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Klayton: Celldweller · The BlackSheep Podcast: Presented by HM Magazine

• 0:16
  Speaker 1: So you ain't have a scene up. It's so rugged
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: and ninety with the couch behind me. Yup boy, just grimey,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: keep the cuffs, join your donuts so you wake and
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: upro me. It's not likely the brains has blown down.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: It's chasing the coast, but no breaks. Slow down.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Black Sheet Podcast. Today we have a
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: little treat for you. This is This is Clayton Scott
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: of you know, famous for a number of different bands
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: and monikers and groups and man, this this guy is
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: something else. If you haven't heard his stuff yet, where
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: have you been so Clayton, we just want to know,
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: first of all, how are you doing today?
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Good? Good? I mean I just found out I was famous,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: so like now that they just got even better. So yeah,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: doing pretty good right now.
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: I do have to say you probably have the best
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: studio setup that Colin and I have ever seen. You know. Fortunately,
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: when we get to interview artists like yourself, you know,
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: sometimes you get people that are just like in their bedroom.
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: Sometimes people are like in a van, and then sometimes
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: people are in a studio. But I will say this
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: is the best studio I've ever seen. Like it looks
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: like it literally looks like like the inside of a
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: power Rangers.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: Like shit, well that's that's then you got exactly what
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: I was going for that it is. I designed this
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: to be like the interior of space ship. And this
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: isn't the whole room. I mean, I have a much
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: bigger room over there, but this is where this is
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: like the control room. So this is kind of like,
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: you know, it's a little more intimate for me, but
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: that's how it was designed to be. I've had people
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: come in here and stress out because it doesn't have
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: like warm lighting and wood floors and carpets, and I'm like,
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: I don't like that stuff. I want to be on
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Like I'm like, bring me into like an Imperial start,
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: you know, starship or something. Artist Royer, that's where I
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: want to make mutes.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you'd be at home if you if you were
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: wearing a stormtrooper.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, armor outfit. That's my other Yeah, that's my other job.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: That's I love it. That's my other job. I'm a
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: full time stormtrooper as well.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: Are you actually a stormtrooper?
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Of course, dude, you didn't know that. It's on
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: my wiki page pretty sure I did not, Dang like
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: Vader himself called me and was like, there you go
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: right right on?
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: Did you like, didn't you like three D print that?
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: Calling your ear muted?
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I just got done three D printing.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: This guy, and nice I got a little jealous. I'm like,
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: you're starting to incringe on my on my territory. Man,
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: you lose my job. Vader's gonna be like you've been
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: blowing it. Man, You're we saw le you get through this.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: We're gonna give this guy a shot. Damn it.
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: I love it. Well, let's talk about music, Clayton, Like,
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: I don't even know really where to begin because you've
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: just been in so many different projects. You've done music
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: your entire life, and let's be honest, you're not spring
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: Chicken to music either, so you know you've been around.
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: You've been around the block. So yeah, I don't know
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: where you want to begin, but like, yeah, where maybe
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: you want to begin? Like how did you even get
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: into music? Was what was the inspiration to like, Hey,
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: I want to do this for my life?
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean my grandfather growing up, you know, like
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: his backyard, my grandparents' backyard in my backyard in New
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: York were connected, so you know, I'd eat dinner, and
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: then I'd go up the steps to my grandparents and
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: be like did you eat and be like no, and
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: then they feed me again. It was the best. But
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: he had a high fire room. I have a documentary
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: out for my first project, Circle of Dust, and he's
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: he's featured in it for this reason. Featured in the
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: sense that I have photos. He's passed away now, but
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: this room, which is also this pictures in the documentary,
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: it's just like wall to wall vinyl eight track headphones.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: Do you have pictures of me like sitting in a
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: chair at probably six or seven years old with headphones on,
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: and he had disco, classical music, gospel rock, like I
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: remember him putting it with things like Elton John. I
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: didn't know what this stuff was, so I absorbed the music,
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: reacted to it, loved it. Grew up in a pretty
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: strict Christian household, and so I wasn't allowed to listen
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: to the music I wanted to listen to, so I
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: had to sneak that in the house. But music was
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: the that was the language for me, Like that was
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: the thing that spoke to me. Like I don't even
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: know why anybody who makes it or really enjoys it
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: knows that it's it's kind of a visceral response. You
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: can't really put it into words why it moves you
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: or how it moves you. It comforts you when you
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: need to be comforted. I don't know. I just reacted
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: to it. So I remember distinctly hearing the song on
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: the radio and it had this voice and I was like,
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: what is that? And it was mister Roboto by Styx
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: at the Domo. He got missed the Roboto, which really
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: I came to find out was a vocoder. Didn't know
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: what that was. So from my onset, my earliest memories
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: of music were based in like electronics and synthesis and
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: not just being like an amazing singer, but like making
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: things sound like they belonged in a spaceship or something
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: like that. So I grew up, you know, and I
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: had an interest in music, but I think I took
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: trombone in second grade. Probably didn't do very good there,
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: but you know, I had an interest but couldn't do
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: anything about it. My mom worked at a hair salon,
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: you know, make meet. Both my parents worked probably like
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: many parents do, and she's like one day came home,
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: I'm thirteen, and she's like, this woman at work has
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: a drum kit. Her son doesn't want to play it anymore.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: I'll buy it for you if you want to play drums.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: And I was like what, I'm like, yes, So she
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: brings home this drum kit that's basically like pots and pants.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, it was, you know, a cheap, beat up kit.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: I set it up totally wrong. I didn't even know
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: where the high hat went. It was over on the
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: right side instead of the left. Tom Tom sitting in
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: front of me, and there was no Internet, there was
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: no like, I didn't have anybody to learn from. And
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: a couple of years later, I was I worked at
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: a machine shop. My dad worked in a machine shop,
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: and I was I was the boy scraping the floors
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: doing the oil changes. I think it was fifteen, and
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: one of the dudes there was really into Neil Pert
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: and he was super into drums, and he finally talked
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: my dad into letting me go to a rehearsal so
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: I can watch him play, and he taught me just
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: like a basic beat, and man, I went home and
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: I just played all the time, and I played and
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: I figured it out. I just kind of figured out
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: how to play on my own. And then I, you know,
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: I eventually got into bands, you know, and I think
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: seventeen eighteen, you know, I'm the drummer, so nobody really
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: wants to give the drummer an opinion or a voice.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: I was just just shut up and just hit the skins.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: But I'd always watch these guys play, and they'd go
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: out to get a drink or whatever they'd do, and
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: I'd pick their guitar up and try to learn how
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: to play a chord. So little by little I started
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: learning how to play all the instruments. And by eighteen,
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: maybe somewhere around there, I was graciously gifted a the
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: honor of barring my parents' credit card under the under
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: the the the acknowledgment that I would die if I
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: didn't pay the bill. Not not literally, but you know,
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: my mom's from from Brooklyn, you know, she's from Queen's Italian,
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: full blooded Italian, Queen's woman. She didn't take any uh
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: any stuff. She's like, you're you're gonna you're gonna make
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: the payments. I'm like, I washed dishes an Italian restaurant.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: I did paper routes, I busted concrete I did that
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: all and I made money and I paid for a
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: little keyboard of a sequencer that had a sequencer in it,
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: and so I just started making demos on a little
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: four track I had gotten. Someone may have given given
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: it to me because I didn't I didn't have money,
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: and I started making demos on that. So the you know,
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: I went from being like music is amazing, but I
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: could never play it to like, oh, I could play drums,
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: and they started learning other instruments, got the sequencer, and
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: I was literally the band. Paradigm was gone. I was like,
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: I don't need any of you. I didn't, I didn't
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: want any I just wanted to be alone. Nobody was
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: as driven or determined to do something as I was.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: I was like, I hated the fact that, you know,
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: we practiced for four hours and everybody's like, I gotta go,
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: and I'm like, what we just started, Like, you know,
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: we got another eight hours to go here. So I
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: spent a lot of time making terrible, terrible music, really
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: bad music on a four track, figuring things out. Singing
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: as a function, not because I had a great voice
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: at all, just because I wanted to tell a story.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: Singing's part of that. I grew up listening to bands
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: and artists that sang, so that was just a natural
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: thing for me. And then somewhere along that that that route,
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: I befriended the guys in Believer and they were on
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: Rex Records. It's the small label on the East Coast
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: and they were based out of Jersey at the time.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: Doug Man and you.
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: Arix the like first label that Living Sacrifice was on.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: Yep, they got signed right before I did, like I can't.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: I was signed to Rex right after them, and it
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: might have been through Kurt Kurt Bachman from Believer, because
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: Kurt signed me, like I, I don't even know why they,
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: you know, the Believer guys took a liking to me.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: There was a band called Sacrament on the label too,
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: and they had some party and I had this little band,
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: me and my brother and this kid, this local kid,
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: and we just had this little metal band and got
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: them a tape and they were like, Hey, we're having
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: this party in Pennsylvania, and we drove down and hung
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: out with those guys, you know, all the Believer guys, Kurt, Joey,
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: the Sacrament guys, and so I stayed in touch with them.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: And when I started doing this industrial thing, which the
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: demos were horrible, I didn't even have a sampler. I
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: was literally taking an AM radio, a shortwave radio, and
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: I had a little delay pedal. And what I would
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: do is I would play my four track with my
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: guitar riff and my drum machine and on the beat,
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: I would just turn the radio on and off and
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: it would go through the delay, so it'd just be
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: like and to me that was industrial. It was like
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: so crazy, but that's all I had. I didn't have
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: any sampler. I couldn't do the things I was hearing
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: in my head. And I put together a song and
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: a half and gave it to them at Cornerstone I
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: think it was. It was festival out in the Midwest somewhere.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: I was there one year, and I think the first
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: year I ever went. I gave them a demo, and
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: I don't know, weeks later, somehow Kurt got my number
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: where I and I remember the surreal moment. I'm literally
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: sitting there in my you know, like a button up
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: shirt or whatever, in the job that I didn't really
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: want to be working, but and he's like, hey man,
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: I checked out the demo. We want to sign you.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: And it was like time froze, and I was like,
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: can you say that again? Like I just want to
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: hear you say it again. I heard you. I just
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: want to hear you say that again. And sure, and
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: then and that's how I get signed. I was, I
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: was at this point, I was already in college, studying
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: to be a doctor. And I was studying to be
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: a doctor not because I like people or I wanted
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: to touch them, but because I had ailments as a kid,
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: and it was a natural thing, like I wanted to
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: get better, so, you know, getting into the medical field whatever.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: But I knew long like I didn't really want to
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: do that. I went to school, did the bare minimum,
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: and I'd come home and I'd play instruments. That's what
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: I wanted to do. So I switched my major into music.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: I was only like a month into a music major
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: and that call from Kirk came in. I literally I
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: literally left school done. I'm like, mom, I mean, I
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: didn't have to apologize to my parents because I was
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: paying for my college, so it wasn't like I bailed
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: on their money. I bailed on my own money. But
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: I was like, I don't care if I even have
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: a shot at this. If this door is gonna crack
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: a millimeter, I'm going to wedge my entire body through
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: that opening so nobody could shut it on me. That's
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: literally where my That's what my mindset was. I'm like,
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: because that's what you want to do.
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: Can I pause you for a second.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: You can't keep going. I'm gonna keep talking.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: I was I'm curious. You know, you grew up in
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: an Italian neighborhood, and from my Midwest understanding of Italian
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: neighborhoods in the New York area, you know they're pretty,
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: you know, rough and rowdy. Was this the kind of
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: experience that you had as well?
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: It wasn't an Italian music. This was a melting pot.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: We had. We had full blooded Irish to are left,
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: we had full blooded Greek. Here right next to them
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: was full blooded a Jewish family, a bunch of Italians
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: up at the top of the hill where my grandparents were,
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: because my grandparents' family was there. So it was a
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: big melt.
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: It sounds like a loud neighborhood. I'll just be honest,
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: very loud.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: See when people say, like, oh that guy, man, he's
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: got too much energy. It's like, well, grow up where
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: I grew up, and that's how I came to the Midwest.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: I'm like, what, why the hell is everybody so slow
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: out here? Like why did everything close at eight o'clock? Like,
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: what's going? So it was it was a shock to
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: me inasmuch as I'm probably a shock to many other people,
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: but routing in the sense that, yeah, I got my ass,
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: I got my ass consistently kicked, you know, like I.
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, was that partially because of your musical interests or
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: was it just because you were a nerd or what?
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: Mostly because I was a wuss? Yeah? Yeah. My parents, uh,
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: my parents you know, taught me turn the other cheeks.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: So it was like, you're not supposed to fight, and
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: so kids sniffed that out at a young age, and
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: that's exactly what happened. They just sniffed it out and
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: they just kicked my ass. I mean, I have very
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: vivid memories. There was one traffic light where I would
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: cross the road to get to my block or my neighborhood,
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: and most of the kids who kicked my ass all
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: the time went straight. So if I got to that light,
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: if I got to that corner and could cross the street.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: I was pretty safe. And I remember, like multiple times
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: even getting halfway across that street and those kids chasing me,
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: ripping my school bag apart papers. It's like a scene
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: out of a movie. Not a great movie, but you
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: know it was my movie and and and my my
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: homework and papers flying all over the street. I'm crying.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: The traffic stop. They were all just going to get
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: this kid out of the road, you know, that kind
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: of stuff. That's kind of how I grew up. But
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: it wasn't like, you know, I had an eyes pulled
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: on me, but it wasn't this is what I wanted
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: to even grow up in crack Alley. I don't want
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: to give that impression, but it was probably a little
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: rough around the edges than some other neighborhoods I've seen
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: later on in life, for sure.
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so not too long after you know, Immortal and
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: some of that early stuff they were doing, you got
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: involved with circles of dust, and I think maybe like
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: that's kind of like where a lot of people may
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: you know, may know you from, or maybe like even
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: like angel dust. But yeah, I'm just curious, like how
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: did how did like circle of dust kind of happen
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: for you, Like, what was the what's the story there of?
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: Well, actually, Circle of Dust was actually the story I
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: told you about Kurt Bachmann from Believer. That was okay,
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: that was that was the that was the impetus so immortal.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: I can't even believe you dropped that name because I
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: didn't even know anybody knew about that, kind of hoping
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: they'd forget. But that was that little band, that thrash band.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: I was the drummer, singer, wrote wrote this, wrote the
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: music just you know, paid for a little eight track
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: studio locally to record this demo, literally doing paper routes
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: and stuff, and we'd all just kick in money to
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: afford that week's recording. It took months to record three songs,
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: I think. But you know, Kurt somewhere along the way,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: you know, heard my demos and was like, hey, we
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: want to sign you. And that was the beginning of
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: Circle of Dust. And quickly from there, like I did
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: that album it turned out like absolute dog shit, and
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: name namely because my four track demo sounded better than
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: my final album because I had ten days to go
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: to Chicago and record the album, but unfortunately they stuck
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: me in a studio that with an engineer who didn't
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: really know what he was doing, and he stuck my
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: guitar amp and it was a Masonic temple and there
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: were big open rooms that were like gymnasiums, and he
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: put my guitar amp basically in this big empty room.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: So it was like putting a guitar amp through a
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: fifteen second reverb and my guitar tones. I've had people
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: tell me for years like, oh, I didn't even realize
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: those guitars. I thought those were sins man. I thought
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: those were synthesizers. I'm like, I caught all of those guitars,
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: did all of my vocals, played bass, laid down all
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: the programming, all everything. In ten days, I lost my
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: voice so I wasn't even able to hit notes. It
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: was like the album turned out.
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: Oh.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: I was really disappointed. But that was the nineteen ninety
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: one release of the self titled Circles This album. But
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: through that process, Doug Mann, who owned the label, was like,
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: you got something going on here. You want to do
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: a project with me? And I was like, I'm like,
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: the president of the label wants to do a project.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: I'm like, hell yeah, Like what it what And he's like,
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: let's do something heavier. And I'm like, you're speaking my language. Sure,
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: let's do that. And you know, fast forward a year
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: later and Brainchild. It was a project called Brainchild. And
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: then later I'm like, this is a Circle of Dust album.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: We just called it circle of Dust name of the
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: album's Brainchild, So that really kind of cemented I think
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: what Circle was, what Circle of Dust was. But the
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: influences were vast, you know, Like I wasn't. I was
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: a metal head as a as a young teenager, but man,
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: I graduated like way past that. The whole guitar, drums,
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: bass paradigm to me was super boring. I'd been in
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: bands I played, I had like larzare double Bass Go,
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: and I was like so proud of myself, but I
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: was like this is boring, Like how what else can
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: you do? Like you got the same sounds and all
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: the instruments, you just put them in a different order,
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: and that's all you can do. Sampling and synthesis. I'm like,
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: I could literally make any I could put a dog
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: barking if I want, which I'm sure I have. I've
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: sampled many movies, I've sampled all I mean, I've done,
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: I've done all kinds of things, but to me that
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you could tell I'm a little hyperactive.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: That kept my That kept my hyperactive brain very engaged,
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: whereas I got quickly bored with sitting behind it drum kit,
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: playing thrash beats or anything else. You know. I loved
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: writing the parts, but just got boring to me.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: So when you think of like a lot of like
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: the metal world today, do you do you look at
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: a lot of what you do kind of ends up
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: bleeding into the metal core and hardcore world. Now do
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: you kind of view that as like a natural progression
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: that was gonna happen anyway, especially like when you have
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: like the industrial metal kind of situation going on in
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: the nineties that kind of evolves into what we see now.
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: Is that something that you saw coming early on?
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: I don't know that I'm that smart. I don't know.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: I don't know if I don't know if I had
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: the crystal ball and I was like, this is what's coming. Yes,
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: Internally I was like, this is what's coming. Because I
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: do have an intuition on technology. I was the first
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: guy to tell everybody I knew get a Spotify account,
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: stop buying albums, get this thing the stream. People like
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: what but regards when it comes to tacking technology. I mean,
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: I grew up on side fi movies. That was my thing,
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: and it's like, of course the worlds you're immersed in there,
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: it's all this future technology. When they try to emulate
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: what music sounded like in the future, it was always
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: weird and weird sounds. And I'm like, yeah, they're not
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: just you know, this isn't a country band. It's like
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: it's weird music. I'm like, this is where it's going.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: And okay, question there, question there, what do What do
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: you think is like the sci fi movie that has
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: that song that you think like blue the hinges off
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: the door of like weird music.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: Oh man, I don't even remember. There was a movie
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: called Outland with Sean Connery actually named after that movie
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: because I loved it so outline clothing. But he was
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: a cop and he goes to this like mining colony
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: on Io, the Moon of Io, and there's a bunch
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: of illegal drug running and he's basically they're paying them.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: Then they're basically warning him look the other way, and
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: he's like, I can't. I can't. He's the good cop.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: And I still to this day. I mean, you look
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: at the effects. It's pretty cheesy. But there were these
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: bar scenes and there was like, you know, mostly naked
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: chicks up there dancing, and is like a teen's like,
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, this is awesome. But I remember the music
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: and the visuals being like, wow, this is so perfectly mad.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: Probably if I listened to it now, you're like, what
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: the hell was I thinking? But as a kid, I
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: was like, this is sick. This is this is the future, right,
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: you know, a mining colony on the moon on the mooniow.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: But you know, speaking to modern metalcore and punk, like,
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: I listened to about that much of it. So I
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: don't really know what goes on in metal. I really,
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: I'm not really terribly interested in it. But I can
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: tell you that I own a record label, and a
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: lot of the music that we have is we have
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: bands like the Browning and Daydrec and Enemy, and these
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: guys and girls are fusing electronics and metal and pushing boundaries.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: And that's the way it always was for me. I
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: wasn't like I have to set trends. Quite honestly, I
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: went into making music completely assuming nobody would care. Nobody
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: was going to listen. I that wasn't My motivation wasn't
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: to get rich. My motivation wasn't to build a spaceship studio.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: One day I thought I was going to be flipping burgers.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: I was like, I'm gonna do this for as long
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: as I can. And and and true story, not that
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: you asked, but I do have legitimately a Taco Bell
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: employment application that I keep in a folder to always
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: remind myself that the day I fail, I'm going to
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: go fill that out and drop it off at Taco Bell.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: So I that you know those things I do, like
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: I psych myself out. You know, to me, it's it's
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: actually meant to be funny in the sense that I
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: hope i'm I don't fail so bad that I have
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: to go apply to for a fast food job. But
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: I've worked fast food jobs. They're not below me. I
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: could do it. I've done it all. But but you know,
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: I didn't think anybody was gonna care about anything I did.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: And quite honestly, if they do care, it's only because
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: I was just too dumb along the way to quit.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: If I'm smart, I would have quit and been a doctor,
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: and I'd probably live in a house twice as big
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: as this, but I don't care, like I you know,
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: at some point, you've got to do what you love
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: in life. And I don't know what to tell you,
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: but whatever, this this inclination that's within me to make
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: music is. I didn't put it there, but I can't
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: get rid of it, Like I would be a miserable
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: being if I was doing anything other than what I'm
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: doing right now.
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: So that brings up like a question that I typically
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: love to ask, especially for artists that have been doing
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: this for quite some time. Is you mentioned that you
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: still have this like taco bell job application sitting there,
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: And there must have been a point where your family,
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: like you know, like if you went back home to
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: your your parents, and at some point they must have
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: been like, all right, this is just like a fun thing,
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: and you're gonna ride this out doing this fun thing.
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: But at some point, like you're gonna have to go
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: like to college, you're gonna have to do the taco
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: bell thing and then move on with your life. But
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: at some point that switches, right, like they must have
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: your family must have realized, okay, wait, like this is
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: legitimately the way you're gonna pay the bills. And I'm curious,
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: like for you, like where did when did that happen?
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: Like at what point did it feel like even for
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: your family, did they recognize Oh he like, this isn't
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: like just a thing that he's gonna do until he
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: does the taco bell job, like this is this is
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: the thing?
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: Well? Hi, whoever just joined there? I uh I, it
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: goes back even before family. It's like even France, so Buka,
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: if any any of anybody who knows that you know,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: the ard Al Parks project I did. I did that
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: with like one of my best friends, Buca, and man,
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: he went like I got my first record deal and
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: he got his first internship at MTV at the same time,
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: so he was starving trying to make it into the
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: MTV system at the time. This is early nineties, and
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: I had just gotten a record deal and at some
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: point he had climbed the ladder. He was like VP
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: of MTV Sports or I don't remember what. He's way
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: better at dates than I am. But at some point
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: he he uh called me and he's like, look, man,
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: I really don't want to see you starve from that now.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: Remember I was doing everything myself, literally every I built
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: my own website, I filled my own merchandise. I did
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: everything because it was me myself and I was just
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: the three of us.
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: We were They only got in here is this like
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: what like what?
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: This would have probably been ninety four or ninety five.
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: Maybe building your own website at ninety four ninety five, that's.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: Crazy, Netscape navigator. I got a book and I read
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: ATML and I typed out HTML and they made basic.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: So that's exactly what he did. He's like, look, you're
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: doing some pretty cool stuff with your websites. I got
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: I can get you right now a job at MTV
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: doing web web graphics and stuff and putting together websites
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: for them. And I literally on the spot. I didn't
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: need to think about it. I was like, look, man,
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: I love you. No, I'm like, if I have to
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: starve another five years, this is what I knew. If
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: I stopped to do anything else to make money, because
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: I've seen people do it, that was the end.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: It's the end.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: If I had any momentum, I had to keep going.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: And this is quite honestly all I wanted to do.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: So it wasn't just my family. It was my friends.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: But at some point, so you know, I get signed
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: in ninety or ninety one. It had to be ninety
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: because I ate my album. First album came out in
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: ninety one, So I got signed in ninety tail into
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: the eighties and the first time I remember thinking like, wow, okay,
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: I'm making some money. It was probably liked two thousand
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: and five, two thousand and six, maybe two thousand and eight. Yeah. Later,
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: So I start for almost two decades and that and
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: this was now Cell Dweller, which is really my main thing.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: Many people maybe they know me from Circle of Dust,
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: but Sell Dweller is that's my thing. That that's who
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: I'm really known as. And it's really a progression of
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: where Circle of Dust left off. But I started again
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: making music for myself, not because I thought it was
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: the future. Like I was really into drum and bass.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: I was really into sy trance, like you know India,
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: this place Goa in India. There was a huge side
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: trans scene. In Israel, there was a huge side trance
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: scene there and drum and bass from the UK, all
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: UK music. I was way more in America, They're playing
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: freaking nickelback. I'm like shoot me, Like, I wasn't into
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: that at all. I didn't care. So I in my mind,
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: coming from like metal background, I still knew how to
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: play all those instruments. I still loved heavy music, but
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: I'm like, I want to involve these other styles. So
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: I make this album, the debut Selldweller album. And my manager,
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: Tyler Bacon, who runs a company called Position Music. They're
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: one of the most successful film and TV video games
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: sing companies in the world. I was the first. I
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: was his. He decided to leave Nashville and he's like,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: I want to manage you, and I'm going to do
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: this film TV thing. And I was the very first
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: licensed Position Music ever had. And from there I went
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: on to things like spider Man, Superman, iron Man, all
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: the Man's like I got I guess I got a
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: man thing. I don't know, but no, it was just
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: a lot of like superhero big like those kinds of things.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: My sound at that time, in the mid two thousands
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: was exactly what encapsulated what they wanted to project to
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: their audience, Like you want to go see this Spider
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: Man movie that album, Okay, so now not to you know,
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: get really boring here but like I got a big
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: record deal, first one ever. Right after, right before I
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: made the debut Celldeller album, I made a three song album,
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: a three song demo on my own dime. I starved,
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: put it together, came out here with my friend Grant
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: Mormon and made this with him, and uh no, no, no, sorry,
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: I didn't. That was later. I made this myself, a
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: three song thing, got signed big deal, this brand new
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: record label that was starting up. They had a lot
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: of money, a billionaire, which at the time in the
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: early two thousands, there weren't as many billionaires with the
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: Bee as there are now. Now. It's like your neighbors
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: a billionaire for all you know. I get this deal
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: and they're flying me out to LA and I'm working
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: with guys like Scott Humphrey and Ben Ben Gross, these
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: big mixer guys that are working on like White Zombie
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: and all this stuff, Rob Zombie whatever, Tommy Lee all
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: that stuff, and I'm like, Wow, I'm like this is it,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: Like I'm this is gonna be this is gonna be
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: my next I'm gonna finally make it paid off my debt.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: I put myself into one hundred two thousands of dollars
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: in debt to get to that point, and I basically
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: just paid it all off when I got an advance,
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: so I still had no money left over. And I'm
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: going through this process, and as I'm making this album,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: I'm halfway through, and nine to eleven happens here two
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: thousand and one, and not shortly after that, not too
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: shortly after that, I get the call, Hey, we're folding
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: the label. PS, we need all that money back. PS.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: The attorney you paid a lot of money to negotiate
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: your deal. You're gonna have to go rehire him and
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: pay him more money to unnegotiate the deal. So I
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: went from going this is going to be the next
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: chapter in my life to going, wow, I am right
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: back in the gutter. So what happened? To make a
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: long story short, they basically garnered fifty percent of everything
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: I made on that album, even though the whole album
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: wasn't done with them. I paid to go to a
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: friends studio here in Detroit, which is why I actually
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: live here now because of that whole process. I came
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: here for three weeks, ended up staying here for six months,
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: and then bought a house and just moved here but
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: that whole process, like I finished the album myself on
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: my own dime, and then fifty percent of any money
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: garnered went to them, and then I had a manager
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: twenty five percent. So if I made one hundred bucks,
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: I was only getting twenty five bucks. And I wasn't
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: I thankfully I wasn't, you know, I was landing movie
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: trailers and at that time, you know, I don't know
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: if I should say it, but you know, those those
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: were forty and fifty thousand dollars paydays. What's up, guys? Hey, Yeah,
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: we wanted to surprise you. We wanted to surprise. We
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: wanted to surprise the hell out of you. All right,
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: So should I keep going or you tell me?
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: So there's another interview that will happen right after, and.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's all good. Do you want me to keep going? Yeah?
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, go ahead, go ahead.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: So anyway, I was getting a fraction of the money
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: that I was actually making for a long time and
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: slowly paying back that debt and everything else. So really
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: I should have died, maybe not necessarily physically, although probably physically,
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: but I should have died career wise. I don't know, easily. Five.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: There's other stories in here that I didn't even get into,
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: like obviously Rex, if you guys know Living Sacrifice or
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: Sacrament or any of those bands, Rex went belly up.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: I was part of that. And then not only were
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: they like, hey, you're not going to make another album
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: because we're not continuing, but you can't make an album
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: with anybody else. You can't sign a deal anywhere else.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: So for a year and a half I had nowhere
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: to go or what to do. And that's exactly at
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: the moment, this guy, Chris Angel calls me and he's like, hey,
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: our parents worked came he might his uncle owned the
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: shop that my father was the foreman of a machine shop,
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: and so he's like, hey, my cousin I worked with
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: this cousin who was really into like death metal and stuff.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: He's like, my cousin said that you make like really
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: heavy music. He was making music like bon Jovi, And
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: he's like, I need something to toughen me up. Do
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: you want to, like, can I hire you to make
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: some music? So in that year and a half we
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: became really good friends, and I was like, you know what,
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: that was the end of Circle of Dust for me,
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: and we formed Angel Does. It was Chris Angel and
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: Circle of Dust became Angel Dust. I did that for
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: six years with him. We played Madison Square Guard and
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: we were on the Howard Stern Show. We did a
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: bunch of stuff and then we split ways and I
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: started Sell Dweller and he went to Vegas and that's
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: he's got a big show there now to continue to run,
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: which has almost all my music in the show.
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: That new Like, I mean you you made some music
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: for even like his show that I like, I remember
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: as a kid watching his show all the time, and
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: you made some of the like the theme music, some
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: of the songs going on, right, Yeah, yeah, Wow, that's incredible.
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: I'm curious, Like, okay, so you explained the story of
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: like how you were connected to Chris. I will say,
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: like he's always felt like just like a really interesting,
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: weird kind of person to me, Like he just kind
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: of has a and and maybe that's all show. Maybe
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: that's just like the way he is on you know,
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: in front of a camera or in front of an audience.
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: But what has what was your impression of Chris, like
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: what what like are you still friends with him? Is
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: it something where you're like, you know that was just
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: a business relationship. But yeah, I'm just always curious, like
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: especially when it comes to like a very famous music
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: uh well not just a musician, but like a magician,
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: Like what, yeah, what was what was he?
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: Like?
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: What?
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: What?
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: You know? We curious and.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: We were for starters where he's still one of my
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: closest friends. We talked, you know, a week ago, two
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: weeks ago. We both have kids now, and we want
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: to like get them together and go to Disney and
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: all this stuff. But you know, you are seeing a
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: bit of a persona. I mean Chris. Chris and I
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: both were as broke as broken be. I was in
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: my parents' basement because they were allowing me to like
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: rent for like a few hundred bucks, and I slept
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: down there and everything, you know, like it was I
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: was rough in it. And he would come to my
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: house in a Hundai that had almost three hundred thousand
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: miles in it. He'd pull up to my front front
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: of my house and the billows of smoke pouring out
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: from under the hood. He had to put a cord
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: of oil in this car just to get home. I mean,
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: it was leaking so bad. We were broke, We were
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: completely broke. So there was no, like fame wasn't. We didn't.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: We weren't working together because it was like, yeah, we
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: had goals, like you know, to make it, so to speak.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: But my I thrust was always music, Like I really
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: loved music. He really wanted to do the Magic show.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: So we did. We you know, we had a show.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: We played at Madison Square Garden for like two weeks
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: during this Halloween event they had there, and we run
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: this this Ricky Lake show, which was like a you know,
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: it was like a TV talk show. I guess she
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: was like something. I don't know. We were on TV.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: We did a bunch of stuff, but ultimately he really
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: wanted to like push the whole magic thing, and I
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: was like that's cool, but like I really want to
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: just focus on music. And that's where we just kind
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: of parted ways. And for a few years, he worked
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: on his thing, I worked on mine. And you know,
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: he's a much better friend than me because he reached
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: out to me and he initiated contact. Is a hey,
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: let's connect again, and let's just like let bygones be
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: bygones and whatever else, you know whatever. You know, you're
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: young and dumb, and you focused on your career and
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: you just make dumb decisions. I think everybody kind of
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: maybe on some level, does that. We probably both weren't exceptions,
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: but we reconnected and things are great. So yeah, the
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: fame aspect of it, I'm sure is what people see.
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: I mean, he's like, you know when when when when
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: something's going down for me or something's going down for him,
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: we'll call each other and be like, this is what's
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: happening right now, Like personal stuff is what I mean.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: So it's more like the friendship. It's like to me,
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: I'm not a starstruck guy, so I don't particularly care
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: how famous a person is, and I don't really like
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: people treating me like I am either, because I don't
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: think I am. Maybe my mom and a math that's
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: cool if they think I'm famous, but yeah, they probably don't.
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: Probably I get that, all right. I do have to ask, though,
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: you know, since since you are close to Chris, uh,
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: what's your favorite magic trick from him?
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: Illusion? Yeah? Right? Illusion? I was what he'd create.
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, illusion.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: I quite honestly, I don't really even know within the
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: context of a show, because the show has changed so
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: many times, and because I have small kids, I haven't
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: been out to Vegas in a while. But the one
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: I loved because it got so many free desserts, Like
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: we're broke, man, like anybody's gonna give us free anything.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: We'd go out to eat all the time. And so
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: what he'd always do is the fork bending trick. And
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: he would just hold the fork up because there's always
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: a fork at the table, and he would just shake
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: it and then he'd slow it down and one of
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: the tongs would be bent and these people's mind would go.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: And I knew how he did it, obviously, and I
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: was involved in some of the you know, we'd be
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: someplace and no one would know we knew each other,
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: and you know, we'd kind of like, you know, I
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: was the magician's assistant, so to speak, incognito, but so
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: I knew the behind the scenes of a lot of
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: of of a lot of how that stuff worked. But
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: I really liked the fork trick because it fed us
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: a bunch of times. You know, it was really it
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: was kind of great and a lot of free like
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: chocolate cake and stuff.
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: It can't be that, all, right, Well, bring it bring
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: it back to music.
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: I've always been curious just because we haven't really discussed
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: music with someone that makes uh electronic style music and
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: to me, to my un unaccustomed ear, you know, I listened.
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: I listen more as like a passing kind of kind
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: of music for me when it comes to electronic music
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: in general. But I have no idea how you like
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: structure a song because oftentimes, at least in my ear,
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: it doesn't seem like there is necessarily, like you know,
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: a tried and trude formula. Maybe there is, but at
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: least especially when I listen to your music, like I don't,
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: I don't hear that necessarily. I don't know where this
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: journey is going to go, and that's part of the
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: reason it's enjoyable to listen to. So when you're thinking
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: about how you're going to structure a song, how you're
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: going to develop a new tune, what what goes through
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: your brain? How do you how do you approach that?
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: Because that is extremely confusing to me.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: Well, I could say this on both sides. I'm not
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: really an electronic musician and I'm not really a metal musician.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm I don't know what I am, to be honest,
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: and that's probably why I'm a very specific flavor of music.
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: You know. But you could go to YouTube right now
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: and learn how to produce an electronic track from a
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: to z. You just follow the directions and now you've
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: got an electronic track. You can go to YouTube right
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: now and learn how to make a metal track. Just
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: follow a to z. You got a metal track. Great.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: I don't do that. I never have. I've learned the reason,
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: the reason it makes sense to my brain, and I
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: just actually recorded a video of the of the day
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: saying this exact thing is make I've made a lot
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: of really bad music. I've made a lot of really
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: big mistakes. I've made albums that people can listen to
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: this day that I'm like, oh my god, what was
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: I doing. I was just doing the best that I could.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: But through that process, that's how I learned how to
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: stack sounds. And when you know there's no formula like
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: I think, I mean to me, it's a compliment that
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: you feel like you go on a journey when you
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: listen to my tracks, because that's literally what I write
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: them for. I'm not I'm not a pops writer. I've tried.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: I fail. I just can't do it. I don't know
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: how to do it. It seems like it would be easy.
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: You just copy this and boom and now you're done. No,
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: I can't. I have to have like thirty parts in
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: a song and it goes. It's just like, you know,
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: I'm more tool than I am Taylor Swift, I guess
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: if that makes sense. And I don't even really know
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: much about Taylor Swift, to be honest, but you know,
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: a lot of times what motivates me is just a
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: sound I'll find or some of these things here. I'll
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: just be, you know, doing something, and I'll plug something
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: and be like this is and then it'll just interject
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: itself in the middle of this punk rock track I'm
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: working on, or you know, or I have a part
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: with a guitar and I'm like, that's not enough. What
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: else am I putting in here? And I just keep
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: combining until it sounds cool to me. And that's really
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: all it is. There's no formula, never went to school
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: for it. Nobody, no, no, no, you know, godfather of
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: this style of music came to me and said this
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: is let me pass down the keys to the kingdom
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: to you. That didn't happen like I I've had. I've
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: had some fairly big artists come to me and be like, man,
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: you're the godfather of this kind of music because you
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: were doing it before anybody was. And I was like,
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: to me, that's super flattering, and I'm not gonna put
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: that crown on my own head because who cares. But
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: all I know is I never cared about whether anybody
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: liked the music or not. I needed to make it,
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: and my motivation was never to make it for somebody else.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: It was always to make it for me. And I
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: was fortunate enough that other people understood what I did
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: and liked it. Oh yeah. Like some of my craziest,
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: most eclectic songs that blend so many styles, almost everybody
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: I knew hated them at first, and after about four
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: listens they're like, nobody does this? Like what is this?
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: I love this? And I know it's just opened people's
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: minds to you know, it's again owning a label and
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: hearing you know, I do hear a bunch of music,
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: and it's like a lot of metal that I hear,
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: and I have people within the circle tell me, like, man,
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: a lot of people are doing now what you were
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: doing fifteen or twenty years ago. So you know, I
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: guess my curse is being a little too ahead of
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: the curve. If I came at the right time, maybe
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: I would be more popular or famous. I don't really know.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: But again that's not my motivator. I don't really care.
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: So your tunes kind of lend themselves, like even though
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: you might be writing the music for yourself, the tunes
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: do lend themselves to like multimedia experience pretty easily. Like
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: when we're talking about movies or commercials or video games
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: or whatever, it really lends itself to that kind of
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: situation because it really does, you know, build this intense
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: emotion or like it can create this like sweeping kind
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: of ethereal kind of situation, or it can it can
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: be whatever whatever the scene or whatever the video game
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: calls for.
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: Is it just a happy accident then that it ends
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: up that way for you? Or is it is it
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: something where you're like, hey, I have like this picture
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: in my brain and that's how I'm going to kind of,
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: you know, put this music out into the world, and
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: then it.
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: Just so happens to match it's multising experience. It is
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: much more that I always have some visual in my head.
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: So again I grew up on like dystopian sci fi
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: and those are my things, Like those are my jams,
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: So I I'm always picturing these landscapes and like what
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: kind of music fits into that? But but I think
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: it was fortuitous that the sounds that I was hearing
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: in my head to my imaginary movies actually translated into
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: movies that p we're making right now and video games
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: and you know, I you know, a fun fact is, like,
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: you know, I own a record label, which is the
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: music side. But I started a company a year ago
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: with a friend of mine a year and a half
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: ago called Bitbot, and we developed video games and we
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: do graphic novels and things like that. And we just
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: January first of this year hired as our creative director
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: Frank O'Connor, who was the He was the franchise director
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: of the Halo franchise for decades, so we have him.
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: We have Brian Ulrich, who began at Nintendo in the
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: eighties has worked on huge ips. So like, our small
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: little company is growing. And part of what's going on
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: is we have Sony announcing one of the games we're
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: building right now, which has not been announced because we're
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: not allowed to announce it. But it's a fairly big title,
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: or it's attached to a fairly big ip, and I'm scoring, can.
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: We ask, can we ask what kind of game?
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: It is?
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: Like?
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: What genre of game?
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: You can.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: I just don't know how to really describe it. It's like,
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: how do I describe it? It definitely revolves around vampires. Uh.
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: But but it's but it was, it was an ip
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: that basically, you know, I can't say I can't because
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: I feel like I'm gonna give it away and then
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna get But you know, all that being said,
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: and we and we have some other things lined up.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: But but but again, my brain has always worked. In fact,
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: that animation right there is my company's that's that's bitbot
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: right there. So this is an animation we made that
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: basically encapsulates our our little uh story. There's a little
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: bit bot guy in a huge astronaut and he's the
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: he's the one actually controlling the astronaut. But you know,
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: multimedia games movies like that. We we've we've produced my
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: business partner and I've produced a bunch of movies already.
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: There's Death Stalker that just came out. Deaf Gasm. If
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: you guys are like in the metal space and you've
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: ever heard of death Gasm Deathcasm too, and we we
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: were executive producers on that. In fact, they were in
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: the movie. But so for me, it's like, as you
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: can tell, nothing ever really was enough for me, Like
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: just playing guitar, bass and drums that wasn't enough, and
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: then just even making the music I make wasn't enough.
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: I had to go get into like games and graphic
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: novels and movies, and so I just like to keep
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: my brain engaged. Is like having multiple outlets. But as
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: it turns out in my career, a lot of times
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: I'm creating the music to some imaginary game or some
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: imaginary movie, and then that ends up translating into a
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: sound that people go, oh, this is this is the future,
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: or this this sounds like a superhero. I don't know
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: why I don't. I don't really either. I feel like
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: if you go in with the intention I'm gonna write
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: a movie. You know, I'm gonna write music that's gonna
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: get used in a you know, superhero movie, you probably
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: will fail. I don't think that's how it works.
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: Do you do you think that there's like certain tropes
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: within your realm of music that are just annoying. Like
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: I remember, like what Inception came out right, That big
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: droning harm sound was just everywhere single commercial still now right,
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: Is there is there a trope or is there like
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: a like a stereotype or a sound that you're just like,
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: all right, we've heard enough of that. Let's let's try
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: to find some other way to scratch that itch.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: I think, you know, and this is not me being judgmental.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: It's just that I'm I'm more dialed in with my
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: sound than maybe some of these you know, some of
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: these metal bands I was hearing maybe like a decade ago.
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: This is when they started putting electronics in like metalcore,
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: and it was like all it would do is you'd
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: start the track with like a little arpeggio or something
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: really simple, and then it was just a metal track
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: all the way through. To me, that was the trope.
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: It was like, Oh, here's they're gonna say it's electronic
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: because it's got this little arc Like my brain doesn't
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: work that way. Like I literally shift gears. I go
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: from full blown like heavy, like I was a huge
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: Slayer fan, like I still to this day. I just
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: love Slayer and not that you know, Circle My new
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: Circle of Dust materials more like in the Slayer world
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: than Celldweller is. But I really like heavy music and
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: then I'll just shift gears from that into something completely electronic.
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: And a lot of times it's a blend of those two.
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: It's not just a shift from one style to the other,
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: like you know, used a razor blade to cut the
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: splice the two together. But yeah, that might have been
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: a trope where it was like some pretty basic sounds
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: over the top of a metal track and then it
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: was like, oh, yeah, this is a this is a
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: like an electronic like metal thing. It's like, no, not,
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: not really. I'm sure within a scene that was edgy
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: because a lot of bands were too afraid to do that.
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: I think that that's what it was. I didn't really
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: have any fear because they had nothing to lose. I
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: had no friends. I wasn't friends with any other bands.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: You know, the fact that Mark and I still talk,
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: Mark Solomon and I, I wouldn't say it's a miracle,
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: but like I didn't grow, like I only interfaced with
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: a few bands, and you know, after playing a place
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: like Cornerstone and being in that scene early on, which
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: was like the Christian scene. Just because the label I
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: was on, those are the gigs they could get. I
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: knew pretty quickly. I was like, I don't want to have
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: anything to do with this. This is hypocrisy, Like one
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: oh one, I'm I'm a New Yorker. Man, It's like
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: I'd rather you just tell me you're gonna stab me
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: in the back than pretend you're my friend and you
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: give me a hug and then stabbing in the back,
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: like we're just more it's just more of a cut
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: and dry thing. So I was like, I don't want
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: to be part of this. So I just really didn't
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: have many friends. And then you know, after that, it
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: was just like you road dog it. So we were
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: playing bills on a Tuesday night, three bands for three bucks,
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: you know, with circle of Dust in there, it's like
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: we were worth a dollar. You know. It's like we
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: were just starving, really just getting paid poorly, sleeping and like, man,
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: I remember some of the places we slept where we
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: got man, we found some good needles. There were some
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: really good needles right outside our door. We're like, wow, yeah,
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: we're if we survived tonight, this will be good news,
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: but you're young. I was like, I just have to
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: get to the next gig, you know, and so now
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: I have no patience for that. I much forget it.
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: I'm not touring anymore.
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: Well, Colin, do you think we should do topts?
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: Let's go top five? Are you ready for your top
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: five most influential records?
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: I'll try, yeah, I'll try. All right, do I just start?
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: Yep, you can go.
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: Let's let's hear each one.
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just give it.
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: This is going off top of my head. It's like
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: somebody asking your favorite flavor of ice cream or your
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: favorite kid. It's like my mind goes blank. I'm like,
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: but I remember influential for me. Start, Let's start with heavy,
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: with Slayer, like hearing that the thrash. I was huge
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: into thrash. That was like I loved Metallica. But Metallica
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: was really the the Britney spears of you know, of metal,
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: you know, compared to like some of the really like
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: Sodom and X I mean not Exodus because Exitus whatever,
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: but you know some of the really like underground Celtic
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: Frost bands like that. Metallica was commercial. I mean they
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: were writing songs, they were singing, and I loved it.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: That's what I gravitated towards. But Slayer, even though Tom
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: Raya didn't sing per se, the energy and the music,
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: the rawness of it, the threat, like I was like,
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: oh man, the harmonies. I was a huge Black Sabbath,
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: a huge this band Trouble. If you're familiar with them,
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: love them, love them, and so the harmonies and like
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: it was just speaking my language transformative.
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: Is there one album specifically you're into from I mean many, but.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: South of Heaven is probably my favorite. Okay, South of
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: Heaven really just kind of encapsulated all the big like
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: moments that I that I really loved about Slayer. This
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: is a band cold future, sound of London. You know,
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: you'd be like, what the hell is that? And it's
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: These guys were really like collage artists. They just basically
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: sampled sounds from all over the place and collaged them together,
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: and they were just musical journeys. This was not This
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: wasn't music you would dance to, even though it was
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: very electronic in nature, a lot of ambience. They'd be
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: like bird sounds and flutes, and then you'd hear clips
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: from movies and then they'd go into a beat and
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: then you know you have this gnarly synth. I mean
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: it just the albums were tied together. There were no
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: breaks life forms as specifically as a double album. And
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: I was dating this girl in Queens and I would
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: drive out through her house, you know, multiple times a week,
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: and I had the cassette in my you know, in
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: my player, driving through you know, driving off Long Island,
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: getting into Queens, through all the tunnels, the lights. It
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: was so cyberpunk, was like it was to me, it
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: was the best. But that music definitely influenced me and
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: I listened to them to this day. This artist Sam Phillips,
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: she was married to this guy t Bone Burnette, who
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: was like I think he was the guitar player for
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: like David Letterman or Johnny Carson. I didn't know anything
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: really about him. I knew everything about her because I
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: discovered this album called Cruel Inventions, And even though maybe
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: her influences were the Beatles, there was just this melancholy
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: to it. There was cool production, panning drums off to
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: the right speaker while there's just a guitar and the
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: left speaker, and I was like, oh, that's a great idea.
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: I mean, I hijacked a lot of these techniques in
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: my music later on, and you know, I was like,
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: this is awesome. Even though again, if you go back
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: further to the Beatles, that's probably where she got it from.
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: But I wasn't really a Beatles fan. I didn't care
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: about the Beatles, but cruel inventions to me, amazing album
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: The Cure Disintegration. I mean, it's probably a joke at
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: this point because South Park had a hole you know,
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: where Robert Smith singer comes out and then they set
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: shout Disintegration. It's my favorite, alum. But there's a reason
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: why because that album emotionally, the soundscapes, it was like
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: this enveloping. You know, this is coming from like a
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: metal head. You know, I'm a metal head. Eighty percent
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: of what I'm gonna give you here, which is four
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: out of the five, are non metal albums, Like everything
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: except Slayers so far non metal, and so yeah, I yeah,
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: just to me, it was transformative. It was just like
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: the guitar tones and all of that, right, which really,
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: you know.
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: I think this means a lot because you are a
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: very like one hundred miles a minute kind of person, right, Yeah,
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: The fact that like a band could could make you
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: stop for a moment and just like take in your
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: emotions is pretty crazy.
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: Most of the because you see, it is more leaning
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: towards that, and that's probably why I needed it. If
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: I listened to just thrash metal all day long, my
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: head would have exploded, like thirty years of it frames
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: all over the ceiling. Right now, you guys be interviewing
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: a headless.
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: Corpse to see you on some uppers right now?
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: Oh man, I don't knew those, And I think maybe
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: the last album would probably be like depeche Mode's Violator
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: because it was Oh. I didn't expect you guys to
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: like respond that way. I thought you might be like,
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: oh what is that? Yeah? Like to me, that was
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: like that was the best depeche Mode album. I really
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: liked them. But this was like me coming from metal
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: and discovering bands that were using electronics that were like
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: their guitars, you know what I'm saying. Like, I was
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: like the melodies they were dark, they were so dark,
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: but yet so completely infectious. The production, the sounds were massive.
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: I'm like, how did they get that sound? I mean,
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: I tried to deconstruct those albums for years and to
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: this day, I you know, I have a better idea,
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: but still so, for all different reasons, all of those
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: albums have absolutely influenced me as an artist, and probably
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: if you listen to Cell Dweller, it is a mixing pot,
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: melting pot of all of that and probably obviously a
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: lot more sure.
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I can definitely hear that.
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I think there's there's so many different
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: landscapes that you kind of talked there. I talked about
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: their soundscapes. I should say that you talked about there
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: that are clearly evident because each of those is taking
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: you on a different kind of journey, right, and Cell
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: Dweller is about taking you on the wildness of journeys.
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: Well hopefully for some people. Yeah. You know, like I
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: did this album called End of an Empire, and you know,
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: just making an album wasn't enough for me. I had
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: to put a whole theme. I created characters. I released
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: the album in chapters, which were two songs installments usually
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: two remixes of those two songs, and two what I
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: was calling factions, which were these instrumental variations of that,
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: but they were very cinematic. They again made to sound
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: like they were coming from a movie. And then, of
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: course when I finished the album, I was like, this
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: isn't good enough. I had a comic book. I had
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: a novel written, a full novel called Black Starts that
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: was a different album. Sorry, But I had a comic
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: book called The Traveler. And then I was like, I
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: was gonna make this whole album of those factions, which
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: was an entire album by itself, and I'm like, I
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: want to voice these characters. So I went and voiced
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: all of these characters, created dialogue, I spoke an alien language.
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: I made it up. I just made it up. So
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: if you go to Spotify and listen to the deluxe
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: version of the album, the second album is like all
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: of those factions with like you'll hear It opens with
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: like ship landing, doors opening, alarms going off, you hear
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: a radio broadcast. I put it all together, recorded all
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: the voices, most ninety eight percent of them are me.
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: I just use my tricks to make myself sound different.
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: But that's where my head is at. That's like, I
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: don't I'm not looking like I wish I was the
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: guy to be like, I want to write the best
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: song I can. I always do try to write the
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: best song I can, but I'm not a pop guy.
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: I want to give people the best experience, like an
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: experience I would want when you put on an album
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: and get lost. We are in a society where things
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: are like everybody's attention span is like this, right. I
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: feel like everybody's looking for some escape from the freaking
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: reality we live in, which is like horrific on many levels.
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: It doesn't matter what side of the political divide you're on,
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: because we are completely divided. Obviously, it doesn't matter what
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: side you're on. It's bad. It's just everything's bad. It
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: has been for I don't know. In my recollection, probably
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: COVID was when it really started getting really bad, and
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: I'm just like, man, it is like it's just been dismal.
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: So like I escape, and I imagine that there's a
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: lot of other people that are looking for an escape too,
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: And that's what I try to pour into my music
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: for myself, hoping that other people will get it. That's
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: why I put the time in to create characters like
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: who really cares? Oh, I got this. I'm working on
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: a new album called god Mode, and it's video game
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: related and for every every song i'm gonna put out,
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: I'm going to create a character that looks like it's
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: from a video game, and it's gonna be branded. It's
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: gonna be a little backstory there. I'm already working on,
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: you know, stories. And I bought several hundred many disc
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: players from Japan years ago because I was gonna use
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: them for my Scandroid project, which is more of a
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: synthway thing. I've shifted gears and I'm incorporating that into
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: the new Cell Dweller album, god Mode, and I'm gonna
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: be selling these things burning the album to you know,
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna be selling many discs, but it's gonna be
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: part of the lore. Like so, to me, world building
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: goes way beyond just the song or even the album.
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: It's like I can't I just can't go. Here's an
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: album and has to be an album and a comic
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: book and mini discs. And I bought these circuit boards
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: that I'm gonna blow torch and make it look like
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: it's a burnt out drone that got shot down in
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: a future war. It's like, am I crazy? Probably?
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean this is awesome.
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: There's enough people around me that tell me so so
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: I must be, but I don't care. Like, to me,
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: this is entertainment, and I feel like I want to
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: give anybody who cares about what I do. I want
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: to give them something they feel is worth putting their
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: time into or helps them escape the reality that they're in.
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of people in really bad realities. Mason.
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: I heard you're not such a great reality out there
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: right now, so you know, like, yeah, you know what
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, Like everybody I think is looking for I mean,
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: if you're some of the lucky few who's just floating
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: in the clouds and life is great, well congratulations, But
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: most of us down here, we're just struggling to get by,
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean?
• 55:17
  Speaker 3: Sure, well, along would like to plug?
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: There?
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I was gonna say, like along those lines they
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: get what do you want to plug? So obviously new
• 55:23
  Speaker 3: album will eventually come out along with a ton of
• 55:26
  Speaker 3: other things, but yeah, what do you want to what
• 55:28
  Speaker 3: do you want to plug?
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: Uh? Well, a fake Breaker, which is the first song
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: from god Mode. It is literally gonna be a single.
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: And then from there I was like, maybe I should
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: turn this into it like a game related like album.
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: I've had this god Mode idea for literally five years,
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: and I'm like, I'm gonna do god Mode. It's gonna
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: be game related. Fake Breaker is the first song. It's
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: out right now. There's a music video you can watch
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: right now, and I did. It's not like my crowning achievement.
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: I don't think for the album, but it is. It
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: is what it is, the video itself, the song I dig.
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: I'm working on another song that's already done, called Spawn,
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: and that will be out right. The two video game
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: scores that I worked on are coming out in the
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: next few months. One is for something Bitbot did. My
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: company Bitbot. We did a graphic novel for this video
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: game called The Legacy of Caine Soul Reaver, and we're
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: breathing some life back into that. And I did I scored,
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: I did a score, We did picture of discs, vinyl
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: and all that, so that's being released. And then the
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: entire score for the game that I mentioned earlier that
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: has not been announced yet, that Sony is announcing I
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: think in April. This whole entire score is dropping around
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: the release of the game, which I think is April,
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: end of March, early April, so that's in between. But
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: then god Mode will resume and yeah, and then there's
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: a bunch of like video game stuff and score stuff.
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: But god Mode is just that's like my focus right now,
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: like just diving deep into that, developing characters that maybe
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: only a few people will care about, but I don't care.
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: I'm just I have to do it. Yeah, And so
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: to me, that's that's what's coming down the pipe right now.
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: There's way, there's way more I haven't. I have another
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: project called Scandroid, which is a little more like retro
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: eighties nineties kind of vibes. I have a whole album
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: demoed out. It's been demoed for three years, and I've
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: just kind of been in a holding pattern waiting for
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: like when's the gap to start this? Obviously not yet.
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: So yeah, and I have more music. There's there's a
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: number of Circle of Dust tracks. I have demos of
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: that are. I just released two new Circle of Dust
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: songs a few months ago, Digital Messiah and I don't
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: know someone else can remind me of that. The other
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: one is but I released I released two of them.
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: Those just came out on an expanded version of Machines
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: of Artist Grace, which was the new Circle of dust
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: album I put out in twenty fifteen.
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: Dude, you're so busy. I don't know how you do
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: all this well.
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: Man, I feel like I'm like, I'm like so slow.
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: I'm managing kids a lot. You know, I got a
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: little kids. It's like it's a lot. I mean, marriage
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: and kids really puts a dent on like full time.
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: I used to be seven days a week, just like focus,
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: like laser. Now it's like if I get seven minutes,
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: I'm good job. So yeah, but it's cool. It's cool.
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm I'm pretty happy. You know. At the
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: end of the day, I'm doing what I love to do,
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: and I get to do it out on my own term.
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: I don't have to work for the man. I don't
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: have to take any gigs I don't want to take.
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: I get to invest my time and my energies into
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: things that I'm directly involved in. The video games that
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: I'm scoring, we're involved in those games, you know, Like
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: I've done the video games where I was the hired gun.
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: My friend of mine, Tom Salt, and I scored season
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: three of Killer Instinct. It's this Xbox Fight. It's like
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat. We scored that game, and it was a
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: great experience, you know, but it was for Microsoft. You know,
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: it's like they're gonna have an opinion and they're going
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: to tell you what they want and don't want, and
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: you have a say to a degree. But this stuff
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: is like, you know, I get to do what I
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: do and it adds value to everything else that we're doing,
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: versus being like, well I just finished that gig, what's
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: the next gig? So I can pay my bills. It's
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: like I have starved for decades to allow myself the
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: grace right now to do whatever I want to do.
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: If that's the right way to say that is.
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: The right way to say that, Well it sounds like
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: you're you're loving what you're doing, and uh that's all
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: that matters. And so, uh, super super excited for all
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: the music that's gonna come down the pipeline here soon.
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: And yeah, thanks so much for chatting about your your
• 59:15
  Speaker 3: musical career, uh and all all things. Uh Clayton, it's
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: just it's super it's just fascinating here. Its entire career.
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: I mean, there's so much, so much more that we
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: could have talked about, but there's only so much time.
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: But thanks so much for chatting more about yeah, your
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: whole musical career obviously cel Dweller and uh yeah, thank
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: you so much.
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: For Yeah, thanks you guys for having me. Man, I
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: just uh again blame Mark Solomon. I saw his pretty
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: face and I'm like, I gotta watch this video. I
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: was like, Hey, those guys want to interview, I'll do
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: an interview with them, and then we've been working on it.
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I appreciate you like digging in and finding
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: out the history, and yeah, there's there's probably I could
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: I could talk for six more hours because I just
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: don't know how to shut up with Yeah, there's there's
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: a lot going on and there's a lot of history.
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: But I'm happy where I'm at, and thanks thanks for
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: taking the time to interview me. If you want to
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: come and send you know, might here. Pedal to the metalwork.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 3: Got shut down.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: Come on, man, you can't be real. I'll show you
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: what it is at the handle build shut he shot down.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: Put the pedal to the meadow work goat