On the left you get an intriguing though provoking delivery set against an irresistibly minimalist beat. On the right you get unlimited Twinkies. Make your voice heard.
Read our discussion with the artist below.
Describe your sound in 3 words
Human wrestles machinery.
Tell us a few things about ‘TWINKIES’. What inspired its unique sound design and the use of clipped reverb tails and dissonant piano clanks?
The sound came first: I was composing on a laptop while riding NYC subways. Thought it would be fun to make beats from samples of a piano that I’d prepared by threading nails into its strings… Then the laptop with all my work was stollen when our house — my pregnant wife (at the time) and mine – was robbed. I’d made one bounce of a rough draft of the beat, but I forever lost my ability to change the source material after the robbery. Six years later, I pulled up the stereo bounce, and just went with it. It had many sonic problems, so the beat on the record has about a million automation moves. Thinking of the robbery brought my mind to the underbelly of capitalism; I don’t fault the robber really — they were desperate. I’m glad we weren’t home… But a world that runs on billionaires lasciviously stalking sales metrics… this is the problem. And it will forever breed desperate robbers who will steal dope beats from expecting artists.
How do you think it challenges the conventional definitions of music and art-making?
The beat was made from samples of a piano filled with nails on a subway, then stollen and resurrected, then (continuing with rail-based transport) I wrote the lyrics over the rediscovered beat while train-traveling 4 hours a day at a time when I was directing an opera (rehearsals were 2 hrs from home by train). But more to the point, the modern “convention” is more and more driven by what non-artists deem as potentially profitable. This twisted process only ever looks backwards at that which has ALREADY been profitable, it doesn’t look to what society truly needs or teach us how to hear new things; conversely, art is only ever made by dreaming of what comes next. Artists look forward, very much at what we need as a people. Artists may borrow from the past, or pay respects, but copying is simply copying, remaking is not making, and remaking is the current “convention.” You will hear some influences in TWINKIES for sure, but it is certainly not made in the spirit of remaking.
Do you think music has the power to change societal choices, or is it merely a reflection of them?
I lived through an abusive childhood, and had it not been for music in my youth, I would have likely become a very broken person. The phrases “music saved me” or “art saved me” are not uncommon. These are basically clichés because these words are so very, very common. I think art may very well have prevented generations of abusers and killers, and this certainly counts as a changing of societal choices. I think that folks who claim art has no power to change had super cozy childhoods. But the real thing for me: it is the business of billionaire CEO’s to change society — to make folks buy more of their whatever they’re selling so they can impress their shareholders and buy bigger yachts, it would seem. And when we have a billionaire class forever buying new government policies to support their fuckery, the only ammo against them is the inspiration and hope of the people for a better future, and we can only turn the people’s eyes away from all the snack cake-ish, money-centered remakes with something better — something new — something of the future with love and hope in its DNA (even if its angry on the surface), and that ammo against profiteering will be, and can only be, dreamed and created by artists.
What would you change in the music industry?
Nothing I love it it’s great!! Sorry… had to… I yearn for a world in which the record execs are less cowardly, and will stand behind new, unprecedented voices so that the people have real options, and can learn to cultivate a taste for the unknown, which IMHO, is how art can help us discover unknowns about ourselves. To be clear, I know many execs are MADE cowardly by the numbers they must hit, dictated from on high, so it goes… “Popular” lyrics these days rarely have anything meaningful to add to our collective discourse, and we’re inundated with endless songs about how great, how unbeatable, how powerful, how attractive, and how privileged the singers are. We may have the Women’s March, BLM, #MeToo, climate activism, etc. but unlike the 60’s, our music stands starkly apart from all this — as if folks are offended by anything deeper than a party track. I often ask, when I hear a new song, can the point of this song be boiled down, more or less accurately, to “I’m cool.” And the answer is all too often yes. We certainly get occasional stabs at meaningful lyrical content, all my faves are — they’re out there, but these are the outliers, not the leaders, it would seem. God bless Radiohead for rising up, though I wonder if they would even get past the initial hurdles in this new paradigm.
Artists and people that have influenced you?
Too many to list… Anyone who’s ever stood against convention and dared to stand up for a new idea that the world initially looked towards with crossed, confused, even angry eyes.
If the music of Michael VQ was a film, which film would that be?
Not sure I’ve seen it yet. But it would take the aesthetics of a toughened, leatherized builder type, joints creaky from a life of making, and blend them with the unfrightened, joyful aesthetics of a toddler playing with brightly colored toys and art supplies and kiddo musical instruments. Both those aesthetics would live side by side as if hopelessly codependent.
What isn’t a crime but should be?
Auto-tune.
Thank you!
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