NZXT PODCAST - #084 - Pixel Terror

Episode Date: April 9, 2021

This week on the podcast, we are joined by Ahrya and Bentley from EDM group Pixel Terror! Pixel Terror and the crew discuss music, bandanas, and being an artist during a pandemic. Follow Pixelterror on Twitter: twitter.com/PixelTerrorBass Listen live to the NZXT 💜 CLUB CAST on our Discord server at discord.gg/nzxt every Thursday at 10AM PT and submit your questions to [e-mail]! Thanks to xenu#9965 for the artwork!

Right on time, as always. Let's do it. Hello and welcome a reward to episode 84 of the NZ60 Clubcast, the official podcast of the NXC community. This podcast is recorded live every Thursday at 10th and Pacific Standard Time, the official NXC Discord server, and is available to stream on demand on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and SoundCloud. So kick off your shoes and relax your socks because this podcast is going to hit you just like a pox. My name is Dennis. With me as always is Ivan.

Hello, Dennis. I am back from the mountains. How was, I wasn't say how worse. How worse the mountains? It was awesome, man. Like I told you, I was trying to disconnect from this hyperactive hive mind. So I literally did not check Slack, email, voicemail, text messages, whatever for an entire week. I didn't have any cell phone reception unless I went down the mountain.

And I did that twice. And both times I messaged you just to check in on you, make sure that everything was okay. And then I yelled at me. And then I yelled at me. Yeah. But it was cool, man. I'm happy to be back. Happy to be on the podcast.

I did listen to like every episode on the on the drive. So I have a list of improvements. So the first improvement is I'm no longer going to type while I talk. It's kind of mine. Yeah. Yeah, that may or may not have been me as well, because we do also throw this up on Twitch on the side. I may be responding to people here as we're kind of hanging out. You know, I'm going to make sure that we're getting all that sweet, sweet user interaction.

But the podcast isn't about me or my keyboard or Ivan's trip in the mountains, at least not yet. Today we have a very, very special guests directly from Hot EDM label Monster Cat, Pixel Terror with ARIA and Bentley. How are you guys doing? what is up guys Hey hey are you here And I think Bentley is frozen But I don't know or not

He's around He's chilling He's around You're good How are you There are you There are you I'm going

I'm frozen I mean your face is frozen Yeah I think it's gonna I still hear your very warm voice But yeah Thank you guys For being on the podcast today

Like we were saying Earlier in our pre-show, I guess, as we'd like to call it. We talk about music a lot. The audio works. The audio works. That's fun. Yeah, exactly.

We talk about music a lot on the podcast. Dennis and I are huge music fans. And you guys are the first musical guests we've ever had on here. Andy doesn't count, even though he is a bass slapper. He does not count. You guys are the first one. So, yeah, we're excited to talk to you, learn more about you guys, your music and all that stuff and also I guess how gaming is is kind of involved in that because pixel just

name pixel I guess is very closely related to game but we'll get into that as yeah as a show progresses but yeah thank you guys for for being here oh yeah we're honored first music guest that's it's pretty special yeah we're having uh Billy Elish next week oh nice and then afterwards uh Murray Carey yeah hopefully you don't I'm too bright. So for those who may not be aware or are familiar, who is, what is pixel terror? So we are a DJ duo.

I mean, I'm sure a lot of people in the chat, they play games like Rocket League and Fortnite, maybe Roblox. So through our label Monster Cat, we've been able to so gratefully release a few of our tracks on those games. We have three tracks on Rocket League and I believe one on Roblox,

one on Fortnite. So where it kind of connects with the whole gaming and computer, I guess, that's kind of where you guys would find us. But yeah, we've been making music together as a duo for about five years. Released countless number of songs,

anywhere from dubstep to trap, Malach, house, anything, you name it, we've made it. And we play some shows. Of course, there's been a little bit of a pause ever since the pandemic. But slowly but surely, but surely, they're coming back. And we're just basically Twitch streaming. We've been Twitch streaming for a while and we just make music and we engage with our fans on all different types of socials.

And yeah, we just have a good time making music. So you mentioned that you guys have been, have been doing music together for five years. How did you meet? How did you get connected and like just decide you guys want to start making music together? I think Bentley can tell this one better than I can. If he's still there. I mean, for the gist of it, basically,

when I was like 18, I was just, me and myself, I was just putting out a bunch of music on SoundCloud. It was cool. I wasn't really gaining that much traction. And at the same time, Bentley was doing some talent buying, throwing shows,

some small shows in Hollywood. And he found my music. I don't know how he found that. But yeah, he hit me up on SoundCloud. I can hear you. Yes, we can hear you. Go for it.

This is why I love recording the live podcast. I think this connection might be a little bit unstable since his video is kind of freezing here. there so hopefully you can get that uh he can get that uh get that uh get that fixed yeah no worries um if you switch off your video it might help yeah someone yeah i was i was looking for artist okay is that does that help i think so yes i think it i think it could help you may have i'll i'll take off my video too um yeah i was just saying uh I was, I was, I had, I was like running a dubstep show in Hollywood and was also DJing and producing and trying to just find, do I ever intend to get a Bentley?

Yeah. I was just trying to find local artists who like actually had good music and like on SoundCloud. And I don't know, I was, I was pretty good crate digger back in the day. I mean, I still consider myself a good crate digger, but I just, I don't know, I just came across the music somehow. I think it was like through some repose chain or something and invited him to come out to the show and perform. And then we ended up getting in the studio after that and just kind of vived out. And we actually had like one or two sessions. And then I think that's literally like the second or third time we met up to make music.

We made a remix for Jackals' song Animal Style, and they ended up mad decent. Diplo's label ended up signing it. So we kind of were like, well, this is a good start. And yeah, the rest is history. A lot of people say the rest is history because it's like so much has happened since then, right? But I can imagine, especially if you've been working together for like five years, right? It's a really long time to be, to be, like, to be paired up with someone. How do you guys keep, like, your, how do you keep your, like, artistic vision fresh?

So it's a lot of just listening to music, trying to, like, have our ear out to find, like, the next new thing, new styles. But also just kind of looking within ourselves and just thinking about what music inspired us from the beginning. for me it was a lot of like early dead mouse uh i loved euro dance and just like early 2000s like a tv and uh cascada benley was really into like more rock alternative rock um but of course there's there's a lot overlapping and i think what makes everything sound fresh is when you combined like two genres that maybe are a little bit unlikely and put them together and just kind of take what made our music taste into something new. And it's fun. It's fun being able to like listen to the songs from your childhood and apply it to the music you're making.

You're going to speak my language here because when I was growing up in like my early, early teens, I listened to so much like Eurodance and you know, stuff like like, like, I'm trying to to think I'll top of my head. Like like you're saying, uh, Cascada, DJ. Jay Sammy, right? Like Mojo. DJ Sammy slap. Yeah. Gigi Vastino.

65. Yeah. Like all that stuff to me is like so timeless. And it's probably some like rose tinted goggles, to be honest. But like to me, that's like the ultimate part of music, right? You got like this really big vocal and he's like really awesome kind of like trans beats in the background. And that's something that like I've always really enjoyed. Like throwing base on Trudota and I'm like going to like go nuts.

It's like the epitome. of intensity. That's the craziest song. Playing that while playing Dota, it's like, come on, right? Come on, man. Double whammy. I think more than anything, it's more like something where it's like our, our, our tastes, our different tastes have like, have combined.

I mean, like, I also listen to like a lot of death punk and a lot of, like I said, iPhone 65 and like, like, I mean, I don't know if you guys knew, but we just did a official cover of Sandstorm that got released through Monster Cat. And that was like a crazy experience because we were just like recreated something that, you know, like we just grew up on. And it's like so iconic. And so that's just like, yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty, it's pretty like breaking out of the Matrix kind of nostalgic in a way. It's funny because I feel like you guys are exactly like Dennis and myself where you guys have opposite tasted music and one of you is a crate digger. But the difference is that I just basically talk crap on Dennis's musical taste instead of trying to start a band.

I'm like, why are you listening to that, man? That's horrible. No, we got to appreciate it. Even if we don't understand all music, I appreciate it. Yeah. No, I just like teasing Dennis. I do appreciate all music. I like all kinds.

But I do like teasing Dennis, especially when he tells me when he mentions that he likes Post Malone. I like to tell him that I don't like Post-Palone. But that's just to really, that's more to tease Dennis than anything. But I do like the fact that Bentley, you're a fellow crate digger, man. How many records do you have in your collection? Well, I wasn't actually a physical crate digger. Digital? the only actual yeah yeah yeah digital but i i just i mean in the in the sense of like i i i've always

i've always like gone out of my way to like find good music like i mean i used to buy CDs at like amoeba music in los angeles and like um and like yeah you know just just like just like going the extra mile to find like the we can call it call it instead of a crate digger we can just call it a a filed explorer By the way, I heard Amiba music just reopened the new location. No way. The world is healing. Little by little.

I saw it in social, there was like a line around the blog, people trying to get in. So I do think people miss that experience of not just like looking for new music, but like, you know, meeting other music fans, just chatting about music, you know, discovering like bands that, you know. You know, you never would have heard of otherwise if you're wearing that record store at that exact moment on that day and time, you know. Yeah. So it's definitely an experience.

I went to Miba once for a show. I think I was watching Anamonaguchi. It was like way back in the day. Would you call me? You heard me. It was like 2000, I think like 2008, 2009 after I saw them like at packs or something. And I don't know what happened to the chip tunes genre, but like I, I've always had like a real big love for it.

And I was listening to some of your guys' stuff today while I was walking my dog. And I was like, I was like, live into it. I was, I was like really digging it. There's like a lot of like of like the like pixelated like eight bit kind of like sound inspiration from it, right? Yeah, yeah. We love putting like, like, little ear candy. We both really like loved a lot of video game. yeah damn it um are you go ahead i was gonna i just want to say for the record the bomberman 64 soundtrack

is such a good soundtrack i just rediscovered it recently but yeah we kind of like in that same vein of like uro dance and just like intense synthesizers you can hear a lot of that in our music we have like sparkly eight-bit sounds like square waves um We have like really, if we're going like on that, it's the same direction as like really computer boxy, kind of like almost artificial sounding things. We love like using like auto tune to the max on vocals to making it sound unnatural in the best of ways

and just kind of take the format of old video game music and sprinkle it here and there while still trying to keep it fresh with like newer sounds. It's really fun. It's really nice to see that there's like a resurgence of more people kind of putting like 8-bit sounds in their dubstep or trap or EDM. It's really nice to see that people are going back to their roots too. We also we also just like, as Arias said, you know, we. I think Bentley dropped again.

I grew up like on Mega Man and I dropped again. Yeah, a little bit here. Yeah, a little bit here and there. I was just saying, yeah, we draw a lot of inspiration from, you know, video game anthem type music. You know, I know I grew up on Mega Man and like, you know, Final Fantasy and stuff like that. I know I know Aria played a lot of video games as well. And, you know, when we, when we formed the project, we both just like, we both were writing,

music that was like in that vein you know i mean i i can also give credit to like pandas and temanite because they were doing kind of this you know that that sound in in particularly in bass music but we just loved it in ed in electronic music it like came naturally to us and so we just you know we we knew what the direction of the project was going to be before it was even like spawned and we uh and so like you know the name pixel terror kind of came from that juxtaposition of video games with, you know, with like eclectic base and I don't know. I mean, we, we always strive to make it tasteful and memorable and not just be like necessarily a banger for the sake of being a banger.

But we do make bangers. But yeah, we do make bangers, but it's also it's also evolved. where we're like our goal is like how can we make this a little more timeless and and and furthermore how are we going to how are we going to continue evolve like as artists and with the scene and um and progress and like continue to break new grounds so even our first track uh was a flip of one of the Pokemon theme songs uh really you can hear a lot we have a lot of like renditions. Like we have a Moral Combat theme song remix too. Just some fun video game tracks that we felt like would slap if we ever played them live. I'm looking and writing this

down all right now. Yeah, look up our track evolution. It's our first track and it's the Pokemon. It's like I don't know what the name of the specific song it is, but it's the one that's like So yeah, that's, if you want to hear some video game music, that's the epitome. I actually just found it. I'm going to drop it in the podcast channel. Yeah, I can actually play that right now. Let me throw it up here real quick. Yeah, someone just posted it.

Yeah, that's a, that's, that's Coyote. He's our resident, EDM fan and fan producer. It's good Coyote. It's going in. It's going in. Ooh, okay. Hey. This is really cool. I love this.

I can tell this is going to be a banger. Yeah. You know bangers. It's like four, five years old now. This is an old track. This is from dubstep gutter. I don't know who they are, but yeah. There's like a lot of, um,

I think I found this like, uh, this like a EDM remix, uh, like, uh, inspirational, and worship music channel, which I find it super hilarious and also crazy, like, lit for no reason. I actually have a banger-related question. Like, when it comes to making music and performing it live, like, my question is, how do you guys actually record it? I'm assuming you guys are doing all this to be, like, computers. But when it comes to playing it live, like, how does that actually happen? Because I know, like, I've seen some people who do this differently.

Like, I know some electronic musicians will, like, you know, go all out and, like, mix stuff on the fly live. And I've seen others just, you know, mix on CDJs and whatnot. So just curious how you guys do it. Yeah, it gets crazy. I've seen, like, Dead Mouse recreate his music live on the stage before. But that's, it gets complicated. But, of course, down the line, we do want to do things where we get more interactive with the music live. But for the most part, it's.

It's super, super easy, super intuitive. We use CDJs and we basically just plan our set. Either if it's like a tour run, we do it, go on a, we go on our laptop and we kind of like plan our set, plan the cues, figure out where we want to start the songs and what's on in what happens in what order and we just put it all on just a thumb drive, the USB flash drive. And that's basically all you need. you just take that to wherever has CDJs. Most clubs and venues have them by standard.

And we just put it in and that's our full library. Do you guys do anything with analog, like records or anything like that? So analog is something that Belly and I have been exploring. Well, okay, not like exactly analog, not like, you know, we aren't buying like big synthesizer machines. but the whole idea of having different knobs, like routing knobs and having like things like parameters randomly move. So basically we do a lot of sound design sessions separate from music production

where we just like, you know, we take our project and we only focus on making random sounds, random bleep loops, computer sounds, just a bunch of random stuff that we honestly don't know what we're going to do with. We just want to make like as much happy mistakes as possible. So we take a fake synthesizer and we have this cool little gadget called LFO that we route to different knobs like a distortion or the pitch or the wave shape or just all these different things. And it's basically to dumb it down.

Ah, Bentley's back. Yeah, I'm on my phone now. Hopefully this is better because I'm really tired of not dealing with that. Actually, you're going to be. I was just saying with analog, I was explaining the LFO and how basically when we route all these parameters to this little robot that's essentially just moving randomly every quarter of a second. It just makes sounds we never would even come up with because it's like there's so

many different parameters, so many different random robots, basically. And it just makes all these cool sounds. So that's the most analog we're getting so far, because we're kind of putting it in the control of the robots. That's really interesting to me. I'm always fascinated with how bands, and I guess especially now, like electronic musicians such as yourselves are making music because there's a lot that goes into it. You know, it's not just, you know, hitting a button on a computer, right? By the way, random question, have you ever, have you guys ever watched that documentary on the making of Dark Side of the Moon?

No. So it's really interesting how they recorded that album because at the time, it was like the most technologically advanced album, like, ever recorded. Like, it had, like, all these crazy, like, synthesizers and whatnot. But it was recorded at Abby Rhodes. studios, you know, like the Beatles' famous home. Yeah. And there's this one song, like the very last song of the Dark Star of the Moon album, where there's like a heart beating at the end.

It's kind of like the guy waking up from a dream or whatever. You can actually hear underneath that a Beatles song if you listen really closely. Really? So yeah. And that wasn't that long ago. You know, this was like in the, what, like 1979, I believe? So what, like 41 years ago. which I guess it's a long time

when you think about how far technology has advanced back then, but it boggles my mind that in 1979, you know, the most advanced technology with this awesome album Dark Shadow of the Moon and they still messed up. Is it because like they were in the other room? No, that

apparently it's because they were, the way that things were recorded back then, they were using a lot of tape that had been previously used and I guess tape was just like super expensive. I don't know how expensive it was, but instead of buying new, new tape all the time, a lot of times it would just erase something they've recorded and record it again over that. But apparently, I don't know what happened, but they messed something up with

this Dark Saturday of the Moon album. So try listening to that heartbeat at the end and see if you can hear that Beatle song underneath it. It's really crazy. That's so sick. That's like the ultimate an Easter egg. Yeah. That's so, so interesting. Can you get sued for that? What they, would they,

nah. I don't know. I'm not a lawyer, but I don't know. No, I mean, I'm sure it's unintentional, but like, I know I have heard so many

stories of people taking random parts accidentally and not going in the best direction. But that's so sick. Yeah. Yeah.

I actually found, found the clip. I'm going to post it in the podcast chat so people can go for it. but yeah we've been we've been trying to like find find new ways kind of of our own to to sort of push boundaries and keep things keep things fresh like musically um as well as just like with our with our live performance you know it's as as of as of now it's been you know the truest form of DJing I guess that we could or I mean like without vinyl I suppose but

you know we we put a lot of set time into our sets there's many times we improvise it and you know try to do like live live bootlegs and whatnot but we're definitely we're definitely you know picking up guitars more and and just trying to figure out how we can sort of elevate the performance value you know it would be funny if when you guys perform alive if benley just has like technical difficulties the entire time. And like the whole show is just like, uh, like him trying something new. You guys should use the Google meat sound as like a sample one of your songs. That'll be hilarious.

That'd be actually so funny. I mean, yeah, things like that would definitely give a show, uh, to an audience and they'll definitely remember when it, oh, the weird things, the weird side. And yeah, we said, we did something in one show. show where it was like like Siri talking to us and we're like and it was like a female robot voice and she's like she's like Bentley and Ari are the worst producers in the world I'm not even sure why you're at this show right now and I and I get on the mic and I'm like shut up Siri and like start the theory we just had it roast us like why does Bentley have green hair he used to

have green hair like why has Arias skip leg day I was going to say, I'm getting like serious like Axel Rose vibes from from from from Bentley right now with the with lung hair and the bandana. Is that intentional or is that just like a like a coincidence? I don't know for a while I wanted to grow like I mean I wanted to grow my hair out and there's always this awkward stage when you grow your hair out for like three to four months where it's just like poofy and goofy goofy looking so I just started

wearing a bandana I actually Ari the first time that I wore a bandana was at your at your like 90s birthday party yeah I had like a 90s birthday party two years ago I wore oh yeah I wore like a I wore a bandana and I was like

dang this is a good look for me so I just kept like I just kept wearing it and now it's like you definitely rocked that look man You got you got the bandana and the hair, the tats. It's like, if I already see you on the street, I'd be like, that guy is definitely in a band. Yeah. You're going to have to commit to it to you, right?

Like, you can't really go half with it. Like, you pretty much have to like go full in with that look or you're just like not selling it. And like he definitely like, as soon as I saw him, like, yeah, like this guy, EDMs. Like, you know, this guy music's. Yeah. Yeah. But finally, but Arii looks like he's in an EDM band. But Banley looks like you said, Guns and Roses or something.

I like it. Arii looks like he could be Kashmir's brother. I'll take it. Yeah, you can see a big difference between me and Bentley. Vanley is a little bit more on the wild side. I'm a lot more like plain and reserved in terms of like keeping heaving the accessory. I just started wearing a ring for the first time. Uh-oh.

The chance of a man. The transformation I'm starting, dude. Once it going with the rings, there's no going back. I got him a ring, but it's not like one of those. It's not like a wedding. It's not like an engagement ring. Not engaging in the ring.

It's like a sick little accessory ring. Right. Yeah, you finally get some style there, but. It's like, if your significant other gives you a ring, it's always an engagement ring. I don't care what you say. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So. So you guys are going to touch on something a little bit here regarding like producers and stuff like that. What are some other genres and like some other artists and some of the producers that you guys like are like paying attention to that you like take inspiration from? Because like myself, I find myself to be like pretty eclectic in my taste. Like I had a huge, it's not a phase, but I listened to like a lot of like heavy and like black metal when I was like in my in my teens. And then I thought you were going to say, I have a. neglecting taste in music, I listen to both East Coast and West Coast rap. Yeah, I was insane. And then, yeah, and then, you know, and then, like, as I got older,

I started listening to, like, a lot more hip-hop and rap, and especially, like, some of the older stuff just because I really, uh, I really like how they just take so much inspiration from, like, different genres, like, funk and rock and stuff like that and just, like, incorporate it into their music. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we've, we've, we've been putting, like, like I said, we've been putting more guitars on our tracks and just trying to like, try to give it like more of a, more of a humanizing feel because I think even with, well, guitars are just great in terms of how they fill the spectrum anyway. So they're always just going to like make life somewhat easier in terms of what you're

putting together on the song. They just, they just, they just feel a nice, a great amount of frequency. and um but but we just wanted we just want to like yeah i mean like you know we just want to find a way to make our music connect more with our fans like on on the regular and um uh yeah what was the question again what what what artists and genres and oh yeah yeah so look up to it yeah so i mean i mean i would say for me you know for me well for us We look a lot at like, in terms of who's pushing the boundaries in electronic, we listen to a lot of virtual riot,eptic, always has great mixed downs. We've been listening to Grant a lot lately because he just always has a fresh way of bringing sort of a future bass vibe.

And we love to, we love to like, it hits the fans and the feels the right way. And like, it's always creative. And so shout out to him. and then I also I also just like I still listen to a lot of like punk rock and throwback stuff but

I guess like outside of electronic music I always always have selection on if you haven't heard of that it's like a it's like a it's a label it's a label it's now a label but it started as like a weekly podcast now they're now they do

two-hour mixes on Apple Radio 1 every Saturday. This guy, Joe K. curates it. He's like, he's like a crate digger. And, you know, it's funny? I just literally read an article about this guy yesterday. He started the radio show from Cal State Long Beach, right? Yeah. Yeah, I just read about that guy.

Yeah. Cool. Yeah. You guys, sorry, go ahead. It's like, it's like Future Beats, Ecclactic Soul, and forgotten gyms is kind of like the tagline. But it's just like really, really fresh, like, kind of like hip hop mixed with soul, mix of funk.

And even like going into like newer house type stuff. But it's so like it's so well curated and like there's always just tons of like I always just get tons of creative inspiration. Like wow. Like that was a cool, you know, that was a cool like that was a cool way to cut that vocal or like. Like, that was a cool, like, drop out of the drums or whatever it was, you know, like, definitely, definitely look to that for kind of, like, outside of EDM inspiration. Do you, are you guys looking for a bass slapper by chance? Do you slap a bass?

I don't, but I know one. I know of one. I know a bass slapper at NZXT. His name's Andy. Oh, nice. We've actually got a number of people who are really in the music. like a Pat, Mushu's got a really good,

or Alex has a really good voice, Andy does the slapping. We've got a, especially on those who are working slash who we're working on like our headset stuff and some other projects. So definitely like, like we've had them play for us live in the office back in the day.

Like I think one day I like walked in to grab coffee and Patch is like on the ground when someone's guitar is like hitting a couple tunes. I'm like, what is happening in this office right now? you definitely start a band yeah shit

what are what are some of your guys yes you already have a name for it it's the next next up show there we go what are some of your guys

musical guilty pleasures because I love the assets of artists that's a very good question I'll just I'll let aria jump on this I just want to say I think I might have died too

Oh, no. I think they all died. Wait. Can you guys hear me? Yes, yeah. Yeah, we can definitely hear you. There's aria part two. I don't know why.

I don't know why mine just crashed. Wow. Like a split second. I think because Bentley said Britney Spears and it just froze everything. Oh, yeah, of course. I'm back. I'm back, baby. Yeah, I said, he asked what are personal and,

musical like guilty pleasures are i said first of all brittany spears toxic for sure amen toxic womanizer involuntary repeat we actually we actually just made an edit of black eyed peas um um bump it bump it no yeah and pump it pump it pump it yeah and i'm not gonna lie it goes it goes off at shows, but, you know, we love, like,

we love, like, finding, like, that those old, like, gyms, especially, I mean,

like, pump it's, I mean, a puppet and toxic are both just, like, outstandingly produced songs. Like,

they're just like, they're like, so, so out of the ordinary in terms of just what the production level was in that era. It's like, really, yeah.

Yeah, it's, it's funny. I was, I was, I was building furniture the other day, and I was like, you know, I'm going to listen to all black-eyed piece because I think people, like, kind of make fun of them. But, like, I remember, you know, when I was in, like, my clubbing days, like, they were on all the time.

Like, there was, like, two, three albums that just were dominating the radio, and they were just kicking a lot of butt all over the place. A flashback to Dennis clubbing to Furgylishes. Dude, Fergillish hits hard. I'm not, so, so. So when I say guilty pleasures, I really doesn't mean, like, songs that are, like, out of your, like, normal repertoire. Like, you just, like, can't help but, like, just jam to you. Like for myself, I will drive to, like, go grab groceries and I'll, like, throw on the Celinda on. Like, I'm not kidding.

Like, I'm all about just, like, really good, really well-performed music. I don't care who it comes from. Yeah. If it sounds good, it sounds good. That's the mantra that we should all have, even when we make music. Just like, if it's undeniably good, you can't really argue against something that makes you happy or something that's near worm. hit me with that. I can argue about it.

I don't like someone with Dennis's taste. There's an audience for everyone. How about that? It's true. I think for me it's like I can definitely appreciate the like junk food style of music. And then I can also appreciate the like really well like crafted, you know, like I'll listen to like Amigo Stir Fry. And then I'll go and listen to like Kendrick Lamar, right? Or I'll listen to like, you know, a FI and then I'll hit up like Newfound Glory or something like that.

Right. Like I'm, I'm. Oh, yeah. Right. I still listen to Falla boy. Yeah. Panic the disco and stuff like that all the time. That first panic album is still a slapper.

I still play it all the time. Yeah. Yeah. You can't hit on it. You can't. You have to understand the context for each one. And like not every song has to be like the most creative out of the box, like meaningful thing in the world. It can be simply.

just like a fun song that just makes you happy gives you good energy exactly ivan so don't make fun of me for being happy i'm inside here trying to live my life with this limit of this happiness leave post malone alone okay please um so uh before we before we uh started um this process of getting you guys in the podcast we asked for some information about you guys and i heard you guys have a have a weekly show on on twitch am i read on that Yes. What's that about? Basically, three times a week every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. We go on Twitch from about 2 to 7 o'clock PST, and we make music, hang out with the chat.

We do some other things here and there, like sample challenges where we give you guys a bunch of sounds. And then we kind of do a little contest that's called the Pixel Grand Prix. or sometimes we do something called sample royale where people send us like a bunch of different sounds random just like we got some guy drinking water some guys saying huge it's like you know like a bunch of random yeah she stuff makes me laugh that's so funny she stuff doesn't get old I don't know why I saw I love

I love guessing samples and like trying to figure out what the heck I do that all the time I will literally be listened to a song and I'm like I know of heard this somewhere and I can't stop until I find out where that sample came from. And then I find out it's been sampled like 30 different times by 50 different artists. This is why I really like listening to Kanye West music, believe it or not. Because for whatever reason, he likes a lot of like 70s rock. Like I've listened to a lot of songs. I'm like, wait, I recognize that.

And I'll go through my word. It was King Crimson. It was the most like rock band. He sampled old Persian song that my parents know. Really? For like the life of Pablo. Like one of these songs with strings is like an old Persian. The artist name is Googush.

I remember everyone was tripping out. So I'm definitely going to tune into the show and get some samples. I think I'm good at that. I think Dennis is good at that too. No, I am. I have an ear for that stuff for whatever reason. I don't have an ear for a lot of things, but it's one thing I have an ear for. But it's funny because I was just watching this TikTok.

It's actually a question I was going to ask you after this. That I'm learning a lot about music from TikTok. There's like a lot of really good DJs who just will like break down samples and like how an artist got a certain sound off of stuff. And I think I saw something where like Kanye sampled a Elton John like live vocal. you can really sample anything there's this one channel I really want to find it I forgot what it's called

but like they show you visually how they took a sample where they cut it how much they pitched it up or down and it's so cool to see there's like a whole one

on Daft Punk and like yeah people are really creative they really make it their own yeah I only say you can find it

I think I saw that daft punk one on TikTok the other day and I was tripping out on that too because they basically spliced up, like, bits and pieces of a sample, and then made, like, a new sample out of it, which is really interesting.

Yeah, with the track lib. I'm going to post the link. Yeah, I think it's super thick. Generally, we've gotten most of our sounds and samples from splice and, like, obviously just sound designing and altering the crap out of, like, whatever we can. but I mean we've just we haven't wanted to find ourselves

any lawsuits so we've been careful about sampling from other songs but you know from like from what we've heard it's kind of one of those things where it's like it's like if the song gets big enough

then you're going to get a cease and desist and like and then you can figure it out from there that means the song's making billions by then so that bridge when we get there that's literally what I told what I told Dennis, because we've been using the We Shop theme music since we started this podcast like two years ago now.

Like we're like an episode 90 and we still haven't been sued by Nintendo. But I told Dennis, if we get sued by Nintendo for using this song, it means that this podcast made it. So we got nothing to worry about. Yeah, pretty much. That's a good indicator. Yeah. I saw this, uh, this video, I figure it was from, I might have been advice or something

where it was like the story of like, uh, of, uh, Cisco's the song, the song and where he took, he takes a sample, it's an example, he takes like one lyric from Ricky Martin's A Living Vita Loka. And like after the song, he's like super big and he's playing everywhere, the guy who wrote that line, like came after them and like got like a cut of the song, which is like so nuts to me. Yeah. That's like a thing. But it's, you know, it's like at the same time as like, you know, you're that big where someone's going to ask for money out of something you created. You probably have already made it and already making a but ton of money, right? So it's like, you know, it's like a. That happened so many times. It happened when Juice World.

Yeah. With the sting happened with Pharrell and what's his name? The Blurred Lines track. Yeah. Robin Thick and Marvin Gay sued them. Their estate sued him. But yeah, once it gets to that point, I guess, like what you've generated from that song is like past the royalties you're getting from that song.

Like the opportunities you got from that song doesn't matter too much. Of course, it's not the best, but. I mean, that's why we sample ourselves now. We try to take our old songs and try to just, because you can't sue ourselves. Dennis is going to sue Little Nas X because he was little first. So to go back a little bit, what are your guys thoughts on apps like TikTok and the way they use music?

Do you have any thoughts and opinions on that? Because it's definitely been like a really hot topic in like the music community. Like I know what's the artist? It's Cookies Kauai or something. She's the one who made that like back it up song or something. And that thing hit really, really big. But she said she saw no, yeah, she saw like no real like lift from it on her own end. So like what are your thoughts about that?

I think it's it's really good. It's of course kind of hard to hit the algorithm. It gets harder and harder every single day. But it's kind of evens the playing field. You can be any person. And if your content is good enough. And I don't know how TikTok. is like managing their algorithm.

I think there's like a, they send it to one person. If they engage with it, they sent to like three more and then so on and so forth. But it's kind of an even playing field for your content. Like if you have good content and if you are consistent, then you can build something out of it. And I've seen people go from, I mean, zero to hero with their music content. And like people have gone on record deals. and people have gotten their songs promoted.

And I, yeah, I mean, I see people in the Discord saying like, yeah, they steal your data. They do. I mean, I'm not saying it's, if anything, that's a good thing to have. But have you heard of Google? That's like what is my answer? Have you heard of all the different? Have you heard about like your credit card company, your insurance? Everyone, there's, it's so sad.

Don't tell them about the grocery stores too. Dude, have you heard of Amazon literally having... There's literally everything. Yeah, they have like your phone, it knows your location, and something is being somewhere. I don't know. It's hard to manage. I'm sure that's a whole other discussion apart from here.

But TikTok in itself is great just to push your own music because you can dumb it down and kind of share it with anybody. And if you share your story and people want to be a part of it, it can gather great things. All right. So we got some questions from the community that I want to bring up a little bit here because you have a couple people who are really in the music

and I'll make sure they get their questions heard. First off is from Coyote Effect. He's a fellow artist. So, you know, maybe one day you guys will be sharing a stage with him. What got you into electronic music specifically and what was the breakthrough point of music and how did you get there?

What do you think, Bentley? I think of my job for a second. Sorry, Cody. Next question. You know, I mean, I think we, me. Yeah, you. Did I get dropped? You're better now, though.

What was the first part of that question? What got you into electronic music specifically? I know the second, I know the answer to the second part. Oh, electronic music. Well, yeah, I mean, like we said earlier, kind of like earlier Eurodance stuff growing up, I think everyone heard a little bit of that. And I got really obsessed with it in college with like the rise of justice and

Benny Benazi and like everyone in college is playing it. I mean, at least in like my circles. And I was like, I was like, this is so so like foreign. But like it just consumed me very quickly. And then I went to like my first electronic show when I was 19. And, um, and then, you know, as far as us, musically like, we've had a couple different breakthroughs, you know. One was just like getting the first song that we ever put out on a label, which was crazy. But we, we hit a number of milestones where you're just like,

okay, this is like, this is going somewhere. It's actually doing something. Suddenly we were playing shows, Monster Cat, which, you know, is one of our, one of our flagship labels that we release on. We really saw a number of labels as well But Monster Cat was ultimately like our First Born Dream to like beyond like we built the project like With the goal of having Monster Cat in mind And so that was like really cool to see that you know And and you know we get a lot of people too asking us like

About how to get on Monster Cat and like this and that and I mean, the short answer is like, we built the project so, so in line with like what we saw Monster Cat doing. And I think a lot of people just like maybe miss the branding aspects or like don't fully like listen to what their Monster Cat's putting out. And, you know, it took us a while too to figure out like, okay, it seems like Monster Cat really likes, they want to have original vocals on their songs. And so once we finally got vocalists in the room, then that took us to another level. And we kind of just both kept going and both kept getting more confident in ourselves as musicians and as producers. And once again, the rest is history. So yeah, definitely releasing with the label was one of the biggest breakthroughs.

We love Monster Cat. They really, they really kill it on all aspects, a very well-oiled machine, as one of the A&Rs say. that actually gets me to a question um so i you know every now and then you'll have like a summer two where there's like a really big hit like edm song right and it's almost always featuring this like just really like killer vocal how do you like do you think there's like a lot of room for songs that don't have vocals because it seems like those are the ones that get like the really big radio play so this so why songs of the vocals are so um I guess susceptible to being a hit is because songs with vocals are more identifiable.

They're more dynamic. You can relate to them more, whether that be because there are lyrics or whether that be because there's a human element to it. Songs that don't have vocals, although, I mean, we all love songs with vocals without vocals, but songs without vocals aren't necessarily as distinct because there isn't like a human element. there isn't like a there isn't like a changing if we call vocal instrument there isn't a really changing dynamic instrument in there to kind of hold onto that's why sometimes people are like oh this is techno it's really repetitive like i can't like you know i can't necessarily connect with this

so with vocals being such a prominent instrument it's easier to kind of feel something with them it's easier. There are all different types of voices. It's so versatile. Even if there's like a song that has like a vocal that comes in and out, but repeats throughout, even that can be susceptible to a hit. I think it's just that human element and that kind of connection

that places it in a position to be a hit. That's really interesting. Yeah. I've always wondered that. So, so thanks for, for. That's my take on it. Of course. Of course.

someone can say some things i i think that just i whenever i think of music i think of it like kind of like an evolutionary way yeah like there are like frequencies and sounds that sound like a baby crying and those are the ones that we kind of that's like a frequency that we have to dip or like cut out because like from an evolutionary standpoint it's a little more sensitive so that's why you feel this way i think like psychologically there are there are reasons why sound sound a certain way. Maybe there's like a secret market for like moms who just really like hearing that baby cry or something right because like kind of puts them in that in that mindset. There's I actually saw this one album that was made by an unborn baby. I don't know what the

process was. A woman was pregnant. She like put the vibrations of the baby kicking and like converted it into sound waves or something. It was weird. And that baby grew up to be DJ Khalid. And everyone clapped. Didn't DJ Caller do that? Didn't he had like his one-year-old son, like produce an album? Yeah, he did. Yeah, he did. Yeah, he put, he put him in the credits.

I think that's like more so just like it's, I think both marking and also just kind of looking out for his child to get royalties whenever he gets older. I usually hear baby crying, a baby crying, no matter what frequency my music is, because I have a toddler. But I get what you mean, though. But like, I totally understand. 3.4K hurts. That's the frequency that baby's cry out.

And the frequency that, I guess, twigs snap in the forest. So if there's a predatory that you let know. That's interesting. Wasn't there like an Aaliyah and Timlin song? There was like a baby doing like a little noise or something on the song? Yeah. What is it called? Yeah.

I think. I'm trying to find somebody. Tell me, that somebody. I do that one, yeah. The baby, yeah, where's it at? I had to find it.

Yeah, I remember that. It's like somewhere in the chorus. Right here. It's there. Yeah, it's obviously crying. It's a cooing. But that's it. I love that song.

I love the path that he used the baby. I always wondered, like, who decided like, hey, I got this baby in the studio. You want to have them make a noise real quick. Yeah, let's go for it. And he's just like one of the biggest hits, right?

How do you even think of that? Dude, music in the past is so much more creative than the music that we get today. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Hot take here. What does everyone else think about it? I mean, you can argue for both. You can argue that.

I mean, okay, there's so many different sides. Are you fighting today? Is that we're doing? We're going to have an argument on the podcast? No. I'll give you my two and four. They're really quick and dirty. Music is a lot more disposable now because it's saturated and,

streaming kind of made that way because people are expecting a new song every other day. Oh, for sure. And music is more accessible. We can make it, we can make music off of our laptop. Anyone can pick up DAW and get fake instruments, drums, and make it sound like it was recorded in the studio. But like also, I think it kind of goes hand in hand. We have a lot of good music, but the quality can kind of diminish. Not to say that all music is bad nowadays.

I'm just saying. It was a, the quality, like, you found a lot more, a lot more like malic and a lot more music theory driven, like, sounds and songs in the past just because, like, it was a harder to access and because there was more, like, put into it. Yeah. I also think they approached albums differently in the past where it wasn't just music. there was also like this like, you know, like art, artistic element with thrown into it with just album art,

you know? Like that's one of the reasons why I love buying records till this day is not necessarily for the music all the time. A lot of times it's just because I like the way the record looks. I'm like, oh, that's an awesome album cover. Like, I want that, you know, it's like, yeah. And then nowadays, yeah, it's just like it's, you know, an MP3 file or like a Spotify link.

It's a lot different, but, I don't necessarily think it makes it worse. It's just different. But my whole take on the whole, like, what's better, like, old music or new music, the way I see it is it's not so much like what's better. It's just that there's so much good old stuff that even if we were to just, like, stop making music today, like no more new music. You can spend the rest of your life trying to listen to all the good music that has ever been recorded

and you still wouldn't be able to listen to all of it, right? Yeah, and I feel like it's also a lot of it's like a self-selection bias, right? Like the good stuff, he's just going to stick around because it's good and like the bad stuff is going to eventually go away, except for, you know, a couple of songs that just don't ever seem to like disappear from the world. Exactly. We just say the old music is good because we just remember the good ones and forget the old ones. It's like everyone forgets about ET and the Atari, right? Literally one of the worst games ever made.

So before we kind of, uh, And this, I want to ask real quick about your new single, Medusa. I heard it today on my walk and I absolutely loved it. Can you go a little bit to the process of making that song, what it means to you? And like, where is it and like the evolution of your guys' art? Yeah. You know, I guess in terms of where it's at in the evolution. It's kind of hard to say.

I feel like the music speaks itself on that. But basically, I got in studio with Isaiah Brown because I've known him for a while. And I've always liked his voice. I think he's still growing as an artist and as vocalist. But we just, I actually met our collaborator, Esper to do it. Like we were just having some people over at our old spot in Sherman Oaks.

And we started showing each other some stuff, like just showing each other some music being like, oh, yeah, that's dope. Like, I guess he kind of like has no nightmare for a bit and show me some stuff that I really liked. And then we ended up just like being like, it was like a Thursday night or something. We were like kind of drunk. So we were like, let's just work on something. and Isaiah was there too, so we just had him record.

And it was kind of just like one of those moments because a lot of times Ari and I work in the studio, we work like, we work like five, you know, three to four, used to be like five days a week, just in the studio, like a daytime job. And we put the hours in for, you know, many years. And I wasn't like kind of finding myself in as many. spontaneous, like we would have people come and record the studio.

I wasn't really finding myself in as many spontaneous studio sessions. I mean, certainly, certainly some, but nothing kind of like as profound as this one. And we just, like, vibed. It was just like, it was just like one of those kind of like nights where we just like vibed out and like, started writing the song. And then I showed it to Aria. And he really liked kind of like the beginning stages of it. So we developed it some more.

had Isaiah come back again, had Isper come in for kind of like final touches. And then, yeah, I mean, it was like, it was just kind of like, it was just one of those things where it was just right place, right time with all the right people. And the piece is really fit. And it was awesome too because like, you know, Isaiah's friends with Turdlies and, um, Esper has his sort of like value. So everyone kind of like added value to not only just the song itself, but like the release and the promo and the rollout for everything that we try to do to kind of make this song get noticed.

And just also just feels like, you know, a little bit, I guess, I guess Isaiah's voice to me feels a little bit more like alternative than kind of some of the more EDME. vocalists that we've had, which is just something that I've been wanting on a little bit more of our crossover type of stuff. And so, yeah, I mean, I think it was just like, at least for me, and that's my side of it. I'd love to hear what Aria has to say. Yeah, Bentley started this with Isaiah and Esper. You know, sounding really sick.

He brought it to me. I did a little bit of production, but for the most part, why we like the song so much was that. Yeah, I had a little piece of everyone. Isaiah killed it on the vocals. Bellian Esperi killed it on the drops and the breakdowns and everything. I hope I killed it. But we had a good time with it.

Yeah, we did a fantastic job. Yeah, we really stuck to finish it. Ari always puts the seasoning on it. Too can, too can. Yeah. So then once we released it, we, I think this was one of the tracks, one of the biggest marketing campaigns that we came up for a track.

We made a, we made like a mini music video. The little skit with Chardley's. I know Isaiah did a little bit of a acoustic cover. Yeah, we had fun with this track. And it's just one of those things where it felt natural. And there was no dull moment. That's awesome. Yeah, it's definitely a great track.

Y'all should listen to it. We linked in the channel. We'll link it again after the show. It's going to be the new. podcast intro. They don't know yet, but we just decided that like right now. So congrats, guys. Do you guys have

some extra time to answer some extra questions from the community? Yeah, sure. Awesome, cool, cool. Because there's some really good ones that I do want to get through. First one is let's see here. What's a genre you've never made but you've always wanted to? Oh, never made but always wanted to.

Glitch hop. I feel like, yeah, Glitch hop is definitely up there. I feel like I've experimented with genres, but we've never released like, I'd say we never really released any future garage.

I definitely want us to like get in that space a little bit. So that's, that's a genre, I would say. Yeah, I was actually in Seattle just working on one of my buddies made a Glitch Hop song because he loves like funk,

Neo Soul and like 70 stuff and combining it with, modern electronic and I think the most sort of like renowned genre of that blending of styles is probably glitch hop and so that was that was actually I had a lot of fun like I was helping him out with that project and I had a lot of fun with it I was like you could actually still make glitch hop like

tight and relevant it's it's actually pretty easy already it's mostly just like where the drums are they're like staggered All the times are the same, just the drums or make it the genre. Come on. Come on. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But, um, well, and, and, and, and some, like, actual guitars and stuff. No, I'm just, I'm just, but, but yeah, no, I mean, uh, yeah, I mean, I just, I think, especially with Monster Cat being, like, a big influence. Like, I mean, we've both been listening to Monster Cat since, you know, since, since, since, since, since, I think since it came out in 2012 or 13. So I think they, did they just have their tenure? They are having their tenure this year. Oh, yeah, yeah. So, which is crazy because it feels like, it feels like I grew up with Monster Cat. But I mean, I was just, I was in college listening to Monster Cat and like pegboard nerds and, you know, all these other art.

I mean, there's a lot of glitch hop on Monster Cat, you know, growing up with it too. So I would say that. But then, yeah, I mean, like, I feel like we've incorporated. almost everything else somehow or another into our songs. We've blended versions of hip hop. We've blended, you know, I guess Future Garage definitely being something that,

I mean, you know, the end of, the end of, what's it called? Backfire. It's kind of garage. It's like Boombat. But, yeah, a little bit.

but like yeah i mean we we've we've tried to find ways of like bringing in different styles even if it's just one portion of a song or whatever um so yeah we try to stay versatile but please let us know if there's anything specific that you would want to hear maybe we haven't thought of or something i want to hear a Travis scott type beat from you guys with some heavily 808ed vocals yes my team he's he's definitely like i would say as much as i don't like how he turns every song he's on into a Travis Scott song. I like the sonics of it. And I feel like his production is very, very like different. And I'm noticing the trend kind of started swinging over to like the stuff he's doing, but it's really, really cool. My roommate's actually

Apex Martin, who's on Mike Dean's label. So yeah, so I'm trying to see if I can finesse some, some situations. So that actually kind of leads into my next. My next. question, which is, are there any collabs you would love to do with any artists? Who would it be in why? I really want to make a track with Virtual Riot. He is so good.

So definitely up there because he is, I think I've actually learned the most from watching his production live streams. Yeah, I feel like, I feel like I would just not even, like I would be just, like, I feel like I wouldn't even learn anything from the

session live with him because I'd be like, what are you, like, what are planning? But no, I mean, I'm kidding. I just feel like he's on another level. Yeah. You know, I mean, I don't even know what a collab with DJ Snake would look like. He seems like way too mysterious to do like something in person. Like I feel like Eptic just sent stuff back and forth. But maybe he like actually got to go.

Like I would love to just like. Get in the studio with DJ Snake, see what his work flow process is. Like, maybe, obviously, SkrillX, too, would be, like, super huge. I'm trying to think of stuff, like, you know, I'm trying to think of stuff, like, kind of outside of EDM. But, you know, I don't know. We get this question a lot, and I feel like my answer changes all the time. So I don't know.

The correct answer was the baby. The baby. You get a ride into the baby car, though. I like little baby more, to be honest. Damn. I do too, actually. I think it's way, way better. But, you know, what do I know, right?

I'm a, I'm a post-Millan fan. Post-Malone, let's collab with him. That'd be sick. Actually, so, yeah, we have been talking about, we've been discussing the idea of doing a collaboration. with or I don't know if it would be a feature or what but we we are talking about reaching out to Black Bear for something on like one of our songs. Ooh.

Yeah. That'd be super cool. All right. So last question I got for you guys before we go ahead and head over to the community updates is what electronic artists do you miss the most who has stopped doing music or changed names or disbanded? There's this one artist. I don't know how

I think it's Obeson O beston Is how you spell it Like the O is like O has a slash in it I didn't really post it But he used to make the craziest music I haven't heard anything new from him

I don't think he's I think he's finished I think he finished making music He beat the game Nice I'm gonna say I'm gonna say the first one that comes to mind,

I know there's definitely a lot. I feel like there's also there's also a good amount of artists that I like really I really liked whenever I, can you hear me? Yes, sir?

Yeah. There's a lot of artists that I really liked that I feel like, if I listen to now, I feel like we've surpassed them in a way. And like, it's interesting to see that, it's interesting to see that like,

in only, like, it's just like only five years, like, how many artists have kind of like, faded away or like, you know, I mean, maybe just, maybe just moved on to other things. I mean, obviously, there's probably plenty of them that are still doing music, maybe in a different lane. But, you know, I guess, I guess that's just kind of a testament to, um, to staying, to staying, staying in it and, and staying driven and, you know, to just keep going to try and achieve your purpose. But first one that comes in mind is Rusty,

because Rusty was like making such crazy next level music. And like he only put out like a small, like a small discography. But I always liked, I always liked listening to Rusty. And a taste maker stuff. Do you have any audio? All right. I said, yeah, obeisone.

Obeason, Obeason, I have no idea. He is so good. We'll figure out when he does. Yeah, he was ahead of the game. I don't know why he stopped. All right. All righty then. Thanks, guys.

Really appreciate it. Thank you for answering all of our questions. If you guys want to stick around for the community updates, totally cool. If not, it's up to you guys. I don't want to hold you up for way too long. Yeah, I kind of have to dip, to be honest. Thank you, Bentley. Really appreciate you hanging out, man.

Yeah, of course. I appreciate it. Thank you guys. I have to take another call. But we really appreciate you guys having us on the show. Yeah, guys. Thank you so much. No, thanks.

Thanks a lot. You know, we'll definitely check out those streams because I want to throw some wacky samples at you guys. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, we love the sample Royale. We're going to be doing that. And then we talked about doing the next Grand Prix where we provide the samples and then the community has to make a song or like make songs while we

make our own version of the song too but we have these i was just saying already we had these like exotic car recordings that my buddy gave me from the shop and so he's having me do this like soundtrack um using all of these like exotic car sounds and it's going to do some cool stuff with it like on social media and this and that, but I figured that we could use them for the, for the stream as well. So, yeah, it's, it's cool. Definitely come check it out. We have a lot of fun.

Yeah. Yeah. And thanks also for the, for the top down in the bed, uh, cam view. I feel like I'm like, treating on your personal life right now, dude. It feels really incident. That means a vibe, man. He's jealous. I'm so tired.

He's just, he's not. hanging out right now. All right guys. Thanks a lot. Really appreciate it. Hopefully we can have you again sometimes super soon or, you know, next time you guys have something that you want to talk about. Definitely let us know. We'll be more than happy just to chill and, you know, talk about music some more. It's great. Cool. Yeah. Thank you guys. Thanks. Take care. Have a good rest of your day, night, morning. Take care. So Cal living. See you. All right, guys. So that was, I guess are you still here? He was gone. He was talking for a second. I guess he's still hanging out. But yeah, that was really cool. It's really awesome having those guys on.

I love talking about music. They gave me an idea, Dennis. Oh, yeah. What was your idea? You know how they were doing this whole like sample challenge? Like we should totally enter with our own group. But we'll do it like in Spanish and our name would be terror pixel. Like the opposite. Because I feel like those guys are very similar to us.

Because they're a tag team, but opposite. And I think you and I are actually very similar in a lot of ways. But when it comes to music, I definitely think we have some similar interests. But for the most part, I think we're opposite. So I think it would be interesting if we actually participated in something together. Like our powers combined could probably make the world's greatest electronic music duo. We'll just quit our jobs here and just start traveling the world doing music. yeah to be honest like i've always wanted to grab like like a set of turntables and just like learn

how to like just do like really basic mixes and like i'd love to like go to like downtown folitin or something you know and just like play music like on the weekends it's it's actually not that hard to be honest to mix um to do club stuff yeah yeah i mean i'm not i wouldn't i would in a million years call myself, I'm, you know, DJ Poppy or whatever. But like, as you know, I listen to a lot of records and because of that, like, not right now, but at one point, you know, in my single days, like my, my stereo system was actually basically a DJ set up because I got tired of flipping records over. So I would like have two turn tables and a mixer and I would play one side of a record and then mix it into like the other side and little by little, I was like, oh, I can actually

like make mixes and stuff. So I'm not a DJ and I'm not going to call myself a DJ, but you can definitely do it, man. It's not super complicated. It's just you have two records and then you have a little slider in the middle and then you just blend them. It was like a hobby. I think I told you my story about me doing like an impromptu DJ

at a Mortal Kombat tournament before now. Probably, but I think it's one of those memories that I filed under Dennis. I don't remember it. Yeah, but basically, like, long story short, I was at, like, the Mortal Kombat, like, finals for, like, their seasonal, like, tournament. Where Sonic Fox won, because he wins everything, right? And it was at a club in downtown L.A. They, like, they, like, rented out the entire building, you know, with stage and all. And afterwards, there was, like, an after party that Nether Realms and Warner Brothers through, you know, for whoever was there, right?

Just kind of make it more of an event. and the music that's playing was really, really, really bad. There was a guy up in the, there's a dude up in the booth. And I'm like, man, this guy's not. Like, no one's moving. No one cares. They're just chatting. It's like, I got you kind of quiet.

He leaves her a bit. And I'm like, all right, let me see what's up. And he's go sneak over. And he's playing, he's playing music off of this like Pandora, a Samsung tablet setup plugged into the ox cord. And I'm like, oh, man, like, no wonder this is so bad. And he was gone for a while, too. So I thought maybe the dude bounced or something.

So I'm like, you what? Like, I'm not doing anything. all my friends are doing something else. I'm going to go, you know, just hop in here. And I literally plug in my phone and I start playing stuff off of Spotify. And like the incident to start playing things. People are like, you know, they're like looking over. Like, all right, you know, it's kind of cool.

It's kind of a vibe. And like, you know, like we literally had like a whole party there. It was really cool. And I kind of like, Batman ever can have stuck with me because I was like, I'm not like someone who I think could like make music, but I can definitely like get a feel for like what a crowd wants to hear and like kind of mix in a couple things that to keep the good vibes going. So I think like even just doing that would just be something super fun to do.

Well, if you end up doing that, let me know if you need a hype man. For sure, dude. Just come in. Yeah, boy. Poppy here. Okay. So community updates before we go ahead and this fantastic podcast, it's so much fun. It's such a great podcast.

So I think that first one's already done. I don't think we can talk about this one anymore. So the pick. People have been DM me about who you. We're going to announce Pucci's pick super, super soon. He's been really, really busy. I'm working on stuff on the back end. But Pucci's pick is coming.

We'll get announced. So don't worry, you'll still get all the fantastic rewards and all the clout for being a valued member of the community. We are also still, and I think small is probably going to spam all this stuff for us anyway. But, yeah, we're still taking applications for moderators. So if you think you could be a good moderator and you have a little bit of experience and know what it's like to help foster community please apply, you know, let us know what's up. Also, Pucci's professors is still taking applications, and Pucci's professors is basically a hardware slash software program, a little group of people in the server who help teach

about software and hardware and hardware in the most simple, non-pretentious, fun, friendly, easy to get into a possible. a really good example why a program this is really important is because if you guys saw one of the latest Linus Tech Tips video where they had one of their like office workers like a research and and like buy and build her own computer parts

it's not easy you know like if you don't know anything about hardware but you know about NZXT and you want to learn it a little bit it can be pretty pretty daunting so I think something like that is pretty awesome Pucci's pals is also a thing is basically our little welcomes friendly committee, you know, that hangs on the server and makes sure everyone's having a good time.

And I believe that's it for that. Also, missing rewards, right? If you guys are missing any rewards, please use the form, mn-60.com slash missing rewards. If you're in the U.S., please wait a month. If you're outside the U.S., please wait up to three months before you submit something because right now with the pandemic, it's still taking a little bit to get things out to people. So let's keep an eye on that. And if follow y'all's any of all's listening from the, from the Twitch, check out our Discord.

Discord.g.g. slash NZXT. We have a great community, free stuff if you hang out. You really can't go wrong. You really can't wrong. And if you're listening on the Discord, check out our Twitch. Twitch.com. We don't have much going on yet. But Dennis and I do want to kick up a notch with the podcast.

and Twitch is going to definitely play a major part in that because the next big thing you want to do, obviously is add video. Like people have been asking about video for a while. We don't have video yet, but I'm hoping soon once Dennis and I get vaccinated, we'll actually be able to get our podcast studio back and go into our studio and record a podcast that not only sounds better,

but just has like a better experience. You know, maybe we can make a little better setup for ourselves over there. And if you can't, then I'll just carve out some space here in the house. Which, by the way, I'm curious. Like, I'm curious how that studio is. I'm hoping that it didn't turn into like some storage closet for the builders. Because I know we were low on space.

So hopefully, hopefully that studio is still there when we get back. Yeah. And also last final update, something that's kind of been happening, turning topic in the community. It's going to throw this out here for everybody who may or not be aware. Yes, there were some goofy stuff that happened with the rewards due to our April Fool's prank. What I would say is don't be worried. If you have rewards that are coming to you, you're not going to miss out on them. If anything, some extra people got a nice gift courtesy of us,

which I think everyone should be happy and celebrate. And we actually have a lot of new people in the server now as a result. So, you know, if you see them, let them know what's up, be welcoming, be warm, be friendly, right? This is a great test, you know, for the community. community to see if they can if they can handle an influx of people you know always always um what's the saying like uh like a never never see if like your neighbor has more than you but always make sure that that they have enough right i think that's a good philosophy to go on i thought the same was don't be dumb well that too but you know yeah just be nice yeah be nice help each other have fun and the rest the rest is history that you really can't pixel to pixel

So terror, so eloquently told us. Yeah, exactly. And yeah, just like how June says, I got a poochie, I feel bad for the guy that actually deserves it. No one deserves it. It doesn't deserve it, right? It's a gift. We give it out for free.

Everyone is deserving. And if you did get one, then awesome. You know, like, you know, make sure that you live up to the N60 core values. You know, those usually go out to the highest ranking members. So, you know, a few people got some of them, you know, like I said, as like a little accidental gift. So, you know, just enjoy it, you know. Enjoy it.

You're part of a special club now, but not too special. And also, don't forget to Fox to Foxel. Follow Pixel Terror, our amazing guests, literally everywhere where they're at. Instead, they're on, they're on Monster Cat. Oh, my God, the embeds. They're a Monster Cat as Pixel Terror on Twitch, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok as Pixel Terror base. They have a YouTube channel.

They have a SoundCloud. They have a Discord as well. The Pixel Core, check them out. I think the stuff that they're doing with like allowing community to come in and like do do music with them make music with them is like really awesome. Yeah, that was an awesome idea. Yeah, super smart. It's like man, I'm going to steal this. I'm not even lying.

I'm totally going to participate in that challenge. No, like I want to send them. I want to send them just like old funk like dirty, dirty samples and see what to do with it. Because I think, I think we should send them some some of your mom's, He's like some bookies. Some bookies, some ananah, some Ananitos Verdes, right? Injillo Wells. What's that one band?

Oh, man, Magneto, right? Voila, voila. I don't know. You should talk to my wife about these bands. Dude, I really feel like me and you're like people like BFFs. Yeah. That's like all her music for sure. Is this song here?

Crit and four. No one's going to charmark this, so we're good. I said it totally wrong. I'm so bad it's Spanish, but the song is a slapper dude. And the video is hilarious. It's like five dudes like synchronized dancing and shaking their hips. It's so funny. I'll link the video too, so see you guys and check it out.

But it's awesome. Other than that, that's pretty much it, guys. Nice to have you back, Ivan. Happy to have you back. Good to be back. Yeah, continue doing great things together. And in the community and in our, you know, socials.

Great. Also, I mean, you know, might as well. Follow us. Follow NST on all of our

social media. We're at NST everywhere pretty much. I don't think we, we have any, any different names almost everywhere.

Definitely, we're definitely on, on live journal. Do you get to hear all my, all my secret thoughts on there? Okay. And,

oh, I messed that up. One more time. One more time. Nope, that doesn't work. There we go. Thank you.

to Pixel Terra once again for joining us for the amazing and insightful podcast. And thank you to everybody who tuned in. Remember to tune in next week at 10 a.m. Pacific Standard Time on the official NZXT Discord server and Twitch and follow at NZXT on all relevant and irrelevant social media. And if you want to ask a question off the air, send an email to Clubcast.n.com. We got a couple of funny messages. Someone just sent us a woo-woo. Someone said, can you sing they're ever going to give you up?

I'm not going to sing I'm not a singer I'm not a business I'm a business man I said that wrong too don't forget to listen to previous episodes on Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Spotify and SackCloud I'm not a business man I'm a business man and

if you can do as a super super duper huge favor leave us a positive review if you like what you hear but especially if you don't and with that guys thank you very much and we'll see you next time bye Wear your mask and stay safe.