#wearetar

Introductions first: for anyone who doesn't know, who are you / where are you from? I’m a lil’ shit from a small town in Dorset, UK. I’m in school right now during a media studies lesson trying to avoid a bollocking.

Your artist profile on the TAR website lists you as having started producing and DJing at 12 (bare envious of that fact no lie); what was it that first got you into making music? I got into music through coming across YouTube tutorials for Ableton. I’ve always kinda been into music by playing instruments and stuff but my inclination to start producing came from morbid curiosity and coming across shit on the internet. It was around the same time that I learnt how to use Photoshop and code. A few years later I guess I just found electronic music and thought it was really cool. I wanted to be a graphic designer when I was 14 but I heard that they have to deal with really horrible people all the time.

Earnest by Kai Whiston

The earliest music of yours that I know of - your 2015 self-released album Earnest - is focused a lot more on traditional hip hop rhythms and flow than the tracks you're putting out at the moment, though the dark atmosphere and running feedback of your current work is still heavily present. What do you see as the major differences between Earnest and your Houndstooth EP with TAR? I’m relieved that I managed to hide the rest of my discography before that release. I was still learning a lot about the craft with mixing and mastering. It’s quite weird because in that album you can hear the amateur tracks I was making at the start and then the more professional tracks I was producing towards the end of the project. I was biting everyone I liked in Earnest, just because I was still new to electronic music in general. I think my attitudes towards having grooves and gridded rhythms and melodies in my music still stands, that dark stuff has lingered around with me from the beginning somehow. I found out the other day of something I made in 2013, I was trying to recreate Joy Division or something. 

>>>> https://soundcloud.com/kaiwhiston/morgue-2013/s-vjkt3 <<<<

I literally didn’t have any knowledge of electronic music other than deadmau5 but sounds like Actress or some shit. Might do a VIP of it or something.

How did you get involved with TAR? Their current roster is pretty expansive in size and stylistic scope, where do you feel you fit in? I came across TAR just by scouring Soundcloud one night. After I finished “Houndstooth” I gave it to Iglooghost to try and send to cool people he knows to see if anyone wanted to release it. He played it to PBDY who runs TAR in LA while IG was on his U.S. tour and PBDY was really impressed. It’s crazy because I’ve been a fan of PBDY’s mixes and releases on TAR for a little while now. I came onto them around the time they were doing Footwork releases with Teklife. I think there are a lot of different sound palettes and styles within TAR, but everyone on the roster has the nature of wanting to making impactful electronic music. PBDY has a great ear for hearing raw talent and curating it in a way that feels synonymous with the label. Also the logo is really fucking cool.

The press release for Houndstooth codifies your music as being of equal parts "creation and destruction" - do you see your production process reflecting this? Pretty much all of my tracks are upcycling shitty demos and ideas together into coherent pieces of work. I like to have a lot of loops and beats ready when I’m going into a track. In another sense it’s very typical that I will create a sound and completely scrap whatever I was spending 2 weeks on to make an entirely new track build around the sound. In terms of destruction probably comes for the chipping and deterioration of samples that I collect. The MIDI & Instruments I use during writing is often very minimal. Pretty much everything I do is sample manipulation. I think there's a pretty cool quality in bringing sounds into a different context, and it’s so easy to put things together unconventionally. It would be a shame to not take advantage of that kind of technology. That, and I’m lazy as fuck.

In line with TAR's Dionysian description of your EP, and since a big part of your music is sample work, would you say your approach to and use of your sources is more "creatively destructive" or "destructively creative"? Do you approach remixing from a similar standpoint? I think my tracks go through flourishes of both really. Sometimes the track will lead me to break down everything about the track, gradually turning it into a gritty sludge fest if I’m in a bad mood. ‘Rev’ from Houndstooth would be a good example of this, I got increasingly destructive as the track went on, ending everything in this crazy almost black metal cymbal wash with sirens and shit. Recently I’ve been more favourable of destructively creative in a sense of sugarcoating these abrasive sounds with ear candy progressions and hooks. That always leads to making the music I most enjoy.

Your name came to mind recently when Superficie (s/o) and myself were talking; he made the point that since "music seems to be more and more [about] the collapsing of cultural signifiers" everyone is "making work that's hyper hybrid" and that "people our age are past sticking to stereotypes... we're getting way better at digesting all this information and presenting it in a way that's cohesive to those in the know", which he saw as readable in the artwork I put together for my mix series and which I see in your music (as well that of someone like 111x). Are those aspects of internet knowledge consumption something you're aware of or trying to achieve with your tunes? Are there influences outside the realm of music that you're taking in and turning out? I think the internet has a huge effect on the music I make because it has a huge effect on who I am. I’ve been basically spending 6+ hours a day on the internet since I got my first computer when I was, like, 8. When my family finally got broadband, watching youtube videos was all I ever wanted to do. I thought it was so mental that I could watch adverts back on YouTube without having to wait for them to come on the telly. These days I usually have about 30 tabs open trying to digest 10 different things at the same time. That maximalist behaviour must have an effect on what I’m trying to do with this music shit. I’m honestly try not to get that deep or philosophical with music. I like to keep things open to interpretation. This tweet nails it the best: 

Attaching safe, distant pseudo-politics to an album of unlistenable beats & sound fx is a short process that comes straight after mastering.

— Peter M Boothroyd (@_booth92) March 2, 2016

In regards to influences outside of music, definitely would have to mention the visuals from Sam Rolfes. My desktop and walls in my room are plastered with Sam Rolfes pieces and Instagram rips. He did the cover for Houndstooth and I’m hoping to get him to do some art on a lot of upcoming projects I have in mind. He’s definitely my favourite contemporary artist, crazy. Also I work in a Chinese Takeaway on the weekends, interpret that however you need to. 

The first time I actually spotted your name in a tracklist was with Iglooghost's NestHQ minimix back in January - he featured your Maxsta remix. The two of you seem to have this mutual love for each other's music (on your rip of the same track you refer to him as "the best producer in the world right now"); what is it that you appreciate about his productions? Do you know each other beyond the internet or is it just a mutual respect kind-of-deal? I hit him up just before that Earnest thing came out when I was really young asking to do a remix of one of his songs. I always heard stories about him because I was friends with his younger brother and often heard stories about him. I heard from his brother when just got DM’d by FlyLo and was gonna do a release with Brainfeeder and my brain pretty much exploded. I’m not sure if I would have bothered to continue with music if it wasn’t for seeing someone from where I was doing the kind of things I wanted to do. It’s very easy to make excuses and feel overwhelmed that everyone usually comes from London, LA, New York or whatever. A lot of that is conditioned from being brought up here. I have nothing against the countryside, it’s just really not for me. Seeing someone like IG from here was super dope anyway, ever since we’ve been really close. He gives me feedback and we talk about pretty much anything and everything. He got into this shit really young as well so our timelines sorta coincide, it’s weird. He really is the best.

The description for ENDGAME’s Precious Metals NTS show (which you guested on) refers to the show as lining up both "tunes for the club" and "tunes for the car" - so, if you had to pick two or three tracks that fit those categories what would you go for? Tunes for the club: Feral - Hyphen

Nexus by Feral

Tarquin - Kid U

Tunes for the car: 50 Cent - Many Men

Young Thug - Drippin

As a final question, what have you got coming up in the future? I just dropped a two-track single of B-sides on TAR. They’re the leftover tracks that came from making Houndstooth that PBDY convinced me to release. I really dig them, and the cover art is done by Donnie Fredericks who Sam (Rolfes) mentors a little bit. It makes the tracks sound even better. Right now it’s on SoundCloud, iTunes, Amazon, Spotify and all that good stuff. A free download will be available on SoundCloud and Bandcamp soon.

Other than that I’m in full EP writing mode, with some other work for this really dope Taiwanese rapper Aristophanes. I produced a track on her album which should be out around January. I’ve also done bits and bobs for this project called Cusp along with producers Joe Petersen, Xeno_ and rapper Buchanan. Some more of that will be out soon.

My teachers is about to ask for all the work I haven’t done this lesson so I’ll see you in a bit.