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INTERVIEWS

Slouch

Peter's habit of combining kitchy old school organ cheese, swingin' low-fi drum breaks, and the coveted Value Village Vinyl cuts, has created his signature brand of Hanna-Barberra Hip-hop. Live shows have been known to involve life size fighting monsters, home made lighting experiments, go-go girls and mad dance-a-delick boogie downs!

UDR: Talk about the Lolo Project and its evolution into Peter Project.

PP: The Lolo Project started off as a name for my 4-track tapes. I got a 4-track when I was 17, and just goofed around on it. I was more into recording than the music. So it was ususally pretty silly stuff. It was sort of based on early Ween. I figured if those guys could make music like that then I could!

Just before I moved to Toronto for school, at 18, a friend of mine gave me a copy of Impulse Tracker™, which is a really ghetto DOS based sampling/sequencing program. I think it's open source. Anyway, this led me to my first ventures into sampling. My first track on it was basically a really bad techo/breakbeat track with Denis Leary yelling "pull up your pants!" over and over again.

I remember feeling really embarassed about getting into this genre of music, because in my circle of friends it was really frowned upon. We were all garage rock/punk kids.

Once at college, I got heavily into the whole sampling thing, and eventually graduated to Buzz Tracker, which is pretty much a pimped out version of Impulse.

For most of my first record, I wasn't really listening to any kind of electronic based music, so I think when I was writing those tracks I was being sort of naive about it. I had not yet really learned the rules of the various genres, so I think that added alot to it. I think Beck, and Air were as electronic as I had gotten at that point. I remember I'd hear Drum and Bass somewhere, and then a week later, I'd think "i'm going to add a Drum and Bass part" however, not knowing anything about it, and having a shitty memory, the part would come out sounding totally weird, and cool. But not Drum and Bass at all. I just didn't know.

I eventually released about 50 copies of the first record. To this day, I'm a little regretfull I didn't really push it at all, because I still get good feadback over that CD.

I'm working on a new CD now, which is almost done. It is to hip-hop what the first one was to electronic music. I've been listening to craploads of hip-hop, and it's been influencing my tracks a lot, but everytime I play a beat for an MC, they laugh and think it's weird. I'm cool with that though. I guess that means it's unique!

At this point, I changed the name from The Lolo Project to Peter Project. I never really liked the name The Lolo Project. It was never meant to last, it just stuck. Besides, 80% of people pronounce it the 'Lolah' Project, which sounds even stupider! Plus, I wanted the name to reflect it's independence from a band. It's just me. I don't want to deal with a band (I'm already in plenty of those).

UDR: Describe the music scene where you live. Are people receptive to what you're doing? You mentioned that your music perplexes the MC's... Are you interested in working with MC's, or keeping it mostly experimental/instrumental?

PP: The music scene in Toronto is pretty broad. I've played in a lot of garage/indie rockesque bands, so that's the network that I seem to work in. That particualar scene is pretty arty and into people pushing it. There's a weekly event called Wavelength which was set up to give all these 'alternative' (i.e., clubs dont know what to do with them) styles of bands a stage, and it's been great for that. I think it has made a very receptive scene for bizarre genres of music. As for the hip-hop scene; I think I'm equally as perplexed with the hip-hop scene as it is with me. I've become a total closet hip-hop head in the last 5 years. I'm sort of on the fence with working with MC's. I love collaborating, and mixing ideas and I love working with good lyricists, however I've also found most MC's to be super flaky and frustrating to work with. Most of them don't return my emails anyway. I think my music freaks them out a bit, I don't know. If you ever saw me on the street, I'm kind of the antethisis of hip-hop, so that probably turns them off too. I'm a skinny little mop topped white kid with Chuck Taylor's and Clarke Kent glasses. I've got a buch of tracks that I was planning on getting some lyricists to spit on for the next record, but the guys I really wanted won't get back to me. Hip-hop doesn't like me. But if there are any good MC's who like my shit, I'm all ears!

UDR: Talk about sampling, and your "particular brand of Hanna-Barberra hip-hop". You use some quirky samples, that seem to fit well with the bounce of yer beats. Talk a bit about your process, currently, and what motivates yer sound, and where you find inspiration.

PP: My process is usually as follows: Sometimes when I'm buying records to sample, I start getting cold feet, and really picky about what I buy, even though it's all 99 cent crap from thrift stores, so I usually take a 20 dollar bill, and allocate every cent to records. That way I have to spend it all. So after I find my 20 records, I got to the studio and just start sifting. The trick is not to over think what your doing, or else you'll think yourself out of it. Just go-go-go. Don't stop to contemplate keys or tempos. Just go, and make it work. I'll sample anything. The other rule I have is to try to only buy records with pretty girls on the cover. That way, if the record is crap, at least I can hang it on my wall, and it will look good. Then I dump them all into my MPC 2000, and do 90% of my writing with that. My MPC is synced to Logic 7, so I can add all the other fun crap as well. I don't know what motivates me. I don't know where this music comes from. I have some pretty obvious influences such as Automator, Shadow and Cut Chemist, as they seem to have a pretty off the wall sampling aesthetic which I like. It sounds cheesy, but the main thing that keeps me into it, is that people keep telling me they really like my shit, and how weird and fun it is. I don't make any money doing this, and I have no record deal, so it's really those people giving feed back that keeps me into it. Sometimes, I get all "what the fuck am I doing, this shit is weird and no one cares" but then someone will come up to me after a show all freaking out about how much they liked it. That makes me think that someone is into it.

UDR: Have you had any formal musical or artistic training? Do you have any other creative outlets?

PP: I played piano when I was a kid. I had this crazy alcoholic czech woman, who was an amazing teacher when she wasn't drunk (which she usually was). I sort of wish I'd stuck with it. I ditched piano for guitar when I was 15, but took it up again at 20 with more focus on organs and synths. I also attended the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD) for 5 years. I studied Environmental Design. I've learned to apply a lot of the creative development I learned to music which is really cool, since I have no interest in building anything. My designs would fall on somebody, and I'd get sued. I'm positive.

I have a small studio space in the east end of Toronto. It's really just a room I rent from a small jingle house. It's got 4 channels wired into a vocal booth which is cool. I used to have it all in my apartment, but I found I'd get up and work on tracks all day. Suddenly it'd be 7:00 pm, and I'd smell like shit, and still be in my underwear. Now it's great. I'll get up at 6:30am, and bike to my studio when no one's awake and the sun's coming up. By the time I get there, I'm wide awake, and totally inspired. And I wonder why MC's dont want to work with me! My day job starts at noon, so that's when I get my time in

I do a bit of graphic design as well. I've always designed my own posters, and artwork. It's nice to keep a hand in other aspects of creativity.

UDR: You say you don't have a record deal, but I understand you've been working on a demo, which I assume you'll try to shop around to interested parties. We would all love to make a living doing this sort of thing, but how important is that to you?

PP: I put togeather a little 8 song 'advance' version of what's going to be on my next record that I'm flogging. I'd be grateful to get some people in my corner to help me release it. I'm a bit crazy in that I hate unfinished business. I hate not seeing things through to their fullest potential and I think that's where a lot of my drive comes from. I'm incapable of NOT finishing a track. Even if I hate it and it's crap, I HAVE to finish it, because you never know what might come of it. And if you dont push it to its limit, you'll never truly know what it could be. That's how I feel about this record. If I finish recording it, and wash my hands like I'm done, then what? No one's going to come find it and listen to it. I want everything I do to meet it's fullest potential. That is the most important thing to me. So if I put togeather a pile of demos, send them out, shove them in people's faces and scream and yell about it, and no one gives a shit, then that's cool. At least I know that no one ACTUALLY gives a shit. I'm not left wondering if people would have liked it, 'cause that's the worst.

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