Shout out new Finals writer Michael Piantini for this chat with 3mouth, whom I was not hip to prior to Michael pitching me this interview, but whose grandma's book Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day I was definitely familiar with. After checking the music I gave Michael the big green light and here we are, 22 pages in the google doc later. Thank you Michael for the passion and hyperlinks, and thank you 3mouth for the music and meeting up with Michael IRL!

-Andrew

During the first global lockdown in 2020, I turned to ambient hiphop beats for comfort. This funneled me towards city pop, which then drew me to future funk. Suddenly, via Spotify algorithms, I heard “SPACE GUIDE DANCING SILLY” by 3mouth and got a taste of breakcore and what would be my musical identity for the next five years. Breakcore is a chopped and screwed variant of jungle and drum n’ bass where the guiding force is chaos. Sure there is a familiar amen break, but it is broken in such a way to prioritize dissonance and abrasive frenetic energy.

In its mid 2000s heyday, breakcore had vivid names like Venetian Snares (ed. note I guess I did have a frame of reference for breakcore, because I remember VS from back in the early 2000s), iGorrr, and Doormouse that skyrocketed the genre into significance across the globe. Eventually the genre flatlined to near extinction, with only pockets of activity in niche communities. That is until the 2021 renaissance of new mediocre breakcore releases that were deeply aestheticized by anime iconography and marketed towards people who just watched Serial Experiment Lain. Part of the problem was the streamlining of digital service providers, like Spotify, that turned the culture of music into a fashionable object for users to express themselves. Music is certainly a way to decorate your life, but it should be taken seriously as both labor and art. While many speculators did get a quick buck from riding the breakcore wave, hundreds of talented producers and enthusiasts were left with a tarnished name. Folks like Yem, Status: Expunged, Arcade Trauma, and many more are keeping it real and keeping the genre interesting.

There’s a lot to say about breakcore, both good and bad. I’ve written stuff about it before and my job is to keep the conversation going. 3mouth’s new album RELIGIOUS XP is a great introduction to the genre if you haven’t heard it before. But that is just the tip of the iceberg, and it goes really deep. I met up with 3mouth at a coffee shop where we talked about the Knicks, hardcore raves, sampling video games, balancing art and work, managing depression, and, of course, breakcore.

All right, check, check, hello, hello. Hi. My name is Michael. We are in Overflow, coffee in LIC. I'm with 3mouth. We're gonna talk. I'm sure it'll be fine. Anyhow, an easy question just to get in the flow of talking: what’d you eat this morning? Did you eat anything?

I did not eat anything. I slept in as much as I could because I work today from 4pm to 11pm, so, nothing to eat. This is my breakfast: a little tea—I had a Zyrtec.

There’s maybe one calorie in that.

There you go.

When the Knicks won the NBA Finals, I remember you posted this picture of your job. It was before and after (closing the restaurant), I said I had thoughts to tell you.

Yeah, please.

My thought is: I'm from New York, I was born in the Dominican Republic, but raised in New York. Until last year, you know, I never followed basketball. I watched (the NBA Finals) last year and then this year. And then, you know, they win, and I go see friends. Then one of them say, “Yo, this guy's been waiting 50 years for this, 26 years he's been waiting for this!” You know, they’re saying this enthusiastically. Maybe they were kind in the drunken state as they're saying all this. But, this is not my win. I'm happy, sure. It's great, but, you know, it's not my win. The thing I realized from this, and seeing everyone else, is that there's a performative element of this celebration. Which is fair, a lot of people are very on the nose about, people are very transparent to disclose that. But it's all fake. Everyone's LARPing, you know?

I was LARPing. My family's a sports family, they're Knicks fans. I grew up in proximity, but I don't watch. Because I'm just a dork, I like my music and my games and shit. But the one game the Knicks lost, I was wearing a Knicks shirt under my work uniform, and I feel like my LARPing was bad luck and I made the Knicks lose—I swear to God. Well, Trump was there, too, so we can blame him. But, you know, I do understand the LARPing. It's a big time for New York and New York pride, and everyone just wants to be happy and it was kind of like a community thing.

How did it feel for you being on the working end of it?

It was horrible. It was one of the most brutal shifts I ever worked, I worked some bad ones. I work across from BAM, and they were showing the games. So people were just filing in, getting drinks to go. I was bartending, and it was just like a nonstop slurry of drinks and people. Actually, everyone was being nice, which really helps. But it was just nonstop. I did not have a minute to breathe. We stayed open way later than usual, cause you can't turn off the game. Then, you know, eventually it ended. It was really awesome to see everyone in such a good mood. Also they didn't give us any trouble. They celebrated, and then everyone dipped.

It’s interesting how fast of a switch that they piled out after the Knicks win. It’s a little…

It’s a little depressing.

It is depressing, but also, I guess it's good that people got up to leave so quickly.

Exactly, and we were so tired. It was the slowest close ever. We were just like, throwing shit away, half awake. And it was awesome at the same time, and we made some good money.

That's what it’s all for, right? A good time, but also good tips. And it's like, no one's an asshole.

No one was an asshole. Everyone was in a really good fucking mood, I will say.

So hopefully we have a repeat, but, you know, maybe it's more chill, because we're used to it. It's not a big championship drought. Now I have some questions for you related to music.

There we go.

So I've been going deep into the archives. I went back and listened to our old interview, when we spoke last year. I tried finding the lo-fi duo you had before. It’s “Motta Boys”? I couldn't find it. I don't know how to spell it.

M-O-T-A B-O-Y-S.

M-O-T-A… I was spelling it “M-O-T-T-O.” I'll try again later when I go home. But, I went back to listen to your old stuff. The thing that got me into electronic music was Factory Sealed. And then going from that to effective. Power, the recent (UP005) NO STRANGER TO DARKNESS, and everything else. There's this recurring motif of sampling live UK jungle sets, what's the deal there?

That's a great question. I've just always really been into sampling, and I'm really into rare samples. Samples no one else has. So I would go through these long live mixes, and there’ll be a lull in the music, and then the DJ will just say the most awesome thing, like the most hype thing ever. And it just translates so perfectly to building energy. That’s good, you got a good ear. Because, lowkey, for my new project I did the least sampling of any project I've ever done in my life. I think it was a hardcore show that I sampled but I've always loved sampling those DJs because I think there's like an infectious energy that only happens at shows and to be able to siphon that into a track is a really useful tool.

That goes into the question about what is “hardcore”, or what is “breakcore?” Like, does it live in the music? Does it live in the scene? Does it exist in live shows? I'm going much further in my questions, so we can go back to this.

We can go far.

Where does that hardcore live to you?

I originally felt like it lived in the music, and it lived in fast BPMs and harsh noises and loud bass. But as I go to more live shows, like Helltekk, you realize that hardcore is more of a live experience. At the end of the day, this music is meant to be experienced live. My one regret with some of the music I put out is that not all of it can be played out at shows. Some of it is just all over the place. But, you know, at the end of the day I had fun making it, so I can only be so mad.

Why do you love gabber kicks so much?

“Why do I love gabber kicks so much?”

There's so much gabber—it’s always that and like so many 808s.

Bass has always been at the forefront of my philosophy. And we talked about this a little last year about how it comes from cloud rap. A really good reference would be like ICYTWAT. The way his 808s hit is crazy. Also, I was really into these SoundCloud rappers. And like… I'm gonna shout out XXXTentacion. The way that the bass was just unbelievably loud and the mix was clipping, like, it just blew my mind, and I thought it was the best thing ever, and I still do. I just love abrasive, loud bass kicks. I generally hate thumpy kicks, and weird industrial kicks with hella reverb on them. I've always loved gabber kicks. I have a really cool folder of gabber kicks I’ve stolen from a whole bunch of different tracks, and I'm slowly building up my personal library. It's all about loud, abrasive bass has always been the foundation of everything I do. Even though I did stray a little bit from it in this recent project.

In the description for RELIGIOUS XP on Bandcamp, you write "listen from front to back, full volume.” I guess that's the ideal experience?

Yes, it is. Because of the really good mixing and mastering my friend Logan did, it sounds really good on speakers. But I think a lot of it isn't going to translate to a show environment, especially some of the softer stuff I did towards the end I think is really more of headphone music, which some people say as a kind of derogatory thing. But I started in music during an internet-centric way, where I was still very locked down. I was still very COVID minded and not going out at all. So I was just thinking people are at home listening to this. So I still have a lot of those sensibilities. I'm hoping for the future to produce more club-oriented stuff.

Do you want to make music that would be danceable, or more so just to mosh to? Or if it's something that maybe a freak would love to listen to on their studio headphones or something to listen to on a really powerful sound system?

I'm leaning more towards live music recently. This album, I think, is best enjoyed by a freak in their headphones, but definitely “DJ NEXT DOOR” I envision playing live and having the crowd go crazy. There is nothing more special than having the crowd react and dance to your track. I’ve realized as cool as it is to have people love it on the headphones—playing it out live and people going crazy, it's truly a euphoric feeling. That's really hard to get.

Where does the laughing producer tag come from?

I don't think I used it on the new one, though. That was more the tag for the last project. A lot of my music has a very demonic feel. I'll also shout out Ethereal, who's this cloud rapper and producer. He uses a really cute bubbly laugh as his producer tag, and I think I'm partially inspired by that. My producer tag comes from this video game Killer 7, and I haven't played the game, but I just thought the laugh was the most perfect demonic laugh. I'll always throw some delay on there, some reverb or stretch it, or like, warp it, you know, pitch it down.

It's very distinct. I played Killer 7.

Oh, you have?

It's a weird game.

I've watched clips of it because I didn't want to LARP too much, I always feel guilty. It is always kind of wrong to sample something you know nothing of. So if I'm not going to have actively played it, I need to at least know what it is, you know.

At first, I thought from the way that laugh is, it reminds me of Billy & Mandy, that opening intro where Grim is laughing. I also thought of Twisted Metal and the image of an angry clown.

It's definitely meant to elicit some creepy, demonic, Billy & Mandy-esque stuff.

Something I've been thinking about a lot is family, in terms of where people get their habits for music from. I like music, no one in my family really likes music in the same way. I'm a writer, no one in my family's a writer or into film or what not. How’d I get here? I don't know. But how about yourself? I remember once you were talking about your dad, and you sent him music and had an interesting response.

I'll start with my grandma, she’s a writer. She wrote the children's book Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (1972). It was really popular in the '70s, a lot of people read it as a kid. She's just an amazing writer, also one of the coolest, smartest people I've ever met in my life. And she also, you know, she's in her mid 90s, but she sat me down and said “I want to listen to your music.” She listened to my crazy ass album. She was honest about not liking some of it, but some of it stuck. She's done some music writing in her time, like musicals and stuff. And then growing up, my parents were always very music minded. My dad is a huge music lover. I've listened to so many things because of him, and he's really into soul music. My middle name is Redding, after Otis Redding. So I'm a white guy who's middle name is this soul singer's last name, and it's peculiar but it speaks to my dad's weirdness and his relationship with music. Family has always been a huge influence. They put me in piano lessons when I was a kid, and they thought I was gonna be a songwriter. I remember when I was young, I’d write weird music, and I had a fake band called Electro Geeks with one of my friends. They never put me on any electronic or rap music, which is really what sent me head first into it. But there’s definitely always a musical vibe in my family, and there still is. Every car ride is littered with music, and sometimes I get to be on the aux these days.

What’s been the most receptive thing that you put your family on to?

That’s a great question. Honestly, they like the softer stuff. I think the gabber kicks and the crazy bass is not always, you know—it's suited for our younger crowd. So they, like my grandma too, definitely liked some of the sweeter stuff. My single “LUCKY” that I had with Cannelle is always well received.

I know of that, I'm online, I got on Instagram!

I got you. She's really cool. So your family doesn't like music, not a very musical family?

I wouldn’t say so much.

Really, not at all?

They're very normal people. That kind of goes into a question I thought about on my way here. About this hardcore, breakcore, jungle, etc, you know, having roots in the working class, normal people. People who want to rave and people who are on the margins of society. But the culture around music has shifted in a way where maybe, these genres have been gentrified. Where there are people involved are LARPing. We're using a word a lot, but it's a very apt word. Folks who aren’t authentic actors in the scene, they’re not enthusiasts, they're just here for a good time. Much like the Knicks, they win and then they leave. Do you have any thoughts on that? Have you seen that in any way, such as people who are cloutchasers?

There's definitely been some bad actors. Me and some friends had a really bad experience with this label Dreamstation. Run by these dudes who seem really business minded saw that breakcore was having this moment, and they just wanted to capitalize on it, and they signed all these artists and didn't really do much for them. They take not a huge cut, but take enough of a cut that they're basically making money off of doing nothing, and that's kind of what labels do. I couldn't tell at first, but we grew to realize that they were not authentic. Authenticity is always a huge part of music, people are attracted to it, people feign it. But I find that most of the people in the hardcore scene are authentic, generally working class people that go to their day jobs and then go spend all their money at the rave that night. Just make enough to make ends meet and repeat the cycle over and over. Brutal way to live, but it's real and it's very New York, and it's authentic for sure.

Do you see there being a moment where the scene goes beyond this tiny group of people to a major shift being more accessible for other people?

Hardcore maybe, I think hardstyle in particular is having a moment. Lil Texas did this huge show at Silo, and XXHARDBIT3S opened. It was huge and it was packed, and it was really cool to see Xie get that opportunity. It seems like breakcore will have these major peaks and major valleys. It had a huge peak in 2021, ‘22 even. And now we're in a bit of a valley, eventually it'll come back. Right now, it's definitely a very fringe thing. The closest we had was Cyberia being kind of relatively mainstream, but since we found out all that weird stuff about the promoter, I think that's definitely not going to really be a thing anymore, hopefully. Breakcore is inherently hard to dance to. I love breakcore, but an hour long breakcore set... I would be like “Alright, I need to go smoke a cigarette.” You need a little more consistency in order to dance. That's where gabber fills the void a little. Have you been to a Helltekk yet?

Still not yet, but I did listen to the Fortified Structures interview you did awhile ago.

Yeah? Wow, that was awesome. That's why I have extra respect for interviewing. I found it so fun to do research and come up with questions that would have them say, “Okay, you did your research.”

No, I still haven't been to one. I think I'm in a unique position where I love this music, I care about it a lot. But, I'm not the biggest fan of going to a show. Obviously, that's how you meet people. When I heard your set at Trans-Pecos, I was like, “Whoa, I’m having a moment.”

Which one was that? Touch Grass?

I think you were b2b with your partner.

Oh! With Pearl, yeah, yeah, yeah! That was a really good one! That was the most out there music I've played, I've never really replicated that. So that was a cool one to catch.

Hearing, and hearing it so loud—I felt everything.

It hits different loud.

I should go to more shows. I do want to go to a Helltekk show. It's an odd thing, like it's hard to dance to. It's sweaty, it's kind of gross.

You didn't hear it from me, but I think they're doing a free one in the warehouse on Saturday. (They did have a “secret” rave and I did end up going.) So if you're free, I'm going to try and make it, depending how tired I am after work.

I do want to go to more shows, I want to hear more music. But I love being with my headphones.

I do, too. I'm kind of a homebody. But I will say, when you go to a really good show, it's truly infectious. I had my little brother come, and he doesn't listen to any hardcore music, he's a rap music fan. First of all, I’d look really cool since I got to play that last set. But I knew he’d have a good time. Even if he doesn't even like the music, he brought his roommate and she was like, "This is awesome.”. And it’s fun to hear it loud as hell, but wear earplugs.

I went to see Los Thuthanaka and saw a bunch of people I know.

That's the most fun part about going out. We don't have to tell everyone this, but I spend a lot of time in the backyard when I go to the shows or in the front. I love just talking to people. You end up seeing the same people a lot, you see all the other DJs. It's fun to like dap everyone up, bum a cigarette, you know. It's also like a big part of my social life to see all these people at the shows.

Having a third space.

True, third space, literally. I didn't even think of it like that, but that is exactly what it is.

But I was at the Los Thuthanaka show at Elsewhere, and they were so fucking loud. Like, I saw other people wearing earplugs and still covering their ears. I didn't have any earplugs and I just rawdogged it.

If you don't go out that often, it's not that important. But it’s just generally good for you especially if you love music, you don't want to fuck up your hearing.

Yeah, they were so, so, so loud. It was really cool, really good. It felt like it ended so soon. I wanted more.

I feel like live music is even cooler. Especially when you go to as many DJ sets as I do, yes, it's cool and if someone's really incredible you're blown away. But live music has always been very special to me. It hits different when you see it.

How often did you work on music versus paying bills?

I'm in the service industry, so I work 30 to 40 (hours) a week during the on-season, which is now. And I've been trying to make music every day. I try to start something every day. If I'm not feeling it, maybe it's 20 minutes. Yesterday, I started track and I just got in the zone. I was making this crazy jungle track and I worked on it for an hour and a half. To me, it's really hard to balance work and music, and I considered getting a different job. But at the same time if I happen to get the opportunity to go on tour, being a server gives me the craziest amount of flexibility where I can take a month off, and they would let me come back and just work my job again. I can get shifts covered if I have a show, that kind of thing. It's been a hard balance to deal with. I've always been a big believer in doing a little something every day, even if it's just 10 minutes or, watch a little sound design video.

So it's chipping at it?

Chipping at it, but when I have a day off I'm also trying to do more collaborative stuff. Do you follow babygh0st? That's like my musical goat. We're working on this cool electropop side project. You were putting me on Underscores last time I remember. I was not tapped in. She obviously had motion but since then, she's taken off. So you were an early investor. She's really awesome and we're doing something sort of in the vein of that. Not really, but, adjacent at least.

Yesterdayneverhappened’s search bar, the first track features babygh0st. It has that kind of hyperpop sensibility.

I think that shows Angel’s (YNH) range, like, how much Angel is able to do, and also it just shows how good of a vocalist Jen (babygh0st) is. Her new stuff that she is gonna put out soon is incredible. We all think that she's up next, like, genuinely. Like, she is so unbelievably talented.

Invest now!

Underscores 2!

We will get back to the Underscores connection. You were shouted out in a Pitchfork review. How’d that make you feel?

That made me feel awesome. And first of all, let me say, 7.7 is insane. Obviously, we all think Angel deserves even more, but Pitchfork is really, really strict. To get at 7.7 is like getting a 9 out of 10 from anyone else. So I was like, “I'm critically acclaimed. I got a 7.7. I'm up there!” And they wrote, “My favorite track was the one (I worked on), I love that track.” Angel and I went to this “SUNDAYs in the JUNGLE” show. Pierce Jackson threw it, he's awesome. He booked me for a different jungle show, the best jungle show I ever did. It was just so lit. And Angel was coming from out of town, they slept on my couch. One morning I was sleeping in and Angel wanted to make jungle the night before, but Pearl had to be up early and I was kind of tired. Then in the morning (makes knocking sounds), they didn’t knock, they FaceTimed me and said, “It's time.” And we just woke up, we rolled up, we just opened up Ableton, and first try and made a fucking banger. It was so awesome. Especially because even when you really like someone, you can make music, you don't always click artistically. Even if your styles are similar and you really fuck with each other. And sometimes you just have an off day, but that was an on-day. I love that track. It's also a really good track to play out, which I'm very happy with.

It feels like jungle has a range. It could be really fun, like the centerpiece of something or it be the closer for a party.

Jungle for most people is a good thing to spruce in, especially since not everyone's down for a full breaks set. I love when they are, but people always love it in moderation. I wish they loved it in whatever the opposite of moderation is—“maxeration.”

I've been tapping into jungle a lot more. I've been thinking about it a lot because I’m working on something about jungle. We're not in the UK, not in London, it's very different, so how do you see the jungle scene in New York?

I always thought there was no jungle scene, but honestly, Pierce is at the forefront of bringing it back. The amount of people that popped out to these shows is incredible. Sometimes you get a lot of people to pop out and they're not even into it. I went to that (Sundays in the Jungle) show for the night before me and Angel made that track—it was packed out, everyone was dancing. You see the same couple people and it's awesome to see them. There really is a, not huge, but meaningful jungle scene right now. I don't like to get too ahead of myself, but it seems like it's on the rise. And I think the stuff that Nia Archives and them are curating across the pond, as they say, is kind of giving rise to us over here. Like, I’m not going to say we're both feeding off each other, but that's definitely helping us. I think jungle is kind of having a bit of a moment right now, which I'm really happy about.

UPSZN—based in Brooklyn but has an East coast/West coast reach.

Oh, yeah! Stateside jungleism.

But having a label, a presence beyond what’s happening in New York…

Yeah, that's a good point. You know, Xie's a very busy person, they have United Jump Front too. So I wish they would do more UPSZN shows, and I think they haven't because of how busy they are. But UPSZN is a huge factor of the jungle scene we have growing here. And their curation is top notch.

DJ Asexual!

Yes, that one was great, insane! It was all made on a tracker too. I was jealous.

Other stuff they’ve done is really good. They have one called wannabe junglist on their Bandcamp.

I'm going to check it out. Xie knows how to choose them for sure.

Now let’s talk about 3mouth’s music. effective. Power: it's really compressed. A lot of your earlier work is like the sound is fighting to get out. Why is it that?

Honestly, in that era I was just working on stuff, and whenever I had a couple of things I liked, I just put it out there. That was when I was in a more experimental era, and so I have that house-y track and then I was also experimenting with the more harsh stuff. Factory Sealed was me experimenting, but I felt really good about it. That one was me experimenting and feeling a little confused about it, but I wanted to keep the momentum and put stuff out. But I am really happy with it, and I really like the album cover of (effective. Power) particularly. It was like a FaceTime screenshot of my partner, and I thought it looked like a Death Grips cover—so I flipped it over and just threw it on it.

On …using the back of the shovel, the track “Club_Venus”, I love that track, it's in my head often. Because it has breakbeats, great house-like synths, also the breaks are so modulated. You do this thing where you have these different genres spliced together. So it's not house music, It's not exactly breakcore, it's not jungle, techno, or acid. It's your own kind of thing. You have a unique sound.

That is a huge compliment, it's cool to feel like you're defying genre. Whenever a comment says, “I could tell it was your music just from your style” like that makes you feel so great. “Club_Venus” in particular was definitely me trying to make a song that I really liked. It was definitely me trying to do gabber, jungle, then also using the pads, and I think it creates a really cool contrast across the board. I'm glad that one resonates with people, I'm glad it resonated with you.

NO STRANGER TO DARKNESS—compact three track EP. Footnote: how do you differentiate between EP and album? Maybe it doesn’t even matter.

I think you might need to do 12 tracks for it to be an album or something like that. I lowkey called RELIGIOUS XP an album, and I realized this may not officially be an album, so I've been calling it a project. To me, an EP is like four tracks, but that's obviously just what I think an EP should be called. That just comes from me not knowing the exact terminology. But it feels more like an album to me.

But NO STRANGER TO DARKNESS, “ASS ASS FAT,” feels like a footwork track? It’s ambiguous and abstract in a way that reminds me of footwork.

I'm definitely very influenced by footwork, especially because I'm so influenced by a Machine Girl, who’s also influenced by footwork. I spend so much time with Angel, who loves footwork, truly dedicated to footwork in a very beautiful way. I don't make footwork because it's really hard to get right, and it's really easy to do poorly. I think the vocal chops in particular are inspired by footwork/club sound. Whether I like it or not, I fucking love footwork, footwork is awesome.

Have you ever heard about Shine Highway? They're a label run by this person, some kind of expressway. They're putting out compilations of “footcore.”

Yes, I've heard of footcore. A friend of mine thought of a term like “post-footwork” for what they do. There's definitely a big footwork, footwork-a-verse, and it also is having a big moment right now.

I'm not the biggest fan of it, it's hard for me to get into. It's hard to dance to. I see other people dance and it is pretty great dancing.

Well, the thing is, footwork is made to be danced to. All the people who made it, most of them were dancers. But when you see them dance to it, it's not like house music where you can fist pump, it's this dance you really need to learn, or at least be around enough to pick it up. You can't just start footworking impromptu. When you play it at a show with the wrong crowd, sometimes they don't fuck with it, same with jungle.

It’s region specific, with footwork folks from Chicago and jungle blokes from the UK. Speaking of UK samples, “NEVER ANYTHING BUT JUNGLE”, where’s that from?

That's from True Detective, with Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. He's not talking about jungle, he's just talking about how the town is a wasteland and it’s all dark. But whenever I hear the word “jungle,” if it's good I'm sampling it. When they say the word jungle it can be corny, but I thought it was perfect.

Question about SPEAKER SMOOCHER track “LOOK AT MY EYES,” you use a sample for that melody?

I wish I could take credit for that melody. The melody and the vocal are one sample. This slow, sweet song. It's “join me (raw)” by dj lost boy.

I’ve heard it used before on a track by Andy pls, he did a Jersey club track.

I think I even heard a reggaeton remix. I was playing Minecraft and we downloaded this plug-in where you could make music discs and do whatever song you wanted. My friend May, who I made a song with, she put on this track and it was using the sample. I was kind of tight, I thought I was the only one who knew about this. But it's all about using it in your own way.

It's fun to hear it 3mouth-ified or Jersey club-ified or reggaeton-ified. I was looking into sample identifiers and I see a lot of them using AI stuff and I don't want any part in that.

I am prepared for the day that they run an AI check over all my shit and I just get a takedown. I'm not even playing, I'm worried! That's part of why I did less sampling, I'm prepared for everything to get taken out. We're not there yet. Honestly, if I had like a million monthly listeners, then maybe they would care, but right now I'm under the radar.

But your stuff is on Bandcamp and it hasn’t been taken down, so you’re good. Shout out Bandcamp.

That article was so cool! It felt so cool to be considered, like, a face of breakcore. When they did the video summary that quoted me, “And 3mouth said it best.” I was like, oh shit, that was awesome!

It helps to interview.

It's more fun to do in-person. I love doing the live interviews, although it's a little stressful to do live. Emails are a little too sanitized, it's a little too thought out. It's nice to put people on spot.

But now RELIGIOUS XP—we're gonna go through the tracklist. So “CHIVALRY IS DEAD,” for the billionth time I've heard it, it's almost as if that opening line… is it a sample?

What opening line?

The one that stutters, “Chi-i-i-i-ivalr-r-r-r-y is dead.”

It's from the video game Puyo Puyo Fever. It's this Candy Crush-like game where you shoot bubbles down and match the colors. I just love my video game samples and so I found this really long video of all the voice lines in the game. Downloaded the whole thing, it’s an hour long. I'm going through it, I hear “chivalry is dead.” I throw it into Amigo—an emulator of Amiga, which is what all the junglists used to use back in the day to chop and stretch shit. Put that nice stretch effect on it. Boom.

You listen to it enough times and it starts to sound like “breakcore is dead.”

Wait, now I gotta listen to it again. That's really cool because I was definitely doing a little breakcore commentary.

My favorite track is "AFK," it has discrete parts to it and towards the end they all come together so well. It feels like a Dark Souls level. You know how parts of that world loop into each other? Well, you hear one part and it flows seamlessly into another. It's very sophisticated.

What a fucking compliment, I love Dark Souls! What makes Dark Souls so special, especially the first Dark Souls, is that world design. I think that track really shows what you were talking about where it's not this genre or that one. It's breakcore, and then it's like acid, and then it's speedcore, gabber with breaks and everything.

It seems there's a lot of people who like “DJ NEXT DOOR”. folks who left a note on Bandcamp put it as their favorite track. I feel like there is something to be said about the titles, can you tell me more?

“DJ NEXT DOOR” came from my neighbors. They left a very nice note on my door, and it said, "Dear dj next door, could you please,” they're very nice. I have to play music loud because I need to test my tracks. They wrote, "Can you please turn down the music? We're getting a little too much sub on this side of the wall.” I put the note up on my fridge and I had all my magnets around it, and I originally wanted the album cover to be this fridge with all these magnets, and then the note right in the center. I was going to call the album “DJ Next Door.” Things kind of fell through with the graphic designer, and I wasn't married to the idea, so I repurposed it. That's where it comes—shoutout to my neighbors. I've been dying to talk about the lore on that one.

“SPEEDING BULLET,” it feels like a j-core track, kind of like m1dy.

It's definitely in that vein. At that time, I was listening to a lot of Baseck, watching a lot of Baseck hardware videos. I was trying to make something pop-y for me and Jen. And then my partner and I got home and we got into an argument. Sometimes we need to separate for a little bit to get a breather, and I was so pissed and I cranked up the BPM and I literally banged out that entire track. It was such a release for me. Then we talked, and we made up and everything was all better. But it was definitely just a very pure form of channeling my emotions into something frenetic and crazy.

How long did that take you?

Not long. Most of my tracks generally, especially for the first pass, it probably took me, like, 30 minutes or maybe an hour. 30 minutes might be a stretch, probably like an hour. I was definitely in a flow state there. You just get in a flow, you're just dragging things in, and you have to then fix it and make it listenable.

I'm an outsider looking in, but the fact it takes you an hour to make a track is crazy. That feels so fast!

I'm very optimized in the way I work. When I make music with people they are like, “Whoa damn! You copied and pasted that shit so quickly.” I used to be into Kenny Beats “The Cave.” He would make a beat in 10 minutes. I was really into just doing shit really fast. I think you get something really raw when you do that too.

I also love the sample you used.

I found a really crazy collection of Memphis acapellas, other people could definitely find it, but I'm holding it close right now.

There's a Persona 3 sample?

I love Persona, I've sampled Persona before in many tracks. Persona is a very meditative experience. A lot of this album, I was really depressed. Postgrad, I don't know, I was hoping I wasn't going to have to work at the restaurant for this long and I was going to find something in the gaming industry or something that's a little less demanding because my job is just so physically demanding and I fucking hate it. And just mentally straining, people are so stupid and annoying sometimes. But a lot of times they're chill. But I played through Persona 3 in about 70 hours, and it really helped me get out of my rut. I found that boss battle to be so cool and I love the voice signs they do. Just the world that they build in those games is cool. Have you played it?

I played through the first dungeon of Persona 5. But I had to go to school and the socializing aspect of the game was too much.

That's the fucking problem, it’s too much of a commitment. Luckily, it was winter, I was working 25 hours a week, which was really stressful because I wasn't living at home, so I was barely making rent. I was really stressed. It was like homework, I spent an hour a day on Persona, very meditative. I played Persona 5 during COVID. I played Persona 4 during college. Every time, it just really helped me mentally. And Persona 6 just got it out, so.

“FRESHMAN FRIDAY,” sounds like the culmination of a hardcore track, and what we were talking about before. That hardcore is something you hear or feel physically or spiritually. I feel like.. It's kind of an attitude. Like a style, like a yell, you know, like a rally cry. That’s what I get from listening to that track.

That one to me is very breakcore, like old school breakcore, but definitely hardcore in the sense that it's super distorted. I threw this crazy saturator on everything that makes it sound so fucked up. And I'm sure it was a nightmare for Logan to mix and master to. But that one is definitely just like pure hardcore energy all the way through.

Where's the title come from?

I just remember on my first day of sixth grade, that someone had written “freshman friday” on the whiteboard and my teacher said to not worry about that, and he erased it. He said it wasn't a thing, and it wasn't a thing. I just thought the concept of it, you beat up the freshman on Friday and give them swirlies, kind of fitting the evil energy of the track.

I was also worried about that in high school, turns out no one does that. Maybe 30 years ago they did. Tell me about “FACE ID,” it sounds like a drum n’ bass track, and more easier to listen to compared to the other tracks. There’s a clear structure to it, it has a certain appeal that is inviting.

That one kind of falls in the two tracks before it a little bit, because it's a less break-centric. I was really into my 909 drum machine emulator I was using, and that was the big part of that. Just doing MIDI and I incorporated a little trill in it that I thought was really cool. And honestly, it was gonna be a throwaway, but I played it for Angel right before I was about to send the demos out to Sheep. I said, “This one's not gonna make it.” And Angel’s like, "Why?" And I said okay, fine, I'll throw it in there. And I'm really glad I did, because a lot of people really like it.

The track rounds everything out.

I think it is a lot more structured, more of a smooth listen than a lot of the other crazy stuff. So I'm really glad I put that.

Thank you, Angel.

Angel's also the one who put me in contact with Sheep. So thank you Angel for many other things as well. Shout out Sheep, definitely!

**Okay, “LIFE BEFORE ACCEPTANCE” and “LIFE AFTER ACCEPTANCE”, because they're right next to each other and the only differences are before and after in the titles. First, what is “acceptance”?

I'm really into ambiguity. I really love for the audience to assign meaning where they see it. I've always been a big fan of playing with ambiguity. But to me, it was kind of like accepting that things don't always work out as quickly as you hope and that things take time. I was in a space where I just really wanted my life to change, and I really didn't want to work this job every day. It was killing me. And I kind of had to accept that, especially postgrad, you're gonna work a job that you don't like, and you might be there for a while, especially if you want to be an artist. For me it was accepting that things take time. I had a phone call with my mom one day and I was hoping I was gonna have some weird breakthrough where she was gonna be like, I just heard about this job and, I know this person or something. But she was like, “Dude, you just gotta put your head down and work, it takes many years to kind of get where you need to go.” I was like, shit. That first track (“BEFORE”) I made during that Persona 3 era where I was super depressed and super fucked up about everything. I was also in a huge rut postgrad, making so much stuff that I did not fuck with. I didn't know what I wanted to put out. This was one of the first tracks where I felt that this is good. “AFTER” was when I regulated a little more, and I think winter had ended, and I felt like I had accepted that I needed to just put my head down for a little and do what had to be done to pay the bills.

Do you feel that you experience seasonal depression?

I think I do, it doesn't help that it's so dead at my work in winter. Sometimes I work from 10am to 4pm and by the time I get out it’s dark already. It was a brutal winter. This last one was not nearly as bad. I just had the postgrad blues.

On both tracks there’s a lot of chiptune.

The first one in particular. I’ve been really into chiptune. I've made a lot of stuff on LSDJ, which is a little tracker for Game Boy, that I want to put out separately, maybe on a side project even. The first one is super chiptune-y. I really like the square wave chords. “AFTER ACCEPTANCE” is meant to feel sad as well. I was telling Angel and Logan that I’m not able to make anything cute, I wanted to make something cute. They said this track was cute. I wasn't going for that, but I’ll certainly take it. I love chiptune and I want to incorporate it more.

There's this static texture in that opening melody, it sounds like it is decaying with a little bit of reverb.

I think it's a square wave with a noise filter that adds that layer of white noise with some reverb on it.

**It’s cute, but also makes me feel melancholic, like the sadness that you want to feel. Like it feels good to feel this type of sadness.

So much of my music, I want you to feel like this is fire and I want you to feel that this track is a banger. For this one, I want you to actually feel like an emotion and feel sad or feel melancholic or anything other than just this is a banger. As cool as it is to make bangers, you know.

Bangers are good, but there's so much more to be felt in human existence. Lastly, “STATE OF BREAKCORE OUTRO.” This is very much a statement piece. It’s very short, very much like an old school breakcore track, like you’d hear in the 90s. Are there words you want to put behind it?

Well, I think Venetian Snares said it, you know? That's why I sampled him. I made the track and then I found that clip after and it'd just fit perfectly. That was probably not long after we had our talk, and I was really thinking about what's going on with breakcore. It was so interesting that he said, "has breakcore become a brand?" Holy shit, he clocked it so early. It's kind of fallen off now, but with the whole Dreamstation and the anime girl stuff, breakcore has become such an aestheticized, brand-ass genre that is so far removed from what it ever was that I was just in shock that he had to clocked it then. Honestly, I don't think it was super relevant when he said it. Maybe he was seeing into the future or maybe he was just trying to say something that seemed deep. But he just super clocked it. I was shocked that someone had predicted this way ahead of the curve.

20 years ago.

Yeah, right? Insane. I wonder what he thinks of the scene now. He probably hates it.

Maybe he hates it, maybe he doesn't even care. Maybe he doesn't even think of himself as someone who makes breakcore, and people just call it breakcore.

That lowkey sounds like him. You gotta get him for an interview.

You know, I'm sure that's possible. I think breakcore is okay, whatever it was or is now, it is healthy. It doesn't have clout or the draw it had when it was reignited in 2020. The people who are making it today are making it their own. They're earnest about it, like the labels who’re putting out compilations and solo releases.

You spotlighted a lot of cool people too in your piece.

The kids are gonna be okay. The old heads, they're still making music. This newsletter, The Breakcore Bugle, they're good about highlighting new releases. I say this as I’ve been very offline in my music habits. I recently got a DAP (digital audio player/HIFI Walker H2). I've been off Spotify and other streaming services—so whenever I’m looking for new music, I go on Soundcloud, Bandcamp, or I get an email. I’m out of the loop of what algorithms are pushing out, you know.

That's the way to do it, it's nice to be more intentional. On the topic of ambiguity, I wanted people to think about what the state of breakcore was. I wasn't saying breakcore is dead. I mean, maybe I was accidentally. But I wanted people to ask what is the state of breakcore, who is it that's saying that breakcore has become a brand, and do some digging.

Notes On Breakcore (2006), it’s a really good short documentary about breakcore, but also acts as a time capsule.

It's also lowkey the most accurate body of work around breakcore, especially at that time.

How did you come to settle on the album cover?

Honestly, I discovered this artist (Kaii2kewl4skewl) and I saw their art and I thought that this was a perfect fit for what I was going for. I think especially for the tracklist, it fits the vibe. I didn’t give them too much direction, I just knew that I wanted a figure. A couple of people have interpreted the cover as me. And again, I like to lean into the ambiguity and let people assign their own meaning. I let the artist do their thing, because I could tell they have a lot of vision and when you give an artist freedom, they make something really cool. And they made some animations that were awesome. The original cover, I like that I had come up with the idea, but it was going to be a fridge in a suburban home. Which isn't really authentic, like, I grew up here in New York City. It was going to capture an interesting vibe, but it wasn't really going to be authentic to me, and that was my one hangup. I'm not heartbroken that I didn't go through with that.

It came out well. It's really unique. It’s interesting to make the connection between this low poly, Frutiger Aero-like figure and the album title, RELIGIOUS XP. There’s something there with how technology has become a religion or something divine. But I’m interested in how music makes you feel. This feels like a project about music, about what music can do to us. There’s this Dutch singer-songwriter Benny Sings, he released an album a couple years ago called Music, and a lot of that project is his love for music. Underscores’ new album U, feels like a love letter to music. Projects about music, where you can feel the artist’s passion, are always successful to me. So I think RELIGIOUS XP is an incredible work—the cover, title, the tracklist.

I wanted it to feel cohesive. I think it was the Breaker Bugle that said that sometimes when you have the soft stuff and the hard stuff together, it doesn't feel cohesive, but they said (my album) felt cohesive, which I was worried about. It came from such a place of not knowing what I was really doing or what I wanted to put out, and yet it came together in such a cohesive way. I've also just been dying to release music.

There are so many people who come out with singles or throwaway tracks—I want something substantial!

I love a project, especially in such an age of short attention spans. Even if you know people will listen to the first song and then they'll be too bored and they'll move on, I'm gonna release a project anyway.

Do you have any future prospects? You said there was stuff you wanted to release you made with the Game Boy emulator.

I would love to. I have some cool gabber tracks I made on Game Boy. I want to do some chipbreak stuff, and I'm hoping to work with Angel on that. I really want to go through more labels just because I think there's so many cool labels and to get eyes on it. My main thing now is Jen and I’s side project, it's been really fun to do a completely new sound and something more pop-y, even some like bro step-y elements. It's been fun to do sound design and just take things in a completely different direction. Aside from that, I really want to make some club-focused jungle stuff, some jungle techno. Maybe release it through UPSZN, maybe through someone else.

I’m a big supporter of UPSZN: “it's always up.” How would you describe breakcore to someone who’s never heard of it?

I would say it's nothing like something you've heard before. Way faster, way harsher, and it might not be for you, but it's worth a shot. It's the kind of thing that doesn't really need to be put in the words. But for the people that it speaks to, it speaks to them deeply, and so give it a shot. Shoutout Xaviersobased, officially, that’s my goat. I made a crazy jerk/jungle track, and I want to get Xaviersobased on it so bad, it’ll be so fire.

There’s a whole sphere of hiphop that I struggle to get into. I keep trying but it is difficult for me.

I agree. I feel like unc sometimes. But then sometimes I'll hear a track and I get it. I don't get everything, but I get it. But it's definitely for the youth. You know, like, if you can fuck with it, I respect that, but sometimes you gotta be honest. You can't fake the funk, you know?