Deradoorian & Teebs: An Alumni Conversation

Both Deradoorian and Teebs have forged their creative paths by doing things their own way. As a member of Dirty Projectors and Avey Tare’s Slasher Flicks, Deradoorian had a hand in expanding the boundaries of indie pop, and her new solo album on Anticon follows down a similarly idiosyncratic path. Teebs, a passionate painter and visual artist, found a musical voice with his unique, earthy and elegant, ambient-inspired take on Low End Theory beat music. As part of our alumni conversation series, we brought the two Red Bull Music Academy graduates and Los Angeles residents together for an intimate chat.

Teebs

When did you move to Los Angeles?

Deradoorian

I moved here from Baltimore a third of the way into writing the record. When I got here, I was just kind of in domestic mode trying to get everything together. I finally got my studio set up and I was super bratty about it because the electrical work in the house is really buzzy and not grounded. I was like, “What’s with this radio station coming through all the time?” There’s this Mexican radio station here that’s a pirate, so they up the frequency super hard and it always comes through the right speaker when you’re playing. I actually got some cool samples.

Eventually I got into a flow with it and had my breakthrough moment while working here in LA. When you’re making something you’re like, “I don’t think I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, I feel like I’m going to die.” But I’m starting to get better at working here.

Teebs

Have you noticed that there are a lot of spiders in Los Angeles?

Deradoorian

Oh yeah. Tons of spiders in the studio.

Teebs

It’s crazy. Does that bug you out?

Deradoorian

Not at all. I love bugs. Spiders are a sign of good health. If they’re living in your home, it means they like the vibe.

Teebs

You have a record coming out on Anticon. How did that come about?

Deradoorian

I’ve known Yoni Wolf from WHY? for ten years now because I used to go to Berkeley in Oakland a lot in my teenage years. He came out here because he has a podcast called the Wandering Wolf. He interviewed me on it and I sent him my record. He was like, “I should send this to Anticon.” I was like, “Anticon? That sounds so weird. I don’t know ...” It just seemed like a weird fit to me at first and I didn’t invest much of my energy into pushing it with them at first, but it developed naturally over time. I’m actually the first female artist they’ve ever had, I think.

Teebs

How did you get the title The Expanding Flower Planet for the album?

Deradoorian

My grandmother gave me... I don’t know if it’s a blanket or a table cloth or whatever. It’s just a Chinese silk textile, blue and red, with this flower mandala. It seems pretty unique. I had that above my little work zone in Baltimore, and I was writing this song, and I kept looking at it. You look at it, focus or unfocus, and you can see things vibrate or move around. I saw it growing, and it looked, oddly, like a brain to me. It became this symbol of consciousness expansion. The only words I can use sound super New Age-y... For the most part, it symbolizes the quest that was making this record.

Teebs

How does it feel going back and forth, solo to band projects?

Deradoorian

I haven’t been in Dirty Projectors for four years, so I haven’t really been going back and forth, but doing the solo stuff was just a lot of learning, a lot of experimenting. Dirty Projectors is very structured and technical music. It’s a lot of concentrating. It was nice to experiment with other ways of playing. It was a pretty heavy, thought out record, but I wanted to balance between feeling and intellectualizing music.

Teebs

Are you spiritual?

Deradoorian

I’ve always had an interest in religion and spirituality and philosophy, but I’ve always been just fascinated by exploring the unknown and why people have faith in something that they can’t directly see or touch. In that sense, it’s always been embedded in me, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that spirituality is very important for me. I’m realizing that music is my spirituality, or it’s my modality. I can’t really justify making music for any other reason than to spiritually connect with other people, because then it seems like a very egotistical act. If I ask myself the question, “Why am I doing this?” The only thing I can come up with is you give, you serve others. So it has to be spiritual because it has to be this constant growth of understanding self, to understand others, to understand the world, to understand the universe.

Teebs

I think I found the quote of the day.

Deradoorian

[laughs]

Teebs

One of the first things that I thought when I heard your music was, “This makes me feel like when I first heard Can,” which was really cool.

Deradoorian

The first time I heard Can, my heart dropped.

Teebs

It’s confusing, right? How good they are.

Deradoorian

I was like, “How can this be so good right away?” The first time I heard Can, it was the same time when I first heard Yes. I got all the mp3s and put them on my parent’s weird computer. I don’t even know how I played the songs because they didn’t have iTunes. It was 10-11 years ago.

Teebs

Was this AOL dial up days? No.

Deradoorian

It wasn’t far off because I’m pretty sure my parents didn’t switch over from 56k for awhile or whatever.

Teebs

That noise! I think that sound of AOL turning on was very influential to me.

Deradoorian

I was always like, “This sounds so annoying.” Intense intervals to be going back and forth.

Teebs

It was terrible, but it was so unique and weird that we couldn’t really escape it.

Deradoorian

I think a big influence for me, though, is Alice Coltrane.

Teebs

She’s heavy.

Deradoorian

I’ve been listening to her for a very long time, and I still don’t get tired of it. It’s so pure and spiritual. Honest. It’s crazy. I feel like she didn’t get the recognition she really deserved.

Teebs

I feel like she got overlooked.

Deradoorian

It’s still a very male dominated field.

Teebs

That’s the huge thing. It’s how you mentioned before... It’s rad that you’re the first female artist on Anticon, but it just sucks that we’re at a point where it’s like, “You’re the first.”

Deradoorian

I wasn’t going to say that, but you got it.

Teebs

It pains me a little bit when that kind of stuff comes up. It’s really weird...

Deradoorian

The more I get into the music industry, the more apparent it becomes how women are viewed or treated. I’ll do everything I can to dispel or try and change that dynamic, but... I feel like Alice is the unsung hero. I love how her voice is not a refined instrument. It’s just this total conduit of spirituality for her. It’s so honest. She was just ... Her and Dorothy Ashby... It brings awesome vibes, and that’s what I love about female musicians, especially in jazz. They were able to bring such a unique sonic vibe to music. It’s so expansive, big, beautiful.

Teebs

It’s groundbreaking. I just feel like there’s so much missing to what’s happening in the world because it’s only voiced from one side. We’re missing a lot of information.

Deradoorian

It’s just so deeply embedded in our society today. It’s an ongoing battle. To fulfill your musical dream, you’ve got to find that balance as a woman, and you also have to deal with people thinking you don’t know what the fuck you’re doing when you do. I have a lot of female musical role models because I recognize the amount of strength they had – especially Alice Coltrane and Dorothy Ashby, being female black musicians in America. I could never fathom what that was like, but I’m sure it was a lot of stuff they had to deal with to fulfill their musical dreams, and they made some of the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard.

Teebs

At the same time with that kind of stress.

Deradoorian

Do you record and sample everything yourself, or do you use electronic instruments or other things as well? It all sounds electronic to me in a way, but also very organic.

Teebs

Yeah. Just going over my last records, it does have this vibe of electronic production to it. To me, I’m actually not so excited about that sound.

Deradoorian

Electronics?

Teebs

Yeah. Computerized sounding stuff. It breaks my heart sometimes. I don’t think it’s bad music, per se. I’m in that realm. I never really was a music head. I love music, but when I started producing, it was just because I had Fruity Loops at the house. Then it became this thing that helps me find peace. It’s meditative. Now fast forward to today...

Deradoorian

It’s become your career.

Teebs

It just happened. I think with everyone having a chance to grab a computer and mess around has confused the music world, but at the same time really opened up some interesting, weird possibilities.

Deradoorian

Yeah. I wouldn’t consider myself an electronic artist. When I went to the Academy in Tokyo, I felt a little out of place, honestly. But it was also very enlightening to be around all these people who understood their recording programs and their computers. I always just want to use it like a four-track. I wish we had more time together with all those people. It goes so fast. So many people there had all this knowledge, but you just end up in this whirlwind of socializing and going to the lectures and just trying to figure out what you want to make. It happens so fast. I have a newfound respect for all of those people working in that modality. Although I think I’m probably going to stick to my...

Teebs

Stick to your guns.

Deradoorian

Stick to my ignorant ways of recording.

Teebs

I understand completely. I like to paint and stuff. That’s my other career, I guess. I never picked up Photoshop, Illustrator, any of that world. At first I was very negative towards it, like, “People doing brush strokes on the computer” You could’ve picked up a brush.” It would’ve looked a lot cooler to me. I was very ignorant, but whatever. I’m still very caveman in that world.

Deradoorian

I just love old school recording, too. I just love what happens if I run something through a space echo five times. Or what if I put the microphone all the way across the room? It might sound like shit, but it was fun to just see what happens. I re-amped a lot of my record at this church in three different rooms, and one was just the main church hall which has super long reverb, and then one was in the basement, which was all cement walls and sounded like shit. It was so abrasive, but then I used it on “DarkLord” because it so wonderfully reflected the negativity of that song. I can go on forever about this, but it makes me think about literal material – cement, wood, stone, dirt – all the things that we build up the world with, their elemental energy, and how that affects you as a person. I think that’s why Japan trips me out so much, because there are so many buildings within the city that are wooden. We kind of live in a digital world, regardless.

Teebs

A little more than kind of. [laughs]

Deradoorian

Were you at Flying Lotus’ record release show for You’re Dead?

Teebs

That crazy VR one? No.

Deradoorian

He had an Oculus set up, the goggles. It was tripping me out. He’s good at incorporating technology and spirituality into something that seems very of this time.

Teebs

He can communicate his ideas so well.

Deradoorian

It also makes you think that there’s still room for originality. You can create something very unique from within yourself, if you are willing to go there. It’s fucking dark.

Teebs

It’s a spiritual journey.

Deradoorian

It’s infinite. I was talking to my friend about it last night, like, “You know that cliché about you have to really struggle to make good art? It’s actually true.” You really have to throw yourself down over and over again.

Teebs

It’s beautifully painful. You think to yourself, “Man, I never want to do this again,” but then you wake up the next day and you’re like, “I can’t wait to make this next thing.”

Deradoorian

And when you realize that you can make these things into something tangible, something listenable. How fucking awesome is it when you can do that?

Teebs

It’s mindblowing. I didn’t really hang out with music heads until I started hanging out with Steve [Flying Lotus]. That’s how I got into this music thing a little more so after the Academy.

Deradoorian

When did you go?

Teebs

In 2008. Steve went in 2006, and this hip hop producer, Samiyam, who’s one of Steve’s friends, went in 2007. Then I went in 2008 from this community, because Low End [Theory] was happening at that time. Low End was brand new back then. There would be four people in the audience. It was a weird time and a weird place because there wasn’t really musicianship happening. It was these guys with beats. [Gaslamp Killer] Will was only playing more psych stuff because heavy dubstep hadn’t crossed over yet from the UK. It was all just hip hop and psych and random records he had from Turkey that he would play on big speakers.

Then you’d see Lotus come up with a PC laptop, sunglasses on. He’s like, “OK, I want to play this beat I made on an airplane once.” He hits play. Everyone’s blown away with this crazy music and it’s really loud. I had never heard this kind of music loud. I was at home with headphones on. Now I’m in this environment where this weirdo music is allowed to be played. I was really into it. Low End turned me on.

Deradoorian

It seems like it was incredibly important – and for a lot of people – to create that platform to show this new music.

Teebs

It felt really good to be able to hear these weird ideas that people are making up. I was like, “This is not a club to me. This is like a weird gathering for sounds and experimentation.”

Deradoorian

I think that’s a very good example of how people can actually create a difference in their musical community. I feel like LA needs so much more of that. We’re not there yet because we’re so spread out. Geographically, it’s a huge challenge for us, but the potential is all around. It’s just how to bring it all together, and that’s up to all of us.