Interview w/ Celestaphone
By Nick Caceres
Published 06/22/2025
A collision between dense plot narratives baked in an ooze of philosophy, religious frameworks and intricate inside jokes serving as commentary to the surrounding world, Celestaphone is the definition of a hidden gem in underground Rap. His latest project, “Cult Subterranea” oversees him conducting a coked out seminar for new recruits at Area 51 simulated inside Drowned God with Australian trio, Dealers of God, proliferating some of the most expansive themes in both of their discographies to date. Fittingly, the collaboration would find itself as a new standout in the radical Dismiss Yourself catalog.
Hailing from the quiet suburbs of Riverside, California, Celestaphone was brought up in a family that instilled in him an appreciation for the creative process, divulging an assemblage of unique instrumental Hip Hop albums at the start of his career which would eventually be in good company with his over-the-top bars by the start of 2018. At this point, it's mandatory for a Celestaphone album to follow a continual story, fleshed-out throughout strings of narratives, at times even portraying different characters as if they’re headmates.
To this day, Celestaphone has never strayed away from sampling the purest cut of analog which over the years has morphed into a groove-fest of an oxymoron, not even at its peak yet with the promise of another collaborative project down the pipe.
The following interview was conducted over email in June where Celestaphone unpacked the network of themes in “Cult Subterranea” along with the announcement of a collaboration with AMFG with a side of past releases. This serves as the SECOND Hip Hop interview in Nick C history, with a third one already in-progress. Get hyped.
Selfie of Celestaphone
Photo courtesy of Celestaphone
Nick: Hey Celestaphone, how’ve you been?
Celestaphone: Good year so far. I’ve been heavily deep diving into health and nutrition lately. I’m currently working on an LP with Belgian artist and funk collector AMFG.
Nick: Oh sweet! If you’re willing to share, what ideas and concepts have you been looking into with this upcoming project with AMFG?
Celestaphone: It could sound like winning an F1 championship title, or a Paisley Park sesh with DJ Quik, maybe even a hydrophone in a pool with seals. Ultimately, our cadavre exquis.
Nick: I saw in your interview with fellow collaborator, Paul Barman, that not only are you an artist but you are pretty much always listening to music and collecting wax. So to kick this off, I’d like to ask any artists or projects that you’ve been gravitating towards lately and if you have any new vinyl pickups?
Celestaphone: I’d recommend Paul Barman’s latest “Tectonic Texts,” shout out to him. Paul and I have great conversations, having one for The Creative Independent highlights that fact in a way I’m super grateful for, very solidifying. Meatus from Dealers was impressed by that interview and I’m sure folks will be glad to read our convo here as well. No contemporary vinyl grabs this year yet— unless we’re counting my own test pressings which sound great. I just heard that Slick Rick album, I need somebody to tell Rick the Ruler that I’ve got a joint for him. Always picking up old wax of course.
Nick: Funny you bring him up. Has anyone ever told you that you have a Slick Rick-esque tone in your delivery?
Celestaphone: Not to me directly but I have actually come across that comparison a few times. Flattering.
Nick: Also I totally get not having many contemporary pickups. For example, I love MIKE but when I caught him live in Charlotte he was selling his LP at the merch table for $60 a pop! So what older records have you copped as of late?
Celestaphone: Oh the prices are not the obstacle! When I'm impressed by something new I'll cop and think nothing of it. Otherwise, this type of music I make means thousands are being poured into old vinyl every year. I'm avoiding MP3s, reissues and YouTube. Fidelity by any means necessary. So I'm making rips of the vinyl for myself most of the time, or I'm dealing with collectors. Right now searching for a specific LP off this South African label called “Transistor” that AMFG showed me. I can't be too specific of course.
Nick: Let’s jump into a record that me and many of the readers here have been super interested in since its drop on 4/20. I think a good place to start with “Cult Subterranea” is asking how you first found out about the ethereal Australian trio, Dealers of God? What gravitated you towards them?
Celestaphone: I was looking through the most random Reddit posts related to “Drowned God” and adjacent games like “Zork Nemesis,” “Myst.” Somehow I came across videos and stuff that Dealers member, p.rosa had posted which conveniently included links to their music. I had no idea there were other people out there making music inspired by these types of games so that piqued my interest. By the time that happened I had already done most of the beats and rhymes that were on “Cult Subterranea.” I ended up listening to “Burned Car Highway Light Volcanic” and then “Dealer's Choice,” then more, enjoying so much of what I’d heard.
Nick: Walk me through how both parties eventually link up, discussing a full-on collaboration. Who reached out first?
Celestaphone: Even though I became aware of Dealers of God some time ago, it wasn’t until after I did a few interviews this year in January where I’d mentioned having a "Drowned God" inspired project, that they ended up reading that somehow and reached out. They brought up being inspired by these games too, very quickly I offered this album to them for co-production because it truly needed something else and I was familiar with their skills. What the Dealers were able to add to “Cult Subterranea" was exactly what the album needed, without question. Props absolutely has to be given to Sticki of Dismiss Yourself as well for taking us on board and putting this out. I had absolutely lovely and thrilling convos with Dealers and Sticki, very like-minded individuals, a pure but uncanny valley collab, effortless.
Nick: When researching for this interview, I took some time examining the liner notes of this album and listening to it while following along on Genius. Needless to say, I didn’t expect the themes to be as dense and intricate as they were upon my first listen. I found myself having to look up terminology to understand where you guys were coming from. So to begin probing the inner workings of “Cult Subterranea,” could you explain how the concept of extraterrestrials relates to a lack of fear or even interest in what is being presented to you, who plays the role of a “protagonist emcee” throughout the project?
Celestaphone: So you’re referring to the Bandcamp blurb and those have been serialized across my rap albums. It just picks off where the last one ended, in other words. Paper Cut From the Obit, my album before this, was very much about ‘dark night of the soul’, ego death, death in general. A common theme in ET encounter lore is people unlocking their ability to experience ETs only after they’ve had their egos broken, and it’s not always in a “oh I just smoked toad” way, soul crushing physical and mental abuse is often reported as moving the needle for people also. I play the protagonist emcee in this case.
Nick: My next question involves providing some lyrical examples across the album:
“I may as well make rap's inaugural anti-religion podcast
I'm like Rap God met Crass
Get evolved while y'all still sniffing on Gog from Magog's ass
I'm like a bible-thumper myself, call that adversarial machine learning
To me thе term pseudo-messiah's a littlе concerning
That's like negative concord.”
(Deep Underground)
“Not all diabolical a dog-whistle for doddering Jew
And what some call Zionist, or x and y hive this, is a mindless close minded view.”
(Moscovium)
“The windows of the soul are empty
False messiahs come with new vistas of a promised paradise
Leading the flock to the slaughter
As the new Jerusalem is built with coal and steel so turns the wheel
Dead to the world if only we knew it
Blissfully unaware of the fate in store for us
You've come to learn our secret.”
(Drake Passage)
I’m curious to know that although there are references to alien activity and religious references, why did you decide to stick to a judaic framework for “Cult Subterranea” even making it crystal clear through the liner notes? I thought this was just about aliens!
Celestaphone: For one, it’s a continuance of topics presented in “Drowned God.” The long “Drake Passage” sample is from the game’s Baphomet character, clips from Malchut and Kether, which are low and high points in the Tree of Life, are scattered throughout the album also. Religion is mankind’s cultural mover and shaker, Abrahamic paradigms being especially influential. Many people exist in the matrix of that, and of course even the most secularized will always be reminded and affected. There are some that have poured a lot of money and resources into self-fulfilling prophecies, there are plenty of people that will view the aftermath as vindication for their religion, perhaps it is vindication and perhaps it is not. All in all it’s just incredibly unavoidably relevant when commenting on world mythos.
Nick: You’ve already been bringing this up but an interesting parallel is that you mentioned that this album is made in remembrance of the creator of “Drowned God,” Harry Horse, in which the title is derived from a letter he wrote in 2005. In what ways is “Cult Subterranea” a spiritual successor of the game?
Celestaphone: I genuinely believe that my mapping of the current landscape of theories and skepticism can stand next to Harry’s. A lot of what he crammed into his game is still relevant today, moreso even. I’ve done my due diligence to mine the fringe thoroughly and present it in a way that isn’t completely jargon, in the vein of Drowned God’s accomplishment.
Nick: To leave on “Cult Subterranea,” one of the funniest things about this album is the fact that you managed to get big names like Blu and Quelle Chris on a Dismiss Yourself release with the track, “Ayys Hello.” How did you manage to get those guys on the track rapping about abduction and cryptids?
Celestaphone: Passed the beat to both of them, mentioned the album’s themes. I’ve always loved hearing Blu and Quelle together, Roc Marciano’s “Cut The Check” for example. Pretty sure I mentioned that to both of them.
Nick: Who did the album art? I really dig their interpretation of extraterrestrials.
Celestaphone: That would be my good friend Alex Haught, an unreal artist named Alicia Cellini Fettering, and myself. Just the fonts alone took forever to nail, again with fidelity, I wanted the homage to be convincing.
Celestaphone & Dealers of God - "Cult Subterranea" (2025) album cover
Image courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: Let’s reel it back to the start of your career. Starting with your debut EP, all the way to “Portrait of a Harlot,” you were strictly an instrumental artist. In what ways do you feel like you developed or felt out your style through these early albums between 2014-18?
Celestaphone: Those albums proved to me that the rumours are true, truly anything can be flipped for hip-hop.
Nick: What made you want to pick up the mic by the time “Tying Up Loose Friends” dropped? Was it simply a confidence thing or something else?
Celestaphone: I was already rhyming and making unreleased rap stuff for years at this point, but yes I had a particular feeling about this project. It is what I wanted to start my public rap journey with.
Nick: I find it interesting how “Tying Up Loose Friends” is more overtly skit and character driven than your later albums. The whole thing reminds me of some lost Adult Swim show that takes place in some SoCal college— so in what ways is this a concept album storywise?
Celestaphone: It definitely does play out some type of school drama. I remember a thematic interest in satirizing the mass shooter psyche, and related cultural angst, for that particular time in 2018. Personally, I’ve never attended a university, and my time in K12 was just painfully boring as a stubborn autodidact. It wasn’t a dramatic time and there was no bullying per se, but as a nerd with nerd friends, of which one friend even knew a now infamous shooter, Randy Stair, personally— it was an incredibly relevant theme amongst fellow screen addicts to play around with. You have to understand, I’m someone who got suspended for bringing the “Johnny the Homicidal Maniac" director's cut to middle school, Eminem is still one of my all time favorite emcees; I grew up on unfettered access to the internet. To me, “Loose Friends" maybe begs to be published on the Newgrounds audio portal more than anything else I’ve made.
Nick: Hold on…are you pulling my leg by telling me that a friend of yours knew THE Randy Stair? Please expand on that because holy shit that’s a wild coincidence!
Celestaphone: Not a joke. Randy, up until their demise, was actively friends with one of the greatest humans I know. I wish I could say more.
Nick: You also mentioned in the description that this album was originally going to be focused around a friend's VR game about strip clubs. Why did that concept fall through and by any chance do you still wish that came to fruition?
Celestaphone: Nothing fell. The whole blurb is jokes of course.
Nick: How did you come up with that part of the blurb then? Gave me chuckle when I first read it.
Celestaphone: Relevant things to poke fun of and rag on at the time.
Celestaphone - "Tying Up Loose Friends" (2018) album cover
Image courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: In regards to “Weevil In Disguise,” I found that album to have a seemingly more political tone than “Loose Friends.” In tracks like “Social Climate of a Robo Life,” “Life Goes On,” and especially “Cheap Cutie,” there was a repeating motif of you roleplaying as this hopeless rebel, warning the people around him to make an effort in resistance to some greater power. Could you break down what you were trying to get across in this album?
Celestaphone: That album is really about flirting with danger. Dancing with the devil, or weevil. You push your luck and you may open a can of worms, or maybe you'll get away with it and life goes on. There are definite powers whose minions freely commit heinous acts constantly who’ll feel little to zero consequences because they’re sanctioned and protected, while someone powerless may be imprisoned for life for pushing back in a country that tolerates no type of protest. That is the spectrum I’m showing on “Weevil In Disguise.”
Nick: How did you come up with the name for the album?
Celestaphone: Instead of the grand malevolent figure, the devil, I thought let’s make it a small, pestering and even pathetic threat. Thus, weevil.
Celestaphone - "Weevil in Disguise" (2020) album cover
Image courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: Tell me about this music video you did for the track, “Sick Ways.” How did you and Wug come up with those stop motion visuals and overall musky tone to that video?
Celestaphone: Wug is someone who was uploading hilarious fake versions of recently released albums, tricking people into downloading them like the old Bill Clinton "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" of Limewire fame. Somehow or another I found out they had a prolific YouTube channel with incredibly interesting videos to say the least. I also enjoyed some of their actual, non parody music releases. I proposed to them the idea of doing a music video, I told them to do whatever they want and what you see for “Sick Ways” is the result.
[Celestaphone]. (2020, June 28). Celestaphone - Sick Ways [Video].
Nick: In transition, did the arts & crafts approach to “Sick Ways” ever contribute to the direction of the album art for “Paper Cut From the Obit?”
Celestaphone: Not directly. I like an artisan or kitsch look though.
Nick: What was the true inspiration then? What about the CD cover?
Celestaphone: Same as the album themes, death, existence in flesh. The alternative CD cover is me holding up my Rattle Me Bones in a parking lot that got flooded. I have no idea why there was a rocking chair in there.
Nick: Why is existentialism and patheticism such a key characteristic of this record that just so happens to be, in my opinion, your grooviest instrumentally?
Celestaphone: I like to do things so wrong that it becomes right I guess. Tortured lyrics on densely funky ear wormy stuff, why not? Just wait though, this next one is going to be miles more groovier.
Nick: Another key characteristic of “Paper Cut from Obit” was that in your previous LP with YOUNGMAN, you had, what I consider to be, one of your first big features on a track, Billy Woods. Coincidentally on “Paper Cut from Obit” you had a very stacked feature from the likes of Moor Mother, Defcee, R.A.P. Ferreira and, of course, Armand Hammer. How did you know Woods previously and did word get out in-between having him as a feature on “A Year of Octobers” and dropping “A Paper Cut from Obit?”
Celestaphone: Paul asked me who should be on the YOUNGMAN LP and my answer was Billy Woods. They'd already been acquainted so it came together phenomenally for "Human Rights.” I followed up with woods after that about doing another song, wanting it to be with him and Moor Mother— Woods said let's do that with ELUCID on board too, done. Our lovely song "Tithes" was born. Dunno if word getting out played a role in facilitating that, maybe, I have been doing this for awhile, but I’ve also got no problem talking to the artists whose work I enjoy. Like with Dealers of God, when that connection happened, a collab quickly followed.
Celestaphone - "Paper Cut from Obit" (2023) album cover
Image courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: Since you’ve been teasing it throughout this interview, I’m curious to know when that AMFG collab is dropping?
Celestaphone: Once it’s finished, the world may have it.
Nick: Are you planning on doing any live shows in the near future?
Celestaphone: It would have to be an offer I cannot refuse.
Nick: Thanks for doing this interview. I’m excited to see what you do next. Anything you’d like to leave us on?
Celestaphone: Thanks for having me. Stay tuned.