I started doing interviews for rateyourmusic.com last year which is a site I use every day for music discovery, and it's now pretty much an excuse to just interview some of my favorite artists and go really in-depth, get all my nerd questions out and learn more about their careers 🙃

since a lot of them would be kind of niche for ktt I thought I'd just start a thread for this maybe to keep the few real music heads on here updated / have an open forum if anyone has questions for artists I will interview soon.

links for all interviews so far:
rateyourmusic.com/~beflygelt
Loraine James
Bloodz Boi
Ichiko Aoba
Jlin
Slauson Malone 1

editing:
Le Guess Who? 2023 festival review
Lee Gamble

upcoming:
Ran Cap Duoi
Dreamcrusher
King Vision Ultra
Nicolas Jaar
pigbaby
Evanora:Unlimited aka Marjorie W.C. Sinclair

def happening but waiting for next big release:
Organ Tapes
bod aka Piano Princess

in talks w but atm a "?"
Dorian Electra
MIKE
Oklou

@proper @Vox @RVI

In

LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOO

in

Will Nicolas Jaar will do another Against All Logic project, and what we gotta do to get Fantasy back on streaming

Clear it Beyoncé

If you’ve got an something with Dreamcrusher on the books, any chance of an interview with Geng PTP? Prolific artist and label runner in his own right, frequent collaborator, brilliant and approachable guy

100% wanting to do that, but he's maybe too underground for rym so thinking maybe toneglow or passionweiss (have a friend there)

maybe even end up doing that before dream lol, they were super enthusiastic about the interview back in May (even wanting to do a photoshoot for it even tho no one expects that of a rym interview), but then ghosted me tons (was also v difficult year for them tbf). recently met them in person briefly before show in Köln but they still have ghosted all the same lul

forgot to add my next 2 things to op lol, already got a lot of material for LGW review and recorded Lee Gamble (just massive editing job bc he's a bit of a talker)

super excited about the lee gamble one, he was sharing rly interesting stories about his DJ career going back to the 90s, talking about his experimental DJ sets in London in the early 2000s

lil preview I sent friends here:
sharetext.me/aoq6nvdbg1

I don't even have any ADHD meds yet once I'm actually able to work a solid amount in a week it's over

i love seeing this for you @op

One of the goats

this is sick

@beflygelt what can you tell me about using RYM beyond just looking at different releases, artists and genres and reading reviews?

It seems like you've really built a network and community through it and I would never thought that was possible just casually running into the site over the years so I'd love to hear as much as possible about that part

OMG in like a zyn

tbh I'm not a fan of rym reviews lol, I usually skip and scroll right to comments lol. occasionally you'll have some really good reviews but 95% are on a spectrum of offensive to "ok take but badly written" lol.

the most interesting immediate things when looking up an artist or album is to see how many people have rated already, whether it's thousands already or only a couple dozen, and then the average rating you kind of always need to see in context of that.

and then also just always find it interesting to see what genres people have voted for, you do get a lot of bullshit votes especially if it's an unknown release but generally would say rym is probably the best site online to discuss what genres might fit specific music (and then you can click on the genres and find more like it)

definitely just hyperlinking your way through the archive is a big part of it. it's like wikipedia rabbit holes lol

it's also handy to see what lists a release is in, if it's pretty unknown on rym then the lists a cool release is on might be on a user list with more fire underground recs

also following users who you see commenting or highly rating things you love is great, you can often find a lot of great stuff just by following ppl who's tastes you dig. it takes a moment to find your people but I def have a few now where I'm like, if this person digs it it's probably cool

Definitely tag me when your talk with Jaar is live 🔥🔥

he was surprisingly super responsive right from first reaching out but has been very quiet since the situation in Palestine escalated (he's done lots of workshops there past years...)

I think I won't hassle him anymore till January tbh, think music promo isn't really his priority right now :/

Immediately sidestepped what I first think of RYM for (the reviews)

This is exactly what I was looking for, thank you so much, added your whole post to a general note I keep on music

Can you see who other people follow on their profiles?

Also can you speak some on how you used RYM to get in touch with all of these artists?

Never knew he had workshops in Palestine, amazing

update: just yolo pitched to him in insta DMs and he's down so add to 2024 list 🙏🏻

he's such a legend for selling bootleg "I was at the Aphex Twin Boiler Room merch" on his bandcamp 🤣

sorry never replied - I only really got in touch with someone /through/ rym with bloodzboi, who I saw was a rym user - and turns out considers RYM his favorite music site (I've kept in contact w him and he's the actual biggest music nerd I know)

LJ I was just chatting w on twitter and she knew rym and was generally extremely chill about doing interviews (her and my editor Marilyn Roxie being so chill and open to give a total rando from Germany a shot literally gave me a career)

Ichiko Aoba I reached out over mail saying I'll be at her gig and then they last minute said cool she'd be happy to do an interview - turns out she knew that she has a ton of fans on the site (I also discovered her on rym in 2017)

Slauson was actually the first one I formerly reached out to over mail saying I'll be at this festival if he wants to meet and then we actually did run into each other and he said yeah I remember your mail and then answered a couple days later saying let's do this but let's do it for my album and then it was almost a full year till that happened.

Organ Tapes, bod and evanora are all people I ran into after/before/at live shows and said hey I do interviews, I did that bloodzboi one (who's a friend of all of them) and they immediately knew bc he had that pinned in his socials for ages and then were immediately really keen to do one w me also.

At this point, honestly mostly because so many ppl are friends w bloodzboi, I just connected to tons of artists I love just chatting talking shop and bonding over music in DMs, and like maybe some of them I would still do interviews w down the line as well.

Organ Tapes is such a nice dude we've just been chatting loads and recently just hung out a whole night during a club night w other German DJ friends in Berlin was rly cute.

Thanks for another great answer, love hearing about all this

Congrats

definitely been a headfucky but beautiful wild year. my whole approach always is just that artist are just people who really like art! if you also really like art it's very easy to connect and talk and inspire each other