about serious, serious things.

B  -  Lets start with you [Jose.] What middle school did you attend? We have to know.          

J - Unfortunately I didn’t go to middle school.

B – You didn’t go to middle school,

J – No,  I mean I went to school for those grades,  but the school I went to was 6 through12, Its like a Jesuit/Catholic all man school.

B – Oh so you’re religious

J – Very religious.

B - Do you have skills with any traditional musical instrument?

J – Yeah man, you’ve never seen me play the guitar?

B – I haven’t seen you play shit, only the microphone.

J -  Oh my god, no way man.

O – This guy can serenade you on the key board, the guitar, he goes to my house, plugs in my keyboard and goes crazy.

B - Are you obessed with the TR 808?

J - Yeah, Yeah!

B – do you own one?

J – no no ,but...

O – you own 2, right?

J – NO no, I borrow two. They’re not really mine, people can claim them back, I’m just borrowing them indefinitely.

B – So in your songs they’re not [third party] samples, You rip it directly from your 808’s.

J – its both samples and real, it all depends on where I was when I did it. Sometimes I use my moms computer.

B – you make a lot of beats on your mom’s computer?

J – some songs that I still play, were made on my mom’s computer.

B – that’s good to know.

J – Its really weird, I’ll go over to eat dinner with her, and I’ll excuse my self early, to retire to pappy’s office…

B – For real?

J – For real.

B – That’s raw though, it’s a good family element to your music.

J – Except its upsetting, my mom gets sad that I don’t talk to her after we eat.

B – Your parents don’t know that you are a performer of the night times?

J – no no, they know. Its hard to describe, they’re not really proud of it, or upset about it. They’re just like in the middle about it.

B – Are you in fact Cuban?

J – In fact?

B – I was lead to believe that you were, but still not sure about it.

J – yeah, but I don’t know that I  ever said [on the record] that I was.

B – but now it is on the record that you are actual Cuban?

J  - No I am in fact, American, I was born here. That’s what my grandfather tells me to say if anybody asks.

B – Cool.

B – how long have you been producing electro bass things? I hadn’t heard of you before 2007.

J – Yeah, I started playing [live] in 2007, and I had made the songs like, late 2006.

B – wow, pretty small time frame, and you’re doing pretty good with it, lots of shows, people seem to like you.

J – the shows make the difference, at first it was all just at home.

B – I’m going to move on to you, Mr. Von Schirach. First things first, what is Palm Tree Snuff?

O – Palm Tree Snuff is a label I started like 5 years ago to realease my music thats like bootlegged shit, you know. Like the Right Said Fred cover and The Prince cover [Sliced Doved on Codeine]. I kind of just did it, and released a seven inch.

B – Pukology?

O – Yeah, that and I released a couple of records as co-releases with people, and they took care of it. But the reason I don’t do it often is cause I don’t have to time to sit there and package orders, I can’t even do that for me, you know. But I co released this one [ Jose El Rey’s A little Strong] with Jose to give it a push, because its Miami, you know, Its Palm Trees.

B – So where would you like to take Palm Tree Snuff?

O – I hope that it gets a PMD deal and people like Jose will really help it get there.

B – Yeah He’s cute.

O – He is cute

J – Thank you, I don’t like it when men say that, well I do like it. But I shouldn’t.

B – Did you graduate highschool?

O – Unfortunately no

J – OMG you lied!

O – I told you [Jose] I graduated?

J – yeah!

O – I dropped out, went to the English center, to pass, then I said I’m not going to do this anymore and went to go get a GED, but I never did.

B – Was it the raves? I heard you used to sneak into raves when you were 16.

O – They were all-ages after 3am, I used to go to the Edge back in ’94.

J – Did you [Otto] ever go the ones at the go-kart place?

B – Those were at Malibu Grand Prix.

O – I used to play at those, the Full Moon parties.

J – I was gonna go one time and try ecstasy, but my car broke down, and my parents wouldn’t lend me there car.

O – GOOD.

B – Tell me a little about the software plug in for the Kontakt program, how you got involved with those people etc.

O – The company Fixed Noise contacted me to do a sound library, using Native Instruments Kontakt, and I had never done anything like that but had eight months to kill, so I said ok, I’ll do it. It was brutal, a lot of geek work. But it got me a lot of sound design jobs, designing, you know. Its hard stuff you know, I’m not built for it. I’m more of a Bass Warrior.

 B - Not built for it as far as production software/hardwares?

O – As far as sitting at home and making sounds for other people to use.

J – Its probably good bass warrior training though, like the equivalent of doing sit-ups and meditation.

B – You were probably stuck there for hours.

O – Yeah, but the worst was the script writing, just the actual software. That was the worst. Making the sounds, I did it, it was fun, you can do whatever, sit there, smoke a cigarette…

B – you wrote the Programming?

O – No, I had to write scripts, in alpha, they weren’t even in beta mode yet. There were so many bugs that I ended up helping beta tests. I would write 3000 scripts and have to rewrite them because the software got upgraded.

B – You learned a lot about sound engineering through that I bet.

O – Yeah, electro-acoustics and recording etc…

J – That’s why you’re so fast…

B – Where did Oozing Bass Spasms come from, It’s a little dancier and less aggressive than your previous release Spine Serpents from Sperm Island.

O – Well Spine serpents was a bootleg, and Oozing Bass Spasms is half of Spine Serpents, mixed better and more engineered with dance tracks I’ve had for years that I’ve played live a lot. It was released with Jason Forrest from the label Cock Rock Disco, and his labels all about dance music so…

J – Its funny though, cause in my brain its your most “normal” record, but still way out there, really left field.

O – Yeah, its still super left field.

J – This is for the record. The ten o’clock shift here is really good.

B – Oh yeah?

O – Everybody else is terrible.

J – Nancy and Ramona, the best.

B – Why did you make Pukology?

O – I wanted to do something like that forever and a label approached me about a way to do it how it’d actually be really cool getting other people involved because at first I wanted to do it recording myself and friends but then getting other people involved, fans, puking for me.

B – Wow that’s nasty.

O – 30 people, theres really 30 people on the record that sent me sounds. That record was really hard to make, it took me like 3 years. They sent me the sound and I would open it and my ex-girlfriend didn’t want me to do it. She wouldn’t let me work on it while she was home because it was really gross. I got super skinny during that always loosing my appetite, I would wake up in the morning and it was instant gross, up-chucks and puking all over.

B – A lot of the sounds you have really aggressive overtones, enveloping the listener in a cacophony of guttural inhuman soundscapes. How does your music affect you when its only you listening to this ungodly….

J – Wait…cacophony?

B – Cacophony.

J – That’s really good…

J – That’s fucking SAT…

O – What does that mean?

B – It’s like an overwhelming “everywhere!” kind of sound in music that just kicks your ass.

J – Like a piano falling down the stairs…

B – Yeah exactly. Like whipping a pipe organ with a live cat would be a cacophonous experience.

B – So, like I was asking, how you you reflect on these enormous nonsensical sounds that come out of who knows where?

O – Sometimes I’m sitting there, just thinking “what the fuck am I making?” you know? But it makes sense to me the next morning. Sometimes I’m still like where do these crazy things come from, or why must I sit there and make such a crazy song?

B – As opposed to trance that’s all happiness and whistles.

O – Yeah, as opposed to that or whatever, even hip-hop or straight up dance music. I’m always like fuck it, lets give it a twist, you know? I guess I never came from a music making background. When I started I didn’t know how to make music, so I always felt that I was un-making music.

B – Just starting with some chaos and working it out bit by bit…

O - Yeah

 J – We had this one song we were doing, and it was ready then we totally fucked it up one day, by adding all this shit to it and deleted it all and took it back to where it was in the beginning.

B – That can be a good way to work.

O – Try EVERYTHING.

B – Some like to start with a little and build up on it until its fine, maybe go over the edge a little bit, others go way over the edge and pull away from it.

J – I take a lot away from my song. I want them to be as simple as they can.

O – Yeah totally.

J – Otto, do you have secret noises in your shit like subliminal messages and backwards recordings.

O – Yeah of course, tons of backwards messages and frequencies.

B – We just got coffee.

B – The culture of electronic music has changed greatly since the influx of more affordable hardware and pirated digital media. Anyone can download anything they need to create anything they want to. Down here, the scene of purely digital performance has blown up seemingly out of no where, a good example is the collective of predominantly laptop oriented musicians, the Creature Tweaker Council. How does our electronic happening compare to other IDM scenes anywhere else?

O – I think its like that all over, everywhere, there’s little scenes of tons of kids who make crazy music, The Creature Tweaker Council is Miami, and Miami is not a part of America. It has its own taste buds.

J – Let the record state that our coffee is spilling everywhere.

O – That’s good you know. Eso quiere dicir que, my grandma is always like “cuando se bota el café, quiere decir que vas a salir con dinero.”

J- Yeah?

O – Mmhmm.

J – I guess that means tomorrow we’re gonna make it.

B – Otto, can you give me a brief rundown of other musicians you’ve worked with lately?

O – Jose El Rey, El Tigre, Doormouse, Baseck, Venetian Snares, Blowfly…

J – Skeeny popee.

O – Skinny Puppy, Kevin Keith, a lot of songs with Kevin Keith.

J – Do you do it long distance through e-mail?

O – That and sometimes I go to LA for three weeks and just sit there and make tracks with him.

J – Who’d you jam with in LA last time?

O – A lot of people, the supergroup.

B – Anyone you would like to work with soon?

O – The Bass Warriors have been working with Debbie from Avenue D recently.

B – Now that I’m jacked up on coffee let me get back to you, Jose. What happened to Miami Bass, what has it become, what are you doing to it?

J – I don’t think Miami Bass ever became what it should have. That’s what I’ve always thought. As a child I would hear certain songs with parts that I would really like aand then they would go and do something that was not entertaining anymore to me. I want to keep the intensity of a song, the catchiness, and make it what I think its supposed to be. Luckily when I met Otto, we didn’t even talk about it specifically, but I don’t know, but somehow we found out that we had the same idea of what Miami Bass is supposed to sound like, and what it’s supposed to make people do. Right now we’ve got four tracks in the works.

B – With the Bass Warriors.

J – Yeah, the Miami Bass Warriors.

O- When I work with Jose, Its soo simple. I make a beat, He’s already playing the melody and that’s it, waste it, It’s super easy, and then the vocals just come from that, and that’s it. And most of our tracks the vocals are freestyle, no written down, all on the spot.

 J – Then we just keep the good parts, and remember them.

B – Are you truly a breaker of hearts like you album [A Little Strong] suggests?

J – Yes...

B – ok, next question then

J – Naw but like, whenever I break a heart, its not my intention to, but… It happens. But most girls, years later thank me for giving them the range of emotions only I can provide.

O – He’s a scorpion bro.

B - What was your goal with A Little Strong?

J – To make it quick, entertaining and fun, to really express my emotions, my motions and make people feel like buying more of the records.

B - Whats with the Jupina? Really?

J – It’s the drink of champions. It’s the taste I taste when I make Bass. It really is.

O – Likewise.

J – Any time I’m writing a song.

O – We’re pussies, though. We like diet.

J – That’s because our metabolisms aren’t as quick as other, so we have to do trickery, take speed and drink Diet Jupina.

B – Otto, whats the weirdest thing that’s happened to you in the city?

O – In this city?

B – Yeah

O – Fuck, there’s a lot.

J – You getting jumped?

O – Yeah but that’s normal.

B – Yeah I heard about that, you and Peasants got mugged on Biscayne.

O – Yeah, it kind of scarred Armandito

J – I would imagine that He’d take it in stride.

O – He wanted to kill. What sucks is we went to the police station afterwards and they were like, not giving a fuck.

O – I think the one of the weirdest things aside from trillions others, one time, I was on Tre Deuce ave (32nd) and 19 Terr, where I had grown up for like my whole life, for 19 years. I was sitting outside, and I saw this dude, three in the morning, lights off. In this peaceful neighborhood, it was gangster, but peace and trees. But this dude walks the street wearing a towel on his head and just a towel, walking down the middle of the street lights shining on him and he was super negro, like charcoal. I was freaking out. That was the weirdest shit, I would never see something like that again. I don’t know if I was out of it or something, seemed like an alien or something.

B – Sounds like it left some kind of impression.

O – Yeah, I loved it, I went inside and wrote a track.

B – So, serious question now, Otto, what’s the point of breakcore? Why does it exist?

O – Why? Because it’s kind of like super hardcore. It’s a gabber kick drum with an amen break on a couple time sigs and pitch at 200bpm. The point of it is for people in Europe to get warmed up in the winter I guess.

J – Like Black Metal

O – Yeah but for the Electro Sci-Fi kids.

J – For the kids who live in apartments who can’t have amps.

O – Hehe, totally. CD players…

B – Pretty hardcore.

J – Did you [Otto] ever make the cd player skip when you were little just to make the song different?

O – Yep, for sure. I would do that, and record it, and record the best parts onto another tape. I liked doing that. Not anymore, now you make all of that on the computer. Back in the day one of my tricks to get fucked up vocals was that I had a Sony DAT machine and when you press fast forwards on it would hit syllables, it would just go “peht-duh-emduh-yeqdrrr-duhduhbuh” and skip and stutter and shutter the track. You would get all this weird information. It’s all about the old school tricks. It was only that DAT machine other DAT machines couldn’t do it it would just fast forward.

B – Jose, so where do you usually start with a track?

J – The best ones, the ones that I play live, the ones I end up recording, just start with a chord and that’s based on something very important that I hear somebody say…

O – Something wet.

J – Or something important that I feel I must tell the world.

J – Do you know about the Miami Bass Warriors? Do you really know?

B – I just know you two and El Tigre became friends got together and got bassin.

J – The 12 inch is coming out soon, its going to be a double single with Going Back to Calle 8 slash Bro That Chicks a Basser complete with acapella tracks for the dj’s to remix  and beat tracks for the amateurs to sing over.

  B - Ok thanks a lot guys, I think we're done.