AN INTERVIEW WITH ENDUSER

1. From the city of Who Dey and Foxy Shazam to the Land of the Frozen Sun, All the Cores and More welcomes breakcore and experimental drum and bass legend Enduser for this interview. Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions! For readers who may not be familiar with your work, would you be able to provide a brief overview and perhaps some key highlights of your career thus far?

Hey I'm Lynn, otherwise known as enduser. Music has been a part of my life from day one. I started off as a band nerd playing saxophone when I was little guy. Got into hip hop, tripped over some punk and landed into industrial music. Then I found out how samplers worked.

Music has always been the most important thing in my life, no matter what. Wherever I would be during my travels - the only thing that would be a constant, safe place for me to exist is with music. I've been in some pretty surreal situations, writing jungle on my heaphones in an actual jungle in Costa Rica to flying around the entire globe in a week's time (and randomly high fiving Richard Devine in a customs line in LAX while he was headed home and and I was going to Australia). The world is a very small place. Small and beautiful. Small and chaotic. I take influence from everything and put it into my work.

2. If I’m not mistaken, you’re out on tour in Europe currently. How is that going? What are some of the major highlights so far?

We are just getting started. I'm off to the UK in a couple of weeks for the Unquiet album release party in Bristol and we've got some other dates coming up in Germany and Estonia shortly after. There's been a little talk about some US dates as well, it would be great to see some folks back home this summer / fall. It's been a minute since I've been on the road so this should be fun :)

3. On January 23rd, Unquiet will be released by Decay Recordings. It’s been a decade since the last full-length. Why did it feel like the time was right for another long-player now? 

It started with the move to Sweden, I was basically cooped up in my apartment for a few months with nothing at all to do. I got my recorder out one night and started to walk around and record some sounds of the wind, just to see what it would pick up. I cranked the gain on some of it and got some pretty harsh noises and really started to mess around with different mixing techniques and eventually I got so sick of everything I wanted to take a step back and start removing parts from the work. I had tracks stacked so high I couldn't stand them anymore. I started to appreciate silence and negative space as much as I did the 'core' stuff I had been listening to for so long.

4. Zooming out even a little further, in a singles-driven musical landscape, what remains so essential about a full-length in your view? Additionally, what do you think changes about the way we experience and/or regard music when we change the medium, say, listening to it on vinyl you purchased versus streaming it on a subscription service? 

To me it's about the story. All of my albums have always told a story, from the title to the tracklisting to the artwork - it's very much a collection of emotions and small clips from my life that I've managed to shatter into some little collected moments. I like a 'banger' as much as the next guy and if a song is good - it's good. But a collection of songs that shift in emotion, tempo, key - that work together as a collective entity exposes a larger view of the makeup of the artist themself. You can see and relate more to their music if you see more than just one quick snapshot. When you get into an album it's more like spending a day with the artist than simply having a coffee with them. You see them laugh and smile, but you also see their road rage and when they stub their toe.

5. So you’re now residing in Sweden. How else have your environs influenced the contents of the record? What are some of the themes you explore on Unquiet?

Well it's definitely two opposite ends of the spectrum with the extremely long cold / dark winters and the endless summer. You really learn to appreciate what you have when you have it. And you know how to adapt / prepare much more. I'm ready for anything at this point.

Unquiet definitey has a bipolar vibe to it. You can hear the darkness and the light in the tracks. Again, I tried to use a lot of subtraction with this one and not just bombard the listener with sound. I tried to create a balance and let things breathe a bit. I needed to let the different moods have some breathing room. The title itself was inspired by the book 'An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness' by Kay Redfield Jamison. I loved that book and I feel like it really does fit the Sweden vibe.

6. Can you talk a little more about the writing process for this one? 

Late nights and just putting my head down. I had some nice experiences in studios in Sweden such as EMS which I hope to work more in the future. But yeah most of it was written late at night with a pot of coffee and my keyboard, occasionally picking up the guitar. During winter I felt really isolated and I felt a bit more into the science behind the sound a bit. I used some different equipment, and referenced my mixdowns with hifi equipment and thought about space more. It was weird. Maybe I was more calm during the process, maybe that comes with age. Or maybe the feeling of being locked up in a cell in the winter here. Not sure :)

7. Tell me about the remixes included on the album—what do you feel they add to or enrich about the experience of the album? 

The Nowan mix is from a DJ partner I have here in Stockholm, he's been a good friend and helped me settle in here - he had to be a part of the release no doubt. We have previously released some other material and his take on 'Northern Tribe' was great. Homemade Weapons is a huge inspiration and just a proper dude all around, massive respect. Love what he brought to the album as well. And SCRWZ - he's a long time friend and jack of all trades. He had an idea to throw a curve ball at the end and I was pleasantly surprised - I loved his take on 'Cabin Fever'.

8. Given my love for “all the cores” as the site’s name would indicate, I feel that though it was twenty years ago (!), I would be remiss if I didn’t ask about your collaborations with Terror and Glassjaw on the Threat soundtrack. How did they come about? Can you talk a little about that project? 

Ha! I got an email one day from Matt Pizzolo, the creator of Threat. I was living in Brooklyn and he asked me to create an alternate score for the movie - he mentioned that Alec Empire was making one and he wanted me to do a 'dj mix' score as well. So we both made those for the DVD and he asked me to pick a couple of songs from a list of hardcore bands that I could remix. I was stoked to see Terror and Glassjaw - I was originally only going to do one but he let me take two. I really loved the idea of the hardcore vs breakore thing, kind of like what happened with judgment night when they had hip hop and metal. Or the Spawn soundtrack - all were great. This was like the super gnarly crusty version, I'm so grateful for the opportunity. We even played on the movie's opening night at CBGBs. Epic shit ;)

9. You’ve been lauded by many for your fearlessness in pushing creative boundaries throughout your career. Who are some artists, past or present, who you admire for their willingness to take creative risks and push sonic or other boundaries?

Peter Gabriel, Justin Broadrick, Burial

10. It’s becoming somewhat of a signature question for me, but I love it, so to close us out, here goes: Ignoring the logistics of how you’d do it, if you were stranded on a desert island and could only bring five records with you, which ones would you bring?

1. The Last Temptation of Christ Soundtrack by Peter Gabriel

2. Hive : Devious Methods

3. Godflesh : Streetcleaner

4. GZA : Liquid Swords

5. Swans : White Light From the Mouth of Infinity