In a new series of Podcasts for Cargo, Akira the Don sits down with UK beatboxing Godfather of the scene and Patriot to this ish, Killa Kela, to talk about upcoming albums, other beatboxers and how the beatboxing scene has changed.
Ahead of their highly anticipated gig at Cargo on the 19th of August, Mila Dore gave The Juan Maclean a quick phone call and asked a few questions:
1. Your new album is called The Future Will Come. What kind of future do you foresee?
I think sci-fi author William Gibson is a visionary in terms of imagining what the future will look like. In general, it is a future in which corporate culture has permeated every aspect of life. Ostensibly major corporations are the ruling powers, in place of government. Even personal identity is dominated by corporate references and allegiances. So maybe the next Juan MacLean album will be part of a Wal Mart advert campaign, if I wait too long between albums again.
2. What were you listening when you were making it?
I made up a playlist of things to intentionally groom myself with before and during the making of the album. Some of the things on this daily playlist were: Grace Jones, Human League, Kraftwerk, lots of 90′s piano house, lots of 80′s synth pop in general, Brain Eno, Can, Cris and Cosey, Ministry, New Order.
3. What is the song (of the last album) you enjoy the most playing live?
Happy House. We usually play it as the last song, with the entire set sort of building up to it. It is by far the most fun for us to play, and we end it as an incredible acid jam that can be extended for as long as we’d like. We did a show once where people were screaming for it as soon as we got on stage, so we just started with Happy House and played it for 45 minutes and left the stage. People were crying by the end, they were so excited, but I also think there was a lot of ecstacy going around.
4. Do you think The Future Will Come is an album meant to be listened to or to be danced to?
I made a conscious effort to make an album that was meant to be more of a ‘listened to’ thing than a ‘danced to’ one. Obviously there are a couple of dance oriented tracks, like The Simple Life and Happy House, but we tried to have it be an album of shorter, more vocal oriented pop songs. In general I think entire LP’s consisting of dance tracks tend to be boring, especially when there are no vocals. We made a very conscious effort to sequence the album so that it was engaging listening experience from beginning to end.
5. What should we expect from your live show?
I think the most important thing to understand is that The Juan MacLean is a proper live band. There are no laptops, we are all playing live instruments. There are four of us playing live keyboards and percussion, and singing of course. We have the greatest drummer in the world, Jerry Fuchs (who also played in bands like Turing Machine, !!!, and now Maserati). Much of the set rests on his shoulders, he really carries the band in a big way. It is like live dance music with the feel of a rock band, a bit more chaotic and hard hitting, with room for improvisation so we can stretch things out.
6. What has been the best concert in your present tour? Why?
We just headlined the Brooklyn Electronic Music festival, and that was phenomenal. It was in the middle of Brooklyn, at an old warehouse, though our stage was outdoors. It was meant to be like an old school rave, and people just went insane when we played. The police came 5 seperate times, demanding that our sound engineer turn it down. He would turn it down a bit, then as soon as they walked away he would turn it up again. In the middle of our last song they physically removed him from the soundboard and hauled him off. We had to go bail him out later on.
7. Tell us 3 good things of working with Nancy. (And one bad? –if that is possible)
1. Nancy has this amazing ability to take an instrumental track she’s been given and transform it into something transcendent. For example, she took Happy House, which on an instrumental level is a fairly standard House track, and turned into a completely uplifting anthem. Another great example is Dance With Me from Less Than Human. Her performance on that track is a tearjerker.
2. She insists on finding healthy food when we are on tour. Jerry and DJ (our keyboard player), eat terribly, a steady diet of alcohol, cocaine, and junk food. Nancy, however, demands that we drive out of our way to find health food stores.
3. She has a wardrobe that can save a show. No matter what is happening during a show, if equipment has broken down or the police have come or the stage is surrounded by hippies doing the Noodle Dance, Nancy is always dressed in the most fascinating and visually engaging outfits, so you always have something to hold your attention.
4. And finally, in terms of ‘bad,’ she is a total Diva. She demands a separate dressing room from the rest of us, and none of us have ever been allowed inside. One time the rest of us and our crew had to share a utility closet at a club, because there was only one dressing room and that was reserved for Nancy. Our ‘dressing room’ actually had a boiler/ water heater in it, so it was incredibly hot. By the time we played we were totally sweating, and all the alcohol had turned warm, so we were all pretty ruined. But she came charging out of her dressing room totally refreshed, carrying the scent of the fresh cut flowers that decorated the inside of it every night.
8. Is it true that you now have a robot mascot? What’s his name? Who made it and why?
Yes, he was built by Mike Vadino, who has been the main graphic designer/art director at DFA from the beginning, and Pat Mahoney, who is the drummer for James Murphy’s band The LCD Soundsystem. We engaged in a partnership with Nooka, a watch company that makes these watches that have non-traditional methods of telling time, and the robot was designed to celebrate the partnering of the futuristic band with the futuristic watch company. The robot is midi controlled and responds to information sent from our MPC. The robot’s name is Jeff.
9. When you look back, how do you see the music you were making with Six Finger Satellite?
Too far ahead of its time to ever gain any mass appeal. It’s quite funny now, in restrospect, as we were an angular guitar band featuring disco drum beats, cowbells, analog synths, and funky basslines, which is all de rigeur at your local indie dance night.
10. You’ve been into dance-punk, then swift into electronic music and eventually into more lyrics-based and “poppy” songs. What’s next? Are you already planning a new album, or we’ll have to wait as much as after Less Than Human?
I don’t really see it all as that much of a shift. It’s a more general tendency toward vocal oriented tracks. There is no way in hell I will wait 4 years to put out another album. James Murphy met with me recently and threatened to withhold all my earnings that he has been saving for me in a special account since the beginning of DFA if I waited too long. He is really good to me, actually. From the beginning, he said “Juan, you are not good with money, if we pay you your earnings you will just waste it all on drugs and food and stuff like that. I will open a special account and put all your royalties, advances, and other profits into it, and take out what I need for administrative purposes.” So he has this account that I am guessing must be pretty big by now. Although I sometimes wonder what these ‘administrative expenses’ are. One time we got in a big fight because we were in LA and we were clothes shopping and eating out at fancy restaurants, and I caught him paying for it with a credit card with my name on it. He said these were the aforementioned ‘administrative expenses,’ and I got mad. But I know he means well.
Click here to buy tickets to see The Juan Maclean LIVE on August 19th.
The all new and shiny Cargo Podcast is in construction to make it as beaming and audibley beautiful as possible. For now, here’s an brief snippet of the interview with Killa Kela that Mr. Akira the Don did for us last week.
Eelus swang by Cargo last month after almost a year of trying get him down here, to create a piece in our yard. As usual with Mr E, he left us with a beautiful yet slightly sinister slice of his artistic world. Mila Doré had a sit down with him to ask him a few questions about his style and his background.
Mila Doré: You first started making hand drawn posters of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Which one was your favourite and why?
Eelus: It was all about Master Splinter for me. He was like a rodent Mr Miyagi. There’s just something cool about a rat with ninja skills. I used to have pet rats too, they’re intelligent critters!
MD: Where else do you find the inspiration? (comics, films, real life…)
E: I’m big into horror and sci-fi, that’s always been my main inspiration. Most images for me are usually have one foot grounded in one of those areas. At the minute I’m reading a lot about natural geometry, Phi, the Golden Section and the basic invisible ordering of the universe. I’m becoming fascinated with the fact that even though the world to us seems chaotic and unstable, there’s a strict design and formula holding everything together. A secret language that governs everything we see or do. The same shapes and numeric equations are used from things as tiny as a virus cell all the way up to the shape and construction of an entire galaxy. For example, the orbit of Venus around the Earth creates an almost perfect pentagram every 8 years, mind blowing!
MD: Why did you choose stencils and not oil painting or ceramics?
E: I basically became interested in the same way I’m sure many others did, Banksy. I moved to London knowing nothing of stencils and street art and had my eyes opened in a big way. After being just a fan and observer of the scene for a while I decided I’d like to create my own work purely for my own satisfaction and curiosity. I used my background in design and illustration and just started making stencils of characters from my sketchbooks and from photos of friends and from magazines. I just seemed to get it, it felt right to me, something in my head clicked from the very first stencil I did. I really enjoy the process, the stages you have to deal with to produce the final piece. You need to be good at every stage to make a great stencil. You can’t be an amazing illustrator or painter but be shit with a scalpel, it just won’t work. It’s such a basic medium too, I guess I enjoy the challenge or getting what’s in my head out onto a wall or canvas using a limited colour palette and basic materials. Plus I’m very impatient and struggle with concentration problems at times. Something like oils is such a long messy process, I love the immediacy and simplicity of spraying a stencil.
MD: What do you find exciting about being on the streets?
E: I’m excited about people’s reactions to my work. I’m putting it out there to be judged, loved, hated, criticized, buffed. If you pick the right spot your piece could be seen, thought about and even discussed by hundreds of people in 1 day. That’s what excites me.
MD: How does it differ when you show your work in a gallery?
E: When you place a piece outside, you’re not trying to make money or please a gallery owner or potential buyer. I mean I know you’re not doing that when you paint a canvas too, you should always paint for you and you alone but if you’re painting a wall, you have another special level of freedom. I used to find showing pieces in a gallery really intense. I would get really excited if people liked the work or bought the work, and I’d become really down and withdrawn if bad things were said or if nothing sold. I’m learning to get better with all that now and starting to really enjoy creating art for myself and purely for the sole reason of creating.
MD: Who are your references in street art?
E: As I mentioned it was Banksy that first introduced me to street art and him and Eine that gave me my first break allowing me to sell my work through Pictures On Walls. My main ‘street art’ favourites are people like Herakut, C215, Titifreak, Blu, Word To Mother, Lister, David Choe, Mr Jago, Mike Giant, Skinner. I tend to be more influenced by people outside street art though, everyone from Aubrey Beardsley and Henry Fuseli to James Jean, Mike Mignola, Tom Gauld, Ashley Wood, Stanley Kubrik, Arthur C. Clarke, and last but not least H.P Lovecraft.
MD: Which is the best graffiti you’ve ever seen?
E: this:
MD: What do you think street art contributes to people in big cities?
E: I think it gives people an everyday opportunity to see art and engage their brains on something they probably wouldn’t have done otherwise. A lot of people never bother going to galleries or museums because they can be put off by the atmosphere or because they have a preconceived idea about what to expect, but with street art, it becomes part of your everyday world whether you like it or not. You could pass a piece on the street on the way to work and that piece could stop you in your tracks, make you take out 1 minute of your busy day to stop and think about it and it could stick in your head for the rest of the day, week, month. It could create discussion between colleagues and friends, make you share ideas and thoughts and just generally get people talking and discussing art where they wouldn’t have otherwise. I got an email once from a woman who had spotted one of my angels that I painted in Dublin. She was walking past there with her son and she said she got the feeling it was there watching over her and her family, giving her hope for the future. I thought that was amazing, it makes it all worthwhile.
MD: Compared to other cities in the world, what do you think about London’s street art scene?
E: I think there’s a lot of great stuff going on but I also think there’s a lot of shit being put out there. I haven’t done anything outside for a while now mainly because I feel like the streets are awash with bad stencils. It’s true that everyone has to start somewhere, you can’t be expected to knock out great pieces from day one, I know I certainly didn’t, but I also didn’t go spraying weak work all over the shop. I won’t put anything outside now unless the location has been carefully considered, planned and thought out and the piece is good enough to be put out there, to make a positive difference to that space and environment.
MD: If you could paint any wall in London which one would it be and what would you paint there?
E: I guess it wouldn’t all be about the biggest most high profile wall. Like I said it would have to be a wall that would interact successfully with the piece, become a collaboration between myself and the street. Sometimes the best wall spaces are the ones hidden away that only a small handful of people will ever see.
MD: What’s the best one you’ve already painted?
E: I think the 2 most successful pieces for me have to be the Main large wall I painted at the Cans Festival in London last year and the Lost Angel in Dublin. They came out exactly as I wanted them, I had a great time painting them, met some great people on both occasions during the process and I’ve had a really positive response from the people who saw them.
MD: What’s the thinking behind Cargo’s wall?
E: I have to say there’s no real concept behind the piece other than the woman is supposed to represent a kind of witch, living out in the forest. I just wanted to make the most of the opportunity and paint something that was just for the sake of painting. It was interesting for me to work on such a landscape format, most of my stuff seems to be portrait for some reason. It was also nice to relax and have fun with it knowing there were no print or canvas sales coming off the back of it.
MD: Could you tell us your favourite place in London to get inspired?
E: London has inspiration everywhere. I live on the South East coast now and make the trip to London around once a week to catch up with stuff. On that day I have an almost inspiration overload. I do a tour of the galleries and see what other people are doing, I walk the streets and take photos, I nip into books shops on the way and stock up on magazines then I spend time with friends in the pub in the evening. Every part of that day in London for me is inspirational.
MD: Tell us two or three places to go in London if we want to see good street art.
E: I used to have a studio in Hackney Wick, that places is constantly dripping with fresh paint. Other than that you’d probably wanna do a tour of the east end. Hit Shoreditch, Old Street, Hackney Rd areas, it’s always been the street art heart of London.
MD: Are you pessimistic or optimistic?
E: Depends what day you catch me on. Some days I can be the Lord of Doom and Gloom but then on others nothing can go wrong. I’m making more of a conscious effort recently to stay positive and optimistic at all times. At the end of the day I’m my own boss, I do what I love doing every single day of my life, I have an amazing supportive family and great friends, a roof over my head, I don’t really have anything to be pessimistic or negative about. The current financial situation in this country is the only worrying thing, a lot of people are obviously feeling the pinch.
MD: Which is your biggest fear? And your most unachievable dream?
E: My biggest fear is losing my creativity and having to go back to working for someone else. That depresses the hell out of me. My most unachievable dream is to become bitten by a radioactive animal or insect which results in me having bizarre super powers, massive responsibilities and crazy enemies. To direct sci-fi films would also be amazing but I have a suspicion that may never happen.
MD: If you could go back in time, would you do anything differently?
E: I would use a darker grey on the background for the Cargo wall 
Apart from that, absolutely nothing. You have to go where the journey takes you, roll with the punches and learn as much as you can from everything you do and everyone you meet.
MD: If you had to choose: Demon or angel?
E: Demon. Nietzsche said that In Heaven, all the interesting people are missing’.I couldn’t agree more.
MD: If you were god and suddenly woke up after a long sleep and saw the current chaos, what would be the first thing you’d do?
E: I’m not sure if I believe in ‘God’ but maybe there is some kind of grand Creator, It’s a nice theory. It seems to me that if something has created us, it’s almost like they’ve bought a Kitten, they’ve let the kitten loose in the house then completely forgotten about it. So when he/she comes back and finds the house has been trashed, he can hardly be surprised. In all honesty if I was said Creator, I’d get my majestic caddie to hand me my Godlike putter and I’d tap us into the nearest black hole (obviously in 1 shot) and start again. I guess me trying to be optimistic isn’t going too well just yet.
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For more information on Eelus go to:
http://eelus.com/ or his One Big Freak Show blog
Thanks to Unusualimage for use of his flickr images.
