Kid606 Interview and More

The Mobius, an experimental electronic show on WREK out of Atlanta, has a great archive of their shows to date. Amongst sets from the likes of Richard Devine and Accelera Deck is an interview with Kid606 that’s a great listen. The Kid has quite a cult of personality in the IDM scene, so hearing him speak has quite a humanizing effect. It turns out he’s hyper, left-coast slangin’, and has a very “young” voice. Every other word is “like.” But he has some nice comments about music, experimental and otherwise. Amongst the topics of conversation is the practice of (electronic) musicians releasing under a plethora of different names, which he looks down upon.

Facing the dilemma of which name/identity to adopt for my first release, I found his logic of musicians having enough confidence in themselves and their work to keep the same name from project to project very inspiring. He’s also surprisingly vehement on copyright and filesharing: “Kid606 The Action Packed Mentalist Kicks Out the Fucking Jams” was intended to be a statement on the last days of Napster, composed from everything the Kid could grab and sample before the P2P network was sued into oblivion by the record industry giants. Like most small label artists/owners he sees filesharing as a means of exposure he wouldn’t otherwise get, though wishes people who could afford his music would pay for it, which I sympathize with.

He just seems like a cool guy, and you get to hear some unreleased stuff of his after the interview to boot, so give it a listen.