May 2021
Q: Your stage name, “Chance De La Soul,” is characterized with japanese katakana spelling. Can you explain how you decided on the name, its stylization, and about how long you’ve been using it?
A: Ah yeah, I’ve been using this name since 2017, it comes from my SoundCloud which was where I primarily posted my music in those early years. The first “CHANCE” part of my name comes from one of my old usernames, and not from Chance the Rapper as some people have suggested lol. And as for the second part of my name, it’s also a complete coincidence that it’s named after another hip-hop act, especially one known for sampling. I came up with the “de la Soul” searching for a name that would look good in katakana to keep with the Vaporwave/Future Funk theme of using Japanese characters for their aesthetic purposes above all else. I had heard of De La Soul before so I translated their name to Japanese and it looked so good that I decided to use it. It was only later that I actually listened to their music and found out how sample-heavy and good it was, that was a nice surprise.
Q: What was your relationship to music like prior to becoming a recording artist? What or who inspired you to start releasing music?
A: I’ve always really enjoyed listening to a ton of different kinds of music, mostly just whatever was shown to me by other people or what was in other media when I was a kid. I was also always really interested in making music, but I had no patience as a kid so there were a lot of false starts. I eventually did get started making music thanks to this group of friends I had in high school that were really into music. Basically, one day while I was at school, one of my other friends walked up to us and told us all to go home that night and download FL Studio so we could each make a track and show it to each other the next day. I went home that night and had a lot of fun making a really bad minute-long track (where I drew a smiley face on the piano roll on top of a random drum beat!), and after that I just kept on making stuff for fun, until I found out about vaporwave and here I am today.
Q: Your music features upbeat, vibrant vaporboogie rhythms, with samples in your latest record ranging from Ben E. King to the Funky 4+1, with a myriad of funk and soul in between. What do you look for in a good sample and how do you typically encounter your source material?
A: Hey you found some samples, nice! As for how I actually find the samples, it varies. A lot of my sampling has been done exclusively through internet sample hunts, although nowadays I do also go out to antique shops and record shops to try to find old records as well. I actually got pretty deep with my internet sample hunting, at one point I wrote a Python script to randomly serve me up blog posts from blogs dedicated to archiving old vinyl releases. I really have to thank all those guys a lot for the work they did and how much it helped me out. YouTube is also a pretty great place to go for finding samples if you know how to look (Hint: If a person’s uploaded an old disco track that they themselves ripped from vinyl, check out their other videos, they’ve likely uploaded more obscure but still great tracks). Figuring out what to sample is a lot easier than finding stuff to sample in the first place though. I generally look for more energetic, bouncy disco tracks, stuff with sparse instruments so that they can be isolated easily, or just weird stuff. It’s all about trying to imagine what a sample could sound like, rather than what it actually sounds like.
Q: You’re already releasing a follow-up to “Chance デラソウル,” which you described as being a companion piece to this self-titled album. In what ways do they parallel or compliment each other?
A: Yeah! This newer album, “Afterparty”, came about because my self-titled album took a while to come out. I decided to try partnering with Mere Notilde (of Notilde Tapes) for that release, and as it was to be the first full release on that label it took a while to set everything up. In that time, I ended up creating another album which sort of continues the spirit of my self-titled album, which was an exploration of everything I’ve learned so far. Think of it as a more complete encapsulation of my current state as a musician right now, with all the ideas that I’m exploring right now coming into view before I hopefully find out what direction I want my music to go in in the future.
Q: Artists who maintain anonymity do so for rather individual reasons - what are yours? Is it difficult given that we’re living in a ubiquitous age of social media?
A: To be honest, I’ve contemplated doing an unprompted face reveal or a video or whatever just to get it out of the way so that it doesn’t become a big deal. When I listen to music, I tend to just focus on the music itself and rarely get into looking into the personal lives of the musicians behind it, and so I just naturally carried over that attitude to this musical project, there’s no real grand reason behind my (so far) anonymity. I also just really like the idea that my music is being enjoyed and shared purely on its own merits, rather than because of who I am. I used to have a plan to publish one big album, call it my final album, and then switch over to a different alias without telling anybody just to see if I could do it again, but at this point I think that would be a bit too harsh on the people who actually like my music lol.
Q: Can you see yourself venturing outside the worlds of future funk/vaporwave, and what genres of music would you pull from to do it?
A: Oh yeah most definitely, I’ve been thinking of eventually buying some proper recording equipment so I can maybe start venturing into making other kinds of songs. You could actually probably make the case that I’ve already ventured out into different genres, I really do enjoy just throwing in a bunch of different stuff together to see what fits. One of the songs on “Afterparty” could literally just be called electro house, another one is basically a rock song (I’ve been really into that sort of sound after I got into playing the guitar over the pandemic, I’ve been listening to a lot of Neutral Milk Hotel). Other than that though, I actually do already have another alias, Amiga Deluxe, where I’ve been making chiptunes for a long time, you can check that out if you’re into that kind of thing.
Q: What kind of music do you find yourself listening to in your spare time?
A: A lot of different things but I usually end up coming back to electronic music mainly. The Avalanches, MF DOOM, Daft Punk, Justice, YUC'e, Girl Talk, J Dilla, Nujabes, Death Grips, Kanye, MGMT, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Neutral Milk Hotel, a bunch of Japanese songs that were inspired by this one vocaloid song that has a huge cult following (look up イワシがつちからはえてくるんだ (Iwashi ga Tsuchi kara Haetekurun da)), and a whole bunch of others that I’m forgetting right now. Oh and also old video game music, I do love my chiptunes after all.
Q: What’s a video game you’re either playing currently, or have played most recently? What would you say are a few of your favorite video games of all-time?
A: I’ve been slowing making my way through Demon’s Souls, I was lucky enough to snag a PS5 and that’s the main game that I’ve been playing so far, but I suck at the Souls games so it’s going to take a while lol. I also beat the first Spider-Man game on PS4, that game was pretty fun. If we’re talking about my favorite games of all time though I’d have to say Ocarina of Time is my favorite of all time just based on the sheer amount of times I’ve played it to completion. Fallout: New Vegas is probably a close second though.
Thanks so much for the interview!
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