Words by Ruth Gebreyesus, Photography by Christopher Currence
Video Stills: Justin Morris, Photo Assistant: Fallou Seck, Wardrobe Stylist: Christopher Smith, Wardrobe Stylist Assistant: Kinjhi Vincent, Groomer: Kara Yancey

One Sunday night in February, I catch MIKE as he makes his way home from a music video shoot for his frequent collaborator and friend TAKA. On our call, in the pitch black of his car ride through Brooklyn, the producer and rapper previews his week ahead: a couple shows in New York, including a DJ set under his producer alias, dj blackpower, kicking off the Dweller Festival, which celebrates and centers Black electronic music artists. A couple days later, he’ll be at World Dweller, a joint party between the revered electronic music platform and Young World, the free summer concert series that MIKE and his friends have organized three editions of in Brooklyn. The lineup for that night features a mix of musicians, including Anysia Kim, Liv.e, dav1d, and Salimata, with whom he’s shared both songs and stages. Just three days after all his Dweller duties wrap, MIKE, along with Salimata, Niontay, and 454, amongst others, set off to tour Europe and North America in support of Burning Desire, his eighth studio album released last October.

After he shares all of this, I offer that he takes time to decompress before we resume. I confess that his schedule is intense to listen to, let alone experience. “I feel like it's ridiculous because I'll be posted in the crib for hella long, just working on music from my bedroom, and then it's really a long time not feeling like you're a rapper, or a musician,” MIKE shares. “And then all of a sudden it's like, ‘Yeah, you're a DJ, musician, creative person.’” 

Even from a secluded bedroom, MIKE and his music are part of a compelling and dynamic constellation of musicians, visual artists, and cultural workers in creative connection with one another. A decidedly collaborative practice has been MIKE’s way ever since the beginning, which can be counted as sometime in 2012. At fourteen, having recently relocated to his father’s in Philadelphia after a five-year stay with his mother in England, MIKE recorded his first song: a speedy and combative rap over Madvillain’s “All Caps,” a collaboration in absentia but a collective effort nonetheless. 

Two years later, MIKE left Philadelphia for New York and went on, in 2015, to form sLUms alongside Adé Hakim, Jodi.10k, Darryl Johnson, King Carter, and Mason Dreiling — a crew of musicians who took their shared digital sonic and community sensibilities into underground performance spaces around Brooklyn. Since then, MIKE has expanded his universe of sounds and visuals, but collaboration remains the connective thread. “I guess I'm kind of head ass for this — [these] are two different people from two completely different worlds about to come together and discuss something that they're both familiar with,” he says, amused by his own enthusiasm. “I just always be so excited to see different techniques, different ideas come together, whether it be musically or even just having a discussion with the homies. I think that's usually what draws me towards people — when I could have a feeling that maybe [this] is somebody who's interacting with life in an interesting way.”

That curiosity is on striking display on Burning Desire, MIKE’s latest album at the time of our conversation. (Two weeks after our chat, he released Pinball, an eleven- track collaboration with Brooklyn producer Tony Seltzer, juxtaposing MIKE’s light-touch verses over Seltzer’s labyrinthine beats.) Spanning 24 songs, Burning Desire is an emotionally and sonically expansive journey grounded by recurring themes: adorned samples orbit around agile and earnest lyrics; horror as a genre is woven into the music and visuals, including a Nollywood twist on the canonical “Thriller” music video for “Set the Mood,” starring Nolly Babes’s Ebele Anueyiagu. The production, mostly by MIKE himself, stretches from the orchestral and poignant on “plz don’t cut my wings,” featuring Earl Sweatshirt, to jazz and R&B melodies passed through progressive electronic treatments on “REAL LOVE with fashionspitta” and “U think Maybe?,” featuring Liv.e and Venna. 

MIKE shares with me that the album came together from a series of serendipities, starting with an audio sample from GTA: San Andreas that he used for the titular track. “I went and low-key did some kind of history on the actual mission that [sampled] video clip comes from, and the mission was called ‘Burning Desire,’” he recalls. “This is how I always come up with my ideas. I'll find one piece and then just add hella different parts to it, kind of like some mixed-media type of vibe.” The horror theme, quite vividly illustrated on the album cover by the prolific Ghanaian painter D.A. Jasper, spun out from self-lore MIKE jokingly built around a fib that he was born on Friday the 13th, though he was born on a Tuesday. “I was so happy and proud of Burning Desire because it felt like everything was making sense. Everything just fell into place,” he shares about the album released on his birthday last year. “Even with my birthday, it landed on Friday the 13th.”

"I was so happy and proud of Burning Desire because it felt like everything was making sense. Everything just fell into place,"...

In surveying the scene, it might be tempting to place MIKE at the center of the creative constellation he’s a part of, a gravitational force around which projects and collaborators auspiciously rotate. Fandom, after all, isn’t free from our worst patriarchal impulses—it doesn’t take much for us to buy the often-sold tale of a genius man who orchestrates all movement around him (artist profiles are especially guilty merchants in this trade.) True portraits of artists and their creative scenes show the energetic yet nebulous points, where people and their ideas and efforts coalesce into one another across space and time. “It's very easy sometimes to get mistaken as that [center of a] magnetic field. Because I know a lot of times it comes from praise, which I appreciate,” MIKE tells me. “But I feel, in honesty, that there's a lot that goes into it. The main component is just the love everybody has for art and each other.” 

There is also a palpable, playful energy around the extended Young World universe that suggests a sincere appreciation for artistry unimpeded by self-seriousness. “When it comes to it, it’s a group of friends who are having a lot of fun. We prioritize a good time. We create in that magnetic field,” MIKE says. He. He credits his friend, manager, and co-conspirator Naavin Karimbux: “A lot of times, a lot of these things I feel already have a spirit or soul of themselves, in a sense. Me and especially my homie Naavin just do a lot to make things easier to enjoy or shine light on things that people may have not necessarily been paying attention to.”

A decade deep into his practice, there’s a self-assuredness that has arrived for MIKE. “I think the older I get, the more I realize everybody has their purpose, and maybe music is my purpose. So that's why I always feel most purposeful when I'm in the mix, doing the music thing,” he tells me. But he has moments of doubt as well. “The way that I started making music is how I still make music today,” he adds, sharing that his first album was made on a stolen microphone (“I know God is going to deal with me for this”) and a cracked version of Ableton on a laptop his sister gifted him for his high school graduation, which he finally replaced last year. “Sometimes I feel like there's a self-guilt thing in me, where I'd be like, am I cheating my way through this?”

“I think the older I get, the more I realize everybody has their purpose, and maybe music is my purpose. So that's why I always feel most purposeful when I'm in the mix, doing the music thing..."

But just as quickly as he spirals down that dubious path, he turns to clarity, even advice, about the spellwork that is creativity. “Sometimes it's hard for people to believe that they could turn something that's not tangible into something tangible. Like, ‘Oh, this is just a thought that I had, now I'm about to turn this into artwork, and I'm about to turn this into the album title’,” MIKE says. “You are low-key world building, in a sense. And I think people sleep on their ability to do that.”

“This music thing is…” he trails off. “Maybe I had to believe it for myself so I could be as dedicated to it, but it literally felt like magic.”

Issue 06 Cover Story: MIKE. Shop the Magnetism Issue

MIKECC01.jpg

MIKE

Words by Gum, Photography by Guarionex Rodriguez Jr.
Stylist: Gia Seo, Stylist Assist: Aaron Ramey, Makeup: Mollie Gloss, Photo Assistant: Tyler Andrew, Photo Assistant: Emilio Chavez, Production Designer: Fletcher Chancey, Art Assistant: Colin Phelan, Art Assistant: Nick Kozmin

As a Black southerner with family records destroyed long ago, the music is both new and intrinsically familiar. Nobody was listening to jungle on the dairy farms in North Carolina, I promise. Yet over the last five years, the genre has come to mean a lot to me and has defined some of my most important friendships and artist relationships. Bass music and sound system culture represent a commitment to sonic abstraction and resistance, and is deeply connected to the sociopolitical history and spiritual contexts of Black people in the Caribbean and the UK. The increasing popularity of the genre in the American market allows us the opportunity to evaluate its diasporic impact and, as Black artists, compare form, style, and perspective. To be a junglist is to be a steward of this history and culture of sound manipulation.

Nia Archives is an artist that I’m extremely proud of both for her excellent music and her efforts in preserving and progressing the culture of jungle music worldwide. Her MOBO Award for Best Dance/Electronic Act is more than well-deserved, and the release of her debut album, Silence Is Loud, is a milestone in her powerful career thus far. She charts an interesting new course for the sonic aesthetics of the genre by fusing it with Britpop and reimagining its context with visuals and storytelling that aren’t limited to the club-going experience.

We catch each other (virtually) in transit for a conversation that I’ve been looking forward to for a while now. Collapsing the distance from Japan to the UK with the magic of video conferencing, we discuss all things jungle, touring, and the future of raving. After missing her event with Renegade and my close friends Swami Sound and Dazegxd in NYC’s Herbert Von King Park, this interview leaves my FOMO satiated.

Gum: I’ve been excited to ask about your film interests. I resonated with that a lot because my first year at university was at NYU for film, and my film experience has definitely impacted the way that I approach my music and try to conceptualize my albums. Did that play a part at all in the development of Silence Is Loud? And how does it impact your music production overall?

Nia: Yeah, I love visual arts. I think if I didn't do music, I'd probably be a creative director or something like that because I really enjoy building a narrative — exploring a narrative with visuals and different media. Nia Archives was a visual archive and then became a sonic archive. So with the album, I wanted to have really strong imagery that all created this world where the album exists in. We’ve got this bunny logo that my friend made for me, and I was trying to tap into that kind of Aphex Twin heavy logo that's easily recognizable. There were so many references to old magazines from the 90s and a lot of old music videos from The Prodigy. So I think to me, the visual side is probably just as important as the music. Obviously the music is first, but I think visuals are definitely just as important. It's another way to express your artistry and your identity. It's like two different hats. 
Gum: Are we going to have a Nia Archives directorial era, making some short films and whatnot? Is that something that you would be open to doing in a larger capacity? 

Nia: I'd love to. I think maybe in a few years. I think that'd be really fun. If the opportunity comes to me, I'd love that. 

Gum: As far as the imagery of the album, I found the prevalence of the Union Jack flag in the album assets interesting. Can you talk a bit about what that imagery means for you and how it relates to the album? 

Nia: The Union Jack was referenced in a lot of punk imagery, and I really love the visual archive of the punk era, especially in the 80s and 90s. There's a little bit of nationalism in there, which is kind of unexpected when you're dual heritage coming from a Caribbean background. I actually saw a tweet the other day about how a lot of American artists actually have a lot of nationalism, like ASAP Rocky with the American flag and stuff like that. Sometimes Brits, especially in this era, might stay away from it, but I think because I was making a lot of Britpop and punky jungle music, I felt like it just made so much sense to have that Union Jack flag imagery in there because it has that punk meaning as well. I thought that would fit in with the energy of jungle, which to me is really rebellious as well. 

Gum: I see a slight parallel between rap music and jungle in the sense that I personally feel like it can be very revolutionary and politically intriguing. I feel like I can see it in the underground community very obviously, but a lot of people see the commercialization of the genres and the way social media affects them and they start to feel like the genre has lost its edge, so to speak, or lost its teeth as far as being politically involved. I wonder how you feel about navigating that. Do you think that jungle is still revolutionary? What kind of political meaning do you think your music has for your audience? 

Nia: I see it more as rebellious over revolutionary. I feel it's a super rebellious genre and culture, the rave element of it coming from the roots of acid house and the free party era into jungle and raving. It’s rebellious, and it definitely still has that spirit, and there are a lot of young people coming through that I'm really excited about. Obviously where there has been commercialization — it’s kind of already happened. That happened in the 90s as well. You had so many commercial artists making jungle in the 90s. I think it's just the cycle is repeating and where you have people making those commercial tunes, I think sometimes people in the underground get really purist about it. But I think it’s cool because it all brings it back to the original source. 

A hardcore junglist might say my music's super watered down. It's not authentic jungle. But then some 18-year-old kid might listen to my music and then go find out about Dillinja and Lemon D, Goldie, all them lots. I think it's all super relative, and I think it's an exciting time because without young people and the new gen, it is not going to continue. It will age out when the original junglists decide they're done with partying or decide they're done with going out to rave and stuff. It's super cool to see people under 25 really getting into the music — people under 30 as well because that's what pushes things forward in my opinion. 

Gum: I was never really much of a club-goer or a rave kid at all, really. I don't go to the club much unless I'm going to DJ. So a lot of electronic music for me has been a very in-the-crib experience — hanging out at home by myself listening to dance music. It's been interesting to see this phenomenon develop, especially in the states where third spaces and public spaces in general feel under assault. It’s hard to just chill in public. There's not really any space for young people to hang out without spending a fuck ton of money. Where are these spaces and where can we rave safely and without spending all of our money? Also as black people trying to do the whole rave thing in America, the stakes feel so high, and it feels so dangerous. I think that's kind of what has been pushing everybody back into the bedroom electronic situation. How do you navigate that kind of tension, and is it like this in the UK as well? Do you find yourself contextualizing your music — even though it is rave music — with the isolation that's come from being in this situation that the pandemic has left us in? 

Nia: I started this Nia Archives project during the lockdown, so it’s funny because I made this music which was for a club environment in my bedroom, and I still make a lot of my music, write a lot of my songs, in bed. I've come from that bedroom producer background and that's really comfortable for me, which is so weird. I think that's one of the things I like about my music — it’s suitable for loads of different environments. It can go off in the club, but it’s also really nice to listen to in the kitchen or when I'm on a run or if I'm on a plane or in a car, whatever. That's one of the things that I like about jungle in general, not just my music. 

I remember I spoke to Goldie about “Inner City Life” and he was like, “People weren't playing that tune in the 90s in the club because it was just too sad. It made everyone cry, and it was more of a listening tune.” People would be like, “This is weird,” and then they'd go and make remixes specifically made for the club. The music is so fast that people think it’s only meant for the club, but I think we are talking about spaces as well. I do notice in America that the rave scene is super different from the UK. It's got such a rich history in creating genres like house music, which basically is the start of everything. 

It does feel like there is a bit of a disconnect sometimes in America with the raving culture. Not New York, necessarily. New York, Miami, and San Francisco actually feel really vibey and really similar to what I know. In other spaces in America, it feels really commercialized, and everyone's just wearing neon leotards and that's what it's about. Not in a rude way, but the experience of dressing up to go to a rave rather than [going for] the music and the culture, I think in the UK case, it's the complete opposite. It doesn't actually matter what you're wearing, people just go in a tracksuit. It's not about the look, necessarily. It’s more about the DJs. The people are so snobby about sound systems in the UK. People will be there and be like, “Oh no, this sound is rubbish, we can't do this.” 

But I've definitely noticed, obviously in the past couple of years, a lot of venues are struggling. I think we're going through a recession right now. I think a lot of festivals aren't going ahead this year. There's a bit of a shift at the moment in terms of spaces to party. I think it's so important to create these communities that don't rely on such major corporations. Even stuff like relying on social media to connect with an audience or the community. I think this is the time to start thinking about what are the ways around this, and how can we connect easier with people and put on parties that aren't so corporate. I dunno if that makes sense, but that's been on my mind recently. 

Gum: What do you think is the biggest difference that you've experienced in the American dance scene versus elsewhere? Conversely, are there any interesting similarities? 

Nia: I think it honestly depends place by place because I feel like, for example, New York has so many similarities with London. I feel like I make more sense when I'm in New York than when I'm in London. I feel like I fit in more there. In terms of partying and stuff, I feel like New York is definitely the most ahead city. Then I would have to say San Francisco — they love to have fun in San Francisco — but I think each territory is different. Certain places I'll go, it feels like when I'm playing, it's a real educational moment, and people are like, “What is this music? This is a lot,” but they're getting into it. Or if I go to Australia — I feel way more ahead in my career in Australia than I do in the UK. They love jungle and drum and bass, and they listen to it all day. Each place is different, and it's really fun to see the different crowds and the different levels of excitement in different places for the music. 

Gum: Speaking of tour, a lot of independent artists have been talking about how hard it is to tour and how difficult it is. Do you resonate with any of those complaints? How's touring been for you? 

Nia: Yeah, I think I'm really blessed. Doing dance music, it's so much easier for me to tour. I don't have the most complex setup, whereas if you're in a band, it's so expensive to tour at the moment. So I feel really blessed that I have that kind of mobility, and that is probably the reason why I've been able to go so many different places. I think for me, touring, I hated it the first year I did it. Just rubbish shows in the middle of the night or fucking graveyard shifts, and it was really tough. I traveled a lot of places on my own, and I didn't like that. I was just super unhealthy on tour last year in the US. I was drinking all the time, eating burgers every day, getting so excited by all the novelty foods and stuff and eating really unhealthy for three weeks and then wondering why I was so depressed because I just literally did not eat a vegetable for a month.

But now I actually really enjoy it because when I'm on tour I only eat salad or sushi. That's my rule. I drink, but I won't drink every day — it’s a weekend thing. I also work out, which is really good for my mental health. I've started bringing my friends with me. My friends came with me to Australia and to America. Bringing my friends makes it feel way more fun. It's not such an intense work focus. I work with a lot of very logical men who are amazing at what they do, but sometimes you need the non-logical chat to make it fun. Bringing my friends on tour has probably been the best thing that I've done in the past six months. I've started making more friends in different places. I'll go to places now, and I'll know people there so I can just hang out with them. I feel very lucky, but I'm really enjoying it at the moment. Don't want to speak too soon, but yeah, so far so good. 

"It does feel like there is a bit of a disconnect sometimes in America with the raving culture. Not New York, necessarily. New York, Miami, and San Francisco actually feel really vibey and really similar to what I know. In other spaces in America, it feels really commercialized, and everyone's just wearing neon leotards and that's what it's about."

Gum: How do you see your live performance experience changing in the future, if at all? What would your dream performance situation be? 

Nia: I'm changing it slightly this year because I've got more visual aspects, which is super important to me. Really elevated the show this year with the visuals and obviously more album tracks, but then next year will be a bit of a weird year because I won't release any projects. I might release some singles, but it'll probably be a bit different next year. But the year after, honestly, depending on how I do it and the state of the world, I think I can do the live thing. I think there's a lot of chat and pressure for me to do the band because I've done it a few times for one-off things with the BBC. I want to do the band, but I don't want to do it too soon because I think number one, it's really expensive. Number two, I'm 24. At this stage in my life most of my audience is super young. If I was 18, I dunno if I'd want to go see me with a band, or if I want to go see me behind the decks, having a more clubby vibe. So I don't want to take it too quickly and run too fast because where do I go from there? I want to feel like I've got some growth into that. In a year or so, it could be more of a live hybrid where I'm maybe playing some parts, but sometimes I watch people when they do have the live shows and I find it so boring. 

I just want to keep it really fun. I don't want it to be me with a keyboard because if I’m focusing on all these things that I need to do, I don't have a chance to have fun with the audience. I want to make sure that whatever I'm doing is still really fun. If I do move into that band space, I want to make sure my audience is ready for it. 

Gum: Have you felt a lot of tension between being perceived as a producer/DJ versus songwriter? Do you personally feel any of that tension, and how are you dealing with that right now? How do you want people to perceive your artist project? 

Nia: I don't really mind, to be honest. I definitely prefer the producer/DJ label over the singer-songwriter because I feel like I do so much more than just write and sing songs. I feel like I'd rather be known as a producer. To me, that makes me feel a bit cooler, so I'll take that. I guess it'll change as I get older and if I do different things — if I write music for other people or if I do more ghost production and stuff, it might change, but I'm totally open to kind of growing in that space. 

Gum: The reception of “Off Wiv Ya Headz” has been so cool. Do you see yourself doing more remixes in the future? Are remixes going to be a big part of your career going forward? 

Nia: I've actually just finished a remix literally a couple of days ago for someone who I'm super excited about. My dream, if I could, would probably be to do two or three remixes a year — maybe two, one at the start and one at the end, just because I actually really enjoy doing them. I find it quite fun because the song's already good, and it's just a bit of a jigsaw putting together all these other pieces. I do them for fun anyway. I make loads of edits just for fun. I'd love to keep doing them, and it's a cool way to collaborate with people in place of features because I don’t really do a lot of features at this point. I did a remix with Jorja last year. I've listened to her music for years, so that was super fun to collaborate with her in that way as well. I hope I can keep doing them in the future.

"I definitely prefer the producer/DJ label over the singer-songwriter because I feel like I do so much more than just write and sing songs. I feel like I'd rather be known as a producer."

Gum: One thing that has kind of piqued my interest a bit as far as the reception of jungle in America is — maybe I'm biased. I hate TikTok because I think it's evil, but it has been both really useful and kind of annoying. In my experience working with Daze, on TikTok they refer to jungle as video game music, and they almost solely talk about it in video game references. 

Jungle stands out to me as a big Jamaican cultural export and a defining musical product of the Windrush generation. How do you see yourself preserving the culture and the history of jungle music? Do you feel like the whole TikTok-ification of it is a pressing issue? Do you feel a pressure to educate the younger generation or do you trust that the audience will dig for it if they love it? 

Nia: When the TikTok jungle thing started, I'd say two years ago, it really used to stress me out. I used to feel really annoyed about it and frustrated. As things have kind of moved since that time, I actually feel so relaxed about it because I think it's a tale as old as time. There's always going to be people that jump on a bandwagon of a sound without having any real connection to that culture or community offline. So I think for me, what's been really encouraging is seeing all these people that really love the music, and they're not labeling it something incorrect. I think sometimes with the TikTok thing, what really frustrated me at the time was more the erasure of these black pioneers who created the sound in the 90s — very street music, working class music — and for people to come online and either claim it as something new that they're doing or completely redefine it and call it breakcore or something is completely wrong. 

A lot of those pioneers didn't actually make a lot of money from that music. There wasn't a lot of money in it. So that was my frustration at the time. I think maybe it's as I'm getting older, now I look at it and I think this has happened so many times before. Once I realized that, it really didn't stress me out as much, and I'm excited about what is happening in jungle, specifically offline. I think what's happening online is cool, but it's not real life. What’s happening offline, where there's real community, especially places like Bristol, London, Manchester — there's real community. There's real things happening where people can get together and enjoy the music together. Even the thing we did in New York with Renegade, bringing so many people together to enjoy music, I think that's more what it's about than TikTok hits or whatever. 

Issue 06 Cover Story: NIA ARCHIVES. Shop the Magnetism Issue

NIA_ARCHIVES_CC_0524_26.jpg

Nia Archives

What does anybody know about jungle music these days?

Words by Rian Phin, Photography by John Yuji
Lighting Tech: Jimi Franklin, Camera Assistant: Dylan Pearce, BTS: Gia Seo, Production Designer: Fletcher Chancey, Art Assistant: Colin Phelan, Art Assistant: Nick Kozmin, Make-Up: Mollie Gloss, Stylists: Nathalie Nguyen + Dominic Lopez, Models: Nathalie, Dom, Lauren, Violet, Smiley

Few independent fashion brands have the resonance to capture and retain audience attention the way cover stars Happy99 have. Designed by Dom Lopez and Nathalie Nguyen, the mysterious, futuristic brand reached a massive scope during the 2020 lockdown through its artistic vision and ability to establish an authentic community. They’ve garnered global interest and celebrity pull requests after sharing their cutting-edge digital footwear designs on Instagram; the experimental designs were initially mistaken for real samples, but were instead works of art to be experienced onscreen. With their nostalgic riffing and visionary perspective on fashion, the design pair has worked to craft a digital and real life tribe. Both experienced multidisciplinary artists, Lopez and Nguyen collaborate in perfect synergy to propel the culture’s vision of art and design into uncharted territory. With equal parts rigor, structure, and creativity that manifests in their unique expressions, the duo creates harmony in all they share.

Both artists are modest about their creative prowess and cultural impact. Nguyen’s background in digital design and garment construction and Lopez’s background in technology and music as a purveyor of cutting-edge and nostalgic culture blend harmoniously to establish the brand’s foundation of masterfully designed clothes with cultural resonance.

Rian: Could you share more about your individual backgrounds and how they overlap creatively?

Nathalie: I went to art school, but I went for 3D animation for the first year and a half, at Academy of Arts in San Francisco. They actually teach you discipline, but I didn't have discipline as an 18-year-old, so I actually dropped out of that major and switched to something called visual development, which is creative storyboarding for video games, comics, and animation. So that's kind of where I was going, like I just decided to be more of a puppet designer than a puppeteer, which is about moving things, not drawing things, very different things. And then I graduated in 2015-ish. I think I met Dom in late 2017. We started working together in 2018.

Dom: I was making beats in high school. I had motion on MySpace. [Laughs] I was just making beats in early SoundCloud days, like 2010, 2011, 2012 I was working at a flea market and just making beats.

Dom modestly shares about being recognized by Matthew Williams (of ALYX, Givenchy), becoming a signed producer, working on the Yeezus album and then spending time gaming. During this period of gaming, he continued to grow and explore his appreciation for the beauty of game design as an art form and his nostalgia for vintage consoles like the PlayStation 1 and Sega Dreamcast.

Dom: When it comes to computers, growing up, I knew how to use Photoshop, I knew how to use all the movie programs, so I was already familiar with music programs. I just looked at a laptop as a tool to do stuff on, until that moment. I didn't like, ever think of it as a tool to make video games on, you know. But at the time, I just searched on YouTube on how to make a video game on a MacBook, and I searched for that, probably 2013, and then I was like, “Oh shit I could do this.” I could watch these tutorials for hours and learn a bunch about coding and animating whatever, so I started just doing that a lot instead of playing video games. I was just like making beats and trying to figure out how to make games. I wasn't good at it, but I made stuff that entertained me. If I showed my friends I was working on a video game, they thought I was a magician or something.

The pair explains that they were first drawn to each other at a burger spot and joined forces creatively and romantically.

Nathalie: We eloped into a relationship. Obviously people told us, “If you guys get together and just end up in the Midwest somewhere as a married couple that just has four kids and only Netflix and chills, we would be really sad.” We didn't have anything that we could confidently say, “This is our thing, this makes us money, and it makes us happy.” We started Happy99 almost to prove the point.

Dom: Before 3D modeling shoes, our homie said he had a plug on making shoes. And we got hyped to hear that because we're like, “Oh, we can make a shoe! Let's just try to go all out and make some crazy stuff!” We were like literally cutting shoes apart, trying to understand how they worked. We were trying to make a physical shoe, and then when it came down to it, we realized it was just so much money. So then we just made 3D shoes, which was Nat’s idea.

Nathalie: I was like, I need stimulation, and we were 3,000 miles apart. We're not making shoes; it's too expensive, and we suck at it, so we were just like, “Okay, I guess we'll do this.” We were sending the file back and forth, and then we started 3D photoshopping them on our friends' feet to just troll the internet. But then what happened? A stylist for Lady Gaga reached out, and then a stylist for Grimes hit us up and wanted a size 8. And we were just like, “They're not real! I can't believe we're pulling it off!” That's how early-3D it was.

Dom: That's how early people really didn't understand—people really didn't know it was fake. If you look at it right now, it's obvious because we have AI. We have eyeball training for AI now, but it was like the collective consciousness was just so dumb that even we had that blindness—like we looked at it, and we were like, “Oh yeah this is so real, we're gonna fool everybody.” 

The meaning of “streetwear” has been abstracted over time into a simple reference point for luxury fashion and logo tees designed as cash grabs. The designers of Happy99 are visionaries, restoring the core values of streetwear by cultivating true community around their work, connecting with their audience beyond aesthetics.

Rian: From global love and highly anticipated drops to the cult following of your store in Manhattan, the origins of Happy99 feel collective and authentic. A lot of “streetwear” brands now are printing logos on shirts, without the fundamental principles of using design as a vehicle to spread their community’s values.

Can you tell me about Happy99’s ability to exist beyond branded clothes and cultivate community so effectively?

Nathalie: I think our brand speaks out to people because they feel like we’re interested in the same hobbies as them, like anime, video games, and music. Especially when it started…

Dom: When I'm at the store, a lot of kids come in and ask a lot of questions like, “How did you guys get to this point”? And the most honest way that I could think about it is just the community—the online community that me and Nat had prior to the brand.

Dom: We knew a lot of weirdos. We never belonged to a scene. We were always floaters. We got these homies that skate over here, we got homies that are more in the queer club scene—we got homies that are just like on some normal shit. Through that network of people and what was going on at the time, it spread through these different subcultures. At the time we didn't think anything of it. Obviously now looking back, I feel like we had like the most ideal PR list one could have ever wished for. In terms of seeding and people being interested in the brand…

Nathalie: It was like a handful, like two people per niche or groups of friends we had, and there were like twenty groups!

Although they’ve established a broad, interconnected audience and brand, they remain mysterious and humble, rooted in their community. They seem to extend that shared personal ethos to their brand’s practice.  

Dom: People are so drawn to the characters, but they don't even know that much about them. They just know what they stand for. And I think that was interesting, when they slowly started to just represent us as people.

When I'm at the store, a lot of kids come in and ask a lot of questions like, “How did you guys get to this point”? And the most honest way that I could think about it is just the community—the online community that me and Nat had prior to the brand.

The duo explains that they haven’t had to use traditional influencer marketing or billboard ads because of their strong relationship with their global network. 

Dom: To this day, we haven't done any of it; we're mostly word of mouth. People who come visit the store, sometimes I ask them, “How'd you hear about it?” They're like, “A friend.” Always a friend, always!

I think like, the community kind of made itself, you know, like created itself for sure.

Rian: You’re creative visionaries and your business operates so differently than the rest of the industry. Do you care if the industry catches up to your innovative perspectives on community and carefully cultivating identity online? Do you value your brand’s uniqueness?

Dom: We could do better in a lot of ways; we're learning. Historically, we used to market a lot with 3D. We used to market with dolls; we've maybe marketed with photos of humans twice, in terms of selling clothes. But I just can't see myself doing it as often as other brands do. [To] push a visual image of somebody onto the consumer, and this person might look like a very unique person or something, or a person that belongs to the subculture, whatever. But in my head, I just know how random the Happy99 fan is, and how different that is. I don't even feel like I want to enforce how that person should look. Even though it is my business to enforce that, I feel like at the same time, I don't have a business telling y'all how to rock this stuff. You can figure it out.

Even when it says our product sells out, it doesn't mean we're selling out like a thousand shirts at a time or something. You know, it's very intimate. But the optics online just make it look like we are potentially a big corporation.

Me and Nat do everything for the brand. We have really awesome friends who work the store, because we used to work the store, and then we realized we weren't designing anything. 

I think it's funny because I always think like, damn, one day, we could really benefit from someone designing or someone taking better product shots. We take the product shots on the iPhone.

Rian: I feel like that's why it resonates with people. You guys have your authorship in it, that's what I mean. 

Dom: I think that's the thing about it. Whether you know it or not, how ingrained in the brand me and Nat are, I think somehow it reaches people—whether you know it or not.

Rian: Why do you think your work has the cultural resonance it does?

Dom: It's just like feeling like it's a home-cooked meal; there's something that just feels different about it, other than a shirt you would buy at Zumies. I think a lot of it is really just giving people space to just imagine things for themselves. I think growing up, that's something [that was] important to me—figuring out what you like for yourself, because those are kind of the things that you're more excited about generally, the things you found on your own. Like ever since like second or third grade, I feel like that's been a feeling that I just chase all the time. It's just like, I like this thing more because I found it, because nobody showed me. I think a lot of people have that kind of connection to it.

"It's just like feeling like it's a home-cooked meal; there's something that just feels different about it, other than a shirt you would buy at Zumies. I think a lot of it is really just giving people space to just imagine things for themselves."

The pair describe their experience shooting with Cult Classic, learning to release control, and collaborating with their closest friends. 

Nathalie: I know Azha and Apryl from like, 2014–15 Bay Area, like, when they used to do Shade Zine. And I knew Justin because we worked with him a few years back, and you know, they worked with a lot of people who collaborated with us. 

Doing the shoot was really cool because we are really scared of shoots, because we're scared of using real models because of the association, [as] we discussed earlier, and the lack of control. It just becomes other people collaborating, and we don't want to be, like, dictators in the shoot. But we have very particular things. And even setting it up, we were very stingy. We were just like, “Um, can we use our friend? Can we get our friend to shoot it?” And then, “Can we just shoot our friends, please?” Like, we just needed to be, like, as close to home as possible, because any variable, any model that we don't know—and then we don't know how to communicate with the model to get what we want, because we don't even know them.

We are kind of control freaks; that is kind of a problem. But we're really happy that this is our biggest shoot, and most professional shoot, and we got to do a Cult Classic, because they kind of already knew us from years back, and they gave us creative control—like, they were very open to it. Anything we asked, they were like, “eah.”- It changed us and helped us understand that maybe doing a photo shoot isn't the worst thing ever—it doesn't have to be a nightmare. 

So we originally were like, “Let's just do this on dolls,” like, no physical people, no models. We were really scared, but we're glad we opened up and let people in and did it the more traditional way because we got to use, you know, our family. Like the three people who work in the store, and we see every day, like, these are our closest friends. And people who just kind of know the day-by-day operations of Happy99—there's nothing more like Happy99 than them.

Drawn to each other, casting a shared vision, Happy99 is a testament to the power of connection, partnership and community. 

Issue 06 Cover Story: HAPPY99. Shop the Magnetism Issue

66927_JYU_CultClassicMagazine-Happy99_010_24-colorpass.jpg

HAPPY99



Words by Erika Nathanielsz
Photography by Amira Green

I think we can all relate to the moment when an unfamiliar artist or album somehow makes its way through the endless internet and ends up in our hands. Our curiosity is peaked, and we take a step further to click play. On even rarer occasions, we are instant fans. 

That was my serendipitous experience with Melika's music, who goes by the moniker Offering Rain. Diving into their 2022 self-titled album, I played the first track on the record, inner vox, nodded my head to the soft bells, tapped my foot to the drums, and then I heard their voice, and I was hooked.

O: I think my origin story really starts with my parents. 

O: My dad is an artist, a painter. He was born in India, he came to the US to pursue art, and he met my mom in Brooklyn. She's from Ecuador. 

I wrote this in a note earlier, but essentially I'm very proudly their love child. So it kind of begins with them. My mom's also an artist in her own right. I don't think she would self-identify as such. My dad waited 13 years to get into an artist complex, which is where we both [reside] right now. And that's where I grew up. I grew up in a building filled with artists, painters, musicians, writers, and actors. Some are notable, and some are super talented but don't have as much recognition. So it was a very interesting upbringing. 

E: Wow, that's very rich culturally and creatively. Amazing. Does your dad still paint? 

O: He is still painting. While I was away, I noticed that he had been working on a new painting. Before I left, it was mostly all red, but now I see this splurge of blue. He has an ebb and flow of going in and out of painting. He's 75, so it’s nice to see him still doing it. 

E: That's beautiful. Was painting your first medium? 

O: I mean, arguably, yes, but I was always running around singing and writing little poems for as long as I can remember. My dad was a single parent, which meant that I spent a lot of my time alone in my own world, and so I found ways to occupy my time. 

E: What would you consider your introduction to music?

O: I was introduced to Bollywood at a young age, which was an interesting introduction to music and media. A lot of Bollywood films are musicals, and those films are really colorful, really entertaining, really dramatic, really romantic, and sometimes really toxic. So that was kind of introduction to music or to understanding the range of sounds, and that also spiraled into other things.

E: Right, right. I noticed with your music, there's such a convergence of different sounds happening. It's like a little r&b, a little soundscape, a little house etc. I like the mixture of things, they feel really good together. What does your process look like?

O: It certainly varies. I think I'm also at a point now where I'm really feeling my limitations, and I want to really challenge myself to push those bounds. I don't know exactly what that looks like yet, but that's my current work in progress. A lot of the time, my process has been throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks, and I feel like I've had to do this dance of when am I producing, when am I songwriting, when am I writing poetry, and how do those things come together? 


I'll produce something first, and then I'll just do a bunch of freestyles on it, and then I'll cut that up and arrange it like, okay, this is the chorus, or this is a bridge, or whatever. And it's been a lot of that, and I'm sure that will kind of hold me down for the time to come. But I also do love the magic that happens when I'm in a room with other musicians, and we're just jamming and there’s no agenda. Just music coming from the spirit. That is becoming more and more interesting to me and that's where I want to focus my time and attention. 


E: Thank you for explaining that. I really enjoy listening to a song and wondering how did that person make that? I was curious about your name Offering Rain, and how you came to that. 


O: I think in 2021 or so, I wrote a poem in my notebook while I was on the train, I was feeling really existential, this was deep in the pandemic. And I wrote this poem, I think it's about self mothering, which is a theme that's reemerging for me now. I was trying to write from the point of view of a higher being. I just let whatever come out, and one line in that poem is “I'm an offering rain.” And that thought was about moment on earth in my imagination where it's so dry, and we're in deep need of nourishment, and the idea is that the Gods have blessed us with this beautiful rain that will nourish us and make us grow, and all this stuff. So that's kind of the idea. 

I think I'm reaching this point, or it feels like I'm at a crossroads where I'm like, I don't want to compromise my desire anymore.

E: Wow, I love that. That's beautiful. I understand that moment of mid pandemic reflection too. Can we talk about the residency that you just completed? How was it?

O: It was exactly what I needed, and I'm so grateful. I’ll share the name of the residency too, it’s called Ma’s House. I've been going through personal loss, and I am currently doing a lot of grieving. I think being there and being away from the day-to-day routine, going to the beach and biking around, and being in a place I've never been before, especially being in nature for me, is really nourishing for my soul. And I just cried a bunch, and I painted, I worked on one song that I love, and then there's a few other songs where I'm like, they're all right. 

What I thought was really synchronistic was that Robin Wall Kimmerer, who authored Braiding Sweetgrass, did an event at Ma’s House while I was there. I have been reading that book—it's on my bedside—and I was so happy to be in her presence and hear her speak. I even asked her a question about grief, just looking for insight. It was really cool to hear her talk about her experience.

E: That’s amazing you got to meet her. What amazing timing, especially during a time when you are grieving. I feel like I’ve almost been going through growing pains. Maneuvering through loss as it compounds the older I get. Do you find that creating or making feels kind of self-soothing in a way, or therapeutic? 

O: I think when I'm improvising and jamming with other people, that process is really therapeutic for me because I think being on the computer, I don't feel like I'm engaging with the outer world. I think in order to move through grief and loss and even joy, for that matter, it's better to share sorrow and share joy than to keep it to ourselves. So, I find that being with other people in a musical setting and singing with them is very therapeutic for me.

E: Absolutely. Big on sharing space and grief when you can. I love that addition about joy too. Where do you see your music guiding you? 

O: I think right now, my main aspiration is to truly follow my heart, and it feels like such a new idea to integrate. I feel like there's a part of me that follows my heart. Just follow my heart. There's a part of me that knows that. But to fully believe and embody that is another practice entirely, and I think I'm reaching this point, or it feels like I'm at a crossroads where I don't want to compromise my desire anymore. There is a voice telling me that I'm meant to sing, and I'm going to do everything in my power to protect this voice, nurture this voice, and give it what it's asking for. I think this is also an area where I have to challenge a lot of my fear-based beliefs, such as how I am going to make money and all this stuff. But I think that I want to give myself the opportunity to move purely out of love for this thing. I'm very lucky to lean on my dad for the time being and be back in the home where I grew up. 

I don't think I've ever granted myself the mindset of being doubt free about music and doing music, and I'm just really going to bet on myself.

E: Yes, yes, and please continue betting on yourself. I listened to wolves+spirals recently. I love how soft and playful this song is. It sounds like a little love song, or like asking questions if it could be something. 

O: Yeah. It's supposed to be this flirtatious song, and then it turns into something else, and I don’t know what it's turned into, to be honest. I don't smoke, but when I was writing I thought it would be fun to be like “do you have a light?” I was thinking, that's a quintessential pickup line. You got a light, someone's outside talking to someone. So I kind of played off of that, and it was more about, do you have that internal light and are we going to be a flame or, it's kind of playing on that idea. 

O: Yeah, so it's just like, are we going to pursue this or what? 

2024_CC_OfferingRain_03.jpg

Offering Rain

Intuition and Making: A Conversation with Aruni Dharmakirthi



In Conversation with Erika Nathanielsz
Photography by Christopher Garcia Valle

Aruni Dharmakirthi allows their intuition to guide them. The Sri Lankan-born artist and teacher relies on pausing, listening, and looking to the past to guide their making. Their work reflects the lives of the people who came before them. Family, home, and spirituality. Aruni’s limitless exploration of materials and textures speaks to the spirit of their practice, to not bind yourself to a medium. To keep exploring. As an educator themselves, these concepts that root their practice also get passed down to a new generation of artists.

E: I was curious about your upbringing. I know you were raised in Florida, but I didn't realize you were born in Sri Lanka. 

A: Really? Yeah, I was born in Sri Lanka and then I moved to America when I was five years old, so we moved in 95. 


E: Do you have any core memories of Sri Lanka?


A : I do. Yeah. It's funny. A lot of them are based around my childhood home, which I guess makes sense. I was so little, but I do have specific memories that feel very detailed, and I'm not totally sure why, because it's such a young age.

E: Beautiful. How often do you visit back home?


A: This is more of a recent thing. I moved to Florida in ‘95 and I didn't go back until 2016. I was fully an adult. I was in college at Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon and went back to Sri Lanka to do research. My thesis project had a lot to do with immigrating and the memories of that home so I went back for that. And this year we're going back as well, and I'm trying to make it an effort to go more often now.

E: I can relate to that feeling of wanting to come back to your familial home.

A: It was pretty intuitive. The first time I did it was as a kid - I had an art class in middle school. It was a sewing class that my science teacher actually taught, haha. She was very cool. 
My mom would also teach hand stitching to us when we were little in the summer. Back then I was really into the idea of becoming a fashion designer. 

E: I also wanted to be a fashion designer as a kid haha.

A: Right? I had notebooks full of clothes that I would draw out. There was a lot of interest in fabric and textiles as a kid. And then in undergrad, I took a soft sculpture class. So that was the other way that I got into it more as an adult. I took that class twice, I really loved my teacher Kelly Boehmer. After I took that class, it kind of felt like the path that I would continue to work within. 


For collage making, I did it periodically throughout my adult art practice, and right before I went to Oregon, I started to do digital collages of my family photos. Right before I moved, I remember scanning a bunch of my parents' photographs. I was just going through and just thinking, I'm going to do something with this, but I don't know what. It did end up becoming a big part of the projects I was making when I was over there.

E: Oh wow, I was wondering how that started. I noticed a lot of photo incorporation in your quilts. That's cool to hear how that started, archiving and then turning it into something.

A: Yeah. It was definitely something I did even when I was little, just going through those family photographs. I think my parents also enjoyed doing that. With my aunts that lived in Florida, I would always wait for storytelling to happen, and to talk about the experiences they had and whatnot. And so I would look through those books all the time or those albums all the time. But yeah, right before I left, I was like, I want to do something with this, but I don't know what exactly. And then it kind of turned into those sort of strange surrealist photographic collages.

E: That’s wonderful. I love the sharing of information passed down through family. Your recent exhibit is entitled Shrine Room, correct?

E  Cool. I was wondering what the thread was for those pieces and how you came to naming it Shrine Room?


A: So when I was making those pieces, it's so funny…I was teaching a lot of oil pastel drawings to my students. I teach art classes as well, but I was doing a lot of still life drawing with my students. I was looking at a lot of still lifes, and then I started noticing that I was making a lot of that as well. I also started to practice Buddhism more seriously in the past couple of years, and I've been learning a lot about the practice of having a shrine, how it functions within the Buddhist lineage, and it kind of came together. A lot of my work, I feel like it comes together intuitively.

My studio practice is in my home. So there is this aspect of looking at the things that are around, there are so many different still lives that I can see and put together. I created these still shrine pieces as well as these felted works, which I kind of thought of as almost divinity type figures. And so all of the shrines are kind of around that central felted composition.

E: Got it. Yeah, I was really curious about the felted works too. Is this a new texture that you were playing around with, or is it something that you've incorporated in your work before?

A: Yeah, I have incorporated it in my work before, but as small patches. So within the quilted pieces, I've had felted pieces that I've made mostly needle felted, small faces or spirals. They're usually single iconographic images. But this is definitely a newer project that I've been doing, it's a mixture of wet felting to make the sheets of fabric, and then also needle felting, where I'm kind of drawing or painting directly onto the felt.

E: Got it. I love those pieces, by the way. They're beautiful. There was something about it that felt really dreamlike.


A: Yes, they really look like watercolor in a way. There's a looseness to it, which I love that you described as dreamlike.


E: I'm always curious with artists on how they decide when a piece is done. What does that process look like for you?

A: That's such a great question. I think it changes for different pieces. Some of them feel really planned out, and so I'm working from a sketch and I'm just trying to get it as close to the sketch as possible. I think some of the works are made much more intuitively where there might be a loose plan, and then I am sort of working with the idea and compromising with how the material functions. So, yeah, it's kind of an intuitive process. But I do work from my sketches often. Or if I'm struggling with an idea, I'll go to my sketchbooks and just kind of look at ideas that I've had from the past and see where maybe certain themes are coming up.

E: I love the flexibility in the process. I'm glad you brought up Buddhism earlier. I saw you were teaching meditation classes. Can you talk about your experience with Buddhism?

A: Yeah. So I was interested in Buddhism after I moved to New York, maybe a year or so after I moved I started to look into it a lot more. My family is culturally Buddhist. Their indigenous practice was Buddhism, but they are also Catholic, so I was raised Catholic as well. For special occasions, we would go to a temple and make offerings, but outside of that, I didn't have a lot of experience with Buddhism. 

After I moved to New York, it really was just a way to figure out mental health stuff. I was just looking for meditation practices, and it kind of felt like an onion. I got to the surface level of these introductory breath meditations, but I just became more and more curious the more I looked into it. I started exploring more, looking into podcasts and going to different meditations and different yoga centers. Eventually, I started going to a space called Three Jewels in New York, and I'm part of that Sangha.


And so I did a meditation teacher training through them, actually, and that really opened the practice up for me even more. But yeah, it's been a really interesting exploration. It's primarily Mahayana Tibetan Buddhism. It's pretty interesting. It's an untouched form of Buddhism that came from India, which eventually Buddhism kind of died out a little bit in India. So yeah, it was an interesting history of it.

E: That is really interesting. I resonated with you about living in New York, and seeking out something for your mental health. I feel like I often needed to pause when I was in New York. Is meditation a daily practice of yours?

A: I'll say it ebbs and flows. It definitely depends. I wish it was a daily practice of mine, but a few months ago, I was so fully in my teaching practice that it kind of fell off, and now I'm trying to do yoga or meditation every day. So it's always an ideal that I'm working towards. And I guess that's the aspect of it being a practice. It's always something I'm working towards.

"And I guess that's the aspect of it being a practice. It's always something I'm working towards."

E: That's true. That's a very good point about practice. I love to hear about your art teaching experience and how that has maybe influenced some of your work now.

A: So I started teaching art maybe six years ago. It was a year after I moved to New York. But it's been a really great experience. I kind of just fell into it. I was just looking for a job, and if it was in the arts, that would be more ideal. And I don't think I ever really considered myself a teacher when I started, and now I am fully sold on it. I primarily teach in New York City public schools, and I work through a nonprofit. The really nice thing about that is that it's not a class that's graded. The idea is that we're teaching kids to have studio practice. 


It's a way to teach them how to express themselves. I try to definitely show them lots of different versions of artwork. If I'm showing a still life, I'll show them a variety of artists' depictions of a still life so that they can see that there isn't one way to make a specific subject. I try to open it up as much as possible. And I think some things that I'm really interested in teaching them is point of view and being able to talk about your work and also defend your ideas. And if we do critique, I tell them that you can say no to a suggestion and say, “I want it to be this way.”

E: That's really important and probably very impactful to be a kid and be told from your teacher that there is more than one way to make or create something. And that you can stand by your ideas too.

My next question before we go into the presentation, what do you envision for the future of your art practice, what's next for you there?

A: I've told myself several times that I want to build a large-scale installation. More recently, I’ve been wanting to make costumes as well—almost like sets—and creating performances is something I've been playing around with. And yeah, I think it would be really fun to collaborate with others and make projects that people could wear and bring the works to life in a way.

E: Yeah, that's really cool. I love the flexibility in your work. You keep me surprised!

List of works in order of appearance: Offering, 2024, Felt and mixed textile, 19 x 10 inches, Guardian, 2024, Felt and mixed textile, 19 x 14 inches, Karmic Bloom, 2024, Felt and mixed textile, 17 x 15 inches, Devotion, 2024, Felt and mixed textile, 15 x 9 inches, Offering, 2024, Felt and mixed textile, 19 x 10 inches, With a Little Help From My Friends, 2024, Felt and Stainless Steel, 12 x 6.4  inches, Earthbound, 2024, Felt and mixed textile, 16.5 x 15.5 inches, Coil, 2024, Felt and mixed textile, 19 x 11 inches

DSC01793.jpg

Aruni Dharmakirthi

Screenshot 2024-09-10 at 2.02.46 PM.png

PERFORMANCES BY
Kelman Duran
Linafornia
Contour

Presented by Deluge and The MAK Center 
for Art & Architecture

Deluge is a performance series that seeks to explore the depths and outer reaches of ambient, experimental, and avant-garde sound. The series aims to create environments for deep listening and discourse around boundary-pushing work by BIPOC artists, building upon the rich landscape of ambient and experimental music performance in Los Angeles with a socially and critically engaged approach. 

In this evocative portrait, filmmaker Alexander Girav documents a series of sonic situations curated by Deluge at the Schindler House in Los Angeles. Girav captures the refined materiality, bold geometry, and subtle changing of light through the home’s spaces, as club experimentalist Kelman Duran, LA beatmaker Linafornia, and songwriter/musician Contour take us on a dynamic sonic odyssey. In this context, the home becomes an unconventional stage for performance, dissolving the boundaries between artist and audience, indoors and out, communion and solitude.

DELUGE

Standing a few yards in front of me is a MacBook Pro, a modular sound system, and an electric guitar at a gallery on East Broadway for Nick Klein’s show at Sara’s Worldwide. Behind those items is artist and musician, Jamie Krasner, born and raised in the general NYC area. Known as James K, she creates emotional, lush, and transformative music with these simple tools. As a collaborator of Yves Tumor, Beta Librae, and Drew McDowall, she has been creating these songs & soundscapes since the early 2010s. You might’ve seen her name on her monthly NTS show, or maybe on bills shared with names like Vegyn or Yawning Portal.

I sat down with James K to discuss her symphonic past, a trip down memory lane recalling her time at RISD & the Providence noise scene, her AD93 release “065 (Scorpio)”, and what’s to come next after an underground hit.

Patrick No: So, I've heard that you grew up playing instruments like the guitar and violin? At what age did you pick up those instruments?

Jamie Krasner: I started playing violin when I was five, really young. That was the first instrument that I got lessons for and started playing when I was a kid. I learned it classically. I was gifted a guitar and started teaching myself to play around 12 years old. I stopped playing the violin around 15-16 years old. With guitar, I just learned and started writing songs around that age. I was kind of writing songs before that with violin a little bit. I never really learned guitar in a shredder type of way. I learned chords as a base to write songs. I still use guitar in most of my productions. It's pretty prevalent throughout most of the work I do. Sometimes, I'll flesh out songs on guitar, and I'll then kind of turn it electronic. Learning it was really what helped me with my songwriting. It started that process or kind of pushed it forward.

PN: When you were 12 playing the guitar, were you more into covering songs you liked or more about playing around with the instrument?

JK: I played covers, for sure. I definitely was learning other people's songs. For me, it was a great way to learn the instrument because I could get the immediate satisfaction of, "Oh, I can play that song. I can sing that song!"

JK: Back then I covered let's see... I was learning Tracy Chapman, Nick Drake, and Elliott Smith. A lot of singer/songwriter guitar tracks, I mean, it was like all over the place. Anything that I wanted to learn, really. People were like, "You should sing that Avril Lavigne song." I would learn it and sing it for my friends, you know? In high school, I did start doing open mics when I started writing songs.

JK: I was performing around, doing open mics, playing in bars and stuff. MySpace was a thing back then, so I would post songs on that. Sometimes people would book me via MySpace. There was an open mic that I would also go to in the East Village, at the SideWalk Cafe. I don't know if it's still a thing, but that was like a big open mic at the time, pretty legendary.

JK: I was born in New York City, and then moved to New Rochelle, about 20 miles north of Manhattan.

PN: So after you were doing local open mics & bar gigs in the city, you went to RISD, correct?

PN: I've heard that there was a prominent noise scene in Providence, at the time.

JK: So, I was at RISD from 2007 to 2011. The noise scene, I think, really started in the early 2000s. There was this whole warehouse scene that kind of popped off in Olneyville, which is pretty close to the school. Dropouts from RISD were a major aspect of forming that community. It kind of continued. It was still pretty vibrant when I was in school. It started dying off, I'd say in the early 2010s. Things were slowing down, a lot of people were moving to New York City. I was there for the tail end of that, and that influenced me a lot. I would go to shows often. There are some people I met from that time who are super inspiring to me, some that I've even collaborated with more recently.

PN: Who are the friends that you've made through that scene or collaborated with?

JK: Eli V Manuscript is someone who I met in Providence and worked with more recently. I just released this hour-long piece “Elektra.” It was a commissioned piece for Issue Project from when I did a residency there. It was a score that I wrote for four musicians. The score was an interpretation of Anne Carson's translation of Sophocles' Electra. Eli created beautiful textual alchemies from the score and text, which they projected along the walls and ceiling throughout the performance.

PN: That's what you dropped this past winter right? I guess relatively new to us listeners.

JK: Yeah, I put it out with iDEAL Recordings. The actual performance took place in 2018, and I released the live recording of it on CD with iDEAL last January.

PN: Tell me some more about your time at RISD. Did you get involved in a handful of bands?

JK: When I showed up there, I was really just playing my guitar and playing songs. I had just started learning how to produce, and I'd recorded some of those songs with a friend in New York. My production skills were pretty limited at that point. I'd be in a studio working with a friend on music and recording my like, folk... simply guitar and voice songs, then we added some instruments. I was learning synths and stuff like that towards the end of high school, this is when I bought my first Casio and a Tascam four-track. At RISD, I started playing & meeting people who did this weekly cafe open mic. I would play with them. That was off of the freak folk scene at that time. I played out with a couple of those [freak folk] bands, and I met bands and individual artists through that. It was really inspiring for me. That was my first two years at RISD. Back then, I was going to shows in the noise scene and in Olneyville. I became really inspired by that. That was a mixture of electronic music, noise, folk, and performance art. I met two people that I then started collaborating with, DJ Richard & Chris.

JK: DJ Richard has a lot of different projects. Chris now goes by Galcher Lustwerk. That's when I really started to get into electronic music. I was really learning how to DJ and produce my own music around that time. Us three had an electronic band together, Vikki T. Honda, and Chris and I had a separate project, Vanessas, where we made music together. That was super formative of my transition into making my own productions.

PN: Shoutout to the noise scene in Rhode Island. It sounds super pivotal.

JK: It was great. I feel really grateful that I was there for it, it was a really unique moment in history. There were wild parties, it was really fun. It felt kind of lawless, everyone was building stuff in these abandoned warehouses. There were parties where someone made like a foam pit or an industrial metal playground. Really fun time. Then I moved back to New York.

CULT CLASSIC ISSUE 06:
AVAILABLE NOW

NIA ARCHIVES for ISSUE 06

Words by Gum
Photography by Guarionex Rodriguez Jr.

CULT CLASSIC ISSUE 06:AVAILABLE NOW

NIA ARCHIVES for ISSUE 06

Words by GumPhotography by Guarionex Rodriguez Jr.

CULT CLASSIC ISSUE 06:
AVAILABLE NOW

Words by Gum
Photography by Guarionex Rodriguez Jr.