In 2010, oOoOO debuted on the now-defunct label Disaro with an untitled CD-R, each of the 100 copies decorated with a unique collage made from cutouts of fashion magazines. At the time, the label and weird artist spelling naturally lumped the EP in with the whole then-on-the-up witch house thing, but looking back, songs like "NoSummr4u" and "Egyptynlvr" easily stand on their own as just weird, corroded pop. Anyway, he was good then and has been since, and just released his debut album, Without Your Love, via his new label Nihjgt Feelings. To celebrate, download this FADER mix and read an interview about the label, being tired with A$AP Rocky and not making coffee. Tracklist at the bottom.
Download: oOoOO's FADER Mix
Why did you decide to start your own label and release your album there? What are your plans for the label? The label's part of an obsession with controlling all aspects of what I put out. I've always enjoyed curation, too. I had a pirate radio show before oOoOO existed. When I have some money someday in like 57 years, I'll buy a dingy little bar on some ancient back ally in a city like Addis Ababa or Gdansk and spend my nights immaculately perfecting the jukebox. And I have a lot of idealistic plans for the label, which will be revealed in due time. But Nihjgt Feelings will move slowly and deliberately. Like burning down a big house with a single match over the course of a lifetime. It probably won't much interest the type of person who's concerned with what's about to "blow up." We're making music for those kids/people who're hanging in their bedroom alone watching old Bresson movies on their laptops, wishing they knew some other creep who wanted to watch old Bresson movies with them. People looking for something to listen to after the movie's over and they're staring at the ceiling trying to fall asleep alone. It's just some little label we're running out of a dilapidated house on an island in the Aegean. So it will be nothing to most people. But hopefully mean a lot to a very few people. I think the mix I made for the Fader here explains better what the label will be about than I can with words.
I really like "Forlorn Dub," but it's not on the album. Why not? I didn't think it fit. All the tracks on Without Your Love are chapters of a single story. But "Forlorn Dub" is its own short tale. I like when tracks are just out floating on the internet with no affiliation to a release, tunes that can't be bought or sold or owned, like ghost tracks that lived in a time before every last bit of the world was a commodity attached to a branding campaign. It's here in the mix I made though.
When did you start considering yourself a musician? I started playing drums when I was three, guitar when I was five. My mom has a picture somewhere of me behind a miniature drum kit. It's strange to look at it, to see pictures of yourself playing music taken before you even had a memory. And since I can't remember that far back, I don't know why I wanted to play music in the first place. No one in my family even plays and no one encouraged me to start. As soon as I could talk, I just started asking for instruments.
On the album, "The South" and "5:51AM" are like Southern rap seen from different decades—the former contemporary, and the latter like early ’90s Memphis. Do you have favorite newish rappers? Or producers? To be honest, I'm kind of burnt out on new music. There was a lot of excellent experimentation between about 2007-2011. But a lot of new stuff out right now feels hollow. Rap/hip-hop in particular seems to have had another brief golden age of experimentation around the turn of the decade. But most of the new shit that's riding that wave is watered down and uninspiring. Hard to pinpoint exactly when it began, but that A$AP Rocky/Skrillex collaboration is as good a marker as any to indicate the moment after it ended. It's also possible that because I'm so deeply immersed in the music industry at the moment, the over saturation has blunted my sensitivity to music and I'm just having a hard time appreciating it. This whole world seemed more magical before I saw how it works on the inside. So I've been digging into the past lately and listening to shit from the ’70s a lot. A lot of film soundtracks. The French Connection. David Axelrod. And everything this person dances to on her youtube channel is pretty good. If she'd do a video using one of my songs, it would be a career highlight for sure.
What type of food do you like to cook, and how do you make it? I deeply, deeply hate cooking. I find it to be one of the most tediously boring activities a person can undertake. I have a hard time even sitting in a kitchen talking to someone else while they do it. I can't believe there's a whole TV network dedicated to that. I eat out or order in for every meal. If I'm at a relatives place out in the suburbs and they don't have any already prepared foods, I go to sleep hungry. I won't even make my own coffee.
Tracklist:
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oOoOO - Mouchette
James Ferraro - Light Skinned
oOoOO - FoRLorN Dub
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The Crystals - He Hit Me (It Felt Like A Kiss)
Kid A - BB Bleu
Don Ellis - The French Connection (End Titles)
Andy Stott - New Ground
oOoOO - untitled #30//abg
Easter - 310 G
Biblo - Floater