Jack: Hey Selwa. Hey Greg. Nice to see you guys and thanks so much for being on with me. I'll start with Greg. What was your early experience with music and getting into music? Were your parents into music? What's your background with that?
Greg: Well, hi Jack, first of all. Thanks for having us on. Great to be here. Well, let's see, as a kid, my parents had a few records that I think that they had probably had since the '60s or '70s and some speakers that they had had since then too, just some old, beat up wooden Fisher speakers and an old turntable. So we would listen to music, I don't know, not very often. It was a special occasion to put a record on. My dad had some folk records, some old blues records, early country. That might have been all. Actually, I don't even know if there was any '60s rock. Definitely no jazz. My mom would listen to the classical station all the time, but that's about it. I didn't really know anyone who made music or played music, so I think the first time I heard pop radio was probably the first early impact that music had on me, aside from when I was very young and don't remember.
Jack: How old do you think you were when you first heard that?
Greg: My first real exposure to pop radio was I had an hour long bus ride to school and the bus driver would always play top 40. That was about 1986, I believe. So was Madonna, some rap, Run-D.M.C., Beastie Boys. I guess it was a mix of late new wave and early hair metal and then eighties R&B.
Jack: You grew up in the Pacific Northwest?
Greg: Yeah, that was in Seattle. And then I guess as a teenager, I didn't know anyone who played music and didn't really ever go out to concerts, maybe once or twice. There was actually an all-ages club owned by the brother of a friend of mine that was in downtown Portland called the X-Ray Cafe. So I went there at least once or twice as a teenager and saw, I don't know, some probably grunge-adjacent or maybe just weird, indie, new Northwest bands. I don't really even remember.
Jack: But any experience with popular music or music as playing music with other people was not...
Greg: Yeah, I didn't really have any concept of where music that was on the radio or recorded came from or who made it. To me it was just stars and they were in some other universe. I definitely listened to the radio all through being a teenager and sort of started to try and pick out different things that I liked. There was an AM radio station in Portland that played stuff that was not current and stuff that was just not popular. I guess it was sort of an indie rock or maybe college format, but it was actually pretty diverse and open for that. So they actually played some rave music on there occasionally. I think also hearing the sort of "Saturday night dance party on Z100!" and all this eurodance on Saturday night, I was like, "What is this crazy electronic sound?" I couldn't imagine how it was made. It was obvious to me that it wasn't made in real time by, like, fingers and and hands moving, and that made me really curious about it. I heard a little bit about raves and about dance music and all that. And that made me start actually searching that stuff out at record stores, trying to find articles and books and stuff like that. It was before I really had access to the internet.
Jack: How old are you? This is still high school?
Greg: Yeah, probably 16, 17. There was actually a little interview with Moby in Parade magazine that came in the Sun newspaper where it was, like, "techno essentials." I was like, "Okay, great, finally, awesome. I know who this guy is, but it says techno." And it was like Donna Summer, Kraftwerk, like all of these things that he thought of his early influences. So I went out and I found those records at used record stores. Sometimes even at Goodwill, there was a lot of stuff at Goodwill when I was a teenager. And I was like, "Okay, I can appreciate these, but they're not like what I was looking for," which is something very pounding and current sounding. But that did lead me down different paths, hearing these sort of early synthesizer dance music things. And then I had a cousin, actually, that lived in New York and was going to raves, so she introduced me to jungle and talked about jungle and how she liked jungle. And then she also took me to this record store, Liquid Sky Records. It was clothing, it was all kinds of stuff. Then after that I started following the Jungle Sky label, which was the Liquid Sky jungle version. That that I was captivated by. I mean, it was completely alien sounding. I couldn't follow the rhythms. It had all these different samples in it. I was really into 1.8.7., early black trans jungle producer, and then DJ Soul Slinger, who was sort of the boss of the label. That stuff had a big impact on me, I think, as I was just leaving, you know, 19 years old and really actually starting to want to figure out how to make music at that point.
Jack: What year is that?
Greg: '97, I guess.
Jack: Were you in college at this point?
Greg: I was not, I didn't go to college right away. So when I was 19, I was living in downtown Portland. I did not have Internet access, I was going to a community college part time. I started taking sequencing lessons there, along with anthropology and some stuff where I was just like, "Oh, I should be in school, let me take a full load of whatever liberal arts and music." And then by the third semester I was only taking music. But so I occasionally had Internet access there and I would look at some forums. Back then I think I started to find synthesizer forums, Analog Heaven mailing lists, and I would just find different music production forums too. People would talk about samples, I would download a few samples and bring them home. I guess as I started taking classes at community college, one of the guys that taught there was super helpful and was like, "You could get this MIDI sequencing software, I actually have an old demo copy of it I can give you. You just have to get a computer to run it on." And I think he told me I could probably go find an old Mac Classic at a thrift store. So I did for, like, 20 bucks, bought a Mac Classic. He gave me this demo software and I had to set the date back so that it would still work. [laughter]
Jack: Some stuff never changes. [laughter]
Greg: The computer didn't have a hard drive, so every time I booted it from floppy, I had to assign a certain amount of RAM to act as a hard drive, and the RAM was 500 kB, maybe. But for MIDI, which is so lightweight, it totally worked. I had to spend a few minutes getting the computer set up and then I would have this whole piano roll for me and I had just started to buy some gear at pawn shops and stuff and sequence.
Jack: That's the origin story.
Greg: Yeah, the crazy thing about those computers is like, "Okay, it stopped working," but I think I went back to thrift stores and bought two or three more over the course of the next year or two just because they were there and they were cheap. Nobody wanted them. They were so small. It's easy to just buy it, bring it home. It's all in one, you know. And then I had an early Akai synthesizer, I got one of the first Akai samplers. The really cheap FM and digital racks and really noisy rack effects. And then I was recording on this digital eight track, which I had spent so much money on. I spent $350. [laughter] And I could record for one hour.
Jack: One hour total?
Greg: Yeah. [laughter] It was like some old, big spinning hard drive in there. You would have to basically record it and then I would mix it onto cassette tape after that, and then that would be my master until I finally got a DAT. But yeah, all of this stuff was in the middle sequencing class, they hadn't really talked about any of the history at all. They showed us a Prophet 600, but by that point in the '90s, their whole studio was racks of stuff that you just sequenced with a computer. Analog was starting to come back as an idea, like the Nord Leads were out and that was like, "Wow, they have knobs just like the old ones! It's so creative!" But aside from that, I didn't have any exposure to how music was made, how techno music was made or dance music or early '80s electronic music or anything like that. Finally, I think what happened is I moved to San Francisco and I didn't bring everything down initially. I don't even think I brought any music gear. But then I went driving around the country for a bit and bought some stuff at pawn shops, ended up with a Yamaha RX5, which has a bunch of outputs. And some analog drum modules - an old Simmons one and an old Tama one - and I was just triggering them from the outputs of the drum machine and just letting the pattern loop and I was like, "Oh, this is how they do it." [laughter] It's just one basic sequencer looping and then you have hands and knobs and you move the knobs around and there you go.
Jack: So at this point, was it a solo pursuit or were you aware of scenes happening, of communities of people doing this?
Greg: Well, it was mostly me. In Portland I was going to raves and I would occasionally meet someone who was a producer and it would just be this thing like, "Oh my God, you know about gear too?" And I'd go to their house and I'd see all the gear they have. It's all totally, completely foreign. I just didn't have any way to find out about other gear. They'd tell me, "Oh yeah, this is an 808, blah, blah, blah, this is the 303," whatever. So there were a few people around Portland older than me that had little home setups like that that were very intriguing. And it just seemed like total random chance to ever meet anyone who had any idea what I was talking about.
Jack: You're in S.F. and you're sort of finding a community of other people who are interested in gear and maybe electronic music.
Greg: In S.F., not quite so much yet. My girlfriend and I, when we got there, I think through some of her friends started going to some shows that were pretty much year 2000 San Francisco Mod/Goth kind of situations. I don't even remember what bands, but to me when I hear the word hipster, that's what it means in my life, it was that period. It was, like, 1979 style or late '70s through early '80s style. I don't know if this was a... It seemed like it was big in San Francisco. It was definitely present in Portland a little bit before I left. But I don't know, white belt, I suppose there was some aspect of post hardcore - if I'm getting that right - in that scene. But they had embraced like first '60s and '70s music and then early '80s music, and in a way it was like, "Oh wow, here's this thing." It's this spectacle that was new to me but then it quickly became very stale and we ended up somehow happening into a Total Shutdown show or something like in a basement in a commercial space, totally off the grid. The music was just insane. Then there was, like, noise musicians and then that same scene had some techno DJs and stuff like that. That was the real underground San Francisco music scene that we had finally sort of broke through to. And we're like, "Oh my God, okay, this is where it's at." When we were first going out in San Francisco, it was this kind of rebellious, young people kind of alternative music spectacle, but still very much in bars, in clubs, very polished. And I think that maybe in Portland, that same aesthetic had been more underground. It was in warehouses and whatever. But in San Francisco, it just felt extremely plastic and commercial. There were nights that would pop up with the theme and it's like, "Okay, this bar, this club wants you and all your friends there. And this is part of what is selling all the alcohol, etc." And the music just became very stale and not interesting. I mean, it was whatever, it was nostalgic retro music, right? So then actually finding noise and techno and free jazz sort of coming out of the same predominantly white underground West Coast music culture was eye opening, I think. It just seemed like it was much more free, you didn't know what to expect and things were definitely going to challenge your notions of what music was in all kinds of different directions, you know?
Jack: When you first heard noise music or, like, free jazz stuff that did not have a beat or melody or whatever, was there growing pains of being like, "This is bullshit," or did you take to it? Did you have any exposure to that stuff before that?
Greg: Not really, I don't think. I don't know, I think that for me up until that point, engaging in music culture, whether it was just listening to CDs or going to raves or going to a basement show, there was very much a role that I was slipping into or trying to slip into. There was an identity that I was assuming in order to participate in a certain type of music, you know what I mean? And I couldn't reconcile those with myself. I was like, "Okay, well, I'm listening to this now, but I also like this," you know what I mean? It's very, I think, naive. And also an artifact of just whatever the cultural time period I grew up in was. Things just seemed very, very segmented and isolated from each other. And I think that seeing that kind of music by people not really dressing up in a specific style that was supposed to go along with the music was a little bit like, "Oh okay, yeah, this doesn't have to be..." It's like, "I don't know how to categorize it and I don't know what the people are supposed to look like." And I think I was fine with that as soon as it came. I always loved hearing different sounds, you know what I mean? If something broke a rule, I wasn't upset about it. It was like, "Okay, so this is a different thing now." It's not that it's not doing what it's supposed to, it's just a different category. So I think I was curious to see all those things. And I also, being young, loved just being blasted by loud noises and hearing different kinds of noises and whatever.
Jack: So this was...
Greg: 2001, 2002, 2003, probably around there. I still was primarily interested in dance music on my own. That's what I wanted to make. It was what I was making in my free time. I never fully, really engaged with the sort of surf, club, dance music scene because a lot of it was very smooth, you know, illustrations of people at the beach drinking a cocktail type of just like the most polished West Coast house type of a sound, you know? I think in a bigger city like San Francisco there is a commercial context for a lot more than there is in a small city. And so in Portland, I actually ended up meeting Derrick May, I met Juan Atkins, I met Ritchie Hawtin, I met all these people who come there because they would play these tiny clubs and it was a very small scene. Stacy Pullen. At that time those guys weren't quite playing as commercially as they did later. I mean, Richie Hawtin was Decks, EFX & 909 still, so that was the first "noise music" I heard. By 6 a.m. in there with just the 909... I'd never seen a drum machine like that either, that you didn't have to tap in real time, and I was like, "It's like a typewriter! What is he doing?!" [laughter] But I wasn't sure whether my ears were malfunctioning or the sound system was malfunctioning or that was the way it was supposed to sound, because by 5 or 6 a.m., it was sort of pure noise with rhythm coming in and out of it. So there was still, I think, a little bit more interaction in Portland in that sort of a way, whereas in San Francisco the dance music scene was just in comfortable clubs and I didn't really experience much of it or know people that were into it, except that in my mid twenties I did discover this other sort of anarcho crust punk, free techno type of scene that would have festivals in the woods and under bridges and stuff like that, kind of white dreadlock, you know.
Jack: This is, like, proto-Burning Man type scene.
Greg: Yeah, they actually had a festival, I don't know if it's still going on, the Autonomous Mutant Fest and they would always find national park land or whatever, so it was always free. They would just go camp wherever they could for free and then set up, like, 20 different sound systems. And I don't know how, but in this whole network of this other underground scene, everyone had sound systems, homemade sound systems, cobbled together sound systems, and they all had vans and buses, too. I hope those people are still out there, I don't know what they're doing. That was all kind of a mix. But I think also in the S.F. experimental kind of underground scene, there were a lot of people who had come from the the earlier '90s rave scene and techno scene as well. Kit Clayton was there, John Santos, who's here now, is a designer, but they all had come from playing in clubs in Berlin and all across the U.S. and now they were in this sort of weirder, more experimental, more freeform music culture in San Francisco. So it was cool to interact with them and get some influence from all that.
[Bergsonist "Exploration Occident"]
Jack: So now I'm going to ask you the same basic questions: what was your early experience with music as a kid? What's your origin story?
Selwa: First off, hi Jack, thanks for having us. It was really nice to listen.
Jack: I'm sure you're finding out all new things about your husband. [laughter]
Selwa: Yeah, it's crazy because I love when he tells me about the past, and I always imagine all the scenes. I feel like it. It was like a movie! [laughter] It was crazy. I love it. But yeah, I think my first experience with music was through, you know, social obligations. When you're little and you go to weddings or any house party in Morocco. It's very common that Moroccan people would hire an orchestra, musicians to play live. So I think that was one of my first experiences of live music.
Jack: They're playing more or less traditional Moroccan music?
Selwa: Yeah, there are some songs people would play only for a certain kind of gathering. For example, if it's a wedding there is a repertoire that people play.
Jack: Right, right. Like national or folk or traditional songs.
Selwa: Yeah, so it's funny because when I was little, I was sick of it, and now I'm trying...
Jack: You're getting back into it finally.
Selwa: Yeah, now I appreciate my culture more. At the time I saw it as an obligation. I was like, "Why am I here? And it's loud music." And now I appreciate it more.
Jack: That's early, more or less childhood, experience with live music. Well, first of all, this is my own ignorance of Moroccan culture: what was it like in Morocco in terms of its engagement with Western culture, being able to hear Western music? I'm just not familiar with what it's like over there, basically.
Selwa: Morocco used to be colonized by France, so we grew up with French culture, basically. I remember every household would have this fake satellite, because it was really hard to get French TV, like, the satellite. So there is a place in Morocco, in Casablanca, it's called Derb Ghallef. It's this gigantic place where people sell fake stuff like fake DVDs, CDs, fake receivers, satellites. And I remember my dad would buy it so we could watch French TV, and I was glued to the music TV channel. There was one, it's like MTV, it's M6 Music. It's crazy because at that time in the '90s, there were superstars like Britney Spears, all that wave of pop. So I remember with my cousin, we would buy magazines, you know, those teenager magazines, and at the back you can find lyrics to songs. So yeah, we were really influenced by French music, but also US big hits.
Jack: Did you ever learn an instrument growing up?
Selwa: Just the normal flutes, you know, the high school...
Jack: You played in the school band.
Selwa: We didn't have a band, it was just the school class.
Jack: Oh right, recorder or something like that.
Selwa: Yeah, it's funny because we would just play French songs with the flute.
Jack: That's funny, a little imperialist brainwashing.
Selwa: Yeah, it was crazy. But it's really interesting because I grew up with that culture, French culture, and even now, I know so many classical French songs and I don't know why.
Jack: Just hearing them as a young person. I wonder if it's changed at all now. Did they teach Moroccan music at all in school?
Selwa: No, the only thing they would teach is we would have Arabic classes. But it's so crazy, everyone was so bad. We had such a hard time understanding and learning Arabic.
Jack: Do you speak at all?
Selwa: Yeah, I speak it, but it's funny because the Moroccan Arabic, it's kind of like slang, it's a mix of French words, but it's so sad because Moroccan musical history and heritage is so rich.
Jack: So from early experiences with music, lots of social events, and then getting French TV, French and American culture, what led you to getting into dance music and more underground music?
Selwa: That's a good question because when I was in Morocco, I was experimenting with GarageBand. I didn't know anything about how to make music but my dad bought me this cheap piano. So I learned to play piano when YouTube started. I remember all my keys had the name of the note. So I was experimenting with making music. But my biggest influence, I would say at that time, was first the music that my dad loved. He showed me Motown, you know, Marvin Gaye, Al Green.
Jack: Right, that's interesting. So that was stuff from when he was a kid.
Selwa: Actually, because he lived in the US for ten years.
Jack: Oh, where did he live?
Selwa: In San Diego. And he was in a rock band with his guitar. So he always loved music.
Jack: Okay, yeah, so that's important, that's a key element there. So you had a musical dad.
Selwa: It was really like my dad was my best friend. And I loved all the music. He's a DJ, he has this old hard drive with so many songs.
Jack: Oh man, so you're totally following in his footsteps.
Selwa: It's crazy, because you remember when it was the 2000s, with LimeWire?
Jack: Yeah, of course.
Selwa: He would download so many songs. He was a DJ at that time and he had this old iPod where he would fill it up with all the songs. So my grandma would ask him to make her CDs so that when she has guests...
Jack: Amazing!
Selwa: It's crazy, it's a whole network in between my dad and my grandmother. [laughter]
Jack: Your dad's pirating music for your grandma's parties.
Selwa: Yeah! And she has an old Hi-Fi, you know, the CD players, like a boombox. So yeah, he was a huge influence on me. And also my mom loved music. I remember the Cher song "Believe," I remember this exactly, my mom would pick us up from school with my cousins and she would play it so loud, and we would dance. [laughter]
Jack: That's great.
Selwa: She was the cool mom, with red hair, very modern and a red car.
Jack: Amazing.
Selwa: So yeah, I think it comes from both. And then of course, when I go to my grandparents' houses, they both would play Arabic music. So I think I had so many influences without thinking about it. Then in 2010, I graduated from high school in Morocco, and I came to the U.S. I didn't know really about the underground scene at that time, but slowly, I think it happened when I shared some songs on SoundCloud and Richard Gamble found it and then he asked me to play live in a show.
Jack: You were living in New York at that point?
Selwa: Yeah, it was kind of weird because I came to study. So I was in Morocco and, you know, in Morocco, the French system can't get you to any schools in the U.S. You need to get a TOEFL and an SIT and I didn't have any of these, so I came to the U.S. to pass the tests. I was studying English, and then I got all my tests, and the New School was the only college that accepted me because I used to paint and I submitted my portfolio, my paintings. It was kind of weird.
Jack: Oh funny. I didn't know that. I didn't realize that's the route that you took, through painting.
Selwa: Yeah, I was so lucky that they accepted me because I couldn't find any other school or college.
Jack: What were you trying to study?
Selwa: To be honest I had no idea, because I just had my portfolio of paintings and I was like, "Maybe I can find a local design class," I didn't really know. I was just trying to get in somewhere.
Jack: You know you wanted to come to the States?
Selwa: Yeah. I was in a fight with my mom and, yeah, the U.S. was the best place because it was so far away. [laughter]
Jack: You were like, "I want to be as far away from Morocco as possible." [laughter]
Selwa: And also I wanted to copy my dad because he came to the U.S. and I was like, "I want to be like my dad."
Jack: So you were at the New School and you put a mix online, you said.
Selwa: Sorry, I think I jumped a lot of...
Jack: No, no, please fill in the details.
Selwa: Because at that time, when I got into school, that's when I started Bizarrbazaar. It was a blog and music blog, and I was still new, so I didn't know anything. So I would go to shows, try to find, like, music that was interesting. I bought my first machine out of Craigslist in 2014 or something, so when I uploaded the song on SoundCloud and Richard Gamble discovered it, I think it was way later. It wasn't the first years, but the first years I remember I would go to shows, especially I would go to a lot of gallery shows, I would go to a lot of talks, lectures, sound art shows. I had a class with Dafna Naphtali, she's a teacher at NYU, but also an amazing artist and musician.
Jack: It sounds like you came to that through the lens of art, or the art world. So did you know about parties or raves or underground stuff at that point, or did that come later?
Selwa: I think it came later. I remember going to one, it was Tiki Disco or something, because my roommate used to go to those kind of shows. I liked it but it wasn't really fun to go out because I hadn't found the music I liked, really. So I'd just go out to go out, to be like, "Oh I'm going out, I'm a normal person."
Jack: At the same time you were in art school and you were going out to gallery stuff and going to see sound art stuff and getting the New York experience of seeing more interesting, weirder culture than just MTV or whatever. So while you were in school, you were also making music?
Selwa: Yeah, that's when I first started. When I had the blog, I was kind of shy and I didn't know I could be making music, but one time I just bought a machine off of Craigslist and then I was experimenting. And also I had a class; I think I'm like Greg, I tried to take sound classes and anything related to music in college. I had the class with Zach Layton. He's amazing, honestly. It's people like Zach that made me... Actually, that's when I met with Doug [Hock]. Honestly, that's when I was like, "Oh my God, there's actually cool people in my school," because through the other classes, it was so annoying, I couldn't actually make friends because it's just so boring. But through the music classes I met so many amazing friends and also the teachers really gave us, you know, even Maryanne Amacher. I think that's when I started getting to ISSUE Project Room shows, I kind of volunteered there. And also I interned at Blank Forms and Harvestworks.
Jack: Oh so you were extremely busy! Definitely at that point you were into experimental music or more underground music kind of stuff.
Selwa: Yeah, that's what saved me because like, I was like, "Oh my God, I love what's happening." I was so excited with all the shows. And then one day I remember I went to this restaurant called Souen and I met Katie O'Sullivan, because she was working there and I was like, "Oh I love your boots." And then she was like, "Oh I'm playing this show, come by." It was at Secret Project Robot, I think.
Jack: Oh that's so funny. Was it Katie and Shawn [O'Sullivan] playing together?
Selwa: Yeah, and Hieroglyphic Being and Alex from Queens.
Jack: Wow, holy shit. [laughter] I'm like, "Why wasn't I at that?" Maybe I was, but I don't think.
Selwa: Maybe you were there!
Jack: That's so funny, so you literally were just like, "I like your boots" and you just started talking. That's a classic story of just running into somebody. So then you went to that show, and is that where you first met people in more of that scene? Like the Bossa [Nova Civic Club] adjacent scene?
Selwa: Yeah, I think so. But actually, when I was in Morocco, I think a year before, I met Florian Kupfer, and he's kind of part of it with L.I.E.S. and he knew Lili [Schulder]. I don't know, it's a different kind of moment that happened. You know what I mean? It's not really linear. But yeah, that party, I met more people and I also started to go to Bossa more, Confused House, Bookworms.
Jack: What year is this? Around 2014?
Selwa: Yeah, I think so. But then it's crazy, as soon as I found out about this music, I was obsessed. That would be my only social outings.
Jack: So then what's the line from this to you doing Eats Tapes? I knew about your band Eats Tapes in high school, just seeing the name being like, "Whoa, that's a cool name."
Greg: Well, I think through this whole time I had just been doing my own thing, making a few cassette tapes here and there and just handing them out to friends. I did actually start jamming with some friends in San Francisco too and that had sort of a synth and drum set band and it was not really defined what the parameters were. Then they had a section of their set that was just synths and then they would go into drums and then guitar. One of them was my roommate for a while in this storefront in San Francisco and so I just started jamming with them and became part of their electronic section of their show. It was interesting to actually play music with people live, and it was just stacks of guitar amps and just keyboards with arpeggiators and me doing electronic drums and whatever. But I don't think we ever did any recordings aside from some cassettes. There might have been some cassettes that we put out through a local label or one of the band members' labels, I can't remember. But at this time, my girlfriend, now ex-wife Marika Jorritsma, and I were living together and she liked what I was doing and really kind of wanted to start jamming with me or figure out a way that we could make music together. So I showed her how to use some basic sequencers, SH-101 and some different things, so we just started playing together. I didn't ever really see a way to move that project into what I saw as the legitimate dance music world. That always sort of bothered me that it couldn't cross over, but I didn't really know how or what would take to do that. I never really heard anything else from the experimental side or the noise side that felt like it was pushing towards that territory until I think maybe 2010 or 2011. My friend Johan [Kauth], who you may know in Antwerp...
Jack: Oh yeah, I've stayed with Johan before, he's great.
Greg: So he was on tour with Container because they had a project together, I think, or maybe he and his project went on tour with Container.
Jack: Oh yeah, Laser Poodle.
Greg: Yeah, Laser Poodle. So I think that was maybe 2010 or something when they came through San Francisco and I saw Container and I was like, "This is techno! This is dangerous."
Jack: Totally. You moved to New York in 2013, right?
Greg: Yeah. In between there, let's see, Eats Tapes ended in about 2009, I went to grad school around that same time at Mills.
Jack: Right. I was talking to Rrose and he said to say hello. You guys were there at the same time?
Greg: He actually convinced me to go there or he was one of the factors. I didn't really know what to do next or how to sort of take music to the next level. For myself, I think I felt like I needed some study and some discipline a little bit. I was constantly working on modifying gear, building some gear and just buying and selling, configuring the studio, experimenting. I'm still doing that to this day, just constantly fiddling around with everything. That was good for what it was. I think I would not recommend that anyone does anything like that, go to grad school of any kind, unless it's free or unless they see some sort of financial benefit from it. Because for me it was a huge expense that I will either never pay off or will have to just bite the bullet.
Jack: For anyone's listening, he's not admitting either way that he's going to do it or not. [laughter]
Greg: Well, what I'm hoping is that after 25 years, if I stay in good standing, it gets forgiven. So I may hit that milestone or else it's just going to have to be biting the bullet and paying it all off to get it out of the way anyways. Don't take on debt unless you're sure you want to is the moral of that story. But as an experience some of it was great. I think meeting people from a completely different music background, lots of classically trained musicians and composers and even just people that had been into like modern classical and 20th century music that I was absolutely unfamiliar with, aside from a few things, you know, basic intros to John Cage. I had heard an intro to Alvin Lucier from a sound art teacher actually at a for-profit graphic design college that I went to briefly, which really opened my mind. So I had some exposure and also at San Francisco State, where I got my undergrad, I had taken some sound art classes and things like that, where it goes into a bit of experimental 20th century music, but not in the way that all of these fellow students at Mills had really been through. A lot of them were very, very fluent in music theory, which I didn't really have any background in. I think my relationship to music had always been more or less pop music culturally because it was about communal activity, celebration, etc. I had had no exposure to academic music or high music, and everyone in this context was coming at it from that angle, which was very weird. It was really interesting, I was curious and I took a post-tonal theory class. I audited it and I hardly understood any of it but I tried to get exposed to it a bit and learn a little bit about serialism. But it was funny because to me, the relative simplicity of dance music rhythms - and that's leaving out a lot because there is definitely complexity in certain ways - was not even a part of these people's experience or conception of music.
Jack: Conception of music whatsoever.
Greg: Yeah, it was like that was one very narrow slice of music that they ignored, was all of the rest of music that everybody pays attention to. [laughter]
Jack: The music that 95%, 99% of the world likes, or the Western world at least.
Greg: I think that on a small level, there had already been for me like, "Okay, well, boom, boom, boom is really easy to understand." And that's why some people actually disrespect it, even people that aren't music snobs. So I had already been through like, "Okay, well, yes, it is simple, but it's also still valid because I also am hearing and feeling all these other different things and all these subtle variations" and blah, blah, blah. So for me, I'd already recognized how superficially simplistic some of the forms of music I was engaging in were, but then also found ways to conceptualize and experiment around that, whereas at Mills I felt like there wasn't even any consideration that anything could be done with those rhythms. I don't know if there was actually even an act of rejection. In a way it was sort of just like, "No, I don't pay any attention to that," you know? At Mills I felt like it was in some ways so open that there was no one really fighting for anything. It was like, "Okay, well, yeah, if you want to do that, that's you, I guess." I don't know, this just could be my own experience. I think some people got a lot out of it if they really got the teachers, the professors to engage with them. I got some good guidance in some very specific ways with things that I was doing, but for the most part it seemed like there wasn't enough structure and they weren't going to impose anything on you. You had to really know how you wanted to make yourself work in order to get anything out of it.
Jack: So during this time - this can bridge the sort of two stories - I guess we left off with starting to get into the dance music world. But could you talk a little bit more about after that and then to meeting Greg through that world?
Selwa: So by that time, I was going to shows and I started like producing, making music and just experimenting on my own. And Richard Gamble found one of the songs I uploaded and he asked me to play live with Katie and S.S.P.S., I think. That was my first live show.
Jack: Where was that?
Selwa: It was at Trans-Pecos, the basement.
Jack: That's great, in the scary basement. [laughter]
Selwa: Yeah! It was very interesting because I think I was like, "No, I'm not ready to play live. I've never played live." And it's crazy that Richard Gamble, he didn't know... My picture was Medusa. People didn't know who I was.
Jack: "She looks crazy!"
Selwa: People actually thought I was a man because I didn't show...
Jack: Wow, really? That's funny.
Selwa: They're like, "Hey, man, you want to play?" [laughter]
Jack: "You know, Bergson, you know..."
Selwa: "Henri?" [laughter]
Jack: Yeah, "Hey, Henry."
Selwa: Henry B. At the time I still had my blog and James Hoff, I remember seeing his music online and I was like, "Oh my God, I love this." And he was making music with viruses, it was called Blaster. I saw that he had an opening at this gallery in the Lower East Side and I met him and then I interviewed him and he was like, "Yeah, sure." So at that time I was making music a little bit on the side, but I was also meeting people and interviewing them and keeping the blog.
Jack: Yeah, that's definitely how I first became aware of you, through that blog, Bizaarbazaar.
Selwa: Yeah, I remember your label! I loved it. It was nice how so many people that I know, you know, everyone was related somehow.
Jack: Totally. We were talking about when you first find out about that and get into that world, it really blows your mind. It blew my mind. You know, when everything sort of starts to connect.
Selwa: It's so true. Even ISSUE Project Room, now when you see who they're booking, it's like a clash, it's a colliding. People who won't necessarily know each other in the past, but now everyone is... Yeah, that's awesome. But yeah, at that time I remember I was addicted to SoundCloud because that's where I discovered so many musicians and producers in Europe or here, and I remember finding a track that Greg wrote and I featured it on the blog.
Jack: Amazing. You were like, "Who's this hot guy making music?" [laughter]
Selwa: I didn't know who he was! I had no idea who he was, but I wrote about his track on the blog. So at that time I used to write...
Greg: Let me just interject with my experience of that. I was just making songs as always but at that point I was posting things on SoundCloud fairly regularly, I guess. So I just made this thing, put it up on SoundCloud, and then at some point, I don't know how much later than when I uploaded it, I don't know how I found this, maybe someone brought it to my attention, but I was like, "Whoa, this blog wrote about this and they're calling it my release. Well, I guess I have a new release." I posted on Facebook and everything in it, but then the description of it too, was like, "G. Zifcak's latest release does this, this and this." But there was a part of it in there that was about anticipation and hesitancy. And then it was like, "Wow, this is really weirdly personal, this person seems to know me too well from this song somehow, I don't know what's going on here." Then and then just forgot about it.
Jack: And then years later... How long? Well, wait, what year is this? 2014? 2015?
Selwa: Maybe 2014, I think.
Jack: That's so funny, so you just found it and then you wrote about it.
Selwa: Yeah, at the time I was trying to be pretty cool. [laughter] So I was trying to write these reviews. It's crazy because I feel like at the time, the music that was in New York was way more exciting than most music I would find from Europe. So I would just post all the new music I found and one day I think you came to my show?
Greg: Yeah, I had just actually started experimenting with modular video synthesis. I'd been into video for a long time, but this is now at around this time video eurorack modules started to become available. So I started messing around with them and I was like, "I would love to make a music video." And I had just been listening to SoundCloud and Bergsonist kept coming up every once in a while and I was like, "Wow, who is this? This stuff is good." [laughter] Then I saw that she was playing at Bossa, so I was like, "I'm going to go to the show and maybe ask if she'll do a video."
Selwa: It's crazy because he came to me and he was like, "Oh, I'd like to make a video." And then when he said his name, I remembered a video he made for Nico [Jacobson] because at that time I was friends with Nico, Gaul Plus, and I told Nico I loved that video because it reminded me of this experimental Japanese moviemaker. But then I made the connection in my mind and I was like, "Yeah, sure." And then from there we started hanging out and he became my best friend. But yeah, it was kind of weird how everything is connected.
Jack: Yeah, it's pretty insane. And now here we are today. I feel like I met Greg, as everybody did back then, at Bossa.
Greg: Really? Is that true? I don't remember.
Jack: I think we met at Bossa. I met you and Andre at the same time, maybe through, Daren [Ho] or Shawn O'Sullivan?
Greg: Daren! I think it was through Daren. Were you doing repair work at Control at some point?
Jack: I was working at Control. I was just doing the shipping, but I would be there all the time, I would be there every day. I was their first employee.
Greg: Daren I met actually when he was about 18. We played in Iowa when he was in college there and he came to our show. But actually I think that we had interacted online before that, it was just about a Simmons drum module or something. He was asking me some questions. [laughter]
Selwa: But it's weird how before it was so easy to meet people. I remember I used to be scared to socialize. I would call my dad and talk to him. [laughter] It was a big thing for me to be social and I learned it, I think, through music, especially at Bossa, like, you can go at any time and people would be there and talking to you. I feel like now it's impossible. Not impossible, but it's harder.
Jack: It's a lot harder. I have my own feelings about Bossa but, looking back, you could pretty much go any night of the week and not know what was going on and you would see people you knew. It was definitely an important part of my life for at least three or four years, you know? I mean, another thing, God, maybe I'll start another podcast just about spaces. That is a huge thing. I'm doing this show at Chaos Computer tonight, one of the worst named venues of all time, but it's a fantastic space.
Greg: Do you know, what's the origin of that name for them?
Jack: I think to me the origin is it's the kind of name that can only happen when you run something as a collective. [laughter] I don't actually know.
Greg: I'm always interested in computing chaos, is the reason I ask. [laughter]
Jack: I wish I could give them that much credit.
Greg: I have to mention it just so it gets mentioned at some point, but Chris Miller, Gunnar Haslam's series on cybernetics and serge patching on YouTube is incredible. Super captivating, very inspiring. He's really taking a look at the functions of the modules for their mathematical properties, not necessarily describing with math what's going on, but how each piece can be used specifically as part of a cybernetic system that manages itself. So he really gets in deep with it and he even relates it to Marxism and stuff like that, which is a whole other thing.
Selwa: The podcast was so good, Base Camp Beta.
Jack: Oh yeah, with Shawn, that's right. They recorded in Control! See, it all comes full circle.
Selwa: Control is the source.
Jack: Control is kind of the source! Daren and Jeff [Witscher] played in St. Louis when I was 17, but then I met Daren a few years later at Hampshire College. I was there and he played, so when I moved to New York ten years ago - ten years ago in one week - he was someone who I hit up when I first moved here being like, "Yo, what's up?" Because I knew about Control and I went in and then I was their first employee. And then really through Daren I've met a lot of people definitely, so I owe a lot of my New York experience to Daren and to other mutual friends of ours. The power of community! It's a powerful thing.
Selwa: That's so nice. People like Daren, they're giving a chance to you.
Jack: Totally. I should just do a podcast just on Daren, actually. Interview all different people about Daren.
Selwa: I think he was my point of entry, maybe, because at a point my roommate was Mariko and she knew Daren, so we would go to shows and she introduced me to a lot of places, to Body Actualized, she would go there, and Daren too, they all knew each other.
Jack: Totally, and you just see this guy who, at that point, was probably wearing all white. When I first met Daren he was not wearing all white yet.
Selwa: Really?
Jack: He started wearing all white I think in 2012. Anyways, I think this is great. Thank you guys for talking to me. It was really cool to learn about both of your earlier histories and developments and trajectories and where it all ended up.
Selwa: Yeah, that was so fun.
Greg: Yeah, thanks for having us.
