Brunson interview: “I grew up in these little MK-Ultra test experiment things called raves”

“No-one in their right mind would release my music, but Tresor aren’t in their right mind – that’s what we expect from them.”

Having made up one part of Model 500’s live show since time immemorial – and coming up as a DJ in The midwest 1990s underground – should be enough to bolster the claim that America’s Gerald Brunson is an unrelenting force of charisma and talent. 

However, unlike most of our interviewees, Brunson chose to respond to our questions regarding his newest EP in long-form recorded soundbites, with many parts of the audio covered in deep thickets of vocoder – highly characteristic for otherworldly techno artists such as himself. 

While we lack the means to reproduce this fascinating audio, we ask you to imagine the voice of an energetic all-American dance music hero, full of simultaneous compassion and critical disdain for the dance music of today, as you read the following interview.

It comes as part of ‘Hug Your Friends’, Brunson’s first ever acid techno release for Tresor. The new EP comes despite Brunson’s relentless come-up, in various forms from slinging & sorting records for Detroit’s legendary Submerge Records shop, to later endeavors as Acid Jakal and for his own imprint, Dance Sacred Records. While it seems like a long time coming for Brunson, it ultimately seems like he doesn’t care too much; a release with Tresor is just the cherry on top for a no-bullshit veteran!

How did you first get into dance music, and how did you find yourself where you are today?

When I was younger, I could not fathom the idea of dance, the idea of dancing in front of a mirror in a studio in West Hollywood , Sweating to Paula Abdul or C+C Music Factory was just really bizarre to me – the way that MTV portrayed dance music was just really awkward.

I was programmed to like a band, bands with different members in it. Each had a different personality, girls could like ‘em, whoever the hot guitar dudes are, they’d be like, “oh, I like him”, but the guys could resonate & find themselves & inspiration too.  

It took me a long time to resonate with rap, I couldn’t take it seriously at first. I was raised in a town where I was one of maybe four black people. I found myself not wanting to be a stereotype; my mom’s white and my dad’s black, I’ve always spoken how I speak. I’ve always said ‘i-ther’ instead of either, stuff like that. I never played sports or anything, hip-hop was just really hard for me to deal with.

There was a song by Digital Underground called Humpty Dance, that kind of stuff was novelty. I was raised on Motown, though, and vintage classic rock like Pink Floyd. But when I got older I pretty much liked R&B and soul, and was really into rock. When grunge swept through, I was a big fan of Nirvana and Alice In Chains. When I got into my junior high age, I remember White Zombie was doing a lot of techno-rock stuff. Techno proper was just really hard to find and get into because it wasn’t distributed and processed like rock and all that pop culture stuff. I had eaten some LSD and after that everything sounded different to me. After that, I stopped listening to music for the arrangement, and started to listen to stuff based on the actual tonal content of it. That was when techno became something I could listen to, since it’s based on frequencies and that’s it. I was lucky to find Aphex Twin, because that was not dance-techno – I didn’t start dancing until I started going to raves – and once I started doing that, that’s when techno was cool with me.

I remember when I listened to Sheet One by Plastikman I took it back, because I thought it was meant to sound trippy and psychedelic, but it was just a drum machine going ‘doop doop doop’. But then I got into rave, hardcore gabber stuff, it was offensive & brash much like rock with a matching tempo. 

As I was going through stuff, and experimenting more as time went on, I found Richie Hawtin’s Mixmag Live mix, it was confusing at first because the mixes are created with surgical precision and the track breaks are inserted every 5 minutes instead of every mix much like mixtapes were. That mix, Dj DRC’s androidgeny & Nigel Richards second floor weirdness tapes became canon for me, I still get excited by that mixmag mix. I can hear how it’s digitally edited, but for me it’s still phenomenal. 

My friends started DJing earlier than me, and we would get double copies of records and mark them, so we could pull off the weird transitions hawtin was pulling off. We were like, “we have these records, they go from this section to this section right here, they’ve gotta be using three turntables.” We had splicing tape, so we put that on our records, and edited them that way so all the hot parts were in sequence.

I don’t wanna say it was weed & psychedelics , but I definitely could not listen to techno back then as I would listen to ‘Time’ by Pink Floyd. But now I hear everything as a sound, a vibration, a pulse. 

Brunson marks a shift away from your earlier work under the name Acid Jakal. Why the name change?

I did the Acid Jakal thing because my dog’s name was Dr. Jak L Turbo, and when I was DJing I went by Jak Turbo, and that was me and 3 turntables and usually my 606. And Acid Jakal was me performing live with TR8s and 505s and shit. And that was still based off my dog’s name. Subconsciously I was trying to form an acid mammal community, because my friend Seth goes by Acid Bat. 

Mainly we’re going with the Brunson thing, because Gerald Brunson is a bit lanky, I’m not a huge fan of my name. Mike Banks always refers to me as Brunson, and I also often go by Turbo. It’s still kinda militant, and straight-edge, although I’m not really straight-edge at all. But it’s more because I don’t understand why everyone where I’m from drinks so much and does so much ketamine and coke. Its so annoying Ill be dancing my ass off & some blow hard has to stop me and ask me for drugs, I say im not on drugs & they respond with “you’re on something to make you dance like that”. Get a fucking life already theres more to the human experience than doing drugs….

Most know you for your involvement in the Model 500 live show. How did you first link up with Juan Atkins and co?

I linked up with Juan mainly through Mike Banks. My dog had passed away and I had moved to Mike’s building in Detroit. 

Detroit’s a pretty greyed-out city, a lot of people there have shell-shock, that thousand yard stare.

 I met Milton aka. DJ Skurge, and we’d play video games projected on the wall using arcade emulators. 

I met Mark Floyd in 2010 he used to date my cousin back before the army took his sanity , and John Collins, in 2008, at some weird crazy after-hours party on Iron Street.

Submerge Records was weird with being open. Before they were ‘open’-open, Korrie got me in, and I met the human soul of submerge Bridgette, Mike Banks’ sister. 
I was just buying records, as I only had a little money, Bridgette gave me most of the Submerge records for free after our conversation with her, korrie & I Had. That was my first run-in with her. 
I was staying to DJ for Zana at Spectacles in 2008 , and she pulled this move (a lot of people just show up to Detroit to stake their claim, to drop a little load and then they’re out) and so she gave me some far off date to play. She said, “If you’re really in the city, then you can play on this date in my store”. Which was like a couple of months. My cousin Tracy was so ready for me to leave lol but I stayed that long & played that date using those records I got from submerge some like no ufo’s I put on 45 rpm to mix a second time with jungle & it was really a moment I will always remember. Thank you Zana!

I had long, bleach-blond dreads at the time, and wore a cowboy hat because I was proud of being from Colorado. I met Mike Banks outside Submerge, and he was tripping on me, and after that I had his email and we just kept in contact. From there, Mike and I had an altercation and was like “hey, I’m gonna try you out for Model 500” after I did some visual VJing for some other Detroit & Colorado events. They were trying to work out what exactly it was that I do, they weren’t used to that skill set.

Then after the movement model 500 show, there was something like two shows without me, and then I finally joined. I guess by not being full of shit, I got in. Mike can smell bullshit a mile away. I’m not fucked up on coke and fentanyl or ketamine all the time. You can count on me at 3 in the morning, I’m committed to the set up, execution of design & the dismantle, I’m not looking for some loose orifice to have sex with or cheap ego boost.

What led to you forming Dance Sacred Records?

Dance Sacred came about because I was a vinyl DJ purist for a large section of my life, I was making these tracks that if I played them, they’d have a really strong impact, and I was the only person who had them.

But I was listening to a bunch of Soundcloud links Freddy Fresh had sent me under his alias Modulator, one of them called Slider, when I listened to it I was like “this thing is going to destroy every warehouse and club it comes into contact with.” I needed to be the one who breaks this to the world, I thought to myself. I’d been toying with this label idea. Milke was like, “if you do that then I’ll sell em in the store”, and I was like, “cool”. 

I have lots of art, I like to do art that ties into record sleeves, shirts and stuff. I was fed up with this really weird sluggy slow mono chromatic tech house experience that was going on, and I wanted to bring back screaming acid techno, with banging sounds – that, again, wasn’t like weird business techno bullshit that sounds like it was made by watching a YouTube tutorial.

When I lived at Submerge, I had no speakers, I was able to run my equipment out of my DJM 800 mixer into microphone port in my computer then use audacity to record & get the sound playback through my laptop speakers Then I learned how to use a multitrack mixer, and people would clock that I was making music. I had sent some of my music around, but it was too raw. Someday I’ll have to do that thing that Nine Inch Nails did where they had their demo tracks on it, and then all the album versions & remixes that followed.  I’ll still play my shit out raw and unmastered, I don’t give a fuck.

It wasn’t like I wasn’t getting turned down by labels, no-one in their right mind would release my music, but I guess Tresor aren’t in their right mind – that’s what we expect from them.

I do full releases, and then I do special limited versions, that I can just hand you if I know you well or if I’ve met you in person. Dance Sacred is one of the ways I can communicate with people globally, based off of the common theme of something we live for, whether it’s ambient, jungle. Maybe you have something I can release. Or maybe one of my releases will fit into some moment of your day, and allow you to experience something in either a lighter or more heavy way.  I got to where I’m at much like the Muppet Movie.  I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it. Kermit and the gang end up in New York and they’ve got this Broadway show and he’s trying to pitch it with no luck and everyone separates and they go their own way, and then Kermit gets amnesia hes unaware the show got picked up, and becomes a New York stockbroker, but then he bumps into the group, gets his memory back, and suddenly boom he’s got the answer to the ending of the show. How is he gonna do the show? With all the friends he met along the way and sharing that story. 

I’m very much where I’m at today due to all the amazing friends/friendships I have made and lost up until today, and not compromising or settling for anything less than what I feel should be reality. If it wasn’t for certain introductions to people like my friends Tracy or Zana, I wouldn’t have the edge on being relevant or helpful for Detroit or any type of real Detroit Street perspectives like that. I want to be clear I am not from Detroit nor did I come up

Despite its tender name, Hug Your Friends is four tracks of hard-hitting acid, contrasting to some of your more ambient and melodic earlier music. What was the core concept behind the EP?

‘Hug Your Friends’ came to be like this… my mom got me hooked on hugging when I was young. She would give met these super intense hugs that were incredible. Hugs are super intense for me. There was this one time my friend Matt and I were tripping at my house when we were 14, My mom came home. Matt and I were not tripping for some reason, we took two hits, people were saying the acid was bunk, but I had a really positive relationship with the people I’d gotten them from, and I was like, “there’s no way they would knowingly do this to me, this stuff has to be good.” 

But we weren’t feeling anything,and then we said “fuck it”, and ate one more. Then my mom came home and we weren’t tripping, and I was like, “mom, do you have any weed?”, and she gave us this cellophane bag about ¼ full of weed. So we’re trying to trip, listening to Pink Floyd. I reboot Dark Side Of The Moon, and we hit the bowl, as soon as we blow out the hit, we start tripping absolute balls. The smoke coming out of our mouths was rainbow colored, and when we both looked at each other, we knew it was happening.

My mom was like, “oh, you guys are listening to Dark Side Of The Moon!” And she starts describing the concert of theirs she saw. She was like, “they had an airplane fly over the crowd, from behind, on fire, and explode, and when it exploded there was just all these clocks everywhere and all this money was falling out of the exploding airplane and it was getting caught by these nets and you were trying to catch the money but couldn’t.” And as she was saying this, it was like we were there, at the concert, and at the same time there was this giant eyeball coming out the wall behind my mom.

The moral of the story is not that I was young and doing drugs,But rather, when my mom went to sleep, and before she went to bed, she gave us hugs. 
The hugs were what did it for us.

Matt would later ask for mom hugs before he went about his day. And even in the shittiest of times, my mom & I would just hug and it would be fantastic. I cannot describe what happens in my body when I hug someone. 

In America we say ‘Tressor’ instead of Tresor. If you actually listen to how you’re saying Tresor, you’re saying ‘treasure’ with an accent. It actually means something like ‘vault’, where you hide your treasure. I wanted it to be like, ‘hug your friends, stick them inside your vault, value them.’ Hug your friends, I’ll crack your back, I’m that guy.

I’ve also had a hard time with people committing suicide, because mental health is in the gutter right now, globally. Unfortunately in electronic music, we’re faced with a very at-risk group of people with addiction issues, and it is what it is. It’s what makes it so creative and expressive, but also so volatile and fragile. I’ve being going to parties since 1995 and I’ve seen entire rave civilizations flourish, then go extinct, and then start up again. I’ve seen dynasties collapse. There was a point in 1998 where parties sucked, because certain people weren’t there, and those people couldn’t be there since they were dead, or in rehab. The underground trying to get mainstream credit wasn’t helping things either.

My guy Ricky “wood”, who was struggling with drugs & deep depression, we’d exchanged some heated words about it & fell out of synch. When we saw each other he kept hugging to make up, and it was just really intense. This was at the drop bass barn event which is bery much a real family reunion camp out zero drama. I had made this decision of I’m not going to play dark, hard, evil, brooding music at this camp out im gonna accent the sick as fuck & positive tips which invloved some light hearted house & soul cleaning UR techno etc. Sure, I played jungle and gabber, but not the brooding dark shit. I didn’t want anyone to feel like that. I got into playing happy house, which did feel a little out of place, but it worked because I wanted to juice people up with positivity. However A week or two later Rick Killed himself & then later Brandon joined him, I then came to terms with the fact I have real friends & family with REAL life problems & stress, so I will never pull any punches after this I will play or say what ever the fuck we are feeling. Rick went out of his way to make sure I understood we were cool & none of my words hurt him we hugged so much it is so obvious to me now, in hindsight. So I seriously stand by the statement “HUG YOUR FRIENDS” because right now is all we have & its best spent with each other losing our minds finding our souls on some sweaty dance floor with music not from this dimension being amplified at stomach rumbling volumes. 

There’s nothing I could’ve done, to stop Rick doing what he was going to do.

I remember the last hug I gave Rick and I’ll always remember it. I’ll remember the mom hug. I remember the hugs I gave to someone when I was 4. Life is live or fucking die. TV will have you think it’s Real Housewives or FOX News or CNN or whatever, but it’s not. 
It’s the experiences you have, period. A lot of those experiences are hard. I’ve had very intense experiences with my mom, but we’re still there and we still hug it out. It’s a tough fucking life, man. People are getting slaughtered in Ukraine, Libya, Venezuela, why? Why are gas prices through the roof? Why is there injustice & strife ? At the end of the day, a hug will change your state of experience. That’s what I’m trying to do with the music, you’re not trying to question anything, like a hug, it’s very direct and specific.

We get the sense that spirituality and psychedelics both have a strong influence on your music. Are we correct? What can you tell us about the influence of Timothy Leary, and other famous US advocates of psychedelic drugs, on your music?

To me, psychs and spirituality go hand in hand, they’re close companions. I live in an area where there’s a strong Native American presence. They’re into peyote, ayahuasca, mushrooms, stuff that takes you out of the box of your ego, and makes you start looking at life with a different perspective.

Gaining perspective is the key to life. Whether you’re in a capitalist, communist, or oligarchic society, your perspectives are ultimately what is going to dictate reality. To me it’s just like with gear, owning a 303 doesn’t make you a good producer, and doing a bunch of coke doesn’t make you a good producer or person, it might make you an asshole, actually. I read an article when I was a teen, Richie Hawtin saying he showed up to parties and people were just handing him LSD like he ate it every day. he later shared the concept of “just because you like chocolate cake, doesn’t mean you eat it every day” on the musik liner notes. That made a lot of sense to me.
If an experience is so intense and profound, why would you keep trying to have the same thing over and over? It doesn’t make sense to me, psychs aren’t the answer, but they’re definitely a basic low level creative aid.

I don’t subscribe to a specific religion, but I find the Tibetan and Egyptian Books of the Dead quite stimulating and interesting. The mystery societies, the Rosicrucians, the ones about the great mystery of life, even The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour, all of it is dealing with this great mystery of life. The ‘Masons are about it, the Knight’s Templars are about it, the way society has been since about 1950, the Nuclear Family age, I would say, is when “they” really started projecting this weird tangent on everyone about what reality is, about what rock music is. It was the Tavistock Society who actually created the words ‘teenager’ and ‘angst’, and all of that, to shape society. 

Timothy Leary was part of that. I don’t think he was a true guru, he was a doctor. 
He worked with the CIA, and on some level he was a narc. He wasn’t a bad person, and after a while he just became who he was and could eat a bunch of acid and do that psych guru stuff.

I will say this now: when people are on LSD, they’re always talking about this enlightenment, but what do they ever do with it? Supposedly they were microdosing in Silicon Valley, and that’s when a bunch of breakthroughs happened, but how can you prove that? If everyone is so enlightened on LSD, why aren’t they walking on water, why aren’t they transforming water into cancer-curing serum? 

When I was going to parties and when people were doing acid and ecstasy, it was a lot more enjoyable than when people were doing Meth, alcohol, ketamine, & fake mdma aka “molly”. Most people that were drinking alcohol & doing Mdma etc are dead from liver cancer or in complete sobriety that keeps them from parties or really really “ate up” & rough looking.
I hate that. a lot of people I feel do not have things in check, and addiction is now running rampant in this society. 

Leary, to me, was part of the thing to get people to do acid ( not mushrooms or peyote or mescaline but street acid)
I mean, honestly, Leary and MK-Ultra had a lot to do with my music, because I grew up in these little MK-Ultra test experiment things called raves, and I was being fed chemicals and reacting to the stimulus of the heat and flashing colors and the repetitive sounds. 
That programmed me to do what I’m doing now. When The Beatles and the ‘67 stuff started happening, with the vibrant colors, and the wavy text,printing,lyrics on a sleeve those things changed the world. 

I don’t subscribe to Leary. The whole deal with him getting arrested was that he could go and work on inmates in jail, which is what he was doing while he was incarcerated. I have no idea how you can do that; give people LSD while you yourself are incarcerated.

But going back to the EP title, Hug Your Friends… When Leary was doing experiments in whatever prison he was in, he found that when you gave people LSD ( or mdma ) and also gave them hugs, you could break through with them on almost anything. He was dealing with super-hard prisoners, with behavioral issues, but when you gave them LSD and hugs, you could bond with them to the point where they could discuss their issues with you and also give them the motivation to change their lives.

I like Owsley Stanley. He did this thing with Nicholas Sand & Sullivan , when the govt started changing the laws on LSD in California, they came to Denver, Colorado, and made a bunch of LSD in this house next to a zoo here. 
They made so much LSD that people may still be eating some of it to this day. As the 55 gallon drums that they buried, people still dig them up. But thats why I mention that, because I make acid techno in the denver area.
A lot of the acid ate between 1969 and ‘06, came from these barrels in Denver. Any way they made the acid, and left that house as is without cleaning up.
The landlord stopped by, there was a horrible smell in the house because the chems they used to make LSD smelled horrible. He called the cops, because he thought there was a dead body in there. The cops found all the LSD ingredients, and then put Stanley Sullivan & Sand in prison. Stanley came from a very rich family, and he’s a genius – the reason his LSD was so good was because he contacted the people who made the Pyrex cookware he used, and he had to make it to a specific density tolerance, precisely – so he was the first to get off due to fancy lawyers. The other two were stuck there in jail for a while. Stanley never made LSD again afterwards, and instead started designing the wall of sound speaker systems for the Grateful Dead as well as mastering the art of recording live shows ( hence why the dead have so many early sound board recordings). And that’s how he pioneered the Wall of Sound, and that’s where Line-Array speaker systems came from, and we all know we love Function One turbo sound & L acoustics , which in turn came from Owlsley.

So we can thank Stanley for that. I can’t stand the Grateful Dead, I don’t consider it sound that is listenable to, it’s music for people to do coke and talk over, I will fight anybody on that, I cannot stand that shit, and can’t tell you how many arguments I’ve gotten into over the Grateful Dead. But without Owsley Stanley, I don’t know if we’d have Line-Array systems. if you’ve been to a concert, and see speakers hanging from the ceiling, that was him. It was more important than what he did with LSD.

LSD just really opened up America/ the world. Things were very black-and-white, nuclear family, Donna Reed-ish here beforehand, but LSD broke people away from the establishment, puritan box of sitting at concerts, people used to sit at concerts, can you believe that?
I don’t think LSD is true freedom, but I do think it helps people get the idea that they can change their perspective on something.  Its very basic first level of realization in reality, to me LSD/drug’s used for recreational use is very basic jr high school level shit. Overload your neurotransmitters & grow up educate yourself. The MAP IS NOT THE TERRITORY.

I am a gearhead. I love my gear guy, Raph at Michigan Synth Works, all day.

For the EP, I had access to this modified 606 that my visual mentor Detronik built. a x0xbo0x raph built me and the effects on the DJM 800 Pioneer mixer. Then on the next acid track, that’s definitely a TR-8S, RMX 1000 and a Moonwind filter (this filter-tracker thing that’s badass). Sometimes it has a mind of its own, but I can’t hate it for having attributes I also possess.

Then with 2way, I was a little out of my mind when I made that; I was just plugging shit in all weird. I had a Big Muff electric worm thing, I was able to set the LFO on it where the filter was coming in and out how I wanted it. 

Oh, the 505! I went through this heavy phase where I had to use the 505 on everything. Then all of my music sounded all the same, so I had to take out the 505. I now have a circuit bent 505 that i’m going to use instead.

I could talk about my studio all day, man. I don’t just make an EP after deciding to I just record music. I love those converter pieces Raph built using micro-USB, because after I dropped my beef with computer DAWs, I started to use anything to make music. I now use Bitwig or Ableton, in conjunction with the Gilbert filter. I have a preenFM2 synth that you can upload DX7 patches onto and shit, it’s got like 16 voices, really small. then I have an MC-202 and a 606. Most of the boutique line, the 06, the 03, the 08. Then I have an SE-O2 with that weird extender on it. Then the x0xb0x was actually made with 303 pieces, I’m in cahoots with Raph from Michigan Synth Works, very grateful for my relationship with him, he built it.

I’ve got a YOCTO that literally howls. Raph also built that. It says it’s ‘spirit controlled’ instead of computer controlled; if you turn the decay up on it, it starts to go ‘oooooooo’. Raph says he doesn’t know why it’s happening, but I know why, it’s because my dog is in that machine.

What can you tell us about the state of the Midwestern dance music scene today? Which artists do you have your eye on / who are you working with?

The state of the Midwest scene today is extreme, and it’s not good but it’s, also good. It’s being ruined by drugs and egos and people that wear black uniforms. They think techno has to be black shirt, black pants, black shoes. I’m a black American though, and apparently we’re credited for creating Detroit dance music & Chicago house, so I don’t need to wear black clothes to justify my allegiance.

It’s a really depressive state of affairs. Here in the Midwest I’m dealing with a lot of suicides and cancel culture. There’s no techno coming out the Midwest now, apart from the usual cats Dark Cloud, Freddy Fresh, Paul birken, Taimbot, Doman,AcidBat, 
I see dj dex yaxteq, jon dixon, Keith tucker, luke hess, shawscape Tyler Dancer, Sean tate etc puttin in work but that’s detroit I’m more talking about Colorado to Wisconsin or what ever the midwest is,
but really the scene is just a lot of people doing coke, ketamine, drinking, talking about mental health because they’re depressed, then resorting back to chemicals & abuse & canceling instead of focusing on being consistent to take the correct steps to ensure mental health.

Milwaukee has good music but also a lot of overdoses. A buddy of mine, Shawn, overdosed, I didn’t even know he was using. When I’m hanging out in europe there I’m there for months, and I see the same thing all the time, everyone doing valium and xanax. There’s this idea that they work hard so they deserve to party hard. It’s like, bitch, I’ve been to the same house in Denver, in Chicago, finland, everywhere. Everyone just getting faded. I’m like, “you are going to burn out by the time you’re 25.” They seem to be able to handle it better in Europe, but in America, it’s not good.

The Midwest is like an ulcer, it’s just not enjoyable. But it is enjoyable too, when you find that party and it’s great, then it’s great. In the 90s, it was better, but it also had a huge crystal meth problem back then. Lots of accusations flying around at promoters allegedly being meth heads being made by closet meth heads.
I’m not trying to kick anyone but there’s lots of dishonesty about drug use here.

It would be nice without the suicide and addiction, it’s like a solar flare happens and people just start killing themselves. There are people who i’ll just never be able to hug again. Their energy is lost at the party. If people weren’t so inundated with brain chemistry-altering chemicals, things would be so much more stable. The overall toll and the loss incurred, I don’t know if it’s worth it, man.

In terms of artists I have my eye on and who I’m working with… Type 303, hot as fuck, he’s from Finland. Anything this guy makes is gold, platinum, it’s space-aged, from the future, from the past, I love it. I want him on the bill at Tresor. I found him like this: I was working at a record shop (my friend Seth’s Love Vinyl store), and there’s this record on the floor with no attention being paid to it, and it said like ‘Rhythm Trax’ or ‘Jacks Trax’. And to me with anything with ‘Jacks’ on it, that’s code for “this is going to be a cool record.” So I was just like, you know what, I’m taking this record… I had it for 4 or 5 months without listening to it. Then I finally listened to it, and I was finally like, “oh my god, this is incredible.” Lone and Type 303, Taimbot, Doman, Shawscape Renegade, anything optic nerve, Elijah Fisher, whoever made 76 Liebe alle on electronic music foundation. I still fuck with suburban knight & body mechanic! The Human League .
I have some throw back tracks I love coming out on Dance sacred such as “Cosmic Drive by” by Will Web & some other tricks up my sleeve.

This Glasgow guy Lukas, he was stuck in this mode of doing covers, but now he’s making some shit. There’s another dude named James Ferguson I know, the stuff I’m hearing him make is very impressive. Colin Ward, too, but he passed away. Stephan Herrera carries on his legacy and does stuff to continue it, very awesome. Dollarstore Keyboard is cool too. 

Can we catch you DJing or playing live soon, and if so, where?

I don’t really play out too much, I am due out in Berlin late summer/fall I am gonna open for wajeed In denver on july 8^th , I did visuals for juan atkins’s set during movement, I have some gigs with the Colorado symphony etc, I seem to be playing for Drop Bass a lot lately, and their friends. Kyle Geiger and I DJ’d for our friend April’s birthday house party back in February – it was so fucking cold outside, if you were to pee it would freeze – and we turned that party out for two days, and just had like short-sleep shifts.

I just played with Suburban Knight, which was really intense and insane, but it didn’t get recorded and I’m really sad about that. We tagged teamed it was so lethal keep UR eyes peeled lol. Again I want to reiterate “ It’s not what Detroit can do for you, It’s what you can do for Detroit” 

Pre-order your copy of Hug Your Friends, expected out on September 30, by clicking here