Kill the Noise on ‘Getting Really Weird,’ Being Inspired by Tame Impala
Do you still consider any of this dubstep?
No. And not that I don’t love dubstep — I love dubstep — but I didn’t even start putting dubstep out until 2011, and I’ve been doing Kill the Noise since 2007, you know? Now I think that the only way for me to get it through people’s fucking heads is to not make any dubstep. I think people get fixated on genres. Everyone just needs a way to identify what they’re talking about, just to sit in a social circle or sell ad clicks or whatever the fuck it is. People just need buzzwords. I guess it’s always been that way. You could use Nine Inch Nails for example: It was “alternative rock” or it was “industrial music.” I listen to it as an adult and I guess at the core it’s rock & roll, but shit, the core of what I’m doing is rock & roll, too. Even “dance music”: It insinuates that you put the music on and everybody starts, like, jumping around or whatever [laughs].
Have any musicians blown you away lately — done something that you didn’t think was possible before?
I think that Tame Impala’s new record, that Currents thing, I was blown away by that. I think that he had a lot of balls to put a record out where he’s literally and figuratively writing songs about just going for it and trying something new and not really giving a shit what people think. In a time where a lot of ideas have been explored sonically and creatively, the thing that’s missing from a lot of music is just people being honest about what their intentions are. I took away a lot of stuff from that on my record. There’s points where it’s literally my voice talking about why I’m doing this shit. Maybe that’s too literal, but at this point it’s an idea that’s fresh because it’s not something you hear very often.
It’s very different from lyrics that are co-written by four people specifically to reach a certain demographic.
Yeah. It’s getting clear to me that there’s two worlds. There’s the mega-crazy pop world and then there’s the rest of us, people that are trying to just survive. I think it’s possible to survive, as long as you’re honest. And making music is collaborative whether you like it or not — unless you’re a fucking bum on Venice Beach with an acoustic guitar — but that’s why I like all these guys like Tame Impala: They don’t give a fuck. They’re just writing songs about their life.
