Reppin’ Chi-Town – Flosstradamus Interview
We’ve written up Flosstradamus a few times, but that just wasn’t enough. I had to interview them. So when they rolled through Boston, I caught up with Curt and Josh for a lil’ chat about everything from Paris to Baltimore, Goofy to the Bulls, and Cool Kids to Gillis. This thing just screams “read me,” does it not?
Let’s start off with y’all’s names.
Curt: What’s up, my name is Curt Cameruci.
Josh: My name’s Josh.
Awesome we’ll start with y’all’s Vice mix with Scion. I couldn’t help but notice that you jammed Justice’s “Phantom” and from it transitioned into Uffie’s “Pop the Glock.” You also talked about SebastiAn before the interview. What do y’all think of the Parisian electro scene?
Curt: Actually it wasn’t on the official release of our mix, but it was up on our website. Scion actually edited a lot of the tracks due to swearing and stuff. You couldn’t say “pop the glock” I guess.
Josh: She couldn’t say “pop the glock,” she couldn’t say “sex.” It was a lot of really, really ridiculous things.
Curt: Another thing is that Vice only gave us forty tracks for that mix, so we only had a little bit of stuff to work with. And I guess they’ve recently begun distributing Ed Banger, like they’re like the go between now in America for Ed Banger. Plus, it’s a lot easier to mix that than Vice’s rock heavier stuff.
Josh: But to answer the question, we like a lot of that stuff. Justice is really good. My personal preference in music is a lot more old school, like a lot more punk and soul based, but their stuff is very different. And a lot of the kids are getting really into it. We saw ‘em at Coachella and it was one of the craziest shows for sure.
Yea, everyone’s getting really amped for their new record. Let’s move from that mix, one of your first proper releases, to your next big release. I heard y’all are lookin’ to go from throwing parties to proper touring and recording soon. How’s that coming along?
Curt: Yea, we’re taking all of June off, thank goodness, ‘cause we’ve been touring pretty much since last August straight, whether it be Europe or the States. So it’s just been a long ass time and it’s taken its toll, so we’re just worn out. So we’re taking June off, and then we’re touring with Chromeo when he comes to the States. When we take time off before our tour that’s when we’ll start grinding out on our album, and probably by the end of June we’ll have a little bit of an EP ready to go.
Josh: Take it on the road when we go out, all that stuff.
Aight. I guess that’s one of struggles of DJing and that whole lifestyle: the grind. What are some other big struggles, and what are the big perks?
Curt: This guy right here does all the background stuff (slaps Josh on the back).
Josh: It’s all me for management. I mean, I manage us, so not only is it airport, hotel, quick dinner, and then like four hours of DJing and two hours of after party, but I’m also e-mailing or on my phone all the time. As stuff has gotten busier for us the phone’s been ringing like nonstop. So like now if I don’t check my e-mail for two days I’ve got like a hundred emails to reply to. You really gotta keep up. And so on top of it being just like non-stop partying., it’s really, really just crazy to have to handle from a business aspect as well.
Makes enough sense. Moving with that computer theme, I’ll be talking to Girl Talk tomorrow night when he comes up to my school. What do y’all think about laptop DJs, both the resepcted artists like Gillis and the kids who just mindlessly throw together mash-ups?
Curt: For one thing, I’m gonna support Gillis for a second. I guess he’s not calling himself a “DJ;” he just goes by “performance artist.” What he does is awesome. He sent us his mix CD like a long, long, long, long, long, long time ago, before anyone had even heard of him, and we were like “wow, this is awesome.” And then when he blew up there were a lot more kids on the computers mixing stuff up. As for these kids, they can just take Ableton and throw together a mash-up or something without any sort of consideration, but a lot of schooled DJs that use laptops and know how to make music can make really good music and churn out some really awesome creations. But yea, there are a lot of kids just taking songs off of blogs and playing ‘em out that night and not listening to the song or putting their own soul into it.
Josh: There’s more “oh this track’s an exclusive.” Even though 7,000 people downloaded it that day, it’s still like “oh this is the newest thing” instead of like “oh I really feel this joint” and “this reminds me of this” or “I can relate to this song or this song for this reason.” Instead it’s just like “oh this is the newest thing from whoever’s hot right now.” They’re not really considering songs like a traditional DJ. And you’ll notice we don’t play much Justice, and that’s no disrespect to them, ‘cause they’re crazy and they’re super good, but they’re just not our style. So like we have our own style as DJs.
When y’all were playing earlier, I heard Kid Sister in the background. She just released the “Control” and “Damn Girl” single. What’s it like working with your sister on y’all’s music and being featured on a magazine cover with her as well.
Josh: Workin’ with your sister in music and business as well, ‘cause were doing lots of shows together, is really hard, and it’s something that she and I were completely unprepared for. My sister is like my best friend. And like through times doin’ it together we’ve gotten a lot better and I guess we took it really well. But it really took a lot of work, ‘cause when you bring business and music aspects into the family, it’s something we hadn’t really done together, and it was a little difficult at first. But its definitely awesome, because she comes on road with us, and she’s one of my best friends and gives moral support; like she’s always the first one dancing at our shows.
Right on. So I’ve seen interviews in which y’all always recommend her and Vyle, but you also talk about Baltimore club music. I was wondering what other different music, especially new stuff, you’re getting in to.
Curt: One other group we wanna shout out is the Cool Kids. They’re our friends, and right now they’re doin’ some hot shit. They’re also our roommates, so like we’re trying to back ‘em. They’ve got that old school flavor with a little bit of that Clipse-ish new school stuff. Also, a lot of juke music. We actually play a lot more juke than Baltimore ‘cause that’s more our roots.
Josh: Yea, we don’t really play that much Baltimore because a lot of kids play that, and the market’s gotten really, really, really, oversaturated with really bad Baltimore remixes. Like Blaqstarr is dope, Scotty B and lots of producers are really killing it, but eighty percent are kids that just found out about it this year and are just making really horrible Baltimore remixes. So we really don’t play it that much except for the ones we really, really like.
Curt: Yea, it’s the same with the electro stuff too.
Josh: Juke, like Chicago juke house like DJ Nayphits, DJ Gant Man, DJ Shift, all those dudes are like really good and it’s still a genre of music that’s pretty much untouched and slept on other than the south side of Chicago. And we’ve been traveling world playing it to a lot of people and trying to push that a lot more than Parisian and Baltimore stuff.
Fair enough. So you talked about the Cool Kids. We all know their stuff like “Mikey Rocks” and “88,” but have you heard any newer songs?
Curt: Oh yea man.
Josh: We got it all.
Curt: Yea man, we got it all. And we’re putting out their mixtape.
Josh: Yea, the mixtape’s coming out on Fool’s Gold, which is A-Trak’s label.
Curt: Their new stuff’s a little different than what’s out now. It’s a lot more soulful. And I mean Mikey’s a really, really good emcee. Like he was telling me he’s getting sick of street-style rappy stuff like they’ve been doin’ and he’s gonna go for a more backpacky feel, like Morehead’s type of track. They might put a few of those on their album. Evan English, the producer, does a really great job, Mikey’s a really good emcee, and together they kill it; they’re doing really good things.
I read that y’all’s favorite venues in Chicago are Town Hall Pub and Sonotheque. Where do you like to play elsewhere in the world, and where do ya wanna go?
Josh: We wanna play in Japan really badly.
Curt: Japan and Australia.
Josh: Yea, definitely Japan and Australia. Outside of Chicago we really like the MJQ, the Drunken Unicorn in Atlanta, and we also like this place in Vancouver, Columbia. I dunno, they had a place that closed down, but I can’t remember the name.
Curt: Basically any place in Canada we really like to play. They’re really fun. Like kids in Canada don’t have any reservations; they just go out and have fun as much as they can. And that’s like our type of crowd: anyone who likes to go all out and wild out. That’s our type of crowd.
Josh: Yea, there’s another place, a venue in Montreal that’s next to the Academy that’s one of the illest venues ever.
OK, sweet deal. We’ll wrap this all up with a non-music question. You’re always ahead of the headgear curve. What’s coming up in the headwear future?
Curt: A wicker hat of course right now. And the Goofy hats at Disneyland for sure.
Josh: I’ve honestly just been wearing this Bulls hat all year.
Curt: Yea, winter’s over and this fool’s still rocking the winter Bulls cap.
Josh: I’ll be rocking it all through summer too.
Aight, cheers.
Curt and Josh: Yea man, enjoy the party.
And here’s an excellent remix the boys did of Matt and Kim’s “Yeah Yeah.” I meant to post this quite some time ago, but apparently I’m a lazy bum. Oh well, at least you’ve got it now.
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