Supersillyus is psychedelic music’s playful prophet, a fun loving alien who pushes his music to its limits. Along with Space Jesus and some other experimental bass friends, Supersillyus played a big part in making this year’s edition of Great North Festival one of the most memorable yet. On top of a late night DJ set and a set with his “Life Band”, the producer also hosted a seminar entitled “Having An Odd Time”, in which he looked to inspire further exploration into the limitless capabilities of electronic music. After his workshop, we sat down with the producer for an interview about his history and future. We talked for near 45 minutes, so we have included the full audio as a podcast below and highlighted some of our favorite answers.
On being drawn into an Archie comic book:
“Yeah, when I was 9-10 years old I got into yoyos, it was the late 90’s it was a fad, it was coming back. My best friend at the time and I got really into it, and we got really good, to the point where I was sponsored by a store and would travel to different places performing and entering contests…I remember I was in the park practicing and my parents see this old guy in the distance just sitting down staring at me. My parents go over to ask him why he was staring at their son and he introduces himself like “Hi my name is George Gladir, and I am the illustrator for Archie comics. We’re doing an episode on yoyos and I thought your son looked like he belonged in a comic book.”
On his creative process:
“In this album I used samples a bit more than I usually do, I usually record all my own vocal samples. All the singing vocals are me and my friends, except for on “Charade”, the last song. Those are a gaelic chant that I reversed, chopped up and harmonized in a weird way. I didn’t know the language so I didn’t want to present the language, I just like using voices as instruments, but I didn’t need people to know the words.”
On forming Schlang with Space Jesus:
“We were both opening for Ott in Philly where he lived, and he was like “Yo man I dig your music, come to Philly a couple days early, let’s hang out, maybe work on something.” I’d never collabed with anybody before, I don’t normally work with other people on electronic music, it’s just such a you and the computer experience. But I get to his house, we hit it off really well, and we end up staying up for three days straight writing gangster computer god in one sitting, and then we’re like “that was way too cool, we gotta do that shit again!”
On his workshop “Having An Odd Time”:
“If you follow me at all on the internet I’m a bit overly vocal about the lack of risk people are taking with electronic music. With the computer you can make any sound ever; I see it as an infinite language, and people are insisting on speaking with a limited vocabulary. I realized that instead of criticizing people for not exploring I would just teach people how to explore better…I just want to encourage people to explore, I feel like we become comfortable very easily, and there’s a lot there at your fingertips.”
On Virtual Reality:
“When someone puts [virtual reality] on for the first time they have this giggle. The only time you’ll ever see that sort of giggle is from someone’s first time taking acid I swear. They’re just sitting there being like “WHAAAAAAAT?? WOAHH” and they’re completely sober. I remember seeing people in the woods on way too much doing the exact same thing, but you’re in my kitchen, and it’s the afternoon.”
On Science Fiction:
“Science fiction has this weird effect where we expect from our future what we imagine in these stories, and there’s no reason for it besides that we think since we can dream it we can achieve it. The best part is we don’t just get what we thought…the things that people are coming up with that we could never imagine, that’s the coolest.”
We’d like to thank Supersillyus for taking the time for this interview, and we are incredibly excited to see what he has coming in the future. To experience the madness of the fun loving producer yourself catch him on the last leg of his current tour, or keep an eye out for future shows.
Connect With Supersillyus
https://www.facebook.com/Supersillyus
https://twitter.com/iamsupersillyus
https://soundcloud.com/supersillyus
Picture courtesy of Great North Festival’s Facebook
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