Episode 43: "DR ALBINO" feat. Torn Hawk *PREVIEW — FULL EPISODE ON PATREON*

You are listening to the free version of Cloud Farm. Swear down, boss. I thought I was on a fucking farm-oriented podcast, motherfucker. Let's cut the bullshit. I'm a genius. That's on Chum. But I'm annoying. Yo, that's on Chum. I'm a genius. Look at the one black feather. But I'm annoying. This is my internal motherlock. Wait, here's my impression of your girlfriend. Hey, this guy. I feel like the porn soundtrack is kind of, it's a lost art. Fake mink is tough on God. You're blowing my load. But you would never wear a hat with a brim. Go kill yourself. I'm going to kill myself. I want the eagles to come un-eaten, motherfucker. I was not aware of that. I am Jack Callahan. I am Jack Callahan. I'm Jack Callahan. Jazz. Jazz. Miles Davis. Fake mink. Crispy pig. White dreams. Recarpet my stairs. Take. the carpet away you got a bunch of witcher DNA it's the mission liquid that makes you like do the thing and see it through I'm all about economy of objects in the kitchen and like but you know that don't you do you remember like a particular like an album cover from like like what are our album covers that visually really impacted you oh if any that's one i'm like really bad at like pulling shit out of my head like on on demand um it's like a specific like soundbite skill that people have dude i know it like blows and people can do it it's like insane it's like what are your favorite except i mean i i say these things all the time where i'm like heat's my favorite movie yeah so things that i've repeated a thousand times what's your favorite movie pete gotcha but yeah like it's then later i'll be like i know what i was but i'm not my brain is not built that way where i can be like oh except that you know i just mentioned that like you know low is a great cover but that's from men fell to earth like it's a still from the movie but heroes is a great cover um do you ever like reverse engineer music from imagery oh for sure yeah i mean i because i i'm like doing as much stuff you know

that you can look at as I am that you can listen to. So I'm usually, I'm maybe more often coming from like a visual direction, like where I, not like to be like, you know, swinging around that I'm like synesthetic or however you say that, like Nabokov type shit. But I think most people are, though, well, yeah. But I mean, you think about like Mahler or something like, or like the ken russell movies where he he was that ken russell movie mollard like it's uh there was a period after maybe like earlier popular music where it was not so visual or something but i think music was always like hyper visual uh i'm i'm sounding real fucking like fluffy right now but yeah i i usually come from like words like naming like like a phrase and and an image and then i'm like i want to make it sound like what those things suggest you know and that kind of keeps me in line for like so it doesn't just go into some like mush space like to remind myself of like what the brief is for that track like okay yeah no it's it's this because i can you can go a lot of different ways but this was like you know the original you know it's like a working title and a working image and i go from like the image to the track so what informed uh or what inspired uh wait was it put that crotchless thing on and come save my life oh that shit uh yeah well that was like i mean i just that was some like like uh dumb like like romance uh uh grief type shit where i was literally like trying to like that was like a craigslist ad was like somebody put put on that outfit and fucking make me feel better the title is what it is what it says it is you know like put that gorgeous put that thing on and and improve my life again reverse engineered from the images again yeah i mean the yeah the

The name came after, but it was like, this kind of sounds like the way I'm feeling, which is, you know, I'm thinking that if only somebody would wear one of those things, they would really save my life. I'm like, I'll just name the track that. And it sounds like that because it's kind of like wistful, like the guitar hooks are kind of like, you know, wistful, but then it's got this like, you know. It's a dance song. I've played that shit before. I've played that shit in the club. Good taste. true i mean it's yeah it's got this dude i was just listening to this i got a bunch of stuff from like like like crappy uh like porn soundtrack samples like i don't i try not to watch that shit that much don't do it but i stick to fellini occasionally happens you know and because i'm just kind of i'm like i'm like uh trawling for for like audio like they'll have the best like 90s art like really like bit crushed like crappy compressed seven different ways from a who knows and maybe just made by i don't well now it could just be made by like a bot but uh it's like really kind of generic but has like strange personality and like the the second track on the lies the last lies lp uh like the the sword whatever track is has this porn soundtrack sample which is sick and then ron made me tone it down he's like hey man that's it's just a little bit it's a little bit too you know like he was embarrassed to have just like Rod was censoring you yes he's a fucking he's he's he's a softy yeah he's always trying to step on people's necks not let them be weirdos he was trying to bite the jugular I mean but I just listened to I was playing it for a friend or something recently I was like oh I forgot that I had this other version it was like a little bit more like in your face where it just like the girl it's a lube of a chick she's like oh yeah and a guy like oh it's like okay it sounds like it's a little bit you know but it's it's groovy it's groovy so you always watch porn with the sound fuck yeah that's the i can listen to it that usually with my eyes closed i feel like the porn soundtrack is kind of it's a lost art

yeah i mean and especially now when it's just gonna be made by like suno i've been messing around with suno man oh shit sounding good it sounded fucking great i had a bunch of uh cocktail stuff that i put to kind of twin stuff i put to like four track for my radio show so i have these tapes sitting around when i'm like taping something onto the onto the four track i'll like listen after it to be like, oh, I wonder what's on this tape. And I remembered that I had that there. So I was like, oh, fuck, now that I'm using the Suno, the AI, you know, music site, like, let me just upload that. And it's, like, super slowed down, like, blown out, like, warbled some shit from Heaven or Las Vegas. And, you know, it's like, of course you can upload other people's music to that site. Like, there's no... even though they could have an algorithm as soundcloud does as soon as you upload something they don't think you have the rights to like within a millisecond it's like you don't so they're not trying because they know that that would cut their user base down to nothing so yeah i'm just doing this project where i'm uploading like super mushed out cocktail stuff um to suno and then and then typing in lyrics and it spits out the best which sounds like that But it kind of like interpolates its own melodies and stuff. And then it will sing these silly, you know, not too goofy, but right on the cusp of goofy and transcendent. Like uncanny goofy. Yeah. It's like, because I say this type shit and it does it. It's my little pal. It does what I see. So you're like pretty optimistic about this stuff. You're not like a naysayer. I'm absolutely. i mean i think about it like the like union returns shit like i use exclusively like that east west uh sounds online um dst or whatever and it's all like pro you know mic'd different mic positions actual instruments that's basically i mean it's kind of ai it's like it it's a an assistant like i'm not and i don't have to engage like a fucking orchestra you know and like it's it's basically this is just one step up from that where the the like like uh this fucking nice thing that that i don't like tarantino i like him as a human being i guess but like i don't like his movies but he said an interesting thing no uh he

I feel like that's the inverse opinion to what a lot of people have. No, but he said a great thing about Ridley Scott. He was at the Sundance Institute or some shit early on, and Ridley Scott was a speaker or a helper. And he was like, how do I make movies? And Ridley Scott was like, you just pick the people and hire the people that will... do the job the way you want them to do it and they make the movie you don't like the director doesn't make the movie you kind of like delegate and you hire and you arrange the this all these skilled people and i i never had thought about it like that and that's and that's becoming more and more like with ai you just become more and more of a director because if you have a lot of ideas it's always painful to have to figure out how to execute them And it just raises the level of scale that you can do really grand things with just you. And you say, do it like that. Because AI, as we know, as we've seen, if you just let it do its generic thing, it comes up with the same crap. There's a look to it. There's a sound to it. It's not good. If people want to listen to that or look at it, fine. But I feel like people are discerning. will reject most of the crap that like if joe schmo goes on there and tries to make something you still need to like pick what's good and bad and nudge it this way or that and you know it's it just raises the the power that one person has um to create like bigger things i think yeah i mean it's almost like to me to me like the whole conversation about like what like there's there's like the pseudo like luddites or whatever who not even like luddites because that's that's that's too derogatory but the people who are like rightfully kind of pessimistic about and people who like embrace it wholeheartedly to me almost like seems beside the point like it's not even at this point it's not even a matter of whether it's good or bad because it's happening yeah exactly like it's just it's here and like as like cynical as it is like you can either embrace it as strong but you can choose to become

proficient in it and find ways to wield it in a way that serves as an extension of whatever your like practice is like whatever you're the ideas that you have burbling in the back of your mind are or you can choose to to deny the reality that's been foisted upon you right yeah you can kind of be all beanie style which um about technology in general or whatever which is cool because they're now well just like like somebody who uh is like super entrenched in in like an anachronistic view of of technology or whatever and but there's a there's a path there there's that you can make good work like with really limited tools in general that that i don't i just don't see like a hard line between the ai and what's already been going on with digital music creation like like ableton is is a is a enabling tool that that by by any like toddler's definition would would would be kind of um on the same trail as ai like it i don't see that ai is that much of a leap it it is like you can do a lot more you know uh you can you can be a lot more specific with with how you direct it but it you know when i was a kid if i thought that i could engage like a whole fucking like string section of an orchestra and then you know it I don't think that that's, you know, has that much, like the digital tools that have been around for quite some time to realize, you know, musical ideas aren't that far away to some kid, you know, then the AI tools, you know, AI, if anything, it makes you have to do more work because you can just create stuff so quickly. There's a new problem where you just have to be like, fuck, I got to stop. i gotta stop because now i'm actually making more work for myself because i have to cut it up yeah and like pick the parts because it does it makes a bunch of shit that's real bad and or maybe it's bad like wait is that bad in a good way is that could i use this you know it just it generates it's it's a it's like uh yeah the curator's complex it puts your faculties to the test in that respect i think yeah it's pretty interesting well i felt like that way with claude too where it's like it actually helped me

like like zero in on what i was trying to say about this dumb hillary clinton rant or whatever like the way that it talked back to me like it made me i felt it in my head like like as the gears were kind of getting like sharpened or more engaged whatever to say what i really wanted to say it didn't feel like like when i started it's because i've only been messing with this shit for like a month um and i don't want to i don't want to come off as some like ai uh evangelist yeah like who cares but it's it's as you say it's just a reality so i'm just having my experience with it and talking about it but like i was concerned you know kind of predictable way initially that it was just gonna like like do everything for me and i would kind of like become like a weird um like you know bag of jello or something but like the the opposite kind of happened where i kind of got more sharpened about like what what i like and what i don't like and what i want to do what i don't want to do just because you know it's like when you if you're like a billionaire like yeah you can do everything and you can be like vanilla ice not like he was a billionaire but he had a bunch of money and he and all he did was to mdma and and cry about it the next day And then he figured out that's not the way to spend money. You know, like if you have money, like it creates choices that just sharpens the choices of how you want to spend the money, you know? It's funny because you, it's interesting because you would got sort of a lot of attention for kind of rearranging and messing with old tech with the VHS stuff. Like at what point did it kind of, I'm not saying, well, maybe it didn't like switch at all. But like, do you think in that process there where you're fucking with old tech? um was that kind of i guess obviously because with the the ai stuff or like when people look at that kind of imagery it's associated with a kind of like elegiac right um you know nostalgia or whatever or like haunting blah blah but like now this like do you think that you approach the ai shit in the same way um well i actually thought about kind of along the lines of what i think you're asking like

While I've been using this shit, because when I first started doing video stuff, I was making comedy movies with my buddies around 2000, 2001. And I was really against using any kind of collage stuff from... you know public sources or copyrighted sources like my friends wanted to put in imagery to these movies like no no it's got to be all original and then something flipped a little later when i started doing the ppu videos and stuff where i was like no i should just use what i want and it's a similar feeling um where now where i'm like i'm it's it's on the continuum like like me appropriating stuff from vhs's and stuff is on the continuum with me, uh, actually taking some of that same stuff or, or still from the web or whatever and inputting it to Craya, you know, and, and coming up with, with other imagery, there's nothing, it's just kind of like extending it. Like I just made a video for the last record, um, that used both, you know, and I figured out how to kind of like, and I, it's, it, I can foresee the two, practices like totally meshing and just making, you know, just again, I'll have more power. I'll be fucking more powerful than ever. Right. I'll be more fucking powerful than ever before. I love that you're naturally doing the full second take. Yeah. Did you ever see the movie Final Flesh? I'm really bad with names. but I don't think so. It's like, do you know who Vernon Chapman is? He did like Xavier. Yeah. It's like a movie where, like, I think it was one of his earlier things with like PFFR, this like kind of like comedy group or whatever that he was in, where they like paid a bunch of like porn studios to like act out these like hyper specific, like insane, surreal scenarios. Whoa. Like the whole thing sounds like, I don't know why it's encouraging, but it just seemed like it would be down your alley. That sounds pretty good.

I'm going to save that for later. Final flash. Write that in my notes. If it's porn though, you're going to have to have your eyes closed whilst you watch it. It's just better. I like sound. I haven't seen it myself, but I'm sure it's visceral. Is doing the work with PPU what brought you into doing electronic music? Or was that something you were doing beforehand? Absolutely. Because, well, I mean, you know, I was in the like crowd shit, like Harmonia, whatever. um but i didn't i wasn't into like funky electronic music of any kind or dance music really um i was into some metallo shit maybe like some guy was selling a whole gigantic cd collection in like 2003 and i gave actually i think he just gave it to me gave it to me and andrew morgan the guy from ppu it was his friend it was going to like fucking oxford or some shit like take take my stuff and he gave me my speakers that I still have these fucking ohm sick fucking speakers that's crazy all right sorry I but yeah like I didn't even know I was such a fucking dumbass that like I would give Andrew like demos of shit that I was doing I was like why don't you put this out on PPU like not knowing not not not getting that like and you wouldn't I mean you could imagine what I was making at that time it was like proto torn hawk shit but it was like super like just like kleenex pop you know like not like wiping your eyes not not like cum rag type shit i that was that was the follow-up yeah but you know he was just kind of gently like like like kind of just wouldn't like say anything or like you know not like shutting me down but yeah i didn't really get like what he was up to or like what that context was and like um but slowly kind of dawned on me what what his project was And then he took me to the gathering that AFP, Andrew Field Pickering, you know, used to have up in Gettysburg at his family's home there. They have a huge camp out with all these, like, you know, mostly East Coast, like, record nerd folks and electronic-oriented young people. And I met a bunch of people there and then kind of started to be like, oh, okay.

I still don't, like, really give a shit about, like, house music specifically. Techno I care a little bit more about, like, in terms of the history, you know, of or, like, older artists or whatever. But, yeah, like, I didn't know anything. And so he was a window. In terms of, like, well, one time we just, we, like, sat there and just, like, recorded samples at his house. Like, we just put stuff on the... turn table and like record like you know screw stuff down but like take little bits and i made a cd of it took it home and that's where like most of the early torn hawk almost all of it those were the beats that i used yeah on like every fucking early lives track like at least you know like 10 tracks were all stuff that was sourced from his that one day where we just sat there oh wow yeah so literally like it in terms of the interpersonal side meeting people and the actual like building blocks of the tracks it was all because of him so how did you get hooked up with him if you weren't a dance music guy up until that point i worked at a uh a coffee shop in dc i was living in dc oh okay i moved down from jersey i got kicked out of my house my mom was sick of me sitting around after i got kicked out of college for starting club destroy oh my god you again preempted one of the sorry well i'll tell you later uh fuck's sake yeah i got kicked out of barred college which nobody should go there. Young people. My girlfriend's there right now. Really? Yeah. Aw, man. Well, it's a good place. They got great factories. I think it's a good place. I just don't think people should be paying 50 grand. Hampshire's got better drugs. We would drive down to Hampshire to buy the MDMA. Don't pay attention to that part, Mom. yeah they had a big fucking party called the menage which i don't think they have anymore probably like in the in the environment we have today like that it would just be like a supposed sex party with like but campus wide and they had these suds like my whole in front of my fucking dorm there was just like a like three feet like a phone party yeah no but it was it was like everywhere but then the entire fucking like huge uh old gym across from my dorm south hall they had it was just filled with these weird

the whole it was crazy man i that's funny because in the uk that's kind of like a a really like generic club night for like it's a staple of uk clubbing for like really like regular people oh no shit yeah yeah but these but like bard people are you know special little dorks uh but yeah so i get kicked out of there then i get I was living back in Jersey at my mom's. Then she kicked me out. So my dad had a place in D.C. that was just free because he was teaching at the University of Maryland. So he said, why not? It was on sabbatical, so the place was empty. So I moved down there and then started working at a coffee shop called Sparky's. And Andrew's girlfriend, Danny, now wife, who ran this vintage shop called Meeps. Fuck, I knew this. That's all in the fucking notes. You're blowing my load. She would come in. She would come in to the... Because her house was like right around the corner from the coffee shop. She would come in like every day. We became friendly. Then Andrew would come in. And DC's so fucking small. And they were friends with Sponius because Andrew, this woman Garnet, was dating Ian. And Andrew and her went to high school together. So it was very small, tight-knit. Like anybody who was... was into cool shit in dc it's like there's no i don't know if it's this way anymore but there's like 10 people you know so once you kind of like meet one person but andrew was like a real special um individual no nobody else in dc was into like the the really uh rig like his rigorous kind of survey of like mid-atlantic dance private press shit and go-go and stuff like um was very and it continues to be i think pretty unique uh which i didn't understand at the time anyway as i said but like we started hanging out all the time and i started working with him and he had a claymation business i think he still has um i would teach kids claymation with him during the summers and shit which was fucking funny sick um and then yeah from there into into what i said let me let me pee really quick though hey faint niggas

They do it all for the clout. Always running their mouth. But they've never been about. I splashed niggas. In and out. In and out. Clout is killing our people. They do it for U-K-L. Clout is killing our people. They do it for U-D-N. Clout is killing our people. They move like the groupies, them. Sending shots or snap, but in real life don't use their skank. You know who likes special entertainment like that? My mom!