I was somewhere in the intestines of the Hype Hotel, watching a rapper contemplate the apocalypse over a sample of Passion Pit, when the disgust began to take hold. A prisoner of my own device, I spat out an ulcerous Doritos Locos taco and trashed my acrid mystery cocktail glowing electric Jonestown Red. The rapper on-stage bragged about “being in the lab like Bill Nye, the Science Guy.” Someone live blogged in a corner. I was offered a free pair of headphones in exchange for signing a blood pact to brand my first-born son, Sol Republic Weiss. It was 1:30 AM on a spring night in 2012 and I vowed to never return to SXSW.

Sometimes, you’re struck with the nacho-flavored revelation that you are the problem. There are countless candidates for worst industry, but the music business is right up there with nuclear power lobbyists, subprime mortgage brokers, and animated Dalmatian slaughterers. If the best music aspires towards an unalloyed purity, its business side has zero qualms about offering 360 deals to 16-year olds, buying them Xanax birthday cakes, and dumping them in the desert inside an oil drum at the first sign of diminished buzz as a 37-year old white executive shouts “GANG!” SXSW became a vessel for that sinister toxicity. If it’s genesis traced back to late 80s DIY indie-rock culture, it mutated into a three-eyed fish with a temporary Skull Candy tattoo, the world’s largest collective Klout thirst trap, where industry executives glad-handed, journalists frantically created hype that lasted as long as a WeTransfer link, and major label stars parachuted in for perfunctory 13-minute sets. It spawned a film festival, a Vegas spinoff for startups, and an Interactive conference where the Tech bros failed to invent an App to make all the tech bros disappear.

Austin was no longer weird: it was washed. At least during that endless spring break where Frito-Lay dreamed the world’s largest vending machine stage, Chase Bank swooped in to siphon off some cool, and rappers flung mixtapes at you like Frisbees. Then there was tragedy, which occurred in 2014 when a drunk driver fleeing the cops plowed through the teeming crowds, killing four and injuring 20 more. It was a gruesome accident, one that sadly felt inevitable.

This is a long and circuitous way to say that SXSW has somehow recovered, at least for now. It’ll never return to its semi-Edenic roots of smoked brisket, ingenious undiscovered bands, and illimitable Lone Star beer. It’s also likely that I’m still the problem. But it’s no longer the dystopian avatar for late Capitalism’s inexorable arc towards algorithm-created music presented by the taste-making algorithms of an off-brand streaming company—co-sponsored by Bud Light Lime-A-Rita.

JPEG Mafia. Photo by Dave Pedley/Getty Images.

It’s not all good, though. This year, you couldn’t avert your eyes from noticing something called the “Tinder Swipe Sessions.” Nor could you ignore the grim cognitive dissonance of suffering homeless veterans sprawled and rotting underneath the I-35 overpass, while dozens of people blithely goose-stepped to the Fader Fort. Later, Statik Selektah rhapsodized about the glorious content that only Netflix can supply before a crowd anxious for a rumored Nas cameo that never materialized.

We’ll remember this tumorous epoch in 2018 for its infinite distraction, myopic Techno-Utopianism, blind faith in one-dimensional statistical metrics, and the curdled cheddar Caligula entombed inside the White House. We’ll also remember the diamond-clustered perfection of Young Thug and Future’s 2012-2016 runs. But if there is a point to this pointlessness, it’s to savor any improvement, however gradual.

If media caterwauling about the corporate idiocy in Austin scared off carpet-bagging superstars, unnatural crowds, and the prospect of a Goldman Sachs Soundcloud stage where you could sign up for a Gucci Gang credit card with 27 percent APR, then so much the better. It’s a victory for the powers of misanthropy. Punk lives, or something. And look, I’m not here to tell you that there isn’t something patently absurd about the entire endeavor, but there is something patently absurd to almost everything in a world where an ex-adult star named Stormy may or may not contain a JPG dossier of presidential dick. So it grows.

The rare moments are becoming increasingly rare, which is partially a function of age, but also a function of the interchangeable nature of hyper-corporate life (*extremely Julian Casablancas voice). Coachella is Bonnaroo with palm trees, which is Coachella with mud, which is Lollapalooza with Kardashians. By its sheer glut of permutations and international acts that still congregate in Austin, SXSW will always have an advantage over much of the major festival circuit. As a bonus, it’s unlikely you’ll meet someone who tells you that they’re pretty sure that they’re a shaman.

In the meantime, there is vernal Texas in that serotonin-flush first weekend in March after the clocks shift. There is G Perico rapping about “How to Survive in South Central” in a jheri curl at the Fader Fort, crossing out every other set and channeling the hedonistic trinity of Too Short, Quik, and Eazy-E. Or Raekwon briefly hypnotizing the crowd with ancient spells about hunger and cocaine before SOB X RBE snarled “Paramedic!” in hoodies. That was just a few hours.

There is Nardwuar in real-life, Canadian rap unicorn, the man who memorized the universe. He knows everything about me. He knows everything about you. He knows everything about YBN Nahmir’s uncle’s brother’s sister’s mother. Give him all the Street Pulitzers or a bronze monument on 6th Street. Doot do.

Maxo Kream. Photo by Dave Pedley/Getty Images.

It is Texas and Texas will never let you forget that. So Maxo Kream manifested almost everywhere, shirtless and rotund, rattling off effortless but tangled catechisms about growing up Hoover in Houston. Trae the Truth conducted codeine spirituals to honor the Screwed Up Click. Bun B was there because this is the law and he is the governor and sometime headliner, and some traditions should never be altered.

In past years, a Kanye, Drake, or Prince inhaled all available oxygen. In this one, Rae Sremmurd ranked among the biggest acts, which is probably the festival’s sweet spot. Still big enough to be the Black Beatles, but not so large that everything strained like it was about to collapse. Please play “Perplexing Pegasus” at my funeral or my ascension to heaven—whichever one comes last. There was rap with direct fidelity to the four element traditionalists at the Stones Throw showcase, courtesy of Homeboy Sandman and Edan, teasing cuts from their very raw just-announced new album that sounded like they’d received prophecies from the Kool Herc oracle at Delphi. I tried to see Young Dolph that night, but the show got canceled due to Dolph allegedly getting arrested, which is arguably the platonic Dolph performance.

A G.O.O.D. Music party in a mansion in the hills above Austin wound up being a one-man showcase for Valee. There were boxes of Domino’s Pizza, a fridge full of cheap beers, and Kanye’s latest signee proving why he might be Kanye’s best signee. In house shoes, he rapped with a sneaky, wily rasp like he was about to steal a million dollar pack from a locked trunk with only a paperclip. The crowd knew every word to “Shell” and “Miami.” All I know is that I woke up with house slippers that weren’t mine and a box of Jenga—lightly used.

Kelela. Photo by Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images.

A Pitchfork daytime party yielded Kelela summoning old spirits in steam bath heat, ostensibly slowing her vocals to match the temperamental weather. Maybe JPEGMAFIA was the greatest revelation of all, fresh off florid Internet hype, but showing and proving as though this moment was long overdue, sweating bullets in overalls, so raw that a raptor could take tips (no Aubrey). In the digital void, his music is funny and abstract; in person, it’s bruising and immediate, the intensity underlying the subversion of the lyrics. If none of these things sound remotely appealing, there is always BBQ.

Our most basic tendencies are to either dismiss something forever or enshrine it in a permanent nostalgia. SXSW isn’t what it was, but it somehow reversed a seemingly inevitable decline. It’s a reminder that most extreme fevers eventually settle into a functional equilibrium, ideally one with good rap music. At this point, I’ll take what I can get, unless it’s a Doritos Locos taco.

Jeff Weiss is a writer based in Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on Noisey US.

In many ways, Electric Wizard are more than a band. Yes, they’re a British doom metal institution—but they’re also a celluloid wormhole, a reading list, an aberration in the fabric of space and time who have fed generations of freaks from a bubbling cauldron of cult cinema, bizarre literature, and subcultural reference points from the interzone. This is all great fun, of course. Should you wish, you could spend months—years, even— tracking down ancient Jess Franco movies, discovering the works of Robert E Howard and H.P Lovecraft, and becoming au fait with crackling old Groundhogs and Amboy Dukes records in pursuit of a greater understanding of the Wizard's catalogue.

But what about an entry point to the Electric Wizard discography? Fanatics are a notoriously diehard bunch who enjoy getting lost in the (green) mist, but new fans are discovering the band all the time. Of course, everyone has a favorite era. You’ll find no end of online debate about the supposed superiority of the original line up, in particular the aural talisman that is 2000’s Dopethrone. But to obsess over that album alone, superb as it is (and we’ll discuss it further down the page) is to miss the point. Electric Wizard have never been about a single "golden era" or set pantheon of essential releases; such sentimental concerns are anathema to a band who have long existed far removed from the regular constraints of the music industry, and who are, essentially, more a psychic channel than a group. The truth is that every era in the Wizard's nearly three decades of activity has its own pitch black charms.

For those unaware of the early history, the band were formed in 1993 by vocalist/guitarist Jus Oborn alongside bassist Tim Bagshaw and drummer Mark Greening in Dorset, UK. Oborn had previously played in a death metal band, Lord of Putrefaction, and was a lifelong Black Sabbath and Saint Vitus obsessive with an encyclopedic knowledge of VHS horror and trash culture. Electric Wizard were, from the outset, a product of their peculiar surroundings—of being a band that channelled Oborn's obsessions while being steeped in the ancient occult folklore and anarchic eccentricities of rural British life. While much of the wider doom pantheon has its foundation in gritty urbanism—be it Black Sabbath evoking the greyscale smog of industrial Birmingham, Pentagram and the humid drug blitzed inertia of Virginia, or Saint Vitus and the Los Angeles heat haze—the Wiz’ have always had both feet firmly planted in claggy Dorset mud.

A self titled 1995 debut LP set their stall in fine fashion, but it was 1997’s Come My Fanatics that really hit home, its turgid doom imbued with sleazy cosmic reach and a blackened punkish energy. And while 2000’s Dopethrone is, by common consensus, the heaviest Wizard record, many find equally satisfying thrills in more majestically hypnotic later material such as 2007’s Witchcult Today, or 2010’s Black Masses. Indeed, hypnosis is arguably the Wizard watchword: to fully understand this band, you need to step somewhat outside the world of heavy metal and into a broader church of eclectic heaviness. They’re as indebted to noisy space rock like Hawkwind and Amon Duul II or brash rock 'n' roll like Amboy Jukes, early Alice Cooper, and Groundhogs as they are to Celtic Frost and Saint Vitus. T

heir discography is large, but not forebodingly so; it can be divided along myriad lay lines, and I set out a few personal entrance points below. Don’t know where to start? Don’t worry, we got you….

So: you want to get into angry and direct Electric Wizard?

Let’s face it, Electric Wizard aren’t exactly the first band that springs to mind when it comes to speed—or brevity. 10-minute songs are the norm, and riffs often unfurl at the speed of a bulldozer pushing against a towering wall of grey silt. That said, the more savage and immediate moments in the Wizard catalogue are amongst their greatest. 2000’s Dopethrone, in particular, is imbued with a righteous fury that see’s Oborn spitting out his tales of primordial destruction with a punkish glee. "Barbarian," for example, is based on a tale gleaned from Robert E Howard’s Conan books, and is a particularly intense workout, with layers of blackened sludge and submerged cymbal crashes courtesy of Mark Greening (one of the most chaotic and idiosyncratic drummers in metal history). "Vinum Sabbathi" says it all in three minutes, while "Funeralopolis" is the last word in scuzzy doom aggression.

The title track from 2010’s Black Masses is a three chord chugathon with a chanted call and response chorus (a live favorite, naturally) while pretty much the entirety of Come My Fanatics sees the original trio of Oborn, Greening and Bagshaw channelling blackened doom 'n' roll. ‘‘Return Trip’’, for example, takes a circular stoner riff and amps the layers of primordial filth until it sounds like a drunk, rampaging elephant. Best of all is ‘’Wizard in Black," which is purely timeless, its mutant blues, fucked to oblivion, with a guitar tone so bass-heavy, so sub-nautically weighted, that it doesn’t sound like a guitar any more. enter Greening’s out of time jazz fills, and, then, the moment Oborn hollers, "The eyes of god look upon what he's done... and the eyes of man... look up and beyond... I am a god, I am the one!"and everything is lowered another octave, and you’re drowning in a primordial hell broth stirred by a toothless Dorset farmer. That moment, my friends, is one of the finest moments in heavy metal history (the sound engineers at Roadburn seem to think so too, given how often you’ll hear ‘Wizard in Black’ warming up the system in between bands).

Come My Fanatics ushered in a new era for doom, engineering a full-on scuzz attack that felt cosmic in reach and was anchored by a very human rage. It’s a great place to start if you’re looking for Wizard on the attack, but 2016’s Wizard Bloody Wizard is also full of direct gut-punch material drawing inspiration from scumbag Detroit rock 'n' roll like the Stooges, Alice Cooper, and the MC5.

Playlist: ‘’Barbarian’’/‘’Return Trip’’/‘’Wizard in Black’’/‘‘Vinuum Sabbathi’’/‘’See you in Hell’’/‘’Funeralopolis’’/‘’We Hate You’’/‘’Black Masses’’/‘’Wicked Caresses’'

Spotify | Apple

So: you want to get into full on, bad trip, psychedelic hypnosis-inducing Electric Wizard?

You’re spoiled for choice, then. Seriously, Electric Wizard love a repetitious groove. The back catalogue is full of music that hinges on queasy walls of slow-shifting, viscous sound, and 1998’s Supercoven EP (it’s nearly an hour long…) is a case in point. The title track features strange Hawkwind-esque synth layers alongside a riff that unravels to its own crawlspace over 16 minutes, with Oborn’s tortured vocals higher up in the mix than usual. The whole EP demands time and repeated plays to make proper sense. It is a dirge, for sure—one for the hardcore heads—that's bereft of the immediacy of Come My Fanatics or Dopethrone and comes steeped in black despair.

After Dopethrone, the Wiz’ started to further experiment with ever more hypnotic material, and while both 2002’s Let Us Prey and 2004’s We Live are not particularly highly-regarded albums, both are worthy of reappraisal. We Live was the first album to feature guitarist Liz Buckingham (formerly of Sourvein) and the telepathic interplay between her and Oborn is amped to fine fettle on the superlative ‘’Eko Eko Azarak.’’ The album also features former Iron Monkey/Crippled Black Pheonix drummer Justin Greaves, who adds a powerful and tight rhythmic component that fits with the album's bleak hypnotic shudder. 2010’s Black Masses also features some fine trance-inducing material, like the powerfully understated ‘‘Satyr IX’— a beautifully slow-burning funeral march—while Come My Fanatics sees the band experimenting with electronics and dub effects on the Hawkwind/Amon Duul indebted ‘’Ivoxir B/Phase Inducer’.’ 2012’s Legalise Drugs and Murder EP also offered a fine sludgy trawl. The title track—a tongue-in-cheek ode to misanthropy that repeated the title phrase ad infinitum over a crushing riff—is pretty much the last word in uncomfortably- drawn-out-way-too-long Wizard.

Playlist: ‘ ’Supercoven’’/‘’Eko Eko Azarak’’/‘’Satyr IX’’/‘’Legalise Drugs and Murder’’/‘’Ivoxir B/Phase Inducer’’/‘‘The Chosen Few’’

Spotify | Apple

So: you want to get into cult movie-referencing Electric Wizard?

Electric Wizard are diehard movie fanatics, inspired by horror, exploitation, and trash culture beyond measure (check Noisey’s Electric Wizard A-Z for a more thorough examination of this side of things). It’s an obsession that frequently carries over into their recorded output, as well as into their singular iconography. The Wizard back catalogue is packed with songs directly inspired by specific movies. 2007’s Witchcult Today—itself perhaps the most instantly accessible Electric Wizard album to the casual listener—contains the only track they’ve ever recorded that could reasonably be described as "funky" in the form of ‘’Dunwich;" based around the 1970 Roger Corman film The Dunwich Horror (itself based on the H.P Lovecraft short story of the same name), the song features the Wiz’ at their jauntiest. Nothing else in their back catalogue sounds anything like it.

Black Masses, meanwhile, has "Venus in Furs," inspired by the Jess Franco film of the same name and, according to Oborn, serving as an ode to the classic trope of "the evil woman who will lead you to doom." Let us Prey featured ‘‘House of Whipcord," which is inspired by the demented 1974 British trash classic of the same name that the story of an underground "house of corrections" run by a retired judge and his sadistic sisters. The 2006 reissue of We Live, meanwhile, offers ‘‘The Living Dead at The Manchester Morgue’’ as a bonus track, paying tribute to perhaps the greatest zombie movie of all time.

Electric Wizard don’t stop there, however. They are also responsible for their own infernal celluloid character creation, "Drugula." He features in ‘‘Satanic Rites of Drugula’' from Witchcult Today, and again on Black Masses ‘‘Crypt of Drugula.’’ The rough idea behind the character is of a bloated, hungover Dracula waking up in 1970s LA and finding himself thrust into the midst of a seedy coke and aviators scene… c’mon, somebody has to make the movie.

Playlist: ‘’Dunwich’’/‘’Venus in Furs’’/‘’The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue’’/‘’House of Whipcord’’/‘’Satanic Rites of Drugula’’/‘’Crypt of Drugula’’/‘’I, The Witchfinder’’/‘’The Hills Have Eyes’’/‘‘Patterns of Evil’’

Spotify | Apple

So: you want to get into the super rare EP’s and early split vinyl releases?

God help you. We’ve already mentioned the excellent Supercoven and Legalise Drugs and Murder EPs, but there is also a cornucopia of excellent music available on limited edition EPs and split discs too... and you’re going to need deep pockets. Most of it is rare, expensive, and tricky to track down, though it’s certainly worth the effort. The 2008 split twelve-inch with Finnish doom kings Reverend Bizarre, for example, saw them contribute the epic ‘‘The House on the Borderland,’’ which was based on the 1908 weird fiction classic by William Hope Hodgson (himself a primary influence on H.P Lovecraft).

1997’s Chrono.naut is one of the most highly sought-after pieces of vinyl Electric Wizard have put out (along with Supercoven, a definite "unholy grail" item) but it’s worth taking the effort to hunt down, as it finds them at their most direct and groovy. hinging on a riff worthy of Fu Manchu and a lyric about "driving through space and time…..Chrononaut, yeah!" A 1995 Rise Above split single with Our Haunted Kingdom (who shortly afterwards became Orange Goblin) saw the Wiz’ contribute the rolling and chaotic ‘‘Demon Lung." Rarer still is 2008’s ‘‘The Processean’’ single; limited to 500 copies sold at the Rise Above 20th anniversary show in 2008, it’s a funeral march of bleak portent, all wet cave drums and swirling guitars. Happy hunting!

Playlist: ‘’Demon Lung’’/‘’The House on the Borderland’’/‘’The Processean’’/‘’Burnout"/‘’Sadiowitch’’/‘’Chrono.naut’’

Harry Sword is observing the Satanic rites of Drugula on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on Noisey US.

A version of this article originally appeared on Noisey en Español. Leer en Español.

Depeche Mode is for the children. If you want proof, look no further than DMK, AKA Depeche Mode Kids: a cover band that pays tribute to the iconic English electronic group from a familial point of view. It’s a dad-and-offspring trio, comprised of Dicken Schrader, the father, his daughter Milah, and his son Korben. It’s no surprise that their covers have garnered millions of views on YouTube—how couldn’t you click on a video cover of “Black Celebration,” in which a dad and his two little kids dress in entirely in black and don eyeliner to boot? The premise basically sells itself, and besides, family bonding is important (take note, Slayer fans). Combined with the high quality of their music, it’s DMK’s uniqueness that launched them into viral fame back in 2012, propelling them beyond their homeland of Colombia and onto live performances in Texas, Spain, and Poland.

As Depeche Mode continues their month-long tour throughout Latin America, we talked with Schrader about what it’s like to cover his favorite band with his own kids. The Bogotá resident has seen the band live four times and can’t fathom life without them—nor without his kids, who’ve helped make his dreams come true. He gets to pay tribute to the soundtrack of his life by performing live covers on stages around the world, with the added bonus that Depeche Mode apparently knows who his kids are.

Noisey: What’s up, Dicken? How are the kids?
Dicken Schrader: Everything’s good! [This] week, the kids come back from Miami. They haven’t been back [to Colombia] since last July. I’m super excited because we’re going to be in the first row [at Depeche Mode’s Bogotá concert], and it’ll be my kids’ first concert. It also looks like we’re going to have backstage passes and everything. So we’re actually going to meet the band. It’s a dream come true.

What are the band dynamics like? In a conventional group, there’s usually a leader who calls all the shots. In DMK’s case, do your kids have to do what dad tells them or something?
Well, sometimes it works like a traditional band. Sometimes we have problems—like somebody’s in a bad mood and doesn’t want to get on stage or the kids are picking on each other; or sometimes I’m the one who’s throwing a fit because of something that didn’t sound right to me. I’d say we have the same issues as traditional bands. When you add in the family factor and fights between siblings become the band’s problem, that’s difficult to navigate. But the idea has always been to have fun, and the role I play as the bandleader is more to teach them things. I’m not a professional musician and I’ve never taken formal lessons, but what I do know, I teach my kids. At the end of the day, we decide among the three of us what songs we want to do and in what order we’re going to play them live, so it’s pretty democratic and cool.

Do you think either of the two kids have a future career in music? I know it’s probably a little too early to tell.
Both have an impressive talent. Korben is a kid that who sits down to do songs with me and I’ll say 'This is a G flat.' And he’ll say, 'No, it’s not a G flat; it’s just a G.' And when we play the keyboard, I realize that he has a better ear than I do. It’s impressive. They’ve been [involved with music] from a young age and I don’t know whether they’ll go on to do it professionally, but if that’s what they want to do, they have a talent for it and they’ve got my full support.

Do the kids get their musical talent from you or does their mom have a part in that?
Their mom is also an artist. She’s a designer and fashion stylist, and she loves music. The kids were raised in a house where music was playing all the time. I had a little Yamaha keyboard that my mom gave me many years ago, and one day I put little colors on the keys to identify the notes and so the kids would have an easier time understanding the instrument. In fact, we write our sheet music in colors. And the good thing is that, ever since they were really little, both kids have been curious about music, so much so that they supported me when I wanted to set up DMK.

How did you first discover Depeche Mode?
I don’t remember the precise moment, but what I do remember is that in 1987 I bought the album Music for the Masses—my first vinyl—and I couldn’t stop listening to it. That’s when I fell in love with Depeche Mode. I started to look for their earlier music because I’d heard some things, but they hadn’t really spoken to me in the same way. They’re the soundtrack to my life: I feel like their lyrics, beyond being super intelligent, are speaking to me personally, and that’s what turns a person into a great fan.

In their heyday, how do you think Depeche Mode contributed to rock and music in general?
They were pioneers. Before them there was Kraftwerk, and they introduced the tech and synthesizers. They were the first to do something a little more poppy and dancey with those elements, but Depeche Mode was the first to put lyrics to that type of music, and so many groups of the past 20 years are their offspring—in one way or another, they have a touch of rock ‘n’ roll with an electronica vibe. Their biggest achievement was converting synth pop into something mainstream and widely known. And they continue to contribute credibility and stability [today], I think. These men who no longer have that youthful flame that makes you automatically able to generate different, new things, continue to show the world that—even after three decades—they’re still relevant. Even the most incredulous people have to admit that Depeche Mode has tremendous significance and staying power.

What do you think is their most underappreciated record?
Well, look, the second album, which is called A Broken Frame—I love it. It was the first album where Martin Gore took on the responsibility for the lyrics, because the first one was written by Vince Clark, who left the group to form Erasure. A Broken Frame has largely been forgotten and I think it’s really good—it has super beautiful songs that one should listen to in order to fully understand the jewel that Depeche Mode was even at the beginning.

You’ve told me that Depeche Mode’s lyrics speak to you. Did the band help you overcome complicated moments in your life?
Yeah, they’ve always done that. There are moments in my life that fit perfectly with certain lyrics. I can’t say that I haven’t had a happy life because it’s been cool, but I’ve had difficult moments and bouts of depression, and Depeche Mode has helped me deal with a lot of that. Listening to Gahan sing what I’m feeling is comforting. That’s why I believe that the most depressing lyrics have the effect of helping you move forward, because you realize that you’re not alone. When I ended my relationship with Milah and Korben’s mom, I started to listen to ‘Shake the Disease,’ and even though I’d heard it thousands of times, in that moment I rediscovered it. And that was exactly the first song we did with DMK. There are songs that you’ll hear your entire life, but you only really understand them decades later. There’s a certain permanence to that, and it’s genius.

So was it that separation from which DMK was born?
Yes, it was, and [the band formed] almost by accident. I never imagined that I’d go play music in Poland with my kids. It was serendipity, a pleasant surprise, that life had saved for me. As [Chilean-French filmmaker Alejandro] Jodorowsky says, it was 'an act of psychomagic' that washed away my regrets and materialized my pain, and through which I was lucky enough to be able to start working with my kids.

The coolest thing about Milah and Korben is that they don’t hold back. Has there been a time when your kids have given you constructive criticism on the project—or on your life—that has stopped you in your tracks?
Nobody’s ever asked me that. Let me see… I think they’ve taught me more than I’ve taught them. When you’re in your 40s, you don’t believe you can create a band and that it will take off, but the kids, in all their innocence, just said to me, ‘Why not?’. Thanks to their encouragement, this thing is still going.

What do you say to critics of tribute bands who dedicate themselves to making covers?
Everything is worthwhile and acceptable in the world of art. There are Depeche Mode tribute bands who take that seriously—they dress the same and even get the same tattoos. That in of itself is an art form; after all, imitation is the purest form of flattery. But at the same time, I don’t consider DMK a traditional cover band. We don’t sound or look the same as Depeche Mode, and we’ve received comments from people who say they hate tribute bands but think our group has originality.

When someone is little, they may not understand just how important bands are. Do you think your kids already understand how big of a deal Depeche Mode is?
I think that Korben, who’s 11, doesn’t yet, but MIlah, who’s 14 already, does understand. She already likes her own music, whether it's Ariana Grande or Taylor Swift, and she realizes that none of them would exist if Depeche Mode hadn’t come first. She explains to her friends that what they listen to today comes from the past, in a certain way. And now that she’s going to see [Depeche Mode] in concert, she’s going to fully understand how important they are.

On the flip side, do you know if Depeche Mode knows who DMK is?
I've heard that they know who we are. Our concert in Poland was broadcast live and Stella, Dave Gahan's daughter, apparently saw it. And a friend of mine who works in a studio in New York talked with them once and mentioned that they know who we are.

Do you have any rituals before playing a show?
We share a RedBull between the three of us. I know I shouldn’t give RedBull to the kids, but it’s our ritual before going out on stage.

What’s going to happen with the project once your kids grow up?
Well, there’ve never been any expectations around that. It was born and grew organically, so it could die in the same way. We’ll see what happens!

This article originally appeared on Noisey ES.

Most people don’t think of Billie Holiday as a folk musician. But Hurray for the Riff Raff's cover of Holiday’s “Fine and Mellow” turns the jazz standard into a down home guitar blues suitable for hollering on the front porch alongside an upright bassist. Project founder Alynda Segarra’s singing has a rough edge that recalls both Holiday and rural performers like Woody Guthrie or Charley Patton. The song isn’t so much a folk roots cover of jazz, as it is a demonstration that Holiday was always a folk singer to begin with.

Hurray for the Riff Raff, who plays Noisey's Emerge Impact + Music fest in April, is a folk roots band, but one that’s always been straining at the edges of what the genre band can be. "Much of what is considered folk today doesn't resonate with me at all because it's completely ignoring the chaos that is happening in our country right now," Segarra says. "To me folk music is the people's music, and it has been a tool to spread ideas and information, as well as personal hardship and experiences."

Folk, she explains, is built around the idea of solidarity with regular folks—whether that's Woody Guthrie singing about the plight of Okies in the dust bowl, or Nina Simone singing about lynch law in the Jim Crow South. Segarra's work, like all the best folk music, is committed to expanding the range of that solidarity, and making Americana big enough for everyone who lives in America.

Segarra got into folk music the traditional way—by hitchhiking across the country. She grew up in a Puerto Rican family in the Bronx, and started playing music in the punk rock scene. At 17, feeling alienated from school and curious about life outside New York, she began catching trains and thumbing rides, traveling across the country until eventually settling in New Orleans. Folk music both fit the landscape she was traveling through and her lifestyle. "I played acoustic music because I needed some way to make money, and I had to carry my instrument on my back," she said.

Sarah Danziger

Segarra formed Hurray for the Riff Raff in 2007, and over the next seven years the group released a steady stream of albums mixing a wide range of influences—from Latin legacies in pop to country— into a unique take on string band music and blues. 2013’s My Dearest Darkest Neighbor includes a slowed-down droning cover of Hank Williams' "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry," plus a version of Lead Belly's "Western Cowboy," in which Segarra declares, "I'm the best Western cowboy who ever sat a saddle" while yodeling convincingly. The highlight of the album, though, may be the cover of John Lennon's "Jealous Guy" in which Segarra half-sympathizes, and more than half-condemns, the self-justifying narrator.

One of Segarra's more celebrated songs, "The Body Electric," from 2014's Small Town Heroes, is a feminist reworking of traditional murder ballads. Rather than celebrating how tough the guy is for shooting Delia down, Segarra pulls the song inside out to stand with women who are victims of abuse or violence.

He shot her down, he put her body in the river
He covered her up, but I went to get her
And I said, "My girl, what happened to you now?"
I said, "My girl, we gotta stop it somehow.”

"The Body Electric" is perhaps even more relevant now than it was four years ago, and not just because of renewed focus on gun violence. When politicians demonize the marginalized, Segarra argues that it's vital to support and speak to those targeted for violence and hatred.

"This administration and the attack on truth telling that is happening in our culture affects me deeply," Segarra said. "Sometimes it makes me feel like I can't write at all, and other times I feel like it's all I can do. Musicians right now have an amazing opportunity to defend the humanity of groups who are being attacked by the people in power. There's so much effort to dehumanize people whether for their immigration status, their race, their religion, their gender identity, and we as musicians can stand up and say we will not allow this. It means something, it shifts our culture and it helps our audience feel brave in their daily lives; it's fucking important."

Segarra's most recent album has also gained resonance since it was released in 2017. The Navigator is a loose concept album which pays tribute to Segarra's Puerto Rican roots. It isn't an album of Puerto Rican music; instead, Hurray for the Riff Raff treats the island’s influence as one part of American music, which fits snugly into place alongside a gleeful reworking of Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark" ("Hungry Ghost") or the Beatles transformed into coffee-shop folk ("Nothing's Gonna Change that Girl"). On "Rican Beach," the band juxtaposes Latin rhythms with a stinging electric guitar line as Segarra sings:

Now all the politicians
They just flap their mouths
They say we'll build a wall to keep them out.

The album itself refutes the idea that you can separate people in that way: Puerto Rico, music and people, is part of America.

The meaning of The Navigator "hasn't shifted but it's amplified," since Trump was elected, Segarra told me. "Puerto Rico is an incredible island with a culture that is so deep even someone like me who grew up removed can feel my roots there. I feel ancestral pain for the suffering of the land and of the people. The government neglect and the downright racism is exactly what this album was about. The Navigator was examining who has 'value' in our country, and who can be swept away."

Folk music is itself one way of talking about who has value. By pushing the boundary of her genre, Segarra is also, implicitly and explicitly, changing who gets to count as American. "I'm from the Bronx and have found a home in New Orleans," she says. "I don't really know what kind of music I make, but it was inspired by folk musicians and blues musicians who were Black, I am inspired by Black and Brown feminists writers, and rock ‘n’ roll."

Hurray for the Riff Raff turns that all into folk music, too.

This story was originally published by A Beautiful Perspective , co-presenter of Emerge Impact + Music along with Noisey by Vice. Get tickets to Emerge, going down April 6-8 in Las Vegas, here.

This article originally appeared on Noisey US.

It's Delta Week on Noisey Australia! To celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of her seminal debut Innocent Eyes, we'll be running Delta Goodrem-related writing every day.

Delta Goodrem is a paragon of grace, beauty, style and sophistication in the Australian music scene. Her image is squeaky clean, even now that she’s released a song about how much she loves fucking, and she’s never really been involved in anything particularly controversial, save maybe an Apple Music ad that was criticised for promoting unsafe driving (in the same month that she found herself with a couple of speeding tickets, no less!)

Anyway, the point here is that Delta is, in many ways, one of the few pop stars without any major controversy attached to her name.

Almost.

Delta has a smear on her record, and it’s a big one: her 2012 feud with Arcade Fire. In 2012, Australia’s pop princess was caught up in a cold war with the indie rock band over similarities between her single “Sitting on Top of the World” and their classic “Rebellion (Lies)”. The feud has never been fully resolved, but the implications are still felt in the worlds of Australian pop and North American indie rock to this day. Today, on day 3 of #DeltaWeek 2018, let’s look back on the brief feud that changed music forever.

September 14th, 2004: Arcade Fire Releases “Rebellion (Lies)”

On September 14th, 2004, Arcade Fire released their debut album, Funeral. Widely praised when it was released, Funeral was home to what would become one of Arcade Fire’s most popular tracks, the song that still closes their live sets to this day: “Rebellion (Lies)”. It’s an iconic time-and-place indie track, one that was used in enough ads and TV shows that it was soon culturally ubiquitous.

April 5th, 2012: Delta Goodrem Releases “Sitting On Top Of The World”

Eight years later, Delta Goodrem, former Neighbours star and Australian pop icon, released “Sitting on Top of the World,” the first single from her fourth studio album Child of the Universe. Eventually nominated for Song of the Year at the 2012 ARIAs, “Sitting on Top of the World” nearly got to number one on the charts, but was held off by Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe.” The single did, however, go multi-platinum.

April 29th, 2012: Musician Darren Cross Finds Similarities Between “Rebellion (Lies)” and “Sitting on Top of the World”

A few weeks after the release of “Sitting on Top of the World,” former Gerling member Darren Cross noted similarities between Delta’s song and Arcade Fire’s. In a blog post that has now suspiciously been deleted, Cross wondered whether Arcade Fire could potentially sue Delta for copyright infringement. Many fans on online forums like FasterLouder and Mess+Noise began to chime in, suggesting that Delta had ripped off the band. Someone made a mashup of the two songs, and honestly? It sounds pretty good!

April 30th, 2012: Delta Goodrem Fans on DeltaDaily.com Call Arcade Fire “No Names”

Delta’s fans are known to be a fierce and loyal group, so naturally they were quick to pounce on anyone suggesting that Delta ripped off Arcade Fire. DeltaDaily.com, Delta’s official fan forum, no longer exists, but according to quotes from FasterLouder, fans on DeltaDaily were skeptical that Delta would rip off a “no name” band like Arcade Fire, and also suggested that Arcade Fire didn’t deserve their Album of the Year Grammy. Debatable, but not an entirely unpopular opinion.

May 19th, 2012: Delta Goodrem Says She “Hadn’t Heard” of Arcade Fire

You’ve probably been wondering: where’s the heat in this story? Where’s the viciousness? Is this even real beef? Well, here’s Delta’s kill shot.

At a vitamin launch in late May, news.com.au asked Delta what she thought of the similarities between her song and “Rebellion (Lies),” to which she replied “I hadn’t heard of “Rebellion (Lies)” until that moment and then I checked it out and was blown away. They’re incredible.”

There’s a lot to unpack here:

1. Delta decided to pull a Mariah and act as if she’d never heard the most ubiquitous indie song of all time, proving herself to be colder and more calculating than anyone could ever have expected. That’s vicious, Delta!

2. Delta starts talking about “Rebellion (Lies)” and then says “They’re incredible.” Notice that? “ They’re incredible.” Not “ It’s incredible,” not “ Arcade Fire are incredible,” but “ They’re incredible.” Does Delta think the band is called “Rebellion (Lies)”? Does she even know what the reporters interviewing her are talking about? Who’s to say!

In all, this is an incredible way to handle a controversy: act kind, act gracious, and slyly deliver a devastating burn.

June 1st, 2017: Arcade Fire Sign to Columbia, a Subsidiary of Sony (Delta’s Label)

Five years after Delta’s conflict-ending blow, she got another win: Arcade Fire signed to Columbia, a subsidiary of Sony, essentially meaning they’re now signed to the same label. I don’t know what this means for sure and I don’t have much-to-any knowledge of “legalese” but one has to assume it means that Arcade Fire can’t sue Delta for copyright infringement. Checkmate, motherfuckers. Delta owns you now. Delta owns all of us.

Arcade Fire declined to comment on this piece.

Shaad is the editor of Noisey AU. Follow him on Twitter.

It's Delta Week on Noisey Australia! To celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of her seminal debut Innocent Eyes, we'll be running Delta Goodrem-related writing every day.

One of the really good things about Australia being so isolated is that our ‘celebrities’ aren’t really celebrities anywhere but Australia. There are exceptions to the rule –– Courtney Barnett and Kylie Minogue are pretty famous internationally, and like, Crocodile Dundee, I guess(??) is well known, but for the most part, an artist could be selling out arenas here and not have a drop of name recognition overseas.

Delta Goodrem is absolutely one of these people, a middle-Australia household name who made the highest selling album of the 2000s in Australia but who also, despite best attempts, has never made it in the US. (There’s a Daily Mail article about Delta’s failed attempts at Stateside success, which includes the tragic fact that Delta bought a 5.8 million dollar Hollywood Hills mansion to live in, which she then had to sell. Full warning, the article is pretty devastating.)

The lack of recognition anywhere but here means that sometimes, Australians become memes! Take, for example, this meme of Jen Cloher at the Grammys from a few years ago:

Credit: Reddit user zcaddy

Or when Jimmy Fallon talked about how much he hated that Kirin J Callinan/Jimmy Barnes video:

Back in 2014, Delta Goodrem found herself with more international attention than she’d ever had before, but probably not in the way that she’d hoped. Marlon Wayans, the comedian best known for White Chicks, was at a Beyonce concert and happened to be standing next to a white woman who was dancing quite badly. He did what any well-adjusted social media user would have done: he posted a selfie with the white lady in the background, captioned “Man I got the most UNRHYTHMIC WHITE WOMAN dancing next to me at the jay and bay concert... This bitch dancing to AC/DC”.

Except said bitch was Our Delta! Of all the memes made of Australians over the years, this is easily one of the best, purely because the likelihood of Delta Goodrem and Marlon Wayans being at the same Beyonce concert in LA is just so small that it feels like a minor miracle.

Delta was very good natured about the Instagram post, tweeting a video of Elaine from Seinfeld dancing with the caption “Had a blast last night.” She has such a good sense of humour, Our Delta.

Of course, the saga ended how all Australian media sagas end: with a person of colour called out for being ‘racist’ against white people, and being asked to apologise. Oh well. At least it was a great meme.

Shaad is the editor of Noisey Australia. Follow him on Twitter.

HTRK's Jonnine Standish and Nigel Yang are collaborating with VICE and BMW on the X-Cape room, a new immersive escape room that'll be open in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne to launch the new BMW X2.

With creative direction by Standish, the X-Cape room is an immersive sonic and visual experience that blends art, interaction, and adventure. Teams of six work together to solve puzzles and complete the mission—all set in another dimension. “We're asking people to find X2, Xanthos, the twin moon of earth, which is stuck in a black hole,” Standish says about the narrative, which takes inspiration from Greek mythology. “Xanthos is ancient Greek for ‘yellow’ or ‘golden’, so that’s a visual theme. You go through a series of environments to retrieve the twin moon.”

A sneak peek at the venue for the Sydney X-Cape room: a cave below the Opera House.

With her HTRK bandmate Nigel Yang providing an ambient soundtrack and Standish crafting mind-bending visuals and puzzles, X-Cape is the perfect project to combine the creative director’s talents and passions. Standish is the quintessential Melbourne multi-hyphenate: she’s worked in fashion, music, visual art, and graphic design. She’s spent a lot of time in Kreuzberg and London. And her band’s debut album, Marry Me Tonight, was produced by Rowland S. Howard.

You can check out X-Cape in Sydney on April 5, 6, and 7; Brisbane on April 12 and 13; and Melbourne on April 26 and 27. You can find out more details and RSVP here. Spaces are limited.

It's 1:15 AM on Wednesday night of South by Southwest at Seven Grand, a downtown whiskey bar with taxidermied deer on the walls. Music industry professionals cross their arms, while garage rockers fill the pit. A young band called Starcrawler sprints through two-minute punk songs as their 18-year-old singer Arrow de Wilde howls like and moves like a Iggy Pop, if someone had stabbed him in the gut. She leans back into a tortured yoga bend, then vaults towards the crowd spitting fake blood all over their jean-jackets.

“Do you know much about this band?” Asked Stacey Wilhelm, a music programmer who has worked for SXSW for 11 years. She begins to lay out their backstory, they've been together for two years, Arrow's mother is a famous photographer, they just released a record on Rough Trade, and ...

“I'm sorry,” says Wilhelm, she runs to a friend and gives them a hug as if they just got back from war. Turns out he's part of their Beggars Group family, a conglomerate of labels that includes Rough Trade, 4AD, Matador, XL, and Young Turks.

SXSW programmers Stacey Wilhelm and Casper Mills / Photo by the author.

To really understand SXSW, known as “South by” to those who’ve lived through one, you have to look behind the scenes. In the midst of a 100+ hour week, Wilhelm and a second programmer, Casper Mills, agreed to let me tag along as they bounced from venue to venue, putting out logistical fires and giving bear hugs to touring agents, label heads, and publishing execs, essentially all the people who usher bands into the public eye (and onto Spotify playlists).

SXSW is not a festival, at least not exactly. Founded in 1987, “the event” as its referred to by staff, is a ten-day conference where the music, tech, and film industries descends on Austin to drink Lone Star and eat breakfast tacos. Then, so the myth goes they’ll invest in a company, buy rights to a film, or sign a band to a publishing deal. Most in the industry have platinum badges, the highest level of access. These retail for $1650 (naturally, many are comped). Locals can buy a music wristband for $189, but they get secondary access after badge holders. All those purchases add up, according to SXSW’s official economic impact report the 2017 event drew 421,900 attendees and brought 348.6 million dollars into the local economy. The list of performing artists won’t fit on a poster, no matter how small the font: this year there were 2000.

“With commercial festivals, bookers come out of the gate with a budget and then plug people in,” says James Minor, head of SXSW music, who happened to be at the Starcrawler show, far out of blood-spit range. “For us, we receive thousands and thousands of applications and weed through them to figure out who would actually benefit from coming to South by Southwest.”

If you’ve attended South by in the last five years, this description probably clashes with your experience. From roughly 2010 to 2016 it became a Spring Break for music fans where they could see Snoop Dogg perform inside a five-story Doritos machine simply by handing over your email address. Hundreds of unofficial parties piggy-backing on talent absorbed all of downtown and East Austin. It became a musical choose-your-own-adventure, every empty parking lot, food truck, or clothing shop becomes a venue, which is a logistical nightmare.

“When there’s no fences, it’s hard to keep in the cattle,” says Wilhelm.

Brands still invest heavily and awkwardly. Diet Coke’s “House of Because” wins most awkward activation of 2018, thanks to horrendous slogans everywhere and samples of new flavors that literally no one wanted (we’re looking at you, twisted mango). But the past two years, the headliners went missing. There's still a buffet of new bands, but acts like Starcrawler aren't playing two shows a day for the kids: their target audience, however crass this may seem, is the music industry. Jaded local bands may scoff at the myth of landing a record deal at South by, but there’s likely no higher concentration of music professionals anywhere else in the world.

“A band who no one knows doesn’t really get signed at South by,” says Mills, who began his career at SXSW interning during college abroad from his native England. “But maybe they’ve been talking with a label and this is the first time they’ve seen them live, and they get to see how they react in different environments. And there’s a lot of sync people looking for artists for movies and film. And a lot of festival and booking agents.”

Getting in front of all those ears takes its toll. DIY-spirited bands want to follow in the footsteps of workhorses like The Black Lips, Thee Oh Sees, or Grimes, who’ve had years where they’ve played over a dozen shows.. But push yourself too far and you’re asking for trouble. A week of sleep deprivation, day drinking, and gear-lifting is a recipe for a meltdown, which doesn’t bode well for your European touring potential.

Photo by the author

Starcrawler are pushing it. Seven Grand is their second show of the day, with many more to go, and 17-year-old guitarist Henri looks dazed. The breakneck speed of the tunes and flailing stage show is already taking its toll. Plus, they just got back from Tokyo. He’s still on Japan time, he says like the coolest teenager of all time.

Still, he’s not as tired as Wilhelm. She’s not performing any music, but she’s awake later than the musicians, keeping an ear on her radio until 3 AM. Then she’s back at the convention center for an 8:30 call time the next morning. For six days in a row.

By the time Starcrawler hits the stage, she's been on her feet for at least 6 hours, bouncing between the many venues she's managing that night. She carries two cell phones like a musical drug dealer, one a work-only burner. Her diet consists primarily of probiotics, Emergen-C, and late-night roast beef sandwiches eaten in the staff hotel suite (all active employees stay in downtown hotel rooms to minimize commute).

“Last night I got a little sleep, I think four and a half hours. That’s a good sleep,” says Stacey.

Photo by the author

These jigsawed showcases, running with only a 10-minute changeover between bands, don't happen by a sprinkling of rock and roll pixie dust. A team of seven programmers work year-round to make it happen, plus 200 other full-time employees, plus 4000 volunteers. During the event, the staff sees everything thanks to a command center with a wall of TVs playing live video feeds outside the venues. It lets them know to send additional staff should a venue become too hectic, update the scheduling app when a venue is at capacity, and disperse their team of off-duty police in the case of an emergency. They’ve even got a meteorologist on call in case of inclemental weather. But there are still last-minute surprises.

At 7 PM on Friday night in the alley between Barracuda and The Main (formerly Emo’s), Mills sits on an electric URB-E scooter that looks like the ungodly offspring of Wall-E and a workout bench. To his left, Barracuda hosts a pit party, where bands don’t set up on the stage, they play with their gear on the ground. It’s dream bill of 12 post-punk and garage bands including IDLES, METZ, Ringo Deathstarr, and, of course, Starcrawler, whose manager arrives direct from the emergency room. During an in-store performance, Arrow pretended to fall, then actually fell and then hit her head. The doctor said there was no concussion, so the show goes on.

To his right, The Main hosts an EDM trap party presented by Monterrey DJ duo Boombox Cartel on the outside stage and a British grime showcase inside. Boombox Cartel have just confirmed their special guest: DJ Carnage, an EDM DJ who sold out a venue four times the size the night before (Stubb’s). Everyone is visibly pumped, but there’s work to be done.

Photo by the author

“If Carnage walks down 6th Street, it’ll cause a fucking riot,” says Mills.

He’s on the radio trying to find two Suburbans to transport Carnage to the venue, how to fulfill his rider while following alcohol commision rules, then he’s coordinating with the social media team on an announcement, then he’s navigating a misunderstanding with the Cartel about streaming rights, then he’s slapping hands with the grime promoter who brought international superstar Kano to the same 200-capacity room in 2017. A few feet away, trending UK rapper Izzie Gibbs freestyles for a film crew and an older Texas gentleman staffing the venue remarks that he doesn’t know anything about rap, but that he knows that’s not easy.

These are just two of the dozen shows that Mills manages that night. He’s the bottom of the funnel, the guy they call when a problem can’t be solved by a stage manager, production team, or doorman. Most importantly, he’s the one emailing for months with the presenters of the showcase, the face of the conference to the rest of the industry. So when any type of shit hits the fan, the presenters ignore the rest of the funnel and go straight to him.

Yet somehow, he keeps email inbox in the single digits (Wilhelm’s is at 13). Both bookers’ eyes drift regularly in conversation, distracted by their earpieces, but they still have the bandwidth to geek out about whatever band is playing. They act like ducks, calm above the surface but frantically kicking their legs underwater. Granted, they mysteriously didn’t answer my texts the night of the bomb threat that shut down the Roots Super Jam, but otherwise they seem capable of putting out any fire with a little creative DIY problem solving (and the logistical might of a multi-million dollar company).

Photo by the author

When I check back in with Stacey, she’s making a mile hike from Hotel Vegas, where Nine Mile Records and Touring hosts a showcase of Americana and indie rock. We meet on Red River and she asks me to stand on her left side because of constant radio chatter in her right ear. Then we walk past Cheer Up Charlies, where AdHoc presents the new project of Monotonix guitarist Yonatan Gat, complete with backing from a choir (Eastern Medicine Singers) and drum viking (Thor Harris). They’re set up on the ground, throwing a a pit party of their own. You can see the stage from Red River Street, it’s full of fans looking down on the action.

Wilhelm apologizes again and stops listening to me, absorbed by her earpiece. One of the biggest battles of the event is capacity requirements. This could be a serious problem should a fire marshall walk by.

“Just like with venues, there’s capacity permits for how many people can be on a stage,” she says. “We need to make sure that doesn’t become an issue... but they have a short set, so hopefully no one will notice.” She runs into a production manager on the street, alerting him to the issue, then takes a requisite moment to geek out about Monotonix.

Next we walk another half mile west to the InterContinental Stephen F. Austin Hotel where a tiny bar hosts the Sounds from Italy showcase. Peronis and Prosecco flow, heat lamps warm up surprisingly decent Neapolitan pizza. For five years she’s been traveling to Italy attending regional festivals and it’s culminated with a partnership with Italy’s official Music Export Office. There’s at least wedding’s worth of Italians in attendance.

“The local communities, there’s expats everywhere, they definitely come out,” says Stacey.

When the South by booking team isn’t putting out fires, they’re shaking hands. Both seem equally important. Stacey sees the Italians presenting the show, they kiss cheeks twice. They’ve emailed for a year, and it’s both a professional and personal necessity to spend 20 minutes catching up (while her earpiece buzzes with logistical chatter). On stage, Italian blues songwriter Violetta Zironi strums out country tunes that sound like they could’ve been written in the Hill Country instead of the hills of Tuscany.

Photo by the author

Another example of industry maneuvering (and impressive musicianship) is the second year of the Jazz Re:Freshed Outernational showcase featuring six hotshot UK ensembles. Blue Lab Beats headlines (they also played London mayor Sadiq Khan’s SXSW Interactive keynote), but the highlight are UK phenoms Ezra Collective, who sound like BadBadNotGood if they only played smoke-filled basements. The previous night they special guested on Stones Throw's showcase.

“I’m so tired, but this is so dope,” says one of the UK promoters. Wilhelm concurs, “That’s like our unofficial motto!”

Just hearing the tunes is dope enough, but knowing what’s going on behind the scenes is almost exhaustingly cool. Tonight, BBC Radio tastemaker Gilles Peterson watches on from a corner of the room (they're on his label’s recent We Out Here jazz comp). Also in the audience are a team of Brazilian promoters who Jazz Re:Freshed teamed with for a series of Sao Paulo shows, extending the reach of underground UK jazz into new continents. And according to Mills, Nike sent down two scouts specifically to see this Ezra Collective, so don’t be surprised if you hear them soon in a commercial for running shoes. The trumpet player rips into a familiar melody and Casper perks up.

“That's Fela Kuti!” says Mills. “It's 'Expensive Shit!'”

Logistically Mills and Wilhelm are beasts, but more importantly they’re very high-level music listeners. Not only are they encyclopedias of history and new talent, but they have an intimate knowledge of label structures, management teams, touring circuits, and career trajectories. The studiousness runs counter to Spotify algorithmic discovery and exemplifies the true taste-making value of the event. This insider curation is why SXSW is such a bounty for music lovers.

In that spirit, it makes sense that this year’s event didn’t feature a five-story Doritos vending machine or a Superbowl halftime show-level headliner. The smaller scale has weeded out the amateurs, and many showcases are so niche that you don’t need a festival credentials if you get there early and are willing to wait in line. Ask any veterans and they’ll tell you SXSW 2018 felt smaller, more manageable, less chaotic.

The tradeoff is that now more than ever, South by is very hard for a civilian to navigate. Enjoying the festival requires open ears and some serious study of the schedule. Not many Austinites or non-professional musical tourists have knowledge of the underground UK jazz scene, but the bookers have built a framework such that anyone with open ears can bounce between venues for a handpicked selection of the best songs no one else has ever heard. Thanks to their hard work, “the event” has finally made it back to its roots: discovery.

As for Starcrawler, I wasn’t able to catch their pit show. Earlier in the evening the door woman promised she’d sneak me past the line, but despite my platinum badge and a bribe of a Mandarin orange, she couldn’t risk breaking fire code. A friend inside reported that Arrow’s horror-show stage presence was terrifying, but admitted that the kids had something special.

The SXSW staff agreed. A back-bending photo of Arrow made the cover of SXSWorld Magazine, a publication printed halfway through the fest that makes it into the bag of every registrant. And as a cherry on top, Starcrawler was awarded this year’s Grulke Prize for Developing U.S. Act, an award previously won by artists like Leon Bridges, Future Islands, and Haim. Proof that at SXSW, sometimes all that fake blood, sweat, and tears really pays off.

Correction: SXSW badges actually cost $1650 for platinum level. Music wristbands cost $189.

Dan Gentile is a writer and reporter based in Austin. He's on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on Noisey US.

There might not be anything on this Earth that Quavo can't accomplish. At least the stuff that matters most. He can rap exceptionally well. He's a damn good auto tune singer. He's a master at ad libs. He's the best celebrity basketball game player. And he's a renowned thespian. But don't play yourself into thinking those are the Migos superstar's only set of skills. Quavo's a hell of a football player as well.

Yesterday on Instagram, Sir Quavious shared a video which compiled all of his highlights as a high school quarterback at Berkmar High School in Gwinnett County, Georgia. In it, a teenage Huncho whips through defenses with his laser left-handed throws and impressive speedy getaways from defenses. It was Michael Vick-esque. Let us not forget that Houston Texans quarterback Taylor Heinicke had to break Quavo's Gwinnett County record for completed passes. Let's also not forget that Quavo once threw a football through a basketball goal like it was nothing. He cannot be confined to one sport.

If it came down to it right now, and if I played fantasy sports, Quavo would be a no-brainer top 10 pick for me. We are not deserving of someone who is this unselfish with their gifts to the world. But Quavious Marshall gives anyway. Watch his high school highlight reel below.

This article originally appeared on Noisey US.

Dating back to her days palling around with drum and bass greats in the 90s, Björk's always had impeccable taste in electronic producers. Over the years, the Icelandic great has commissioned some incredible dancefloor-focused mixes of her songs, a treat that's seemingly only become more frequent as she's redoubled her fascination with experimental club sounds—enlisting futurist producers like Arca, Rabit, and the Haxan Cloak to help bring her recent mutant visions to life. Today, she's continuing that thread of her work. She's released an EP of remixes and reworks of "Arisen My Senses," aided by three of most exciting synthesists and percussion contorters working right now: the techno dramatist Kelly Lee Owens, the prismatic footwork contortionist Jlin, and Scottish electro-abstractor Lanark Artefax.

Each take has its own strange charms. Owens manages to preserve the otherworldly bliss of the original, offering new synthetic reawakenings, like watching a flower bloom on one of those fancy HDR monitors. Lanark Artefax offers both blippy beatwork and bombed-out synth work that manages to hit the exact swooning midpoint between Aphex Twin's more straightforward productions and post-rock's didactic ambience.

The real standout though is Jlin's slivered vision of the song. It's taxonomically interesting—as it's the only one labeled a rework rather than a remix—but that distinction feels deserved. She approaches the original like a stack of Jenga blocks, knocking the whole thing down, then rebuilding it in her own twisted image. Björk's voice is reduced to a few slivered syllables, fluttering insect-like over Skip-It kick drums and all manner of loopy hand-percussion parts. It's exactly the same kind of magic that fueled the sharp angles of Jlin's killer 2017 album Black Origami, but with the added kick of some magical source material. You wouldn't necessarily know it was a flip of a Björk track if you heard it out in the nightlife wilds, but that's the beauty of mixes like this, sometimes you can discover whole new worlds.

You can listen below, or pick up a vinyl copy of the EP on May 25. It's coming out on "slug genitalia" colored vinyl, which sounds sick not that I know exactly what it means.

This article originally appeared on Noisey US.

My first album in over a decade, You’re Not Alone, came out earlier this month. As one does, I’ve been doing a lot of interviews to promote the album. I’ve been asked all the questions you’d expect—about my process, what the album means, what inspired the songs, and why it took so long to get a new album out.

That last question is easy. From the very start of my party adventure back in 1999, I had made it a conscious strategy to say yes to almost all opportunities that "felt right." Even if a particular invitation didn't make rational sense or even seemed like a bad idea, if my deeper instincts told me this was what I was supposed to do, I would follow the path where it took me. Over the past ten years especially, this approach took me to destinations far outside of music, and outside of my comfort zone. Those offers lead to more, and those to more still. They never really stopped. Over the last ten years I’ve written an advice column, had a radio show, made TV appearances, hosted a children's game show, worked on a book, helped break a world record, produced other artists, played in other people's bands, gone on a speaking tour that took me to all 50 states, and a few dozen other things. It’s been incredible. But before I’d even realized it, a considerable amount of time had passed, and largely unbeknownst to me, recording new ANDREW W.K. music wasn't part of that time. In the middle of branching out into new and exciting adventures I honestly began to wonder if it ever would be again.

But the Party Gods pulled the stars into alignment, and jolted me with a striking bolt of mysterious inspiration, and after over two years of recording and mixing, You’re Not Alone is finally out in the world. And that brings us back to questions about the album, and my attempts to explain how it came to be, questions I’ve found extremely difficult to answer. But I’m going to give it my best, most noble and honest effort here about what the album is, what it means to me, and how I made it. And to do this, I have to travel back in time, to when I was five-years-old.

That’s when music really got its hooks in me. That’s when I fell in love with the feeling music gave me. It was a stirring of the soul so cataclysmic and so explosive, nothing else I've felt before—or since—has compared. This feeling was introduced to me by my piano teacher. I'd been taking piano lessons for several months, after having become more than passingly interested in the instrument about a year earlier. My dad had taken a few lessons and we had a piano in the house since I was born. Seeing and hearing him manipulate the large wooden machine with black and white buttons, entranced me.

My parents noticed this, and soon found a piano curriculum for young children called the Pedagogy program. The beauty of this program was that my main piano teacher was a student too, albeit one that was about 20 years older than I was. The Pedagogy program was run in cooperation with the University of Michigan School of Music. Part of their graduate student studies involved teaching young children piano. I was one of those children.

"That’s when I fell in love with the feeling music gave me. It was a stirring of the soul so cataclysmic and so explosive, nothing else I've felt before—or since—has compared." —Andrew W.K.

It was this piano teacher who introduced me to a realm of feeling I hadn't known was possible. Every now and then, during one of my lessons, my teacher Michelle would play one of the pieces she was working on for her various recitals—she'd play it just for me. During these private impromptu piano performances, I was shown glimpses of the ecstatic and holistic joy that music could unleash. But it wasn't until one particularly memorable piano lesson when Michelle played an especially dramatic piece by J.S. Bach that I first experienced such immense waves of surging emotional and physical movement, I actually felt nauseous.

The chills up my spine, the butterflies in my stomach, the tears in my eyes—all these were symptoms usually associated with something very wrong, but at the core of all these feelings was a glowing goodness that told me everything (including me) was all right. All right. Unconditionally right in each and every way. A rightness on a cosmic level. The music was the feeling of pure understanding—a resplendent level of clarity both bewildering and obvious. Most of all, this feeling told me, in no uncertain terms, that there was a benevolent spirit at the heart of all things. A goodness that defied logic and rational comprehension. A goodness that couldn't be articulated or explained, only experienced. And I had just experienced that goodness through the power of music.

At first, I thought this breakthrough was a fluke. It seemed too good to be true. But at our next lesson, when I asked Michelle to play that Bach piece again, I felt myself swept even more deeply into that same whirlpool of elation. I then realized, this is what music is: an access point to a genuine type of perfect Truth. A full-blown collision with being alive, an intimate soul encounter with the quintessence of existence. Music is one of the few phenomenon that can effortless penetrate the depths of our soul and bring to the surface it's most sublime qualities. It is, I learned back then, an intimate emotional encounter with the divine.

Once I realized music could be relied upon to bring me this surge of primordial pleasure, I had no doubt in my mind that music—or more specifically, the feeling that music gave me—would be at the center of all my activities from then on. And thus was born my life's purpose. This feeling instantly became my focus and my only lasting ambition. I didn't know exactly what or how I would devote myself to it, I just could tell that it would dominate my life whether I wanted it to or not. So I might as well embrace it and serve it with all I had.

For the last decade, there were moments when I allowed myself to indulge in the inverted pleasures of oblivion. I didn’t realize it, but I was losing my ability to stay close to that feeling-of-all-feelings. The feeling I had promised to serve was being neglected in favor of confusion and the attraction of sadistic despair. Through the grace of the Party Gods, I was pulled back from the brink with my self-inflicted ordeal internalized and absorbed. And now, with You’re Not Alone, I’m making up for missing time.

"I want my music to make people feel like the first day of summer vacation. Like going down a roller coaster hill. Like the pizza delivery man ringing the doorbell just when you were starting to lose hope." —Andrew W.K.

I want my music to make people feel like the first day of summer vacation. Like going down a roller coaster hill. Like the pizza delivery man ringing the doorbell just when you were starting to lose hope. Like when an underdog team wins the big game. How do I make things feel this way? How do I take those parts of life that are completely overwhelmingly joyous and make music that sounds like that feels, where every emotion comes together? How do I create work that makes you so happy you could cry, and so overwhelmed that you're laughing? That’s a raw totality of feeling beyond definition. And that’s what I’m aiming for. That's what partying is.

I want my music to be maximalist. More is more, not just for the sake of it but because that's what allows the feeling to build up and break through to the next level of intensity. I realize this approach is not everyone’s cup of tea—some find it exhausting and heavy handed. But what I hope is that there's someone else out there who's looking for this exact kind of overwhelming and full blown feeling, and that we can find each other and then party together.

Granted, it's all quite intense. It's a confrontational encounter with overloaded sensory power. And that does ask a lot of us. We can't have our guards up and still gain access to this joy zone. The power of partying is trying to blow your walls down like the wolf in the Three Little Pigs. And it's for your own good. You have to let go, and risk looking foolish. People are rightfully skeptical of any phenomena capable of overtaking their conscious grasp on the world and turning them inside out with waves of feeling. But music, like its cousins in the visual arts and letters, is benevolent by nature. There's an essential goodness that defies even the most sadistic human efforts to corrupt their core beauty.

We need not shield ourselves from the glory of this goodness. We can doubt the messenger, but need not doubt the message. We're only cheating ourselves when we keep joy at bay. If you don't get this feeling from me, I honestly pray that you get it from somewhere. The feeling is unsubtle, blunt, straightforward, and cannot be obscured. It's the feeling of life, and all you're doing by denying it is being a little less alive yourself.

This is what my new album is about. This is what all my albums are about. This is what everything I've ever done has been aiming for. I may not have nailed the bullseye yet, but at least I know what I'm shooting for. And I'll never stop shooting... or partying.

Follow Andrew W.K. on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on Noisey US.

Online dating has become more and more particular as society breaks off into smaller niches of interest. If there's a site where Trump supporters can connect to potentially boink each other, anything is possible. To that end, some higher level of Kanye stans among stans have created a site called Yeezy Dating that describes itself as "a dating site for fans of the genius Mr. Kanye West," implying some kind of sapiosexual bent of seeking out only those who can truly appreciate songs like "Drunk & Hot Girls."

The service has not launched yet (only early access is open), but if you're curious, we've prepped a handy guide to the many questionable personalities you'll likely find in the community, unique to the kind of site that asks dedicated Kanye West fans to join.

Standard Hypebeast

Image via Pinterest

Ex-Hypebeast Who Is Actually Trying to Resell Their Yeezys for $2,000

Image via Wikimedia Commons

Chance the Rapper Acolyte

Kardashian-Jenner Disciple

Image via Pixspec

A "You Don't Understand the Vision" Type

No, this picture is not repeated by mistake.

Editor of a Music Website

Person Who Will Not Stop Arguing With You That Yeezus Is the Best Kanye Album

"If you *really* listen to 'I'm in It,' you'll see how deep it is."

Person Who Dyes Their Hair Pink

Every Single Person Who Owns that Off-White Belt

Image via Off-White

Person Who Watches Anime

"...but only the good ones, like 'Akira.' I don't like that moe shit."

Someone Who Works for Noisey

Look at this fucking nerd

Travis Scott

Image via Wikimedia Commons

Phil is on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on Noisey CA.

Where most artists spend a few years (literally) begging for shares on their social media pages or to like, comment and subscribe to their channels, LB has been able to accumulate an envious following all before graduating high school. He’s already amassed two million and counting views to date on YouTube and has already received the notorious Drake co-sign for his song “My Phone.” But for LB, which stands for Loyal Boss, who is part of a collection of artists from the city, specifically from the Jane and Finch area—like Pressa and Friyie—who have been able to turn their hobbies into careers, this is just the beginning. “I’m 16 from Jane and Finch. I play a lot of sports, I rap with my friends. Just a regular kid, but,” he says matter of factly, “I’m special.”

Like any contemporary creative, LB has used social media to get a headstart into the game, posting now-deleted videos on YouTube of him and his friends freestyling. He attributes his growing fanbase to word of mouth through high school and middle school but also explains that a lot of his records were repurposed in NBA 2K reels on YouTube which, in turn, exposed him to an international audience. “There were a lot of 2K players that listened to it because a lot of YouTubers were posting it in their mixtapes, so a lot of people online from the States were listening to the music.”

Unlike many artists who prefer to work alone, most of the records in LB’s earlier catalog are collaborative. The artist works alongside his friends to produce his music, particularly 14-year-old Peppa Baby, part of his collective CashFlow along with FK and G-boy, itself part of an even bigger collective, Gangflow, comprised of other local artists. Their sound is comprised of Zaytoven-like production with earworm hooks that echo the cadences of Drake or Migos, but mired in local slang. LB and Peppa recently sat down with a local media outlet talking about the power of collaborative work effort, which is a philosophy they truly live by. “If we succeed, we all succeed. If LB goes to the top, we all go to the top,” Peppa mentions in the interview.

Even with this newfound attention, LB says there’s been little to no difference to how his peers treat him outside of a joke or two that prod at his local celebrity. “Most of the people I go to school with, they already knew me from before so it’s the same,” he says. “And I was always popular so it didn’t—it changed a little, but not really. They’ll sing my songs to try and get at me.” The record “No Time,” featuring Iraq and Lanks, was the first of the videos posted on his page to reach one million views, but LB explains that the milestone that got him the most excited was when it reached 100,00 views. “I think I felt better when it was 100,000 than a million. When it was [approaching] a million I already knew it was gonna go to a million, it kept going up.”

His mom and manager says that she knew LB was always destined for big things, sharing that he first started out dancing, picked up an interest in basketball, and found a home in rap, even though he had plenty of dance-related opportunities available. Still overwhelmed with the amount of traction he receives, she says that she’s handling her role as "momager" with ease. “Right now, it’s like disbelief. I don’t know what it is. We’re just tryna live it like, the way how he’s out there and known, I guess it hasn’t hit us as yet cause we’re still living everyday life the same way.”

Photo By Tejas Panchal

It’s a great time for the young artist to be entering the scene as Toronto’s position in the global music world is at a pivotal stage. The gripes of many seasoned industry people have been that the talent in Toronto is overlooked, the writing on our artists are uninformed and that institutional barriers limit the success of our artists past local level. The scene has drastically changed since. The visibility of Toronto artists has increased immensely: SXSW bills, curated Apple Music playlists, the Grammys and international music festival stages. Still, the city’s new crop of artists, including LB's peers like K Money and more, are approaching their artistry differently in comparison to previous generations. Through platforms like YouTube and Instagram they're building their own digital hubs which allows them to pull in large numbers from a strong and vocal audience, locally and internationally, without need or opinions from the mainstream . Effectively, creating a burgeoning new rap community for the next generation that's centered on the only thing that matters: audience engagement.

Still, LB has his sights set on the local level right now. He’s performed in different venues and clubs across the city, is scheduled to perform on a few more over the summer, and wants to continue doing live shows. In comparison to other well-known acts from the city, LB is relatively young but sees that as advantageous. “I see myself as a big factor for the youth because there’s not a lot of youth rappers,” he says, “A lot of kids look up to me because they can relate to me more than to the older rappers.”

Just recently, LB released his debut album, So Spliffy earlier this a month: a collection of bravado records that [what do they sound like] feature more than a handful of artists from his locale. Unsurprisingly, he has a clear vision of what he’d like to accomplish beyond this album. “I’m gonna go quadruple platinum. I plan to work with a lot of artists, plan to be successful, [and] plan to be rich” before adding confidently, "But right now, I’m just tryna better myself.”

Sharine Taylor is a writer is also a boss of many things, too many actually. Follow her on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on Noisey CA.

Zach Zoya is a rapper from Montreal who manages to combine technical skill with songs that are actually enjoyable to listen to. His latest single, "Who Dat," is a great introduction, riding a buoyant beat as Zoya describes himself as having "hair in the air like Bart." The accompanying video takes that unreal angle and propels it to the heavens and beyond. Directed by Vincent Ruel-Coté, the clip follows Zoya and company as they wield rapiers, become polygonal models of themselves, and learn how to shoot beams from their hands. It's every comic book story you've ever loved in one rap video.

"The video is meant to reflect the energy of the song, not really in a story format but more of a demonstrative one," Zoya tells Noisey. "I wanted it to feel like a fashion photoshoot on drugs. I wanted it to feel epileptic, jumpy and all over the place. I got all my squad in there with me too, everybody in the video, with a few exceptions, are close friends. So it's kinda like 'yo watch out there's a new kid in town.'" Watch the "Who Dat" video above.

Phil is on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on Noisey CA.

You were never supposed to know that Greta Kline is Frankie Cosmos. That was the idea at first at least, she says on a February morning walking through the chilly cragginess of Brooklyn Botanic Garden. There would only be the songs she recorded in her room—fumbly, humble, off-the-cuff and uploaded straight to Bandcamp, often without a second thought. There was no plan for ego, no persona, no interviews, no extended photoshoots—not that any of that was really in the picture back then anyway. There were just the songs, strummed quietly in her room, some shows, which were a little louderm but not much. There was some sense that she could do this forever, just making things on her own, in between other obligations to school and friends and all the things that take up a young person’s life.

That plan, insomuch as it was even a plan, was waylaid pretty much from the beginning, thanks to some internet sleuthing by the blogs that were first enamored with the shaggy miniatures she recorded. Somewhere along the line, even as Frankie Cosmos morphed from solo project into full-fledged band, it became about her. And the rest of the world caught on quick. There were shows in every respectable DIY venue across New York’s five boroughs. There were overflowing free shows in university coffee houses. There was press with just about every tastemaking publication you can imagine—from tiny blogs to fashion publications all the way up to The New York Times. New York Magazine named her 2014 album Zentropy, her first release recorded in a studio with a producer, the best pop album of that year.

Now 24 years old, all of that acclaim—as well as the anxiety that’s attendant to sudden changes in what you expect your life to be—that’s come in the years since has rested squarely on her shoulders. At shows, when she’s sitting and selling her merch, it’s her that the kids come up to, offering her both tokens of affection and heir emotional burdens, seeing themselves in the echoes of the romantic turmoil and existential nerves that she’s exposed over the course of the few dozen releases she’s uploaded to the internet. “I feel like my persona is on display,” she says of the ad hoc therapy sessions she ends up offering at the merch table night after night. “To the point that I feel like I don’t have a personality because everyone has this weird idea of my personality...which isn’t me, because they don’t know me.”

A sudden rise like this is a strange thing for a young person to deal with. But now part of the job of heading up the business that is Frankie Cosmos means doing the uncomfortable stuff, like what she’s doing today—waking up early on Presidents’ Day to dodge tourists and stand in the cold as someone takes her picture, and then sitting outside as a journalist pushes her to outline the things that stress her out about the life she’s chosen.

Later, after we’ve settled in a stone gazebo at a northern corner of Prospect Park, she explains that as she’s preparing to release her third full-band record Vessel (her first for Sub Pop) on March 30, she’s still trying to figure out how to deal with being a person in public. “I wish I had the ability to pretend to be mysterious,” she says, tugging at the collar of puffy black parka. “But I don’t understand it at all. I can see how being tough like that would make it easier go through so many interviews. Because sometimes I feel like I’m too earnest and it drains me.”

But then, she follows that statement with nearly an hour-and-a-half of unreserved earnestness. Admittedly some of that is likely due to an amount of familiarity that we have—this is the third story I’ve written about Kline, including one that involved spending many hours together over the better part of a year—but that’s also just kind of how she is. She speaks unreservedly, dipping between subjects and trains of thought with a casual freeness. And yet, she expresses the idea, multiple times in our chat, that she always ends up regretting the things she says in interviews—that she never really feels like she quite addresses the ideas she means to. “Ultimately, we invented language.” she says with a pause in one of these moments of hesitation. “So how can it really fully express actual feeling?”

There’s something endearing in the way she still just does it, walking up to the borders of explaining her social and professional anxieties. Even if she can’t ever feel like she describes the thing itself, she does her best to trace around it, the way a series of straight lines can describe a circle.

Consequently, Kline seems content on Vessel to keep putting as much of herself out there as ever. The record consists of 18 songs, recorded like her last two albums with a full band and the producer Hunter Davidsohn, written over the course of a tense and tenuous time in her life. In the two years since her last album Next Thing, she’s ended up with a whole new band around her. Her long term relationship with Frankie Cosmos’ former drummer Aaron Maine (who also records as Porches) came to an end. She toured endlessly, spending eight to nine months out of each year on the road, with rarely more than two weeks at home. These things aren’t all in the songs literally, but Vessel carries the spirit of these trying times, the incredible lows of romantic dissolution and tour burnout channeled through brief, but potent indie pop songs plumbing the depths of her own psyche.

Some of these songs were written pre-breakup, some were written in its wake, some were written when she was 16 years old—proof if anything to not try to project someone’s biography onto their music. Still though, like with anything she’s made over the last half-decade or so, there’s a lot of her in there. That means there’s also the hope of new beginnings, new love songs and happy endings, or at least comforting realizations that come to in the midst of all the muck and mire. In one of the record’s most memorable choruses she sings, “Being alive / Matters quite a bit / Even when you feel like shit.”

That’s sort of the sentiment that I come away from our conversation with too—that life is weird and intimidating, full of fear and feelings of inadequacy. Sometimes you just have to lay all that stuff out on the table, purge it from your system. I guess they say that talking about your anxiety can help sometimes, but even when it doesn’t you keep on living. You get up from your interview, you go and buy a doughnut, you get on the train, there is more life ahead. It’s weird but on some level it’s all we have.

Noisey: How does your headspace hold up on long tours? You’ve basically been on the road for two full years at this point.
Greta Kline: The thing that keeps me going is having opening bands that are really nice and getting to watch music that you like everyday. Wanting to actually be at the show is a really important thing. But I’m also someone who spends zero minutes in the greenroom and I do merch for almost the whole show. That’s started to wear on me after two years of it. I basically turn on my social lights just the whole time I’m on tour. Then when I’m home I’m really tired and I sleep for two weeks.

Sometimes even going to one show is hard.
I feel that way at home, when I go to a show I’m like, “Wow, I can’t wait to not go to a show for at least a week.” But on a tour, it’s like “OK, tomorrow again.” Then the next day, again. Then you spend all day in the car. You go to the venue. You maybe eat dinner if you have time. Then you soundcheck. You play. You sleep. It’s this really weird experience, then you start to feel a little crazy. A lot of this album is about feeling like I’m not a natural performer and that performing is hurting me.

Hurting you how?
That it’s hurting my soul. That playing songs is painful. I’ve also played in other people’s projects and it doesn’t feel that way. It’s really different when it’s your own words and your own super intense feelings that are being put on display.You start to feel like, “Who am I?” I started to resent that my bandmates don’t have that same feeling of their soul being eked out of them onstage. Although they put in so much of their own soul as well.

When you talk about the ideas people have of you, how do you actually encounter those ideas?
It manifests in the way people treat me. People know that I’m going to be at the merch table, and know that they can talk to me about their life. I’m suddenly giving therapy sessions at the merch table.

Like Lucy from Peanuts.
Exactly. Emotionally it can be really exhausting. Once in a while I’m like, “This is awesome, I’m making friends with a cool teenager who’s coming to me for advice. I don’t have any advice! I suck!”

As you’ve had to grapple with being more of a public person, have you felt a need to hold more back?
I don’t feel the need to hold back, but I need to make clear that what’s out there isn’t all of me. There’s so much of me that’s private. Because it seems like [the songs offer] such a personal view of me people think they know all this stuff about me. It even shows up in the way people ask questions about the songs, just assuming they know what its about.

The other thing is, I run all of our online merch stuff. I fucked it up and I forgot to mark some stuff as shipped. Fuck! I don’t know how to do this! My business is too close to me. I’m too close to have a neutral reaction to that. Like, “Oh it was a mistake in the shipping department.”

But you are the shipping department.
I was so mad at myself for having messed it up. I was crying and saying to my mom, “Sometimes I wish that I worked at Starbucks so I could just go home after and not think about my job.” I feel like I haven’t been home from work in six years.

Touring started as a thing that was just for fun, my vacation from real life, and now when I’m home it’s my vacation from my job. I don’t know if everyone is cut out for it. And sometimes I wonder, am I cut out for it or not? I don’t know. I’m going on another eight months of tours, how’s that going to go? How am I going to feel after that?

Do you have moments where you think you’re not going to make it through a tour?
There was a moment where I thought it was over in the summer. We were on this Europe tour and we had three days in a row of waking up at 4 AM to fly after playing shows. The third day of getting three hours of sleep we had to play a show at 2 PM at a festival in Poland. We got there and we had an hour before we played.

Then I did two interviews, felt insane, got onstage, it sounded so bad and I couldn’t hear myself. During the show I just felt my brain, like, flipping. ”I...hate...performing...so much.” I was looking at my bandmates with wide eyes, shaking my head, just signalling them, “I’m done. I can’t finish the tour.” Afterwards I crumpled in this ditch in Poland and started crying. Like, “I can’t do it, I want to go home. I want to cancel the next tour. I can’t do it anymore.” Then I had dinner, and got some sleep. And I went and played another show.

"A lot of this album is about feeling like I’m not a natural performer and that performing is hurting me. That it's hurting my soul. That playing songs is painful."

When do you find time to write?
Every second that I’m at home. It’s very precious time now. That’s the main thing that sets off the breakdown, feeling like I’m not writing songs. In the news, when musicians die, I just think about their whole life and what they’ve contributed to the world. I want to put out as much music as I can before I die, I don’t want my legacy to be that I was a touring musician. If I have to have a job that’s completely separate from music and that’s the way I can write the most songs, then I want to do that.

Looking at your Bandcamp, you’ve already released more music than most people do in their life.
That’s true, but you’ll see that when I started touring, that amount started declining so fast. It’s not like I’m not writing the same amount when I’m at home. If I were home all the time I would be putting out that same amount of music.

That’s the level you want to operate at?
I want to make everything! I’m trying to figure out how to write all the songs I want to write. For me, it’s not even about putting them out. I think a lot of people know how they feel all the time. Wouldn’t that be cool? Sometimes writing a song helps me figure it out, sometimes its writing 15 songs about it. Sometimes two years later I hear a song and go, “oh that’s what that was about!” [Songwriting] is really important emotionally to me and the less I do it the more I freak out.

It makes sense that it’d be hard to have other people form ideas around that.
It was funny, during the year and a half of touring Next Thing, during that time I went through a breakup. The way I felt about that album changed. That was interesting, to have the songs reveal new things to me, to the new version of me that was playing them. I’d have people come up to me and say, “This is a breakup album right?” And I’d be like, “No, I wrote this when I thought I was in a relationship that was fine.”

During the five years that I dated Aaron, every single album I put out, people would ask me if we broke up. And I’d be like, “What? I don’t get it! My relationship sounds bad to you?” It was good to have people be like, “This was bad, we can tell from your songs that you’re suffering.”

You write a lot about love. What about that topic makes it such a fruitful thing for you to untangle?
The thing that I’ve learned about romantic love—and all kinds of love and friendships—is that everybody approaches it really differently, and often incompatibly. I started writing about love at a really young age. I was definitely the kind of person that was fitting myself into other people’s lives and taking whatever I could get, not thinking about what was good for me. I didn’t have an idea of what I needed. A lot of my songs are me trying to figure that out.

A song like “Duet,” which is an old song on the new album, when I was writing it I was experimenting with, what do I want to hear in a duet? What do I want in this relationship and what am I actually getting? The whole joke is it’s a duet with myself. And every relationship is kind of a duet with yourself. Everything you hear is what you think it is. When someone says “I love you,” you don’t know what they mean, you just know what you mean when you say it. It can mean something totally different.

Something that I can hear happening on Vessel is me writing these songs that are really tense and grappling with not understanding what to do. If you read all the lyrics, there’s so many question marks in them.

"I’m just trying to figure out how to be a person [...] I imagine I’m not the only person in the world who thinks I’m wrong all the time."

You seem concerned a lot with embodiment, is that what the title of the record’s about?
That’s the album title in a nutshell, totally. I wish I knew where it came from. I go back and forth between feeling really disconnected from my body and feeling totally connected to it and understanding that. I have a fraught relationship with my own shell. I don’t even look in the mirror anymore, it’s too horrible.

You’re forced to confront the reality that you’re “a thing” in addition to your thoughts.
That you’re visible. There’s this really good moment in Jane Eyre. She sees a ghost across the room and realizes its a mirror and its her own pale face looking back at her. That moment has always stuck with me because I have it all the time. Where I’m like, oh my god, that’s me? What is me?

It can change depending on what day someone catches you on.
That’s something that scares me so much about being on tour because my emotions fluctuate so hard, some people might meet me in one city and be like “Wow, Greta’s so cool and nice and positive and she gave me the nicest hug and advice and it made my day.” Then someone else might see me the next day and go, “That girl’s so horrible and so cruel and wouldn’t even take a picture with me.” They’re two totally different views, and they’re both me!

That line of thought can be really suffocating.
It’s scary. It’s part of why I feel so sad after socializing. I think a lot of people with social anxiety do this, but if I can bring myself to go to a party at all, what I do is after 45 minutes I go, “Maybe I wasn’t really invited.” And then I leave, and then I go home and analyze every single thing I said to every person and think that it was a poor reflection of my thoughts. I’ll probably do it after this interview. I’ll go home and be like, “Everything I said didn’t exactly say what I was trying to say, and I probably sounded really full of myself and stupid.” I’ll go home and think that and beat myself up about it for an hour, and then I’ll do an interview on Wednesday and try to do it better, but I’ll probably do even worse job because I’m thinking about it so hard. It’s pretty fucked up.

Do you have ways of quelling that thinking?
Not going out. That’s a good one. I’m kind of a homebody now. This is one of the things I like about relationships too. We’re all seeking to feel understood by someone and the more time you spend with someone the more you feel that way hopefully. It’s really nice to feel like you can be quiet, [to have] relationships where you don’t have to put on any kind of performance to hang out with them. I just hold onto those relationships as much as I can. I know the truth of what I am. If I can understand who I am, I don’t have to freak out so much if someone else didn’t really get it.

But then you’ve said you don’t always understand who you are.
Well, that’s why I’m trying to figure it out all the time. I think its funny. Which is me? Is it who I think I am or who you think I am? If my personality exists alone in my house and nobody’s there to see it, does it exist at all? I’m just trying to figure out how to be a person. I’m very comfortable with admitting I’m still growing up and learning about it a lot, every day. I imagine I’m not the only person in the world who thinks I’m wrong all the time.

That’s probably why people connect to your songs.
It’s always hilarious to me when I meet someone who seems really cool and sure of themselves and comfortable and connects to my music. I’m like, “How? But you’re awesome and I suck. It’s kinda reassuring.” It’s so nice to know that everyone feels the same pain. It doesn’t actually say anything about who you are that you feel bad. Maybe some people see me—I don’t want to make any assumptions [ Laughs.]—and think I’m cool and maybe it’s nice for them to know that I don’t feel cool and I feel like shit all the time.

Colin Joyce is an editor at Noisey and is on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on Noisey US.

It's Delta Week on Noisey Australia! To celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of her seminal debut Innocent Eyes, we'll be running Delta Goodrem-related writing every day.

Generally speaking, there are only a couple of reasons to perform a tribute to someone at an awards show. Usually, it’ll be because they’ve died. Sometimes, it’ll be because an artist has reached a huge career milestone. Not in 2003, though! At the 2003 ARIA Awards, Savage Garden’s Darren Hayes performed a tribute to Delta that was introduced with a four-minute obituary reel. It’s just as cooked as it sounds. The video begins with clips from Delta’s childhood, before moving on to give a recap of her (very short til that point) career. It ends with newspaper clippings about Delta’s cancer struggle, and they don’t show a live shot of Delta –– who is alive, mostly well, and literally at the awards –– until after Hayes finishes his performance. If you tuned in during this performance, you’d probably assume Delta was dead.

Of every hideously tacky performance, tribute and speech that’s graced the ARIAs stage, this has to be one of the most bizarre. Please, on day 4 of #DeltaWeek, enjoy this bizarre early-2000s moment of Delta Culture:

It's Delta Week on Noisey Australia! To celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of her seminal debut Innocent Eyes, we'll be running Delta Goodrem-related writing every day. Check out the rest of the series here.

Do you remember when you were seven, and the only thing that you wanted to do was line up for three hours at Sanity in a suburban shopping mall and get Delta Goodrem to sign your deluxe edition Innocent Eyes CD? If so, you’re definitely not alone. Goodrem’s ballad-heavy 2003 debut was this country’s best-selling album of the 2000s, surpassing two P!nk releases and Kylie’s Fever. It was played on repeat in tween bedrooms across the nation, inspiring a generation to take up piano lessons and dress exclusively in boho tops from Supré.

Innocent Eyes is a classic. Fifteen years later, it’s a sad fact that its impact on the Australian cultural zeitgeist has gone mostly unexamined. The album’s clear-hearted melodies, overplayed on Australian radio yet mostly ignored on the international charts, take full advantage of (and in some cases, even predict) key trends in confessional adult contemporary pop. What’s most remarkable about Innocent Eyes, though, is its breathless and endearingly melodramatic naivety. Goodrem’s heartfelt collection of songs about lost innocence is a time capsule of girlhood for twentysomethings all over Australia.

Appropriately, Innocent Eyes has a coming-of-age story behind it. At 14 years old, Goodrem caught the attention of manager Glenn Wheatley when she sent a demo CD to the Sydney Swans asking whether she could sing at one of their matches. The AFL gig never happened, but Wheatley wrangled her a deal with Sony less than 12 months later. Initially the label marketed Goodrem as a dance pop artist in the vein of Britney Spears or, more likely, Nikki Webster. It didn’t work out: her first single, “I Don’t Care” failed to impact the ARIA charts, despite sharing the same writing team as Christina Aguilera’s “Genie in a Bottle”.

So, at 17, Goodrem switched gears. She balanced writing the piano-driven tracks for Innocent Eyes with exam study and her acting work, starring as virginal schoolgirl and aspiring singer Nina Tucker on Neighbours. The Channel Ten fame formula worked for her as it had once done for Kylie Minogue; Goodrem was a household name in Australia, and to a lesser extent the United Kingdom, from the moment her single “Born To Try” debuted in the top three of the ARIA charts in late 2002.

Goodrem wasn’t destined for Kylie levels of international stardom, but back then it felt like she was, particularly if you were a young girl falling in love with music for the first time and saving up to buy her CDs and concert DVDs from Target, as most of her fans at the time were. Delta Goodrem was a goddess who had descended from heaven and moved into the house next door. She was approachable and sweet but impossibly beautiful, her eerily symmetrical features and windswept curls instantly becoming an devotional symbol of womanhood for young girls. Goodrem was a popstar with a non-American accent, an Australian singer who still somehow looked like she came from another world. There was no one who could touch her, and the fact of her existence felt precious.

In the tradition of teenage popstar debuts like Britney Spears’ ...Baby One More Time and Killing Heidi’s Reflector, Innocent Eyes contends with mature themes—love and sex, betrayal and heartbreak—on deceptively sweet and innocent terms. Goodrem makes wise-beyond-her-years declarations that “life’s full of mistakes” and sings about cheating boyfriends with a Jojo-esque cynicism (“You’re just so predictable in every way/ I want you to know I know your game”). The album is imbued with a dark sense of drama, particularly on its title track. “Innocent Eyes” perfectly soundtracks an experience that sits a little bit before Britney’s “I’m Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman” on the puberty timeline. The song considers the fraught transition from girlhood to teenagerhood, the years before the prospect of actual womanhood even becomes a concern. There’s plenty of material written from the perspective of the schoolyard rather than adult experience on Innocent Eyes, but the lyrical rawness works, in the same way it later would for a Fearless-era Taylor Swift. Lyrically and thematically, Innocent Eyes is also an obvious forebear to Kelly Clarkson’s Breakaway, the album that pulled Clarkson away from American Idol and into the pop canon.

Piano ballads aren’t given the credit they’re due at the best of times, especially not those that speak to “the little girl inside”. Innocent Eyes is a starry-eyed record, and while it’s easier now to appreciate the virtues of its frank and confessional songwriting, Goodrem’s earnest adult contemporary vibe never even felt remotely cool back in the day. She was a young woman singer, it was young women who liked her music, and in the eyes of critics this was to Goodrem’s detriment. Innocent Eyes received positive reviews, but they were always framed with the implication that real music fans should feel guilt for listening. “Really, this isn't bad at all,” a reviewer for The Guardian grudgingly admitted back in in 2003.

There have been few local musicians to inspire the tween devotion that Delta did with Innocent Eyes, and her iconic Visualise national stadium tour—her first, taking place in 2005 after she’d released two albums and made a full recovery from Hodgkin's Lymphoma—was one of the biggest tours by an Australian artist ever. That year, Goodrem sold more tickets than Destiny’s Child, more than 50 Cent, more than Green Day. By 21 years old, Delta Goodrem ruled Australia.

But she’d done no US press for Innocent Eyes during her recovery period, and while her second record Mistaken Identity—the lyrics of which describe a young woman’s brush with death and, at the same time, fame—sold incredibly well in Australia, the singer’s chances of breaking into the US market appeared to have been dashed. She’s continued to release music here ever since, but if we’re on the subject of lost innocence then seeing the megastar who defined your childhood reduced to becoming a judge on The Voice is heartbreaking. This is the same singer once so beloved by the Australian public that during her cancer battle in 2003 the ARIA Awards were transformed into a bizarre and in retrospect disturbing funeral-esque tribute to her talents. There’s nothing wrong with a steady paycheck on The Voice, but there’s a jarring contrast between what her career could have been and what it is now.

Delta Goodrem was never going to be Kylie Minogue. She doesn’t have the sexual potency, and you can barely picture her with a drink in hand, let alone performing classic party bangers at Mardi Gras. But she is, as Innocent Eyes and plenty of her later work testifies, an incredibly gifted songwriter, and a powerful vocalist. Her story, that of gargantuan local success that never translated overseas, is one shared by many. History has shown how major record labels fail Australian artists, and women have always been the greatest victims of this—Goodrem is joined in her lack of North American airplay by other enormously popular singer-songwriters like Missy Higgins and Megan Washington. You always got the sense that Goodrem’s blindingly fast rise to fame made her even more susceptible to the tall poppy syndrome we ruthlessly subject all our performers to. Many of our greatest musical success stories—Kylie, Sia—only became so when they effectively cut ties with their home country forever. It’s not a coincidence.

Delta, for all her strange career decisions over the years (Cats? That much-publicised failed move to Los Angeles?) could never be called a failure. She’s about to star in a TV biopic about Olivia Newton-John, and millions of millennial women in this country will, for the rest of their lives, hear one of Innocent Eyes’ five hit singles on the radio and be instantly transported back in time to their girlhood. That image of a gorgeous, confident young woman pouring her heart out in front of a grand piano, wearing a fairytale princess-style ball gown with her hair styled in 2000s prom-style ringlets, so earnest and yet so mysterious at the same time, is as crucial a piece of national music history as “You’re The Voice” or “Never Tear Us Apart”. Maybe I’m just lost in my reflections, but Innocent Eyes is one of Australia’s most important cultural documents. She may never have made it overseas, but Australian women are lucky to have grown up with Delta.

Kat Gillespie is an editor at VICE Australia. Follow her on Twitter.

Just over a week ago, Burial and The Bug announced that they'd be releasing a 2 track EP under the collaborative moniker Flame 1, as part of the launch of Kevin Martin's new record label Pressure. Along with that announcement came the first of the songs, "Fog," and today, we're hearing the second, "Shrine," which completes the AA side release.

In keeping with "Fog," "Shrine" is a track which feels compelled by forward motion thanks to its choppy percussion, but not necessarily by speed. It's the sound of bleariness and mild paranoia, with smoky synths that capture the essence of your headspace when you find yourself coming home on public transport on the first bus home, your forehead knocking against the window unceremoniously, making the dull ache in your temples sharpen for a second. If it were a colour, it'd be grey – the colour of cloudiness and, usually, of reality. In that, however, there's beauty: whenever someone is able to encapsulate a mood this fully with music, its universality feels cemented, and that's a special thing.

Hear "Shrine" here via Crack magazine.

Follow Noisey on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on Noisey UK.

A version of this article originally appeared on Noisey Germany.

“I’m better than Tupac, Biggie, Eminem, Kendrick, J. Cole, and even Lil Pump," says Face. The rapper from Ufa, the capital city of the Republic of Bashkortostan, Russia, has an androgynous look about him, with facial tattoos, oversized sunglasses, and long, straight hair, the silky strands of which hang down onto his shoulders. On his track “БУРГЕР" ("Burger"), a minimal-beat banger held together by an excessive baseline, he repeats over and over again that he’s going to storm a Gucci store. Face is 21 years old, and he’s already one of the most controversial rappers in Russia. He’s revered on the schoolyards and adored by the country’s youth, but everyone else—especially the older generation—finds him shocking. Of the 24 million people who viewed the YouTube video for “БУРГЕР,” 288,000 of them pressed the “dislike” button.

Face is one of several young artists who are transforming Russia’s hip-hop scene. Previously, Russian rappers had pulled inspiration from US stars by adapting their techniques to suit Russian lyrics, but recent years have seen the rise of local musicians like Pharaoh and Oxxxymiron, both of whom have created a global sound that can’t ignore its Russian roots. In Russia, rap is more important than ever—for the younger generation, it’s the most popular musical genre in the country. Although MTV Russia had taken to promoting homegrown rappers 10 years earlier, boosting their sales and helping them garner awards, the new generation of Russian rap operates independently of old musical structures. They use social media to promote their work and handle bookings and merch on their own. They’re not dependent on hip-hop channels, given that there’s really only two relevant media outlets in the country, rap.ru and the-flow.ru. Whether racking up millions of views on YouTube or performing on major tours, the country’s indie rappers have taken a DIY approach that is clearly working. What does Russian rap sound like and how political is it? Is it really possible to work freely in a country that imprisoned the members of Pussy Riot in a women’s corrective labor colony? We searched for the answers.

Anyone outside of Russia who wants to learn more about the country’s rap scene is sure to run into one major problem: the language barrier. Of the 11 Russian artists we contacted for this story, many were unreachable; two declined specifically because of their poor English skills. Russians speak Russian; English skills can’t be taken for granted, especially outside the subcultural capitals of St. Petersburg and Moscow.

Fortunately, we were able to Skype with Nikolai* from his apartment in Moscow. Nikolai, who requested that his name be changed for the purposes of this article, studied journalism, works in the music industry, and organizes events. Not only is he a rap aficionado—he's also fully-versed in the latest developments of Russian hip-hop.

Rap Isn't Welcome

“We’re in the third generation of rappers in Russia,” Nikolai explains. “The scene and its fan base are both big, thanks to the demographics—lots of children were born during the 90s.” At the beginning of the decade, young Russians had started getting into rap and doing graffiti to express themselves. The Soviet Union had finally fallen, allowing for a real music scene to take root. In the heyday of the USSR, hip-hop would’ve been totally out of the question: Western music wasn’t welcome, and you weren’t even supposed to wear jeans. But there were exceptions, of course. The first Russian rap track was released in 1984 and had the unimaginative title "Rap"—a Russian-language remake of the Sugar Hill Gang classic "Rapper’s Delight,” produced by the band Час пик. Rap functioned as a means of musical humor, not as a legitimate starting point for hip-hop in the country.

In the wake of the USSR, Russian rap slowly developed into a mainstream genre, sometimes characterized by post-Soviet divisions, corny pathos, or edgy provocation. It sounded just like American rap that had been translated into Russian. Nikolai describes it as an unintentional parody of US hip-hop that didn’t sound great, although people would party to it. Мальчишник or the cross-over attempts of Децл, for example, were both bands considered vulgar by the standards of the time. Hip-hop scenes started to sprout up in bigger cities, but the epicenters of the genre were firmly established in Moscow and St. Petersburg, where they remain today. Many artists flock to either city regardless, as the living conditions in both areas are far superior when compared to the rest of the country. Pharaoh, who we interviewed via email, outlined another reason why these cities are particularly appealing: “Maybe everything is happening there because it’s easier to get a wider variety of drugs.”

For a long time, Russian rap was a walking cliché. Strong men with well-muscled bodies would hang out with other muscular men; women only appeared as dancers in videos, if anything, or were featured as “the angel among a thousand whores,” a popular sexist trope in rap. Macho rap was in style back then and it still is today, rife with machismo images that are deeply anchored in Russian society and politics. Timati is a good example—he’s the most commercially successful rapper in the country and a devout fan of Vladimir Putin. He looks like an oligarch who’s swimming in money, apparently can do whatever he wants because his dad knows a prominent Russian politician, and was recently photographed driving around in his Rolls Royce at night. “[Timati] is a phenomenon in the mainstream media,” Nikolai says. “But everyone in the local scene hates him.”

In the past five years, a new generation of rappers has emerged: They openly discuss issues like depression, experiment with new sounds, and prefer androgynous fashion over displays of machismo. While Timati makes appearances on TV, new rappers upload their music to VKontakte, the most popular social network in the country (also known simply as VK). “Everything happens online now,” Nikolai stresses. Indie labels dominate, and platforms like YouTube and online groups like VK's "Rhythm and Punches" have provided a robust outlet for new rap songs. SoundCloud, on the other hand, isn’t terribly important. CDs aren’t even manufactured; no one in Russia under the age of 35 actually buys them anymore.

Russia’s rap scene is based on a DIY ethos, and continues to operate accordingly. It flourished without assistance from the record industry and the commercial structures within it. There’s a dominant “fuck the major labels” attitude; artists make most of their money off merchandise and endless live performances in Russia’s major cities. “The language barrier is one of the reasons why Russian rap is so huge,” Nikolai explains. “Even a lot of younger people still don’t speak English all that well, so they don’t listen to a lot of American rap.”

Pharaoh, King of Russian Emo-Rap

Pharaoh is an artist who’s especially loved by young people around the country. He wears his hair down and slinks around in fancy streetwear. He raps about the clear demarcation between his work and the mainstream; his tracks speak to highly emotional fights for independence. “I felt opposed to all the music being made in Russia back then,” he told Noisey over email. “I was like, Fuck them all, I’m on my own shit.”

Pharaoh aspires to be more than a mega social media star on Instagram, as he mentions in his video " ФОСФОР " ("Phosphor"). He sings, lets out tortured death screams like Kurt Cobain, and raps with a flow that hints at Eminem's influence. Dystopian beats underscore Pharaoh’s emotional explosions. It’s enough to send a shiver down your spine.

The DIY approach has permeated Dead Dynasty, Pharaoh’s collective. “I prefer to record for myself so that I can push my musical vision forward, you know what I mean?” he explains, adding that he works on his own videos and cites Quentin Tarantino as a big influence. While the comment may seem like a cliché you’d hear from any young rapper regardless of their nationality, with Pharaoh, it actually holds up: Whoever wants to make music independently has to get things done themselves. The music industry in Russia isn’t as open to progressive trends as the industries in the US and the UK are.

At 22 years old, Pharaoh is up there with Face as one of the most promising talents in the Russian scene. But his rise wasn’t obvious from the start. About five years ago, at the beginning of his career, his sound was similar to that of Yung Lean’s; only recently, in his latest release “ Pink Phloyd,” did it become clear that Pharaoh had his own undeniably unique sound. Society’s sudden acceptance of the genre makes him skeptical. “Society only started to accept [hip-hop] as soon as young people started paying lots of attention to it, and only once [they realized there was] money to be made from it. That’s so hypocritical,” he argues. Sure, it’s cool to perform live before a crowd of 5,000 people, but Pharaoh still has his concerns. “The subculture is growing, but as it [becomes more popular] it becomes less creative.”

The rapper says this tendency is especially true of Moscow, where he was born. He describes the neighborhood where he grew up as a normal area with normal drug problems, whereas today the city has become much more crowded to the point where it “feels like an anthill.” Above all, he says that people are more vain today than they were back then. Either way, his creative base is still in Moscow. “At age 18, I decided to put everything into music. It was worth it,” he tells us. As if to confirm this, his manager mentions Pharaoh’s upcoming European tour. The rapper says he’s confident enough to fight his way through that anthill and ignore any rejection of new sounds. When he wants to retreat from the hustle and bustle of urban life, he records a new track or heads to his best friend’s apartment, his favorite spot in Moscow. “I basically live there.”

Oxxxymiron, "The Biggest Battle Rapper in the World"

Pharaoh is right about the commercialization of subculture, but Oxxxymiron proves that it’s still possible for creativity to blossom even with mainstream success. The rapper is from St. Petersburg, where “Versus”—the country’s largest rap battle event—takes place. “There’s an enormous hype around rap battles right now,” Nikolai explains. Oxxxymiron has established himself as Russia’s best battle rapper, and the hip-hop magazine Source recently acknowledged him as the best one in the world. They support that claim with the YouTube video of his battle against the US’ own Dizaster, which has over 10 million views. Millions of people regularly tune in to YouTube to watch him verbally annihilate his opponents, both in Russian and in English. The bilingual rapper was raised in London.

Originally born in Leningrad (present-day St. Petersburg), Oxxxymiron’s parents relocated to London shortly after the birth of their son. There, he struggled. Although he attended school in the grey suburbs of London and came from rather precarious circumstances, he was ultimately accepted to Oxford University, where he studied English literature and learned to rap from grime MCs on the city streets. Today, even his Russian lyrics have a literary quality to them. Oxxxymiron is poetic in his verbal assaults, focuses on concept tracks on his albums, and flows as if he were still standing on a street corner in East London. At 33-years-old—and after years of hustling—he’s one of the most important rappers in Russia, largely thanks to his battles. Despite a brief interlude of working with Optik Russia—the subsidiary of Optik Records, which was founded by prominent German rapper Kool Savas—and an array of projects that didn’t garner much attention, Oxxxymiron’s victorious rap battles kickstarted his career.

He might be 10 years older than the fresh talent coming from Moscow and St. Petersburg, but Oxxxymiron is wholly on their side. He too is a DIY artist, although he’s more focused on lyrics than his younger colleagues are. His sound is brute when compared to the eldritch sound of Pharaoh—which just goes to show how diverse Russian rap has become. “The new generation has more knowledge of global music and what’s happening in different scenes, and they mix these influences into their own sound,” Nikolai explains. It took awhile, but the era of bad copies within Russia’s musical landscape has finally come to an end, replaced by a flourishing, totally unique hip-hop scene.

March 22 Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Face is from St. Petersburg, when he's actually from Ufa, in the Republic of Bashkortostan, Russia. Noisey regrets the error.

Johann Voigt is on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on Noisey DE.

In the temperamental world of independent music, SideOneDummy Records seemed to be a bastion of hope. Toward the end of 2017, the Los Angeles-based indie record label announced the signing of two promising new artists, Kississippi and Mom Jeans. The company had recently relocated its offices from Hollywood Heights to Glendale, in a building that also housed their newly opened pop-up shop which served as both a retail space and a performance area for artists. The label, then in its 22nd year of operation, had built a back catalog of early records by bands like The Gaslight Anthem, Flogging Molly, and Gogol Bordello, as well as an impressive active roster of breakout acts like PUP, Worriers, and Rozwell Kid. The label was even in talks with punk veterans Against Me! about releasing their next album. And, perhaps most notably, the SideOneDummy staff had successfully crafted an identity for the label and built a loyal community of dedicated fans.

Then, on January 3, SideOneDummy’s founders, Bill Armstrong and Joe Sib, laid off the label’s entire staff save for one employee, General Manager Thomas Dreux. Director of Marketing Jamie Coletta, Production and Digital Director Christina Johns, and Marketing Manager Kevin Modry were all let go. Speaking by phone, Armstrong describes the move as an unfortunate but necessary restructuring of the company, which will remain operational but in a different way.

“It’s a restructuring, and maybe even an evolution,” says Armstrong. “We’re gonna focus on the things we have going. We still have active projects.” Armstrong remains on good terms with his former employees—he helped Johns land a new job at Hopeless Records and continues to employ Coletta on a freelance basis for a few remaining projects—but the move came as a surprise to the staff, who received three months’ severance pay. “It’s a confluence of things. There was no real event that kicked it over the edge. It was more of a combination of overlapping situations, both personal and professional,” says Armstrong.

“Usually by August and September, we’ve mapped out some of next year,” says Coletta. “We had some stuff, but not a lot. I remember thinking, ‘Should I be looking for records to put out? Should I be hustling?’ I never got much of an answer on that.”

Many SideOneDummy artists who spoke to Noisey were reluctant to comment publicly on their situations since their futures with the label are currently being determined. Some have pre-existing contract renewal options under evaluation, others are in the process of obtaining rights to their back catalog from the label, and those with recent or future releases are working with the label on promotional strategies going forward. And since SideOneDummy has largely been home to small to mid-level acts that largely don’t employ lawyers or managers, most have been left to navigate negotiations on their own, and lack the business acumen to do so.

Mom Jeans, the Berkeley, California-based band that was recently tapped by Coletta to release their sophomore album with SideOneDummy, was a victim of unfortunate timing. The band tweeted in October that they had signed to the label and would be releasing a record with them in the fall of 2018. But an astute Redditor noticed last month that the band had been removed from the active roster on SideOneDummy’s website and others began to speculate about the band’s future.

“We were basically totally 100 percent committed to SideOneDummy and the paperwork was in the final stages of getting squared up, just sorting out all the fine print,” guitarist Eric Butler tells Noisey. “We were a week or two away from signing the contract when we heard the news.” Butler says that while Mom Jeans was excited to work with SideOneDummy, the band is glad to have found a home for their record with Counter Intuitive Records, through whom they have previously released material.

“The heart of S1D recently seemed to be employees like Jamie Coletta and Christina Johns,” Counter Intuitive owner Jake Sulzer said via email. “So knowing that they will still be actively involved in the music industry is really the only reassurance I need to still believe labels are needed and will survive.”

One sentiment that felt universal among all SideOneDummy artists interviewed was the appreciation for the personal care and attention the label’s staff, particularly Coletta and Johns, gave their work. Many cited this as the direct motivation for signing with the label.

“I came to SideOne because I really loved and trusted and admired what Jamie and Christina were doing with the label,” says Chris Farren, who released an album, Can’t Die, with SideOneDummy in 2016. Farren says Sib informed him via phone that the label would be releasing him from his contract, in which there was an option to release another album that he was in the middle of writing, but the label would continue to press and sell copies of Can’t Die as needed. Farren’s other project with Jeff Rosenstock, Antarctigo Vespucci, was also set to release an album with SideOneDummy, he says, but it will now be released by another label.

Rosenstock was one of SideOneDummy’s greatest success stories in recent years. In his short time with the label, he released 2015’s We Cool? and 2016’s WORRY., successfully establishing himself as a solo artist after ending his DIY punk outfit Bomb the Music Industry!. WORRY. landed on many critics’ Albums of the Year lists (#11 on Noisey’s) and earned him a spot on Last Call with Carson Daly. But on January 1, he released a surprise album, POST-, through Polyvinyl Records, a move he says he decided upon before learning of SideOneDummy’s restructuring.

“I attribute Jamie Coletta to a lot of our success,” says Rosenstock, who had previously been famously label-averse, and released music through his own bedroom label Quote Unquote Records. “She coaxed me out of the shell of anxiety and fear that I had been chilling out in for years and years. I really don't think anybody would be trying to talk to me about anything if Jamie hadn't worked her ass off finding people who give a shit.”

Many artists expressed concern about the label losing the identity and community it had built over the last few years, as well as the camaraderie among its bands, who frequently tour together. There’s been a noticeable change in tone on the label’s social media accounts in recent weeks. Erica Lauren, who the label employed on a freelance basis to run its Twitter and Instagram accounts, was also let go in the restructuring. The label’s Twitter account, which once held a strong voice and actively engaged with users, now mostly reposts promotional tweets about artists.

As for signing new bands, Armstrong says the label will still be keeping its eyes out, but may scale back a bit, and may reconsider how they release music going forward. (In 2017, the label released material by Iron Chic, Worriers, Rozwell Kid, Nahko, Pkew Pkew Pkew, the Smith Street Band, AJJ, and Chris Shiflett.) “We want to take a little bit of a pause and not feel committed to sign a huge volume of stuff if we don’t have to right now,” he says, “just keep our radar up for the things we feel are special.”

At the end of 2017, Sib organized a label dinner with Against Me! and had been in touch with frontwoman Laura Jane Grace about the label’s interest in signing the band as recently as December 21. “Before the holidays, I told Joe Sib that we were going to think about it over Christmas/New Years and then the next thing I heard was they’d let everyone go,” says Grace.

In over two decades of operation, SideOneDummy has amassed an impressive back catalog of albums by everyone from Title Fight to The Casualties to MxPx, and Armstrong says the label will continue to support these releases, domestically and internationally. “We still have really good relationships with people we are working with and have worked with before, we’re still active with all that,” he says.

A big asset to SideOneDummy’s catalog was the Vans Warped Tour’s compilation CD series, which the label had been releasing annually since 1998, and whose gold records hung on the walls of the SideOneDummy offices. But the CDs have seen diminishing returns over the years, as have the Warped Tour’s ticket sales, according to founder Kevin Lyman. The Warped Tour will come to an end after this summer’s run, and the compilations will cease production as well, though Armstrong says this loss did not contribute to SideOneDummy’s restructuring, noting that the label did not own digital rights to the compilations’ songs.

For now, SideOneDummy is at a turning point as its owners reassess their business plan to navigate the fickle and ever-changing music industry. But for many familiar with the label and its artists, the change in staff feels like the end of an era.

“It was fun and, really, my dream job for years,” says Johns. “It just didn’t do as well and as fast as we’d all hoped.”

Dan Ozzi is on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on Noisey US.