Morgan Geist (Metro Area)

Gerd Janson

Please welcome Mr Morgan Geist. Morgan is one half of super-duper producer team Metro Area and the emperor of Environ records. Morgan, how did all this music thing start for you, as a kid?

Morgan Geist

Wow, you’re going to make me work. Alright, how did it start for me as a kid? Well, I grew up in a house that always had music playing, different types of music, and I have an older brother and an older sister. My brother is about ten years older than I am and my sister is a little less than that. They were really pivotal. Listening to what they played was very important to me. My mom and dad listened to jazz and classical. Unfortunately, my mom listened to some show tunes, and so she tried force-feeding that and I didn’t quite take to that. My brother and sister had different tastes and both of their record collections formed where I would eventually go with music. My brother listened to a lot of what is called classic rock today and also progressive rock, which is this universally mocked genre – and for good reason. But that’s where I first heard synthesizers, like Pink Floyd and Emerson, Lake & Palmer and stuff like that. I remember just being fascinated with those synthesizer sounds and wondering where they came from, even though they were being used in really cheesy ways, like 15-minute solos, doing special effects and that was pretty much it, and then they’d get back to the guitars.

Gerd Janson

You don’t like guitars?

Morgan Geist

I like guitars sometimes. I don’t like Emerson, Lake & Palmer guitars [laughs]. Then my sister was listening to – I always described it that way – just party music. Late ’70s, early ’80s, when I started to become aware what she was listening to.

Gerd Janson

How would you define party music?

Morgan Geist

Well, music that works at the party [laughter]. She listened to Rick James, she listened to B-52’s, she listened to Devo. I remember that was my first album, I got a Devo cassette. And I used to infuriate her because we would sit in front of the television watching music videos, and if I saw her press record on her little tape recorder, I pressed record on mine. So, all of her tapes had this little click in the beginning, from me pressing mine. I sort of copied her and it was a big influence. I mean, I still like Devo today, you know, B-52’s. Sort of dance-rock and some of it was just dance-dance, like some B-52’s songs were pretty influential, like “Mesopotamia” on early Detroit stuff. So, that’s sort of it really. And then New York. I’m from New Jersey and New York radio was a huge influence as well because pop radio when I was growing up was a lot more diverse than what radio is today. You’d hear hip-hop next to rock, you’d hear Whodini or UTFO and then, whatever, Blondie. It was really fantastic, it was like top-40 to us growing up. When I went to college and met people from other areas of the country, that wasn’t top-40 for them. I guess it was a regional top-40 or something, and that happened later on with radio, like freestyle, other New Jersey and New York-specific…

Gerd Janson

So you are talking about stations like Kiss FM and...

Morgan Geist

Yeah, Kiss FM, but I’m also talking about really cheesy stations, like - I mean, anyone from New York will remember Z100 or 95.5, which today would be Clear Channel stations, basically. But their playlists back then were far more interesting. I’m sure payola and all of the evils of radio were in effect back then, but somehow the programming was just more interesting. I feel like it’s a bit homogenized today. Back then it was all sorts of music and maybe a little more playful and experimental. So, that was a big influence.

Gerd Janson

So, today there is no big station left in New York?

Morgan Geist

No, New York has huge stations. What I prefer to listen to is… there are sort of classic dance shows that will come on. There was a show I listened to through the ’90s that was called Kiss Club Classics. That is where I got schooled basically on dance music history. And so there’s elements of that, and those DJs are still on air. You know, Red Alert is still doing stuff and Funkmaster Flex is still doing stuff. I mean, some of my favorite records I heard Funkmaster Flex play or Red Alert play – “Atmosphere Strutt” by Cloud One, I first heard that in a hip-hop mix. You know, now I feel like a lot of people now come at it like it is some obscure disco record, but it was party music, that’s why it got played by Red Alert.

Gerd Janson

And when did you get your first synthesizer then, being obsessed with them?

Morgan Geist

When I was 15. Do I have to give you the year? I mean, in the ’80s for sure, that’s when I got it. I got a synthesizer and a basic Alesis sequencer.

Gerd Janson

And you took piano lessons then?

Morgan Geist

I took piano lessons when I was small and pretty much resisted it all the way – and was just very bored and fidgety while the lesson was happening. And I closed the lid on my piano teacher’s fingers once and things like that. So, it didn’t really take with me. I just took it maybe for a year, so I don’t have any formal musical training. I still can’t really read music.

Gerd Janson

So, it took a synthesizer to make you tick?

Morgan Geist

Tick, doing horrible synthpop on one synthesizer. I mean, I always loved playing on the piano. Even when I was young I used to record myself on my little tape recorder – record some sequence and then play it back and play over it, so something in my brain was saying that I should go towards making electronic music even back then.

Gerd Janson

And when did you make the step to electronic music?

Morgan Geist

I always seemed to listen to it, from when I was young with my brother and my sister, and then getting into, I dunno, new wave, synth-based music.

Gerd Janson

But I meant the stuff you were doing as a producer.

Morgan Geist

As a producer? I mean, from 15 on I was trying to make a record. It wasn’t happening because you’re still in this sort of experimental phase, you’re learning the gear. Being in suburban New Jersey, which was really... you know, you got these New York dance stations, but the truth of the matter was, it was like Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen, it was rockers.

Gerd Janson

Guys with mullets?

Morgan Geist

Yeah, rocking the mullets and whatever. I mean, I was pretty alienated listening to electronic music and there was no one to teach me. What today seems to be pretty quick, if you open up Reason or whatever, and there are tutorials on the web, back then it was hard because you were on your own. I guess you could hire someone to teach you or go to the library and maybe they had some MIDI book or something like that. It took a long while to get the basics understood. My first proper 12”, the music was from ’93, but I think it came out in ’94.

Gerd Janson

On which label?

Morgan Geist

Metamorphic Records, Dan Curtin’s label out of Ohio, because I went to school in Ohio.

Gerd Janson

To Oberlin College?

Morgan Geist

Yeah, I went to Oberlin college. Actually, the Oberlin Conservatory is there, which is pretty highly regarded, but I was an English major and didn’t go to the conservatory. And it was hard to even to really take classes in the conservatory. Like, I tried to take electronic music classes, but they didn’t really want anything to do with the college kids back then. I always feel like it’s this weird justice that most of the interesting music that came out of Oberlin, came from the college – like Tortoise, Bitch Magnet, a lot of people that became known came from the college side. And the conservatory just turned out, for the most part, jazz and classical robots, you know very traditional … playing pianos. People who could play Bach or Brahms perfectly, but if you wanted them to make a beat with any movement in it, forget it. So, they couldn’t really improvise.

Gerd Janson

And you met Dan Curtin there?

Morgan Geist

Yeah, it was pretty random. There you used to be a dance music magazine called Street Sound, which was fairly cheesy, but I used to pick it up and his address was in it. This was when I was home in New Jersey and I said, “Oh, I’ll be in Ohio – this guys near me.” And I called, I think it was his mom’s house, and I left a message. He was on tour in Japan or something and a month and a half later he called me. And, knowing Dan, it’s pretty funny that he remembered to follow up on this message. But that was the start of everything because he invited me to Cleveland and I checked out his studio. He was my mentor, really. I mean, he is the guy who introduced me to a lot of the early techno, Detroit techno and Chicago house. I’m always afraid of using the word techno because today it has such a different meaning today, but the techno I heard was not hard, it was creative – soulful is a pretty overused word – but very emotional as opposed to purely functional, where it’s just like, “You will dance.” It sort of moved me a bit more and just seeing this guy doing all these records in his apartment... You know, he had all the Roland shit, 303, 909, so I was pretty impressed when I went over there. And he gave me some records and I studied them. He put out my first record – I sent him a tape and he liked it, it was pretty easy.

Gerd Janson

If you are talking about Detroit techno, you obviously mean guys like Derrick May, Juan Atkins.

Morgan Geist

Yeah, Derrick May, Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson, whose songs I heard accidentally, before I wasn’t really into the stuff, but “Big Fun” and “Good Life” were big songs on New York radio, so I got to hear them. This was also when I thought that dance music is kind of stupid because I was hearing freestyle all the time. I remember liking them, but not admitting to like them because I was like, “Ah, it’s dance music… I’m more into experimental music.” Those guys, but also the second and third wave, like Carl Craig, I was really into Kenny Larkin, all those guys.

Gerd Janson

You’ve got a record by Derrick there, right?

Morgan Geist

I’ve got a record by Derrick. I actually have on my iPod an early Dan Curtin release. I’ll play it. This sounds really fast and weird to me now, but it’s a good example of his early music.

audience member

Dan Curtin as Apogee?

Morgan Geist

Not as Apogee, but as Dan Curtin. This is one of his early Metamorphic tracks. It’s called “Static.” I couldn’t find my record, so he sent me an MP3, so I apologize for the quality.

(music: Planetary – “Static”)

Morgan Geist

Dan was a hip-hop guy, so he used a lot of the rough hip-hop samples, and you could hear an 808 in there and a 303, which was a big acid house machine. But he used them in this really bizarre kind of way. And it’s a weird example, I don’t know if this is the best track from back then, but that was my introduction to those machines, through this really strange experimental stuff.

Gerd Janson

Do you have your first record on Metamorphic?

Morgan Geist

I don’t have it with me, no. I will have to look for it on eBay because I don’t know if I own a copy of it. But my early stuff was not quite that frantic. That was a pretty abstract track, but my stuff was maybe a bit more musical and maybe more towards the Transmat, Derrick May side of it, rather than experimental.

Gerd Janson

Do you have an example of it, on your iPod maybe?

Morgan Geist

Of my own? You know, I don’t think I have an of my early stuff. I’m pretty ill-prepared. But by proxy, I could play you a Derrick May track. He’s another big influence. And I’m not going to play “Strings of Life” because that’s kind of boring at this point. I’ll play “Kaos,” and pitch it down.

(music: Rhythim Is Rhythim – “Kaos”)

Morgan Geist

Yeah, it’s late ’80s, I think. I know the record was released... Well, it says ’92, but he released several versions of it. As you could hear, I barely played the record, it played so. I apologize for that. And, you know, again I chose a bad one. Derrick May’s stuff usually has these pads, these really dramatic chords and that was just a major influence.

Gerd Janson

Maybe opposed to these examples of Detroit body music, we should hear one of your own tracks you are putting out nowadays, which is pretty different to...

Morgan Geist

Well, I haven’t made any music in a while. So this one’s from 2000, I’ll play you “24k”. This is available for sale right after the lecture, a special price just for you.

[inaudible comment from audience member]

Morgan Geist

Cool, thanks … There’s a lot of different styles on this record, but I play you the most upbeat track.

(music: Morgan Geist – “24k” / applause)

Gerd Janson

So, how did you get from Derrick May to stuff like that? Is it because of Kiss Club Classics?

Morgan Geist

It doesn’t seem like a leap to me. The influence of classic dance music, which I got into from the mid-’90s on, and disco. I mean, you can hear it in the bassline and the strings, the other stuff I don’t think is that far removed from techno – at least in philosophy, to me it’s not. Maybe when people listen to it, it sounds different. I mean, you always have a different take on your own music and you can’t be objective about it. But the Metro Area project, I always felt when it started, I thought it was very techno. But to me techno was always this philosophy of trying to make a new... you can’t really make new music at this point in time, but a new recombinant form.

Gerd Janson

Modern-day disco?

Morgan Geist

Something like that. And something that has not been heard before, maybe a different combination of textures and sounds and progressions. It’s not like techno is this sound or techno is this tempo, it’s sort of a feeling and that’s sort of the philosophy that drives me, even though I personally can’t relate to what people call techno today because I feel it’s changed a bit. But the philosophy was appealing to me when I started out because it made you push yourself, and it was also by any means necessary. House as well and hip-hop as well – people were making tracks with relatively cheap gear and what they could find at pawn shops, making something beautiful with it.

Gerd Janson

So, how do you feel about the technical revolutions of these days?

Morgan Geist

It’s impressive. I mean, since I started out so long ago, I’m amazed by what you could fit on software now, and how cheap it is and how it is accessible to everybody. That’s great. There’s elements of it, as a grumpy old man, I’m a little hesitant about how some of the software encourages you to make music. I feel like a lot of it is loop-based and repetitive. Even a lot of the new software DJ tools, like [Ableton] Live or Final Scratch, I mean, that stuff is incredible to think that it even exists, it’s what we used to dream about. But now that it does exist, the way it encourages a lot of people to work, is putting things on a grid and quantizing the shit out of everything. I love quantized music, I love computer music – I have Kraftwerk here, I love stuff like that – but there is a time and place for it and it’s not all the time. It’s nice to get off the grid sometimes. Electronic music was always grid-based, you know. I think now it’s just so easy, you open up a file and it’s 120 bpm and you have your grid right there, and people work with their eyes more than with their ears, looking at the grid making sure everything lines up. Then there are people doing incredible music with today’s tools, so it really depends on how the user approaches it.

Gerd Janson

Are you using it yourself?

Morgan Geist

I use a sequencer, yeah, and I use digital audio, but I like hardware. I like hardware synths, I like my old drum machines, I like my old effects. I have a big ugly ’70s mixer because I think it sounds good. It sounds damn good. I feel like I could hear the computer sometimes. I saw Danny [Legowelt] speaking the other day and he said, “Sometimes people think they can hear the computer,” and he thinks it’s because of how people use the computer. They make sounds that don’t sound like old synths because they don’t know how to program. And I think that was an excellent point. I think if you know what you’re doing, and you’re getting virtuosic whatever tool you’re using, be it software or hardware, you can make it do whatever you want. But for me, personally, maybe I’m just unable to do something good with software synths. I have old, unstable, noisy things.

Gerd Janson

And if it comes to the DJ side of things, you haven’t gotten into Final Scratch?

Morgan Geist

No, I haul vinyl around. I’m just comfortable with vinyl. I spin edits off of CD, and it is really convenient. You know, the idea of taking a bag of CDs or just a computer really appeals when my back is killing me from hauling records around. But I like the feel of records, I like how they sound, too. I’ve recorded records to do edits and I play them off CD and it sounds different to me. I think it’s because a CD takes anything you throw at it. A digital media will take anything you throw at it as long as it doesn’t go above zero. Vinyl is temperamental and you need it to treat it with care, and it only accepts a certain range of frequencies, and to me, those frequencies are pleasing to my ear. There’s a power and punch to it that is different than digital files. Digital files get loud as hell, and sometimes they sound great, but I have a soft spot for vinyl, obviously. It doesn’t hurt that I have a record label and I make vinyl – I have a vested interest.

Gerd Janson

So you don’t think that the days of vinyl are counted?

Morgan Geist

Oh, they are. I’m just not happy about it.

Gerd Janson

And talking about your own label Environ Records, what was the reason to start your own record label?

Morgan Geist

Well, I started Environ ten years ago. I started it after my first record on Metamorphic. This is how naive I was about music because Dan Curtin would put out crazy shit. He wasn’t like a major label who says, “This has to work for the kids.” You could do whatever. Despite that, after my first record, I was like, “Fuck, this guy just wants to have stuff that’s gonna work on the dancefloor. I want to able to put out anything.” So, my second record was on my own label and I also wanted to learn… it was sort of a crash course in how distribution works, manufacturing... I guess, how the music industry works. You have to learn about publishing, and I liked the idea of keeping control over my songs, so that was the impetus for starting the label. And then as my name got out there a little bit, I did some records with labels in Europe, and that just really made me do Environ, because they want to fuck you, basically. They wouldn’t pay royalties, they give you contracts, if you’re naive... I blame myself, but I was 20 or 21, I didn’t know anything. Someone wants to put out my record, fine. So I signed some shitty contracts and that made me, as I grew a bit more aware of how bad those contracts were, it made want to continue Environ. And eventually, I just focused all my work on the label, aside from remixes, which I’ll do wherever because it’s not my music, I’m working on someone else’s.

audience member

I have your first record on Environ, it’s the blue one, right? I bought it like five years ago or something. I was obviously too young to buy when it first came out. There’s two things I’m curious about during that period. I don’t have everything that you’ve done, I don’t have Super, but I have like 90% and I see the evolution of you’re being young when you started the label, I think it shows. The first question is what happened to the guys that remixed your first record?

Morgan Geist

Connection Machine…

audience member

Connection Machine, and they had something on Planet E…

Morgan Geist

Yeah, they had a great record on Carl Craig’s label. Natasja and Jeroen, they were friends of mine. I had no money when I started the label and they were really cool and did a remix for, let’s say a very fair fee. That was a great lesson in running a record label, too. Because they gave me a remix that I didn’t expect, it’s like this funeral dirge or something. It’s really slow, it sounds like it’s being played backwards, and I was like, “Damn! I didn’t want that. Can’t you make it sound like the Planet E record? That’s the one I like.” But I decided that’s what they wanted to do, so I put it out. You asked what happened to them… they weren’t doing anything for a very long time and they just had a label called Downlow. Actually, Minto was a participant here in the Red Bull thing. He runs this label and he issued these old tracks for the first time from that same period fairly recently, like six months ago. I don’t know if these guys are still doing music.

audience member

There’s a record on Downlow, too, by Dan Curtin. That was question number one, question number two is: If you listen to Super it sounds like a really concise … like everything on Environ, apart from those first few records… It sounds very objective and in pursuit of an objective, making it real at some point. The track builds and builds and builds and gets hypnotic, but when you listen to your first few works, and almost anything Dan Curtin has done, it’s like eight bars one thing, eight bars another, eight bars another… almost like classical music. Even when you worked with Titonton [Duvanté]...

Morgan Geist

That’s a pretty nice comparison… or just like schizophrenic, like we don’t know what we were doing (laughs).

audience member

Is it like a school? Because Titonton is the same and I know you did music with him…

Morgan Geist

Yeah, Titonton Duvanté. I mean, the early records were schizophrenic and changed a lot and that’s because I got bored with grooves. Listening to dance records and it’s like nine songs of five, six minutes. But it seems you are asking how it evolved.

Audience Member

Did you have a point in your life where you said, “Man, I don’t think that this is going to work on the dancefloor”?

Morgan Geist

No, I continue not to be worried too much about what’s going to work on the dancefloor and what not because the dancers know what’s going to work on the dancefloor. With the revival of some weird disco music, and people becoming familiar with those sounds, you can play crazy stuff out. If you had played that five years ago, people in Germany would’ve thrown schnitzel at you. They would have gotten pretty annoyed with you. So I don’t think about that too much because if it works, it works. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. But as far as it getting sort of more linear, more groove-based, as opposed to try to fit a lot of ideas in, I think that came from listening to disco and soul, and just great songwriting. Mr. Ware is here right now and listening to stuff like that, you realize interest can be held and energy can be conveyed... I don’t know if you can convey energy, but you can hold people’s interest and keep people captivated with something. Just like great songwriting doesn’t have all these bells whistles, it can be a simple song. I think I always liked the idea of less-is-more production. I never liked this tendency I see in a lot electronic music for people to just layer and layer things, and, like, loops. I like it when people have thought it out, and I think, as I’ve grown musically and done it more and more, I also listen to a lot of great compositions, you realize that you could do a lot with very little. And I think that’s just a natural tendency for me to strip out my compositions more and not have all these changes, and just trying to maintain some movement, a real composition, rather than all these bells and whistles and flashy changes and crazy breaks, things like that.

audience member

A year ago, I suppose, I was talking with a friend of mine about Metro Area and as I was arguing more or less the same thing, like “less is more” and minimal … and he told me that, actually, I was wrong. He just asked me to listen again and he said. “Listen to this, and to this and to this… this is not minimal.” And I didn’t notice, but there is very much in [your] music… contrary to what I was thinking before… So, how did you do it [laughter]?

Morgan Geist

Could you rephrase the question? [laughter]

audience member

The music I know of you is, indeed, minimal or kind of stretched out, but as he asked me, I did listen again and it is actually not. There are indeed different layers, many of them actually … Is there a production technique to make it work [laughter]? Maybe it’s the use of analog synths?

Morgan Geist

I don’t think it is one tool or anything like that. I don’t think it’s anything special that we’re doing. I think it’s just paying attention to how things work together. In terms of production, being aware when you have clashing frequencies. Like, when you have everything in the mid-range and no bass, you’re not going to have the same clarity because everything’s fighting for the same space. If you have your bass here, and you have your mid-range theme here and something on top, and everything has its own space to breathe, then you’re going to hear everything a bit more clearly. But you hear noise music where everything’s fighting for attention, and that’s great too. I mean, there’s no sort of right or wrong. And I guess compositionally… I don’t know, I don’t think about it too much.

Actually, I’ve spoken with my partner Darshan [Jesrani] about it. With food, things like sushi for example: it’s few flavors, and it really concentrates your attention and you get to enjoy these few flavors at once or you get to enjoy just one, a nice piece of raw fish or whatever. Maybe I enjoy that experience or something and that’s the same approach with music. You want to focus on one sound at a time or something like that. It’s hard to quantify it and say how it’s done. Maybe I’ve just always enjoyed being able to hear certain distinct elements and not having any extraneous sounds in there. Like, when we’re making music, if we’re stuck at a certain point, I tend to really try not to be like, “Ah, let me put just this here. Let me just glue it together with this sound and move on.” I think it helps to try and figure out why the song isn’t working at that spot and try to come up with an elegant solution, rather than making everything just slapped together and confused, just because you can’t think of what to do there.

I tend to try to do that and think about things and work them out, but balance that though with some spontaneous, raw energy. Because if you overthink things they come out boring. You produce the shit out of things, you make everything perfect, and it loses its energy. Classic dance music, like disco and things when people were working with tape and not computers, taught me a lot about that. There’s these mistakes that are left in, and the mistakes are the best part. It was hard to get away from that. It’s something Darshan and I joke about. Like, we both went through this “eliminate all variation”-phase. We had to be able to play back the thing perfectly. Like, we had to sequence all the changes. If we wanted to tape it now and have a master, or play it live, it all had to sound the same. That’s when we both went through the same mistakes as we learned about making electronic music. I think we both arrived at the conclusion that mistakes are good. Not everything has to be intentional that’s as vital as being studied and being deliberate about your composition. That was a very long answer to another question that you didn’t ask, I’m sorry [laughter].

Gerd Janson

So, maybe you could play one of those disco tracks that are wrong that are right?

Morgan Geist

I’ve got bags and bags of that stuff. Something that’s so wrong it’s right. Actually, I didn’t expect that … a so-wrong-it’s-right record You know what? I did a mix CD full of stuff like that called Unclassics. And basically the whole point of the collection was, these songs didn’t become hits for a reason, there’s something wrong with every one of them, and that’s what I love about them. Damn, there’s so much bad music on here, I don’t know what to pick. I’ll play you a couple. The first one is called “Pacific” by Zodiac. I don’t know what these guys were thinking. This is from 1980 in Russia. I think they thought they were making space rock. I think they were trying to be the French band Space, but it came sonically like Spy Hunter – I don’t know if you ever played that, it’s like an ’80s video game. The minute I heard this I was like, “Damn! How could I license this? This track is ridiculous.”

(music: Zodiac – “Pacific”)

Morgan Geist

Yeah, that’s that.

Gerd Janson

It sounds very Balihu-ish.

Morgan Geist

Yeah, it does. Daniel Wang, who is a big influence as well, who did the label, Balihu. Yeah, this sounds like Danny’s Russian predecessors, or something like that.

I’ll play you another track off of this, which is a great example of something really corny, but I found kind of beautiful. It’s Purple Flash “We Can Make It.” This guy’s a Canadian disco producer. This is from 1983, and he wanted to make a Michael McDonald hit record. God, I hope he doesn’t watch the archive of this, because he’ll hate me.

It’s called “We Can Make It” and that’s ironic because it didn’t quite cut it, but Danny Wang, who you had just mentioned, he and I both found this record at the same time, separately, and met up, and were like, “I have to play you this record!” And we had the same record. Here’s “We Can Make It”, it’s really corny, but hey, guilty pleasure.

(music: Purple Flash – “We Can Make It”)

Gerd Janson

I think it has quite a New Order edge to it.

Morgan Geist

Yeah, it does have a New Order edge. And again, licensing all these tracks, there were great lessons in what you think you’re doing and what is happening. I mean, not to be condescending; I don’t mean to be like, “Yeah, they thought they had a hit and they didn’t!” But him saying that this was his track… and he has another track, this thing called “World Invaders” by Pluton and The Humanoids and he’s like, “Yeah, this is my Giorgio Moroder track. It’s like ‘The Chase.’” Giorgio Moroder was this zillion-selling, super-successful disco producer artist and you listen to this and you’re like, “Wow, this is made with 50 bucks and a drum machine.” But I like this better, so more power to him.

It was pretty fun compiling this. There’s something on here called Eurofunk “Manshortage.” It was done by Lewis Martineé, who does like Ricky Martin remixes, and does really super-pop stuff. He did Exposé and all these really successful bands, and I called him – and this is my moment of pride for this – I called him up to license “Man Shortage” and he said, “Why do you want to license this? It’s like the worst track I’ve ever done…” And so I said, “Yeah, that’s why!” [laughter] I didn’t say that because that would have been politically a bad thing to do. I said, “Oh, it’s a real cult classic up here,” you know? Which was bullshit! [laughter]

Gerd Janson

You were actually very conscious when you put this compilation together of getting the artists’ royalties.

Morgan Geist

Oh, for licensing? Yeah, there were a lot of tracks I really wanted to put on here that would have made it a better compilation, but I didn’t want to put the stuff out illegally. Which is a really bad way of doing business because you make a lot more money if you just bootleg it and it takes a lot less time, but I didn’t want to do that.

Gerd Janson

But that’s pretty much what’s happening all over the world now, stuff like that.

Morgan Geist

Yeah, well the 12” market exists because of bootlegs right now and there’s some great bootlegs out there, but I don’t know, it’s not for me. I’ve had my stuff bootlegged a couple of times, I know how that feels. I wouldn’t want to do that to somebody. And also a lot of these people, a lot of these musicians didn’t get rich doing this stuff so, if you could make them a few bucks by bringing it back, that’s cool. And if I can make a few bucks, too, I’m not going to pretend this was all altruism. I was hoping this would sell well, and it did way better than I expected, so that’s nice too. But I can sleep at night knowing it was a proper license rather than making money off their backs without their knowing. And getting sued sucks too [laughs].

Gerd Janson

Are you buying bootlegs and re-edits yourself then?

Morgan Geist

No, not anymore. It’s like some weird rule I have. My friend just bought me Cosmic Voyagers, this new bootleg series and there’s some great stuff on it, but I was like. “I’m not buying that.” And he just got so sick of me that he bought it for me and now I have it. It’s actually a really good set up because if I talk about not buying it enough, one of my friends will get it for me… I get it anyway. I don’t mean to totally diss on bootlegs because a lot of my education came from going to Rock & Soul Records in New York City, which is the bootleg capital of the world. I can’t believe they’re still open, it’s just unreal the shit they sell in there. And I got a lot of great tracks through this whole second level of marketing 12”s that are bootlegs below the traditional properly licensed [records], but it’s how a lot of people learn. It’s also great if you don’t want to take out your originals and scratch up your originals, you just take out the bootleg.

Gerd Janson

And, we got another question.

audience member

I’m not sure about this but I thought this is the way Larry Levan and all these godfather people of house and dance music did it too? They used edits and bootlegs to make them mixable, so it’s inherent in dance music.

Morgan Geist

Oh, yeah. I’m not denying that, but let’s be clear: making an edit and playing it yourself is different than taking [Laid Back’s] “White Horse” which you can find in any thrift shop anywhere, and putting it out to make a quick buck off it. I mean, not like White Horse was living-in-a-cardboard-box poor. I mean, they’re not going to miss the 3,000 dollars. But edits are great. The difference is: do you play them in your DJ set? I do edits as well and there’s bootleg edits that are amazing that a certain Mr. K did, you know? There’re a lot of amazing, legendary edits on bootlegs in New York, there’s a whole history of music just in those, but, yeah, it’s more like the putting it out and profiting from it. If people wanted to make edits and then even sell the record at cost or something, that’s different than making a profit off of someone else’s stuff. I mean, it sounds really inflexible and I know it is, but maybe I have to see it in black and white. It would have been really easy to go down the wrong path with Unclassics and take all the songs I wanted to and just put them out illegally. So maybe I made it very black and white so there was no temptation and I had to do it legally and pay people. It’s just my personal feeling. I know it’s not for everybody.

audience member

Do you also experiment in mixing like the cosmic](/lectures/daniele-baldelli-elevator-ride) DJs did? I heard you said something about the cosmic DJs, I’m sure you know what I mean about cosmic, right?

Morgan Geist

Oh, do you mean do I play that type of stuff? Playing at different speeds and things like that? Rarely, I have no problem with that but there’s only a couple of records that I play at different speeds.

Gerd Janson

Yeah, don’t tell that to Daniele Baldelli…

Morgan Geist

Yeah, Daniele Baldelli! And he lectured at Red Bull, didn’t he?

Gerd Janson

Yeah, I think it was last year and he tends to play almost every record on the wrong speed.

Morgan Geist

Yeah, it’s pretty cool and I like the idea of doing it. I have some CDs from the old Manhattan Club in Italy. It was amazing what they did, it was really druggy sounding incredible slow stuff, for heroin dancing.

audience member

That was the problem later, that’s the reason why all the clubs closed.

Morgan Geist

Because of the heroin?

audience member

Yeah, too many drugs.

Morgan Geist

It’s funny, cosmic seems to be this sort of buzzword for disco DJs.

Gerd Janson

Yeah, I think the British...

Morgan Geist

Yeah, the British. It’s just like what happened with Italo disco. These things become buzzwords and people start taking regular records that weren’t anything special and being like, “This is under 100 bpm, so it’s cosmic,” or whatever. The original stuff was pretty cool and I don’t really do it much. I could never match what they did.

Gerd Janson

Yeah, a lot of people started playing Kompakt records at different speeds.

Morgan Geist

Oh, really?

Gerd Janson

Yeah.

Morgan Geist

Wow. Cool.

audience member

Was it at least worth the effort of licensing your Unclassic series?

Morgan Geist

Yeah, it was worth it because I was happy with the way the mix CD came out, and the way the 12” series came out. It was also worth it to meet these people, you know. It was exciting to talk to these people. It was humbling too, because you might think, you have some 12”s out, things are going well, like you’re going to be doing music your whole life. I think they put me in touch with the fact that you either do music because you love music, or you do it because it’s a business venture. It could be both, but only one thing’s going to survive. For a lot of these guys, they’re still doing music just because they love music. They stopped making money off of it, or they never made money off of it. They just keep doing it. These tracks are 20, 25 years-old, and most of the people... and I say guys they were all guys, actually no women, unfortunately… They’re all still doing music and all active and doing music, which really surprised me. They were surprised... They, in turn, were surprised that I was contacting them about these tracks.

One or two of them, Lewis Martineé and this other guy who did a track called “Disco Special” by Discotheque. Those guys have pretty successful careers. Lewis Martineé he had pop music. This other guy’s a classical guitarist. They were surprised that I wanted to license the stuff. The classical guitarist barely remembered doing the track, which also made me feel like a dumbass for licensing it because I could have just bootlegged it and he wouldn’t have known or cared because he barely remembered his own track. That made it really satisfying. From a business perspective, it wasn’t immensely satisfying because it was an expensive project to do.

audience member

I meant it more alongside that length, that frame of mind. Was it worth it in terms of you having to cut out of the profit, and give some of it to the people you licensed tracks from? Was it still enough work? I mean, did it compensate the work? Could you release it and not worry about how much money you’d lose, or...

Morgan Geist

Like losing money?

audience member

I’m sure you didn’t do it to make money, but...

Morgan Geist

Oh no, yo, hey, I’ll make money. I have no problem with that. It’s this... I knew going down this particular path, it was not going to be a big money maker. It’s a really, sort of, specific niche. Only, sort of like, music nerds like this stuff. It’s not a big whatever, commercial club release, or hip-hop release, or something like that. I knew it was going to sell low numbers, but it did better than I expected, and it crossed over into some areas that I never would have imagined.

Like, in the US there’s a magazine called, Entertainment Weekly, which is this cheesy, sort you know like, “Hey, what did Tom Cruise do this week?” Seeing them talk about Discotheque and Purple Flash and Manshortage in Entertainment Weekly that was pretty satisfying. We got some pretty funny reviews with it, and generally all positive. I sort of think that music reviewers were like, “If I say what I really think, people will think I’m stupid, so I better give this a good review.” I think most people probably were like, “What the fuck is this shit?” And they were like, “Oh this is brilliant”, or whatever.

audience member

Just one more question: I felt something around the phenomena of the disco comeback, at least in my country. I live in Portugal and can fairly say I feel like club culture there is non-existent and there are hardly any DJs there that actually really love music and who try to understand it as a phenomena. They’re just like, “What’s the latest thing?” And I want to be alternative and I want to be fresh and sometimes there’s a big convergence towards everyone being like sheep – there are no black sheep. And when your stuff started coming out I remember buying it – of course, I don’t mean the first records but the Balihu stuff and the “Atmosphirique“ record – and I was really happy but I couldn’t show it to anyone because everyone was like, “What the hell is that, man? That is bar music, you play that when you’re having a pint and the volume is low and you don’t care. You don’t play that to dance.” So, a couple of years later all this new wave things comes over and everyone remembers Nitzer Ebb and Human League and somehow you got thrown in there, at least that’s what I felt. One time Darshan came to play… actually you were supposed to play at Lux in Lisbon once. You were meant to come to Lisbon and I was told you didn’t go because you were [scared of flying] or something. That was the story that I heard, but stories are stories. I was very eager for that but I didn’t have the chance … but I heard you last night finally, so… [laughter] Anyway, when I heard Darshan play, he played in a club that was usually electroclash and everybody was expecting…

Morgan Geist

There better be a good punchline (laughter).

Audience Member

It’s building, it’s like your tracks. Everyone was expecting some sort of fresh hard sound like [Tiefschwarz] or something and, of course, he played a brilliant classic disco set, which nobody danced to. My question is, do you feel that happened in some way? [As in] media-wise you were driven down a [path] you had absolutely nothing to do with? And how did you deal with that?

Gerd Janson

I think he wants to know if Metro Area are electroclash.

Morgan Geist

Are we electroclash? The answer is yes [laughter from audience]. No, no, I think I understand what you’re asking. You can’t control what people say about you. Some people get it and some people don’t. “Get it” meaning your intention. You might make a very personal song and it blows up and ends up being on a tampon commercial or the soundtrack to getting a bank loan or something like that. You can’t control that. I guess, you can get uptight about it, which we did somewhat, or you can let it go. And then a few years later I wondered what the hell we were uptight about. When Metro Area was really hyped, I was really picky about where I licensed everything to. Now, four years later I’m like. “Damn, I should have licensed it to whoever wanted it and tried to make some loot. Just chill out about it.”

So that’s sort of where I’ve arrived at, not really caring what people say. I know what you’re saying, some people said it was part of this music that was different to what we were interested in. And also some people say that it influenced some genres that we can’t relate to and that part is weird because early on, we took sounds that were so precious to us and dear to us and that we really loved, all these influences and made something and we were worried about selling 500 copies because there was no appeal. That’s the only weird part of it, is hearing all the same sounds. It was like a palette that we thought was new but it got injected to something we can’t relate to or don’t necessarily relate to the philosophy of some of the music like you were saying. I’m not sure exactly what electroclash is, but when you see some people write about it, and you listen to some of the records and you can’t really relate to it. For every person who went down that path, there was someone else who it was an honor to hear from and that we were really psyched about. You know, one email from Larry Heard wipes out a bad electroclash review. So whatever, people do what they want. That’s the risk with releasing music publicly because once your baby’s out there, people do whatever they want with it. They talk about it however they want. With bootlegs and remixing and edits they will literally will do what they want with it. Like, they’ll take out parts you thought were vital and turn it into something that you don’t even recognize. But that’s totally cool, if you’re making music for the public, the public can do whatever they want with it.

audience member

What about the copycats? There were like a thousand copycats of Metro Area a year afterwards.

Morgan Geist

I don’t know, when we made our music it wasn’t like we were doing something that revolutionary. There’s probably people from the ’70s and ’80s that would call us copycats, so we have no right to get self-righteous about it. The only bummer about it is that vinyl doesn’t break down very easily, it’s going to be around for millions of years. And it shouldn’t be landfill material, every record should be precious and essential. That’s the only bummer about uncreative music. I don’t know what particular copycats there are, but, if people put stuff out that’s uninspired or unoriginal or that they’re not putting their heart into, it’s a waste of plastic and it’s a waste of time. Dance music would be much more exciting if everyone was trying to do something special.

audience member

Since we’re on the topic of putting your heart into it, can you kind of break down how it is that you and Darshan get a track started because I think we’re talking a lot of interesting stuff here but I’d really like to know how the creative process starts with you guys in the studio?

Morgan Geist

Yeah, well, first we sit around for three weeks not doing music, then we’d go out to eat…

audience member

Sorry, what’s the purpose of that phase then?

Morgan Geist

No, I’m kidding, we just work so slowly. That was my lame joke about how we’ve done like five records in seven years or something. One of us will generally start on a skeletal version of a track. Occasionally, we’ll work together but… Wow, I’m trying to think of a track in particular. Like the first Metro Area track, which was “Atmosphirique,” I just threw some stuff together at home. The beat, the bassline, an accompaniment to the bassline and I took it to Darshan, and this was right when digital audio started becoming affordable. Because we could never afford tape and I don’t know how to align a tape machine and all that.

audience member

Would you prefer to have tape if you could have had it?

Morgan Geist

Oh, yeah! I’d prefer to not have it [so that] for most of my life I got out of my bed and walked over to my studio two steps away. It would have been awesome to have a real studio and awesome mixer and open-reel deck. Right when digital audio became more affordable, that’s what really spurred Metro Area on because finally we could do stuff that wasn’t based on small samples. So I just did this thing, and did it really loosely, which was another goal, and I just put it on DAT – such a fine, gorgeous-sounding medium (laughs) – and I brought it over to Darshan and we put it on this Roland VS-880, which was this 8-track recording [machine]. If you took a shit, then put it in a pillow and then put that inside George Bush...

I’m trying to describe how terrible it sounds. It was this awful-sounding machine, no offense to anyone who owns one, I mean, we did… So, we just put it on that and then recorded stuff over it; we recorded handclaps, which was [also] a huge revelation to us also because it’s really hard to sequence live handclaps. Danny Wang and I used to have these nerd-ass discussions about, “Well, how do you make sequenced handclaps sound like disco records?” We’d have these arguments, really sexy stuff like that, and we recorded handclaps and that’s when we knew, “Damn! This was going to be fun.” We recorded like eight tracks of handclaps and we were like, “This is the track.” Then Darshan recorded some chords over it and then I recorded some more synth and then we mixed it down to another DAT and then it sounded like how I described, really muddy and disgusting. But I started it and brought it to Darshan and he added spice to it.

Later on, he’d start a skeletal track – be it a rhythm or bassline or something like that – he’d bring it over to me and I’d work on it. And as the creative relationship grew, we got these roles that we’d do. He’d do the sparse bassline and I’d do some sweet chords and that got really tired, so then we started forcing each other to do stuff that we wouldn’t usually do. So he’d start doing chordal stuff or if I’d done the drums on the last one, he’d do the drums on the new one and that sort of keeps it somewhat interesting. Otherwise you fall into these roles and familiarity breeds contempt and all that… you start resenting your own music because it gets really predictable.

audience member

What I like about that is I instantly thought of this episode of Dexter’s Lab, where Dexter has a jam with the professor in the studio and they’re all going on these Moog’s and stuff. So I was thinking is fun important in the studio because it sounds like fun is part of what you’re doing here?

Morgan Geist

Fun is really important and that’s why we waste so much time doing ridiculous things. I can’t even talk about it because he’d kill me. We used to go off on these tangents making fun of other dance music. We’d be trying to do a Metro Area track and then we’d spend eight hours doing a really bad top-40 trance track or something (laughter). I mean, not recording it but we’d just be like: (motions banging the keyboard) ‘Bah bah bah bah!’ It was just fun. Or we’d do a ballad or whatever. That was a lot of wasted time but it was fun, you know? And I think we still have fun in the studio and a lot of the stuff on our records we laugh at. We’ll do a little riff and go, “That’s stupid!” And then keep it in there (laughter).

audience member

Do you see Metro Area as quite serious music? Because I think everyone here is able to sit and chin-stroke a bit, “Oh, they’re so postmodern, contemporary, post-punk, disco, new wave, pre-electroclash, around the corner around the back hanging with the intelligent disco mob.” This is all bullshit, really. Is it serious or is it fun?

Morgan Geist

It’s both. The only emotion I’d say we’re not into is… we’re not too big on irony because I feel like irony ruined a lot of new dance music. People didn’t have the balls – sorry to be so male-centric – people didn’t have the guts to say, “Hey, I like this and it’s cheesy!” They’d be like, “Yo, I’m being ironic, check this out.” So we were always really against that and that’s the one serious part of our music. We love listening to music, we love making music, so that’s very serious. And I think it’s possible to have humor in music and to have it be serious and beautiful. The track that’s coming into my head, Patrick Adams is going to be here in a couple of days and I’m dying that I’m not going to be able to see him, even though I got to interview him once, which makes it a little better. But he did this project called Bumblebee Unlimited, he did both voices... I mean, ask him about this, it’s an incredible story. But it’s two bees talking to each other and he used vari-speed on the tape and it’s like, “Yo, what’s up baby, nice body,” and she’s like, “Yeah, I’m a perfect 24-38-24.” It’s like these two bees and the track is ridiculous, you’re like, “Wow! What was happening when he did that track?” I want to be respectful but it’s out-there, really funny shit.

But if I listen to that track, I get chills because there’s these string parts in it that are gorgeous and even just how fucked up these bees are talking to each other (laughter). You listen to that at home and it’s like, “This is kind of funny,” and you hear it on a big soundsystem and it’s otherworldly because there’s this incredible disco track and these bees having a conversation. And, yeah, it moves me! I’m getting goose bumps now thinking about the string line in that track, it’s gorgeous. So, I think it’s possible to have humor and also this earnestness or seriousness at the same time. It’s the interplay between those that makes the music vital, I think. Because you get too chin-strokey if it’s all seriousness, and you’re Weird Al Yankovic if you make it all funny, so whatever…

audience member

And the last one. So we had a bit of fun there, how about the chin-strokey, serious side in a way? What are the sort of things that inform on that slightly ’80s mood? I’m just trying to imagine what you think of when you’re trying to make a vibe in the studio. Is it like a Blade Runner thing? Where does that mood come from, that ’80s analog synth stuff?

Morgan Geist

We just always imagine we’re in Blade Runner. All the records are made that way. No, I think it was just all our influences being mixed. I mean, the ’80s thing, at this point it’s such a huge part of the sound but it’s almost coincidental, at the time there wasn’t a lot of music doing that. When we started doing Metro Area, it was both wanting to do something along these lines. That was like the positive motivation but the negative thing driving us was: we were really dissatisfied with what was going on with dance music at the time. We were coming out of people taking huge chunks of disco records and putting a kick under it and being like, “This is my new track.” And I think that was really what was motivating us because they were ’70s and ’80s tracks – more ’70s – but that was the same thing era-wise. It was the same era that we maybe were referencing with our early stuff.

We wanted to take more of the philosophy and production values of it and apply that towards and put I through our own filters. You know how I said I thought of it as a techno project? Techno to me was whatever the Jeff Mills quote is, “At a rock concert people scream when they hear something they know and in a techno club, people scream when they hear something they don’t know.” I always loved that quote, it’s so goddamn quotable, isn’t it? It’s like a Hallmark card. So, that quote was sort of motivating the philosophy behind it. We wanted to do something that people weren’t hearing at the time, yet took all of these ’70s and ’80s production values and sounds and palettes. I mean, we can’t deny that, the modulated little synth riffs and stuff, it’s straight out of D-Train or S.O.S. Band or whatever. It was stuff we were listening to and still listen to and we wanted to sort of combine that whole thing. So, to combine your questions, when it became not weird anymore and people were accepting it, then it was like, “Oh, it’s this ’80s group,” which drove us nuts because to us it was just music. But then people were saying, “I hear this squiggly synth sound, so it’s an ’80s throwback thing.” So whatever. And it makes it hard to make new records now because we don’t want to repeat ourselves but it’s like we don’t really want to make a hip-house track. It would be nice to grab influences from other eras but we can’t change what we like and we really like ’60s, ’70s, ’80s stuff. It seems that we like that the most, even though we listen to all sorts of things including brand new stuff.

Gerd Janson

So you might want to play some of your “serious fun music”?

Morgan Geist

“Serious fun music.” You mean a Metro Area track?

Gerd Janson

Yeah.

Morgan Geist

OK, of course. What should I play?

Gerd Janson

The most gimmicky one.

Morgan Geist

The most gimmicky one? Well, the most gimmicky one is “Miura,” but I don’t know if it really represents the ’80s. Since I talked about the disgusting one before, I’ll play you the really lo-fi one that we did first.

(music: Metro Area – “Atmosphirique”)

(music: Metro Area – “Dance reaction” / applause)

Gerd Janson

Were those strings also done by this Kelley Polar guy?

Morgan Geist

Yeah, Kelley Polar is a friend from college, who went to the conservatory at Oberlin and somehow didn’t come out as damaged goods and he could make a beat and play with some groove, so he helped us with the string parts. Since Darshan and I, neither of us can really read music, we’d sing the stuff to him – which was painful – and he’d play it and occasionally he’d embellish it. We didn’t know any terms so we’d be like, “Can you do (imitating instrument) “weeeah”?” And he’d be like, “Oh, you want me to do a glissando?” And we’d say, “Yeah, that’s what we want you to do.” And so he was a major help in realizing what we were hearing in our heads. Because we couldn’t use synth strings, even though Derrick May and [all those guys] used synth pads and it’s amazing, but for this particular project we wanted to use real strings. So, we did.

Gerd Janson

And I think you guys had some questions a few minutes before or are they eradicated now?

Audience Member

Actually, I was just asking about Kelley Polar Quartet, it was just in my mind so it’s answered now.

Morgan Geist

Kelley Polar? Gerd read your mind. Kelley Polar, as I said, he’s the guy who did the strings and I produced three EPs with him for my label. He’s a violist and he can play incredible pieces of classical music and he’s quite good, but he also loves dance music and loves weird pop music. So for his EPs, he’d bring me down these funny, quirky pop songs with a beat and sometimes he’d be rapping on them and stuff, just totally unfiltered. And for the 12”s, I’d edit it, take all the fun out of it, and turn it into these 12” tracks but he’s doing an album that comes out next week on Environ Records (strokes chin and laughs) available at your local store.

Gerd Janson

Called?

Morgan Geist

Called [_Love Songs Of The Hanging Gardens. This is really pop music because he needed to make some pop music. I feel like he wants to do things with his songs that moved along a bit faster than what the dancefloor dictated. He didn’t want things to loop up forever and have a long intro, he wanted to do concise pop songs, so I figured an album was a great venue for doing that. And it was something I also really wanted to do this because my favorite labels, some old major labels but also Prelude and West End and Supertronics and things like that, they’d put out dance music and they’d also have a track in the R&B Top 100 and they’d have it in the Top 40. Like “Heartbeat” by Taana Gardner…

Gerd Janson

On West End?

Morgan Geist

On West End Records, yeah. Who covered it, En Vogue?

Audience Member

Ini Kamoze.

Morgan Geist

Right, wait. What did En Vogue cover? There was another…

Gerd Janson

De La Soul even sampled it.

Morgan Geist

Alright, I need to do my research. The point was they did pop music, basically, and some of it worked in the disco and some of it worked on radio. So that’s ideally what I want Environ to be. I didn’t want it to be one style, just techno, just house, just disco. So, I think this album will really help broaden the palette because it’s more pop stuff. It’s also the first vocal album.

Gerd Janson

It will get you into the top 40?

Morgan Geist

Yeah, that’s the aim, to get into the top 40. I don’t think this will get in the top million.

Audience Member

Can we listen to one of them?

Morgan Geist

Yeah, sure.

Audience Member

And at what point does Laurie Anderson come in? Because it’s reminding me of Laurie Anderson.

Morgan Geist

Laurie Anderson did you say? Ooohhh. Oh, I don’t know maybe she was an influence, I did a terrible track sampling “O Superman” when I was young. Thank God that never came out. I don’t know, she’s cool.

Audience Member

Yeah, she’s cool but it’s a thin line between art and pop music that she’s walking on and that’s why I wondered...

Morgan Geist

Oh, I see. Yeah, it’s nice to tread that line. And you’re right, Laurie Anderson does do really experimental stuff that’s quite inaccessible and some of her stuff is really accessible, if you’re in the right frame of mind. That’s another thing, I hate to keep harkening back to the ’70s and ’80s, but a lot of pop music was pretty creative back then, even horrible pop music. Like, I don’t know if a song like “Fish Heads” could be top 40 nowadays. I don’t know if anybody remembers that? “Fish Heads”… no? It’s for the best. The lyric was: “Fish heads, fish heads, roly-poly fish heads / fish heads, fish heads eat ’em up, yum.” That was the whole song. And that was like on top 40 radio when I was young. Maybe it’s that that stuff went away, I dunno … That was sort of an absurd pop song.

Audience Member

You must have heard “Crazy Frog,” though?

Morgan Geist

I’ve read about this, I think I’ve heard bits of it, yeah.

Audience Member

That’s been driving us mad.

Morgan Geist

But isn’t that like a phone thing? I thought it was like a ringtone?

Audience Member

It began that way and then the fire spread.

Gerd Janson

It’s played on MTV and everything. There’s a video.

Morgan Geist

Like “Fish Heads” seems like this absurdist fun experiment and that seems like this scary corporate thing because I thought it was like a ringtone type of thing, but who knows? But experimental is what you make it. If you strip the vocals out of most hip-hop stuff and new R&B stuff, it’s the craziest sounding music and it wasn’t always like that. Ten years ago, a top 40 hip-hop track, the backing stuff would have been experimental techno. Now it’s just a Burger King commercial. So should I play some?

Gerd Janson

“Ashamed of Myself.”

Morgan Geist

Gerd did an edit of this track. Mike and I, Kelley Polar and I – his name’s Mike – we’re not wild about this one, but Gerd seems to be. This is “Ashamed of Myself.”

(music: Kelley Polar – “Ashamed of Myself” / applause)

Gerd Janson

So please give Mr Morgan Geist another special [round of] applause.