Mad Mike embodies techno music from Detroit. That is to say his preponderant role in this cradle of techno. Quiet figure but very influential at the beginning of the 90’s, the boss of Underground Resistance is also an electronic music producer who has released and co-produced more than 200 tracks. On the occasion of a day off in Dijon, Mad Mike spent an hour behind the microphone – an extremely rare occurrence – in order to talk about his city and his music of course, but also about his musical background as a session guitarist in the 80’s and his learning of the work in the studio alongside George Clinton.
Mike welcome, and thank you for being here. How is Underground Resistance?
Thank you for having us here. I’m glad people are still interested in what we do. Right now, Underground Resistance is training new guys and reforming.
From time to time we lose some of the guys when they get to Europe (laughs), and they don’t come back any more. We have to keep new, young guys coming sometimes. It’s strange in a way, the success of the techno music, it’s even reached Detroit. I used to count on it, nobody knowing nothing about anything, and those guys always made the best records. They only knew their own environment.
So now you get a lot of people that come and they wanna, of course, be the next jet-set DJ. So they hand me the music hoping they can get away, more so than just handing me the music so they can get a record, you know?
Before it used to be, “I just wanted to see my record get made,” and that was a big accomplishment. Now some think, in a way, that the record is not enough, everybody wants to go away, become a famous DJ, and get paid. It’s difficult to find that rare person, who really doesn’t know a lot about Europe or the rest of the world. To me that’s a true Detroit record, that’s a guy who makes something out of his basement, and he doesn’t have influences from everywhere else.
So I have some new guys, it’s hard to find them, but we have some guys that I feel are really making some good stuff. So that’s how we are right now.
What’s up with newly released UR-088 Dangerous? How it is linked to the polluted water crisis in Flint?
If you look closely on the label art, there’s the solution to the Flint water problem. There is a solution for it, it’s very very cheap, and the information is available on Netflix. I don’t know why people just don’t use it.
So Mark Taylor, the artist that produced that, who is also my buddy in Model 500, a long long time friend, we decided what this project was going to be about. The water looked like caca, when he looked, Mark said: “Mike look at this, this water looks like rust, I don’t know how they think somebody could drink that stuff”.
Everybody wants do something about it, and I thought to bring more international attention to that. What’s going to hurt people, what’s really going to hurt their heart, and make it even a sadder story, is the solution, that’s right on the record label art. There’s a website where people can go to.
A long time ago there was an inventor, that created a machine for third world countries, so they could have have clean water. He tried to take the machine to the United Nations, they told him they’re not in the business of clean water. He was trying to get rid of the 2/3rd of the world water borne diseases, he’s a really good guy, but he didn’t have enough politics to cut through what obviously should get done. Again what’s sad is, here the situation comes again.
This is a very bad thing, so in our way we wanted to, though this record, bring some attention to that.
With the Timeline record UR-87, what can you tell us about the track, ‘A Moment In Marseille’?
We had a gig in Marseille, that was the first time some of the new guys were getting out. Actually we did a radio interview at a radio station near Marseille. These new guys I’m talking about are very talented jazz musicians, and very young.
Sometimes I reach out to the hip-hop genre, ‘cause we have producers in various other genres. When looking for guys I’ll go up to them and say: “Hey how many times are you gonna play John Coltrane? That’s fifty years old what about the future?” And most of them tell me, fuck off or whatever, but these particular guys listened, and they understood what I was telling them. They’ve started to get interested in High Tech Jazz, producing music with different machines, and in different ways.
So I think that going to Marseille, France was such a big experience for them, that when they got back, there was a moment that they decided electronic music was going to be the new kind of jazz.
I can say, a lot of their friends, have started to notice, because the new guys are traveling around. There friends will say: “Hey man, how do you do that?”, and they’ll respond: “Hey man that’s another world to just jazz, we got to keep pushing forward”.
I was always a big fan of Stanley Clarke, Chick Corea, and Joe Zawinul. These guys were experimenting with synthesizers, most of the synths were just player synths, they didn’t have the triggers or any of that stuff that later developed, that Juan [Atkins] exploited to get that tech sound. In the jazz world they were kinda pushed away like: “That’s not really jazz, not traditional jazz”, it was weird, but they influenced us a lot.
So I felt like we need to get some of the kids, because they don’t play fusion and stuff. Jean-Luc Ponty was a huge influence for a lot for us, we use to hear all that with Mojo. We would hear all these musics. I know that that moment in Marseille was a big moment for them, that’s when they’ve decided they were going leave the more traditional jazz, which they were brought up on, and continue with this style. I’m pretty sure that’s their inspiration. I think it’s pretty obvious but they really enjoyed their first trip to France.
This track is not a live extract from the Marseille gig ?
No it was recorded afterwards.
What’s your point of view on the recent killings of black people by US cops?
That’s been happening for so long, there ain’t no point of view, it’s just a given. That’s been happening so long, I think the technology just caught up with them, the cell phones just caught up with up them.
Detroit riots in 1967, 1943, there’s a long history of what we call handcuffed violence. When they have you handcuffed there’s not a lot you can do. It’s even worse when you get locked up in the prisons, and in the jails. So it’s a given, it’s a way of life.
Look into Malice Green, there’s a brother in Detroit named Malice Green. They’ve just tore down his memorial. Obviously sometimes it’s a point of inspiration, you learn to take wrong, and turn it into sound.
There’s solutions to it, but I can’t really tell you, it would be kinda hard for you to hear about what some guys do. It’s wrong but there is always another side to it too.
I think all of the police, especially when they kill people, and you have it on film, like Tamir Rice in Cleveland, the other guy who was helping a handicap person, and they just shot him. I think all that does is to suffice, and show the rest of the world just how primitive the country mentality is.
For any intelligent person watching the presidential elections right now can see how primitive it is. I hate to tell you all this but (laughs), when you’ve all purged some out of Europe, maybe you didn’t send the best ones over there, it’s kinda rough to say, but…
I think if education was equal for everybody, and there was a national standard like free college, would probably cut into a lot of it a lot of these really primitive actions. There’s areas of US where education is the last thing you think about. As I travel and see education levels around the rest of the world, that’s the scariest part of the US, just a lack of cultural education makes it a volatile place sometimes.
What do you think about the new band, Prophets of Rage, with Chuck D, RATM…?
Anything they do I love, I’m all with that man. A lot of people wonder if there’s anything to still resist, to fight about.
All I can say is last summer in Detroit, a city which has been ravaged by violent crime and crack cocaine, we have radio stations there, and instead of choosing diverse program content, our number one record last year was, ‘I’m in love with the Coco’ by O.T. Genasis. Now O.T. Genasis has got his right to be on the radio, make his cocaine jam, but really, really, is that what we get after 40 years of crack cocaine? Chinese, Israeli military firearms all up in the damn city? Death after death, after death, after death, police killed enough, is that what we get for the number one hit record? No Carl Craig, no Flying Lotus, no Prophets of Rage , none of this, all of this is gone off the radio.
So when I say education, what you guys are doing with this radio station, and I know you don’t have bandwidth or enough power to do what you wanna do, you can’t compete with the heavy airwaves, but don’t worry technology will make a way. That transmitter based dinosaur ass radio will be gone soon. People will be able to hear what they need to hear. Sometimes community needs to hear something different, something exciting, and that’s what happened in Detroit with Electrifying Mojo. We got to hear something that propelled us way past the moment, even though the moment was messed up with drugs and heroin. You at least have to imagine something better, different, and the thought of a future is what makes hope.
For us we were very very fortunate to have Radio DJs, that cared about the community, and played what they thought the community needed. The market was so discarded, who cared about Detroit? So obviously radio-wise, they didn’t care about what we listened to, it was a garbage market, nobody had money to buy anything, so that the DJs actually could play what was needed.
When I say cultural education, A lot of times it’s not that you have to go to college, or this or that. It’s what comes in your ears, and our kids are getting a prerequisite recipe for prison, drug and violence. That’s what they get fed, that’s what a lot of them look at as making it, and it also fuels a stereotype that the police have in their mind. You wear certain clothes, they’re wearing the clothes they see on their heroes wearing, so the police they have a stereotype, the kids got a stereotype, and it’s all ass backwards. Sometimes the mixture comes together and there’s a fatality. But to tell you the truth, the one they never see, is all of the drug guys, that get killed by guys that hunt them. There’s guys that professionally hunt these dudes, and they kill them everyday. That’s why to show that as a lifestyle as a winner, you don’t have enough guns to protect you from what’s eventually coming to you. Me and my friends call them casket bags. They get 2 years of fame, where you walk around, get to be the man, then after that your ass is dead, the next one comes, next one comes, and the next one comes … That cycle never even gets televised, but you hear it in the raps: ‘yeah you never catch me slippin’, no we gonna catch you slippin, your ass is going to slip, and you’re gonna fall in a six foot hole. But there’s no video camera to show that part. I ain’t gonna lie, I’ll be glad to see their asses go.
A lot of time, that’s why I got into Futuristic Music because sometimes, the Hip-Hop was just a repeat of what I already knew. It’s like the news story for the day, in the hood, I don’t need hear it, cause I already knew what’s going on. I know, I’m older, I made it through that little kid stuff. I know there’s guys that get out of prison everyday, they’re hungry, they need money, and food. So they find them a little fat dope boy, knock his ass out, and get paid. That’s how it goes man, no push-ups, no sit-ups, easy game, easy target, no kind of body structure, it’s like the jungle, they just take the easiest ones. That’s the reality of selling drugs in the inner city. You have to be a beast, and that movie Scarface, which is the most popular movie in the hood, is unfortunately a fantasy, it doesn’t happen like that. You don’t go out in a blaze of glory, you just go out on some low dark street, and you’re gone. Some of the UR records reflect those moments, that doo-doo moment, when you see the guys shit on themselves before they kill them, because he’s so scared that’s got a sound to it too. I’ve seen some of those moments sometimes, when guys know they’re gonna be gone, it’s sad man. Your mama teaches you right from wrong from the beginning, minding the lure of money, power and fame, and it’s sad.
It’s a really really great irony living amongst that mentality. It’s the struggle that makes Prophets of Rage, and all of that stuff. Every minute that those guys fight back into something, it really really helps. It would just help more if the radio stations thought more of their constituents, than as a future jailed person or people that can only accept one kind of music. It’s really sad when corporate America or corporate anything takes over music, art, and culture. That’s what should scare people more than anything because they generalize people, they think all the black guys listen to this, all the white kids listen to this, let’s market it at them, and in doing so you destroy potential with this generalization. WW2 should teach people that generalization is dangerous man.
Again my cry is always for more culture through the ears, sometimes culture through the eyes doesn’t reach everybody, artwork, unless it’s graffiti. Sometimes through the eyes it doesn’t, because the educational system doesn’t support that. I always make a reference to the Mona-Lisa. You can put the Mona-Lisa in Detroit hanging on telephone pole and it would just sit there. If the correct car comes up, pulls up, pops the hood, guys would look at it mechanically. If you’ve been teaching mechanical beauty for 40, 50 years you can’t expect people to appreciate this type of art, the European art form. Our art form a lot of times is expressed mechanically: sweet cars, hell of a bike, some type of engineering, good cement job, or whatever. It’s almost like rich folks get a kick out of going to worker places, trying to hit them over the head with their traditional form of art, see their reactions, and they again generalize people. To us Kraftwerk was art, it was sweet.
Radio was really important back in the day to discover new music?
Yes it created Detroit techno, that’s how powerful it was. I don’t think anybody in Detroit techno is a genius, there’s some gifted guys like Derrick (May), I think he’s definitely gifted; Carl Craig, I’ve worked with a lot of them, Jeff Mills, extremely gifted, Robert Hood. The truth of the matter is, when you go to a good club and there’s a good DJ, the DJ really makes the record by mixing the 2 records together, all you have to do is listen and see the reaction of the people, it tells you what the next record could be, it’s not a genius thing, it’s a being here thing, it’s a living it type of thing.
I think our DJs on the radio, back in the day, which was Jeff Mills, Jeff pretty much played whatever was funky, whatever he thought was happening. We had Alan Oldham who was very important in college radio WDET. Alan Oldham was really into industrial music, of course, that led him into UR, Richie Hawtin. I know he was the first guy to play +8 on the radio, as well some of the UR stuff. John Collins was on the radio, Duane “in the Mix” Bradley too. Radio was free, it had free moments, I’m sure they had programing as well, but it had free moments that really made the recipe for Detroit. I think all the guys they really enjoyed music and kinda DJed as well, they made what they thought should be made, and of course that parlayed through Detroit techno. Again, I don’t think any particular person was a genius, I think we got some really brave radio pioneers like Jeff, but the main one was Electri
fying Mojo because he literally broke people like the B52’s, which you would never think would happen in Detroit, B52’s, David Bowie, Prince. He would play anything George Clinton brought, he walked into his studio: ‘hey man play this’, you could hear him talking, and he put it on, it was real.
I can’t stress enough what those guys did for us, and in turn what happened for the world. The biggest disappointment is that the gift of electronic music (or whatever it’s called now) and when Detroit gave that away, and we never recovered by losing so many of the guys. Unfortunately we still have to endure a lot of bullshit on the radio. I think that was inevitable because again corporate was taking station by station, they’re probably doing the same here, and if you guys want any kind of life here, you’d better fight it, you’d absolutely better fight it. You better know their intentions aren’t good for the people. It’s just sales, sales, sales, more sales, and no recognition of local culture. It’s like the Borg. It’s a culture eater, and that’s a big problem in the US. You have all – like I said before – these corporate entities taking over art things, and they shouldn’t be, the intangibles, things they really have no idea how to deal with.
Mad Mike (turning back), Le Consortium – Dijon, 2011 (pic : Mister B)
Before UR, you were playing bass with Parliament ?
No, we went on tour with Parliament, I played in a group called Cherubim, and we used to open for the Funkadelics. A lot of times we ended up on stage with them because, maybe some of the guys of the Funkadelics didn’t come to the show (laughs). Also we worked many times in the studio with George Clinton, him giving Jeff, the guys, and I personal mixing board lessons at United Sound. I played on some guitar stuff with them. Many of my friends were in, Amp Fiddler and Michael Payne. So I played with many of the guys, and yes we did go on an extended tour with them. Like I said that was fun because often times, he says: “Hey you know ‘Knee Deep’?, Yeah okay, get out there ‘cause I don’t know where the guitar player is!” (laughs). It was cool because, Mr. George Clinton, a lot of people take him as a character or a comical figure, but I can tell you in the studio he’s a beast, he absolutely knew exactly what he was doing. Him and an engineer named Mike Iacopelli, they’re pretty much responsible for tape looping. Any producers out there know what I’m talking about, tape looping is so important, it’s driven a whole industry of Hip-Hop, a lot of the machines that were designed to produce Hip-Hop, even Ableton, Serato, when they hit the loop feature that’s a Detroit invention. I saw the little apparatus they had, it was popsicle sticks, and they made a giant loop for a 2 track tape. That was George Clinton, and another engineer, I believe it was Mike Iacopelli, but it could have been Tony, and those guys did that at United Sounds. Of course George produced a whole lot of hits based on tape looping because he could get that huge crowd sound, he will dedicate two tracks to the rhythm section. So they re-recorded the 2 tracks on 24 tracks, which would leave you 20 tracks to guitar, vocals; it was a new way to do things. So that’s been my relationship with the Funkadelics.
What was the name of your band again ?
Cherubim. It was an offshoot of Parlet, he had many offshoots. They didn’t last that long, but it was fun. I can tell you, George Clinton would always explain the record industry, the way he saw it. First he would always tell us: “Don’t get in it; Make your own records; Do your own things”. Then he said: “If you do get in it, spend so much money in the studio, that they have to make your record into a hit”. That was his advice always (laughs).
Your band was once signed to Motown?
Yeah one of the bands [I was in] signed up with them, man that was a nightmare. We were really good session musicians, down at United Sounds, and they wanted us to make this band For Girls Only. It was pop commercial stuff, we didn’t like it. At that time Prince was happening, they wanted us to wear Prince clothes, dress up like Prince, and it wasn’t happening. We were just session guys, we didn’t like it, we flew to New York looked at the contract, and it just wasn’t gonna happen. To tell the truth, we saw too much of the music industry, and how fake it was. We played on many many records, I can’t even tell you how many records. Scott [Weatherspoon], Raphael [Merriweathers aka UR’s Ray 7], Mike Harris, we played on many records, and I never got any credit because they put the pretty people on the cover. Most the major music thing is a lie, there were these three church ladies, that used to sing on all the background, on the major music stuff. The major record companies from LA, they would always send the tapes to Detroit or Chicago, cause’ you’ve got good musicians, and they were cheaper than the LA guys. So they send it there, you put your part on, send it back to LA, and it says some other dude, who looks good, played the part that you really played, and you get a hundred dollars or two hundred dollars, which was big money in Detroit at the time. So I was seeing the underbelly of this machine, it’s corporate way of doing music, we were young, and we had George Clinton in there saying, “you see what they’re doing?” One thing I can say about Funkadelic, they played on their records. He made sure who ever played on the record, that’s the guy who played on that record, there was no guy they flew in, it was real. The Debarges were real, the group Debarge they really played on their records. For most of the ones that we played on, the people you see never played or sang on the record. Then they would get the church girls to sing the lead, then the pretty girl from LA would try to match it, and they would double it. So the girl in the back is really singing the strongest one, the other ones they don’t have any projection, they’re up on on the mic, real close because they can’t sing loud, they don’t have no damn stomach muscle or nothing, the big girls can hit it, and they would fake it; or they get a guy with a sampler, and tune them a little bit at a time, with the pitch wheel, and put them in tune.
It’s a real fake industry, it’s so easy to make a star, it’s easy to make a star DJ, shit all you need is five or ten thousand dollars a month, paid to a publicist, then you’re the man. You’ve got a DJ around the corner, who can kick his ass, but this guy pays money to get promotion. So if people really are that gullible to get fooled into who actually got talent and who doesn’t, it’s a shame. Your ears should be able to tell you who can really throw down. If it’s a good DJ you’ll feel it, you don’t need nobody to tell you he’s good. The people around will tell you, it’s good; but you know if you have to read everything out of a news magazine or an advertisement you’re gonna be in trouble anyway. I can give you a formula for finding out fakes, how you pay to play: If the person on the cover of the magazine or the website has a significant advertisement inside the magazine or the website, then you can figure out what’s going on.
What is like to be Mad Mike, the famous and the infamous?
It’s dusty, real dusty. Right now we’re doing another building. Our neighborhood is getting really gentrified right now. We felt the greatest need was to preserve the fact that black folks from the inner city had a lot to do with the pioneering of music that went really forward, a music that affected the world. I said about ten years ago, we want to try to make the first electronic music living archive, so the kids in Detroit can walk up and get inspired by what happened, and that’s kind of growing now. Kenny Dixon’s got an undisclosed place, very close to us, and that was very important, ‘cause Kenny is really an innovative guy. Recently my good friend from Tresor, Dimitri Hegemann, who about 25 years ago, we helped him, he cares about the kids from east Berlin, he thought they needed something, that something was UR. He thought they needed the sound of Detroit. So we went there and unknowingly, well kinda knowingly, cause it was a really dump ass terrible place, and he figured music could bring flowers and good stuff and we were like: “Yeah you’re kinda crazy but…”, he told us the kids needed this. We challenged him back then: “We’re gonna help you, you’re gonna help us one day”, and that day came, maybe couple of years ago. Dimitri, to his credit, is one of the few European guys who didn’t just exploit the music, and move on. He always tried to do something in Detroit, help Detroit. But nothing would ever happen. He had big ideas, but [in Detroit] he ran into the bureaucracy of: “Hey I wanna get paid, so what’s in that for me?” and he couldn’t understand that. But this time he did something [that worked and] now we’re working on another building.
For me it’s a great irony to be Mad Mike, because two days ago I was just catching a rat in my damn house, and I had to kill his ass, and two days later I’m doing a radio interview in Dijon. The airplane is a very cruel instrument of change, you change environment so quick, that for me it’s a weird thing, it depresses many of the Detroit guys. They come here and see a culture, a way of life, they see street cars, mass transportation, they see it, they live it, they become a part of it, and you go back in time when you go back to Detroit. Then you listen to city officials telling you about future cities and you’re like, man I’ve kinda already been to the future. It’s a very difficult transition for DJs, some of them have drug problems, they get depressed, they wanna come to Europe all the time. So for me, when I come over here, I just bang it out, hit the tracks, do the best I can at the shows, and hurry up and get back home. I don’t like to spend no extra time here, I feel like I get soft almost, I get used to the more efficient things here. You can become used to it, then you find yourself criticizing where you come from, and I’m not going to do that either. Yeah, Detroit is not perfect in many many ways, but of course, in that is the sound we’re making anyway. I think we need Detroit, we need places that’s not clinically, aesthetically clean, and perfect. For us if it’s funky that’s good enough. It doesn’t have to be recorded at a top quality, latest Pro Tools, that’s it. To be able to say that’s it is a powerful word in production. I noticed many people in their production, with so many options, so many really good tools, it’s almost like they become indecisive. In a sense Detroit is necessary, and our effort, on our block, is to keep it a little dirty, a little real, before they clean it all up, and make it a big hospital. So that’s what we’re working on now.
Which of the UR artists what the most complicated to work with?
That’s a good question. I would say Jeff [Mills] and Rob [Hood] because of their intensity, and I can add Milton in there too (Dj Skurge). Rob and Dj Skurge I would put at the same, because sometimes they’re so critical of themselves, they want perfection every time, it makes it hard, it makes it difficult. Rob is particularly artistic, he’s very very artistic. Sometimes with some of the guys, if the music is good, that’s okay, that’s the end, you do the rest. With some of the guys the artwork has got to be perfect too. Rob he draws, he’s a very good artist, so with Rob it’s gotta be right. A lot of times with UR, it’s a boot camp anyway, because it’s difficult to get along with me, I will say: “Hey you know what, I’m the boss, that’s enough of that shit, this records got to come out”. It’s like a baby to me, If I see the record for too long, either it’s gonna get thrown to trash or it’s gonna come out now, what’s the decision you wanna make. Cause if you’ve taken too long, there’s too much perfection maybe, so obviously each guy, eventually they gonna move on, you don’t want your daddy telling you all the time what you got to do. They kinda grow up in UR, then they move on. All I ask is that they bring something back, for Robert Hood and Jeff, man they brought a lot back, so much, I can’t tell you how much. It makes me mad when sometimes people say: “What about them, they left Detroit”, like they’re mad. Well you try to have kids, children, and raise them in Detroit, your mind change, your kids are supposed to have more potential, so you should never judge someone, until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.
I can tell you both, Rob and Jeff, sometimes when the UR is down to the last dollar, the last knee; cause I take it there, I’m in the shit. The man comes to cut the power off, and I’m like: “Hey get off the porch, you ain’t cutting off shit”, and you’ve got to do that sometimes to keep the lights on. Cause the guys wanna cut the power off in the middle of the winter. I got guys where I can say very proudly, I never ran out of nothing with some of my guys. Some of the fans even put in, and they’ll visit us and say: “Hey man it’s cold, what’s going on?”, and I’ll say: “Well the heat’s off, that what’s going on. Shit! What are you a genius or something?”. So people won’t make a donation, ‘cause I won’t accept it, but they’ll buy 200 of the same record or something crazy like that, that’s their way of helping us out. We’ve had many times, where we’ve been helped, but Jeff and Rob will always call, look out and ask about us and see if we’re okay. If I’m okay they don’t bother, but if they know we’re in trouble or hear about it they always step up. Carl Craig, a lot of the guys do well globally, they always look out, Kenny Dixon, big big help. We’ve got some good friends in high places. Yeah, I should’ve answered that with the first question, how was UR. We’re blessed, we ain’t got a lot, but we’re blessed. What better thing to have than good friends?
Are there some french artists that have asked you about making music with them or producing some of their music?
No, not really, if they did they were not really forceful. The only guy that ever gets on me is Laurent [Garnier], he always gets on me and asks: “Hey Mike make some more Davina” (laughs). People have sent us music sometimes from France, they’ll say that want to be on UR. To tell the truth to be on UR, I gotta hear the environment. For instance, like Drexciya, people don’t think about, it’s special, cause’ I can relate with James Stinson, there’s no ocean around Detroit, people don’t think about that. There’s water there, the only clue is that there is much much water underground. Me and him, I knew when I listened to his sound, it sounded like the shit I have seen, so I knew where he was coming from. Sometimes it’s a particular lack of respect for perfection, some guys explain less answers, some artists they go forward, and other ones believe this is my best I can do, like it or leave it. I can’t tell, there’s no question, whether they think it’s good, it’s the best shit in the world to them. I like that when the people present their music like this, I like their feeling. I don’t like when they say: “Oh I’ve got some better stuff,” I like when they say, “this is it, I might not see tomorrow brother so put this one out”. That was Derek Jamerson, Jamerson he’s probably a destructive genius, a genius that destructive to their self, this guy was like that. Whenever he presented me the music he would say: “Hey Mike, I might not see tomorrow”, and he meant it. Of course this is some intensity you have to listen to.
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Words : Martial Ratel
Translation : Sophie Brignoli, Mathieu Roussotte
Illustration : Yas Munasinghe