1. Hello and thank you for agreeing to do this interview! Lets start of with you introducing yourself, tell us where your from?

Hi Aaron, thanks for inviting me here. I come from Rethymnon, a small town in Crete. I lived for 5 years in Thessaloniki, where I studied architecture and I got back again to my town 7 years before.

2. You use flash a lot in your work, can you remember the first time you used flash and why you chose and developed this technique?

In October of  2009 I was in Athens, walking and shooting photos with my friend Costas Papageorgiou. He convinced me to buy a flash and from then and on I started to use it with a cable. I think I use it to be able to create my own light and be somehow independent from the external natural light sources, which a lot of times are not the desired ones at any moment.

3. Seeing as the street environment is out of your control, how much would you say that capturing a powerful image is down to luck?

I think luck is important in street photography, but without endless hours of walking, it brings no result just by itself. One or two photos may be a result of luck, but a whole portfolio can be born only through persistent work.

4. Your style is very eerie with a dark undertone, do you think this goes down your own subconscious perception of reality?

I don’t know, maybe…

5. Looking at your photographs you favor the wide angle lenses, why do these lenses suit your style?

Now that I think of it, maybe architecture helped me get used only to wide angle lenses. But the reaI reason I insist is that I believe photos of people have to be as close as possible to be full of life. I am not a scientist to observe through telescopes, I want to be inside life. And only the wide angle lenses permit the photographer to be inside the human crowd.

6. You take candid street portraiture using off-camera flash close up to your subject, how do people react to being photographed this way?

Most of them don’t understand what’s happening. What I’ve seen up to now is that the closer I get the less people realize that they get photographed. I have received some aggressive reactions from time to time but these incidents are relatively very few.

7. Who are some of your influences and favourite photographers at the moment?

My favourite photographers are Weegee, M.Parr ,G.Winogrand, D.Arbus , A.Sander.

I also like contemporary photographers, some of them I have presented them in my blog:

http://dirtyharrry.blogspot.com/p/photographers.html

8. Why is photography important to you?

I always carry my camera with me and when I see something interesting I take a photo of it. In the future maybe the answer to this question will be more clear in my mind, now I’m not sure. The truth is that I don’t know if I will ever be sure about anything.

9. Greece is going through some pretty tough times right now, do you think it has transcended into your work somehow, is it something you think about?

I can’t tell if the crisis is easily visible in my photos, as I’m not much interested in documentary photography. But it’s inevitable for someone who lives here to be blind to the political decadence and social struggle. I don’t know if Greece wasn’t in crisis if was shooting differently, maybe yes, maybe no. I guess since I’m now out in the streets and I shoot photos of a specific environment, that my photos are an aspect of this specific environment. Photography speaks differently to everyone, I don’t know what conclusions may come out from my photos.

10. Where do you draw the line regarding digital manipulation on your personal work?

Working on the contrast and levels in the raw files is enough for me. I think the line that I don’t want to pass is to spend more time in front of a computer editing photos I took, instead of searching for new images.

11. Do you plan to exhibit or publish any of your work in print form?

I edited two venustreet books with photos of mine and many other photographers.

I had made an exhibition two years before and I have participated in a few group exhibitions. Exhibiting is nice, as you can see your photos printed (I’ve not seen not even the 1% of my photos printed, unfortunately I rarely print) but also needs money, time etc and I don’t know if this is exactly what I can do at the moment.

12. Can you remember why you first started to photograph?

I bought my first analog camera in 1997 in the university, it was a necessary tool for my studies and my work. The first years until 2008 I was shooting only buildings and urban spaces. The way I was shooting in these early photos was terrible I must say. Not the subjects themselves, as any subject is interesting, but the way I was shooting. I paid attention only to frame well, I didn’t care at all about the meaning of what I was shooting. In 2008 I bought a digital camera and started to shoot more. I saw some Magnum photos and understood that photography is not only framing. Eleven years of terrible photos is a long time. I have to try to repair this somehow. Inside the total garbage that I shoot, I may find some moments that I like and I won’t delete. And after some months or years I’ll see these images and they will probably say nothing to me any more. I think this is more or less this is the way it goes.

13. Whats the most important thing you’ve learned thats improved you’re photography the greatest?

What I try to do is shooting as much as I can and looking at other people’s work to see how how they understand the world around them. These two things I think are very important for me, it’s a kind of dialog between my thoughts and other people’s thoughts.

14. Could you name one of your favorite photographs and explain what makes it so special?

Here’s a discussion about this photo :  

http://www.flickr.com/groups/onthestreet/discuss/72157621917523497/page127/#comment72157626483173946

15. Finally is there anything else you would like to add or promote?

Hmm… I think this world we live in has to collapse and rise again differently.

Interviewer: Aaron Keogh
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/36062242@N02/

 1. Firstly thanks for agreeing to this interview. Could you introduce yourself and tell us where your currently working?

I’m Kramer O’Neill, and I live in Brooklyn, NY. Sometimes I take pictures.

2. Let’s start of with your new books, ‘Pictures of People and Things 1’ and ‘Till Human Voices’. What made you want to publish these two books?

Pictures of People and Things was a little book I put together for fun while making the more “serious” Till Human Voices, but what do you know? It ended up being printed first. Not a total surprise, I guess: Pictures was made quickly from a diverse pool of years of shooting; it’s about diptychs and little narrative arcs and graphic matches. I tried not to think too much, to leave it loose and see what happened. It benefits greatly from this spontaneous assembly. I like it; it’s like looking at someone else’s edit of my work. Till Human Voices, on the other hand, is a pristine, meditative, very focused book. And that takes a lot of thought and editing and re-editing.

3. How long have you been photographing for and why did you start in the first place?

I shot a lot as a teenager, but not much in my twenties. Then I started again around five years ago, but with a totally different idea of what photography was. I used to be very concerned with getting the technical parts right, and now I hardly think about that. It’s much more about the action of making things, the expressionistic aspect rather than “correct” documentation.

4. You state on your website that you went out and made photos during morning and evening at certain times of the day within certain months of the year. Why did you choose to work within these time constraints? 

That began with a corner I liked shooting during my lunch break when I had a job in midtown Manhattan. After a while, I realized I’d been making a little project there, where it’s always more or less the same shot, but all the players have changed. When I saw the Design Trust Photo Urbanism Fellowship was accepting applications, I figured I could expand this plan to other locations. Miraculously, they liked the idea.

5. Do you have any stories of people grabbing/ reacting to your camera because they didn’t like being photographed?

Nothing terrible. Occasionally someone will confront me, but I might say something like “I was trying to photograph you, but you missed the light. You see, the way it’s falling over here, you would have needed to be…” and they get bored and wander off. Often a smile will do, or a distracted look. Sometimes they’re just curious what I’m doing, not angry. I think I’m pretty quiet and unassuming in general, the kind of guy who would have made a good “little gray man” in CIA-speak. People just don’t notice me. That’s annoying when I’m in line at the bank, but good for street photography.

6. From your Flickr account I’ve gathered that you use both film and digital cameras. Could you tell us what cameras you currently use and what makes them ideal for what you do?

My go-to has long been a Leica M4-2 that I bought used and very beaten-up. I like that; it makes me less worried about carrying it out everywhere – any new damage I inflict upon it is completely unnoticeable. And of course, it’s small and quiet, mechanical with no meter. At times, it really does feel like an extension of my own mind and body. I also use a Nikonos V for in-water stuff. It’s a brilliantly-designed waterproof rangefinder. And I have an Olympus OM1 that I use occasionally; pre-Nikonos, I used it with a diving case in the water. And I use a 5D mkII for things requiring that kind of camera.

7. Amongst your influences you noted Trent Parke as an inspiration, which is evident in your current work. What did you like about Trents working style that inspired you to go out and shoot street in a surreal way?

When I first saw Parke’s work, I didn’t think of it as street photography. My knowledge of street at the time was pretty limited; I had long loved Robert Frank’s The Americans, and I was vaguely aware that it fit the genre, but Parke’s seemed so outside of it, despite the fact that he was generally shooting within a very conservative concept of street photography (ie: literally on a street). So what was different? Nothing, but everything. His processing, obviously, but also the situations he found. Many of them weren’t about human interaction at all; they worked on some other level. A filmmaker I know uses the term “illuminating the mystery of life,” and that’s what Parke’s work does for me. There’s this little space between what we logically should do and what we actually do, where we should be and where we are, the inexplicable mental or divine divergence that makes us human. That gulf is the mystery. That’s the space I want to photograph.

8. Your underwater work is truly breathtaking, why did you dive into underwater photography?

Looking back on my photography over the last five years, I can actually see myself edging closer and closer to the water. One summer of sporadic employment, I would take the subway out to Brighton Beach/Coney Island and just spend the days walking up and down the beach, photographing anything that caught my eye. But after a while that wasn’t enough. At a certain point, I was running out into the waves at Rockaway Beach, photographing bodysurfers and then jumping as high as possible when the wave crashed over me, camera overhead. And I thought: “wait, this is ridiculous. Time to get the necessary equipment and actually get in there.”

9. What motivates you to go out and document everyday life on the street?

It’s essential to my ability to cope with things I don’t understand, and there’s a whole lot I don’t understand. Some people jog, some do yoga, I photograph. (Actually, I like yoga too.) It’s not that I need to photograph, it’s that I can’t not photograph. 

10. Most of your pictures contain a high contrast, high energy aura about them. Would you say theirs more meaning to your pictures than first glance? 

I sure hope so. An easy critique of my work might be that it’s “purely aesthetics,” but aesthetics are photography. It’s not just that Garry Winogrand happened to find compelling scenes – they also looked interesting, because of light and angle and lens choice. Form and function are not separable. Great work does something specific to its genre that can’t be properly articulated in any other art form. I love good writing on photography or film or painting, but the best photos or films or paintings can’t be fully explained by writing, they can only be explained by themselves. 

11. Your work was put on show at the Atlantic Avenue Subway Station after being awarded the fifth photo Urbanism fellowship Award for your project ‘Same Time Every Day’. Did you have a chance to go down and watch peoples reactions to the work and what kind of feedback did you get from the public and people seeing it for the first time?

I’ve been there a few times, but oddly, I haven’t felt compelled to spend a long time there. I lived with these images for so long, trying to get people interested, it’s hard to stay excited about things you look at every day for years – I’m always hoping the next thing I shoot will be better. But it’s definitely fun to walk by the lightboxes, in that nobody knows who I am, so I’ve heard comments that ran the gamut: “Oh, that’s nice” to “Ugh, I don’t get this at all, why do they put up this crap?!” The fun part of it is that this isn’t a gallery, it doesn’t have the quotes around it telling people they have to appreciate it in a specific way (or appreciate it at all).

12. Your pictures are arranged into sets, almost like miniature stories. Did you consciously go out to make photos to fit into a story or was it the other way around?

Some of it is planned, some of it is about editing. I’ve done a lot of work in film editing, and have a decent sense of how to match images graphically and narratively. Often, I’ll notice I’m making a self-contained “story” midway through making it. It’s not necessarily conscious up to that point.

13. What countries most intrigue you to visit and document other than the USA, if any?

I tend to get really excited about places when I’m applying to artist residencies; there are stories to be found everywhere. Lately I’ve been putting together an application for a program in Finland, and that eastern-yet-not-Eastern Bloc concept has been fascinating me. (Note that I have yet to get any residencies, so we’ll see what I’m obsessed with next month.) I would definitely like to spend time in eastern Europe, North Africa, Australia, Latin America…have I covered everything yet? I also spend a lot of time in France for personal reasons, although the personal and the photographic are inextricably linked for me. I’m planning to move there in the next year.

14. Where do you see you and your work going in the near future?

I wish I knew, but that’s the adventure.

15. Finally, is their anything else you’d like to add or promote?

I already talked up the books, but I’ll gladly mention them again. I’m learning that self-publishing involves massive amounts of self-promotion. Which is quite a different thing from, you know, taking pictures.

Interviewer: Aaron Keogh
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/36062242@N02/

1. Hello, could you introduce yourself and tell us where your from?

Hi Aaron, I am David R. Cornejo, I was born in Mexico in 1984. I like to work with sound and all kinds of visual arts such as drawing, design, photography, and video amongst others. I currently live in downtown Guadalajara (Mexico).

2. Tell us a bit about the culture of Mexico, what kind of experiences could a traveller expect to find upon arriving at a town far away from the main tourist paths?

As soon as you get off the plane, you should head downtown. There, you can find a lot of cool places. For instance a local market where you can find fruit, food, traditional candies (many of them covered in chili), folk crafts and costumes, music, sometimes even different animals. You can also find colonial buildings most in baroque and churriqueresque styles. Haunted places (alleys, stores, houses, parks), popular legends, and cemeteries show a different side of our culture, since death is an important part of it. One of our biggest holidays, is “Día de Muertos” (The Day of the Dead) where people gather in cemeteries, build altars where they leave their deceased friends and relatives all what they liked when they were alive: tequila, cigarettes, food, and decorate them with flowers, photos, and candles as a way to remember the dead. Legend says they come back in spirit to drink, smoke, and eat, you know, remember how much fun Earth was.

3. What inspires you day to day to make art?

Most inspiration for my work comes from my absurd obsession with the occult, you know, the knowledge of the paranormal, the unexplained. That’s the most inspiring theme I have found. It never ends. I’m also really into all the kind of things I liked as a child, toys, cartoons, movies, all that takes you back to when you were only just discovering the world around you.

4. What was the inspiration behind the “Hairywords chair”?

I kept thinking how words probably create the most reproduced sound in our world (since there’s so many of us and we all speak), and how when someone writes them down they take them and give them the capacity to remain for a much longer time than when they are only spoken. 

The Hairywords Chair as well as the other installations made with this technique came basically from that idea. I painted the chair in 3 different sessions throughout a long period of time, in which I wrote memories that I recalled thru words and bits and pieces of what I heard at the moment. This created a kind of subconscious cypher and makes each person that sees it able to read a different part of it.

5. I sense a psychedelic/ geometric inspired feeling in your work, is finding order in all the chaos something you try to portray in your work?

Definitely. I am very influenced by the whole psychedelic philosophies from the 60’s and its consequences in art; the bright colorful kaleidoscopic collages. On the other hand, I feel very uncomfortable with empty spaces so that’s where the chaotic element comes from, its a sort of a “Horror vacui” thing of mine.

6. You exhibited your work through a solo exhibition, what made you want to exhibit your work to the public and how was the exhibition received?

A friend of mine invited me to make an intervention in a big black room of his concept store and boutique. I liked the idea of experimenting with Hairy Words on a bigger scale than what I’m used to and to use the walls as well as the roof. I also exhibited a series of paintings and installations with a violent and absurd childish tendency. A lot of people came, and you know, they seem to have enjoyed it.

7. You use Tumblr as a means of putting your work out their to the world, how has the internet and social networking helped you progress with your art?

My blog in Tumblr is a sort of diary of my work, a therapy that helps keep myself active and it turned out to be a very good way to meet very different people that do so many interesting things. It helps create a virtual community that I wouldn’t be able to find otherwise.

8. You’ve created visual as well as sound works, what do you enjoy about using different mediums?

I kind of rotate from one activity to another thru the year as I feel necessary. I’m very comfortable going back and forth for some reason. That’s probably why I like music, painting, and video, or anything else just the same. 

9. We both collaborated on a video about a year ago called ‘The Dream’, the response to the video was very positive. People seem to enjoy it when two well fitting artists get together and create something. What do you enjoy about collaboration?

I really enjoy how different one’s work can turn out to be when collaborating with someone else, you know, how both works can be greatly complemented by one another. I have had the opportunity to make a few collaborations thanks to the way we interact nowadays. Internet has been a great tool and it makes it so much easier to work with different people abroad. 

10. Who are the characters/ figures portrayed in a lot of your work?

I guess the characters I create are the ones I would have enjoyed to see or have as a child. My father is a publicist and my mother is a painter so I grew up surrounded by colourful and playful drawings, paintings, books that play a very big part of what I do now.  

11. Are the sounds you create an extension of your visual work, or are they something your experimenting with?

I think it might be the other way around since I started doing music and experimenting with sound even before I did with drawing, at least in a more professional level but they are definitely part of the same thing.

12. You use graph paper a lot in your works, why do you choose this over a blank canvas?

I actually use almost any surface, including graph paper. I try to find different materials as well as dirty or old things for me to paint on. I avoid blank canvases at all costs, I find them rather annoying. Such a white clean surface that’s actually meant to serve a sole purpose can be somewhat limiting and doesn’t really let me work freely.

13. Mexico has a reputation for being quite violent, would you say this is true?

Mexico has been going thru a lot this last decade, it has grown violent in some areas, mainly in the most important frontier cities. As I said before, I live in Guadalajara, and I’ve never had any kind of trouble or bad experience. 

14. Your work is very raw, in the sense that it has a sketchy feel about it. Do you work fast allowing yourself to work parallel to what your brain’s thinking in the moment?

Yes, I actually never think beforehand what I’m about to paint, I don’t prepare anything before I do so either. Everything develops right that moment and shapes itself little by little until I’m comfortable with the final result.

15. Are their any future projects you’d like to promote?

Right now I’m mostly focused in music, I have a new project called “Play Tonto”, where I use low fidelity recordings techniques to create acid, noisy melodies focusing mainly on coming up with an analog sound when digital media prevails. My first album is already finished, it’s probably going to be released later this year on audio cassette. I am also working on a 7” vinyl single. You can check it out at soundcloud.com/playtonto. On the other hand there’s “The Horse We Want To Hang” (THWWTH), a studio where we plan to include different fields such as design, clothing, music, print, film, books, etc., incorporating interesting artists from all around the world.

16. Is their anything else you’d like to add?

Well I’d like to thank you for this interview, it was really fun! I had a great time!

Name: David R. Cornejo
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pillowkite/
Website: http://davidrcornejo.tumblr.com/
Play Tonto: http://soundcloud.com/playtonto

Interviewer: Aaron Keogh
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/36062242@N02/

1. Thanks for granting us this interview. First, let’s get into your new project. How did you guys first meet, and what about your relationship made you realize that you you two should work on tunes together? 

Doubleclick: We both lived in Brighton, but despite having a few friends in common, we didn’t actually cross paths until about ten years ago. When you both like Jungle, Cardiacs and tracks like Brandy’s “What About Us?”, you pretty much have to make an LP. I’m speaking from a position of limited experience, but it’s been 100% true in all cases in which I was personally involved. 

2. How did the name Two Fingers come about? 

Doubleclick: We went through a lot of potential names, using all the usual methods. At one point I got so desperate I even tried the “anagram of your last names” thing, but that doesn’t work so well when you’re called Tobin and Chapman. I know Two Fingers isn’t the greatest name in the world, but would you want to be part of an act called Phantom Cabin? Or Bacon Ham Pint? A Camp Thin Nob? Me neither. 

3. Were you guys shooting to work on an album together? 

Doubleclick: Yes, and more. We set out to make the LP, and then do production for other musicians. 

4. The majority of the album features vocals, including Sway atop 7 of the 12 tracks. Was that by design? How did you guys get Sway to contribute so much to the project? 

Amon: I cornered him at a festival in France and handed him a CD of our beats. He didn’t know it yet, but we’d already decided he was going to be the main vocalist on the record. 

5. How would you describe the Two Fingers sound? I saw in URB that you guys classify this as a Hip-Hop album. Do you think the buying public will?

Doubleclick: A lot of people think Hip-Hop is just a certain sound, that it’s an easily definable style of music, and that’s fine, but they don’t think the way we do. I think Hip-Hop is more than that (more than just music too, but that’s another discussion). It’s partly in the style, but it’s also in your way of thinking, the approach to what you do. I wouldn’t feel comfortable if this LP sounded like other people’s Hip-Hop anyway. We had an idea, and we couldn’t stifle it just to fit other people’s expectations.

Amon: Yo, andatzwatsup! 

Doubleclick: Quiet, you. 

6. What kind of equipment was used in creating the album? 

Amon: Some important pieces of hardware: Chandler compression and in particular the Manley EQ. 

7. I read a description of the album that described it as a “brutal and beautiful record that could only have grown out of the UK and the internationalism of those involved”. Do you have any thoughts on where that distinct hybrid sound of the UK will be going in the next 5 years or so? Do you think genres like dubstep could blow up on a larger scale? 

Doubleclick: Absolutely, and it’s overdue, particularly for the producers. The recent news about Snoop rhyming over Chase & Status’s “Eastern Jam” is a controversial subject, but I’m really excited to see where that can go. Back in ‘94, you had Goldie and 4-Hero remixing Scarface, Rob Playford & Foul Play remixing King Just… I was always expecting that the incredible production talent in DnB would end up doing full-on Hip-Hop work, and of course eventually we had the Adam F ”K.A.O.S.” project, but it never really went the way I expected. I see dubstep and DnB as extensions of the same thing, and I think there’s plenty that our producers can contribute directly to the US Hip-Hop and R&B scenes. As for whether dubstep itself could blow up, it certainly could and in many ways it already has. It’s for the producers in the scene to decide what happens next. 

8. Word is Two Fingers will be performing live with Sway for a few dates in May (including a show at The Scala on May 13th). What can heads expect from this environment - will you guys stick to the tracks, or is there room for exploration and freestyling? 

Amon: We’ll be using decks combined with Native Instruments’ Traktor Scratch Pro, which allows us to give Sway free rein. He can go off on tangents in any way he likes, and we can fit the structure of the music around his performance. 

9. Are there plans for any Two Fingers releases after this one? 

Amon: We’ve got another single (“That Girl”) coming in May which features the remix by Spor. We’re also planning a reworking of another LP track for another single release later in the year. 

10. Now, many heads would be upset if I didn’t ask - when are you going to churn out some more Jungle/DnB-esque tunes? 

Doubleclick: Anyone who loves DnB will hear straight away that there’s a strong thread of DnB running through the LP, especially in tracks like “Keman Rhythm”, but it’s very much blended into other styles. We have some tracks which didn’t make it onto the LP which are more explicitly DnB. There are so many tunes that just wouldn’t fit, and believe me it kills us hearing these things, thinking “if only we could have got this on there”. We have talked about doing an EP of DnB, though, so maybe we’ll get it out that way. We’ll be producing for other vocalists again soon, too, so maybe we can sneak a little something past them when they’re not looking. 

11. Do you have a favorite tune from your back catalogue? 

Amon: There’s a track called “Slowly” I’ll always have a soft spot for. 

12. Any chatter about an Amon Tobin solo album in the future? 

Amon: I’m going to start recording towards the end of this year. I’ve got this idea but it’s way too ambitious… it might have to remain a pipe dream, so I’ll keep it under my hat until I know I can do it for sure. Either way, I’ll continue to release one-off tunes regularly on my site (amontobin.com). I have to keep making tunes even if it’s not for a bigger project, otherwise I get a bit twitchy. More TF stuff on its way too, of course. 

13. Do you get excited about new artists? Who is currently on your radar as someone who’s doing exciting work? 

Amon: I get inspired all the time by other producers. I want to keep learning and progress and I think the best way to do that is to listen with an open mind. I recently spent a bit of time at Eskmo’s studio, and he taught me a lot in a very short space of time. I had the same experience with the guys from Noisia a while back. These are all people who love what they do and are dedicated to their own progress in production. I find that motivating in itself. 

14. Could we get a current top 10 from you? 

Doubleclick: The last few months have been a bit crazy, and we haven’t been able to buy anything or really listen to much music. I only get to listen to things on headphones when I’m on my way out these days, so I’ll give you a top eleven of what’s on my iPod today instead: 

Bettye Swann - Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye 
Fatme Serhan - Ala Warag Il Foull 
Frank Black - History Song 
Gremlinz, Manifest & Verb - Lion Of Babylon 
Broken Note - Crux 
Lil Kim - Lighters Up (Marc Mac remix) 
Billy Bragg - Levi Stubbs’s Tears 
Raphael Saadiq - Still Ray 
Tim Smith - Bug From Heaven 
Trimbal - Taliban 
Brandy – Necessary 

15. Do you have any shout outs or final thoughts? 

Doubleclick: Thanks again to Khoma for the LP and singles artwork. Thanks too to Pillsbury for inventing canned cinnamon rolls with icing. Got me through some difficult winters in Montreal. 

Interviewer: Aaron Keogh
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/36062242@N02/

1. So what are the Wilcox Sessions?

Dick Thompson: Live hybrid-music videos recorded in our living room.

2. Where about’s on planet Earth do you record the sessions?

Dick Thompson: Hollywood, USA.

3. Why did you want to start this project?

Dick Thompson: We are huge music fans. Our first date was supposed to be Interpol at the Troubador, but I slept on getting tickets so we saw The Neptunas at the Mint instead.  I had always wanted to make music videos, Beaver wrote music previews for Flavorpill in NY, SF, and LA. She made a number of mix tapes each year for our friends that always featured new music no one had ever heard of. Around 2006 we had an idea to curate a monthly music show at our homies Equator Books in Venice and I would “film the bands and put it up on the Internet.”  We never got our shit together though. Then in February of 2010 Equator Books was closing it’s doors for good we were filled with a lot of regret for all the things we said we wanted to do but never did.  Fifteen year olds Dead Henry were playing the closing night party (little kyle was an intern) and their youth and excitement brought an element of exuberance and hope to an overall melancholic night – that’s when the idea was re-born. We went out and bought a camera the next day and two weeks later we had shot our first session.

4. How did you (Dick and Beaver) meet?

Dick Thompson: We met on a four day party weekend in LA back in early 2000’s. Here is our wedding commercial from ’08.

5. How do you choose the bands you record? 

Dick Thompson: A co-worker of mine answered this for me once, “Whoever will say yes.”  When we did our first session we didn’t really know any bands personally. We asked Dead Henry to be the guinea pigs for our first session, little Kyle from the band worked at our friend’s bookstore, Equator Books. After that it kind of snowballed and it went from friends of friends to managers, labels, and publicists becoming involved. Now the general reaction is “How did you get them to play your living room.” Our friend and collaborator Douglas Caballero has been great for us. He was the producer and host of a daily music program for Current TV so he knew the landscape pretty well, he booked a lot of cool bands for us like Voxhaul Broadcast, The Greenhornes and Moby. Each situation is completely different really. Little Hurricane was the first band to contact us from our website, we met Brooks from The Growlers in a swimming pool in Palm Springs, The Neighbors went to high school with Dead Henry. We don’t really understand why people show up ourselves, but we love it that they do. The bottom line is we invest our own money and most of our free time into the videos, so that generally guides our decisions.

6. What prior work have you done in video?

Dick Thompson: I’ve been a filmmaker since my teens. I’ve done a few music videos in the past and bunch of short films and I make my living as an editor for a television network.

Porn Guide: The Film Maker’s Guide to Pornography: 

 Blow: A Public Service Announcement:

Dead Man Eating:

Bedroom Scene Music Video:

7. Some of the props used in the videos are extremely unique. Big vintage lights, ball pits, tin foil furniture!? Are you responsible for the props or do the bands bring them? 

Dick Thompson: We try to do something unique for each video, and props and lighting are an easy way to do that. We bought the Fortuny lamp at a designer garage sale for the sole purpose of being a prop for the sessions. I bought the kiddie pool in hopes that we would fill it with water, but Beaver put the kybosh on it so we filled it up with the balls instead. The foil was 100% The Growlers. We had already bought a fish tank and 2 fish bowls for their session when they showed up with a box full of space blankets. It took them at least an hour to set them up.  It’s amazing how creative and committed they are.

8. What inspired you to theme the Wilcox Sessions in your living room?

Dick Thompson: Both necessity and laziness. When we bought the loft I never thought we could afford to shoot another project.  You could say it was born out of a creative solution to a financial problem. Leverage what you have.

9. Is the ‘take your shoes off’ rule something that happens even when your not recording?

Dick Thompson: Absolutely. My dad used to greet his guests, “Take your shoes off and stay a while.” David from Voxhaul Broadcast still apologizes every time he sees us for forgetting.  Beaver sends an email out to each band before their session reminding them to wear snazzy socks along with a short questionnaire: 1) what’s your favorite food? 2) what’s your favorite booze (it’s usually whiskey btw).

10. What new artists are you eyeing up for future recordings?

Dick Thompson: Los Angeles is a hot bed of talent right now, there are so many great bands.   We like Foster The People, Superhumanoids, The Chain Gang of 1974, Shannon and The Clams. We only shoot on the weekends so sometimes we get lucky where a band is coming through town and has the night off, like with The Greenhornes. Whoever will say yes, that we dig, basically.

11. The quality of your recordings are very high, both visually and sonically. How do you achieve this level of quality time after time?

Dick Thompson: We have a great crew and most have been with us from the very beginning.  We shoot on multiple Canon 7ds or 5ds. The most we’ve had was seven, but we were pretty much tripping over each other all night. The secret recipe is four cameras with operators and one on lockdown. I also have a couple GOPRO HD HEROs which are good for timelapses of setup or tucked away in a drum kit or keyboard.  We usually have a small jib arm or doorway dolly and my favorite is the smoke machine. Our sound engineer Bruce Hall literally brings a truck of equipment over that you could pretty much record a legit album on. He usually uses at least 24-30 mics each individually tracked so there is a lot of flexibility in the mix for our sound producer Manoj Gopinath to get it right. We usually spend around 20 hours on the edit of each video too.  So even though we record live, we take a lot of liberties in post that make a big difference. The process is often drunken and ragtag but the results are professional.

12. Most of the bands and artists you record are quite niche, is new music something your want to promote?

Dick Thompson: Absolutely. We love the discovery aspect of music. There’s an energy and excitement to up and coming bands that makes the laborious aspects of production more satisfying. Production is hard, physical work, and feeling like the hired help on a promotional stop makes everything seem heavier. New bands definitely take advantage of the free liquor cabinet more often than not, which usually makes everyone happier. 

13. What happens behind the scenes when the bands have gone home?

Dick Thompson: If the band wants to stay and party we certainly accommodate that.  Sometimes it’s very professional and we shake hands and that’s that. In the case of the Hanni El Khatib session we all stayed up late, then made a baby. 

14. Where does the name ‘Wilcox Sessions’ come from, is it a surname?

Dick Thompson: It’s named after the street we live on. My biggest regret is the ‘sessions’ moniker, since there are so many ‘sessions’ out there now. I like the ‘Dick and Beaver’ Music Show better.

15. If you could give one piece of random advise what would it be?

Dick Thompson: Stop talking about it and get off your ass and do something and good things will happen.

16. Is their anything you’d like to add?

Dick Thompson: Nope, think that’s it. Thanks for watching. 

Name: The Wilcox Sessions
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/wilcoxsessions
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wilcoxsessions/
Website: http://wilcoxsessions.com/
Contact: wilcoxsessions@gmail.com

Interviewer: Aaron Keogh
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/36062242@N02/