CHINESE VERSION

連結收聽 Bungalovv 為 HKCR 特製的 Mix

海外巡演常置人於飄搖的情況－SIM卡沒辦法運作，付款方式屢遭拒絕，與複雜的地緣政治離不開關係的簽證申請過程。然而，以Bungalovv為名發行音樂的Pablo Betas，在開啟三個月的亞洲巡演前，便已對飄搖的環境了熟於心。他在阿根廷飄搖不定的經濟及政治環境中度過了大半輩子，前幾年則作為移民工人在柏林的創意行業中工作，這些經歷已使他與飄搖（precarity）結下了深厚的關係。他的人生是以持續的創作去面對飄搖處境的故事。

訪問：梁安琳 Anlin Liang

訪談是在廣州進行的。 Pablo在我前一天舉辦演出的DIY場地也演了一個小型的免費派對。兩天都有警察出現，都是來說我們聲音太大的，但場地其實不靠近任何居民大樓。幸好我們收到的都是輕微的警告，沒有任何實質的麻煩。

上一年夏天，我從倫敦搬回中國。在一年多的時間裡，我目睹了廣州的數個場地的開幕和倒閉。這裡面有俱樂部，也有多功能DIY空間。我有一些在俱樂部工作過的朋友至今仍被欠薪；演出費遲遲收不到這種事情也時常出現，但這樣的待遇主要還是留給本地稍微沒那麼出名的藝人的。

本地藝人在彼此之間會談論這些不公義的遭遇。本地藝人也會討論國際藝人和本地藝人之間所受到的差別對待。很多時候，跟國際藝人相比，本地藝人投入更多的努力，甚至有更精彩的演出，然而獲得的報酬和機會卻少得多。所以，當Pablo在我們向我提及這次巡演中有的活動主辦給請他這樣的國際藝人，卻不給本地藝人付錢時，我自然是感到極其驚訝，甚至因為有人說出這件事而心生感激。整體來說，Pablo在我心中是個對不平衡的權力關係有敏銳意識的人。

在2018年的一篇訪談（中文）裡，Pablo提到他跟幾個藝術家一同在布宜諾斯艾利斯組成了一個名為TRRUENO的團體（TRRUENO来自西班牙語的「trueno 」，意即「雷电」），這個團體是面對當時政治，經濟和文化狀況的必要產物。在另一篇對TRRUENO成員的訪談（英文）中，他們也提到了在布宜諾斯艾利斯舉辦活動不是那麼容易的事情，糟糕的經濟狀況和警察暴力構成了重重阻礙。我讓Pablo為我對這個情況作更詳細的解釋。

「在阿根廷，左右翼政府不斷輪替，他們各自都總是會去摧毀前一任政府做過的事情……他們總是在摧毀一切，這讓人無法創造出任何東西來。」在Cristina Fernández de Kirchner 在帶領的左翼政府下，TRRUENO有組織工作坊和在博物館演出的機會，甚至還受到當地報紙的採訪。但即便在那時，掌管布宜諾斯艾利斯這座城市的，是日後的右翼總統Mauricio Macri——他在這座城市裡有自己的警察，而這些警察總是在檢查各種場地，尋找各種能威脅場地關門的細節（比方說該空間的度量），不停對場地進行罰款，場地只能靠給他們提供免費酒水或分給他們門票收入使他們停止騷擾。

THUMP的一篇文章（英文）指出，阿根廷對夜生活的限制政策始於2004年的一場大火——這場大火發生在一所名為República Cromañón的夜店裡，致使194人喪生。但是有懲罰性質的政策針對的主要還是小型DIY派對，而非大型活動。 Pablo說，在舉辦活動時，演出陣容必須要涵括樂隊；場地裡出現的鼓或吉他音箱能夠制止警察來騷擾活動。這主要是跟管製成本相關：小型DIY場地若要走法律程序註冊，註冊成「樂隊場地」比「俱樂部」更容易。 Pablo說，「在政府更替後，他們開始對小型場地窮追猛打，想辦法讓這些場地關門，如果看到有人跳舞，有電子音樂在播放，就會對場地進行罰款。」有的場地甚至會貼海報說「你不能在此跳舞」。場地不斷倒閉。

擁有自己的空間做自己想做的事情，這本身就是一個政治性的事件，但是演奏音樂或舉辦活動的政治意義是否被浪漫化了呢？ Pablo可不這麼想。「這聽起來可能比較陳腔濫調，但我是來自噪音/龐克場景的，我認為地下音樂環境中很多想要被聽見，也想要跟他人產生連結的少數群體。很多時候俱樂部是個主要的輸出點，但它也許不是最好的輸出點或我們選擇的輸出點。在阿根廷，乃至整個拉丁美洲，音樂都是非常政治化的東西。我記得HiedraH Club de Baile的許多派對是在布宜諾斯艾利斯的街頭上舉辦的，或者他們會在派對上播放有關國內發生的不公正事件的音頻，這些事件主流媒體是不會提及的。」

我們坐下來進行採訪的第一件事就是看著Pablo打開FL Studio展示他的創意過程。他拖進了一些坎比亞（Cumbia）鼓的取樣，切割，然後以不同方式重新安排切過的取樣，加入效果，改變單一取樣的聲音。轉眼間已有好幾個音軌疊在一起——Pablo承認他在編排聲音和取樣這方面比較混亂無序，而FL Studio簡易直接（也不需要擔心取樣必須待在同一個音軌上）的拖拽方式，正中他內心對電子遊戲的喜愛。他在青少年時期玩過許多電子遊戲，同時也開始使用FL Studio，並在不知道採樣為何物的情況下發現了使用音訊檔案作為採樣的可能性。他開始用電子遊戲裡的聲音製作簡單的歌曲；因為他最初的電子音樂作品大多是8-bit音樂。

Pablo也承認他並不是特別喜歡技術方面的東西，因為他在當中找不到喜悅。但他的確是透過跟比較技術狂的朋友坐在一起，聽他們解釋而學會了像混音這樣的技巧。他強調在音樂創作中，他人的協助和意見是很重要的。「其實我很討厭全能電子音樂人/製作人或一個人是一支樂隊這樣的概念。因為我認為在創作過程中總是有很多人一起參與的，這樣音樂也會更有趣，更豐富。」

『其實我很討厭全能電子音樂人/製作人或一個人是一支樂隊這樣的概念。因為我認為在創作過程中總是有很多人一起參與的，這樣音樂也會更有趣，更豐富。』

我總是對那些意識到可以用在環境中找到的/錄製的聲音創作音樂的人感到好奇——我有個這麼做的朋友房門口貼著Pierre Schaeffer的海報。 Pablo也會用很多他自己錄製的的聲音。於是我問他為何會產生這樣的想法，而答案很簡單：他在DIY朋克場景中成長，總是在樂隊裡演奏，因此總是做好錄製的準備，比方說一首歌的構思。他用過卡式錄音機，後面用了數位的錄音機，現在則是用手機來錄音。他愛各種聲音——鑰匙碰撞的聲音，項鍊掉到桌面的聲音，甚至是對講機的嘀聲……這些對他來說都是值得錄下來的有意思的聲音。

Pablo在樂團的參與以及對吉他音樂的熱愛——直到現在他還是不停在聽My Bloody Valentine，The Jesus and Mary Chain和Deftones，近期最愛的樂團則是Duster——也影響了他後來的創作，將他跟解構俱樂部這種帶有實驗意味的聲音連結在一起。「我總是在樂團裡彈吉他，因此很喜歡各種效果，喜歡做一些很雜訊的東西，也總是會去看噪音演出。」在2016年遭遇的一場車禍後，他重新打開FL Studio ，不知不覺做起了類似的「噪音」。一開始他以為這樣的聲音很難在軟體內實現，但後來當他看到軟體內的效果跟吉他踏板有著一模一樣的參數後，便意識到他可以在軟體內做吉他也能做的事；只不過它聽起來跟吉他不一樣，完全變成了另一種樂器。俱樂部這一環境在當時並非他做音樂的主要參照物，他更多是在音樂上作自己的實驗。然而，他開始看到人們會在他和他的朋友演奏音樂時跳舞——他們演奏的音樂如今大多會被歸類為Witch House/Electroclash或純粹是「實驗」音樂。「我覺得，俱樂部更大程度上是從這樣開始的吧，不過我們一直都是很實驗的。我們的觀眾也是會去看噪音演出的人。」

墨西哥廠牌Infinite Machine的創辦人Charlie Juarez請Pablo為廠牌製作一張專輯（而非EP），給Pablo在製作更為以打擊樂為中心的，更「俱樂部」的音樂這一道路上又額外推了一把。「他讓我嘗試不同的歌曲結構，因為我之前做的曲子都是偏電影感的。我總是在開頭引入一些聲音，漸漸加入更多聲音，然後在歌曲的結尾，所以聲音糅合在一起又消散，一直都是同樣的結構…於是我開始去探索不同的結構，比方說用一聲巨響來開頭，用底鼓來開頭，我喜歡上了這樣來做歌，並為專輯做了14首demo 。」其中的六首最終變成了《Donde Hubo Fuego》這張專輯，而在製作過程中的許多構思則被收進了硬碟中，擱置起來——「那些都只是實驗」。

Pablo回想起這個過程說，「做電子音樂跟在樂團演奏的不同之處在於，做電子音樂時，你是先錄製了一首歌，再去弄清楚如何現場演奏出來；而在跟樂團去錄音室錄音之前，你已經排練了多次，已經得知道如何演奏了。所以在做電子音樂時會累積很多作為練習或即興的，有潛力的曲子，而它們的未來取決於你的藝術發展方向。」

Pablo一輩子都在做音樂，但妨礙眾多藝術家的共通死穴——完美主義——他一開始並沒有將自己的創作分享給世人。在經歷了2016年的那場車禍後——當時他正準備從黑心公司離職——一切都改變了。由於醫療系統失效，頭骨破碎的他當天沒有接受任何治療，後來由於手術會導致他左耳失聰，他沒有動手術，而是接受了高強度的藥物治療。 Pablo的左耳聽力還沒完全恢復，他形容左耳像是時時刻刻帶著個低通濾波器（low-pass filter），或是活在水下一般。

這次不幸的對生命脆弱的見解將他從先前的猶豫和不自信中拉了出來。「如果我死了，我所有的構思，所有的創作都發不出來了，也就沒有人會知道。自此我對自己的音樂心態更放鬆了，也開始作更多的發行，更多的演出。」

在身體恢復期間，Pablo去了一趟柏林，在到達的第二晚他就已經遇見了Mechatok，Lotic，Ziúr，Gil，Mobilegirl，Dinamarca…「我在Soundcloud上關注的人都在這裡了。」他在阿根廷時會放這些製作人的音樂，所以當他看到這些製作人也放自己和朋友的音樂時，他感到無比驚喜。

上述的許多音樂人都是一場名為解構俱樂部的風潮中的明星，Pablo當初也是因為像Astrosuka這樣的朋友介紹而因此了解這個場景。「解構俱樂部」一詞現在似乎不大受待見，但是Pablo看起來並不介意。他說這個風潮讓很多從金屬，實驗背景和龐克場景的人們聚在一起進行交流。「我覺得這個風潮是由許多對音樂產業憤怒，不喜歡這個系統的人對這一行業的重新詮釋，並在線上以席捲一切的勢頭繁衍。對於TRRUENO而言，這場風潮還幫了我們很多，因為自此開始在地球另一端也有人放我們的音樂。這完全是網絡的功勞。」

Pablo決心搬去柏林，但整個過程比原計劃多花了兩年的時間，因為佩索在一場急劇的經濟危機中不斷貶值。他必須接下比之前多得多的工作，為去柏林的簽證申請和差旅生活費存錢。 Pablo在布宜諾斯艾利斯和柏林的「正職」都是在視覺領域內。他由親身經歷知道，當人們將激情轉化為賴以生存的工作時，剛開始的好奇心和激情會很快消散——他曾經也做過VJ，且很享受自己創作視覺，但在媒體和廣告業的工作奪走了那種快樂；他很難再為自己進行創作。

事實上，在出發進行亞洲巡迴之前，Pablo才剛辭掉了一份工作，他過去三年的簽證都是跟那份工作掛鉤的。他任職的那家公司在疫情期間裁掉了他的許多同事，工作任務就全都轉移到了他的身上。這在他的記憶中是一段非常陰鬱的時光——每天長時間工作，薪資卻不見漲。合約裡的一項條款讓他不得不忍受這不公平的待遇：如果辭職，他的簽證狀況會變得非常不穩定。

他盡量不以音樂作為收入來源。音樂也許無法帶給他穩定的收入，但在某種程度上為他帶來了更多移動上的自由。「我以前住在我媽媽家裡一個很小的房間裡，在一台破爛電腦上做音樂，身無分文。當時我的處境實話說是很飄搖的。」但如今他在亞洲遊歷，在東亞和東南亞演出，而這都是他所創作的音樂帶給他的東西。 Pablo說他在深圳演出時跟同場的DJ Nigga Fox聊過一模一樣的話題——他們都来自較為貧窮的家庭，但音樂把他們帶到了此前根本去不到的地方。

Pablo在Genome 6.66Mbp的最新發行《Visited by Strangers》靈感來自他在某個Instagram帳號上看到的一幅畫，而這幅畫最終成為了該EP的封面藝術。它是由一位名為Rafał Borcz的波蘭藝術家所創作的，畫面描繪的是身披白色月光，在蕭肅且佈滿荊棘的森林中行走的狼群。 Palo說這幅畫讓他彷彿孤身一人在迎接某些奇異事物的來臨，而當它來的時候，「你要去迎接它」。 EP上的歌曲是在疫情期間所作的，那時死亡和世界終結的感覺是如此地迫切。

我問Pablo，在車禍後，他對死亡的恐懼是增加了還是減少了，他回答說他更害怕死亡了。「但是，」他回想道，「我有一次搭飛機去葡萄牙，飛機因為輪子出不來一直無法著陸，在空中上上下下。飛機上的人們非常驚慌，但我想，『我又能做些什麼呢？』如果我什麼都做不了，那就只能經歷下去了。死了就死了。但是最終我們沒有死。飛機著陸了。」

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ENGLISH VERSION

Listen to the Mix created by Bungalovv for HKCR

Touring overseas puts you in precarious situations—SIM card that doesn’t work, payment methods that get declined, complex visa application processes entangled with geopolitical complexities. Pablo Betas, who releases music under the alias Bungalovv, however, knows precarity well even before taking on the three-month long tour in Asia. Having lived amid the perpetually precarious economic and political climate in Argentina and worked as a migrant worker in the creative field in Berlin for the past few years, he has formed a deep relationship with precarity. His story is one that negotiates precarity with the consistent act of creating.

Interview by Anlin Liang

The interview was conducted in Guangzhou, China. I hosted an event at the same venue where Pablo played a small free party the day after. The police showed up on both days saying we were being too loud, despite the fact that the venue wasn’t near any residential buildings. Luckily it was only some mild warning that didn’t cause any substantial trouble.

I moved back to China from London last summer. Within the span of a little bit over a year, I witnessed several venues in Guangzhou—whether it was a club or a multi-functional DIY space—opening and closing. Several of my friends who were club workers are still owed wages till this day; delayed gig payments are not unusual either, but of course this sort of treatment is reserved mainly for small local acts.

Local artists sometimes talk to each other about the unfair treatments. Local artists also talk about the discrepancy in treatments received by local artists and international artists. It’s almost a consensus that a lot of the time local artists put in more effort and play better sets but receive much less financial compensation and opportunities than international artists. So naturally, when Pablo mentioned to me how during his tour, certain promoters paid international acts like himself at the expense of local artists when we met, I was caught off guard and almost felt grateful that someone said it. In general, Pablo struck me as someone who’s conscious about the imbalance in power dynamics.

In a 2018 interview, Pablo mentioned that TRRUENO (the name comes from “trueno”, which means “thunder” in Spanish), the collective he formed with several artists in Buenos Aires, were born out of political and economic and cultural necessities. There’s another interview with TRRUENO members in which the dire economic situation and police violence were cited as obstacles to organizing events in Buenos Aires. I asked Pablo to give me more details on what the situation was like.

“In Argentina, you have a left wing government and then right wing, left, right, and they are all trying to dissolve the things the previous government did…you can never create something because they are destroying everything all the time.” Under the left wing government of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, TRRUENO received opportunities to organize workshops and play at museums and were even interviewed for a main local newspaper. But even during that time, the city of Buenos Aires was also governed by the future right wing president Mauricio Macri. Macri created his own police in the city. They were always checking on the venues, looking for things (for example, the measurements of the space) that could potentially threaten to close down the venues, fining the venues again and again, and often had to be bribed away with alcohol or the money from the tickets sold.

According to a THUMP article, the prohibitive regulation that sought to restrict nightlife in Argentina started after a fire broke out at the República Cromañón nightclub in 2004 that killed 194 people, but the punitive measures targeted mostly small DIY parties instead of larger events. Pablo said that the line-ups of the events always needed to include bands along with electronic music acts; a drum set or a guitar amp at the venue could deter the police from harassing the event. It was mostly because of the regulation costs: it was more accessible for a small DIY venue—if they want to enter in the legal process and register the venue—to be registered as a “band venue” rather than a “club” one. “When the government changed, they were trying to chase all the small venues to try to shut them down, and to put fines if people were dancing, if there was electronic music going on,” Pablo said. At some point, some venues would put up posters saying “you cannot dance here.” Venues also kept closing down.

Being able to claim your own space and do whatever you find fun in that space is inherently political, but were the political implications of playing music or hosting events romanticized? Pablo didn’t think so. “This sounds somewhat cliché, but coming from a noise and punk background, I think that in the underground music environment it is full of minorities who want to be heard and connect as well with others. Although many times the club is one of the main outputs, it is probably not the best one or the one we choose. In Argentina, and throughout Latin America, music is quite politicized. I remember in many cases at HiedraH Club de Baile parties they have taken the streets of Buenos Aires or they have played audios of injustices that were happening in the country and that the mass media decided to omit.”

The first thing Pablo did after we sat down for the interview was to demonstrate his creative process in FL Studio. He dragged some Cumbia drum samples, chopped them, rearranged them in different ways, and put effects on them, and manipulated the sounds of individual samples. In just a few seconds, several tracks are stacked on top of each other—Pablo admitted to be a more chaotic type when it comes to arranging samples and sounds, and for him, the ease and directness of the drag and drop approach in FL Studio (without having to worry about the samples needing to be on the same track) appealed to his love for video games: he used to play a lot of video games during his teenage years, and around the same time he got into FL Studio and discovered the possibility of using audio files as samples although he didn’t know what sampling was. He started doing basic tracks with sounds from video games and his first electronic music projects were mostly 8-bit music.

Pablo also admitted that he was not too heavy on the technical side because he didn’t find it joyful. But he did learn things like mixing techniques mainly by sitting with his friends who were more into the technical aspects of music making, and listening to them explain things. He stressed the importance of having other people’s assistance and perspectives in creating music. “I actually hate the idea of an electronic musician or a producer that knows everything and it’s one person band this kind of thing. Because I think there are always a lot of people involved in the process; it also makes the music even more interesting and rich at some point.”

“I actually hate the idea of an electronic musician or a producer that knows everything and it’s one person band this kind of thing. Because I think there are always a lot of people involved in the process; it also makes the music even more interesting and rich at some point.”

I am always fascinated with people who are aware of the possibility of creating music with found/recorded sounds—one of my friends who does this has a Pierre Schaeffer poster on his door. Pablo would use a lot of the sounds he records himself as well. I asked Pablo how he came to have the ideas of recording sounds, and the reason turned out to be very simple: growing up, being part of the DIY punk scene and always playing in bands, he was always prepared to record something, an idea of a song, for example. He used to do this with a cassette recorder, then switched to a digital one later, and now on his phone. He loves sounds—the sound of the keys rattling, the sound of his chains dropping on the table, or even the beep sound on the intercom; all these are interesting and recording-worthy to him.
Pablo’s involvement in bands and his love for guitar music—he still always listened to My Bloody Valentine, The Jesus and Mary Chain and Deftones, and his current favourite band is Duster—also informed his later projects and connected him with the Deconstructed Club sound, the sound associated with an experimental undertone. “Since I was always playing the guitar in bands, I was always very into effects and doing noisy things, and I was always going to see noise projects.” After getting into a car accident in 2016, he reopened FL Studio and found himself making a similar “noise”. At first he thought it was going to be difficult to achieve those sounds in a DAW, but then he realized the effects have exactly the same parameters as the pedals, and it clicked for him that he could do things similar to what he could do with the guitar; it just didn’t sound like guitar and became a totally different instrument. The club setting wasn’t his primary reference point for making music at that time, it was more about experimenting with sounds in his own way. Gradually, however, he found that people were dancing when he and his friends played music in Buenos Aires—the kind of music would be most commonly described as the “Witch House” or “Electroclash” or simply “Experimental” today. “Maybe the club thing was starting more that way, I think. But it always was super experimental. Our audience were also the people that were going to noise projects.”

Charlie Juarez, the owner of the Mexican label Infinite Machine, gave Pablo an extra push in producing more percussion-oriented/“clubby” music when he asked Pablo to make an album, instead of an EP, for the label. “He told me to try a different kind of structure, because all my previous tracks were on the cinematic side. I always started with introducing some sounds, adding more gradually, and at the end of the track, all the sounds combined together into something and then dissolved. Always the same structure…So I started to explore different structures, like starting the track with a ‘bang’, with a kick. I got really into that, and made 14 different demos for it.” Six of the demos made it into Donde Hubo Fuego, and on the other hand, a lot of the ideas in this process were put away in the hard drive—“they were just experiments.”

“The different concept with electronic music is,” Pablo said, reflecting on the process, “that you start a track recording it and then you need to figure out how to play that thing live, whereas you would make so many rehearsals before going to a studio recording with a band and you already know how to play it. So sometimes you just have a lot of potential tracks that are just exercises or improv and their future definitely depends on your artistic curation.”

Pablo has been making music his whole life, but he didn’t put any of his creations out to the world at first because of one common damning factor for artists: perfectionism. That car accident in 2016 eventually changed everything—he was hit by a car as he was about to leave a shady company he worked for. The broken healthcare system left him with a fractured skull without being treated for a whole day, and then he went through heavy medication without surgery because that would mean no hearing on the left ear forever. His hearing in the left ear still hasn’t been fully recovered; he described it as having a low pass filter or living under water all the time.

This unfortunate encounter with the fragility of life actually pulled him out of hesitation and insecurity. “If I died, all the tracks I made, all my ideas, all the things I had created would never be released, and no one would know anything about it. That’s how I became more chilled with my music and started to release more stuff and play more stuff.”

While recovering from the accident, Pablo went on a trip to Berlin, and on the second night there he saw Mechatok, Lotic, Ziúr, Gil, Mobilegirl, Dinamarca…“My whole SoundCloud following is there.” Finding out people in Berlin—whose music he would play out in parties—were also playing the music he and his friends in Argentina made was a huge surprise for him.

A lot of these acts were shiny participants in the Deconstructed Club movement and Pablo was initially introduced to their music through friends like Astrosuka. The term “Deconstructed Club” seems to be getting a certain amount of hate now but Pablo didn’t seem to mind it at all. He said the movement helped many people coming from metal, experimental music and punk scenes to communicate with each other. “I think it was a reinterpretation of the music industry by many people who were angry and against the system and it was reproduced online with a very rapid effervescence. In the case of TRRUENO, the movement also helped us a lot because we began to experience our music being played in other parts of the planet. And that’s just the internet.”

Pablo became determined to move to Berlin, but it took two more years for him to move than initially planned because the Peso was losing its value during an exponential economic crisis. He had to work a lot more to save all the money needed for the visa application and the trip and living expenses in Berlin. Both in Buenos Aires and in Berlin, Pablo’s day jobs were in the visual realm. He knew from experience when one turned their passion into work for financial security, the initial curiosity and passion could quickly wear off—he used to be a VJ as well and enjoyed doing visuals for himself, but working in the media and advertisement robbed that joy away; it became really difficult for him to create for himself.

In fact, right before he took off for the Asia tour, Pablo just got out of a job on which his visa had been dependent for over three years. The company in Berlin he worked for laid off a lot of his co-workers during the pandemic and all the workload was transferred to him. It was a miserable time as he recalled, having to work long hours every day without any pay rise. A clause in the contract determined that he could not just call it quits as he might be thrown into a more precarious visa situation, so he endured the unfair treatment.

He tried to stay away from doing music as work for financial gain. Music might not bring him financial security, but to some extent it brought him mobility with more ease. “I was doing music when I was living in a very small room in my mom’s place, without money at all. I was doing it on a shitty computer. It was a very precarious situation to be honest.” But right now Pablo is touring in Asia, performing all over East and Southeast Asia, and it’s just because of the music he created. “It’s insane!” Pablo said he talked about the exact same thing with DJ Nigga Fox when they performed together in Shenzhen–both of them came from poor families, but somehow music took them to distant places they wouldn’t have been able to travel to.

His latest release on Genome 6.66Mbp, Visited by Strangers, was inspired by a painting he saw on an random Instagram account, which ended up becoming the artwork for the project. The painting was made by a Polish artist named Rafał Borcz, and it portrayed a wolf pack all coated in the bright, white moonlight walking amidst a bare and thorny forest. For Pablo, the painting evoked the sense of being alone when something strange came and, “you just have to embrace it.” The tracks were composed during the pandemic when the imminence of death and the sense of the world ending were gravely felt.

I asked Pablo if he’s got greater or lesser fear for death after his car accident, and he said he feared death more, “BUT,” he recalled, “I was on a plane to Portugal once and it failed to land and was going up and down for a while because the wheels weren’t coming out. People on the plane were panicking but I was thinking, ‘what can I do about it?’ If I can’t do anything about it, just get through it. If you die you die, but in the end we did not die. The plane landed.”

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