themegoman

Download: King Cannibal “So… Embrace The Minimum”

(from Let The Night Roar out now on Ninjatune)

King Cannibal likes his basslines nasty. The producer finds pleasure in dark, gritty beats that barely support a booty shake. Instead, take the lyrics to “Colder Still” off his latest, Let the Night Roar: “I believe in death. I believe in disease. In justice, torture and anger. I believe in murder.” Knives slash. “I believe in pain. I believe in cruelty and infidelity. I believe in slime, stink, and in every crawling putrid thing, every possible ugliness and corruption you son of a bitch!” Some shimmers. “I believe in you.” Doesn’t that just make you feel warm and fuzzy? This interview by Daiana Feuer.

Where did Zilla end and King Cannibal begin?
King Cannibal: I didn’t do many productions under the Zilla name. I did some remixes and mixes. I made some tracks but it was me just sort of finding my feet. I ended up having to stop using the name because it turned out there was a band in the States already called Zilla, after I had already started releasing material. I was going to put a record out with Kid 606 but it got too difficult to try and battle for this, which was ultimately just a name, so I became King Cannibal. At that point I started making music that was darker and different from what I had been doing before. It was a happy coincidence.
So you are now flesh-eating royalty.
King Cannibal: You could say that! But at least these two words together don’t draw up a whole lot in Google. As long as you have Google safe on.
Have you ever seen a dead body?
King Cannibal: Not up close and personal. In film. Wait, what am I talking about? After they die, in the hospital, some family. I’ve not stepped over bodies to get to my front door, no.
Blood and violence can be really cool as fiction, but when you see a dead body in the street, you have to wonder—is it OK to mess around with these ideas?
King Cannibal: I understand what you mean. Life and death become very real in that sense. It’s quite easy to think of it in abstract terms. You see so many films, people getting killed, and you don’t really think about it. Up close in that situation, but it was not something I had thought about. As long as I don’t kill and eat anybody I should be OK.
Cannibalism is interesting. I mean, it makes sense for the music you make—cutting, sampling, mixing.
King Cannibal: That was the whole idea. I do taste a lot of other tracks and if you think about music eating itself in terms of sampling … It was born of that. Rather than trying to sound scary. My music has gone down a dark route but I had not set out to sound so heavy and gruesome. The music came out of me that way.
Where does the darkness reveal itself in a dance song?
King Cannibal: For me there’s so much lightness in pop music—there’s an abundance of that in dubstep right now. It’s all quite melodic. The wonky side of things. I’ve always been a fan of aggressive, energetic music. Growing up I was in punk bands. That stuff excites me. The darker stuff allows me to do stuff that is slower in tempo but still sounding quite energetic. It can swirl around. I like to have a lot of sonic things constantly occurring. I find it hard to do that in a polite, melodic way. Coming out of punk music I got into drum and bass in the late ’90s. The darker side of any genre that’s around has always attracted me. I don’t know why it speaks to me more than anything else, but it does. That’s what I have. I couldn’t really say what effect it has on other people. Everyone reacts differently. Some reviews have said, ‘Oh, he should lighten up. Hasn’t he heard everyone’s making more melodic music?’ But what’s the point of doing what everyone else is doing?
Some of it could easily translate to the dance floor, despite the slower tempo. It’s electronic and uses dance structures. But I want to listen to it rather than shake my bum.
King Cannibal: A lot of music gets made for the dance floor but I didn’t make the album with that approach, so you’re right. It’s not meant to fill the dance floor in terms of structure. Most of the music I listen to is on headphones when I’m out and about. I wanted to listen to this in the same way. That’s why there are so many sounds going on. If it were meant for the dance floor, the tracks would be a lot simpler and more conventionally composed really. Dance floor records are good. They’re useful for DJing and can be good pop things, but I want to make something you can listen to over and over again, and pick up details. People say it’s a barrage of sound. I love that.
You love that bass sound. It’s an album dedicated to that beat.
King Cannibal: I’ve always been into different types of bass music—not so much dancehall. I know what I like. Drum and bass and dubstep now. I like a lot of techno as well. There’s not a whole lot of bass in that though. The Baltimore stuff doesn’t grab me so much. It’s just kick drums. I can’t be having that. I really enjoy making basslines. That’s the main reason the album is so bass-y. That’s the thing I enjoy the most in music-making—making nasty basslines.
What silent film would you like to make a score for?
King Cannibal: This is something I’ve been looking into actually! I’m torn between Electric Dragon: 80.000 V, which is a Japanese cult film. There’s a film called Begotten. It’s sort of like Eraserhead but more messed up. It’s about the Earth being born again. It starts off with God ripping his internal organs out and Mother Nature being born from that. You watch it and the only score on it is this drone—it’s quite messed up. It’s like 90 minutes of saturated black and white film that looks like Rorschach tests. And just people cutting their insides out. It’s quite a grim film. The director, Merhige, also did Shadow of the Vampire, but that’s totally different. It’s like what the hell happened here? How did this guy make both these films?
Would you rather be a vampire or a werewolf?
King Cannibal: Ah, a very current question considering the fashion status vampires have in the world these days. I’d probably be a vampire because a werewolf has no say of when he turns into a werewolf, but a vampire is always a vampire so you can learn to be a vampire on your own terms rather than be like, ‘Christ, a full moon is coming.’
What’s the most important evolution you’ve seen in dance music?
King Cannibal: It’s probably been the emergence of dubstep. In a few years it’s gone from being a small thing to playing at festivals—it’s around everywhere. It’s really dominating. It’s going into house music. Even Pharrell and those sort of guys are doing tracks with English dubstep producers, which is crazy seeing it from where I’m watching. The decline of modern production techniques also. Everything’s changed to software now. Every modern pop record. I detest the sound of it these days. It’s so overly layered, these plastic synths—uch, it just sounds so brittle and nothing’s real in that. You can’t reach out and touch anything in the track. That’s the biggest thing I don’t like that I’ve seen over the past five years—or the aughties, as they’re calling this last nameless decade. It’s the change-over from people using hardware. It’s not a road I want to go down but it’s easier for people. Everything’s there in front of them. It’s good to have something real in a track. Which is what I like about the old drum and bass music. It’s very simply produced in modern terms, but I find it amazing that a track that’s fifteen years old can still sound futuristic. That’s what I’m interested in, rather than something sounding of the moment that will sound old in three years. It’s going to date so quickly. Look at anything on the Prototype compilation. That’s been a big influence on me. It still sounds fresh. That came out in the late ’90s. I need to add dirt to something for it to sound solid. I need noise. I run things through quiet guitar distortion so it sounds realer. When you have drums, they should have a lot of punch to them. It should sound like a heavy drum kit rather than ‘the perfect snare must be 200 hertz’ … a flat sound that things have now. Hardware is expensive, and yes, I use some software, but I try to make good with what I got.
Why do you think people are interested in torture and pain? What’s the fascination?
King Cannibal: I make music which is easily transposed onto that sort of thing. But I think it’s exploring the human potential, what people are capable of. Even taking my album title, Let the Night Roar, which is from a Jim Jones speech—the last one before 990 people were killed in a mass slaying suicide. I just enjoy reading up on these things. I don’t know why. I certainly hope I’m never caught up in something like that. But it is interesting to know what this human being is able to do and what leads to these things. Jim Jones, when he started doing his preaching, he was one of the first people in the South with mixed congregations. He was one of the first to adopt a black child. It started with good intent and then somewhere along the line he got massively screwed up and killed a bunch of people. It’s just interesting. Maybe it’s a voyeuristic thing. People are capable of a lot of good and a lot of bad as well.

KING CANNIBAL WITH DNTEL AND NOCANDO ON WED., FEB. 10, FOR THE RELEASE PARTY OF NOCANDO’S JIMMY THE LOCK AT LOW END THEORY AT THE AIRLINER, 2419 N. BROADWAY, LOS ANGELES. 10 PM / $5-$10 / 18+. LOWENDTHEORYCLUB.COM. KING CANNIBAL’S LET THE NIGHT ROAR IS OUT NOW ON NINJATUNE. VISIT KING CANNIBAL AT GODSOFWAR.WORDPRESS.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/KINGCANNIBAL.