Captivating, bewildering, enamoring and cathartic. The delicate electronic passages perfectly blends well against the wall of dense guitar washes accompanied by angelic disembodied voices that echoes through out a cacophony of beauty. Yes, Bitcrush paints this onto a musical canvas. The gentleman behind this is also the owner of the famed experimental record label n5MD, Mike Cadoo. It's with great honor and with much pleasure as Mr. Cadoo sat down with the Room and talked about life and music.
Room: Hi Mike, I really like your bands name, how did this came about?
Bitcrush: Thanks Carlo. I think it was just something that described the project when I started it. The first album Enarc having its style very firmly planted in the IDM genre. It then became my main project and the name just stuck even though the music I am making now has little to do with bit reducers distortion or the love of bits / bytes.
Room: When did you know that you were interested in music?
Bitcrush: Very early on. My grandfather purchased a toy guitar for me when I was very young and I wore it out fairly quickly. I was always into music and sound. I picked up music lessons as soon as you are able to in grade school and never once thought about if it was right for me. It just felt like something I innately needed and wanted to be doing.
Room: I understand that you were a part of other acts earlier on your music career namely Gridlock and Dryft. How are they different from Bitcrush?
Bitcrush: I have actually re-instated the dryft project. It initially started out as a way for me to experiment with different styles of electronic music outside of the confines of the parameters of Gridlock. I tried to not incorporate too many extra curricular influences into Gridlock as I had a partner that had a certain vision for the group. At a certain point I stopped dryft and brought all those influences into Gridlock. This eventually became a strain on our working relationship...even though I think the last 2 post-industrial/IDM Gridlock albums are our best. The new dryft album Ventricle should be out sometime in late 2010 and i think it will please fans of my previous work that have not been able to follow my bitcrush project's trajectory into shoegaze/post-rock/ambient/etc.
Room: Who are your main influences that made Bitcrush what it is today?
Bitcrush: Interesting as I never really get asked this. One thing that had a very interesting influence on me that I just recently realized... Gridlock used to be in a studio/rehearsal complex with many rooms. Sleep, Drunk Horse, AFI, and The Donnas all practiced there. There was a band in the outer most corner of the complex who called the selves The Jim Yoshii Pile-up and they played a sort of indie/post-rock. Because of the distance they were from our room and the fact that we could hear them through the void in the ceiling between our skylight and the roof added natural reverb really made them sound so lush and huge. They were a very good band in their own right but much more personal and clean sounding up close so this added distance really made them something I vividly remember and I think that subliminally I tried to get that widescreen sound for bitcrush....i don't think I succeeded... but I do try. Other influences would be Jim Thurwells' Foetus production techniques (butterfly potion era Foetus especially) , Idaho (especially the song bass crawl from the forbidden ep). Sigur ros is an obvious influence on my basswork as well. The aforementioned The Jim Yoshii Pile-up have a specific song “before i left, after i got back“ that has been a an influence especially on my longer tracks. Swervedriver is another not so obvious influence. All these influences are not so much the bands' styles but an element about their production or a specific song from them.
Room: Where do you draw inspiration from when writing music for Bitcrush?
Bitcrush: Mostly all personal. Life is a great creative enabler when a project such as bitcrush is used mostly as a personal catharsis.
Room: Your music is quite spacial albeit the wall of noise. Is this reflective on how you view life?
Bitcrush: Life as spacial? Oh I don't know... that is a hard one. I have a very very skeptical view on life and the issues that are around us. My music is very personal and the spacial aspect may just be what I have inside me....i really have no idea.
Room: Kindly name a few artists that you find interesting and that I should check out?
Bitcrush: Nadja, worriedaboutsatan, and the american dollar are some I could recommend.
Room: Thank you Mike! Should you have any messages to the readers?
Bitcrush: Look for the next Bitcrush album Of Embers (n5MD) due out on March 30th. Thanks to my fans for listening and Carlo thanks so much for the interview and playing Bitcrush (and n5MD) music on your side of the dateline!!
n5MD
Bitcrush
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