A quick search of the "Musical Groups from Melbourne" wikipedia page reveals an incredible list that includes Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Amyl and the Sniffers, and on and on... but what about the current underground punk scene? Luckily, we've been able to gain some insight on some of the city's coolest up and coming bands with help from one tireless musician who calls Melbourne home: Billiam.
Billiam has his own lengthy list of music related projects, both as a musician and a listener. We talked with him earlier this year for this blog about his band Disco Junk. He's also a part of the stellar new trash-punk trio Tor, who put out the catchy "WIFI HEAD" single a couple months ago. ON TOP OF that and playing in like 5 other bands, Billiam also heads up the fantastic zine Magnetic Visions and summed up things in Melbourne accordingly "... theres so much going on right now its insane"
Billiam sent us this great list of Melbourne punk bands. This is easily the best city-specific punk list anyone's ever sent me, it's all good. Much love to Melbourne!
Paris From Tokyo is a producer/multi-instrumentalist from Detroit who is part of the exciting new wave of musical talent coming from the city. His latest singles "Granite" and "Agoraphobia" both dropped within the last week and were accompanied with stellar music videos.We had the pleasure of speaking to Paris about both his music and his life. Enjoy!
Remove Records: Thank you for doing this interview! Can you start by telling us a bit about yourself and how you got started in music?
Paris: First off, thanks for having me! i love interviews and i don’t get to do a bunch of em. Second, I’m 21 years old, i’ve been making music since i was 13 and since then i’ve taught myself how to do everything i do now as far as art and what not
Where does the name Paris From Tokyo come from?
the name Paris From Tokyo came about when i was 15. i got it from the Lupe Fiasco song Paris, Tokyo and i just added a “from” lol. it’s really stupid in retrospect but it stuck and everyone pretty much refers to me as paris now so i just kinda roll with it
What do you hope people take away from listening to your music?
this is a hard question lol. i’ve made a lot of different stuff with varied intentions for all of it but i think above all else, i want people to walk away from my music feeling closer to me as a person. i put a lot of myself into everything i make. my hopes, my dreams, my fears and my general disposition toward the world all laid out on the table for the world to see and if they relate, that’s awesome but it’s more-so cathartic for me.
What have you been listening to lately?
it’s been a real mixed bag lately haha. i’ve been getting into a lot of older stuff like Tom Tom Club, Elliott Smith, a bunch of shoegaze stuff like my bloody valentine and cocteau twins, curren$y, jpegmafia, dorothy ashby, p funk. the list just goes on and on
Who are some people from Detroit that you think more people should be listening to?
Mykel Andre, Ziggy Waters, Kaio, Srch Engn, and plenty others that don’t come to mind off the top but they know i love them <3
What are some of your favorite venues in Detroit?
My favorite venues that i’ve performed at in the city were personally Trumbullplex and The Loving Touch
If you could collaborate with one artist/musician, who would it be?
this is a tough one too lol. i’d say it’s a tie between Chaz Bundick & Thom Yorke
What are you working on next?
many different things at once haha. i have a rap project called Agoraphobia produced by the brilliant Cam Spacely coming at the end of the year and something else that i can’t talk too much about. Agoraphobia is cool because i don’t usually let a lot of people produce songs for me let alone an entire project but i trust Cam a lot.
How do you feel about the future of art/music?
i feel like the future in that regard is in good hands. there are so many brilliant minds with interesting stories just waiting to be told and art itself is becoming so accessible that it’s gonna be impossible to ignore them.
Ish Chowdhury is easily one of the coolest. chillest people I know. He's the lead-singer of The Indigo Curve, who are currently working on their debut album, and he is an all around positive presence in the local music community, with a respect of the past and a visionary/forward thinking outlook that is sure to turn some heads. We're so stoked to share our interview with Ish below. Enjoy!
Remove Records: Can you tell us how you started playing music?
Ish: Oh man. I guess it started in 7th grade when I wrote a rap song about pollution for science class. Shit was a hit haha, I had to perform it in front of three classes. I even had a beat and everything. After that, my time in rap began. And I mean I came up on Nas, Big L, Big Pun, a lot of nasty east coast spitters whom I definitely crafted my flow and style from. My plan was to graduate high school and drop an album, with 5 - 6 years of my best shit I've never recorded. And then my computer crashed. Everything was lost. So I bought a guitar. Nowadays I'll still freestyle for fun, love it.
How did The Indigo Curve come together and what are the bands future plans?
Initially at the beginning of 2020 I wanted to start a solo project, which was The Indigo Curve. Me and my little brother came up with the name while we were in New York the last week of December. Came back with the name, and recorded a song with Adam, our lead guitarist. Then one day Adam called me like just before midnight, and said, "listen, I met this drummer." He was referring to Markus (aka Chef). He just had Niko join him for his solo band. But on the phone he told me to come over next week and jam. That's where it happened. I introduced three or four songs I had written and they just took it to another level. At that point I was like, alright, fuck the solo shit, this is ours now. Mike used to be the bassist in an old band with me and Adam, and he joined us a few weeks later to play the keys for us. I'm really stoked, it's just the dopest band I've been in, and I think we have something special for folks to come.
I haven't been able to make it out to your recent shows, but how has it been for you playing shows during COVID?
Shit's dead man, understandably so. Outdoor shows in the summer sun are fun, but people are just apprehensive to be out, and I can dig that. Our burden was forming literally a week before COVID took serious effect. After a few months, we had a handful of outdoor shows, and it felt good to share what we've been working on, and seeing what people think. Now that we kinda "exist" to people, we're hitting the studio to work on a full length album. Definitely gonna try to shake some socks with this new stuff.
What are some of your favorite venues in Detroit? Any outside of the city?
I don't know why but Trumbullplex is just my favorite for some reason. I hate lit up places and lights just bother me to an incomprehensible extent. Dark joints kinda hidden away from lots of traffic do it for me. Outside of the city? Hamtown's got a bunch of cool spots. Aside from them, I'm a big fan of Elektricity. I pray to the gods you know I'm joking.
Why do you think Detroit has so many good musicians/bands, both past and present?
Culture bro. Art is not possible without a culture existing somewhere. And Detroit has such a rich mix of humans with different vibes. I grew up on Talbot street in Hamtown as a kid and remember going to the masjid, then walking outside into the poultry market, then walking down the street with my uncle to a money transfer shop his boy owned. Down the same street a Ukrainian church, polish meat markets, Yemeni joints, all of it man. I used to work at the Church's Chicken when I was 16 on Vernor. Never did I see so many Hispanic people just stopping in to grab their chicken for their lunch. Different, various groups of people just naturally invokes mad culture bumping around. And that's a source of inspiration. The city has never felt as gritty as it was made to seem to me, it's always been beautiful. All these artists, musicians, writers - these people carry these experiences and feelings and put it down on their medium. But honestly, I could do without a Starbucks or two. It's like an invasive species for dope cities.
What have you been listening to lately?
Bumping the new Stags album you just sent me at the moment. I would totally burn a house down to the tune of Do Some Curls, shit slams. Been on a return to Joey Bada$$ and Capital Steez the last few days. But I've recently gotten into 80s Japanese city pop and Phoebe Bridgers lately. Phoebe is such a bad bitch man. Not as in looks even though she's pretty, but bad bitch in the way she weaves hardbody lyrics together with a gorgeous voice. Her writing is next level. And she just starts songs so hard. I'm a huge believer in the first bar you drop being memorable. She started a song off with, "When the speed kicks in, I go to the store for nothing." That's where she had me.
If you could collaborate with any artist/musician, who would it be and why?
I really fuck with Bakpak Durden, they're one of my favorite artists around the city. I saw their work at an art show my friend Allison Scout, who is also an incredible artist, invited me to. And I was just like, yo. This is so lovely, while simultaneously street as fuck. Once I found out Bakpak does a bunch of murals that was it. Not now, but at some point I wanna do something, I have no idea what, with them.
How do you feel about the future of art and music?
I'm hopeful man. I want the city to get back to its riotous roar of music shows, art shows, pop ups, anything and everything in between. Interesting people live here. I can't name a neighborhood without artists and creators living there. And as creators we live off presenting our creation to the world. It's a drag having to keep our space from all the groups of people we fuck with, because it's our art that brings us together. But we'll get by. We always get by.
Whoa! We've been doing interviews on this blog for a couple of years now, but this one is definitely a personal highlight for me. I've been very fortunate to get to know Ko this year as she has been working on a project called The Heart Of Detroit; documenting people from all walks of life from Detroit through photos and interviews during the coronavirus pandemic. She's put a ton of work into this project, and you might also know her from her time playing fuzz guitar in The Dirtbombs or DJing on Little Steven's Underground Sirius/XM 21. Please check out the incredible Heart Of Detroit photo-essays and enjoy our very own interview with Ko below!
RR: Thank you for doing this interview! Can you tell us about your project
“The Heart of Detroit”?
Ko: I started the Heart of Detroit when the Federal Government announced that they were going to be giving out “Small Business Loans” (PPP). When the list of businesses that received them was announced, I got really angry. The Lakers/ Ruth Chris’ Steak House? Since when are places like that “Small businesses?” So I spent a few day being angry. like really angry. When I finally settled down, I thought, “ there has to be something that I can do to turn this anger into something else.” But that led to another problem, what could a person like me do? I’m not a doctor, scientist, business person and I don’t have any money. How can one person like me do anything to make a change or do anything?
I sat down for a few days and really thought about it and tried to think about what I have going for me, what I’m good at. Because of The Dirtbombs and my show on Little Steven’s Underground Garage Siriusxm, I have decent social media following, I know that I can talk to people and I can take pictures ( I took the photos for the cover of the 1st White Stripes LP and a few singles) so why not start an Instagram page where I post a picture a day of someone in black and white wearing a face mask and write a bio? Part 2 would be post covid and I would go back and take photos of everyone I’d already taken photos of but in COLOR!
Before I could get this off the ground, I talked to my friend Joseph Patel, who is a master of Media. He lives in NYC and w’ve been friends for awhile and he’s always given me great advice. I told him my idea and he said “You’re gonna have a hard time getting people to start following a page so you should start posting on the new page and on all the rest of your social media until you reach like 1,000 followers? So I started contacting people. I made a concerted effort to find people who were both friends AND people I didn’t know and started taking photos. I took a test round of 4 and before posting anything I contacted Nick Zinner from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and asked if he’d look at the photos and give me tips. He’s got like 4 photobooks out so it was really helpful to have someone give me some help on that front as well. the first couple weeks were weird because we were still in lockdown and the tabs on my car had expired. Plus, no one really had much to say because none of us knew anything. but that all changed when George Floyd was murdered. After that, people had so much to say and the project sort of became a different animal.
I should actually say that the project is constantly evolving. I didn’t realize that this project was going to be so much work. Naively, I hoped that this whole thing would be done by the end of the year when I started. So the reality of posting a person every single day sinks in, the fact that not only am I not getting paid but I’m spending money that I can’t afford to spend started to hit me. Luckily, by this point, the project had really begun to take off and people started donating gas money, which was an enormous amount of help. Crazy good things have happened because of this project. I’ve made more friends in the last 5 months that in the last 4 years of my life but most importantly, I’ve been able to share people’s stories with real results. I took pictures of Harriette Brown (Chef Bee), who passes out meals at the Road Parks transit center every wednesday at 6p an wrote about how she passed out 700 meals in 10 minutes. How she relies on donations from local chefs for food and can only do it once a week because she prepares the meals from her home and has no funding. two days later, a Developer named Rick Stanza contacted me and asked how he could help her. I put them in touch and now he’s buying her a building so she will have a space with cold storage to work out of. People understand the importance of community so I did a fund raiser for myself (because my car was staring to make all sorts of weird noises) and asked for $400 with a 5 day end date.
At the end of the 5 days, I had raised $4,200. Too much money for me. so I set aside the initial $800 for car repairs for myself and then donated the rest to people who I had featured in my posts.After I donated the money, I got a message from a man named David Reagan who said that he’d been following the project and wanted to give but didn’t feel comfortable putting his credit card on the internet and offered to look at my car and fix whatever he could for free as his way of making a donation. So that freed up more money for me to donate! I really want people to get even a little bit of good news, a sense of community and if my project can do that, I’m doing my 70+ hour a week unpaid job hahaha.
What do you hope people take away from viewing the photos and interviews?
I hope that people will look at my project and know that they are not alone, whatever they are feeling isn’t wrong. I want people to feel like they have a new friend in reading each of my posts. We are a community and if the federal government isn’t going to help us, the people in the project are good people. We all need to do something, no matter how small. It’s not enough to repost articles on Facebook or argue with people who aren’t ever going to see your point of view. DO something!
Why Is Detroit a special place for you?
Detroit is home. I’ve travelled all over the world for touring and there is nowhere like Detroit. I don’t know how else to explain it.
Is there a common theme or message you’ve found by speaking with so many people during this difficult time?
Even through all of the turmoil, sadness, anger… people still find hope. There’s always a silver lining. We seem to be learning from all of this, not just Covid, but everything that’s happened in the past 6 months.
Do you have other ideas for projects involving photography?
Is photography something you’d like to pursue more?
Honestly, I have no idea. This project is my everything right now and I really only picked up photography because of this project. I guess we’ll see what happens?
Switching gears to music, have you been playing guitar recently?
Nope. Right now I only have time for my radio show, the project and my Boyfriend and my Dog. Oh and sometimes I sleep. haha
What is the first song you think The Dirtbombs will play when
the band returns to playing shows?
“Start the Party”!
How do you feel about the future of music/art?
This is such a difficult question. Part of the problem here is many venues are out of business or are being sold. Without venues and art galleries, where do the bands play? where do the artists show their art? Many venues and galleries are in “Prime Real Estate” areas and if they can’t afford to keep paying rent or god forbid, have to sell, those places aren’t going to be bought by “Good Samaritans” who will let those spaces remain venues or galleries. They’re gonna end up as luxury condos or parking lots. we need to support groups like https://www.nivassoc.org/
It’s sad really because the US doesn’t support the arts the way Canada or European countries do.
We typically talk to musicians on this blog, but today we have the absolute pleasure to talk with Simone from EAT DA RICH, a great design/clothing company from Detroit that uses upcycled material to make exciting, handmade anti-fast fashion!!!!! EAT DA RICH has a new earring collection "Precious Moments II" plus a unisex scent about to drop called "EAT DA RICH No.1".
Check out photos of their new stuff and our interview with Simone below. Enjoy!
RR:Thanks for taking the time to speak with us! Can you tell us a bit about yourself and EAT DA RICH?
EDR: My name is Simone Else and I invented EAT DA RICH. I started by selling vintage a decade ago and then upcycling/repurposing came into play soon after. I realized that I didn't want to work for anyone else and had some jobs along the way that helped me learn how to do that. Slowly but surely I've been able to make my living from my ideas through my brand.
What are some places you draw inspiration from for your work?
Used to be a lot of action movies and perverse content from side jobs I had but these days it's a lot more therapeutic and stems from abundance. Shit that really makes me depressed or gets my blood flowing, good or bad. Making new things from old possessions of the past works best to help me feel mentally stable.
Is there a collection or a specific era from the EAT DA RICH collection that stands out to you?
omg no, I mean if you looked at my shop you wouldn't believe me that everything is made by one person, it's psychotic. I can say that with each collection I release I am feeling more and more centered with production. Whether its earrings or whatever... I'm honing in more and more on what I want to do and enjoy doing vs. "what I think will sell" or kicking out numbers like I have had to in the past to pay the bills.
Are there any mediums of art you haven't worked in yet that you're interested in trying out?
Forever and ever...I just got an air brush machine and my friend gave me a lesson and I already have work I made from that one night in print, it's so fun. On my list of new stuff to invest in to broaden my craft I have rock tumbler and wood whittling tools if that gives you an idea of where I'm at, haha.
Who are some local designers people should know about? Or Local photographers/models/artists?
hmm, since covid I havn't gotten to work with that many people but I did get a chance to help with wardrobe on Tiny Jag's new music video, should be out soon. She's a fucking powerhouse super star and has the personality of royalty to boot. Def check her out... Miles Marie is my go to partner in crime for taking a lot of my photos and helping me get ideas out of my head, we have a good work flow. We trust and respect each other in our respective trades so that makes it easier and gives way more room for fun, which is what this is all about. I wanna work with Coastwild modeling soon, shit now that I'm on a roll I guess there are a lot. Detroit rules. Milfie Bitch is a total badass musician mommy babe, I love following her on IG. The new Kelly Jean Caldwell album "Birdie" is a total banger...I dont know if it's out yet but keep your ears peeled. FFTY is like family and a total creative beast to work with and best drunk gazelle modeling eyes. Bethany Shorb is constantly amazing me with her production and genius ideas and fast, how is she so fast on those drops?
How do you feel about the protests going on?
Probably the way a lot of people do...they're important but I wish humanity was so far beyond this... it makes me really low down when I accept how far we have to go. I voted today, fuck Trump and all these boomers and old cock suckers who abuse their power... but it's everywhere and we just have to not give up.
Do you think the current events will have a positive effect in Detroit in the future?
I have no idea
What kind of music do you typically listen to?
Right now A LOT of Nilsson, Paul Simon and Janet Jackson.
What kind of car do you drive?
Volvo Turbo 940
How do you feel about the future of clothing?
I guess I don't feel much either way. I'm happy upcycling is trending but y'all still need to stop giving your money to Amazon and McDonalds.
Remove Records resident DJ's, DJ Crrew, has been continuing their battles with the evil DJ Hover.
Not much is known about DJ Hover, but we do know they like to hover, float, and play music too fast.
Checkout the video below to hear DJ Crrew slow things down at our favorite bar, Outer Limits Lounge (featuring DJ Sh.am, DJ Slow St. Germaine, DJ 2Shades, DJ Sweatie, and more)
