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- [00:00]
Host 1
Jokerman podcast is brought to you by Distrokid and their new Direct to fan tool. Allowing any artist to sell merch. Distrokid Direct allows artists to create a merch store in minutes without any upfront costs or any technical skills or know how they'll take care of all the logistics and the nitty gritty. And as with distribution through Distrokid, they never take a cut of the proceeds. You, the artist, keep 100% of your earnings. Once again, that's Distrokid Direct. Open a store today@distrokid.com direct. I mean, I love the gesture. It's definitely something that like 22 year old me, or I guess what I was, I was 20 when no Love Deep Web came out, 20 year old me loved. And it's something that frankly 34 year old me also still loves. And it's something that like, I, you know, I don't know that I would put my dick on the COVID of a podcast necessarily, but it's something. I wish we should have done that
- [01:05]
Host 2
for the COVID of a show.
- [01:06]
Host 1
Right? For the show. Exactly. It's something that I would want to do and it feels like a gesture that is spiritually in line with the Jokerman podcast that you would want to.
- [01:19]
Host 2
That you respect maybe. Is.
- [01:22]
Host 1
Yeah. I mean, I have no desire to
- [01:24]
Host 2
broadcast because you just said that's something I want to do.
- [01:28]
Host 1
I have no desire to broadcast my two messages.
- [01:31]
Host 2
Member to the world at large. That word again.
- [01:35]
Host 1
There it is. Shout out. Bruce. I have no desire to. What did he say? Mr. Concupiscence?
- [01:43]
Host 2
Rich. Tumescent to the touch.
- [01:44]
Host 1
Bruce Horn. That's right. For the program.
- [01:47]
Host 2
That's kind of a Death Grips like lyric.
- [01:49]
Host 1
That is sort of Death gripsy. Yeah. Anyways, I don't need to have my shit out there, but I. I would do it and I would be glad to have done it, if that makes sense, which maybe it doesn't. It sounds like it makes about as much sense as Zach Hill's explanation did, to be honest.
- [02:07]
Host 2
Yeah. Everything about this record is unconventional.
- [02:14]
Host 1
Yes.
- [02:15]
Host 2
Chiefly its release and the circumstances surrounding its release. Do you know much about that?
- [02:21]
Host 1
Yes. So they had been. I mean, I know what I think I know. At least you can correct me if I'm wrong because I feel like it's been established by now that our roles have switched here. And you're the deep knowledge haver with the Death Grips lore compared to me. Obviously. Epic, they signed Epic did Money Store through them first official release. That's partly why there's not nearly as many samples compared to ex military, obviously. And then they want to drop no Love, Deep Web or I guess no Love at one point, same year later in 2012. I think MoneyStar came out in the spring like we talked about on the last episode and Epic wouldn't commit to putting it out before 2013. So they just said fuck you guys. And then self release the record that was supposed to be put out through Epic and turn into a whole big kerfuffle. Do I have the basics of that correct?
- [03:13]
Host 2
I think so. I don't know exactly about what Epic's point of view was on the release date or anything like that. I know for certain they didn't want it released the way it was released, which was with no warning, apparently to the label and for free, all at once.
- [03:32]
Host 1
Also with a big juicy cock on
- [03:33]
Host 2
the COVID That wasn't something that the label wanted to have happen.
- [03:37]
Host 1
That was not in the deck in the pitch book from the A and R team at Epic.
- [03:43]
Host 2
They had put out an arg, by the way.
- [03:45]
Host 1
Alternate. Right. Alternate reality augmented reality game. Yeah.
- [03:50]
Host 2
Which was in this case a dizzyingly complex digital egg hunt goose chase.
- [03:57]
Host 1
Well, I saw this a little bit on Wikipedia. Yeah. So there's a promotion section there. And they said, okay. So using the Internet as its medium, the ARG mainly employed encrypted archive files. Don't know what that is. Hosted on the Tor network. That's the Deep Web with the file type gpg. The game employed many types of encryption through image, text and sound files, including braille, QR codes, base 64, the Caesar cipher, binary Morse code and the Afene cipher. Don't know what that is. And use websites such as Imgur and various Tor related sites. The game yielded the first mention of the original release date of no Love Deepweb, October 23, 2012 and an unmastered version of the Money Store for download on the first day. On the fifth day, an instrumental version of the Money Store was discovered by users of 4chan. Back to 4chan after last episode on a dot onion domain and uploaded for regular download. Dot onion of course, is the web address conceit that deep websites are hosted on the same way that it's like.com.net, gov onion is how you navigate to various Deep web pages. So I wasn't necessarily aware of all this before literally just speaking it out five minutes ago, but I liked that we were kind of already on this wavelength in the previous episode. Suffice it to say, you know, some pretty Intricate, heady, like, maybe pointless. But also the pointlessness is the point type of phenomena that go along with Death Grips and the music release. And I think that speaks a little bit to some of the points that we raised last time. Like when you were talking a little bit about the Death Grips Reddit, the Death Grips fandom. There is this sort of, like, I don't know, adventure game, you know, nerdiness aspect. I think that a certain type of person can really latch on to hook onto with this shit. And when that certain type of person finds another version of that certain type of person, say on the Death Grips Reddit, for instance, it can sort of brew this very particular kind of fandom.
- [06:11]
Host 2
I think there's an interesting aspect to what's going on here with the the band's relationship to the label. I'll just quote this piece in Spin. Hill started taking some inspiration from his younger brother, a career gamer.
- [06:30]
Host 1
Career gamer, okay.
- [06:32]
Host 2
In one of their long kid fighting conversations, Hill talked about The Book of Five Rings, a 17th century text of philosophy and strategy from a Japanese swordsman. His brother countered with some techniques used in role playing games. Staple Magic the Gathering. There are three types of decks in magic. The Speedy Offensive of the Aggro Deck, the Deus Ex Machina Checkmates of the Combo Deck, and the Slow and Steady Game of the Control Deck. We perceived that this record label is running a game right, says Hill. The Control Deck is the shit because basically you unsummon people's magic by using their own magic against them. You put yourself in the same place as the other person so they have nothing on you. It's like an illusion, redirection of power and putting yourself in the environments these people are in. It creates a chaos element. We started thinking about that in the sense of where we were as a band. When they landed in Los Angeles in their first impulsive visit to the label, they were walking down Sunset Boulevard with their bags and past Chateau Marmont, the famed luxury hotel and or castle where Led Zeppelin rode motorcycles through the lobby. Lindsay Lohan got booted for skipping her bill, and Katy Perry and John Mayer currently, currently contemporaneously rendezvoused on dates.
- [07:58]
Host 1
Katy Perry and John Mayer spotted canoodling at the Chateau.
- [08:04]
Host 2
That's like the least of the mentions you could make. The rabbit hole of Chateau celebrity shenanigans is endless. We're aware of that place and the things that it represents, says Hill. All the people we're working with, they do their lunches there and stay there, and we can visualize what that is we walked inside. Somehow it's not the kind of place you can just walk inside. It's a real tripped out environment. It's very elitist. We walked inside and started having these flashes about the control deck and posturing and putting yourself in these places. So we put ourselves there. We moved in there and stayed for two months. We used what was left from our advance and burned through the fucking thing. For the next two months, the Marmont was the band's control station. And they played an illusion game against everybody they were working with, learning through, quote, full infiltration about Hollywood's social hierarchy. All these artists want to work toward being able to live at that place, says Hill. A lot of people, that's their version of success. So we put ourselves in what people's version of success is and burned through what we had to experience that. But also what it did for us is make us realize that this isn't success at all. This is a joke. We were about to torch all of that while living in the building. Everything pretty much was essentially done from that place. Of course, there is a series of photographs, most notably of Ride standing on the balcony of their room overlooking the
- [09:41]
Host 1
street, flipping the bird.
- [09:42]
Host 2
Yeah, Double birds standing very unsafely and precariously on this very thin balcony several stories up.
- [09:49]
Host 1
Shot at the Chateau, you're saying?
- [09:50]
Host 2
That's right, yeah.
- [09:51]
Host 1
Apparently the dick shot also the bathroom of the Chateau.
- [09:55]
Host 2
That's right. In their room. Room 77, apparently. I didn't realize that was shot in there for the longest time. I assumed it was like in an airport bathroom or something.
- [10:05]
Host 1
Yeah, you can see it. It's got this sort of vintage square tile there in the background.
- [10:10]
Host 2
There's a lot going on in this to unpack in just terms of like this whole idea of infiltrating the. The enemy's domain by staying in the Chateau as a.
- [10:23]
Host 1
It's a little. I mean, this is honestly kind of the most punk. Like, you know when people say, like, oh, that's so punk rock, dude. It's so punk rock that someone, you know, I don't know, said fuck you to the man or whatever. Like this is. I don't use that sort of terminology or whatever. But were I that type of person, like, this whole thing is kind of the closest thing I could imagine to being the type of thing. I would say that about making your crazy mixtape with all these stolen samples. It's awesome. Huge hit. Signed to Epic Money Store drops through Epic. Huge, you know, commercially. Relatively commercially successful, critically lauded across the world. You get a bunch of money and then you got this follow up record that you got to put out and it's going to have the dick on the COVID and also you just end up dropping it on a torrent website on a random day after the label refuses to put it out. And oh, also it's like the most, I don't know about you to actually start edging towards the music contained here. It's the most abrasive and hardcore and really kind of intense music that they at least had released up until this point. Death Grip's obviously very frequently thought of or spoken about as this abrasive experimental macho, to use one of the terms they were using themselves in that interview earlier. Hard to listen to music, but I mean they're stereotypically believed as such or portrayed as such. And I think if you see some of the live clips, you understand why no Love Deep Web, I think, actually earns that reputation.
- [12:09]
Host 2
It's a transgressive act to do this.
- [12:12]
Host 1
This is a much more kind of heavy duty hardcore in the shit record, I think, than either Ex Military or Moneystorm.