Sunday, August 29, 2010

Junk Culture

Junk Culture

This week's Q&A is with Junk Culture's Deepak Mantena.

There's not a whole lot to be learned about Junk Culture, on the internet (at least, not at the time of this writing). Thanks, however, to a link to his twitter account, I can tell you he appears to be a fan of Freaks & Geeks, Julia Roberts and Sudoku... So, that's kind of interesting.

A look at his biography information on Facebook only reveals that a boy band by the name of Lyte Funky Ones was an American three-man pop/rap group consisting of Rich Cronin, Devin Lima and Brad Fischetti, and no, I don't think that has anything to do with anything... not really.

It CAN be said that Junk Culture has been performing a lot of shows, including four with label mate, Girl Talk, last year, and also that there are a couple of videos to view at their website. Check it out HERE.

Without further ado, here's the SAR Q&A with Junk Culture...


*Name: Junk Culture

*Are there any additional names used to describe this project: Not yet. Brorock, maybe?

*Do you use a pseudonym?
Not yet.

*Members: Two (Deepak Mantena & Nitin Mantena) - I sing and play samples and record the jams and my brother Nitin plays drums. My friend Harrison is going to be playing drums for me on a tour with Tobacco in September.

*Founding Members: Just me.

*Tape manipulations, digital deconstructions or turntable creations: I haven't exclusively defined the means by which I make music because for my music making purposes the means are the least important thing to me. I want the freedom to make music with any tools I want without letting the tools define the band.

*Another genre descriptor: Genre-wise I've been thinking of my music as cosmic r&b, which I think is especially apt for how I want the material moving forward to sound.

*Why you use this descriptor:
I really love the production of a lot of 90’s r&b music, from the instrumentation to the vocal treatment. It's something I kind of wanted to emulate in some of my new material. I guess the cosmic part is because the new material is not straight up r&b, it's definitely a little out there. Plus I have a huge interest in outer space and astronomy, so I guess all that stuff just made it feel like an apt way to describe some of the new material, which I feel is quite a bit different than the first record. (I had released music for 6 years prior under another name that just didn't seem to represent the material anymore. So looking through my record collection one day looking for something to listen to, I saw OMD’s “Junk Culture” and it just clicked. It really made sense with the material.)

*Location:
I've from Oxford, Mississippi, where I've lived most of my life.

*Original Location: Idaho

*What is your creative/artistic background:
I've been playing and recording music since I was kid. I started on piano and guitar, but once I discovered the computer that became a new instrument to make music with. At the same time I've always loved doing stage plays when I can and working on short films. So those three things continue to spiral into taking up the largest amounts of my time.

*History:
Junk Culture has existed since October of 2008, but I put out two records on my own under a different name years and years before that.

*Born: Nitin and I were both born in Idaho.

*Motivations: Despite being a huge fan of music, it's still inexplicable to me how certain songs can make me feel the way they do. That's something that transcends conscious reasoning, for me at least, and my motivation is to try and explore that with my own music.

*Philosophy:
So far, my goal is simply to record material that evokes a strong emotion of some sort in myself. Not just this song makes me happy or sad or something, but strong emotions that have a physicality to them, that are ambivalent even, that I can feel in my stomach. If my material can accomplish that on some level for me, I'm happy to have people hear it in hopes that they'll have a similar reaction. I should say, these high level things are important to my process, but it's not my intention to be heavy handed about this stuff with my listeners. If people listen to my work and get something out of it, I'm pumped, even if it's not what I intended for them to feel.

*How would you like to be remembered: For being inconsistently funny on Twitter.

*Web address:
http://junkculture.biz
http://twitter.com/ilikepants


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