Vinyl Cape is a collaboration between MC/vocalist Brzowski (RI/ME), producer C$ Burns (ME), and DJ Mo Niklz (CT). A cursory glance at their internet profiles reveals a self-description of "Gothic Outlaw Doom Rap", which fails to fully capture the full picture but offers a glance at the tone and vibe of the project, in my opinion. Any given performance will feature the gravelly tone of Brzo dancing/slicing atop/through C Money's guitar painted score. DJ Mo Niklz, who has been known around the CT scene for his live video sets drenched with movie and television show clips, adds his type of flavor throughout, as cuts become another instrument or voice to the proceedings.
The collective has just released their mix-compilation Ritual Abuse: Mixed Cape I and hit the road with. . . umm. . . me on the Part Of The Problem mini-tour earlier this month. The tour ran through 5 different towns in the Northeast. This interview was conducted for a local CT publication for a potential new column, but when they failed to post this, I thought it might be cool to feature it here after folks became interested in the tour diary I wrote for ok-tho during our journey.
The voice of Vinyl Cape, Brzowski, took a moment to sit down with me and yap before the roadtrip began. . .
SKETCH THA CATACLYSM:
As we are set to embark on our short journey of shows and such, I recall my initial reaction to seeing you live (which I believe was at the Heirloom Arts Theater in Danbury, CT). I thought you were an immediately engaging performer. It felt like a show right away; the type of thing where it would make an impression on a person, whether they were enjoying the music or not. It was really cool to see. It made me curious as to what kind of performers caught you early on and what motivated you to hit the stage in THAT way.
BRZOWSKI (of Vinyl Cape):
Well, first off, thank you for sharing that.
The first concerts I attended as a teenager were all metal or punk bands, where energy and presence were just as important as the material itself. People like Peter Steele from Type O Negative, Mina (Keith) Caputo from Life of Agony, and an old Boston punk band The Showcase Showdown all come to mind. The energy is infectious when you can tell the people on stage are seriously engaged and enjoying what they are doing. Hip-hop is a genre akin to stand-up comedy or public speaking at it's most stripped down. It is YOUR words and YOUR personality, so you have to hypertrophy your personality and connect with your audience early in the performance to get them engaged.
SKETCH THA CATACLYSM:
Were you late to hip-hop or was it in your life at the time of those early shows?
BRZOWSKI:
To put it in perspective, the first two cassettes that I bought of my own volition were Iron Maiden's Piece of Mind and DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince's He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper. I was really young. . . this was about '88.
SKETCH THA CATACLYSM:
Ahh yes Fresh Prince. I still think those early records had jewels that were slept on. Some of that stuff still sounds great now.
BRZOWSKI:
I listened to all sorts of music when I was really young, pillaging the tape collections of my friends, their older siblings, and neighborhood rummage-sales. Fat Boys, Black Sabbath, Run DMC, Ice-T, Bob Dylan, Slayer. . . all before puberty. I did not attempt to rap myself until I was in my late-teen years. I started playing guitar and singing around 12.
SKETCH THA CATACLYSM:
What was it that finally got you to rap for the first time?
BRZOWSKI:
It was 1999, and I was really enamored with painting graffiti: productions, murals, handstyles. . . and collateral damage! There were several great lay-ups in RI and MA at the time where artists would just post up for the day and bring a boom-box and take their time. The typical playlist would be something like: Black Flag, Soundbombing, Gangstarr, Mos Def, Operation Ivy, Eyehategod, Arsonists; people would just throw on whatever they wanted, genre be damned. Hearing your Non-Phixion and The Best of the Geto Boys mixed in with all of this heavy music just made me realize that there was room to get weird. I really despised the rap-rock "music" that was happening then (having an intimate connection with both worlds, it seemed like that nu-metal chunka-chunka wave was a bro-down marketing point for the lowest common denominator). And, if anything, I thought that people like Dalek or Mike Patton were coming closer to a synthesis of those worlds.
SKETCH THA CATACLYSM:
I've always had a love for Mike Patton's work. He does so much shit so well. Completely unpredictable human.
BRZOWSKI:
A true artist in a world of commerce, that's Patton.
Arsonists hit me hard, as did Funcrusher Plus, and the first Themselves album. Saul Williams. The first couple of Sage Francis cassettes. The Future is Now from Non-Phixion. This may sound foolish to the younger readers, but, being a caucasian rapper. But, that is another line of conversation.
SKETCH THA CATACLYSM:
Your music is thick with vocabulary (which can seem a silly thing to make notable of music within a genre full of speech); even song-titles bear the fruit of "Veneficium" or "Permafrost" or an amalgamated prefix/suffix mash-up. You dropped "hypertrophy" on me a moment ago. Haha. I love things of this sort. Word choices speak loudly to me. Are you a big reader? Do you latch on to words through conversation? I'm curious.
BRZOWSKI:
I read often, speak often, and listen often, and pick up words and phrases all over. I used to read a lot of critical theory after college, and the last few years I've been obsessed with obscure history and regional dialects/accents. In particular, words that only exist in certain places. Hardcore nerd interests!
SKETCH:
That's excellent! I caught a gentleman using the word "peripatetic" in this Hunter S Thompson documentary and it sent me on a fine tangent. New words can be doors to entire song concepts or corners of your mind.
You've paired with collaborators such as Agent8 and Moshe for projects in the past, but now we have Vinyl Cape, the confluence of C Money Burns, DJ Mo Niklz, and yourself. Can you speak on the formation of the group and about the album that I hear is approaching?
BRZOWSKI:
Vinyl Cape came into being in almost-glacial slo-mo. C Money is a friend from Milled Pavement Records formative days, and I did some A&R work on his Friends With Money album, and was featured on it a few times.
Through those interactions, I learned that in addition to being into funk, jazz, hip-hop, and the like, he also had an huge encyclopedic knowledge of Metal, Doom, B-Movies, and Film scores. We chatted a bit and hung out working on the post-production for several of my projects (he's stunning with mixing/mastering), and we decided that we should work on a project combining our interests in a way that our solo material had never reflected.
Yes, there is rapping, and programmed drums, but we add hermetic/gothic story lines, symphonic keyboards and Black Metal riffs. We came out of the box wanting to be the convalescence of these diverse interests, and amalgamate them into one project, and I think we've succeeded thus far. One 7" single, one freebie 3 song single, 2 mixtapes, one tour with Uncommon Nasa, and this upcoming one with you are leading up to our full-length next year. We have about nine of the songs done, and will cap it around twelve. Or thirteen, because we like to be hokey.
Mo Niklz has been a good friend for years. He is a talented and hard-working DJ, and is one of those few precious people that holds nothing back. No hidden agenda, no shyness about speaking his mind. I'm sure he thinks he's in over his head with Vinyl Cape.
"Wait, how many of these crappy black and white vampire movies do I have to watch to get samples?"
Poor Mo! Haha! Love that dude. The 4th member of Vinyl Cape is the visual artist Stacy Howe (http://stacyhowe.com). She's an internationally recognized artist that has been generous enough to lend all of the images to our flyers, cover art, shirts, stickers etc!
SKETCH:
Well thank you sir for taking a moment to allow me to indulge in my curiosities in you as a fellow musician and future tour mate. I'm looking forward to the new record and what you guys are going to bring when you hit the stage on this trip.
Any last words?
BRZOWSKI:
Sketch, thanks so much for taking the time and interest my friend. I'm looking forward to the run. Check us out here:
http://vinylcape.com
facebook.com/vinylcape
@VinylCape
And sexy solo BRZOWSKI stuff here:
http://milledpavement.com
http://facebook.com/BRZOWSKImusic
@BRZOWSKImusic
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