INTERVIEWS
Bashment YC On Seoul’s EDM Scene, K-pop Influences, and New Music
From Seoul to Los Angeles, rising DJ and producer Bashment YC is weaving the threads of a promising career in dance music. The South Korean young gun recently released “Real Good,” a collaboration with Illusïn and popular French producer Valy Mo released last month. The funky house tune was produced remotely, with Bashment working in South Korea and Mo chipping away in France. All said and done, they hit the nail on the head by dropping a thumping club track. To celebrate the release, we caught up with Bashment YC to chat about new music on the horizon, his influences, and EDM culture in his hometown Seoul. EDM.com: What’s the story behind this track? How did it come about? Bashment YC: The track was released on Will Sparks’ label Teamwrk Records...
Post-Hardcore Hellions Alexisonfire Return With Otherness
“Band practice has always felt the same,” swears guitarist/vocalist Wade MacNeil about reconvening with his colleagues in post-hardcore aggregate Alexisonfire. “We’re just trying to make something that feels like us.” After going on hiatus in 2012, reuniting for a tour in 2015 and writing, recording and releasing three new songs, the quintet spent their pandemic quarantine creating Otherness, the follow-up to their 2009 album Old Crows/Young Cardinals. “I think what we felt we owed to the fans is, if we’re ‘back,’ then let’s be back. We want people to know this isn’t some nostalgia trip or victory lap. We’re playing because we love it and we want to be on the road playing those songs for the people that have allowed us to do this for the last 20 years.” Of course, it’s not like America eve...
From Broadway to the Highway
It took Anaïs Mitchell roughly a decade to create her Tony and Grammy award-winning Broadway phenomenon Hadestown – a retelling of a Greek myth set in The Netherworld. And with that, she became just the fourth woman to compose the music, lyrics and book of a Broadway musical (which then ran for 16 years). Now, she is looking to the future — cradling that Grammy, and eight Tony Awards no less. She has also been dubbed by NPR as “one of the greatest songwriters of her generation,” an article in Acoustic Guitar magazine called Mitchell “fearlessly emotive” and compared her to Bob Dylan, and then there was that Time Magazine 100 List in 2020. No wonder when I last spent an afternoon with her in New York, pre-pandemic she was all smiles. Then again, I think she’s just the smiling ty...
Young Guv’s Blessings and Curses
Young Guv’s Ben Cook briefly sums up the year he and his band spent in Taos, New Mexico, writing, hiking, cooking and experiencing the paranormal. “There’s just a lot of weird shit out there,” he says. Cook, the nucleus of the power-pop band, along with most of his live touring outfit and co-writers and producers, did what pretty much every other band did in the spring of 2020 – called off the tour. They were in El Paso, Texas, and rather than return to their homes in New York, they decided to experience true isolation somewhere new. The idea of Taos, New Mexico, an artsy, hippie-and-artist-friendly paradise a little over two-and-a-half hours northeast of Albuquerque, seemed like as good a spot as any to hunker down and figure out their next move. Originally, it seemed like more of an inco...
This Raver Has Become an EDM Darling—Because of His Stank Face
Fortune favors the bold in the weird and wonderful world of electronic dance music. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Nick Wise captured the hearts of the EDM community when he went viral for—well, just being himself. Thanks to a serendipitous appearance on a livestream, Wise, a dubstep fanatic who also produces music under the moniker Biotechnick, has become a darling of the bass music festival scene. One of the constants of these fests are the battalions of head-bangers maniacally riding the rails at any given stage—but they quake just a little bit harder when Wise is there. If you attend Lost Lands, Bass Canyon or practically any other major dubstep festival, odds are you’ll see an afro whipping like a dandelion petal in a hurricane. That’s Wise, w...
“No Rules”: Anfisa Letyago Reveals the Muses and Methods That Skyrocketed Her to Techno Stardom
She’s been dubbed the “new generation” by Carl Cox. Tapped for remixes by the likes of Stephan Bodzin and Alan Fitzpatrick. Streamed nearly 800,000 times via her Cercle performance in Malta. Simply put, Anfisa Letyago is a force to be reckoned with. And, according to an exclusive interview with EDM.com, she’s running entirely on instinct. “I have no rules. I simply follow my instinct and try to stay true to my natural female evolution,” the Class of 2022 inductee and N:S:DA labelhead explained. “I need to feel free to express myself at best.” It’s a doctrine that has taken the techno scene by storm, marked by a spellbinding sound both hard and soft, escapist and in the moment. Likely, this unique point of view was shape...
Shining Vale Creators Sharon Horgan and Jeff Astrof on Combining Horror and Comedy In a Whole New Way
The new Starz series Shining Vale opens with some bold decrees: that women are roughly twice as likely as men to suffer from depression, that women are also twice as likely to be possessed by a demon, and that the symptoms of depression and possession are pretty much the same. Thus begins Sharon Horgan and Jeff Astrof’s tale of Pat, a troubled writer (Courteney Cox) moving with her family to a massive — and potentially haunted — new house in Connecticut, in search of a new start that may or may not get complicated by a ghostly presence lurking in the walls. The series features an unconventional blend of horror and comedy, what Horgan (the critically lauded co-creator of nuanced relationship dramedies like Divorce and Catastrophe) has dubbed a “shit-com.” When speaking with Consequence abou...
Aisha Tyler on Getting to Join The Boys Universe With Her Diabolical Animated Short
Despite a long career as a voice actress, Aisha Tyler swears that she didn’t write one of the lead roles in her animated short for The Boys for herself. Yet she’s flawless casting as Nubia, one of the two superheroes featured in “Nubian vs Nubian,” the sixth short in the new animated anthology designed to keep The Boys fans happy until Season 3 premieres this June. All of the shorts in The Boys Presents: Diabolical take on unique aspects of life in this surreal universe overseen by executive producer Eric Kripke, utilizing different animation styles and some star-studded casts. In “Nubian vs Nubian,” Don Cheadle voices Nubian Prince, a superhero whose initial connection with fellow supe Nubia (Tyler) leads to marriage and a young daughter… and also the sorts of marriage issues that affect ...
Sebastian Stan Is a One-Man Mötley Crüe
Mötley Crüe ruled the metal scene in the late ‘80s, going on to sell over 100 million records. However, by the time Sebastian Stan was the right age to appreciate the glam band, the metal heyday had passed. “Unfortunately, I didn’t really know Mötley Crüe when I was growing up,” Stan says, “because when I was in high school, it was already a grunge world.” But that didn’t stop the Romanian-born actor from discovering the band later, telling SPIN, “I personally gravitate towards the ’80s.” So, despite not growing up on the iconic group, he eventually came to love them. Eventually becoming intimately familiar with one of the band members by playing him on TV. Stan, 39, is currently garnering praise for his portrayal of Crüe drummer Tommy Lee in the Hulu drama Pam and Tommy, a fictionalized r...
Band of Horses’ Ben Bridwell Isn’t Convinced Things Are Great, But He’s Trying
Ben Bridwell is just waking up from a nap between interviews. Five years after his band’s last album — a span that felt even longer due to the pandemic — the Band of Horses frontman is back on the press circuit, and it’s tiring. If fielding repetitious questions from journalists weren’t wearying enough, the topics up for discussion have been weighing on Bridwell for years. Written pre-COVID, the stories on Band of Horses’ new record, Things Are Great, are about depression, darkness, and divorce. Singing those songs live is something he looks forward to as meditative (“It’ll probably be more joyful than reflective on what the story is,” he tells Consequence. “It’s more like paying attention to the goddamn chords and shit”), but speaking about them is something else entirely. “I had a Z...
Rhys Darby on Finally Playing the Lead and Collaborating With Taika Waititi Again: “We Have Kindred Spirits”
At the end of Consequence‘s phone interview with Our Flag Means Death star Rhys Darby, the veteran comedy actor felt the need to apologize. “Sorry for rambling on — I’ve had two coffees and you’re the first person I’ve spoken to today,” he said, before adding, “I’m a lead actor now, I’m going to do way more talking!” This is Darby’s time to shine, as after decades of appearing in projects like the Jumanji films and his iconic role as Murray in Flight of the Conchords, he’s for the first time ever number one on the call sheet for a TV show. Specifically, Darby stars the HBO Max period comedy about real-life historical figure Stebe Bonnet, who abandoned his family in 1717 to become a pirate, assembling an eclectic crew on board his well-appointed ship for one of the weirder mid-life crises o...
Nostalgia Is Not Gang of Four’s Passion
Being the lead singer of a strident rock band has virtues both public and personal. In his role as frontman for the perpetually influential post-punk unit Gang of Four, Jon King has generated his share of both intellectual napalm and rock history bona fides. But he seems positively giddy about his band’s latest acknowledgment. “Well, this is one of the greatest moments in my life,” he begins, sitting down with SPIN via Zoom, casual and bespectacled yet dapper in a blue zip-up sweater and dark pants. “There’s a book by John Niven called Kill Your Friends that is set in the music business of the ‘80s. A great book. There are people in it like our former manager Chris Briggs and [major-label executive] Tracey Bennett and all these other people. The story is about a fictional A&R man who t...
