Piece from Buzzine
From humble beginnings spent building their own musical scene in Chicago, IL, Josh Young and Curt Cameruci, aka J2K and Autobot, aka Flosstradamus have steadily gained critical and commercial acclaim to the point that they are now desrevedly hailed as a leading artist in the new wave of Electronic Dance Music which is currently exploding all around the globe.
With an encyclopedic awareness spanning musical genres and an unquenchable thirst to keep pushing beyond any critical expectations, Flosstradamus have spend the past 5 years issuing a constant stream of quality remixes and original EPs, while also never shying away from performing for a crowd of any size, whether it is tens of thousands in festival massives to happy hundreds in packed clubs, or even to delighted dozens at intimate backroom bar gigs roaming from Atlanta to Amsterdam, from Detroit to Dubai and from Chicago to Copenhagen and beyond.
Alongside building a worldwide reputation as party starter extraordinaires, Flosstradamus are also famed for notable collaborations with like-minded Windy City family like The Cool Kids, A-Trak, and (actual sibling) Kid Sister, and for their shrewd remix work for international superstars including Lana Del Rey, De La Soul, Bloc Party, Major Lazer and many, many more. On a recent hot day in Austin, TX, Buzzine’s Andrew Shaw sat down with the endlessly energetic duo to discuss their artistic roots, the ways they have learned to make music as a team, to collaborate with other artists and perhaps even talk a little about that oft-rumoured debut studio album…
Andrew Shaw: Starting out together in Chicago, you weren’t originally being signed by managers or engaged by bookers, you were hosting your own homegrown parties, developing your music in a truly independent way: How much of your musical style today stems from the fact that you grew so organically from the very beginning?
Josh Young: Honestly, it has everything to do with our career that he and I joined forces and started our own party. And in Chicago, which is a city that has a gigantic population, but with this sort of small town mentality where everything can be word of mouth. So when we started our parties, there were maybe...
20 kids there. And then the next one, the next month there were 40. And then the next month, there were 100…
So I think that for things to happen like that and happen organically, that is a very integral part of becoming who we are now because everything along the way, even up to this point, has happened that exact same way. Now, obviously we have worked with managers. And we have worked with agents and all types of things, but still a majority of the best moments in our career have come from just organic interactions with our peers or other individuals in the music world.
Curt Cameruci: At this day and age, to be able to do what we have done, how we started as, like, small peanuts and have to tour for seven years and just keep doing it… it’s kind of cool to see how people are doing it these days. They will have a hot song on the internet and shoot up to the top... and they also shoot down to the bottom as well! But it was cool for us. We got to work our way up and meet people all the way to the top. And we have been able to stay afloat a little bit longer. And I feel like being able to just grow is like a little seed, all the way up.
AS: Since the birth of the city itself, Chicago has been famous for the music it offers the world, but it is also almost as famous for not actually supporting its homegrown talent. How were you able to beat that reputation and become hometown heroes?
JY: When we started, it was at a time where there was so many nights going on in Chicago that were very finetuned to one genre of music. It was a tech house night, a deep house night, a techno night. And then there is the Indie Rock Club that is only bands that pretty much sound exactly the same. And we tried to get into those worlds. We had made demo’s and went door to door almost trying to shop ourselves to clubs. And they turned us down. So we literally said, “Screw it” and started our own thing because we wanted to play whatever we wanted to play, no boundaries. And this was at a time that the term “mashup” wasn’t really a household name...
So people weren’t playing everything, or playing everything out as DJ’s, but our generation, as music appreciators and music lovers listen to everything. So there was an audience automatically for it. We just started putting it together. Hollertronix in Philly, which was Diplo and DJ Low Budget. And The Rub in New York, they were kind of doing the same thing. And the scene just kind of grew organically around it.
When we started doing that in Chicago, it sort of broke down the barriers of that kind of hater mentality. Because we said, “screw that!” from the jump. We were having a party in a gay neighborhood and we were like; “We wanteveryone here. We don’t care who you are, what you’re in to. We want you to come to our party and have fun.” And that is all that matters.
And it kind of took that fear of someone blowing up and then leaving Chicago away, because we embrace the city so much and we embrace everyone.
AS: Speaking of musical scenes… you have been one of the biggest supporters of Juke music. For people outside of Chicago, can you tell us something about that style of music and the effect it had on you the first time you heard it?
CC: Well I grew up in Kalamazoo, MI actually, which is half way between Detroit and Chicago. And so I was influenced a little bit by Ghettotech, which is almost the same thing as Juke music: It was just Detroit’s version and a little more techno influenced. Juke was Chicago’s thing and that was more house music. It had a little bit more samples that were more urban.
The first time I heard it, it was awesome, because when I was DJ'ing I was really into doing double time and half time things so I would like to mix a house record with a hip-hop record. And Juke music is one track that has all of that in it. It goes super fast tempo and then all of a sudden, a breakdown comes and then it goes half time and it turns into like a hip-hop groove. So when I first heard that stuff it was so infectious... and the vocals are so catchy! “Ass-N-Titties” By DJ Assault was probably the first Ghettotech Juke record I ever heard. I just saw what the girls were doing on the dance floor and I was like, “I got to be a part of this thing”! [Laughs]
JY: It was kind of crazy for me because I grew up in the south suburbs of Chicago, and there were all these raves and Juke parties happening at the warehouses in my area. My sister (Melisa Young, aka Kid Sister) is four years older than me, so she was actually going to these parties. And then she would bring back mixtapes and things that she would get in the parking lot and play them around the house. So I’m hearing, “Oh, oh, work it, work it! Oh, oh work it, work it!” It’s literally a song that is eight minutes long and just says that over and over and over again. [Laughs] And the drums switch up and it goescrazy. And I am like ten.
Your brain at ten, you can’t even comprehend why you love that so much but you’re walking around, “Work it, work it!” Like Curt said, the entire song is a hook. There is no need for, like, “We are going to write a beautiful chorus right here.” No, no, it is just straight to the point. And it is just the infectious rhythms of it. You just are immediately sucked into it. And whether you like it or not you will be singing that later. It will be with you. So it’s cool, man!
AS: Ever since URB Magazine picked you as one of their “Next 100” in 2006 there have been rumors on a pretty semi-regular basis about the release of your debut studio album. Let's start a new one - is this the year that people actually get to hear a Flossy Full Length? [Smiles]
JY: We were joking about that because we are signed with Fool’s Gold Records and we were talking to A-Trak about what we are going to do this year because we started to release a lot of original music in the last say, six months or so. And we said, “We want to do an album. We really want to do this album.” We want to do an album and then talk about how it has been the seven-year album for us. [Laughs] But I think, honestly, we are going to be releasing a lot more EP’s and sort of shortform albums over the next year. And then at the end of the year I believe we are going to put together a compilation of all of those, or the best bits of those...
CC: And also... it’s taken this long because Josh and I were DJ’s first. We were just DJ’s. We didn’t really produce. So we got thrown into somewhat of a spotlight and we were like, “Oh shoot, we have to make an album now. We have to do this. We are being forced into it.” And it was like we just didn’t know. And so we have been very fortunate to have people like IHeartComix and Mad Decent and Fools Gold. And people who gave us remix opportunities, because it was just practice for us. We have been kind of practicing to make an album this whole time...
JY: I’ll say straight up… it has taken us seven years to find our chemistry as producers. And whose role is what. In the final song who plays what part, because we did some collaborations before that where literally both of us were making a song together. And it has so many ideas, and so many things all over it and it didn’t have this rhythm. On stage our chemistry was just 100% organic. We just clicked. He would play a song and immediately I would know what I want to play out of it. And I would look over at his computer sometimes and he would have the same song that I was about to play queued up to play anyways. [Laughs]
CC: [Laughs] That happened earlier this week too!
JY: [Laughs] Exactly, so we can exist on that level. But when it came to production, we could not quite figure out who was suppose to do what. Curt moved to New York two years ago. And, like, distance made the heart grow fonder. We have kind of sorted out this method where we send sessions back and forth to each other and can edit each other’s ideas. So I will do basically a whole demo, that’s almost a finished song: Send it to him and if he likes it then we can, kind of, fine tune it from there. And that has really been the key to us getting to a point where we can make original music.
AS: So, are the recent EPs and remixes representative of what will be happening within that upcoming new music? Will it be a big break from what has come out so far or will there be a continuity, something that you sat down and put in place as a conceptual thread?
CC: Josh and I have been making a bunch of demo’s. We’ve just been making a bunch of demo’s in general… whether it is for someone to rap on it. or whether it is for someone to sing on. Whether it is for these EP’s... And right not we have just been stockpiling. We could release it now if we wanted to but we are just stockpiling. We would like to get some artists on things. And collaborate a little bit more.
JY: Our most recent stuff has been sampling pretty heavy Hardstyle music, which is like a fast, really aggressive version of house music that has come from Germany and Amsterdam. It’s cool because we put the two together and it is something that we have been doing in our sets for quite a while, mixing Euro music.
We will play Alice DJ's “Better Off Alone” and then we’ll mix “Big Pimpin’” out of it. And it sounds good because it has kind of a double time boom-boom-boom! and then switches to a BOOM! half-time breakdown, and it just works together really well. Now there is kind of a scene for it with Trap music...
AS: You just mentioned a desire for more artist collaborations... Your previous guests come from a very wide musical spectrum: How do you go about making a choice, or narrowing down who you’re keen to work with?
CC: I think that we’re going to choose people that we work with just like we choose elements in a song. We want to have stuff that makes the song better. If it doesn’t work, we will take it out. So when we are trying to find someone to work with… if they can make the song better we’ll totally put it out. And we’ll work with them and develop...
It isn’t necessarily we are trying to find someone who is hot, or who is not. Just that if they make the song better, we will work with them - whether that’s my neighbor or whether that’s Rihanna. If they can make what we are doing sound a lot cooler, then we’ll work with them.
JY: And it has to be organic too. It’s all just about the relationship. If you get someone in the studio and you’re not feeling them, they’re not feeling you. They could killthe song, but it there’s not a good natural vibe, it’s not going to work. So what we like to do is send people stripped-down versions of songs. They’ll write their verse to it, send it back to us and then we really start to build the song around that. It is not really good for us to do a big complete project and send it, and then have someone just lay what they are going to do over the top of it.
Right now we are in the process of working on our next EP with Fool’s Gold. And I think that that is going to be similar to this kind of trap style stuff we are doing but mixed with actual MC’s on the tracks. So that will be interesting.
CC: We are very fortunate to be living in a time when we can do that. Like Josh said… he’s in Chicago and I am in New York and we are able to send stuff back and forth. And then as well, there are the artists. There could be somebody in Amsterdam that we want to work with, and because of the power of the internet we can make amazing songs. We can collaborate with anybody. Hopefully all these cooks can come together and make a great feast.
AS: When you are sending those files backwards and forward, are there moments you remember where you receive something from your partner and just think, “Woah! Where did that come from?”
JY: Sometimes we’ll have songs that will grow on us, that it might take a little bit for one of us to say, “Oh this is kind of a good jam.” But for the most part, when he sends me a song that I truly feel is a hit or something that I think is really going to work for us… it is almost immediate. It’s just a feeling that I get when I hear it.
CC: And even before we were sending demos to each other, even before he would be sending stuff to me and I would be sending stuff to him, we were sending other people’s songs to each other to work in the set. So we had already been doing it, it's so second nature. But now it is just our own music instead of, “Check out this new track. We can put in our DJ set.”
JY: Yeah, for sure.
CC: So we kind of do the same thing with that. We are almost like curating what we want to play to everyone, but we are the ones who are creating it...
AS: Is that long distance process an established pattern now - something that will continue, or might you get together in a room sometimes and switch up the dynamic?
JY: Oh no, no! We have found what works and we are notgoing to change it. We found that it works because Curt is an incredible, not to pat you on the back right now, but you are an incredible engineer: Curt is an incredible engineer! [Laughs] And for years, his passion has been just to find plug-ins and things to mix the songs and make them sound huge. That’s not my strong point. My strong point is just to kind of have an idea and get it on the page and send it over to him and he will mix it and make it sound incredible.
So we found a formula that works for us and we’re just going to run with it because we can turn tracks around so fast that way. We just share a Dropbox. So I will finish a session at two in the morning and instead of having to save it, put it on a hard drive, send it via snail mail or whatever, I just throw it into a folder and I go to bed. And I wake up in the morning and he is working on it in New York. So once we kind of got into this rhythm, then we are pretty much unstoppable!
CC: We have been working in studios since we started this new process and even that’s unnecessary. We don’t need an expensive studio to do this now. We found a way that we can just do it at our own home studios. And we can turn out these little tracks without having to sit in the studio or he has to come to New York and we’re just spending money.
JY: And we did that... I flew out to New York and we worked at the Converse studio, Rubber Tracks. And it was a great experience because they have amazing equipment. And these Oceana speakers, or Ocean Way rather. These huge speakers, they were designed for Michael Jackson! It was like, “Oh great, we get to hear our stuff on there.” But as far as the vibe goes, I would say it wasn’t as good as when we’re working separately talking on iChat and I am sending him little MP3 demos being like, “Do you like this?” And he is like, “Yeah, send me the session.” And I would send him the session. So we really found what works for us, what works best.
AS: Is there a key difference in the way you approach remixing someone else's music as opposed to creating your own original track. Let's use your recent remix of Major Lazer’s “Original Don” as an example: How did you approach that project?
JY: Honestly, they referenced Hardstyle in that song. So when we heard it, immediately it made sense for us to flip it in the way we have been flipping other Hardstyle songs that we were finding on the internet. So the whole way we have gone about this… a lot of people were comparing it to Dubstep or sort of attaching it to that scene. And it’s similar in the sense that it is sort of in the same tempo range and has sort of the same structure. It has these kind of big buildups and these payoffs or drops. But whereas Dubstep pays off, and it is really aggressive, in your face in a masculine way, we almost like to dial it back a little bit and bring some of that Southern Soul and a more mellow bass to it.
So, I feel like when we approached that remix we were just trying to put our style that we are working on right now, on to that sort of song because the song is so aggressive straight away. And we didn’t want to change it too much because I loved the track and I feel like, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it! So we just took away their percussion and the harder elements and replaced them with our, more mellow and bouncy rhythms.
AS: Talking about Dubstep… as a pair of DJ’s you can bear expert witness to the fact that Electronic Dance music in America is coming back to the mainstream, and coming back perhaps even stronger than it did before - why do you think that is?
JY: Honestly, I feel like the music industry right now is so desperate for something to sell and to attach itself to. And right now it is so valuable to be new. America is slower, but surely catching on to that electronic music, I mean there was the initial wave of, like Daft Punk, and that had its bubble, but it never really had this lasting power. And you go over to the UK and turn on the TV and that is all that is on. 90% of the music on there is some electronic music. So I have no idea why it never caught on in America.
But now you have these people who are not only just artists but they are also, like, sort of brands and these entities that you can attach yourself to. You have A-Track and Fool’s Gold Records: That’s like this whole crew. And then you have Diplo and Mad Decent and that is this whole kind of crew and lifestyle. It’s like the L.A. kind of thing. And then you have Skrillex and that’s this whole kind of world you can be in. And there are all these artists underneath them too that you can follow and just completely get submerged into that world.
And now that that exists and kids have so much accessibility to music that is being made from everywhere all over the world, there is a fanbase for it. And that is something that didn’t happen in America for a while because this music was still so much of a sub-genre. It wasn’t everywhere, now it is everywhere. Now it is in every car commercial, it is in every TV show. And Duck Sauce's "Barbra Streisand" is being played on Glee! Curt’s mom knows who Duck Sauce is and she lives in a small rural town in Michigan. [Laughs] If it’s everywhere, then people are going to have a chance to like it.
CC: And even now when I turn on modern rock radio stations, it’s the pop rock station is playing dance tracks. You’ll hear Katy Perry. She is a Rock artist but her single is house music with some Ska guitar over it but that makes it Rock. Every genre, even Country, even Taylor Swift… her tracks are dance tracks but they have a banjo in them. It’s a little tweak... Dance music has totally infiltrated all of music in America.
AS: Talking about the diversity of places where dance music is heard… the pair of you have played such a wide range of venues, from huge festivals and big arenas to small clubs and tiny dive bars. What’s the common Flosstradamus thread that you bring to such dramatically different kinds of shows?
CC: It is hard to answer that. It is a great question, but it is hard to answer that because… yeah… we have played so many different types of places. We have played hippie jam band festivals. We have played the clubbiest of clubs, bottle service clubs…
JY: …in Vegas or wherever…
CC: …Yeah, in Vegas. And we will play a little dive bar somewhere. And that is just what we’ve always liked to do. I feel that even if we get to the top as far as you can be, Tiesto-level, we would still like to play the little dive bars and stuff like that, because we like to keep it with the fans and just keep it humble in a sense. And I like that. I like thatexperience. I don’t want to get to the top and just sit in front of… [Laughs] well actually I do… but to sit in front of a million people and raise my hands and stuff. But, I just like all of the different things. It is hard to explain it all.
JY: When we are playing a room it doesn’t matter the size, it is all about the energy. So like I said, when we started doing our parties, small little parties in a place that literally was the size of this hotel room that we are in… 25 people going nuts felt as good to me as playing Coachella and having five thousand people going nuts. It is very different and there is a bigger quantity but the energy and the interaction still feels the same.
So for us when Curt’s saying, “Oh, I don’t want to play in front of a million people… da da da”, we can play in front of a million people and if they are not feeling it then it won’t be as good as playing for five of our best friends at a private little party and they are having the time of their lives. So it really is; as long as we are interacting well with the crowd, five thousand, five million to ten… it’s just good all around. So that is what we are really going for is to try and have that kind of connection.
AS: The vibe you chase is all in the nuts. [Laughs]
JY: [Laughs] Exactly.
AS: Josh, we need to ask you a question about your sister, because when we interviewed Melisa (aka Kid Sister) last year, she told us that even though there were times as kids that all you did is fight, you are now the best of friends and you are her ‘go to guy’ for musical advice, which is heartwarming but possibly somethingshe wouldn't say that to your face... [Smiles]
JY: No, we’ve talked about it. [Laughs]
AS: So, in return what is it about Kid Sister as an artist that impresses you most?
JY: Melisa was not a rapper when Kid Sister came to fruition. She was in high school band. And she was in the drama club and did plays in musical theatres. So she had a musical background, but hadn’t written a rap song until she wrote her first rap song, which was heard by thousands of people. So the fact that she could just adapt that quickly wasamazing to me. Yeah, she says I’m her ‘go to’, but that is more just in a sense of, like, for creative and constructive criticism.
She writes all of her music: She writes 90% of her own songs. And it is just phenomenal to me that like in an era and a time where there are Katy Perry’s and there are these, kind of studio rats, who are people who have been writing music professionally for years and years and years just becoming artists. And it’s like, okay, that’s a no brainer. That’s what you do for a living. So obviously for her to even compete with them or to even be on the same stage as them is just amazing to me...
AS: Curt, as the non-Young in the room - is there a different dynamic when you watch two siblings making music, could you always recognize a family talent there?
CC: When Melisa first started rapping, for one, she came out of nowhere. And I think there was an unspoken competition maybe. At least maybe on her behalf! [Laughs] I don’t know about Josh’s behalf, but I think she wanted to get where he was because he was kind of killing it at the time. And I think that just kind of kicked her in the butt to step it up and to do what she did.
When we first heard their first demo’s I was like, “Wait, who is this? Wait: really, her?!!” And I think that’s what it was. I think she just wanted to step it up to where he was at. He can probably speak on it more, but I’m sure there is a little bit of competition going on behind the scenes.
JY: Oh definitely! [Laughs] She and I both came from the same world. We were music fans more than anything. We had never written a song or we had never performed a song or DJ’ed out in public. But we started down this path and I think she saw that it was possible, because of us.
We were getting attention and we started to build this career. And it got to the point where we could quit our jobs. And she was like, “Wow, that is something that you can actually do?” And from Curt and me becoming producers, based mainly off of being selectors, and DJ’s, and our appreciation for music, she did the same thing. She became a rapper because that’s what she listened to for 20 years. And it was the natural progression for her as an artist.
CC: I think as well, Josh and I… we made all different types of genre’s and stuff. And even the way that she makes music is kind of the same way. She can sing. She can 'pop sing'. She can speed rap. She can kind of hit the whole spectrum of it all. I think we all kind of came… like you said… we all came from this thing where we are appreciators of it. Now we can take what we have absorbed all these years, and put it back out and make our own version of it.
JY: If you look at music right now, it you look at the biggest female rapper, Nicki Minaj, she is doing that. She sings and does like really poppy huge productions. But then also, she could rap the craziest, most street, guttural, it would make you blush... And over a clap, just like literally, a kick drum and a clap, and both songs are amazing. And she is touching on both. And I’m not going to say that, I will say it… I don’t think that would happen if it wasn’t for people like Amanda Blank and Melisa… Kid Sister. Even Peaches and people that kind of paved the way for women to come out, and Foxy Brown, and just be themselves and touch on all of that. I think it has really worked out in the end for everyone.
AS: So to bring the focus back to Flosstradamus, moving past how you perhaps inspired Melisa to become Kid Sister… over the past few years, as things have really taken off for you, was there one moment when you actually thought ‘Yes, this is it: this is a Rock Star moment"?
CC: I’ve got one... But I think even to this day we don’t even think that it is like handsome rock star stuff. We are just two humble dudes from the mid west and this is an awesome ride to be on. But I remember, because it started to go really quick for us at first and we were out in L.A. for the URB photo shoot. And Josh and I were like; it kind of just hit me then. I don’t know when it hit him but it was like, “Wait what? We’re doing a cover photo shoot in L.A.?” Like the most cliché 'star' thing to do. And that was like the first thing. It was like… “Whoa, we are kind of like doing something.” I don’t know, but it still hasn’t hit me and we have been doing it for eight years...
JY: There have been a lot of moments that have been really cool, where we’ve met people that we idolize and been able to sit and actually talk to people who musically are just beyond us. But the little moments are the best for me.
I can remember Curt and I were thrifting in Chicago and we walked out of the store and these two kids looked like they had been waiting for us to walk out for ages. And they were just like, “You guys are f***ing awesome.” It was really early in our career, and we were like, “Thanks!” And they just walked. I remember Curt looking at me like, “This is our job. This is our job right now.” We get to make music and have fun and then we go outside and just some random kids on the street are like, “Keep it up, you’re great.” And it just feels incredible to have people acknowledge that. So that was probably a pretty good moment for me.
AS: Speaking of good moments, ours has come to an end here, for today: What words would you like to leave us with?
JY: I really would like to say to any artist out there, or any kids who are doing this, that longevity is the key because people come and go so fast. It’s ‘here today, gone today’, everything moves so quickly. Me and this guy, we have had lulls in our relationship and in our career and we have gone up to Coachella and then we have gone down to playing literally to 20 people where no one cared. But we kept doing it. And we stuck with it. And we stuck with each other. And if you do that, I think that in the end if you do that… you are going to get what you want out of your career, out of your life…
The latest Flosstradamus release, the 'Jubilation 2,0' EP is out now on Fools Gold Records.
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