Today we’re pleased to be interviewing the band Slum about their video, “Well to Doozy.” It’s a brilliant and fun video, with a distinctive animation style. It combines all sorts of images: weird ghosts, ax killers, corpses swinging on nooses, LSD, and police sucking dollar bills out of citizens’ pockets. The band describes themselves as an electronic noise duo. There are heavy, organic drums, a distorted bass takes center stage. The lyrics are brilliantly evocative: How did you get all those cools things?” The art looks something like Egon Schiele on LSD. The song seems poised to become an anthem of middle-class angst. As a Toronto native, I’m sorry to say that I hadn’t heard of Slum before, but they can now count me among their fans.
Chris McClure, UniversalCinema Magazine (UM): First, what were your main influences for this album? I’m probably dating myself here, but I hear some Pixies, early Joy Division, more of a punk aesthetic.
McDrag: The influence on the album was a lot of early Chicago and English noise rock and bands such as: Big Black, The Fall, Suicide, Chrome, Butthole Surfers. Overall I think there’s some Joy Division and Pixies in our DNA as well.
O’Malley: My keyboard influence is heavily inspired by retro game consoles like Atari, NES/Gameboy. Definitally takes inspiration from chiptune. I also used to dabble in obscure prog bands like Van der Graaf Generator, Can and The Nice.. so you can definitely also sense a little “avant-garde” influence at times.
(UM): I wasn’t able to find out a lot about you on the web. Is that intentional? I noticed that you seem to wear masks. Can you tell us a bit about yourselves?
McDrag: We are an electronic/noise duo from Toronto, Canada. We decided years ago we were going to wear masks to conceal our faces so that people could only focus on the music and the substance rather than how we look. We figure if there’s no definitive face there’s no ego to hide behind.
O’Malley: We just put out our debut album called “Enfant Terrible!” so we’re fresh outta the womb. There’s been some really kind words out there about us and the response has been growing. We’ve just been stoked that there’s people out there finding enjoyment in our music and videos.. enough to keep coming back to it. We got a lot more on the way so we’ll see what chances it may bring. On another note we were wearing masks before corvid made them hip, so it’s a little unfortunate to have the “rona” take all the credit for popularizing face coverings. Call it bad timing.
(UM): Could you tell us about the animation style and the concept for the Video?
McDrag: Well, we had an idea of doing stop motion and just went for it, and honestly that’s really it.. We brought our stream of conscious style to Illustration and just had random visions to the song that we basically brought to reality.
O’Malley: It started as sorta random sketches gradually being drawn and coloured in on a blank sheet. Then it just quickly evolved into doing more complex cutout style animations and bringing the drawing to life, plus experimenting with lights, and several cheap dollar store items to create effects that were actually quite practical. We didn’t use or rely on any digital effects to create the aesthetic we were going for.
(UM): Did you do the animation yourselves? At the end of the video we see two masked dope smokers with markers and drawings. Is that you?
McDrag: We did! And yes that is us. We animated the video over the course of a year. Dope is good and legal here in Canada. so, we’re not badasses or anything hahaha.
O’Malley: What started as a sorta random impulsive “quarantine” idea turned into a 12 month commitment that admittedly at times we questioned would ever get done. The final shot is us literally celebrating its completion, as well as giving the viewer a glimpse at our work station and showing that this video really was made by two dudes with nothing but printer paper, cheap lights, markers and an iphone 6.
(UM): There seems to be a horrified child watching all these images on TV. Is this meant to be a warning to him about how awful it is to grow up?
McDrag: Hahah, not necessarily, but that’s definitely an interesting take!
O’Malley: Hah, even I can’t tell for sure if he’s horrified by what he’s just seen or simply overwhelmed by it… we’ll leave it up to the viewer to figure that one out.
(UM): Would you say that this is a happy song or a bleak one? To me it seems like it’s an attempt to have fun and enjoy oneself, but underneath there’s a profound disgust, bordering on violent hatred of modern life.
McDrag: Yeah, I mean I think it’s definitely reflective of our surroundings, so it’s more bleak than happy. Living in the city and being in and out the majority of your life you kinda see a little bit of everything. Poverty, whelth, classism, gentrification, addiction, activism; you name it – it’s all happening, so I think you got exactly what we were going for by saying that because you see a lot of people that really are crushed by systematic oppression and it really sucks to witness and you really do get this feeling of disgust for a lot of it.
(UM): Your mascot seems to be a drippy awful ghost that floats through the video and at one point, haunts someone’s shoes. Could you tell us about this guy?
McDrag: Well, a friend of ours actually designed it and we thought that it suited the music so we paid him handsomely for it. The original design name is “Blue collar ghost” and the fact he’s coming out of shoe is probably a statement on the working class & how being on your feet all day will give you rancid smelling feet, no doubt.
O’Malley: That shot also alludes to our album art in which he’s featured coming out of a blundstone boot. During our early stages we stumbled upon the illustration and instantly went “That’s it. That’s the cover.”. I think we felt it not only tied in well with our music, but it also sort of resembles the shape of our masks. Courtesy of Kyle Pullin.
(UM): What are the cool things that the upper middle class have?
McDrag: In some cases their own ability to evade certain tax margins (ha!). Aside from that.. You could pee yourself, but if you pee yourself in a BMW you’re obviously in a better place situationally than the person who isn’t, so there’s that.. The line is meant to be rhetorical.
O’Malley: I’ve always been intrigued by the bidet.
(UM): Are you for or against ramen noodles?
McDrag: I don’t get the fuss, but we’re not “against” it.
O’Malley: Yeah, it may be a bit overrated. Like lobster.
