ESPRIT 空想 - Kenyon Horn At Home Performance / Q&A

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at this so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] did [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] did [Music] did sleep [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] oh [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so thank you so much for having me kenyan okay i've got some questions uh here that i would love to answer um the first one from sarah a ceramics major uh freshman here at kenyon college says would you say what would who would you say were your major influences in regards to your singing vocals as george clanton so when i perform as george sometimes i sing uh often i sing and who are my influences well um in the in the olden days i didn't think that i was able to sing um and and what really gave me the confidence was i found out um kind of through doing karaoke that i could do a really good uh impression of the guy that sings the song don't you want me baby it's a popular 80s song it's like don't you want me baby um that was a number one hit song by the human league and i found out that but i've seen this pretty good and then i started with this kind of very 80s affect um were you seeing all theatrical and whatnot and um i found out that dipping into that character gave me a lot of confidence in in my singing that i didn't have before and i realized well i've got actually you know it could use some work but a pretty strong voice and i guess over the years a little bit of that 80s affect kind of faded away um as i've kind of found what elements of my own voice were in there but i would say you know it was really the human league was a huge influence and just 80s music in general um but now i don't think of it so much and i and i just kind of try to sound natural but you know all of that is just kind of like subconsciously ingrained in your mind at a certain point and you don't really notice uh who your influences are anymore you're just picking and choosing little things that you hear great question and another question from michaela a geometry major i didn't even know that you could major in geometry a junior here at kenyon college says one thing that is fascinating about your music is that even though it draws from your memories of growing up there is a nostalgia factor that can be tapped into by people younger than yourself younger than me uh what pieces of media have you drawn from informing your aesthetic for george clanton and esprit and why might you think they can be appreciated by so many different people oh thank you michaela that's an excellent question um one thing that is fascinating about your music you know i'm pulling from is another influences style question pieces of media to form my aesthetic it's difficult to know much what my aesthetic is i definitely um you know jump around a lot um i really like kind of late 90s right now i'm really into like this um kind of late 90s early 2000s kind of future utopian sort of y2k aesthetic um and i'm i'm kind of exploring i guess how 3d art was rendered at that time and utilizing it for myself um i also you know my george clanton slide album cover was bigly influenced by just kind of like 90s magazine advertisements particularly skechers which i'm wearing on the cover the skechers shoe and before that you know i've dabbled in different sort of like 90 cgi and and maybe you know i don't think so much uh 80s stuff but you know i'm i'm sure it's there um particularly maybe some of like um the the funny faces that i pull like you know that's kind of influenced by funny what we perceive as funny 80s album covers today i guess they thought that they look cool then it's really impossible to know um but yeah you know so i i collect i've been collecting some video equipment from the early 2000s late 90s which is what you're seeing uh here today and wise can that be appreciated by a bunch of people well um i don't know thank you for saying that it is um i think if somebody doesn't have any distinct memory of that you know i don't think that it's necessarily kind of um you know even tapping on nostalgia for me all the time uh you know sometimes we take those old things and kind of twist them into something new that doesn't really remind me of anything um but i think it's cool that there are these kind of abandoned uh aesthetics that were obviously just inherently cool at some other point in time and to be able to kind of dig for those and find these abandoned aesthetics it's like well here i can come up with and present something that's new and fresh to people but i don't actually have to be creative enough to come up with something new and fresh myself i can just kind of go back into something that um people abandoned because it got played out so much like with these y2k aesthetics like eventually that looked played out but now you haven't seen it for 20 odd years so uh it's fresh again because in many cases you know you've never seen anything that looks like this even if you know it was the year 2000 it would just blend in and you wouldn't even notice it like i was just talking to a friend about how wow look how cool this album cover looks i remember when i was a kid all album covers looked like this and it was just like in one eye out the other it didn't matter you didn't really even think about these cool like 3d graphics now they kind of look cool it's kind of otherworldly um to kind of purposely put a limit on the quality of something that you can do because you're trying to replicate the look of a time period excuse me for my long answer i hope that you'll forgive me um who are some emerging artists that you really love um well you know what i kind of discover a lot of artists from [Music] doing this weekly live stream that i've been forcing myself to do for the past 30 some weeks and um kind of listening to what people who are watching the live stream are suggesting and bringing those bringing some of those people on the show i think that there's this band called magdalena bay that's really cool um i just met them this week and so i've been listening to them a lot there are some um you know really cool uh emerging artists uh in the vaporwave scene and you know some that aren't so cool i tend to kind of broaden my net to kind of find things that i that i think are particularly interesting and and and i'm going to have to give a shout out to my friend adam kane uh right now who is really just emerging out of nowhere um with not a lot of musical history uh that people can listen to and he is just absolutely uh killing it right now so uh check out adam kane um most of the people that i become exposed to are people who i work with um as far as emerging artists i don't really do a lot of digging a lot of the artists that i listen to are already established and i'm typically late to the game when it comes to them like uh i'm really into caroline polacek right now but it took me like almost a year to kind of come around and give that album a listen and for that matter that's just something that happens in my life all the time like i think it took me two years to listen to the uh tame impala currents album and then that was my favorite album of the year but nobody wanted to talk to me about it because it was already played out by the time i heard it so sorry i don't have any a better answer for you um who are some artists in your eyes that are wildly underrated slash underappreciated interesting i wonder if i'm going to edit this after the fact so i could think about it a little bit longer wildly underrated artists okay again i'm going to have to kind of circle back to some people that i work with here and they're the ones who are really coming to mind there's a band called death dynamic shroud who i think is kind of will be in the future kind of rated on this level of like the aphex twins of the world or the uh you know the boards of canada of the world or these kind of like mysterious um electronic acts that people put a lot of value on um that people just kind of worship and i think that in that sense they're kind of undiscovered people who follow vaporwave know who they are but people aren't really like listening to death dynamic shroud yet and um you know i hope that i can do everything that i can in my power to kind of switch that up there's another really cool kind of ethereal um kind of like uh drum and bass artist named aural imbalance that it's kind of like it doesn't seem like really anybody is listening to that um but i listen to them all the time and just put them on and can listen to their entire discography um that's one to check out and another uh friend of mine who i think is is uh criminally underrated is equip equip is an artist out of chicago who makes music that's kind of influenced by video games like early 90s video games and i think what they're doing is really interesting and kind of unparalleled in music period i think it's a really unique and distinctly identifiable style um that it seems like everybody who comes upon it loves it but um hasn't really found the audience yet i think because you know it's weird it's weird to like base your whole music off of this like one singular aesthetic but he's really mastered it and makes some truly incredible music um you have said okay here we go you have said that uh question number five you said that your musical process george clinton is mostly you experimenting until you find something you enjoy based on your lack of formal training do you find this to be more or less the same with a spree or is your process different you know what the the real answer there is that the george clan and esprit processes are are almost identical i mean in fact they're identical to the point where i don't set out to make a george clinton or esprit song it's just kind of how does the song end and what does it lend itself to as far as a live performance do i have a song here that kind of has a chanty hook that i can sing and a room full of people are going to want to sing along or is this kind of more of something that i can loop and really get in a trance by and you know put the delays on and and really just kind of meditate and feel psychedelic too kind of a transportative song and then those end up on the esprit lineup but the beginnings they're identical i don't set out to make any different i don't set out to make anything it just happens on accident and then if it sounds like a george if it's going to be a george clinton song it goes over here if it's a spree it goes over here and you know to be honest i'm kind of always kind of blurring those lines uh and we might kind of find like a hybrid george clanton esprit album on the next album let's kind of blends both of those things but generally that's how it has been done uh up to this point and i'm con i'm developing music for george clanton and esprit at the same time and just kind of leap frog each other every other year um question number six one project of yours is that i love oh thank you is your collaboration with nick hexam of 311 how did this collaboration come to be do you foresee yourself continuing that project in the future and who are some other artists you would like to work with if given the opportunity well i'm glad that you loved that album with 311 it came to be because i love 311 and i was talking about them on basically any opportunity that i was given i would talk about 311 and and how much i liked them i think that i got a little bit of a kick out of people being like oh 311 that's got nothing in common with your music i've never really checked them out i only really like that you know i know that one song but it's funny i mean 311 is huge um you know to the people who know 311 and they don't really know who i am so anyway long story short um some of the people on the 311 team are george clanton fans and they put the music in front of um essay and peanut and they were listening to it and then nick hexum was like what is this and they're like huh you know i don't know this is george clanton guy and nick hexsom actually got first listened to the esprit album 200 electronica and that's what he liked and i met him backstage because his people got me backstage tickets and says hey anytime you want to come come out and i didn't know that it was going to be anything i was just going to get a free ticket to 311. so i went i watched them backstage i got some free beers and then um at the end i met nick hexham we took a photo he said hey if you ever want somebody to play guitar on your song let me know and i thought that he was just being sweet but it turns out he was being serious and i sent him a song and he sent me back a guitar part and a singing part i thought it was obviously i thought it was amazing and we went on to just replicate that um eight or nine more times to make the album and do i see myself con continuing that project in the future well i feel like that project there is a lot of material to digest and i think that i'm going to uh back away you know from it for now but and work on the new like solo george clinton album but i could see him you know asking him to feature on the new solo george clanton album or you know doing another song again i think it would be cool to have an opportunity to remix a new 311 song um but we'll see how that goes and who are some other artists that you would love to work with well i always really really wanted to work with keith flint from uh the prodigy uh he is sort of recently deceased rest in peace keith flynn he's the guy who's seeing some i'm a fire starter twisted fire starter i always wanted to work with him and another one who's extremely high on my list is um seal the guy who sings kiss from a rose and i don't know what it is i you know i guess i have these childhood fantasies about um making music with my favorite artists from when i was a kid there are some uh you know modern artists that i would really like to work with um uh gene dawson i'd love to work with i think that he is under well it's kind of too late to say that he's underrated because i think he's popping off right now um let's see any plans to continue the 100 electronic on in the future yes uh 100 electronicon is meant to be a yearly event we just got screwed out of it this year because of coronavirus but i want to do it every year basically until i'm dead or people stop coming so i look forward to doing 100 electronic on which if you don't know is is a festival for me and other similar artists that i created last year and we wanted it was a big hit and we yes i want to do it again uh next year thank you for that question and the year after that and the year after that one too question number eight you've been releasing music for well over 12 years that's true do you feel that you have quote found your sound or is it constantly changing and developing yes and double yes uh i do feel like i found my sound as opposed to sort of um i feel like this is something pretty much all musicians do as early on in their career they're they seek out specific things to kind of emulate and i think that that's a learning process that everybody has to go through um as you say oh i want to make this song that sounds exactly like this and then you try to figure out how it was done and and you don't really have maybe a totally unique thing of your own um and nothing is ever totally unique no matter how pretentious somebody is and they'll tell you that they don't have any influences but at this point i feel like instead of consciously pulling from my influences it's just kind of all in my mind and now instead of trying to say oh i want to make a blend of you know the prodigy and the happy mondays and uh the laws and uh smashing pumpkins and primal scream and you know mixing all these things together i say i'm just going to make a george clanton song today and i know what that's going to sound like so in that way i have found my sound but that doesn't mean that it's not changing and developing because now that i'm kind of on this george clanton road that i'm i'm i'm always kind of tweaking things and i guess it just depends on do you think you know that 100 that the album 100 electronica and slide sound the same um or that slide and the new nick hexum album sounds the same and and if the answer is no then yes it is constantly changing and developing but at the same time i also feel like i kind of found my sound and if you listen to those songs and you don't you know have a vocal to go off of and you had never heard them before i think you'd go oh yeah that sounds like a george clinton song and i think that that's going to be true for my future output but i i hope that it will have progressed and developed and be a little bit fresh because it's easy to go backwards and just keep creating the same song even if that's maybe what people want from me it's just more fun to try to challenge yourself and find something new which is the whole reason that i guess you get into this kind of art as to for self-fulfillment any new projects in the works question number nine yeah uh i am working on a new album it's about halfway done i really really really love it it's coming along slow though because i'm working on all other different types of projects right now i'm working on some virtual reality projects i'm developing a virtual reality concert series called virtual utopia that's virtualutopia.org where you can um [Music] we're actually taking um the money that some of the money that i make from my 100 electronic record label and putting it into paying up and coming sort of virtual environment developers kind of under undiscovered talent to develop virtual reality scenes for other indie artists to perform in and then we match these people up these indie musicians and these up-and-coming vr developers and we give the vr developers a little bit of money and they make kind of like a music video for a live performance of a of a independent kind of underground musician and then every month or every couple of months or every three months we're shrink we're shrinking down the the space in between them i hope to start doing these shows every month or at least every other month next year um and uh that's just that's obviously that's a lot of work for me and it's a new area to explore for me um i'm working on upgrading my live streaming that i'm doing every week uh because that's been a successful form of kind of outreach from my sort of pitch and hold area of music to reach out to a broader sort of set of musicians and invite them to come on the show and to kind of introduce my sort of cult following to some other artists that are outside of this tiny little tiny little vaporwave bubble that sometimes we end up existing in um and not exploring other avenues and i'm just starting today i'm i'm kind of interested in blockchain and these kind of opportunities to put limited art on the blockchain and how that kind of can integrate with my whole vision for this sort of virtual reality future that i'm building for my 100 electronic record label i'm just i'm doing such a bad job of explaining what i'm talking about so but if that's true you've probably already turned this off but thank you for listening i've got one more uh question question number 10 many people label your work as vaporwave and chillwave how in your own words would you describe your sound um yes uh i i describe my sound as vaporwave because um it's the easiest thing um to but but truly uh you know i don't because definitions don't update as fast as perhaps the art develops a lot of people disagree that my music is vaporwave um and okay i understand where you're coming from with that if uh because there's very very little in common with my music my music is typically all originally composed versus vaporwave is kind of famous for being sample based and chill wave um yeah i mean a lot of people say it's not vaporwave it's chillwave well i don't have a you know i don't really think that it's truly either one of those things it's kind of a mix of a lot of different styles of music and i think that it pretentiously i i have to say i think that it defines it defies being defined in in such specific terms um but you know i like to define it in specific terms so as to not be one of those pretentious guys that goes oh you know it can't be defined it's all these different things um but you know like i said earlier i'm pulling from a lot of different influences basically it's just i have a a playlist of my favorite songs called george clanton's favorite songs on spotify and i think that my music is just kind of like take all of those songs and blend them up together like mixing all the flavors at the soda fountain machine and then what you get is george clan it's like a mixture of all kinds of different sounds but because i'm exploring these kind of dead aesthetics and um playing around with artificially warping my sound to make it sound old and manipulated and vibey and psychedelic and we're doing this kind of psychedelic electronic music i like to describe my music as a vaporwave and with that said thank you so much for having me i know that i went way over my time and maybe someone should cut this down to only the good bits thanks again for watching bye

Channel: 100% Electronica

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Id: pCVG1rjWojU

Length: 60min 12sec (3612 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 12 2020