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troutfishinginmusic · 3 years

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Interview: Ben Yost (Kickpop Records)

Kickpop’s first 10” sampler offers up a variety of different. The limited run of 25 records sold out in under an hour, according to the label’s Instagram.

The Flaks have a sound that recalls the skate punk of the 90s with tinges of emo (pretty fully-formed for a group of teenagers at the time). Blank Tape Tax takes a more experimental approach sculpting out something evocative. Logan Gaval of Greet Death’s contribution recalls something that would’ve come out under the Orchid Tapes banner. For Once In My Life’s “Song One” is a math-y screamo dirge. Broadacre’s “My Mother the Carjacker,” my favorite here, closes the sampler on a note of classic Midwest emo.

Ben Yost, 25, runs the Michigan label and has a direct connection with all the bands featured on the sampler. Yost has been playing shows since he was 13. He was kind enough to field a few questions via email. His answers have been adjusted a bit for style/clarity.

Starting a label nowadays kind of entails having a bit of an attachment to physical media. In terms of packaging, can you remember the first CD/tape/record that really made a big impression on you?

The first piece of physical media as in a tape, CD, or record that left an immediate impression on me was a copy of Chess Records' "Sail On" by Muddy Waters. It was my dad's copy of the record and inside was a Xerox he had made of Muddy's obituary. I was also in love with large hole 45's as a kid and would listen to The Who, The Animals, The Doors and stuff like that. When I got a little older and discovered punk, I began collecting 7"s. 7"s with sleeves are really my favorite type of vinyl record product. These days I mostly collect oddities, 12" singles and jazz LP's, but I'll always prefer to have a copy in my hands over streaming. Oddly enough, my favorite physical media for music is actually CD not vinyl (strictly speaking from a listening experience perspective).

What make you want to start Kickpop? Where does the name come from? I wanted to start Kickpop Records because I wanted to put out all my own records under one umbrella. I wanted a chance to release my friend's music in a way I've seen done by some of my awesome friends and mentors in Detroit like Eric Scobie from Dropping Bombs records, Brenden Therrien from Over & Out Recordings, and Nick Rorick from Night Fighter Records. I basically saw what those guys did and wanted to be like them.

The name Kickpop is just a made-up word I thought sounded cool. I used to really like the skateboard brand Popwar when I was a kid, I guess I just thought the names sounded similar. Kickpop is also a DJ trick like a scratch or a chirp. I dabble in turntablism and have been producing and making beats for years, so I thought it would be a good name for releasing 12" singles or 7" breaks later down the road. Thus far I've only released my own band's (Blank Tape Tax) music, which is a multi-genre project ranging from instrumental hip-hop to jazz to folk to avant-garde to punk, so the name of the label is fitting.

The bands on the comp all kind of have a fairly different sound. Are there things you personally look for when putting stuff out by other artists?

I've put out other records before starting Kickpop Records, the first big project I did was a pressing of 500 7"s in 2012. I started playing gigs at kind of a younger age and then I worked briefly at two different record stores before doing what I do now. So I've always been surrounded by not only records, but by so many different kinds of music. I really love listening to so much different stuff. Especially after digging for samples while making beats; after studying jazz and really doing some heavy listening; or even just after working in the store. So really I'll put out anything that moves me that I'm in a position to release. At this stage, to be realistic, I can't take on larger projects, but that may change with time. The genre's I am most interested in personally are however, jazz, punk, folk/americana, hip-hop and indie. But like I said, I'll release anyone who I'm able to take on so long as their music moves me.

How did you come into contact with each band?

I played drums and wrote the songs for The Flaks. That was my first band. We were together from 2009-2014. The Flaks' song "Cradle Your World," which is featured on the comp, is my favorite song that I've ever written or recorded even though I do not sing it. I met Logan in 2013 or maybe even 2012 at the Flint Local at a Flaks show. Later, I started the band Broadacre with James Schultz of Sunlight Ascending and sang as well as played drums for that project. When I was in Broadacre we would play shows with Greet Death back when they were called Pines. I played quite a few shows with Pines and even played drums for Greet Death for one show in Flint opening for Sweat.

I kind of got a 90s emo vibe from the cover art. Where was the photo taken?

James Schultz of Broadacre and Sunlight Ascending did the album artwork for this comp. The photo is a picture at the intersection of Livernois and 14 Mile in Clawson. Clawson is home to a Jimmy Johns, a Jet's Pizza and a record store (Flipside Records) that many of us from our little scene have worked at (I worked at Jet's and at Flipside, myself). James, myself and especially Nathan from For Once In My Life (also of the band Youth Novel) are really into 90's screamo and screamy-hardcore type stuff. I think that’s where the emo look comes from on the album cover. Logan's song, the Blank Tape Tax song and the For Once In My Life song were all recorded by me on a Tascam Portastudio MKIII. I also think the visuals are trying to match that aesthetic.

There's one lyric that popped out on the Blank Tape Tax song: "My tears are made of milk/my veil is made of silk.” Is that kind of just an interpretive lyric or is it directly referencing something? My lyric "In a white silk veil my tears are made of milk" is a lyric in reference to the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 and seeing people having to wash their eyes out with milk to counteract tear gas. I'll let the listener draw whatever else they want to from the lyric. Everyone involved in this record stands in full support of Black Lives Matter and stands against racial injustice of any kind, as well as prejudice based on sex, gender, ability, or religion.

Outside of the bands on the comp, what music do you think people should try out? Outside of this record I think that everyone should listen to jazz. It's America's only original artform and is art that speaks to the greatest aspects of creativity, discipline, spirituality and musicianship. The more one learns about jazz, the more they discover just how rebellious jazz is. To quote jazz saxophonist Archie Shepp "[The purpose of the jazz musician] ought to be to liberate America aesthetically and socially from it's inhumanity." And to quote Henry Rollins "The real punk rock in America is bebop." I think that everyone would have a much deeper understanding of the American condition if everyone listened to jazz. I suggest starting with modern jazz, like Thelonious Monk. Or listen to some contemporary players like Geri Allen (RIP) or Ambrose Akinmusire. Or if you're in metro-Detroit try to catch a set by my friend Louis Jones' quartet or Alexis Lombre.

All photos courtesy of Ben Yost: Photo 1: Blank Tape Tax, photo 2: For Once in My Life, photo 3: Broadacre photo 4: Logan Gaval. You can stream the sampler here.

#kickpop #kickpoprecords #michigan #emo #screamo #punk #experimental #indie

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gamebunny-advance · 2 years

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Nice. (+ Self Reflection)

Well, so far at least 5 of you have looked at that thing, which is about 3 more than I expected, so the fic is doing much better than I thought it would, so thanks for taking the time to check it out \(^o^)/

But it is in my nature to not shut the hell up about my inner thoughts, so here they are (warning, contains spoilers to "Heart and Soul"):

The main idea of getting separated from your parent on an elevator is based on something I saw in real life once, except it was an escalator and probably didn't involve robo-security. I always wondered what happened to those kids afterwards...

I really should have cut more out. I feel like there's just a little too much "nothing" happening.

Is calling Tatiana, "Miss Quartz" annoying? The idea with the narration early on is that while it's a third-person narrator, it's still mostly from Yinu's point of view, so her inner thoughts inform the narration more often than not. I dunno, it's kind of inconsistent, and I'll probably stick to something more traditional if I ever rewrite this.

I feel like I accidentally set up the hairbands to be more important than they actually were. They were just supposed to be the cause of the inciting incident, just something to get Yinu to the elevator, but since the front end is the most heavy with description, it put too much emphasis on them. There was one version of the draft where instead of the bandage, one of the bands was her token of appreciation, but it didn't make sense to me to give 1010 a wearable keepsake when his physical body is routinely destroyed, and it would have been lost over time. Having him just lose the memories should have been sad enough on its own. He doesn't need to lose what she gave him too.

I hope that I fixed most of the instances of 1010 being referred to as "it". He's supposed to be an "it" up until he has a proper name, but in an earlier version, the pronoun would change depending on who was focusing on him, so Yinu and Neon J. use "he/him" because they recognize him as a person while Mama and Tatiana use "it" because they don't. I thought it was confusing, so I tried to fix all of them, but there might be some remnants left over. OTL

I feel like I could have cut all this action if I'd just thought to set this during a power outage instead of having 1010 be willingly defiant. I didn't think about this until I was taking a shower after posting. Sometimes shower thoughts are useful. If I ever rewrite this fic, I'll try that out to see if I can keep it saccharine through the entire run. I didn't mean to play "Gotcha!" and make it sad out of nowhere, but that's just where it felt like it was going. If they were both lost due to a power outage, then I think them sticking together and not being able to find the adults is a little more justified.

I should have checked if "Heart and Soul" is actually in the public domain first. I don't think it is, so it doesn't make much sense for 1010 to be programmed with it as one of his default songs. But the whole fic was written around getting to the scene where they play that song together, so I was willing to bend that plausibility to get there.

I wrote this imagining 1010 with his MKI design, hence the cap, but the implication is that he's currently a MKII and then gets upgraded to MKIII. So... yeah. If I rewrite this, I'm gonna have to fix that.

It's not that I don't like stories where the robot outlives its human companions, and it has to learn to cope with that, I just feel like in reality, it would be more likely that the robot either breaks down or loses their memories before their human companion dies. Machines are fragile.

I hope I didn't write Yinu to seem too young. I'm not exactly sure how mature that age range is supposed to be. At 8, she'd be the equivalent of a 2nd or 3rd grader, so I figure this is an age where she can understand complex thought but just not have the vocabulary for it.

#gbunny writes #it's got some problems but i still like it #i usually have such a hard time writing stories but this one came pretty easily #with some actual editing it could probably be a 7 out of 10 instead of the 4 out of 10 it probably is XP

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