Fancy Mike / Music / BlogMike Kleine is a hip hop artist with an electronic spirit, who pulls influence from film.  I’ve been a long time fan of his work, and over the summer we collaborated on a few projects in which he provided the music, including The Facebook Game and the upcoming Magic Pink Man 2. Austin: To start off, your music seems to pull influences from both hip hop and electronic. If the two genres were to wage in a civil war, which side would you find yourself on? Mike Kleine: Oh boy, that’s a tough one… I do love myself some hip hop (always will) but there’s just something euphoric about making something that’s different, you know? So whenever I make my tracks, I try to blend elements from both worlds. I’m not saying that this is true for all producers or the only way it goes but most of the time, I personally feel like basic hip hop is restrictive; in the sense that first thing that comes to mind is “let’s sample this… let’s sample that.” With electronic music, I feel that it all truly comes from within yourself. You can still sample in electronic music but when you say electronic, your definition is probably going to be different that someone elses. now when you say hip hop, most people think, “SAMPLE.” I’d start off hip-hop, kill the general/leader while he’s asleep and switch over to the electronic side and become a hero. Austin: Sounds good to me. Now, as far as hip hop goes, when you’re creating your beats, do you picture them being used with rapping vocals over them, or do you create your beats purely for the instrumental value? Mike Kleine: Funny thing, since I released the Fancy Mike EP this summer, a couple of people here at school (Grinnell College) contacted me the second week of classes and we’ve sort of started this Hip Hop collective. It started with 4 of us and now there are 12 regular members; we meet every Monday night and just rap over beats and throw ideas at each other. Now most of the stuff on the Fancy Mike EP, according to me, cannot be rapped over as is, but that’s just me. During our first meeting, one of them was like “Play Death Proof, play it… I’ve already got some sick rhymes to this one…” And it was interesting to see someone in real life actually request a song of mine and spit rhymes over it. Something I worked on for 2 months, something I listened to almost every day to fine-tune, and now this one guy was adding to it, making it something new; it’s a feeling I can’t really describe. But right now, we are in the process of reworking a couple of my track (3 I think) because they really want to use them so I am going to add certain things, cut others, and extend certain parts but it’s all from the ground up. I am making new beats now and currently have 4 only they have heard… And now, I have the idea that “people are going rap over this” which sorta changes my method by 5%… It’s still the same stuff, just a little different is all. Doctor Octagaon aka Kool Kieth is scheduled to perform in October/November and we are hoping to have enough material to open for him that night. We’re also planning on having a live drummer perform with us for our first show. But to actually answer your question… When I make my music, I never think “this is definitely something someone is going to rap over” because I don’t know what “that” sounds like. I just make something that works on it’s own and sometimes, people send me tracks of theirs where they’ve rapped over a song of mine and I’ll think, “cool.” But no, I don’t ever restrict myself like that. I just really go with what comes to mind first, which is why sometimes people ask why a song is the way it is, sorta unconventional and it catches them off guard. I like that Austin: Yeah, I feel you, and that’s great that you’re doing more live performances, I totally need to see you perform sometime. Now you mentioned your track, Deathproof, which I’m actually using for one of my animations (if i ever get it done.) that track is totally sick and really creative. It’s also the title, correct me if I’m wrong, of a Quentin Tarantino film? Sometimes when I listen to your music i get a feeling that its missing a film that should be playing with it, do you ever create music that pulls influence from any films? To elaborate on that question, sometimes I hear samples that sound like they could be part of spaghetti westerns, samurai films, or spacey flicks. Mike Kleine: It is as a matter of fact the title of a Quentin Tarantino Film, which I loved by the way and for some reason, people just didn’t like. But when I first started (before I really got into the electronic side of hip hop) a lot, actually almost every instrument in my tracks was sampled. Listen to Monsterville and Heavy and you’ll get the gist of it. I love those tracks to death but I really can’t make ones like those anymore. If I ever hear an ill sample, I’ll definitely use it and try to incorporate into what I am working with but nowadays, it’s all fresh; very synth-heavy, full of added drums sounds (like maracas and shakers) and glitched out for the most part I don’t want to restrict myself either and two or three of my songs have similar-sounding drum patterns but that’s just me being lazy, which is why the live drumming aspect of our shows is going to be mad crazy (I think.) But as far as sampling goes, I don’t like sampling 2 seconds of a clip to loop over a beat, that’s just whack, anyone can do that. I’ll take anywhere from 1-5 seconds of a sample I really like, hold on to it for about a week, listen to a ton of other stuff in the meantime and then usually, I find 2 or 3 other samples I absolutely love and somehow, I make it work but that takes a lot of time and passion which is why if I use samples, it’s gotta stick and work. I’d love to be able to bust out 50 beats a week like some of those other dudes but I’m too much of a perfectionist… On average, I’d say I release (to the public) about 20-30 beats… Which is really small for someone who is supposedly producing. I know dudes who release 25 beats a week and it’s like a religion to them, they have to but its also the same dudes who sell them for $50-$1000 and I don’t do that. You could say I do it for the love of music but that’s cliched as hell… I just make music I want to listen to and oddly enough it takes a good year for me to actually not hate a song I’ve made and I think that happens because I have to listen to the same thing over and over again. This semester there is going to be this film festival going on, playing silent films and a bunch of musicians are collaborating to play live music along to these films and I’m signed up for a 20 minute film. I frequently take a movie I like, mute the intro or any epic scene and begin to either play a track of mine over that scene or play some live instruments to that particular scene. So I wouldn’t say that my tracks pull influences from films… Perhaps the visual aspect, but never the audio aspect. Meaning, if I watch a guy bashing 22 dudes faces in (Oldboy,) I may want to make a track to that… But it may start that way and then in the end, not sound anything like I wanted to (which is fine) but still originating with the idea of “what if a song like THIS was playing during this scene?” I want to do this someday, score/create an entire soundtrack to a film and the reason why most of my stuff wouldn’t really fit with a film is because film music needs to go along with the stuff going on on the screen and sometimes, alone, it sounds bland and boring but with the visuals, it stays in the back of your mind, reinforcing what you see, and if I did that, lots of it would probably be ambient-ish but still fused with hip hop and electronic, most likely. Austin: Whoa, that’s really intensely awesome.  If it was the other way around, and someone had to create a film based on a score you created, what would that film be composed of? Say you’ve already made a series of tracks from scratch, that are brand new, that intertwine like brothers and sisters. A director is hired to compose a film based off of these series of tracks, what is this film going to be like? Mike Kleine: Well I’ve made these four new tracks “Juggernaut, Leviathan, Behemoth, and Ultramegabigmonster” and these are all really DIRTY and GRIMEY sounding with some deep kicks and spacey claps and I’ve added a few tricks where certain drops and claps sound like they are coming from the back of your head and then hitting you right in the eyes.I’d picture the film as being this really sleazy GRINDHOUSE type flick full of absurd moments, aliens, motorcycles on fire with pitchforks going through them, sharks that can float through the air and go through anything, talking clouds, firehoses that explode with fire and brimstone on firemen who are trying to put out a housefire, states that disappear from the United States map overnight, giant creatures from space trying to eat the world, and black dolphins falling from the sky onto cars. After that, I’d like to work on a hip hop musical Austin: Sounds like a Mike Kleine kinda film.  There was a hip hop musical here in my town, but I never saw it. Now aside from hip hop, are you engaged in any other sorts of music? rock, folk, classical? Mike Kleine: I used to play the guitar but haven’t done much of that recently… I can’t do everything at once, you know? I still listen to rock every now and then and love the hell out of classical… I’ve sampled Phillip Glass twice already I believe, one of my favorite composers, and I listen to classical at least once on youtube throughout the week. I don’t listen to folk at all, which is a shame. I just don’t think I’m ready to get into that world yet. Austin: Sounds good. Finally, what are some musicians readers should be listening to? Mike Kleine: Nosaj Thing, Lorn, Omegaclash, Bag Raiders, Mr. Oizo, Freescha, Jamie Vex’d, tdBt and the Garys, Edan, Flako, Onra, Joker, Mux Mool, UV, Michna, Fulgeance, Hudson Mohawke, Zomby, and Dorian Concept… Definitely. I’m probably forgetting lots but those guys are awesome, I love em all. Austin Breed: Well super thanks for your time, Mike, this was a rad interview. I love how, to me, you blend the lines between all creative media, art/film, with your music. Please, please, keep on making those beats. Is there anything you’d like to say or point off for the last bit of the interview? Opinions about O Lush? Mike Kleine: I really like the name. By the way, here’s a new song I’m working on. It’s called Chateaubriand. I’m really into spacing out these days:Fancy Mike- Chateaubriand Austin Breed: Cool! I’ll definently include that in the post. peace out, I’m going to turn off my laptop before the battery dies.

Fancy Mike / Music / Blog

Mike Kleine is a hip hop artist with an electronic spirit, who pulls influence from film.  I’ve been a long time fan of his work, and over the summer we collaborated on a few projects in which he provided the music, including The Facebook Game and the upcoming Magic Pink Man 2.

Austin: To start off, your music seems to pull influences from both hip hop and electronic. If the two genres were to wage in a civil war, which side would you find yourself on?

Mike Kleine: Oh boy, that’s a tough one…

I do love myself some hip hop (always will) but there’s just something euphoric about making something that’s different, you know? So whenever I make my tracks, I try to blend elements from both worlds. I’m not saying that this is true for all producers or the only way it goes but most of the time, I personally feel like basic hip hop is restrictive; in the sense that first thing that comes to mind is “let’s sample this… let’s sample that.”

With electronic music, I feel that it all truly comes from within yourself. You can still sample in electronic music but when you say electronic, your definition is probably going to be different that someone elses. now when you say hip hop, most people think, “SAMPLE.”

I’d start off hip-hop, kill the general/leader while he’s asleep and switch over to the electronic side and become a hero.

Austin: Sounds good to me. Now, as far as hip hop goes, when you’re creating your beats, do you picture them being used with rapping vocals over them, or do you create your beats purely for the instrumental value?

Mike Kleine: Funny thing, since I released the Fancy Mike EP this summer, a couple of people here at school (Grinnell College) contacted me the second week of classes and we’ve sort of started this Hip Hop collective. It started with 4 of us and now there are 12 regular members; we meet every Monday night and just rap over beats and throw ideas at each other. Now most of the stuff on the Fancy Mike EP, according to me, cannot be rapped over as is, but that’s just me. During our first meeting, one of them was like “Play Death Proof, play it… I’ve already got some sick rhymes to this one…” And it was interesting to see someone in real life actually request a song of mine and spit rhymes over it. Something I worked on for 2 months, something I listened to almost every day to fine-tune, and now this one guy was adding to it, making it something new; it’s a feeling I can’t really describe.

But right now, we are in the process of reworking a couple of my track (3 I think) because they really want to use them so I am going to add certain things, cut others, and extend certain parts but it’s all from the ground up. I am making new beats now and currently have 4 only they have heard… And now, I have the idea that “people are going rap over this” which sorta changes my method by 5%… It’s still the same stuff, just a little different is all.

Doctor Octagaon aka Kool Kieth is scheduled to perform in October/November and we are hoping to have enough material to open for him that night. We’re also planning on having a live drummer perform with us for our first show.

But to actually answer your question… When I make my music, I never think “this is definitely something someone is going to rap over” because I don’t know what “that” sounds like. I just make something that works on it’s own and sometimes, people send me tracks of theirs where they’ve rapped over a song of mine and I’ll think, “cool.”

But no, I don’t ever restrict myself like that. I just really go with what comes to mind first, which is why sometimes people ask why a song is the way it is, sorta unconventional and it catches them off guard.

I like that

Austin: Yeah, I feel you, and that’s great that you’re doing more live performances, I totally need to see you perform sometime. Now you mentioned your track, Deathproof, which I’m actually using for one of my animations (if i ever get it done.) that track is totally sick and really creative. It’s also the title, correct me if I’m wrong, of a Quentin Tarantino film? Sometimes when I listen to your music i get a feeling that its missing a film that should be playing with it, do you ever create music that pulls influence from any films?

To elaborate on that question, sometimes I hear samples that sound like they could be part of spaghetti westerns, samurai films, or spacey flicks.

Mike Kleine: It is as a matter of fact the title of a Quentin Tarantino Film, which I loved by the way and for some reason, people just didn’t like. But when I first started (before I really got into the electronic side of hip hop) a lot, actually almost every instrument in my tracks was sampled. Listen to Monsterville and Heavy and you’ll get the gist of it. I love those tracks to death but I really can’t make ones like those anymore. If I ever hear an ill sample, I’ll definitely use it and try to incorporate into what I am working with but nowadays, it’s all fresh; very synth-heavy, full of added drums sounds (like maracas and shakers) and glitched out for the most part

I don’t want to restrict myself either and two or three of my songs have similar-sounding drum patterns but that’s just me being lazy, which is why the live drumming aspect of our shows is going to be mad crazy (I think.) But as far as sampling goes, I don’t like sampling 2 seconds of a clip to loop over a beat, that’s just whack, anyone can do that. I’ll take anywhere from 1-5 seconds of a sample I really like, hold on to it for about a week, listen to a ton of other stuff in the meantime and then usually, I find 2 or 3 other samples I absolutely love and somehow, I make it work but that takes a lot of time and passion which is why if I use samples, it’s gotta stick and work.

I’d love to be able to bust out 50 beats a week like some of those other dudes but I’m too much of a perfectionist… On average, I’d say I release (to the public) about 20-30 beats… Which is really small for someone who is supposedly producing. I know dudes who release 25 beats a week and it’s like a religion to them, they have to but its also the same dudes who sell them for $50-$1000 and I don’t do that.

You could say I do it for the love of music but that’s cliched as hell… I just make music I want to listen to and oddly enough it takes a good year for me to actually not hate a song I’ve made and I think that happens because I have to listen to the same thing over and over again.

This semester there is going to be this film festival going on, playing silent films and a bunch of musicians are collaborating to play live music along to these films and I’m signed up for a 20 minute film. I frequently take a movie I like, mute the intro or any epic scene and begin to either play a track of mine over that scene or play some live instruments to that particular scene. So I wouldn’t say that my tracks pull influences from films… Perhaps the visual aspect, but never the audio aspect. Meaning, if I watch a guy bashing 22 dudes faces in (Oldboy,) I may want to make a track to that… But it may start that way and then in the end, not sound anything like I wanted to (which is fine) but still originating with the idea of “what if a song like THIS was playing during this scene?”

I want to do this someday, score/create an entire soundtrack to a film and the reason why most of my stuff wouldn’t really fit with a film is because film music needs to go along with the stuff going on on the screen and sometimes, alone, it sounds bland and boring but with the visuals, it stays in the back of your mind, reinforcing what you see, and if I did that, lots of it would probably be ambient-ish but still fused with hip hop and electronic, most likely.

Austin: Whoa, that’s really intensely awesome.  If it was the other way around, and someone had to create a film based on a score you created, what would that film be composed of? Say you’ve already made a series of tracks from scratch, that are brand new, that intertwine like brothers and sisters. A director is hired to compose a film based off of these series of tracks, what is this film going to be like?

Mike Kleine: Well I’ve made these four new tracks “Juggernaut, Leviathan, Behemoth, and Ultramegabigmonster” and these are all really DIRTY and GRIMEY sounding with some deep kicks and spacey claps and I’ve added a few tricks where certain drops and claps sound like they are coming from the back of your head and then hitting you right in the eyes.

I’d picture the film as being this really sleazy GRINDHOUSE type flick full of absurd moments, aliens, motorcycles on fire with pitchforks going through them, sharks that can float through the air and go through anything, talking clouds, firehoses that explode with fire and brimstone on firemen who are trying to put out a housefire, states that disappear from the United States map overnight, giant creatures from space trying to eat the world, and black dolphins falling from the sky onto cars.

After that, I’d like to work on a hip hop musical

Austin: Sounds like a Mike Kleine kinda film.  There was a hip hop musical here in my town, but I never saw it. Now aside from hip hop, are you engaged in any other sorts of music? rock, folk, classical?

Mike Kleine: I used to play the guitar but haven’t done much of that recently… I can’t do everything at once, you know? I still listen to rock every now and then and love the hell out of classical… I’ve sampled Phillip Glass twice already I believe, one of my favorite composers, and I listen to classical at least once on youtube throughout the week. I don’t listen to folk at all, which is a shame. I just don’t think I’m ready to get into that world yet.

Austin: Sounds good. Finally, what are some musicians readers should be listening to?

Mike Kleine: Nosaj Thing, Lorn, Omegaclash, Bag Raiders, Mr. Oizo, Freescha, Jamie Vex’d, tdBt and the Garys, Edan, Flako, Onra, Joker, Mux Mool, UV, Michna, Fulgeance, Hudson Mohawke, Zomby, and Dorian Concept… Definitely. I’m probably forgetting lots but those guys are awesome, I love em all.

Austin Breed: Well super thanks for your time, Mike, this was a rad interview. I love how, to me, you blend the lines between all creative media, art/film, with your music. Please, please, keep on making those beats. Is there anything you’d like to say or point off for the last bit of the interview? Opinions about O Lush?

Mike Kleine: I really like the name. By the way, here’s a new song I’m working on. It’s called Chateaubriand. I’m really into spacing out these days:


Fancy Mike- Chateaubriand


Austin Breed: Cool! I’ll definently include that in the post. peace out, I’m going to turn off my laptop before the battery dies.



Tuesday, September 29th 2009



Email us your work.
Contact at austinbreed[at]gmail.com.



austin breed × brainchild
erika barker × photographer jeremy grandorff × illustrator
matt hocker × writer


BBBBUTTER
CAMP NORTH
THANKS JEFF


banner photo by ROBERT BRYCE MILBURN
search
archive / random