Tone Glow 162: Spaghetti Blacc
An interview with the enigmatic New York rapper Spaghetti Blacc about making computer games, hearing music in the everyday, and his prolific 200+ album output
Spaghetti Blacc
Spaghetti Blacc makes noise and rap, but not necessarily noise rap. “Sometimes I like my rap very rap and my noise very noise,” he explains. Imagine a run of a half-dozen hip-hop anthems suddenly broken by a power electronics episode, or the opposite, or a black metal dirge. Or picture this repeated with albums—six noise projects then a rap tape. Mind you, Spaghetti is liable to put out that much material in a month or two. Each release might have a different artist name attached, but all of it comes for us under the auspices of Blacc Ski Weekend Industries, LLC.
You hear this and stare blankly at the cover art and click through to the full catalog, only to find your face melting across an event horizon of world-building and -destroying pandemonium. If this were a rabbit hole, the rabbit would have a chip in its brain and wig-peeling talons dripping the remains of lesser MCs. You assume this is outsider art because you don’t yet know about the network of Southeast Asian experimentalists, or the treatise on improvised non-verbal communication as a universal language. Samuel Diamond spoke with Spaghetti Blacc in June 2024. Read on, dive in, burn out.
Samuel Diamond: What’s your earliest music-making memory?
Spaghetti Blacc: I grew up with musicians in the family. My dad and my uncle were deejaying back in the day. So, I was like 14. My uncle had a studio in his bedroom and was giving me old stuff, Casio keyboards, mixers, microphone. I probably got a guitar from Walmart, and that was the setup. I was fumbling around with Sony Acid by the time I was 15 or 16. But music was always in the house. I was listening to albums, like full records, for the first time in high school. That’s when I started to go back and listen to the classics—36 Chambers, Tribe. I was starting to fumble around production equipment, just making very simple loops because I didn’t have any formal training in anything. So, I was trying to piece together my skills. I put three albums up on iTunes when I was 17 under my legal name, and it was just loops but sampling different genres—Sade over shoegaze or something like that. I was trying my hand at storytelling, filmmaking, writing. Creatively, filmmaking seemed really ambitious whereas making music—this is the era of bedroom pop—you can close off, be a little isolated, and treat your bedroom like it’s your studio. That’s been a staple since my teen days. I always have a microphone in my bedroom. I always have studio monitors next to my bed.
You mentioned your uncle as a DJ. What type of music were you being exposed to?
Hip-hop. He produced for a girl group that I think did R&B. But my dad and my uncle were deejaying in the late ’70s. If people talk about Sedgwick Avenue, University Avenue—where my parents grew up—was not too far from that. Every Thanksgiving dinner, every family conversation was, “Who are you listening to now?” My uncle would always give me a hard time about anyone I brought up. I was all over the place, so I get it. I would be throwing names at him like E-40. He’d be like “E-40!? What you doing?” But we’re talking about dudes born in the ’60s.
Late ’70s Bronx hip-hop can get exclusionary.
Exactly. They had the books by KRS-One in the house. It took a very long journey for me to make my way back there to appreciate the purist attitude.
I hear you. So, you get into rap. Of course, the other genre that jumps out from your music would be noise. Tell me how you got into that.
That was school days, 19 or 20. I was interested enough in other music like rock to try my hand at guitar. But because I had no formal training, I picked up the guitar upside-down. I’m a right-handed dude playing left-handed. Really quickly, I got into anything made with the guitar that didn’t sound like guitar. That’s the trajectory of Jimi Hendrix. Just take that further out. With any genre, if I wonder what’s going on, that always incentivizes me to keep listening. It used to be tons of guitar effects and then that became detuned guitars, things that aren’t in Western tuning. Throw in other string instruments. I had a mandolin for a while, an autoharp. By the time I was in college, I was being exposed to Sun Ra, free jazz. It really opened my doors. There was harsh noise I always knew existed. There was noise rock I kind of knew. But once you get into the electroacoustic free improv, like Weasel Walter, it’s taking from all these genres. I can barely remember all my influences now, but to even try to navigate what kind of terrain that is, it’s wild.
You say you didn’t have any formal training. You didn’t play an instrument in high school?
Nah, I did go to a very nice school that tried to give me lessons, back in middle school also, but I wasn’t practicing. In college I did saxophone lessons—for a semester. But that’s only a couple months’ worth of practice or knowledge. I didn’t know how to apply that to anything. I was doing a lot of screaming into the sax, but I can’t read sheet music. MIDI is my main avenue of understanding music theory, honestly.
How does that lack of formal training inform what you do as a musician?
Back when I was a teenager, I had friends that had bass lessons. I had one friend who played organ with the church. These were guys where as soon as it was time to jam, it was like, “Alright, let’s play in this key.” And I’m like, I have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about, bro. I just heard Bitches Brew for the first time. I’m pretty sure we can just make some sounds and go with it. No one was hearing that back then. I like the idea of inventing a sonic language, was getting introduced to gamelan and wanted to move away from Western notes. The argument people would always bring to me is, “Wouldn’t you be able to do more with your music if you knew the fundamentals to break them down and play with them?” Yeah, that’s totally true. You can do a lot more with more gestures at your disposal, knowing more about music theory, but that’s not to say you couldn’t do anything without it. And this is a decade’s worth of playing instruments before I’m getting into art movements that are very anti-formal training and anti-virtuosity. I was talking to a friend recently, and we’re thinking about jamming as live communication where it’s a shared language between two people. Even if they’ve got 10 instruments each, at the core, that language is what you want to express, and I’m responding to it. That has nothing to do with notes, BPMs, DAWs. Whatever your gesture is, you’re going to be able to tell if you’re on stage with me, that I heard you out, and I’m responding to it. That can be some wild bass noise out of a didgeridoo. You’re going to hear me complement the high end. It’s going to work some way or another regardless of whatever tools we have.
Can you walk me through what your recording setup is like? I’m wondering what instruments you have lying around.
I’ve got a trombone I just picked up in East Harlem. I’ve got the autoharp. I’ve had that for a decade—one of those things you see at a crappy bar hanging on the wall. If you get a contact microphone and some beeswax so it sticks on there, I was ripping that shit up when I was first doing free jazz. I have an MPC8800 that was a gift from my uncle. He finally moved out his place, and I took this big old console from his apartment. I’ve got my old turntable. I’ve got my old Behringer mixer. It’s great, it’s portable. I plug that back into itself. You get the no-input noise. I’ve got a few pedals. My favorite ones are the Eventide, some Moog stuff. I had at one point this little pen synthesizer that used to make these Vocaloid sounds, Miku Hatsune stuff. That was a cheat code. I wish I had that at this moment. It’s such a cold sound.
What happened to it?
I don’t even know. I was in Morocco, and it’s not in my bag anymore. But they make those anywhere. It looks like a Kay·Bee Toys thing, and I’m just like, hell yeah, I’m bringing this on tour with me. I did order this custom-made or circuit-bent-modified CDJ Numark mixer. I’m trying to do turntable tricks on CD so it’s all glitched out. I have this thing called a Gizmotron that sits on a guitar. It’s like six gears, each you can press with a little button and the gear spins on a string and gives you infinite sustain. I used to have the EBow back in the day.
I’m brain dead when it comes to equipment. I’m curious, does this carry over to other parts of your life? Are you into mechanical equipment in general or just instruments?
I wish I had the patience to be a real mechanic. The gear is all stuff I’ve come across over the years. I’ve sold all my gear. I bought it all back. The first time I made a vinyl, it was like alright, let me sell all this stuff. But I remember learning some neat tricks and tips. One time in college this dude was like, “Check out this cake pan,” a bundt cake pan. He hit it with a chair, and it sounds like a gong. So, I keep a cake pan in the house now.
That’s a cheat code.
Right. I have a set of bagpipes I picked up on Brighton Beach from Craigslist.
Good place to get bagpipes.
That’s such a New Yorker story somehow. I even have this thing. (He pulls out an electronic device comprised of a rectangular speaker box attached to a skinny neck with seven buttons on it.) This is the companion of the bagpipe, an electronic bagpipe synth. You practice your fingering on it, and it makes this Game Boy-sounding wannabe-bagpipe tone. This in the arsenal.
A bagpipe MIDI controller.
It’s really just about little gadgets and things I come across. As a kid, I was a toy collector, so it kind of reminds me of that. But there is a fetishistic thing about gear. Concerts used to be sitting on the floor with all this spread out, all these cables and wires—a spaghetti mess essentially.
You mentioned a turntable and an MPC. Where do you typically look for samples?
It’s whatever comes to me. I’m interested in movies, and I’ll be like OK, I know this dude makes a sick score. I live in the Lower East Side, so unfortunately, there’s not many record stores where I can find interesting things that easily outside of a few places … Downtown Music Gallery! That’s not even just records. I get CDs, tapes, whatever. I love that place. They do a free show every week, have all the things I’m looking for and put on great recommendations. I go in there, and I’m like let me get atonal guitars, industrial sounds.
It’s such a niche subculture. Obviously, there’s the whole downtown scene that’s existed in New York forever, but to have a store strictly dedicated to that cross-section of music, when I first got there, I was like woah, this is another world.
Yeah, I’m trying to think of what else. There’s one old school anime in particular, a ’60s anime I keep going back to, flipping the same songs even. It’s got this horn sound to it, and this is so beautiful. It’s one of my favorite albums to put on.
Do you care to share what it is, or do we have to do the research?
Yeah, I’ma let y’all do the research. It’s too good.
Fair enough. I respect it.
The anime people will like it, if you like old anime.
Apart from your sound, one of the first things anyone diving into your music is going to be struck by is the sheer amount that exists. How do you come up with so much material?
It’s really just any idea that pops into my head. Sometimes, when you find a new album, something you’re really going to enjoy, you’re so hyped you stop it after one song. Like, I already have 10 ideas—I’m going to record two whole albums just based off of this. But my influences are so diverse, even between noise or J-pop or rap. There are so many things that still haven’t happened yet, so many ideas that could still be tested out. At a certain point, I was interested in making my own genre, not just one album where I found the sound but making a whole history out of it, a culture and environment, like here’s how it would be if every band you saw on the street were playing this sound. Sometimes, my imagination goes out that far. It’s a lot of just trying ideas. I don’t think everything is going to be up everyone’s alley. Someone will tell me, “I thought this was your best album,” and I’m like ah, that album’s whatever. It’s a lot of just being enthusiastic about music, performance, breaking conventions, and sounds you want to put together. Probably someone already has done it, but you don’t know that.
Do you know how many albums you’ve put out to date?
It’s around 213. You’ve got Spaghetti Blacc with 177. There’s Gods on Safari, the name I was doing at the same time Spaghetti Blacc was starting, and that was non-rap mainly. There’s some rap on there, but it used to start out as free jazz. There’s like 40 on that. And then I’ve got one or two projects with a friend from years ago that are floating out there on different Bandcamps. So, it comes out to a little over 200.
That’s wild. With this many albums out, it’d be easy for someone to say, “Oh, well, he just puts everything out.” Is there truth to that?
Yeah.
Then how do you think about releasing music vs. making music?
Releasing music… now we’re getting into the music business and how to roll out music for people to enjoy. And I’m not with any of that. I treat music as an expression as natural as going to the bathroom and taking a dump. So, as soon as it’s been processed in my stomach, that’s when it’s coming out, and that’s it. Now, does everyone have the time to keep up with five albums dropped in a month? Probably not, but it’s on the internet. You’ll get to it when you get to it.
Because of how you put your music out, I find myself thinking about it more in terms of albums than songs.
That probably goes back to my childhood: buying CDs and that feeling of opening that booklet, that product in your hand that you really cherish. I was always album-oriented, sometimes even more so than live performances. The studio is that space where I have that mindset and I can go into all of my ideas.
There are several albums that I want to discuss in more detail. But first I wanted to ask if you have any personal favorites from your catalog, or is it like picking favorite children?
There are a couple. If I put it on CD or vinyl, usually that’s for a reason. I don’t know if I have a favorite of all time because I’d have to go back and listen and see how something compares to something else I’ve done. But there are key moments. There was a time when my sound had a lot of video game orchestra sounds. Then there was maybe a three-year period where I was really into Chinese horns. There probably is an album that speaks to all the different things I enjoy about my albums and puts it in a neat way. But who knows if that’s even my favorite?
The first album I heard that made me a Spaghetti Blacc fan was A Mercy Killing (Feb. 2019). What do you remember about putting that together?
A lot of collaborations. Theravada made a beat for that. Rob Chambers made a beat. I had a lot of creative people over in this space, in my apartment. Through work, I met people like Loone Don, a great guy. I love that guy. He was on two tracks freestyling. Just the chemistry: it was one of those albums where I went out of my way to seek people out and make it like a community. It’s not just me you’re listening to. I think that’s why a lot of people responded to it, because here’s this really distinct style weaving in all this other stuff. Over time, I’ve enjoyed that one a lot.
Going back to it, I noticed that more than I did in the past. There’s that stretch in the middle with a bunch of guests. There’s this kind of world built around it.
One of those tracks was recorded in Vietnam. I was in Vietnam playing a show, and Emcee K, my dude with the AutoTune on one track, was on some, “Come over to the apartment after you do the show.” And I’m like hell yeah. Playing a show somewhere is already fun enough, but doing the recording session after? That was beautiful.
I know you toured East Asia in 2015. I was wondering if the collaboration came out of that.
Essentially. For a while, I was going places in Southeast Asia through a website, Syrphe. This guy Cedric was based in Berlin for a while. He runs a database of Asian and African experimental musicians, just lists of countries. I hit this dude up back in 2015, 2016. I think I started with Bangkok, Thailand and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. This dude would put me in touch with people who would set me up with shows. Every time I would go out and play a show, I would talk to these dudes, noise musicians in Bangkok, the free jazz scene in Kuala Lumpur, and I’m like yo, you know this dude, Cedric? He helped me get out here. They’re like, “Oh, yeah, he’s awesome. We play with him all the time.” And I’ve never met this person face to face. That was a community that built, especially with the musicians in Bangkok. They put me up in a hotel the second time I went back. We were doing this metal festival. Gamnad 737 is my guy. He always wants to collaborate. We had this dude who’d come out from Indonesia, Harsh Productions. Years later, I’m doing synths for a death metal album. Through this label, I get an opportunity to remix some super-dope, wild Indonesian stuff. It definitely opened doors. I’ve met people back in America through that community in Bangkok. Someone who’d collaborated with an artist out there reached out to me, and now I’m talking to dudes in Seattle.
That’s sick. Do those collaborations continue?
Yeah, and I’ve spread out to other places since then. Ho Chi Minh City was 2018. That was the last place in Southeast Asia I went to. I collaborated with my friends in Bangkok in 2019. The heavy metal stuff came out in 2023, so that’s still going. Great stuff happening out there. I’ve played with rap groups out in Bali. They’re doing their thing.
On the topic of collaborations, I wanted to talk about the Craymen project Mano Destra: Show of Hands. I remember being excited about this ever since you gave me a track for my last Halloween mix at Tiny Mix Tapes. Then, when the project came out, at 31 songs, it felt like a summation of everything that got me into your music. I have no question attached to this. I’ll just tell you that I have a clear memory of listening to it in Minneapolis by the Mississippi River in November 2019 right before a record-breaking winter.
That was a fun one. Craymen was me and my old roommate. It’s a lot of synth sounds. I came out with a Mano Destra trading card game at that time, the whole board game and everything. I was sending out CD packs. I didn’t have a CD, but I would send out the card game with other merch to random record stores across the world.
Another couple albums I have some personal musings attached to are Don’t Give a Fuck About U: The Album and Dope Feen Economy, both from May 2020—right in the thick of pandemic lockdown. Where was your head at around that time?
The lockdown was letting me back into my natural habitat. It was like alright, now there’s really no reason to be outside. Everything is turning towards performances you can look at from home. Even from pre-pandemic to in the middle of the pandemic, there was a huge leap in terms of what I was able to pull off as a producer. The sound just intensified. I look at it almost like two different Spaghetti Blaccs. One was a very rap-focused trajectory that I’m still going on. Because I was inside, I was watching more stuff, so I had more samples and things to put together: video games, Game Boy sounds, movie stuff. That was just a mind undisturbed.
It’s interesting to hear you say that. This event sent the whole population into a kind of panic. But for certain people, myself included, the idea of being left to your own devices is not necessarily something inducing panic. You bring it up in terms of the production. I was hearing that in the lyrics.
For sure. Parts of it were like too good to be true. Definitely readjusting to everything opening back up, I was distrustful literally of the whole world. All of this crap is still here. It’s capitalism telling you to get back out there and spend your money on shit. There was a brief moment where I thought everything was going to change forever, and I was welcoming that with open arms.
If we jump ahead in your catalog, another album I really dig is Regime of Genius. One thing it highlights for me is a pattern in your work where you’ll have just one or two rap songs—often, relatively straightforward ones—on an album that’s otherwise almost all instrumental, chaotic noise. I’m curious to hear your thoughts behind that.
I love hip-hop. I love rapping. But sometimes when you’re trying to get your language out, you want to move away from beats altogether. I’ve seen people use drums as all sorts of crazy textures. You can find industrial hip-hop, trip-hop, and people doing all this other stuff with it. But sometimes I like my rap very rap and my noise very noise. It’s 2024. That’s not that strange. I’ve never seen myself as someone who’s unique in what I appreciate. Even if I’m not in any scene, and I’m by myself, there are other people that appreciate the same sounds. So, I was never afraid just to put a random thing on here. Sometimes, it’s like I need a rap song on here. Other times, it’s just oh, crap, a rap song came out, and we’re in the middle of this. But I’ve done the reverse, too, where it’s a whole bunch of rap tracks and then just one song that goes out. I appreciate the mix-up.
It’s funny to hear you talk about it as something spontaneous because to me it often sounds purposeful. A rap on some of these noisier albums will almost feel like a mission statement.
The different sounds I like sometimes aren’t isolated in one sound. Sometimes the sound I want to include is an entire rap song. And to someone who’s trying to tune in to hear heavy metal, the rap song might come across as noise. I don’t want it to be just a rap album or a noise album all the time. Sometimes you’ve got to throw those curveballs.
Are you always working on just one album at a time or do you do multiple at once?
I used to do multiple at once. 10, 12 years ago, I used to split things up by an idea. Sometimes the idea starts with the album title, sometimes with a song title, sometimes the cover. I used to have separate ones. This one goes here, this one here. Sometimes that’s because of the genre. But lately, I’m just like no, you’re getting the stream of conscious. Whatever is coming out is going right here. I barely even rearrange track orders anymore.
Regime of Genius has something of a companion piece in Interloper Shelf Life—great title by the way—which came out a day later, has similarly styled cover art, and consists of just four songs, almost like bonus cuts. Was that the intention there?
I just liked the sound more. It’s tricky wrestling with the full album and an EP. If I sit on an album for multiple months, that’s how you get 20 tracks. Sometimes I’m waiting for a collaboration to come through and in that time, I’ll do a bunch of stuff. Other times I’m focusing on a skill. I’ll be like, “For this album, I want to make a band that sounds like this. And maybe that band also has an EP they threw out afterward.” I’ve tried nearly every mix-match of concise ideas and indulging. At the time, I’m not entirely sure if that was the intent.
Am I correct to assume that you put together most of your cover art?
Most, yeah. I’m a very visual person. There’s been styles of albums over the years, everything from Southern rap with the title on the top and the big bling and two flaming cars at the bottom to your really simple close-up shot of a rapper with the out-of-focus background. I used to really want to get into film, so I had an idea for visuals in general. Sometimes, even if it’s a seemingly random abstract painting, that’s going in there. At this point, we’ve had music that’s a commodity for so long, you’ve almost seen every kind of color pattern replicated. People do judge things by their cover, so I like putting some work into that, but sometimes I fall flat on my ass, too. People will be like, “Yo, this looks mad pixelated, bro. How come you don’t have a bigger image?” It’s a street tape. Go find some shit from ’99 that was sold on a street corner. It’s 200 by 400. It’s not going to be a huge picture. Just deal with it.
Beyond the form itself, I find myself picking up some themes and throughlines.
Sometimes it’s a juxtaposition of crazy sci-fi stuff that’s over the top with the Blacc Ski Weekend imagery—ski suits, a ski team, but also getting on that mountaintop. So, it’s aggressive but also very wild and bizarre. It’s in the raps, too, whether you’re focusing on what a computer chip can do, what’s going on with the virtual world, controlling shit that resembles human life. I throw in a lot of transhumanist themes. My visual influences: I love anime, old school movies, sci-fi, horror, anything from Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell, Videodrome, Scanners. In trying to make what is very much an unsettling project, I throw all that in there. And now it’s not just the pretty psychedelic color stuff; that stuff is also poisonous, horrible, and scary. The name Spaghetti is spat out like one of these logos that’s just drooling off.
I’ve definitely picked up the black metal font you use for Spaghetti Blacc.
A couple of those were designed by a friend from Bangkok. That came out of one of the festivals I was doing out there. To me, that stuff is straight-up graffiti. I remember when I got into black metal, part of me is like I can’t read what this says. And then I’m like oh, that’s the point. I don’t need to be able to pick out every single letter. In the same way, it reminds me of Rammellzee weaponizing how each letter looks. So, I was all about that 1,000 percent.
Moving a little further away from the music, you’ve also designed more than a few computer games and written a science-fiction novella. How did you get into this?
As a little kid, I wasn’t thinking about rapping. But I always had a brain for writing scripts and telling stories that didn’t seem conventional. For the computer games, I essentially jot down a whole bunch of notes, take a bunch of reference photos, write out a script, and then I’m usually working with a small team. They come back to me with character designs, level designs. I look them over like I want more shadows here, more stuff there. I love the idea of video games being as artistic as cinema. Some of my favorite video game moments back in the day are just cinema—cut scenes. Part of it is also like a movie but you’re in control. You, the audience, are now a participating member of this. So, if I make you do some shit in this game that you’re not down with, that’s very unsettling.
The novella was such a deep dive into madness. We were talking earlier about what it means to improvise music on stage with other performers. You’re communicating in a language without words. I know literary movements like Dada and stream-of-conscious stuff, so I like the idea of just taking an idea, playing with it, and going as far out as possible. That was me working through that idea. How far do we push this expression to get to new languages to figure out what could be communicated afterwards? Language is only going to point you in the direction of words. It’s a whole book about that.
You’re answering my next question. To what degree do you see your works across these different mediums crossing over with and informing one another?
There is a constant aesthetic that permeates all of this. The same themes are in everything. So, writing a script might get me motivated to make a beat, which might make me motivated to take a photo or try my hand at a new kind of idea. All these different mediums already influence me to do other things. I’ll watch an anime and be like damn, this is a great vibe for me. This is something I want to bring to a song. And then how do I know if a song was good? I play videogames while the song is playing. When I’m creating, I definitely bring the same energy to all these things. I look at it like rap is a different way of telling the same stories that would be in my dystopian sci-fi movie, game, novel, whatever. It’s all related. And it shows you the way I approach things. This is a very distinct world that I’m painting.
We’ve spent most of this interview talking about music you’ve released under the name Spaghetti Blacc, but your computer games and all of your albums have been released under the auspices of Blacc Ski Weekend. So, first of all, have you ever been involved in MLK Ski Weekend, the “must attend winter getaway for urban socialites across the world,” currently occupying the blackskiweekend.com URL?
Oh wow, I’ve never even checked that URL. I can tell you I’ve never been on skis.
Same, bro.
I romanticize the mountaintop. You might see me in some fly ski wear. The name came out of a line off a Dru Down song, some Bay Area pimp shit, tennis shoe pimping. It conveyed so much of what I wanted at the time, this idea of random Black placement on this white mountaintop, and you just apply that to anything you want.
Almost every album on Blacc Ski Weekend Industries has been released under a different moniker. You’ve also dropped several projects on the Spaghetti Blacc Bandcamp with different artist names: Sadist Front, Naught Zilch, and Court Martialed to name just a few. I’m wondering if you see these acts as different characters.
Completely, yeah. Sometimes I have to get out of Spaghetti Blacc. It’s almost like what I was saying earlier about trying to make my own genre. I’m at the point where I’m stepping out of myself to be someone influenced by myself. Or I’m stepping out of my thing to try and get back into the same musical idea as a different musician of different abilities.
I’ve posed a version of this question to Kool Keith and Serengeti, and it’s inspired by a legendary DOOM interview, so you’re in good company here. If these acts represent different characters, what would they say to one another given the chance to commingle?
I’ve never thought of that. Some of them are so separate in what they do. Court Martialed is very metal focused, punk focused—drums, bass, guitar, playing at whatever crazy speed. There’s even pop albums somewhere in the mix, like Prince-influenced dance drums. Ultimately, I was never trying to cater to just one audience. These were different projects that were meant not to meld at all. Sometimes, even the same idea goes through different recording environments seemingly. You get a super hi-fi-sounding Spaghetti Blacc album followed by really low, garbage-sounding equipment that’s dusty. You can never tell what’s a demo sound, what’s a fully-fledged idea.
If you got them all in a room, I don’t know if they would socialize. But you would get the sense of a different musical timeline, an alternate history where this genre branches off into another genre into a different genre, and none of this really sounds like anything you’ve heard listening to music that actually exists. It’s all self-contained. Court Martialed might be super inspired by Craymen. It’d be interesting to see the more recent acts covering songs that came out way before.
Your last couple albums included production by you and Sozemania, whose beats would sound very familiar to anyone who came up on ’90s hip-hop. Someone looking to plumb a story from this might say, “The juxtaposition lays bare the false dichotomy of noise and rap music.” Is there anything to that, or are you just doing what you do?
It always starts with my ear. If I like something, then that’s what I want to go with. So, I was probably in that ’90s mindset myself. That’s what was helping me write. That’s what I want to spit to. It got to a point where I can challenge myself as a producer by having other producers on my stuff. I can make beats but they’re not going to sound like this. Also, those beats flip samples you might have heard already. Why? Because I love flipping samples I’ve already heard! Fuck it, we’re already sampling. But I do like giving a little bit of flavor that’s outside myself when the time calls for it. My favorite rap albums, it’s someone performing and conquering a variety of styles. It’s not just someone sticking with boom bap or trap for 15 songs. They dabble with both. But first and foremost, I just like the beats, so that was it.
That stuff inspires me to write, too.
Sometimes I’ll get a comparison that I think is so off and I’ll be like, do you not get what I’m actually going for? I’ve been compared to people who I respect dearly, but sometimes I feel like people are missing some of the really obvious influences.
What’s a good example?
I’ve been compared to Saul Williams. I know Saul Williams’ music. It’s dope. I appreciate it.
That’s almost insulting.
Right?! It wasn’t in America so we’re going to let it chill. You hit the nail on the head talking about Kool Keith, people I’ve actually listened to and tried to take something of theirs and use it to communicate my thing. But you can get a little bit tired of these comparisons. Sometimes, you’ve got to lay things out very bare for people.
Final question: What is a noise you absolutely love to hear, and why?
Lately, I listen to my bath water draining. I love pipes in apartments, water, wind howling. That is my shit up and down. I don’t know if it’s just my apartment—I’m in a studio—but if I had the bathroom door open you would hear it throughout the whole shit. If you’ve seen Eraserhead, you get all those industrial sounds. I remember reading how a lot of musicians in cities like New York and Tokyo are influenced by noise that drives your daily life, all these blocks under construction, the constant jackhammering, and all of that. I do take a lot of that in hearing rhythms, drones, engines, and stuff like that. But I have a sweet spot for plumbing.
Why plumbing in particular?
It hits all these weird harmonics. A big part of the noise music I make is feedback. Listening to the guitars of black metal, they’re super reverb drenched. It’s almost like if you run a shower, it sounds like black metal. Just hearing the drain reminds me of the sound of feedback. My toilet makes this whining sound after you flush it that goes on for a mad long time, but it hits this high-pitched note, and I’m like damn, what the fuck is going on with my bathroom?
I love how quickly you were able to answer that. You’ve clearly thought about this.
Hell yeah.
Spaghetti Blacc’s music can be heard at his Bandcamp pages, one of which is here.
Thank you for reading the 162nd issue of Tone Glow. Treat listening to music as an expression as natural as going to the bathroom.
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