Interviews – Page 5 – Communiqué

Josh Wink talks work/life balance, Philly nightlife history

Josh Wink gives an interview on club vs. home life ahead of hometown Halloween gig.

Ovum's Very Own, Josh Wink — Ovum’s Very Own, Josh Wink

It’s a brisk fall afternoon when I meet up with Josh Wink at Northern Liberties record store Profond Music N Art. Josh has just arrived back from finishing an acclaimed summer residency in Ibiza and is helping organize his son’s birthday party before heading out to Amsterdam the next night.

“My son is four, so I’m still new to being a parent, and there’s all these things I try to balance: being a father and a partner to my wife, being ‘just Josh’ to the people I know from the neighborhood and community gardens, and then being Josh Wink the artist. Finding time to do other things is difficult, but there’s something nice and humble about being here in Philly. I like riding my bike places, I don’t have a car.”

This year marks the twentieth anniversary of Josh’s game-changing anthem “Higher State of Consciousness”, the first instrumental record to ever enter the UK’s top 15 national chart twice in one year. The track burst him onto the international scene and became heavily engrained with the first wave of pre-EDM stadium-packing electronic music that took the US and Europe by storm in the ‘90s.

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Josh co-hosted a show on WKDU in the 90s called Rave FM, so you know we had to get him to do a station ID for us!

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Telekinesis plays Philly tonight, chases 80’s vibes on new album

by Shannen Gaffney

Telekinesis, the moniker used by Michael Benjamin Lerner, (also the superpower which allows superheroes to move objects with their minds) has released a new album this September on Merge Records called Ad Infinitum. On tour with Say Hi, he plays Johnny Brenda’s tonight and spoke to us about finding new influences and staying inspired on the road.

On facing writer’s block while working on the new record Lerner said, “I tried to play the guitar but just didn’t want to do it, it was very uninspiring to me at the time. So I just put the guitar away and then tried to learn a bunch of other instruments. I didn’t really understand how drum machines and synthesizers worked before… it sort of came out of boredom in a way.” Continue reading “Telekinesis plays Philly tonight, chases 80’s vibes on new album”

Goldroom on Fighting the Good Fight & his Favorite Snapchats

Ahead of his LIVE full band performance at Coda tonight (10/15), we caught up with Josh Legg, the mastermind behind Goldroom, to talk about what it means to deliver a true live electronic music performance, his influences, and what his favorite kind of Snapchats are.

KDU: So you’re on a live tour now. What does it mean to you with regard to DJing vs live performance?

Goldroom: I grew up playing in bands and have always incorporated a lot of live instrumentation into my music. I cared a lot about DJing when I started Goldroom and I was only doing DJ sets then. I still DJ all the time – both in clubs and festivals. For me, playing live is a whole different level of emotional commitment and it’s much more musically fulfilling for me. We’re not up there with a couple of drum pads and an Ableton controller. When we’re up there live it’s a four-piece band with bass, guitar, and we sing every song – it’s truly like a band experience. Trying to bring electronic music to people in an authentically live performance is something that means a lot to me and I’m trying to fight the good fight.

Continue reading “Goldroom on Fighting the Good Fight & his Favorite Snapchats”

King Gizzard on the Melbourne scene, their upcoming albums + the perfect vegemite sandwich

Screen Shot 2015-09-15 at 12.31.01 AM — *Cook + Eric enjoying cheesesteaks in Philly*

Screen Shot 2015-09-15 at 12.31.09 AM — *King Gizzard at Johnny Brenda’s 9/13/2015*

Photos from Pooneh Ghana (@poonehghana)

Before their show at Johnny Brenda’s, DJs Kirsten and Shannen caught up with Lucas Skinner (bass) and Eric Moore (drums/manager) of King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard to talk about everything from poisonous spiders and the Melbourne DIY scene to their new album, Paper Maché Dream Balloon (out November 13th).

First question, cup of blood or shot of shit?

Lucas: What?

If you had to drink one.

Eric: Is it my own or someone else’s?

Someone else’s.

E: I think definitely blood.

L: I think you’d get more sick if you eat shit.

E: If it was my own, I’d go with blood. I always just drink my own blood anyway, like when I get a cut.

Right, delicious. What are some of your favorite hair products?

E: I used to use Surf Paste in high school. That was a long time ago.

L: I use oils on my beard.

This is the second to last date of your US tour, which city has been your favorite?

L: We’ve done a few places we haven’t been before, New Orleans was one.

E: All the ones up the west coast were cool. Portland was my favorite place. The scenery is so beautiful and the drives are amazing up the coast.

Did you guys do any traveling before KGATLW?

L: We did a tour about three months ago in the states and Europe and most of us went home for a month but Stu and Ambrose and their girlfriends went traveling through Europe and Eric went to LA for a month.

E: Yeah I’ve been away for ages.

L: But before the band we did a US road trip up the east coast starting in Austin and going up to New York. That gave us a good idea of the landscape and how to get around.

What is your favorite thing to do on a date?

L: My girlfriend and I for our first date we went walking our dogs on the beach.

E: Luke is the sweetheart. Mine would just be something lame like going to a bar or a movie. But I haven’t been on a date in a very long time.

L: Eric’s the only one without a girlfriend in the band. Everyone else is kind of settled down. He’s the wild card.

So you work a lot with artist Jason Galea and your shows have such a strong visual component, is he going to be involved in music videos in the future?

E: Yeah Jason’s here on tour with us. He does the visuals and is working on heaps of stuff.

L: He’s the creative director, does all our visual stuff, artwork, t-shirts, videos. We’re actually making a video with another friend at the moment because Jason’s a bit busy, that’ll be the first one we’ve done without him. Continue reading “King Gizzard on the Melbourne scene, their upcoming albums + the perfect vegemite sandwich”

Making Time History with Dave P

Last week, we had the honor and pleasure of hosting the ever-RAD Dave P in our studios to help him celebrate FIFTEEN YEARS of legendary Making Time parties. Our station actually goes way back with Dave, as he made his FIRST EVER RADio appearance on WKDU to promote the VERY FIRST Making Time in 2000.

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Pre-Record Store Day chat with Icebird (RJD2 & Aaron Livingston)

Everyday is Record Store Day for a lot of us, including RJD2 and Aaron Livingston, who recorded a brilliant album together in 2011 as Icebird. I had the privilege to sit down with them in our studio last week to chat and play some records ahead of the Record Store Day vinyl release of their album The Abandoned Lullaby.

“I feel weird saying I have a lot of records when I’m sitting next to RJ. I have a few records,” said Aaron.

RJ responded, “But I don’t have a lot of records, I don’t have records like Rich Medina. I have a modest record collection when I consider the heavy duty record collectors. I don’t have a storage unit -there’s a defining line and I’m a non-storage unit guy.”

Continue reading “Pre-Record Store Day chat with Icebird (RJD2 & Aaron Livingston)”

Natalia Zamilska: “All or Nothing”

by Maxwell Stetson

In this National Geographic article, neuroscientist Valorie Salimpoor looks for answers about her personal, euphoric reaction to the Johannes Brhams’s song, “Hungarian Dance No. 5”. She wondered how and why this music moved her and the processes it took within her brain. These questions led her to Thalia Wheatley, a Dartmouth psychologist, who offered an explanation.

Thalia found “[that] every time you listen to music, you constantly activate [musical] templates that you’ve [created] that predict the reward you’ll feel from a given piece.”

In her opinion, “new music is presumably rewarding, not only because it fits implicitly learned patterns, but because it deviates from those patterns, however slightly.” I believe this constant template reformation and pattern shifting is an aspect to be loved, especially when it occurs organically. When this occurs, it can progress your tastes and emotions into a new and unknown fields, allowing you to think and feel differently.

I begin with this to highlight a similar joy I felt when listening to the pioneering artist we’re featuring today.

When I first heard the culturally shattering sounds of Natalia Zamilska, my musical template was completely rearranged in wonder. Her creation of raw and heavy techno, noise, electronica and modern world music was new, artistic and incredibly exciting to me.

“Duel 35” was the first track of Zamilska’s that made me a huge fan. It consists of the toughest booming techno sound, both danceable and sexy. The tribal chants and noisy pops later in the song add to its power. The sound, combined with an incredibly artistic and creative video, made me feel like Zamilska was creating art, not just music.

Natalia admitted she didn’t expect much to happen after releasing “Quarrel,” a 2014 single, yet the feedback was so affirmative that she felt like she had to finish an album as soon as possible. “Untune” was then created during live shows, as she used the audience members as her collaborators, testing various musical creations on them. Since then, her recognition has been accumulating worldwide. The Quietus, an art/culture online magazine out of London, rated “Untune” as one of the best tracks of 2014, while Vevo ranked “Duel 35” as #15 out of the top 100 songs from their “Other Side of Music” for 2014. She’s since accumulated 7,200 Facebook likes and 1,700 Soundcloud followers and was featured on Dior’s Toyko Fashion Show, 2015.

It’s an honor and a pleasure to share this amazing interview with you! Here’s Booty Shakers’ exclusive interview with the incredible talent that is Natalia Zamilska! Continue reading “Natalia Zamilska: “All or Nothing””