Homepage/Features//feature article

---

Featured article...

---

The Infesticons

After releasing the Album of his career, subba worships at the alter of Mike Ladd

Mike Ladd is a unique figure in the world of contemporary music, an MC and producer who’s tried his hand at countless styles and approaches through his many projects over the years. As the final part of his Infesticon/Majesticon concept trilogy hit the world, we spoke to Ladd, on holiday in Boston, to talk 21st century mixtapes, Rip Van Winkle, Picasso, concept records, and the enduring benefits of vinyl.

Hi, how are you doing? What’re you up to at the moment?
I’m good, we’ve just put the record out so I’m wrapping things up with that, and setting stuff up for a tour in the fall. We’ve come over to the states from Paris, I’m working on my EP at my friend’s place in the Bronx while we’re over here, but for now we’re in Boston, so my kids can see my family, and stuff like that. Hopefully they can learn some proper English out here, rather than speaking that frog language (laughs). I’m working on new music, and my wife and kids get a bit of a vacation.

The final part of the Infesticon/Majesticon trilogy, ‘Bedford Park’, is out now; with seven years between The Majesticons’ ‘Beauty Party’ and the new record, how did you handle the challenge of distilling your ideas for the end of the trilogy down into one album?
I guess that’s where the story comes into it, that kind of Rip Van Winkle take on things. The Infesticons are heading out after hiding in this bunker, and basically the record is like a demo tape. They should really just be called songs instead of anthems, as it’s a real collection of songs. Where the first record had a really heavy theme, and the second was a party, this is more of a humble record. These guys have been hiding out, and then they come out... in the music business, seven years is like seven hundred years. They come out into a completely different universe. On the first record I didn’t care if something was new, or old, or whatever, but most of all I wanted to make sure that no one had ever made anything like that before, and this time I put that aside and just made songs. People have told me that it still sounds like nothing that they’ve heard before.

Yeah, ‘Bedford Park’ is a pretty diverse record, a collision of countless sounds and styles, not to mention lyrical topics. Would you say that’s a reflection of the ‘Infesticon’ state of mind, at the conclusion of the ongoing narrative?
It’s partially that, and it’s also functioning like a mixtape. If you think about music these days, a record gets thrown into a particle-izer every time that it’s made now... it goes straight into your ITunes shuffle mode. It’s like ‘bowwwwwwwwwww’, it’s shot out there with a thousand other things. The emphasis was on creating a solid collection of songs, rather than a heavily thematic album. It’s one of those ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ things too: if you keep making these quote unquote ‘concept records’ people say, ‘why are you always making concept records?’ But y’know, two high school kids say ‘we’re gonna start a band, and it’s going to be about chicks and getting fucked up... that’s a concept too. I just concentrated on making good songs. At first I was like, ‘but it’s not a record,’ but at the same time I wanted to see what happened when you make a mixtape, because people are just going to pick out what they like from it anyway.

‘Bedford Park’ has been going out on vinyl so far, why did you decide to publish the album in that format? It’s interesting how much the idea of a music business, with money made from recorded music, has altered since ‘Gun Hill Road’…
We put it out on vinyl as, with business being so bad, Big Dada gave me a choice. I could either put it out on CD or vinyl, but not both, and I personally prefer vinyl. I was like, ‘I don’t want to be sitting there with my own personal collection and a little jewel case, I want it on vinyl. When they sent the time capsule into space to communicate with extra-terrestrial beings, they didn’t put a CD on there, they sent a record, you know? There’s more space. I love vinyl more than I love CDs, and so if we press these things and they have to send me back the returns, I’d much rather have a box of vinyl in my basement than a box of CDs. Over here, all the big CD stores closed six years ago already, but the vast majority of the mom and pop shops which were open when I was a kid, and you could buy these records: they’re still open. We’ve only pressed up a thousand copies so we’re not exactly going nuts with it, but there are definitely a lot of major vinyl fans still out there.

In the intervening years you’ve worked on a number of other projects, including work with Vijay Iyer, and your Negrophilia and Father Divine projects; you seem to be constantly developing and reconstituting your craft, is that something that’s you consciously aim for? Is experimentation something that you need to enjoy your work?
Yes, definitely. When I think of what I’m doing as an artistic endeavour or whatever, over my whole life...most of the time I don’t even consider myself an artist, I’m just trying to get out as much stuff as I can, and keep working. I do want to be able to step back and see this large body of work, you know? I want it to be pretty different. So, I try to do as many things as I can, and I do experiment. It’s one way of doing things, some people don’t have the patience for it, and some people don’t appreciate it, as every time it’s not necessarily a finished, perfect thing. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it’s not. For me personally, my two favourite things about Picasso; and I’m not like a Picasso worshipper; were both in the Picasso museum in Barcelona. Firstly they had these watercolours that he’d done when he was a kid, and they were ridiculous. They were these landscapes, these little postcard sized landscapes, and you could just see the kid... ‘Ok, shadow, got that, perspective, got that,’ you know? It was amazing to see this process. The other part was a film of him working on Guernica, and he draws this line... he starts at the top of this huge piece of paper above his head, and uses this crayon or chalk, and pulls it down. I’ve never seen such a fearless motion. My hair literally stood on end. Those were two pieces of art that really impressed me, and they weren’t even finished, they were works in progress. And of course, they have weight because there are excellent finished pieces that he did. I don’t mind the fact that I’m not hiding my process, my experimentation, as ideally something more perfect will come along in the end.

You’re pretty much in a category of one in the world of hip-hop, if we insist in lumping you into that category. How do you feel about the state of hip-hop and the avant-garde at present, and the changes since the original Infesticons record in 2000… are there any artists out there who you see as inspiring or especially interesting?
That’s a good question; I’ve got two kids running around all the time so there’s a lot of stuff that I’ve been missing. The Flying Lotus stuff has been really good, and Antipop (Consortium) are real good friends, and their last record was great. I heard these other guys These Are Powers the other day, who seemed pretty good too.

Awesome. How did you go about assembling and recording the ‘Bedford Park’ album? The Infesticons was and is a collective of different creatives such as Saul Williams and Creature, so how much did you collaborate on the songwriting, the direction of the album?
They did influence the album actually, especially Jamal. I would send people out a bunch of tracks, and they would reject some and take others, even on song structure and how that was going to work. I think that I actually took more advice on this record than on any of the other times, though all the records have had some kind of outside input. I sent Antipop this huge, complicated track that I was really into, and they were like, ‘take that out, take that out, take that out.’ I was like, ‘my track!’ But of course, once it was done and everything was out of it, I was like, ‘oh, this is brilliant.’ With every collaboration I’ve learned a hell of a lot from the people that I’ve been working with. It’s definitely worth listening to people (laughs).

The new album’s visual art/cover is very striking, could you tell us a little about the thought process behind that?
Well, part of the way that I make music is by fiddling away with other stuff while I’m making beats or whatever, and I built this model of a destroyed city while I was making music and listening to records in my studio. When it came the time to do the album cover, Big Dada asked if I knew any artists we could use, but all the people I asked weren’t able to do it. I was either left high and dry, or what they were working on was great but didn’t fit the album. I sent the guys who were designing the record a few snapshots of this thing in my studio, and they asked me to set it up with a little more theme to it. We built this thing to what the two guys who were designing the record wanted, and then took some pictures of it, so a whole mythology came about, which I haven’t even finished writing yet. The guy in the middle, the statue: that’s the first Infesticon. He’s from 1732 or some shit (laughs). I’ll have to explain that on my website.

You’ve mentioned that you’re preparing for Infesticon live shows in the near future, so could a visit to the UK be on the cards?
Yeah, we’re setting it up now. Hopefully we’ll be touring for a good part of next fall. I built the record to play live, everything on it arguably sounds better live than it does on the record. I know that they work on stage, so we’ve just gotta get out and play. We’ve already done one genuine show as The Infesticons with me, Juice Aleem, and Gamma, alongside a drummer, and that was great. If we can just get out there we’re going to crush it. The UK bookers in particular are freaking out, with the recession and everything, if you can’t guarantee 200-250 people they won’t book you. But hey, we’ve got enough time to convince people.

Great, thanks for your time. Finally, any advice for people just entering the world of art/music in 2010?
I still believe, and maybe I’m naive, that if you make an unbelievable song, and you put it online, and it’s at least got some kind of gimmick to it, you’ll be alright. Making that song is really fucking hard, but it’s possible. Stay diverse so that you can keep eating. I’ve got to do about five different things to keep food on the table, but they’re all basically related to what I do. I still don’t have a dayjob, so I’m pretty thankful about that. It’s not easy, we’re not rich, but it works out. I still wake up laughing and smiling every morning.

Cheers, take care,
Thanks Rob.

The Infesticons’ ‘Bedford Park’ is out now on Big Dada.
mikeladd.net/
Thanks go to James Heather for sorting the interview.

Rob Sayce