By Drew Daniel

IN THE HANDS of Jay Lesser, drum 'n' bass feels less like a jungle rinse-out and more like one of those water cannons used by foreign governments to disperse rioting crowds. Lesser tracks like "One Ambient Motherfucker" and "Markus Popp Can Kiss My Redneck Ass" dish out punishingly crunchy beats and sarcasm in equal measure, while live Lesser sets seem to implode any "hard guy" pretensions in a haze of queasy noise and skittering drum stabs.

The result is unique in the polite climate of current electronics – with the exception of friend and collaborator Kid 606, whose work shares Lesser's cross-wiring of precise production and snotty gusto. Mashing together sheets of high-end digital noise, gabba thumps, and spot-on snare attacks with a newfound flair for tech-house atmospherics and the occasional melodic synth line, Kid 606 evades the IDM nerd factor through sheer "fuck it" attitude. Whether he's ripping off the film Heavy Metal Parking Lot or a skipping Sheryl Crow CD, there's a breezy shamelessness to his sampling and appropriation that smacks of juvenile delinquency rather than cutesy postmodern quotation.

Currently riding a wave of deserved hype for his full-length album Down with the Scene on Ipecac Records, Kid 606 – a.k.a. Miguel Depedro – has recently relocated to San Francisco, where he runs his own label, Tigerbeat6. Recovering from a grueling European tour with the Kid, Jay Lesser is now semi-hard at work on the next Lesser album, a full-length release for Matador called Gearhound. Before giving you their conversation, I feel compelled to offer a "disc"laimer: I've known Jay and Miguel for about three years or so, I'm in a noise project with them called Disc, and Jay is also a member of my band (Matmos) when we play live. On Miguel's 21st birthday we gathered at my house to talk about San Diego, heavy metal, tech geekery, and N.W.A. Later we had ice cream and cookies, the Kid blew out his candles, and we watched wrestling.

1: San Diego

Bay Guardian: Why are so many fucked-up or creative people (A Minor Forest, Optiganally Yours, Black Heart Procession, Heavy Vegetable, Locust) from San Diego, and why did both of you leave?

Jay Lesser: The words "military town" answer both questions. There's not a whole lot there.

Kid 606: So beautiful, so comfortable, so ... miserable. If you fit in, it's great: beautiful beaches, beautiful girls, cool schools. It's fucking utopia if you fit in, but as soon as you don't –

JL: It's a great place to retire.

BG: [To Kid] Jay moved to S.F., and now you have too – are you stalking him?

K6: Totally, I'm stalking Jay. I asked Jay if he was ever planning to move back to San Diego, and he said no, and that helped me make up my mind. If we're going to be doing stuff together, it helps to be around. The plan is to write some quick songs together that aren't too anal about the DSP [Digital Signal Processing] stuff.

JL: Under another name, as the Sex Pixels.

BG: Never Mind the Bitmaps?

K6: Jay will be Jay Rotten, and I will be Kid Vicious.

BG: [To Kid] I thought you moved to S.F. because you had punched out too many people in San Diego.

K6: I can't say enough bad things about San Diego musically. I'd run into people trying to buy analog synthesizers before the whole "electronica" boom, but they were trying to make either Vangelis or bad techno. It never evolved past raves. Then a whole jungle scene emerged in San Diego – another thing for me not to feel a part of.

2: Touring

BG: For electronic musicians, you guys tour a lot.

JL: We're like Deep Purple.

BG: What's so appealing about touring?

JL: Free drinks, paid vacation.

K6: You need an escape, somewhere where you're not responsible. Sometimes you have to leave. I went on tour even though it was a shady one, just to get away from my ex-girlfriend, so that I could not call her and she could not call me. It's not about promoting records. If I had to tour to promote every record I put out, I'd never be home.

JL: If I had enough money, I would just go and see things; with touring, there's enough money that you can feel OK about being out there without wasting your money. If I could go on tour and not play any shows, that would be excellent. The music part is the bad part.

BG: Since you both have opened for rock bands, you've had to be ambassadors to the world of non-guitars – have you had to defend yourself physically?

JL: Yes, I have. When I was in Missoula, Montana, with A Minor Forest, there was an altercation with a cowboy. I had been drinking. I guess in the "ambassador" sense, I'm not a good electronic musician; I'm not self-reflexive or quiet.

K6: If you're a rock person who's going to see electronic music, it shouldn't be us. The Fantomas tour [Kid 606 opened] was up and down every night, but Connecticut was definitely the biggest death-threat hillbilly thing.

BG: Connecticut? But they're rich!

K6: Not where we played. A good percentage of the 2000 Maniacs were at that show. The Mr. Bungle fans liked me, but the Slayer fans didn't – and then you'd have the Slayer fans chatting me up so they could meet Dave Lombardo and touch his body. I was the backstage designator along with electronic ambassador. People keep telling me that if I had visuals, if I had more people up onstage acting like they were doing something, I know it would be 10 times more successful live, but I'm consciously not doing it. I'm not going to do everything it takes to fucking sell records and get "bigger." It's such an offense to people to have someone go up there and not put on the Lizard King show.

3: Hype

JL: [To Kid, in guidance counselor voice] You've really matured in the past few years.

K6: Ma-turd. I just got a review and a feature article in NME and a thing in SPIN. I try to forget it as soon as I read it.

BG: What do you think about that hype?

K6: I just want it to end quick. [Quoting NME review] "He's trouble where ever he goes, making music working on a laptop in a bunker somewhere." Bunker? I've never been stashed in some fucking bunker.

BG: But the turnover, especially within the British music press, is very quick – they build you up and then take you down.

K6: Totally. The main thing is that I won't always be making music that [relates to] all that hype and all that crap. Honestly, you can't be important and special to them all the time. Eventually I'd like to have something else up my sleeve, but honestly I don't think I've yet found it.

4: Metal vs. dance music

BG: Jay, you were in a metal cover band [Creeping Death, with members of A Minor Forest] – do you feel betrayed by the Napster vs. Lars mash-up?

JL: It's sort of unfortunate, but I knew it was going to happen. I already knew that Metallica were puds. Betrayed? I only felt betrayed by their black album. We never played anything after Master of Puppets anyways.

BG: You both love the Artful Dodger's big two-step hit "Rewind (When the Crowd Say Bo Selector)," but you seem pretty hostile to the official story about electronic music and the dance floor. Will you ever make "real" dance music?

JL: I just don't know how to do it, and I've never been to a rave. I don't know how to make a breakdown: "Now you tastefully remove this instrument, and then this one." My songs are more like a metal song – there's this part, then this part, then the pre-chorus, then the chorus.

BG: But it sounds to me like there's at least a drum 'n' bass template there.

JL: No, it's like a guitar solo played on the drums. It's like a heavy-metal band where people only play drums. But no one just wants to hear drums, so I have to find other sounds too. I wanted to do a record where all the sounds were gathered from Guitar Center, people soloing and stuff.

5: Gearhounds

BG: So what is a gearhound?

JL: A gearhound is the same as a tablegazer, which is the same as a chinstroker: the people who come to electronic music shows and sit in the front and stare at what you're doing and what equipment you're using.

BG: Staring covetously, like at a trade show?

JL: The perfect example is this: we played in Germany last year. The year before I brought over a Pioneer CDJ and a KAOSS pad, and when I went to Germany the following year, the guy we stayed with had two CDJs and a Kaoss pad too [in German accent] "Because I saw you use it!"

K6: Whereas I go to a punk show and just listen to the music, I'm not checking out what fucking amps the band are using.

JL: In a lot of ways, though, there's not much more to electronic music these days than what cool little tech thing you're doing.

BG: A lot of people think that, but I don't know if it's true. I mean, that guy with the CDJs isn't going to make a Lesser track.

JL: He'll probably sell more.

BG: Why is your upcoming EP called Mensa Dance Squad?

JL: I like to dabble in social commentary. Really that record could be called anything. Napster Rules, Metallica Sucks. The Mensa Dance Squad are the fans, basically – the IDM list, some of whom are nice people, but they're kind of freaky, kind of weird, lurker people.

6: Hip-hop

BG: You both have recently covered N.W.A. [on Attitude, a three-inch CD on Tigerbeat6]. Jay, you covered "Fat Girl on My Jock" and replaced the "fat girl" 's name with your own. Are you on N.W.A.'s jock? Are you that fat girl?

JL: I've always felt the same strange fascination with hip-hop, and I also feel highly uncomfortable about that fascination. But I can accept that.

BG: What's good about your track is that it addressed that – it didn't cover it up under a fake "dude, I'm so down" attitude.

JL: I'm so not down.

BG: Miguel, you did the most famous, instantly recognizable N.W.A. track, "Straight Outta Compton." Why?

K6: [Sarcastically] Because I want to be the most famous, instantly recognizable IDM musician ever! With "Straight Outta Compton," I can relate to it. Sure, when I first heard it, I wasn't personally straight outta Compton, but times were tough and shit is fucked, and you need something to cling on to when you're younger, whether it's Godflesh, Danzig, the Misfits – you hear some music and you want to be that person. "I'm a bad motherfucker and you know this" – I've felt that. But I would never get on stage and rap those lyrics because that would be a fucking joke.

more noise | return to top | sfbg.com