YOUNG MUSCLE INTERVIEW

Back in August, we sent Detroit music enthusiast and journalists breW out to Red Door Digital with a Zoom Recorder to have some conversations with DJs playing a stacked show that evening. 

A couple weeks ago, we released the first interview with AK which you can check over here. Next up, we're dropping their conversation with Detroit's toughest selector: Young Muscle. You can listen to their conversation about deep admiration for the UK scene and Interference Detroit, or read the transcript below. 

BREW: Hi! …We’re outside of Red Door NOTION’s gonna play after AK right now…Initially, what got you into mixing music?

YOUNG MUSCLE: I've always been into electronic dance music. When I was a teenager I was on imageboard websites downloading music and when I moved out of my mom's house at 18, one of my friends brought up that I had such a deep knowledge of dance music that I should try my hand in deejaying. She helped me get into mixing, taught me the ropes.

How old?

I was 18 or 19. It was before I was allowed into the clubs. I would get people to sneak me so I could deejay.

Was it around the area you grew up?

I grew up in Sterling Heights, which is about 30 minutes outside of Detroit. Then when I moved down here, I was deejaying primarily at places like City Club which are right in the heart of the city.

So that was kinda the start of your deejaying career?

yea that was definitely the start. My friend Cory, Cory P…. specifically, teaching. Shout out to Cory

Does she still do anything with it?

She doesn’t deejay anymore to my knowledge, but she is the person who helped me get my foot in the door.

From that style around then and with what Corey introduced you to, how would you say it has evolved to what you say is UK techno. How does it embed Detroit sound or Cory’s sound?

When I started playing and mixing I was more traditionally like strictly techno and strictly house. Over the course of a few years, you know, I’d always know about UK Bass music– specifically like James Blake and Burial and other UK artists.

Was it based off some of your discography?

Yes, more so my digging. I would say my discography is based off of my digging and my influences that came up.

Did they go hand in hand? Which ones the chicken, which one was the egg?

It feels sacrilegious to say but–I love Detroit techno but my brain is overseas in the UK. I think that UK dance music is so fascinating and there is so much variety and interesting sounds coming out of London and Bristol. It's really, that’s where my heart is.

Even though you are bringing sound over, which they are all embedded with each other, it doesn’t really matter cuz we all feed off the spaces we are in/ the music we listen to. With that and your influences– being resident of Interference Detroit, how do you think it is shaping you as a deejay?

It definitely pushed me to play outside of my normal boundaries. I saw a meme about how DJs always play the eight same songs during their set. Sometimes it can feel that way when I deejay. I feel that way.

Do you think it is a tempo or a rhythmic pattern?

I would say it challenges me to play slower and faster when there are different headliners and it also challenges me to play outside of my comfort zone…you know? I don’t spin a whole lot of electro. I don’t spin a whole lot of strictly techno. When I play interference I have to push myself into a zone where the music that I’m playing matches what the crowd expects. As well as that, Nick Dagher, the genius behind Interference, and I have a perfect synergy. When we deejay I feel like I don’t have to think about what I'm doing. We can just instinctively go from one place to the next without really focusing too much. It's just very heady, very instinctual.

Sometimes there are expectations when you’re on a bill… and how do you normally impose those on yourself? Is it information based on who is booking, based off of who’s headlining– you kinda said that?

Usually who is headlining. I’ll kinda– if it’s someone I am unfamiliar with– I'll go through and listen to some of their mixes and see what kind of things they play. And then, kinda fine tune my set so that it is appropriate for the night. But I also like to put my own spin on things so I never try to stick to the rules too much.

It is important to be flexible. So you did a lot of City Club starting... Where are some of your favorite places to play?

Some of my favorite places to play…I really love Marble Bar, I love playing on the patio so much.

New speakers (inside)... have you been on those yet?

I haven’t been on the new speakers yet. I do– I can’t say too much but I do have a gig coming up. It hasn’t been announced yet but I will be inside on those new speakers.

Very exciting. That was a half-promotion. Anything else you are working on?

I have a few things in the pipeline right now. I just sent a handful of demos and dubs over to a few different figures. I have a track coming out on a very well known UK bass artist label sometime, I think, in September. It hasn’t been announced yet as well so I can’t say too much. I can say this because the secret’s kind of out already. Nick Boyd who runs Sorry Records in New York, him and I have been in talks about putting out an EP for a track that I have called “Looney Tune” which kinda made the rounds through Dekmantel and other festivals that have been going on… Thank you so much!

MOTORMOUTH RADIO EP. 43: 1 YEAR ANIVERSSARY PT. 2

LISTEN

No Ego

Love & War - Amp Fiddler [Weona Ryder]

SENSOR DATA - DJ Stingray 313 [Jomo]

Anti-Capitalist

Thought 2 - Underground Resistance [Weona Ryder]

Get Live - Waajeed [Jomo]

Communal 

No One Can Love Me (The Way You Do) - Johnnie Mae Matthews [Weona Ryder]

Mothership Connection - Parliament [Jomo]

Homage To An Artist

The Day We Lost the Soul/Tribute! - Moodymann [Weona Ryder]

Sonic Rendezvous - BMG & Derek Plaslaiko [Jomo]

An Artist With Discovered Tapes

Perdida - Martin Solis & Los Primos [Weona Ryder]

 A Drop in the Bucket - The Deacons [Jomo]

ONE YEAR OF MOTORMOUTH

Weona Ryder, founder & host of Motormouth:

feeling worlds of gratitude writing this reflection. it feels surreal that we’ve been on the airwaves for a year, but we are just getting started. our work here is not done, as our love for detroit will never fade away. we truly cherish every single song, artist, album, space, collective, labels, etc, that we highlight on motormouth. and i would like to take some time to talk about this…

2-3 years ago, me and dj jomo would ride our bikes around the city at night, blasting everything from drexciya to laughing hyenas. this was also around the time i got off all social media. what was really infuriating to me at that time was not knowing of any shows, releases, interviews, etc, because everything gets posted onto “the gram.” however, i soon began to realize that this is merely a surface level issue and there are bigger problems underneath it all.

dj jomo and i would have extensive conversations about this on our nocturnal bike rides, as we were learning more about techno’s history and the philosophy behind it. we felt like we were getting a commercialized experience rather than experiencing a communal one. where profit, marketing, and branding are prioritized, rather than connection and collectiveness. we were inspired by Mojo, an anonymous radio host back in the day that truly was about the music and nothing else. with his midnight funk association, he would have the entire city lighting up their car headlights, porch lights, bedroom lights for the landing of the mothership. there was a true sense of collectiveness through the music. however, being born in 1999… to actually experience the midnight funk association was a ghost of a chance. i’m left with only the anecdotes of techno titans illustrating how essential and important it was for the city to have underground, unrestricted, and uncompromising music on the airwaves. around this time, DJ jomo wrote Acid Detroit and would talk to me about Mark Fisher’s conception of hauntology, “according to Fisher, society is haunted by the remnants of lost futures, leading to a cultural landscape where nostalgia and revivalism are predominant on a superficial, aesthetic level,” which really resonated with me because i had felt like I missed out on the “good” days and they were not coming back. i didnt want to romanticize the past either, because there was a plethora of hardships in the city throughout the 20th century. however, the difference between then and now is that we are lacking, deteriorating, and trading off our collectiveness and togetherness in the name of profit and individualism. so then the next thing i thought was, are we going to be a part of the problem or are we going to be a part of the solution? you can’t do both. in todays current situation, there are spaces in the area (and honestly all over) that have weaponized phrases like “community”, “safe space”, “family” but are actually being pretty deceptive about the profits they’re raking in. there is nothing familial or communal about making money off of peoples vulnerabilities and/or the exploitation of artists. this is not new, and hasn’t been for a very long time. the exploitation we see today though, it is meant to look pretty at face value and to deceive people into self-willingly giving money or time to it. the same exact places and “collectives” are the ones that have dominated the nightlife circuit, leaving it narrowed for any new, up and coming collectives & DIY spaces.

so, that is when motormouth was born.

we don’t want to play “the game.” we have other ideas of success and none of those ideas include profit. we wanted to bring back old traditional ways of media. in the age of streaming services and social media, digging up dead mediums like radio programming, blogging, hand-made zines, and word of mouth, might seem mindless to some. but to us, we see it as mindful.

instead of having to make constant posts daily to beat the algorithm, wasting away creative energy for the sake of marketing/branding, and upholding the fast-paced consumption model we are forced to use, we have adopted these dying mediums to reject and remove the hands of robber barons that have tainted, exploited, and nearly destroyed our respective & communal scenes. the sonic landscape of detroit, both from the past and present, is truly sacred and must be protected from these soulless entities. long story short— if you have made it this far in my reflection, i would like to express my gratitude to you for taking the time out of your day to read this. please talk to a stranger today. please pick up a magazine or a vinyl record today. please connect with someone or something other than swiping up on a story or doom scrolling on shorts. you will be surprised when you clear your head from the online algorithm and see all the gilded features we are consciously and subconsciously perpetuating. we do not have to accept this decadent lifestyle. we can’t relive the days before iphones and tik tok, but we can be intentional with the technology we have access to in our daily lives.

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Jomo, editor & co-host of Motormouth:

As we mark one year of Motormouth, I reflect on how far this little experiment has come. What started as joining my great friend Weona Ryder in co-hosting a weekly radio show, “dedicated and devoted to all things Detroit, both past and present,” has slowly evolved into a multi-faceted operation that now includes guest writers, artists, show reviews, think pieces, and interviews. We live on the airwaves, with a new episode of the show airing on 99.1 CJAM every week. But we also live virtually, here, on our blog, and physically in the form of three self-published zines. 

In some ways, reaching this milestone isn’t surprising—Motormouth was built with sustainability in mind. We’ve always envisioned this project as a long-term effort, so hitting the one-year mark passed quietly, largely uncelebrated. In some ways, there was little more to say than “back to business as usual.”

But this isn’t a business.

Motormouth is driven by a deep passion for the intersections of Detroit, music, art, storytelling, and—if I may be so bold—political and philosophical ideals. We remain committed to our values, including maintaining anonymity as much as possible in a panoptic world. We will continue to keep Motormouth off social media in an effort to bypass dominant models of information dissemination and gatekeeping. We will continue to celebrate Detroit’s brilliance and tell the stories of those who’ve made their mark here. And, of course, we'll never play the same song twice.

Here's to another year of curiosity and discovery.

MOTORMOUTH RADIO EP. 42: 1 YEAR ANNIVERSARY

 

LISTEN [episode starts at 1:44]

An Artist That Made You Want To Dive Deeper Into Detroit History

People - Moodymann [Jomo]

Flowers of Romance - L-Seven [Weona Ryder]

An Artist That Got Their Flowers In Retrospect

Brand - Majesty Crush [Jomo]

Where Do We Go From Here? - Death [Weona Ryder]

An Artist That Didn't Compromise Their Sound & Vision for Money

Astronomical Guidepost - Drexciya [Jomo]

Thunderbird ESQ - The Gories [Weona Ryder]

A Detroit Artist That Is Not Actually From Detroit

Nightclubbing - Iggy Pop [Jomo]

Eastern Market - Yusef Lateef [Weona Ryder]

Detroit Magic 

Everything I Want - Laughing Hyenas [Jomo]

Phase 4 - Jeff "The Wizard" Mills [Weona Ryder]

AK INTERVIEW

Back in August, we sent Detroit music enthusiast and journalist breW out to Red Door Digital with a Zoom Recorder to have some conversations with DJs playing a stacked show that evening.

 Up first, we're dropping their interview with beloved selector AK. You can listen to their conversation about independent artistry and highlight gigs here, or read the transcript below. 

BREW: Did MeanRed get in touch with you about getting on this bill with Notion and Young Muscle?

AK: I've been with MeanRed, not like been with them, I don’t have a deal or anything, I’ve been on their roster for about a year now. I'm also assuming it was because I also opened for Nia Archives...

…Similar style… 

Yes, it's like the Spotify algorithm. They were like okay who do we have here that sounds like them a little bit. And it was like, “AK can do it.” So here I am! *laughs*

You had some documentation as well, Bad Listener? What inspired that? 

So I don’t have any promotional footage as AK by myself out in the world, outside of my personal phone, my friend's phones. I don’t have any professional like– people posting up with professional cameras. Like TASCAM recordings. I was supposed to do their show, they have a show that they do at their spot. Bad Listener...

Is it far from here? 

I don’t know, I've never been. So this is how it happened: I was supposed to go to their spot but I couldn’t line it up properly so I just told them, "Hey guys how do you feel about comin' out to me and coming to see the show? A and B, like making this a part of y’all's segment?"

So getting some footage here and some other stuff elsewhere? 

Yeah, in the future maybe we get [some]. So for this show tonight, it was strictly this set. So this is going to be broadcast on their platforms and stuff.

So they are recording the sound?

So they recorded the sound as well as the video feed for me tonight. This is the first time I ever did anything like that. I’m really excited and nervous– but excited to see, and to hear. Cause I’ve never done this before and we’re just like formally meeting and getting this done. They’re super dope. I'm so grateful.

Two of them?

I think there’s like 5 of them, but two of them tonight yeah–Three, three, three! We got Billy, we got Steph, and we got Rob. Shout out to you all. Bad Listener!

Ok so was it any reason that it happened to be like a jungle and bass set for the year?

Well, this is my first D&B booking for the year that’s like with a big-name artist. Last year it was Nia Archives, the year before that it was Vegyn.

Right, there were sounds for tonight that sent me back to that show.

Yeah, yeah. So I guess they decided to keep the trend going for the third year and have me do Notion!

Is this around the same time of year or is it a little bit sooner?

I actually remember the exact dates. So I did Vegyn on March 5th, I think I did Nia Archives, I did that on November 7th, and then this one is in the summer so I think I've done one for every season except for the winter.

So have you been preparing for this? Did you carry over any sound from any of [the shows mentioned]?

No, I downloaded a lot of new songs today and yesterday, actually. I just have a nice catalog, I guess. Yeah, I don’t play a lot, but I have a lot of jungle and drum and bass just off my own collection. So I just play off that, you know I get new stuff so it can sound fresh. But I also don’t play D&B often.

Did you plan on playing any of this for your Movement set that was unfortunately rained out?

You know what, low key, a few tracks. Not completely D&B cuz I was going B2B with Sheefy McFly and we were doing ghettotech and stuff. So I was gon finess like maybe a D&B remix and track in there somewhere, who knows. That set was gonna be impromptu too so... We practiced but it was still gonna be like freestyle. It wasn’t like an “Ima play this song, you play this” No. We just walked up there and just played whatever.

a

OK, so it's cool that for a big event [Movement]... you got to have a more seasoned mixer/ DJ alongside you, accompanying you… It would make me feel safe. You know, like having someone guide you. Are there other areas that you want to feel safer in or that you do to make you feel comfortable?

Yeah, of course. I don’t have a team like, I don’t have a manager or a liaison. Right now, I’m here with my best friends, so that’s my security.

Do they make you feel safe when you go elsewhere too? 

All the time. Never fails– they better than any security team I could hire, if I say. Like honestly being a DJ of my caliber, and not having a team creates obstacles, but in the same breath, it shows how independent I am, and what I can do on my own…I would like to feel safe in the spaces, but whether I have a team, or a gang, or a gaggle or just a big group or whoever, my safety is always at risk so the best thing I can do is take care of myself and keep an eye out for the people around me, report what I see. I’m not a snitch but ion go for no fuck shit. Yeah! Trying to make it do what it do for me, at the best as I can with what I have and a lot of times it be me, and my homies. So shout out to my homies!

The “homies” as well as being Blueprint sometimes.

Absolutely those are my best friends, lowkey my sisters. We’ve been locked in enough...

Do you have any plans with them soon or anything you want to personally share? 

Blueprint is doing a lot of things in the next few months! That I can’t say. I just teased y’all Ah HA! It's a secret. But, keep an eye out, keep an ear out, keep ya ass out!

MOTORMOUTH RADIO EPISODE 41

Laurel Halo

LISTEN

Rollercrash - Goudron

Parallel Shift - Cybotron

Alottochewon - Thomas Xu

Drunken Noodles - Julion D'Angelo & Specter

stack of matter - caitlin c harvey & AnJelic 

Airsick - Laurel Halo

Imaginary Lover - My Brightest Diamond

Jealous of the Sun - Slizz

My Best Friend's Girl - Hala

Cry Girl - The Gories

EXP TWO - Kyle Hall

96 Tears - Aretha Franklin

Who Wouldnt Love A Man Like That - Mable John

Into Feeling Lonely - Allee Willis

Lake Shore Drive - Theo Parrish

MOTORMOUTH RADIO EP. 40

Allee Willis

LISTEN

Warm - Echospace

Quaranta - Danny Brown

Glowin' - The Rationals

I Am The Dancer - Clinic Stars

Surfacing - Windy & Carl

WORRY - Greyhound

regret - cryingfossil & Bccording

marble - architecture in tokyo

Who Is Genuine? - Russ Macklem

Stronger (DJ Minx Remix) - SYREETA

U Know (feat. Josh Caffee) - Lauren Flax

Detroit Groove - Terrence Parker

Losing Control (Robert Hood) - DBX 

MULTI FUNCTIONAL ROBOTICS - DJ Stingray 313

Feel It - Floorplan 

The D - Allee Willis & The People of Detroit

What Kind of Shoes Does September Wear? - Allee Willis