Welcome to In Conversation, a special interview column on the site where we sit down with artists and dive deep into everything music. This week, Joe spoke with King Yosef to discuss their upcoming record, past collaborations and new members joining the group.
Powered by RedCircle
Joe: How are you feeling ahead of the release of An Underlying Hum?
Yosef: It feels quite surreal, releasing an album feels like going through different stages, similar to the stages of grief. Some days, I feel really down, thinking that nobody will like it. Other days, I feel like it’s the coolest thing ever. Whatever happens, I have to accept that I did my best and I’m excited for people to hear it. I believe it’s the first album I’ve made that has a full fleshed-out sound. There are different avenues to explore, and there’s so much packed into it that I’m looking forward to seeing how people digest it.
Joe: How has the transition been from uploading music to Soundcloud to putting together a full record?
Yosef: What’s amusing is that I never really thought about changing my sound or anything. It was more like the less something was happening, the more something else would happen, if that makes sense. When I first started uploading tracks, they were super industrial with leads and just me yelling over them. I had a band at the time, a metalcore/hardcore band, so I had no need to do any metal stuff. But I couldn’t rap, so I yelled instead. Then that band disbanded, and all the new things I wrote for it were already in the space that I was moving towards. As I no longer had a band, I thought, “Well, I still want to play guitar, and I’m still a guitar player. I still like writing real drum stuff.” It just kept evolving until I reached a point where I don’t even know where it starts or ends anymore. It’s just an amalgamation of all my musical interests, colliding and referencing so many weird things with each other.
Joe: You bring a wide range of influences and sound into the record, what was it like getting all those to work together?
Yosef: I find it funny that I have a live band who plays with me, and I often reference them a lot. They even played some of the instruments on the album. The joke, which is also serious, is that I always try to figure out how to write something simple but in the most roundabout way possible. There are many guitar moments on this album that are not actually guitar, and my only goal was to write something heavy without using the guitar. I always reference something tangible in another format and reference it in an abstract way. It just makes sense to me to put them together. When I was writing the record, I didn’t necessarily think, “I’m going to write this type of stuff.” I had around 60 instrumentals, and as I started writing lyrics, it just naturally fell into place. I would just say, “This one goes on the album“. It wasn’t a conscious thought of, “Oh, this one references that, so it’ll make sense to people“. “Power” is probably the most closely related in terms of writing a 90s industrial metal just in terms of like a beater. But other than that, I just know when I get there. I explore and sift through until suddenly I’m like, “Oh yeah, this is it. Perfect.” It’s hard to explain the aesthetic outside of my head.
Joe: This gives many entry points into the record, was this intentional?
Yosef: Yeah, it wasn’t intentional. In hindsight, during the mixing process, I realized that my only role was to be honest and write what I want. Before The Ever Growing Wound EP, it felt like I was very one-dimensional and knew what people expected of me all the time. It was like being a one-trick pony, I made those songs when I was young, and I wondered what it would look like when I’m 35-40. So I wanted to write all the things that I want to write, whether it’s accepted or not. I decided that there’s going to be a soft song on the album, a weird, ambient Deftones-inspired song with break beats and other things. My goal was to lay the groundwork so that I can go in any direction, and it would always make sense if you have this as a reference point. It’s like the first map that shows you the trails. If you listen to this other thing I did, it all leads back to home. When we finished tracking “Pulling At A Thread“, Kurt Ballou joked that I better hope it becomes my most popular song. When I showed people the record and talked with them, they said it was a real album with so many things for people to get into.
Joe: How has your background in producing and working with other artists impacted your approach?
Yosef: The first time I wrote down An Underlying Hum was in 2019, and I had a demo or maybe two, and I thought, “That’s it, that’s the name of my album“. From then on, if something didn’t feel right, I wasn’t going to do it, that was the idea. Within that, I isolated myself a lot. So when I would write, it was like, “Oh, this is my music“. As silly as that sounds, it just felt like something I wanted to hear. I wasn’t thinking about writing a song that sounds like another band or is inspired by a particular thing. I just wrote what sounded like me, at least to me.
Being a producer, I like working on all the stuff that I work on all the time. Every time I work on another record, it’s like painting. Working with an artist who requests something out of you that they’re looking to do is like another paintbrush that I get to add to my tool belt. When I go back to my own space for my own music, I have another paintbrush that I would have never thought of before because somebody else pushed me outside of my box. I’m very grateful to be able to work on other people’s music because it gives me so much exploration to learn new things and not be stuck in my own sonic space forever. Just writing my music and being consumed by it and my own world would be kind of miserable, which is why I have so many secret side projects on the internet. I get burnt out, and I’m like, “I’m just going to write a whole new thing, release it, and it feels good“. Then, that’s it.
Joe: How was was it working with a producer on An Underlying Hum?
Yosef: The songs were already written when we went into the studio because I’m a programmer when it comes to synths, drum machines, Ableton, and all that stuff. When we got there, the songs were already about 85% complete, and I always mixed and mastered them myself because I know exactly what I want it to sound like. It was liberating to go to two people whose music and work I respect so much, Kurt and Steve. Kurt is one of my biggest influences, and his production work on so many records was so important to my growth as a musician. So to go to him and have him treat me like a contemporary and not a kid and hear my ideas definitely built up some trust. As we went through the process, he started understanding more what the goal was, and it allowed me to let go a bit more. There are all sorts of little Kurt and Steve moments on the album, like at the end of “Drift Below,” where there’s this crazy, weird-sounding synth that rises over and over again, sounding like it’s oscillating. It’s not even a synth; we just tracked it, and Kurt randomly asked what scale it was and what the root was. I told him he tuned the guitar for an open tuning, and then I put a reverb on it and controlled the decay. He did some crazy slide guitar and made me hold the decay, and it ended up being the outro to “Drip Below.” Little things like that are all over the record, where once he understood it, he was like, “We need to double-track this” or “do this weird little thing on guitar that you would have never thought to do“, and it worked out every time.
Joe: Was it intentional to have the second half be more atmospheric?
Yosef: I guess the most accurate way to describe it is that this album is very much about my own inner workings, me as a person. However, the way the album progresses is that it becomes more helpless, aggressive, and contemplative. And then for me, the bookend was “Drift Below“. That was the first dive into a strange sonic space, and “Adrienne” is the bookend, “Adrienne” is supposed to be the light moment before it gets really dark and contemplative. To me, I was thinking that it could be like, not necessarily like an A to B, but I definitely wanted it to feel like you start somewhere that feels familiar, and by the time you get to the end, it’s like a new space that’s all-enveloping. I wanted it to feel like you’re starting in something that’s very upfront and very close to you, and by the time you get to the end, it feels like you’re in a void, where the pressure of everything is gigantic and you feel like you’re in something huge.
Joe: Was the intention of the singles being from the first half of the record to keep that a surprise?
Yosef: There will be more music videos for the record, but nothing that will give away anything before the album is fully released. My main goal is to have singles, but I really wanted to make a record where you start at the beginning and end at the finish line. I wanted to create an album that, if you shuffled it, it wouldn’t make sense. Everything is so in tandem with each other that I really wanted to make a front-to-back record, where everything informs the next thing. There are so many things that even I forget now, but when I did a listen about a week ago, I noticed how many layers deep things go if you just read the lyrics from start to finish. I turn phrases so many times until you get to the end-all-be-all at the end, and you’re getting tidbits of the last chapter throughout the entire record. When you get to the very end and read the lyrics, it’s everything you witnessed before, recontextualized. I completely forgot how much I painstakingly did that until I really listened to the record and spoke and sifted.
There are motifs throughout the album too that I think will take people a while to notice. Even when you listen to it, there’s one Easter egg I’ll give away. When you start the album, if you turn up the volume to max for four seconds, you can hear the piano line that serves as the motif for the whole record. It’s buried quietly in the background. It’s also at the end of the last EP, but very faintly as a three-line. That piano line is hidden throughout the entire record and is used repeatedly in different contexts.
Joe: What’s the experience been like doing this DIY?
Yosef: I think for me it’s a little bit of both. As much as I want this album to make sense to people, before this, I think labels didn’t understand what I do. They think I’m going to do SoundCloud rap or that it’s going to be like rap music like Limp Bizkit or Nine Inch Nails, if that makes any sense. For me, I have a distrust of people fully understanding the vision. I’m not opposed to a label, absolutely. It’s a lot of work doing this all DIY. Everything for this whole record has been done via my friends, myself, our medium, some of our connections, and that’s it. It has been a workload but it does have its payoff. I think there’s a greater sense of accomplishment when you’re doing this all DIY. When something good happens, you’re like, “Well, you know, me and my friends did this. There was no label, no Instagram ad campaign via a 15-person team from so-and-so records.” This was all completely in-house, and that’s a win.
Joe: Have you tried to promote yourself and the record in a different way, for example using Discord and Youtube?
Yosef: Yeah, I think that’s because I’ve been on the internet for so long. My music has always been a part of the internet, but now I’m trying to bring it more into the real world. This has been a natural progression for me over the last two years. I learned pretty early on, even during SoundCloud times, that I never wanted to be a person who was like a link spammer. Everybody remembers the days when bands on Facebook would say “like our fan page“, but did that really work? Have I ever become a fan of someone because of that? No. I learned pretty early on that when I can find communities, support other people, and find other things to be inspired by, people will return that favor, they will return the love.
For example, even with Discord, my friend suggested that I start a Discord server years ago, and I was hesitant at first, but eventually, I did it. Suddenly, there were kids in my Discord who collaborated with each other, shared each other’s stuff, and had intimate discussions. There was a little creative community in there, and I thought, “Yeah, this is awesome“. YouTube has been another platform for me, there’s another King Yosef YouTube channel that has 13,000 subscribers, but it’s all producer stuff. I started using YouTube to get my beats out there back in 2013, that was already a part of my approach. Talking to other people, I realized that for typical four to five person bands, it’s more challenging to figure out what to do after they write music. For me, that’s not hard because I already have all the music myself. I don’t have to go to a studio to make that happen. Some bands don’t even know how to make an Instagram reel with their song. I think just being on the internet for so long and participating in internet communities have led to a natural progression of how I use the internet to market or promote my music.
Joe: How have past collaborations with Darke Complex, Static Dress and Youthcode come about?
Yosef: They are very natural and I’m really big on not forcing anything. Maybe it would be better if I were sometimes, but personally, I never want to do anything that feels like I’m bothering someone or creates an uncomfortable, strange friction. Even going back to the Darke Complex stuff in 2017, I’ve been a fan of Widow since I was a young teenager. Watching the EP come out and the whole rollout was super exciting, and then the name change happened. Suddenly, the bass player of Darke Complex started following me, which was a huge deal for me at 17. I didn’t want to say anything about it and tried to act cool, but a few days later, he DM’d me and asked if I wanted to work on a record with them since they liked what I was doing. I said yes, even though they had a crazy deadline of just two days. I was on a family vacation at the time, but I stayed in my hotel room and made music for two days straight.
Then there’s the Static Dress stuff – I found Static Dress the day after “Safeword” came out. It felt like 2020 because it just felt right at the beginning of the pandemic. I randomly followed Olli from Static Dress and he followed me back, even retweeting one of my songs. I DM’d him saying, “Hey, I love what you’re doing. Please keep it up.” He replied, “I’d love to work with you on something at some point“. I replied, “Sure, let’s work on something“, it’s like saying “Let’s get lunch” for musicians; it sounds nice, but it rarely happens. However, we did end up collaborating on some video stuff and started chatting on FaceTime all the time. One day, he called me and said, “Hey, I have this song. My voice doesn’t work for the part. I need something gnarly“. He asked me to do my voice on the part, and it was natural and stress-free. If it made sense, it felt good, and that’s how it happened. The same thing happened with Youth Code, I was just a fan of theirs, and one day, they reached out to me, saying they liked what I was doing. We started chatting on FaceTime, talking about the pandemic and ended up agreeing to do a whole album together. For me, collaborations are all about asking myself if I want to do it and if it feels good. If it meets those two requirements and if I can get something creatively out of it that I wouldn’t get anywhere else, I’ll do it. I’ll never do anything purely for the sake of it being a good career move.
Joe: What is the story behind Cameron and Lyden joining?
Yosef: I met Lynn when she was doing some filming for a tour. We’ve been mutuals for a couple of years, and we’ve never met in person, just Instagram DMs every once in a while. Then she came through and was opening for From Indian Lakes, one of my favorite indie bands from my teenage years and she put us on guest list for the show. We showed up, hung out with her, and they needed a place to crash that night, so we offered to let them stay with us. Lynn mentioned that if I ever needed drums for something, she’d be interested. Later, when I started thinking about playing live, I tweeted that I needed a drummer in Portland, and she replied saying she would fly up just to play drums for me.
Before Cameron, I had a friend named Jeremiah playing with us for a while, but it was too much for him. So the role that Cameron now fills was kind of undefined. Cameron moved up here and I asked him to play with me. It’s like a hired gun situation, and he said he would do whatever I wanted. When it came time to record the record, I had already programmed everything, but I thought it would be better if Lynn played the drums live. It was a camaraderie experience, and we all went to the studio together. Cameron tracked all the bass on the record, and Lynn played all the drums. She also played guitar on “The Crevasse” because I wrote the riff and couldn’t play it. They’re both my best friends before they’re in my band. For the time being, they’re the live members. If they’re ever too busy, we’ve already talked about fill-ins. I’d rather have band members who are my friends than just someone who fills the slot.
Many thanks to Yosef for sitting down and answering our questions about the new album, which you can pre-order here. For a full review of An Underlying Hum and everything King Yosef, stick around with Boolin Tunes.