Interview: Teebs on Music, Cartoons and Christmas Records

How are you doing? Where are you right now?

I’m at home, literally just waking up, in LA. I was up really late watching some Netflix stuff.

So you're in LA proper now, or are you in Chino Hills still?

I’m in LA, on the east side now.

Like Highland Park?

Yeah, pretty much. I’m in Glass Hill Park - but right outside Highland, Mt. Washington, Eagle Rock and all that.

RBMA: So, first of all, real quick, I was going to ask you about your name, which is obviously shortened somehow from your real name, Mtendre. However, when I was looking online, I came across the Urban Dictionary, and according to them, ‘Teebs’ is a way of saying your telling the truth when using Instant Messenger? Any comment on this being part of your name?

Hahaha! I don’t use it that way.

Damn, I was hoping there was some connection. You’re in Los Angeles now, but you’ve lived in Connecticut, Atlanta, New York… Why so much moving?

Uhh, family choices. My parents used to live in New York, but then my dad’s job was in California. Connecticut was my grandmas’s house, so we lived with her for a while. Then in Atlanta, my cousins lived there, so we shared an apartment with them for a bit. And then we joined my dad in LA.

And what did your dad do?

He was working at that point as a freelance engineer for some companies. By then though, he just ended up getting a job with some insurance company…

And you went to engineering school at first, right?

Yeah, sort of. It wasn’t for engineering though. I went there for culinary arts actually. But it wasn’t for me.

How many years did you do culinary arts?

I just did it for one year. It was a good program, but it just wasn’t for me.

So what was your dish?

Ha! No, it wasn’t even that cool. It was just learning how to stay sanitized and meat handling skills and stuff.

OK, so, you’ve been a lot of places. Why don’t you pick one that you wouldn’t mind spending a year at…

Hmmm… That’s a good question. Maybe London because I’ve got some friends there, and it seems like the next place I could see myself feeling a bit at home. The friends there could make it a lot easier for sure.

LA is warm. Your music feels warm. London is not warm. Do you think you could make your music in a cold environment?

Haha, yeah, I think so. Whenever I’m there, it feels right. Actually though, I think every time I’ve gone to London, I’ve always had the most problems with travel situations and weird things, so it’s kind of always the shittiest times. But I like being there, so I think I’ll be all right.

Who’s your crew in London?

Some good music friends would be this dude, Lukid. Also, Kutmah is now over there, so that’s a big one. Fatima is also a friend of mine.

Alright, so, like I said, your music feels warm, but I read somewhere that you were sampling a lot from Christmas records… Can you explain that?

Haha, it wasn’t solely, I wasn’t necessarily looking for these things, but then I started doing this art project with record sleeves...

For Dublab, right?

Yeah, but it was mostly just to pay rent. I moved in with Flying Lotus and Samiyam; I had no money, no job, and once I paid the first month's rent I was completely broke. So, I was thinking, “How can I survive off the stuff I like to do?” Like some kind of test or something. So I went to Poobah Records, and they had this section in the front of free records – you just take them. Mostly like Christmas records, and Christian hymns and stuff. All the stuff nobody wanted. So that’s what I had to work with.

So you were making art pieces out of the covers and then sampling the music...

Yeah.

So you were really double exploiting these Christian hymn artists, weren’t you? They might come calling with their congregation.

Haha, yeah.

And were you exhibiting these pieces?

No, not at that time. First I made about 25, then I figured I would make 100, my friend who was good at web design put up a quick site, and we just said first come, first serve. All the paintings were like $20.

But they became kind of a collectors item, right?

Yeah, they became pretty popular. More popular than anything else I’ve done…

So we’ve talked about Christmas records, but do you have any other dark guilty musical pleasures?

Haha, no, I don’t think I’ve got anything to hide when it comes to music. I can’t think of anything.

There’s nothing you do in your room in hiding, when the lights are off, and all your roommates are gone?

Wait, are we talking music here?

So, you’re using an SP-404 for live shows, and Fruity Loops for your productions. Are you using mostly samples these days, or are you playing stuff?

Yep. Right now, it’s just samples. That’s all I have. I usually try to borrow stuff, but I’m actually trying to buy some instruments.

So you’re buying records quite a bit?

Ummm, sort of. I still usually just dive into that free pile at Poobah’s.

I read somewhere that you weren’t necessarily brought up in a musical environment, but you discovered it through contemporary music and are working backwards. So what decade are you in right now?

I’ve been learning a bit more about 50s stuff, because that’s the kind of stuff I find. And then, really more 80s. 70s a little bit, but to be honest, I only know certain gems here and there that people show me. I’m very terrible at musical knowledge. 

I have this theory going that there are two ways to make unique music. One would be to know everything, and take influences from thousands of different realms, and the second way would be to know nothing about music, like The Shaggs. Do you think that’s accurate?

I wouldn’t disagree with that. I do feel that because I don’t know a lot of shit, it really helps to just make stuff up. It’s a fair assumption.
 

Your paintings, and your music, they create a lot of beauty out of what could be argued are ugly records, ugly record covers. Do they fall under the re-constructionist movement? I was listening to museum headphones last year, and they threw that term out… If you die, and a hundred years later, could they throw you in that category?

Haha… It could occur. I don’t think too much about that kind of stuff. I know when I was getting into art, there was this video I saw that was some museum funded art video. They were taking two kinds of art styles, one was what they called “power art” which was artists that made really visually intense shit, so even if you’re on the other side of the building, you can really get the piece. Like instantly, you get it. The video was comparing that to artists that are more like, you have to understand the history of why they are doing it. Like that toilet upside down piece that people are saying is the most amazing thing ever, because it changed the world of art of something; that was the mind kind of art that they were talking about. For me, I really dug that emotional, powerful stuff. I like the idea of mental stuff, but I like power art. That’s what got me into art. I think my stuff falls into that category.

So that falls into the big things you draw on your paintings… I don’t know what to call them. Puffer fish?

Haha, I call them “floaters.”

You’re doing big pieces now, are you mainly doing these for commissions, or just for fun?

A bit of both. I get commissions, but I’m really bad at doing them. I need to answer those phone calls. My last body of work was when my record came out, I wanted to do an exhibit, so that whole year I was working on stuff around that release day. Now, in July I need to start working on stuff for an art show at the end of the year in Chicago.

I’m switching up a tiny bit, but the 'Adventure Time' cartoon… You talk about this a lot. How much cartoon influence to you have going on?

A LOT! A lot. ‘Adventure Time’ is crazy. When I used to live at my mom’s house in Chino, that’s the only thing I used to watch. I used to watch cartoons every day. Literally every day.

Can you give me your top five favorite cartoons?

‘Adventure Time’ would be number one. That murders everything. Then ‘Adventures of Flapjack.’ It’s kind of like a new SpongeBob or something. Those two are my favorite current things. This is tough. What am I watching these days?

Were you ever a Looney Tunes fan?

Yeah, I was huge on Looney Tunes. I was huge on 'Ren & Stimpy.' I was huge on 'Rocko’s Modern Life.' I like 'Tom & Jerry.' I think that's at least five.

Switching up again, what does a Teebs show look like, circa right now?

It consists of me testing out my new stuff that I want to put on record. So it’s a lot of that, and some stuff I picked up traveling for my first time in Europe. So I’m going to play some stuff from friends. And I just use the SP.

Let’s say 20 years go by… Thirty years even… Do you have some fantasy of what kind of music you want to make?

I have one idea… If I can just play one note, and the whole room starts crying. Bawling. Everyone would just break down completely. It would be the brown note mixed with everything else. Like a million audience crowd. Everyone crying. All languages, all barriers broken. That one note shatters everything.

Teebs has a recent mix out for Mary Anne Hobbes. His full length, Ardour, has been out for some time, but that doesn't really matter because it's good. Listen to his live performance from the 2011 Sonar Festival in Barcelona below.