In 2014, Sean Jewel conducted a massive interview with a gathering of Deathbomb Arc artists and label head Brian Miller. In recent years, the article has been scrubbed from the site it was originally posted at. We have gathered all of the text content for it from archival sites and recreated it below. Only one image from it has currently been found, picturing (L-R) tik///tik, William Hutson, and Jonathan Snipes.
No Genre, No Authenticity, No Problem: An Interview With LA Label Deathbomb Arc by Sean Jewell
Interview conducted with Los Angeles DIY label Deathbomb Arc, on the birth of clipping., the meaning of experimental music, and the curses and blessings of liking everything:
I love Seattle, but after developing a nasty case of seasonal-affected malaise last month, I did what any miserable person would do: took some work in Los Angeles, California. I later realized that the dates I’d be there included the evening of the Grammys. I began to imagine a scenario in which an award would be given to artists who take chances with music rather than make popular music, and little Los Angeles label Deathbomb Arc came to mind. I did what any self-doubting writer would do: I requested an interview. Deathbomb Arc is the label that birthed Sub Pop signees clipping., a group whose music works as much to entertain as it does to muddle and expand genre. Their 2013 release midcity did the unlikely and combined two of my great loves: electroacoustic interference music and hiphop. I wanted to understand the genesis of their sound, so I talked to label boss Brian Miller and to my surprise in one evening he’d rounded up two-thirds of the members of clipping., Jonathan Snipes, and William Hutson (Daveed Diggs was away and unavailable), rapper I.E. (Margot Padilla), noise musician Tik//Tik (Stephen Cano) and label videographer and graphic designer Cristina Bercovitz for an all-pro interview session.
I did my best to avoid the Grammys in LA. I sped up Mullholland drive, tumbled down Topanga Canyon, and watched paddle boarders surf in the sunset at Malibu. I went to Watts, talked to the daughter of Harlem Renaissance player Leo Trammel about the Charles Mingus Youth Arts Center. We agreed Los Angeles’ legacy of great musicians (Eric Dolphy, Schoolboy Q, John Cage, Ice Cube, Tyrese Gibson, Barry White just to name a few) was shamefully not its most recognized feature. I watched a girl play guitar at Watts Towers, heard her father sing, and became aggravated at the police helicopters looming overhead. I relaxed in the sun. That evening I found my way to Mid City LA and met the Deathbomb Arc crew at the home of Jonathan Snipes. We sat around the kitchen table and talked. My malaise melted and was recast as a sense of belonging.
My first exposure to clipping. was through their mixtape for No Conclusion. The group took a leak of Kanye West’s Yeezus, and the idea from their Twitter followers that Kanye might have been listening to clipping. during its making, and put together a mixtape over their favorite parts of his leaked songs (there weren’t many) that included their favorite rap music from the year prior. The person who pointed me toward clipping. mentioned to me that this label had been releasing artists music on cassette like the medium never went out of style. clipping. released an untitled cassette on Deathbomb and very few sold until their album midcity drew attention with a free online download. Midcity was also later released on cassette. I asked Brian Miller about that.
“I feel pretty out of touch with the history of its hipness. I put out the first cassette on Deathbomb in ’04 and at that point I felt late to the game.” He and Jeff Witscher (aka Rene Hell) put out work on cassette as Foot Village. He reminded me that the cassette has always been the chosen medium of the noise music genre and that it just never went away in that small corner due to its relative cheapness to produce. Brian is soft spoken and obviously cares deeply about music. He’s seen to it that his younger musicians get albums put out on cassette so they can see and hold quality, visible copies of their work. He does it to show them he cares. The idea comes up that older cars accommodate the medium, as well as the fact that it can be produced in any length cheaply. “The thing I love about cassettes is that nobody is making the argument that they sound better,” Snipes jokes. “They sound awful, so the the appeal really is all fetish or novelty.” "I have no idea what many of the younger acts I work with think about me putting their music out on cassette," Brian Miller says. "For them it’s not novelty or fetish at all, they didn't grow up with them, and acts like Signor Benedick The Moor have been completely shocked when I describe releasing music on actual physical cassette” I.E. is sitting off to my left and confirms the notion when he asks if she had an opinion about the release of her work on a certain medium: “I didn't care what the hell it came out on!”
I.E. makes painfully earnest hiphop that stems from her growing up outside of LA (in Inland Empire, hence the name). I ask her how her recent show in Seattle was. “It was terrible.” I played at The Josephine, nobody came, I just kind of played for the two dudes that lived there and the other act.” Brian Miller reminisces on bringing clipping. and Foot Village to Seattle and being well attended, but recognizes the fortune of those in their scene in LA, a place with no apprehension about putting a band on a bill because of their style. It’s this kind of availability and openness at venues (the last decade) that has given way to such a youthful music movement in LA (think Burger Records, Innovative Leisure, Deathbomb Arc).
Snipes, who is also a film score producer (Room 237, the documentary that investigates the myths behind Kubrick’s The Shining, is his best work, which he brought along Bill Hutson for) confesses his love for CDs as a music medium and his worst show in Seattle. He’s hirsute and talkative, smart, and nice. He has a lot of thoughts about music. He recalls his worst show in Seattle with his "ravesploitation" group Captain Ahab (one part of the genesis of clipping.) “I played the Baltic Room, the people who booked the show were very kind, but we got unplugged pretty soon into our set because people who were there weren't there to watch a sweaty white dude rap about buttholes.” Laughter erupts at the table. “It gave me the perspective that my idea—which to me was the most important part of that group—was totally offensive to everyone else on the bill, rappers and DJs whose craft defined them. Since then I've been on a bill or two with acts who I regarded as offensive.” Captain Ahab was a group born out of post 9-11 nationalism and moroseness of a nation, “What Captain Ahab was doing was acceptable in the circles we traveled in because everyone had gotten so conservative and boring, but here was a group of young people with no genre, making art a safe space for dangerous ideas, defending that idea at a point in America where people were questioning the way they expressed themselves,” Miller says.
“The modus operandi of Deathbomb is punk as a way of being in the world, and not a type of music,” Hutson interjects. He’s undoubtedly the dissident in the group. He towers over me in height, and he’s ruggedly good looking. There are things going on behind his piercing eyes. He doesn’t speak much, but when he does it’s profound. I’d heard of his work, but he surprised me with his in-depth knowledge of hiphop, noise, and punk. “If you listen to most punk now, it’s the most conservative, closed-minded shit you've ever heard. You can be punk now and not make punk music.”
His comment reminds me that I.E.’s work is a dead ringer for early-'80s LA punk. A self-proclaimed chola rave queen, she could be the child of Alice Bag, and her music recalls The Cholitas and X. “I do listen to that music, but I grew up on hiphop. I’m also big into Euro dance music and new wave.” The great thing about her album Most Importantly is that she reminds every hard-on about the absolutely horrid world women grow up in without a single sad face emoji. Instead she uses chip tunes, noise music, and hiphop to get her truly hilarious, truly feminist point of view through to you.
Besides I.E. and Brian Miller, everyone gathered is into theater or came from that background. Some went to UCLA, Daveed went to Brown, Christina is a well-known puppeteer in Los Angeles and has directed several videos for clipping. and other Deathbomb artists. “We studied very traditional American theater, what can you say about that? It makes you creative in a very production-driven way. It affects the way we all work together.”
“It’s also a style of art we’re all interested in, but realized soon into school that we really don’t ever want to make,” Snipes jokes. “We learned how to do all this by doing Captain Ahab (Snipes' earlier group). It took us a long time to learn how to brand things, how to package things,” Cristina adds.
Miller brings up the point that the improvisational ability members possess affects their love for their unorthodox performances and musical styles. That the training to recognize others' cues can direct you on stage—theater or musical—and take you somewhere further than just a recital of recorded work, can really bring the music to life. Snipes talks a bit about how theater relates to composing music: “What is the idea of this entire play, and does every decision you’re making support this one very simple idea. If it does not, you cut it, successful theater is based on this.” Hutson concludes, “The only other idea I would add is that what theater did for us, for Captain Ahab, and for clipping. is that we have no concern for authenticity. Lying is a performance; we lie a lot.”
“There is nothing explicitly sexist about speaking over rhythms.” William Hutson says, laughing. “You don’t have to say monstrous things about women as a rapper, they just generally do for some reason.”
I’d just brought up my theory that hiphop as a movement is incorrectly labeled as sexist. That people, rappers, as individuals can be called out for their actions or their speech, but the movement cannot. People don’t attack thespianism as a whole because the actor who plays Don Draper on Mad Men gives a sexist performance on TV, so what’s the difference with rap?
“Some people don't understand that. People do think that musicians go on stage and are the ultimate version of themselves,” Brian Miller adds.
People imprint themselves on music like no other art form. clipping.’s work especially has been regarded as more aggro than deserved (in my opinion) and Bill Hutson helps me understand why when I bring up the fact that I have feelings for abstract art (I feel as emotional at the lines of Judd and paint blotches of a Frankenthaler as I do at good music), yet I still understand the painters and sculptors of that period were not referencing me.
“But even abstract art was sold on the rugged individualism of Pollock as some cowboy. With the artist as the character and not the art,” Hutson interjects. “It’s all a bunch of bullshit to me,” he says, before shrinking back into his shoulders and staring into his wine.
Jonathan Snipes explains: “I always thought of my Captain Ahab lyrics as a sort of musical timbre. I responded to Miami Bass and Detroit Ghetto House music. I liked the drum machine sounds, the way they were programmed, the synths, and the words. The words in those songs just so happen to mostly be about women’s butts.” (Everyone at the table giggles. it makes sense, sort of.) “It wouldn’t be that type of music if we weren’t talking about women’s butts. The words you’re using can be a timbre choice. I think the same is true for clipping. I don’t feel like I’m allowed to say that, because I don’t write the words for clipping., but I would say that’s true of that band as well.”
He brings up a point I’d been dying to talk about. The lyrical choices on clipping.’s midcity are massive in terms of word placement. It’s clear that Daveed Diggs’ lyrics weren’t written into a cell phone that evening and recorded once, never to be edited. His story rhymes and raps are deliciously grotesque poetry about lost lovers, affection for the city, and blind loyalty to the street, that are as visually stimulating as they are precisely spit. I read that they'd been choosy about his phrasing. “Rappers don’t have editors," Hutson says, “except for Daveed, he’s been amazed that we have opinions, and will ask us which line or word is better, but that certainly is not how rap music gets written anywhere else.” The amazing thing about clipping.’s experimental hiphop is also the fact that Daveed seems to stand alone while rhyming, as the electro-acoustic interference and noise he raps over is not necessarily providing him with a rhythm, many times he is the rhythm, and the noise is the lead, but before I get to lost in my love for minimalism, the maximalist at the table speaks up.
tik///tik (Steven Cano) has been a noise-music fixture around Los Angeles for years. If there is a true noise music maker at the table it’s him. I’m surprised though, to learn that the vocals and vocal samples in his music are his own. Miller regards him as the most soulful musician of the group because of his earnestness, and I’m surprised at his personality in person. He's congenial, almost diminutive. He speaks quietly for having made such noisy music over the years. My favorite works of his Jewel Play, and Every Hex Is A Hearthache wrap his pop vocals in visqueen and duct tape and toss the kidnapped, dead idea of pop into a chilly slough. “I might push the volume, but there’s always something in the middle of that maelstrom of sounds going around in my music. There’ll be a horrible torch song right in the middle of my songs, and that’s what I’m worried about,” he says, quietly, almost unsure of himself.
If you hear his music you might be as shocked as me that he’s making pop tunes. His inspirations:
“I relate to Miami Freestyle, I used to steal my brothers N.W.A., I listened to LL Cool J, that’s kind of what attracted me to Captain Ahab (Snipes’ early group) originally because I like that Miami ‘booty’ sound.”
Brian says: “The first time he really struck me was on his tracks during ‘The Fruit Will Rot Vol. 3’; everyone else delivered really harsh noise for that compilation. Steven turned in these tracks that could have used vocal samples from pop acts from the '60s or something, but they weren’t, they’re actually Steven singing. I’ve never heard anything else like it." Then he sums up tik///tik in a single sentence, putting it in a way I'd never thought of: "How many people out there are like ‘Gee, I sure wish there was a group that bridged the gap between my harsh noise records and my soul collection?”
Steven's reply: “It’s part of the LA thing, though. I’m fine sitting between all these people. I’ve been on tour with them. Nothing is weird to me. To me I.E. has written the noisiest punk-rock track ever. Genre doesn’t exist.”
Speaking of LA acts going way back, and The Fruit Will Rot Vol.3 gives me the chance to ask Bill Hutson of what I’d heard was the genesis of clipping, his early work as a noise act called Beach Balls.
“It was a joke about all of the LA harsh noise acts at that time, people were ripping off one artist known as Pedestrian Deposit. Everyone’s music was coming out as blasts of harsh noise between ambient music cuts. I made the joke that I was going to do that in my band Beach Balls, but with harsh noise and rap a cappellas. It was just an attempt to re-format what everyone was doing by ripping off one guy. But instead of copying we’d switch out one of the genres for something I related to.”
The DNA of clipping. can be traced all the way back to that mixtape in which Bill uses a click track and a Ying Yang Twins sample to make a song called “Case Sensitivity” that takes the juvenile "whisper song" and turns it into an ominous hiphop adventure. Snipes recalls begging Hutson to form a band after seeing LA group Death Set play distorted radio-rap songs inbetween songs in their set. “I told him for years someone needed to do this as a band, combine noise and rap, and eventually I convinced him we should do it as a remix project. The first one we worked on was using an Insane Clown Posse a cappella.”
Hutson: “The reason I did all that, and I made all these songs that never came out, was because I was uncomfortable with the degree to which…it was a joke about taking these power electronic songs that are either explicitly or implicitly white-supremacist music, and I would beat match them with like Lil Wayne rapping over them. Because they were in the same tempo, and it was like, ‘these are two sounds I like and how do I deal with the fact that some of the music I like is really fucked up and I don’t agree with it’…” He goes on to rant about acts whose white-supremacist values seem to have been forgotten (or more likely not even researched) because their bands make for good buzz media.
Miller: “The idea was of negotiating between all the different types of music, and being able to touch base with them, but the culture at that time was not ok with us mixing those things. We mash things together so much that people don’t realize we love all these genres. You really have to listen to hear those things in there, the soul singing, Trina samples, J Mascis. We met because I once put out a very abstract tribute to Cash Money records, and I knew of Bill’s music, then wrote to him and found out we lived near each other. It was cool for us, but at the time it literally got me hate mail from people who thought we shouldn’t combine certain music and rap. Bill just happened to be into experimental music and hiphop like me.”
Hutson: “Very specifically, Cash Money records. When I was a kid I wanted to be a Cash Money Millionaire, and in 1998 I switched to wanting to be a No Limit Soldier,” he laughs.
As Brian points out, these things may sound like nothing weird at all now, but in ‘02 looked like a pretty defiant (read: punk) stance toward the standards of craven scenesters. Brian also previously put out a tribute compilation to No Limit records as well that asked bands to write songs around the idea of No Limit records. The DIY to stardom aspect of those labels are what inspired Deathbomb. Also the question of what it means to be a white person from suburban LA who loves southern gangster rap. The exploration, the experiment, was the point.
“Call it mysoginist, but those Southern labels supported more female acts at that time than any other label, I can name more female rappers from New Orleans than I can from any other city.” Earlier I mistakenly referred to Percy Miller (aka Master P, head of No Limit) as Patrick Miller, and Bill Hutson corrected me as soon as it came out of my mouth. I apologized. Dude is serious about his rap and hiphop.
What's the point of any music?
It would be taking advantage of the privilege of having so many experimental, electro-acoustic interference, musique concrète geeks in the same room to not ask: What is the point ? What is the point of music with little rhythm, few words, unrecognizable instruments? I look to the very intelligent members of this very noisy label for help.
“I might be the wrong person to answer that,” Steven Cano (aka tik///tik) says “when I’m making my music I feel like I’m Selena in the middle of everything. For me it’s another version of pop music, and that’s how I attack it. It doesn’t mean I don’t listen to other noise artists, but that’s how I know how to make music, that’s where it comes from”
“I love the sounds, personally. I find them exciting, and for me that’s all there needs to be is that the sounds are pleasing to my ears.” Jonathan Snipes says.
“What’s the point of any music?” Bill Hutson says, then crosses his legs and looks away and laughs.
But from I.E. comes something poignant as usual:
“The first time I heard these guys was over The Smell speakers and the hair stood up on my arms. I never knew what noise music was, but I kind of made it, and then when I was starting to become an artist I had the same feelings as these guys, like maybe everyone was a white supremacist or something, and being part of a group meant just getting together and collectively hating things. I tried to hang with punkers, because where I grew up hiphop was the music of gangsters, and though hiphop was my whole life, I didn’t want to be a gangster. Then I met these guys and they had this funky way of liking everything and playing it loud. I didn’t know what noise was but I saw tik///tik, and Beach Balls, and I just felt awesome. I felt so happy that there were people who didn’t discount anything or put things in a box”.
The conversation drifts and I let it. Most of these people haven't sat in the same room together in some time, and combined they have decades of experience making art. Clearly we have music in common, but just like I love to talk about Seattle, they love to talk about LA.
Hutson: “There’s also sort of an assumption—and you see this a lot when you play places that aren’t big cities or you interact with people who like noise but aren’t from big cities—there’s an idea that you’re making an extreme kind of music because you don’t like the music that the guys who picked on you in high school listened to. There’s an assumption that if you like noise that you dislike other things, like because you make this music you don’t like Mandy Moore, but the opposite is true in LA; you can do both.”
Snipes: “There’s so many weird nested little music scenes here that you’re not just part of the 'music scene' there’s a place for you here no matter what you do."
Brian Miller: “What’s been hard to find outside of LA is a scene of people who don’t play music that sounds the same, where the people are related by more abstract concepts and will share the same bill. There is a place for lots of acts who are not appropriate bar-rock acts.”
Hutson: “I’m interested in the character of underground LA music. For instance, what are you doing making music for a very small group of people in the city that produces mainstream culture for most of the world? You can’t be sanctimonious about it, either, because no one here is actually proud of LA. This is a city that when you leave and tell someone where you’re from they have no problem telling you how much they fuckin' hate it. Then they go home turn on their TV and look at my fuckin' city”.
Snipes: “I love LA for that reason. I’m scared of civic pride anyway. It’s like nationalism to me. I love a lot of cities, but I love Los Angeles because we don’t have that. Being from LA is neutral in a weird way, because we’re all at odds with our environment.”
Hutson: “Talking to Sub Pop and playing in Seattle at the Silver Jubilee I couldn’t believe how much un-ironic pride there was in something so simple as a little record label. The whole city stopped, you guys flew a Sub Pop flag from the Space Needle! I saw the mayor walking around the concert in a Sub Pop T-shirt. I just couldn't imagine that happening in LA. Could you imagine a street fair and our landmarks flying flags because we’re proud we made Transformers 3 this year? I love the sincere pride in a cultural product from the city. I told everyone that while I was there.”
This is the genesis of Deathbomb’s latest group project, True Neutral Crew, a trio consisting of Brian Miller, Daveed Diggs, and I.E. that seeks to make music from a truly neutral standpoint. Their original idea for their #Monsanto EP was an album written from Monsanto's point of view. Thankfully, being truly neutral, they made what came out—a smartly written, well-rhymed noise-rap record. But the very structure of the group is representative of their isolation, their lack of an option to have an opinion about. Their refusal to participate in a broken system.
We talked a bit about the "instruments" that Deathbomb artists use. Tik///Tik used a flower electronics brand synth called a little boy blue. The designer, Jessica Rylan, is well respected in the group (indeed, in noise-music circles in general), she did graduate work at Stanford, and she’s now at MIT, but has spent time on tour with Deathbomb happily repairing the gear they smashed, and playing music with them. Christina Bercovitz filmed clipping.'s videos with a Betamax camcorder, and a mini DV recorder after finding the Betamax camcorder in Jonathan's dad’s attic. Their ideas for a dirtier, noisier visual aesthetic are from talking to Hutson and Diggs about BET Uncut, a show that Daveed and Bill stayed up late watching in high school. All the videos from that era were prior to HDTV or any really clear video. I’m surprised to find, however that for all the noises one can find on their collective records, no one is really a gear head. I’m looking around the apartment and see only records and turntables. Jonathan does mention that since clipping. has become associated with Sub Pop they've had access to more resources than every before.
I ask Brian what the future holds, since clipping. is now signed to Sub Pop, and how he feels about them leaving Deathbomb Arc.
Miller: “I’m not afraid to stand up for what I want. I’ve known Jonathan long enough that I’m not embarrassed to ask for what I care about, but I’ve also been invested in his music for over a decade now, so I want to see amazing things happen for him. I have asked if they could do another album on Deathbomb Arc, as well.”
Snipes: “It’s in our contract, the contract is pretty exclusive, like any record contract, but initially it was that we would make music exclusively for Sub Pop, unless it was for a film, because they knew that Bill and I had done a film score together and I had done film scores on my own. And then we were like, we should be able to do a record for Brian, and they said okay. Sub Pop has given us absolutely everything we’ve asked for. I’ve yet to hear anyone say anything bad about them.”
Sub Pop actually found out about clipping. because Miller emailed someone in the label's IT department looking for a place to book a show. He shared midcity and it made such an impression that they got signed. I ask Snipes if he has a plan for the new music.
“Nah.” Everyone laughs uproariously.
“We probably can’t talk too much about it. It’s basically done. It exists, we love it, and if you turn that recorder off we’ll play you a track downstairs.”
I’ve never shut a recorder off faster in my life. I found my way downstairs into clipping.'s studio and started eying gear. I sat down at the back of the small narrow space while Jonathan and Bill decided what to play. In the end, I got to hear two tracks. “They’re too novel,” argued Bill. “They’re all novel,” laughed Jonathan. Jonathan Snipes, Cristina Bercovitz, Bill Hutson, Margot Padilla, Stephen Cano, Brian Miller
What I heard first might take me some time to process. It felt open, concise, like Jay Z's early work, but drugged and thugged, as if that same work had been produced by DJ Screw. The second track I heard absolutely blew my mind. The curatorial genius of Brian Miller, the film score experience of Jonathan Snipes, the distinct taste and unrelenting dedication to sound of William Hutson, and the writing and rapping abilities of Daveed Diggs came through like a rejuvenating force. What began as “harsh noise”—perhaps the harshest particular noise I can think of—becomes a gorgeous heavenly chord when matched with other harsh (very common) noises up the scale. Like I.E. said, the hair stood up on my arms, things were way out of the box, nothing (not even the noises we're ungrateful we hear) had been discounted, I felt like I belonged. Everyone in the room listened like they were investigating the music. I felt the electronic warmth of the wall of modular synths, MIDI controllers, drum machines and every kind of keyboard you can name. The noise drove through the room, mingled with the flesh, and even Bill and Jonathan enjoyed what they had made. When it was over I.E. looked me dead in the eye and offered to sell me weed, I laughed, because music is my shit, and talking to the folks at Deathbomb Arc already had me high as one can get.
For a good primer with what's going on over at Deathbomb Arc, pick up their new compilation called EVIL. Sales from it go to supporting anti-debt charity rolling jubilee and it features ridiculous spitters like Signor Benedick The Moor and VIPER VENOM, plus gorgeous noise from Sissy Cobb and Dreamcrusher.
