Episode 15: "ENTER DA SLAGVAULT" feat. Otis *FULL EPISODE ON PATREON*

I just saw Enemy of the Pod and he was really good as well. This is the level of nuance that you can only find on the podcast platform where we're disliking someone on a personal level does not mutually exclude musical depreciation. Where else? It's crazy. nasty bitch, I'm a farmer. Come through with an ugly ass hoe, call her two-headed llama. She wanna sleep on me, better bring some pajamas. I got a white boy, entourage, Johnny Drama. PR Farmers. What's up? You know what's up? Yeah. It's egg time. It's egg time. Thanks for dinner. No, that's just a little pick-me-up. Oh, just a little pick-me-up, yeah. Nothing wrong with that. Look at this shit. A fine batch. Damn, you're really trying to get your gains before New York. I'm going to look so fucking shit, man. I'm going to look so shit. It's like this awkward introductory stage where there's maybe a minuscule amount of new muscle packed, but the most of it is lard. So I'm going to look like a bloated fucking... The kids just always look like shit, so you don't even care.

Yeah, just desensitize yourself to your own repulsiveness. Yeah. It's rock and roll to be a slog. What? I'm trying to get the Rick Rubin body type, maybe. Dude, he's looking good now, I feel like. Rick Rubin? Oh, wait, I thought you were saying Rick Ross. Oh, right. What does Rick Ross look like now? You should get the Rick Ross body type. I believe he's a black man. Yeah. He definitely skips leg day. The roster? Yeah, the roster. That's a disappointment, man. He's not the man I thought he was. I don't know if he looks significantly better than he ever did. Dude, maybe this is before your time, but there was the infamous shout out to all the pair cultural landmark like fucking seven years ago. I've just never really followed mainstream hip-hop culture. You're reading about TRY. We're talking diss tracks. Yeah, I only follow... Who's that? Fucking cunt. Just got to get it out of the system. Oh, shit. The guest has arrived. Could it be? Hello. Hi, how are you? Okay. Can you hear me? Yeah, man. You sound crisp. You sound suave. Okay, good. You're flexing on us with a t-shirt. I was going to say, it's already flexed on us straight away. Is that the Batiga NTS thing? No, they had a collab with Horst Festival here. Oh, nice. Yeah. I don't know what you've heard of this, about this podcast or of this podcast, but we've taken on a new structure and we kick off a little bit of kind of like low quality mundane banter about recent events just to sort of to humanize us as hosts and show a little bit of our personality. to the listeners because i feel like maybe we we come off as a little bit alienating and inaccessible um so that's what that's what that's what's happening right now uh did you know that uh i i hung out with dom over the weekend ahead of but we saw chuki mamani kondori the goat lisa crampton e plus e but here's the twist though dom had dom had had a a series of beers which the the combined effects thereof sort of um

I guess you could say made him drunk, which ultimately resulted in him not being able to go to the DJ Python party we were going to after Alicia. I honestly felt fine. And then I was standing in the queue with Deva and Tim and Christian and we got to the front and I was just like, damn, I'm going to throw up right now. And in my head, I didn't even feel that. So I literally had to like run past everyone. and just spew it was a very like open place to spew so i was like i can't come back in at this point um yeah but i'll spend the great details i had to run run home to save save the other end as well if you know what i mean well dude that happened to me yesterday again really like real bad again yeah yeah four weeks i had four weeks off though i had four weeks off which is pretty good i went i went i went to the same show actually yesterday in brussels Oh, yeah, they played there as well. I saw that. What's the scene on the ground like? Give us a little field report. The Brussels scene. I mean, you've been, no? No, no, I mean the Alicia show. Oh, yeah, it was good. But I wasn't really too familiar with the new songs. I'm mostly an Elijah stand, and I guess they didn't play a lot of that. which i knew already but still it's like it was literally like five minutes from my place i had a free ticket so i was like this is this is a real shame if i'm not gonna make this one yeah you have to man you have to be present you have to be a royalty and you also have to bless alicia with the presence of brussels royalty in the form of yourself i certainly did i went to bringing back the key topic yeah were you a big like e plus e stan like early days early alicia um quite i would say i actually went into their last show which was like six years ago apparently they didn't play like any other buzz and show in between so i guess that makes me a fan your enthusiasm is palpable man

All right, so now that we've done some classic clout farm, tepid opener small talk, we're in Don was drunk, which is pretty cool. By the way, your exit was really stealthy. We spent like a good half hour being kind of bewildered, trying to track your ass down. But we did ultimately move on. But there was a shockwave of stress and panic. How was that? Yeah, I wasn't really able to participate because I was also kind of debilitated. so i i had to sort of like ambiently take it in it was it was fun it was fun as hell but i kind of just i spent most of the time kind of like in the green room like trying to gather my wits i got a lot of texts about the green room i was like okay guys you know brian So, I guess, for the sake of introductions, we have the Slachverik, sorry, the Slach, more Flemishly, the Slachverik Don, Otis, with us. Saliva, Moneyline, Bambino DJ, Chickamook.com, O'Comeups, Buga, Detente, Roger Goon, Diony Lake, Piano Princess, Dasikira, Ava, Eterna, Color Plus, DJ Heroin, aka DJH, Yawning Portal, Benjamin Furtado. If these names...

mean nothing to you, I suggest you drag your sickly, anemic body to the nearest internet browser. Type in soundcloud.com, follow Slach Beric, press play and watch as your IQ blossoms beyond digits. We have among us Otis, the Belgian man, responsible for a bunch of music that I've listened to repeatedly for a number of years at this point. Well, what do you have to say for yourself, Otis? How are you feeling? I'm good. And first of all, I want to thank you for the direct pronunciation of the word because there is something I need to get off my chest about the name. And you can probably guess it already. But we sort of came up with this name when I was 15, 16. And it wasn't until I booked the first UK artist that somebody came to me and they were like... you know what a slag is right i obviously had no no clue so here uh once and for all like slag quick as you know it's just like a general term for drums and percussion a dutch word flemish word doesn't have anything to do with actual slags or whatever you call them And I can confirm, having been to numerous slag work shows at this point, there's not a slag in sight. It's one of the least slag-centric crowds that I'm at. So I'm glad that we've put that to bed. I think hearing Americans say slag work really, really gnaws at me. But this is like a very UK word, no? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It doesn't really resonate with anyone. Slag is very UK. I was a bit scared that would fuck me over to ever do something in the UK but I guess it didn't work out. It's kind of sick though having something called slag work in the UK. I don't know what the equivalent word would be in like Belgian, Flemish, whatever. Well, just like slut work which would be translated as slut work.

Let's work. Kegwerk, perhaps. There you go. But when you want to go nuclear, you should change the name to that. Yeah. When you want to really hit the big bucks, that's when you change the name. Well, you just opened a strip club, right? Called Slugwell. That's the next move, yeah. Slugwell, that's actually a sick name for a strip club in the UK. so rob is always grinding man rob's always rob's always ideating on disruptive on disruptive establishments and and i can see them what's that he's 100 the horniest host on the farm it's true am i also not like the the first like non-native english speaker yeah we don't really talk to we don't really we try to stay within the sort of the commonwealth you traveled recently how how did you how did you feel about the the london show man the the semi-recent one at one side yeah that was sick um i was a bit surprised actually by the the size of london kind of scared me a little bit it's just like in brussels everything is like so small and It was like, I want to see a friend. It's like, sure, come over. It's only like one hour, 45 minutes. Like, by the time I could have gone here from my house to the seaside, which is basically half of the country. Other than that, London was great. We sold out the show. 200 tickets. 200 tickets, yes. No, no, but it was good. yeah you were you were kind of nervy beforehand you seemed like apprehensive about doing it i feel like you guys you guys have like conquered a lot of the the the like major club cities and like london was kind of the last one to fall if i'm if i'm not mistaken um more or less yeah it's just like everyone made me sky everyone's like yeah london's so hard so difficult but i guess we got this lucky window of like end of january where like nothing's really happening but it's like

Just late enough for people to give up on the dry January or like start spending again. Wait, so did you stick around for a few days, go to anything else? Yeah, I went to a legendary pub with Deva in, where was this? Clapton. What did you go to? Fuck, what's it called? I forget what it's called. It was, yeah, we hung out for an evening. It was very... It wasn't the White Hart. Fuck, I forget what the hell it's called. Not the legendary one, but you had four pints of Guinness. Callback. What's the one that's by the canal? The Anchor and Hope. It wasn't the Anchor. Princess of Wales? It wasn't the Princess of Wales. We'll reserve this deep dive. Welcome to the Naming Pubs in Clapton podcast. Yeah. Oh, God. We've become everything we hate. My first question to our esteemed guest. To what extent is Slachberg on the vanguard of the new digital experimental music landscape? Would you say the label was founded by Otis de Haas in 2017 and is a Brussels-based label and event series representing a fusion of love, dedication, and an uncanny knack for discovering and nurturing underground talent while embracing an ever-evolving digital ethos? There was a question in there? Yeah. Which was? You just... Yeah, I'm just going by the Nina write-up, man. How was New York for you? How did that come together? I'm not really sure, actually. I just... I just wanted to go try to organize a party. I don't know if I can say this because I did this all illegally. Obviously, I didn't get a visa. No, but actually, I don't know. New York is kind of like a zoo. There's just so much of everything. It's almost easier to throw a party there than anywhere in Europe, I would say, just because there's so many venues.

that's gonna attract actual like crowds is another story but like everything is so easy going like so little administration to do like i feel like here in europe we are just so like bound by like paperwork permits everything and in new york it's just like people come play for a little bit of cash and that's it like end of story yeah what was the venue uh i did one at market hotel which is like what is this big street where there's like this overground metro yeah anyway and then i did another one at chaos computer which i think now has been torn down like this diy space somewhere um close to the canal where you just had to press the doorbell and then somebody would buzz you in. It was kind of illegal, I guess. And then the last time I went, I did this at the end, which used to be this karaoke bar. It used to be called Heaven or Las Vegas, a place with a lot of history. something between a club and a bar which i feel like everything in new york is sort of that vibe and this one for this one i i hosted it together with the nina protocol guys oh yeah our our favorite patrons um myself and um sean dj rish played at heaven at the end formerly dj rish formerly dj rish now known as rish a decision I'm wholeheartedly against. Ian played as well in DJ Nicely. I was, like, super excited about it, but it was on a Sunday. But I just assumed, like, New York being New York, the place is, like, brimming with real heads. So just by definition of who we are, the place will be fucking rammed. It's probably one of the most, like, depressingly, like, underattended shows I've ever, like, had the suicidal misconception of playing.

Of the maybe like 15 total people who like made an appearance, one of them was Ben UFO. Who saw like maybe like eight minutes of my set and then did. Yeah, also we, like me and Dida played a fucking all-nighter on a Tuesday night at the legendary Bossa Nova club. Hell yeah. And we would like, I know we would get paid by a barcode or something. So we played for like, I don't know, four or five hours straight. And then in the end, I had to wait like an hour at the bar. And in the end, I get this envelope with like 32 bucks. For like me and him to split. Like, fuck yeah, the American dream. I'm sure it was culturally enriching, if not financially. I'm sure you learned a lot. Shout out to Adida, by the way. for sure dude that that song he put that um i think he put out on slagwerk as well uh what's it called again it has this like downtown what the is that called is it from like from the christmasy tape no no no it was just like a one-off single oh it's don't touch crickets that goes so hard i think that was a slug break one right uh no he dropped this on his own did he oh you should have you should have jumped on that you cannot jump on everything you have to man you can maybe you should have jumped on it i should have jumped this is true

I mean, more than anything, I think there's a longstanding rivalry between TT and Slime. I mean, I was DMing Otis before the show saying we have to manufacture beef because that's the essence of a juicy, brimming podcast. But the enthusiasm was lacking. Otis is a man of peace, ultimately. You can tell. Fuck you, Otis. Come at me. You've stolen so many artists from me. To think of the chickenmuck.com release, I can only shudder. How did you first come across Bambino and chickenmuck.com? How did they enter your world? it's a good question i remember i guess there was this sort of mixtape with a blue like a blue vinyl cover from bambino but i think it was some like side account with some like i don't know dmb jungle-ish edits yeah and uh that's that's how it all started the rest was the bambino show history the one with ludy piano yeah i guess dude that's as loud as it gets what the hell was that my siri came on i know i don't know how to disable it it's as loud as it gets in reference to the what are you what are you smoking right what are you smoking there um no no i don't know i think something that you guys said just triggered it to come on um how do you what's here this is like i feel like it's an it's in the ongoing like war against um algorithm dictated uh um taste development what's your what are your like what's your what's your like music sourcing process like do you care to share do i care to share i do it's just like i don't really have the uh the secret or whatever i'm just basically like scroll i'm still a soundcloud admirer like big time i think i

i always will but it's not like i'm on some like deep floor or whatever i just i don't know you just have a blessed you just have a blessed soundcloud feed and it organically maybe maybe yeah i know the feeling i guess i i made the account like 10 years ago so I feel like if your follows go deep enough and have been developed for as long as they have, you're going to be blessed with the sauce pretty consistently. I kind of have the same approach where it just kind of makes its way into my feed. Very occasionally, I'll venture outside of SoundCloud or whatever. But for the most part, that's been a consistent source. I feel like every two, three years or something, there'll be... a new proclamation of the death of soundcloud like either it'll be some like some rapper who wants to distance themselves from the culture because they they view that the the phrase soundcloud rapper is like a slur like a pejorative or like soundcloud have some financial difficulties and it's it's like seemingly on the work of bankruptcy and then inevitably like some angel investor comes in and bills them out um do you feel like how how how in your view has like the culture of soundcloud evolved if at all for you For me, it still sort of has the same function as like 10 years ago. Although I feel like a lot of people left at some point. But then I was also like, where are you all going? Because it's still here. There's still a lot of interesting stuff to find. I think a lot of people left to try and... Sorry, I interrupted you. No, no, like for me, I don't really see the alternative at this point. for the function that it has which is like just discovering music that it's not necessarily in a regular like release output like it's not on been it's not been through an official distributor like it's just some people like random bedroom producers dropping some random edits like i i don't really see any any other platform where i could where i could find this sort of track

Completely. There's just, like, there's a lack of functional alternatives. Like, do you read music media? No. Sorry? Was there a period where you did, like, as a kid? Not really, except, like, my dad is sort of, like, he always buys, like, the wire and stuff in these type of magazines. But then, yeah, he also told me at some point he felt that his scope was a little bit too limited to what these sort of press instances have to say. Yeah. Which kind of makes sense. I guess I'm just in general too young to really be into written press. It's a sad set of affairs, man. It's a sad set of affairs. But you can't read. I can read, but I should read more. Like, even in general. My day is, like, 90% stream time, which is bad. How's your attention span? When's the last time you took a book? It's terrible. Like, even in terms of working, I cannot, like, focus for, like, five minutes. Dude, when the DMs are as flaming hot as our respective inboxes are at all times, it's completely understandable. There's just a constant influx of requests. There's just no way. Little cloud droplets just seeping into your consciousness. It's a sickness, man. It's an addiction. But it's the inevitable side effect of having the sauce that we do. Yeah, man. No, but Robert, you were saying people left SoundCloud to go where? to try out other i think it it like coincides with like uh like direct to consumer uh distributors like ditto i think a lot of people thought that like because soundcloud wasn't monetized at the time either so i think a lot of people left to basically try and pursue like algorithmic playlists success because i think it also probably goes it like i feel like there was a period up until about 2017 where

SoundCloud was one of the main metrics through which you could gauge an artist's importance and success. And that like very quickly kind of dipped off. And I think that was because that was the first time the artist who blew up on SoundCloud shifted into DSPs and the major streaming platforms and began to see playlisting success. And you kind of had this second wave almost of like the digital music industry where people were able to make. not the same money as they could previously, but more money on streaming. And I think that led to a dip of interest, including with myself, a dip of interest in SoundCloud. But I think where SoundCloud were lucky or filled the need was that then were then a lot of younger people who were making music, who needed somewhere free to put their music, who all flooded onto SoundCloud. And I think that still is... is basically why it's so popular is because it's always got this free option that basically nothing else has. Nothing else with its scale has. And that's why there's seemingly this kind of never-ending stream of incredibly interesting music that's often pretty naive and idiosyncratic. And SoundCloud will always fulfill that need. But I guess it's then also got the issue of the fact that What gives it its personality is the free part of the fact that the service is free, but the company is constantly in financial issues. That's kind of a bind. Yeah, but that's also, yeah, it makes sense. That's also what I was saying. Like I only go there to find this specific branch of music that has not necessarily been put out officially. If I want official records, I will just use other platforms. So like each platform has sort of its own. Yeah, you get what I'm saying? Actually, what was the whole thing with James Blake about it?

Yeah, I was going to say, we all jump in shit to vault. I actually saw him live last night.