Redefining the Interview with Robin Burnett (Internet Club)
By: Nick Caceres
Published: 05/02/2024
Straight out of the collective of figures during the inception of the internet-based micro-genre, Vaporwave, Dallas-based artist and producer, Robin Burnett, assembled some of the oldest releases in the scene from as early as 2011, collaborating with Leonce Nelson just shy of a year before the release of "Floral Shoppe." Burnett would continue to pump out some of the most recognizable classic Vaporwave releases during the early 2010s, while still in high school. Their aliases consist of Internet Club, Datavision Ltd., insight NetProject, Wakesleep and much more.
Their unkempt approach to sample-based plunderphonics conducted through Audacity, Ableton and tape recording is recognizable for it’s glitchier production. In fact, their attempt to sample vintage Japanese television over a decade ago helped pioneer the more experimental aspects of Vaporwave with their DELUXE trilogy being one of the earliest instances of broken transmission in the flesh, paving the way for contemporaries like Asutenki and Infinity Frequencies to proliferate it’s popularity within the endless sea of Vaporwave variations.
The following interview was recorded through two sessions between Feb. 22 and April 3 where a chunk of Burnett’s discography was covered in company with other aspects regarding visuals and live performances.
Internet Club profile image
Image Courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: Hello Robin! Before we start, who are you and what do you do exactly?
Robin: I am Robin. I am Internet club, Wakesleep Datavis, DJ Internet Visions, on occasion pulse code modulation, audio artifacting, digital de-enhancement and various sorts of things. As you can tell, I'm extremely media trained. I know exactly what I'm doing right now.
Nick: (laughs) You’re a pro! Where are you currently based from and are there any other figures within vaporwave that are local to the area?
Robin: I’m around Dallas/Fort Worth and I haven't really looked. I don't really pay too much attention to a lot of Vaporwave stuff because it's hard for me to pay attention to anything at this point.
Nick: I would like to rewind to the beginning, since there's a lot to ask about in that area but first, how and why did you start making music? I assume you were in high school at the time?
Robin: I started making music around elementary school. It was just me dicking around on a microKORG I got for Christmas or screwing around with Garage Band loops because I had discovered Atari Teenage Riot and Merzbow when I was 11. I made some the most god awful shit known to man. I guess I earnestly started getting into it in 2010 which was when Datavis became a thing.
Nick: Was your setup or workspace within your bedroom or somewhere a kid would make do with their environment?
Robin: When I started out, I had a microKORG with one of those mini Kaoss Pads and then a Line 6 DL4 looper that I got from my brother after he stopped doing stuff with his guitar. I just took it from him. I was doing hardware stuff at first. That was sort of a setup and it was just in my bedroom but the earliest Datavis, Datavis as in pre-Datavision Ltd., around early 2010, I'd use this free chiptune software called C Basic Core 64 and make these messy, pseudo-chiptune Commodore 64 SID file kind of jams, completely improvised. It was a total mess but kind of endearing. The first releases were actually made with the Line 6 DL4. I actually have two now and this Yamaha keyboard I got from Goodwill. It was just these lumbering drones and cheap keyboard drum machines looping around and making dusty, droning, rhythmic, weird shit. So it started out with a hardware approach and I never really had any dedicated focus on whether this should be software or hardware. I kind of just did some stuff in software; some stuff in hardware. As much as it was me being more serious, it was still me fucking around since I was a teenager, a very young teenager. Then I started messing around with Audacity around late 2010. I had this record, “Fading,” that was all done with Audacity. I was just taking little samples and just completely overprocessing the hell out of them. Just a complete fucking mess but kind of, again, endearing in a way. That's around the time when Datavision Ltd. started. I had met Leonce, the homie, on Twitter around late 2009 to 2010 or so. We would just talk shit on Twitter and trade material. I would just fuck around with it and he'd fuck around with shit I sent him and that sort of evolved into DataVision Ltd. I'm trying to remember the chronology of that. DataVision Ltd. came out in Jan 2011 and was mostly made around Nov-Dec, 2010. I did know and love Oneohtrix Point Never and Games by that point, but I don't think I knew of Sunsetcorp yet. I was really influenced by, not even hypnagogic pop, but more like a post-chillwave thing. Leonce had this sort of screwy, ambient, chillwave thing. Both Geotherm and I were super obsessed with that. He (Leonce) was messing around with Ableton and I was trying to approximate things as best as I could in Audacity. He and I would just fuck around looking for shit on YouTube.
Datavis - "Fading" (2010) album cover.
Image Courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: I know that Datavision Ltd. was not only one of your first projects but also one of the earliest Vaporwave projects in existence. I believe it predated the release of “Floral Shoppe” by around a year and I’ve always been fascinated with that initial period before Vaporwave became Vaporwave. You get to see the genre still forming in the womb with artists like Daniel Lopatin, James Ferraro, Skeleton 骷 and, of course, you, who pumped out releases that would get swept up into this genre upon its official inception. So in short, what was the landscape like during that proto-period?
Robin: If I could digress just a second before Datavision Ltd., I had also released some stuff under the Datavis name, which is just me. I had this jokey compilation called “FUCK THE POLICE” with a picture of a cute puppy that I had released on Bandcamp*. It was just a bunch of screwy Ableton shit. That was released maybe a couple weeks before or after we had released Vector Tables. Going back, I would always be fucking around with random nonsense or non-genres. If you go to the Internet Club Last.fm page and look at the tags, what was going around was new breed, post-chillwave, post-witch house, eccojams, loop jamming sort of thing since it was around 2010 to 2011 or so. It seemed like there was a new micro genre every month. When leonce and I did “Fading,” I came up with treblefunk which was just little me coming up with bullshit. Before Vaporwave became a term, you just got lots of bullshit that either I came up with or other people came up with.
*Both “FUCK THE POLICE” and “FUCK THE POLICE II (THE AWAKENING)” are no longer available on Bandcamp and have been so since around 2010-2011.
Original artist Image for Datavision Ltd.
Image Courtesy of Vaporwave.wiki
Nick: Returning to this record, what was it like making “Vector Tables” with Leonce? Was that your first time fully collaborating on a project?
Robin: I had collaborated with the Leonce on the “Fading” EP a little bit. I guess this was the first fully-fledged collaboration. Technically, the record is actually a split. I did the first three tracks and he did the last three tracks. We didn't actually do any music jointly, but it all came from, I guess, trading stuff. So it was still very much collaborative. It's so janky, but in the most endearing way. Leonce absolutely fucking ate the video for that. I love it!
Nick: What was the original idea or theme behind that record?
Robin: I don't really remember. My AIM transcripts from back then are long gone. I think we were just really heavily inspired by that time period when chillwave was over, whatever that meant. It seemed like there was another wave with a new micro genre every five seconds, almost that sort of hipster runoff era maybe. A blog that always was the big one for me was Altered Zones which was this Pitchfork blog that was really influential. It only lasted for a year and a half but it put me on so much shit. The website is no longer online but it was just pure blog life. It was a lot of weird tape stuff like Natural Snow Buildings and other ambient noise kind of things which would then bleed into more polished things. Then you'd see a James Ferraro-like confluence. Altered Zones felt like a place where you just have a ton of different things blending together with that aftermath of Witch house and Chillwave.
Altered Zones logo.
Image Courtesy of Pitchfork
Nick: Did those concepts connect with the visuals that Leonce made?
Robin: Definitely. Even the visuals were still a collaboration between me and Leonce. He did all of the video stuff but I did dig up several sources for the artwork.
Nick: I think that was in the video. Do you know where that source was from?
Robin: There was a group, Japan Computer Graphics Lab, that did a lot of computer graphics during the ‘80s for Japanese television and film. It's still online, the video that I used. It's just this seven minute long demo reel that has a bunch of stuff. It also actually has music in there that I sampled for several IC records as well. The sample for “No More Mono” from “DELUXE” is in there.
Datavision Ltd. - "Vector Tables" (2011) album cover
Image Courtesy of Bandcamp
[DatavisionLtd]. (2011, January 16). VECTOR TABLES (NSFW) [Video].
[VintageCG]. (2009, August 11). Japan Computer Graphics Lab (1984) [Video].
Nick: I also checked out the only other video on that channel. That mall video was oddly ahead of its time. Why was that uploaded and if you took that footage, is that mall still around?
Robin: I don't remember what mall it was. It was just some footage I got off of DeadMalls.com or something. Kind of side-stepping a little bit but around early 2011, one of the tracks that was on “Fuck the Cops” was this track called “LUXX.” A couple years later, I reused it for the Memorex Dawn record, “Galleria.” That album was me basically trying to do that two years after the fact which is, I guess, whatever you'd call the mallsoft thing. I’m probably not the first person to do it. I don't want to lay claim too much of anything but definitely around Dec 2010 to Jan 2011, that track, “LUXX,” was part of a little compilation, “FUCK THE POLICE,” that I put together that kind of disappeared off of Bandcamp at first. I have the video that I made at the time and it was also footage from DeadMalls.com.
[Datavision Ltd.]. (2011, December 19). N I G H T W A V E S [Video].
[cyberia]. (2013, January 21). LUXX [Video].
Memorex Dawn - "Galleria" (2013) album cover
Image Courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: How did Internet Club materialize? What was the original idea behind it and where were the first singles originally shared?
Robin: So immediately after “Vector Tables,” I believe “Telnet Erotika” by Vektroid came out and that was definitely an influence on that record. Then fast forward like six months, Turntable.fm launched and me and Leonce started using that. We ended up meeting a bunch total music dweebs, sort of like hypnagogic, post-Ferraro, New Age Tapes era people.
Turntable.fm original logo
Image Courtesy of Wikipedia
Nick: Were these people directly connected to James Ferraro or were they just fans?
Robin: They were fans more than anything. We were also really into Ariel Pink, unfortunately, and Outer Limits Recordings, rest in peace. We were just a bunch of weirdos. Some of the names kind of escaped me but Luxury Elite was part of that.
Nick: Was this before she released anything?
Robin: This was around mid 2011, well before Luxury Elite was a project. They were just starting. We would just play shit back when you could directly upload MP3s to Turntable.fm, just giving no shits about copyright and playing whatever bullshit off of YouTube. Oh actually, quick shoutout to Julien Love. That track, “BABY ALL THE TIME,” was a huge influence on Datavision Ltd. That was also a huge influence to that whole blogspot era. Anyways back to what I was saying. Basically we just had a little crew which was just people playing shit. I think the original, I don't think there's really any idea behind it, but the original idea behind Internet Club at first was just me making random shit that I could play on Turntable.fm. The first Internet Club release wasn't credited as Internet Club and was more so just a random track called “Internet Gospel Pt. II” which was the title of a track on this James Ferraro, Daniel Lopatin and Laurel Halo collaboration that hadn't even come out yet but it had been announced. I also liked Megazord, Christian Oldham, who did a lot of design for Games, Napolian etc. way back in the day. He was another really big influence. The first IC thing, credited to the name itself, was a month after that. It was the most revolting bullshit ever, based off of the Pokemon creepypasta, “Lavender Town,” just pitched down to hell with the most out-of-time drums you've heard in your entire life. That's “GATEWAY 2 UR DREAMS.” Then “MODERN BUSINESS COLLECTION” dropped in July and I don't really remember a lot from then so I don't want to speak too confidently about it. I know that I originally released the first IC album, “MODERN BUSINESS COLLECTION,” anonymously on my Tumblr pretending that it wasn't me, as you do in those days. The big thing with “MODERN BUSINESS COLLECTION” was that Leonce turned me on to Computer Dreams. That was the big one. I was like, “holy shit, this whips ass.” Again, I don't want to speak too confidently, but I just know Computer Dreams was a huge influence on the early IC records. That includes “Midnight Television” and such.
Internet Club - "MODERN BUSINESS COLLECTION" (2011) album cover
Image Courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: Going off from that first album, you had a decent amount of releases put out in the latter half of 2011.
Robin: I don't know how! I just had so many ideas. I was like, “I'm gonna release an album every month!” What the fuck was I thinking?!
Nick: I feel like the whole album a month rule during that time caught up to you when you had to postpone the release of “THE SHARPER IMAGE” by a few weeks. I assume that was the reason and if not, what was it then?
Robin: That was still quite early in the IC lifespan, so it wasn't a burnout thing. It was more just that there wasn't much in the way of consistency with it. So I kind of tabled it because I had other ideas that I wanted to get to first, like “BEYOND THE ZONE.” That record is definitely a bit of a hodgepodge compared to the others.
Nick: In my opinion, “The Sharper Image” is one of your most underrated, not just in your own discography but early vaporwave in general. According to your Twitter, It was based off of “Nerf Arena Blast” (1999). How exactly did you make sure that this theme was consistent throughout the album?
Robin: Oh, that was more of just a Twitter joke. It's definitely an early ‘00s kind of thing. You could tell by the title and the THX sound. Oh yeah, and the first track is just a little joke about “Nerf Arena Blast,” which I played a ton as a kid. I also know that sort of early ‘00s kind of thing was definitely with that record from all the sample sources, although, with a sort of inconsistency. There's a little bit of bouncing around like the second to last track, “SCREENSAVER MUSIC.” I made that around the time of “DELUXE,” I believe, and it doesn't really fit with the rest of The Sharper Image but it still makes sense in the context of the record. I was depressed when I was making that track and it still makes sense with the hodgepodge nature of that record.
Nick: I know that Patryk Films made a visual for the track, “FOR FURTHER INFORMATION,” a few years after the initial release. If you've seen it, what did you think of it? Did they do it justice?
Robin: I think it works quite nicely. It matches the sort of neurosis with the track. It's cute. I don't really think there's much I can say about it. I've always thought Patryk Films did good work. There's some stuff that he's done that are absolute all-timers for me.
Internet Club - "THE SHARPER IMAGE" (2011) album cover
Image Courtesy of Bandcamp
[[PATRYK FILMS]]. (2013, October 16). For Further Information (MV) [Video].
Nick: I’s like to also focus on “BEYOND THE ZONE.” Do you feel like that release helped expand the IC sound? If not, what albums do you credit for developing your sound that predate that?
Robin: Not sure if I ever thought in terms of a sound. I just feel like every album had a concept but I wouldn't say aesthetic. I despise the word aesthetic. Every album was just me trying to dig in and screw around with a concept. “MODERN BUSINESS COLLECTION” was like, “basically, I'm Computer Dreams. I will make a Computer Dreams album even though it wasn't really a Computer Dreams album. It's an Internet Club album.”
Nick: If that’s the case, what about “BEYOND THE ZONE?”
Robin: Side note: after that, “DELUXE” was my first look into, Japanese TV commercials and that was definitely influenced by Vektroid and her look into that. “Beyond the Zone” was somewhere between like Heisei-era Japan during the ‘90s and ‘00s, crossed with that early optimized business. It’s just this weird unholy hybrid. That album is just fucking perfect.
Nick: Every time I hear it, I'm like, “this is so ahead of the curve!”
Robin: It’s beyond the zone you could say.
Internet Club - "BEYOND THE ZONE" (2011) album cover
Image Courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: (laughs) I would like to dive into the DELUXE trilogy since you mentioned it. I know that the first drop of this series, “DELUXE,” was the sophomore album under the IC alias. Was that originally going to be a stand alone release or did you have a series in mind from the start?
Robin: No, I never imagined there would be a series. I'm not sure how much of that was retroactive in the first place. I don't think I thought of them as a series until the second record, the big one. With “DELUXE” I was starting to mess with a tape. There are several tracks on “DELUXE” that are me recording samples and stuff on my computer and sending it through a shitty RadioShack tape recorder I got and then just completely fucking with the speed and sending it back. So it just has these fucked up dropouts and speed changes. It's only on a couple of tracks, but it definitely adds a lot to it.
Nick: Which tracks are those?
Robin: The first track, “Forever,” and then the fourth one, “No More Mono.”
Nick: Where did the album art come from?
Robin: I have no memory whatsoever. I'm pretty sure I forgot immediately after. Regardless that's the tape technique I would then use with the ECCO UNLIMITED records which means the third DELUXE record is the first ECCO UNLIMITED record. I mean the second one was pushing the Japanese commercial vomit thing in one direction, the third record was pushing it in another direction and “DELUXE” was the starting point for both approaches.
Internet Club - "DELUXE" (2011) album cover
Image Courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: What led to you wanting to switch to a more erratic style of sampling on
“▣世界から解放され▣” (Liberated from The World)? I know that first release did have a similar sampling style approach, but not at that level.
Robin: Oh God, that one. I definitely do not want to speak for what 15 year old me was thinking. I don't think I was thinking anything. I was just like, “let's just see what happens!” Computer Dreams had that one record called “Untitled.” There's just this 12 to 16 minute long block of samples that was one mp3. I originally wanted to make some shit around New Year's Eve or whatever. This was immediately after “NEW MILLENIUM CONCEPTS” which dove deeper into a sort of darker Satoshi Kon influence because I had just watched “Perfect Blue” and I was like, “holy shit.” So I made New Millenium Concepts after that and I was still in that kind of zone when I made “░▒▓新しいデラックスライフ▓▒░” (New Life Deluxe) or “NLD” to be short. There's definitely a feeling of making something darker and a little bit more foreboding but still with that sort of sense of me just fucking around. “░▒▓新しいデラックスライフ▓▒░” (New Life Deluxe) was originally going to be one mp3, however midway through making it, I was like, “I'll cut this up into tracks.” I made it in pretty much real time. When I say real time, I mean the tracks were sequenced as they were made. It's all constructed, obviously, but there's definitely a sense of liveness to it. I always really liked that sort of liveness within a constructed sample base because usually you don't associate samples with doing things live but I always wanted to have that energy to it and I think “NLD” gets that. I really honed in on a sense of whatever happens, happens.
Internet Club - "New Millennium Concepts" (2011) album cover
Image Courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: If you saw this, what did you think of the video Pad Chennington did on that release? What did you think of his takeaway?
Robin: Shoutout to Pad Chennington. I don't really check up on all the vaporwave stuff now but I did watch that video around the time it came out. I was like, “(blush) oh my gosh. I'm being praised.” I don't remember what I thought about it. I'd have to watch it again but I thought it was cool. The reception to that record has always been really funny to me, just because it can mean so many different things. Everything is simultaneously true and completely wrong and meaningless but at the same time, as that record has aged, the darkness of it definitely becomes a little more apparent, the Kon influence. Even then it's also still ridiculous.
"░▒▓新しいデラックスライフ▓▒░" (New Life Deluxe) - "▣世界から解放され▣" (Liberated From the World) (2012) album cover
Image Courtesy of Bandcamp
[Pad Chennington]. (2018, May 28). Has Vaporwave Gone Too Far? [Video].
Nick: I think another interesting aspect regarding “░▒▓新しいデラックスライフ▓▒░” (New Life Deluxe) are the samples themselves since I believe you've never revealed what they were. Back in 2019, the YouTuber, DJ Suryong, uploaded a sample breakdown of that album, along with updates about what has been found since that upload. So what's your opinion on fans trying to find those samples on that record?
Robin: I love it so much because there's so many Internet Club samples that I just legitimately forget. Just in one ear, out the other.
Nick: So it's not like you're trying to hold them back, you just don't remember.
Robin: Yeah but with that record it's amazing because I didn't know or remember all of this shit either. There’s some stuff like the one that samples the Glico PRETZ commercial that I actually rediscovered because I was really getting into ‘90s idol pop, Tokyo Performance Doll, Qlair, and that kind of thing. That came up naturally but a lot of the other stuff, I just had no idea. I don't know how they could have dug this shit up. Crazy. Some of it is really obvious. Heart of Shibuya is pretty easy.
Nick: Are you amazed that fans can find stuff that you forget?
Robin: It's definitely a question that I've been thinking about more because I love making sample based music. It's always really interesting to see what I can do with something else and when I was doing IC originally in 2011 through 2013, I never thought about people finding samples. I never really figured anyone would care enough so I didn't really think too much about if I was going to remember any of this. Some stuff I remembered, some stuff I didn't, whatever is whatever. Nowadays, I'm not guarded towards it and I don't want to be possessive of what I sample. If someone asks, I will more likely than not tell them.
[DJ suryong スリョン]. (2019, March 27). ░▒▓新しいデラックスライフ▓▒░ ▣世界から解放され▣ songs and their original samples [Video].
Nick: I know that a year after the initial release, liberated from the world, computer TV created a visual for the song, we'll just call it “Primetime” for the time being. Do you feel like the style of that visual matches the energy of the record?
Robin: Since the day I first saw that when it was released, I think that's probably been my top three. I love that one so much. That's literally what went on in my brain when I first heard that album. It’s just these sorts of little movements and gestures that are chopped up and repeated ad infinitum. It doesn't even look real. I wouldn't say exactly uncanny but it just feels like hyper television or hyper information. It doesn't feel like someone composed this in a computer program, it feels like a computer made it. Everything just blends together so perfectly. It doesn't look like anything was edited. It looks like someone just grabbed something off of YouTube. It's very easy to make something that just looks so heavily processed and so obviously composited but this feels like a live feed from another dimension.
[パソコン TV]. (2013, March 5). ░▒▓新しいデラックスライフ▓▒░ - PRIMETIME今日のプログラミングLATENIGHT [Video].
Nick: I know that more recently in 2022, a decade later, you dropped a follow-up called "SPEED DIALER !." What made you want to revive “░▒▓新しいデラックスライフ▓▒░” (New Life Deluxe) for that release?
Robin: That was made as I was making “FORMAT BLUE” and it was dumb early in the morning. I had spent the whole night going through and digging for samples and adjusting things that would appear on "FORMAT BLUE." I was also watching some streams with some friends and I guess I got kind of like buzzed and just started fucking around in Audacity with a bunch of samples that I had collected for “FORMAT BLUE” that never appeared on the actual record itself but were gathered in the same sample hunting sessions. I just started making some shit and it just turned into a thing. At some point it was the exact same length as the first “░▒▓新しいデラックスライフ▓▒░” (New Life Deluxe) record and then I just released it through Twitter. It was kind of a thing in itself. It’s similar in how it’s inexplicable.
"░▒▓新・新しいデラックスライフ▓▒░" (New Life Deluxe) - "Speed Dialer !" (2022) album cover
Image Courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: I want to ask about “NHK REMINDS YOU TO BOOST YOUR SIGNAL.” I really liked the long-form drone inspiration on that, but I would like to know why you decided to take that approach?
Robin: Mysterious things happen when you're in the drone zone. I think it was just the sort of experimentation with tape that I started to do with “DELUXE,” stretching the kinetic, commercial chopping of “DELUXE” and other parts of the DELUXE Trilogy but in the other direction. There was something I liked with having it longer. Definitely gives even more room for a sort of improvisational approach where you can start really fucking with shit more, as opposed to like shorter bursts on other records. That was made even more so by “LIQUID NITROGEN.”
ECCO UNLIMITED - "NHK REMINDS YOU TO BOOST YOUR SIGNAL" (2012) album cover
Image Courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: How did you furtherr push that sound you were trying to convey on “NHK REMINDS YOU TO BOOST YOUR SIGNAL” on “LIQUID NITROGEN?”
Robin: Just blasting it out to hell and back. It was the same way with an assemblage that I made and then recorded to tape. I would screw around with the cables and whatnot and same thing when I was playing the tape back into my computer. Just really blasting it out with these huge shards of molten sound with bits of color coming out. I don't even remember how I got it so saturated because I had blank tape that I would just put on the little write out tabs and just re-record over and over. I would use that whenever I wanted to gunk up the fidelity of something and I believe I used that for the ECCO UNLIMITED records. Don't know whatever happened to it.
ECCO UNLIMITED - "Liquid Nitrogen" (2012) album cover
Image Courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: When it comes to the album “REDEFINING THE WORKPLACE,” was it based on a personal or professional experience or from someone you know. If not, what was it exactly?
Robin: So basically “REDEFINING THE WORKPLACE” started with, “WEBINAR,” the record from Oct 2011. "WEBINAR" was influenced from when I was in my art class. We took a field trip to this office park close to us that had a bunch of sculptures plopped around. At the time it was called “Hall Office Park” but it’s now just known as “Hall Park.” At the time they hadn't really made it a big mixed-use kind of thing at this time. The tagline for “Hall Office Park” was “REDEFINING THE WORKPLACE.” So that's where the name of the record came from.
Internet Club - "WEBINAR" (2011) album cover
Image Courtesy of Bandcamp
Picture of Hall Park
Picture Courtesy of Hall Park
Nick: Both of those albums reminded me of when I used to mess with Google Sketchup as a kid. I used to download user created assets and attempt to make neighborhoods and small towns out of them. This was around the same time when these albums were released but, of course, I didn't know about Vaporwave then.
Robin: I kind of fucked around with Google Sketchup but my whole thing was Google Earth back when it was a separate app.
Nick: I used to use that back around 2010. I remember being so fascinated by it.
Robin: And it had a secret flight simulator that was fucking lit. That's sort of like office postmodernism. An office park sells you the idea of productivity and this was, I guess, my idea of that idea, just completely perverted to some ridiculous level and absolutely slathered in Ableton crystal reverb. “WEBINAR” started the thing and then with "REDEFINING THE WORKPLACE," that's when I went absolutely bonkers in Ableton and just fucked with the effects to a revolting level. I was making the peak of my very concretely situationist and marxist plunderphonics phase yet. The first track on “REDEFINING THE WORKPLACE” samples a piece of stock music that was used in a video by Tim and Eric.
Internet Club - "REDEFINING THE WORKPLACE" (2012) album cover
Image Courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: I know that the YouTuber, Dallas Salad, made a visualizer for the track, “SYSTEM FOCUS.” If you've seen that video, what did you think of it?
Robin: I don't have any real opinion of it. It kind of feels a little general. Like Vaporwave aesthetic that feels a little non-descript, not very specific to “REDEFINING THE WORKPLACE” as such. If anything, it feels a little bit more like “MODERN BUSINESS COLLECTION” or “UNDERWATER MIRAGE” or something.
[Dallas Sallad]. (2014, May 15). INTERNET CLUB - SYSTEM FOCUS [Video].
Nick: There was another visual that I found which was created by Venezia around 2015 for the track, “THE NEW DIGITAL FRONTIER.” Unlike the visual for “SYSTEM FOCUS,” this focused on one exact source, which was people on jet skis. If you've seen that video, what did you think of it?
Robin: I vaguely remember this one. Anything higher than 360p is too high quality and this feels maybe not high-definition enough but it's such a glossy record. It's like a rock thrown at a huge plasma television or an LCD TV and you get these cracks with all of those fucked colors. So I wouldn't say it really matches the visuals but it matches the idea of that album. There is a rhythm to it. So it definitely works from a rhythmic-like editing standpoint even if the low definition, sort of a conspicuously ‘80s or ‘90s visual might not match as much but jet skis floating on water matches the rhythm of the track itself quite well.
[V E N E Z I A]. (2015, March 6). INTERNET CLUB - THE NEW DIGITAL FRONTIER (Music Video) [Video].
Nick: I want to bring up “VANISHING VISION.” I consider it to be one of the cutest sounding Vaporwave albums but I know that your intentions was for it to release in Nov. 2036. Why was that the case?
Robin: I think that was just me saying shit on Twitter. So much stuff that seems like lore is just me fucking around on Twitter.
Nick: That's hilarious! They seemingly took that seriously on the Vaporwave Wiki.
Robin: Oh well. I've been using Twitter since I was 11. There's a lot of bullshit mixed with truth. Just finding a joke and messing around with it and picking on small little details.
Nick: I also found that the album cover contrasts the music a bit. When I first looked at the cover, I was expecting something dark ambient or even dreampunk. Was that intentional?
Robin: I think it's not as much of a contrast as it seems. I think it might be a case of having your idea of it influenced by what came after perhaps. I do think the art has that sense of foreboding, definitely, but also not strictly a negative feeling. I mean, you see the art, the rain, colorful signs and soft cell animation. It does feel fitting for the tones but as you get to the back half of the album, it does get drearier and nastier, well not necessarily nastier, but more ambient and emotional. It feels very fitting in that sense.
Internet Club - "VANISHING VISION" (2012) album cover
Image Courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: Similar to the last album, around a year later, Patryk Films made a visualizer for the track, “BY DESIGN.” What did you think of that one if you’ve seen it?
Robin: Oh yeah, that one. It's so left field. It doesn't really make any sense because why do you have this urban ambient, digi vaporwave thing with this Russian children's cartoon? Yet it makes perfect sense as an accompaniment. They're both just very colorful in sounds and visuals. There's a level of, not necessarily nostalgia, I don't have any care about nostalgia. I mean, it's easy to just say nostalgia, aesthetics, vibes or whatever the fuck when none of those words mean anything. I am, especially now, very allergic to nostalgia but also not. It just has this sort of feeling. I don't know how to put it into words. It's a very good visual.
Nick: I didn't know that cartoon was Russian. I didn't know what that cartoon even was. It looked like something I may have seen as a kid, like “Little Bear.”
Robin: Yeah, it just has that sort of je ne sais quoi or whatever. It feels very appropriate, especially for the artwork of “VANISHING VISION” itself. It just has this sort of contrast, you know, light and darkness jutting up against each other, just on a very basic level.
[[PATRYK FILMS]]. (2013, March 30). Internet Club - By design (MV) [Video].
Nick: When it comes to “FINAL TEARS,” where did the eerie cover art come from?
Robin: That is from a video from the early ‘90s. There was this club in Tokyo called “Juliana's Tokyo” where you'd have a lot of rave and Eurobeat sounds coming from. One of the things with Juliana is that a lot of the dancers there would have these fans that they would be waving around and that's a still from one of those. It's one of those promo videos they had. Legendary places like that just have this sort of sound that became known as Rave, Techno, Eurobeat and Eurodance cranked up to the fucking maximum. I love it.
[ELI RENATO BAUMANN]. (2012, March 27). Juliana's Tokyo - Forever (The Last Day Of Juliana's Tokyo) [Video].
Nick: I feel like out of all of your back catalog that I listened to, “FINAL TEARS” was the one that surprised me the most by it's sheer intensity. How did you manage to provide such a bass heavy, glitched out spectrum of production?
Robin: I don't know if I ever actually told anyone this in public but I've told it to a couple of friends. A lot of "FINAL TEARS" was originally made in May of 2012. I had just watched “Chungking Express” (1994) and half of “Fallen Angels” (1995) so I was in a big cantopop sort of Wong Kar-Wai zone. Looking back it does get very orientalist so I kind of like, kind of don't like Final Tears. The most extreme parts are when it has the big trap beat with everything layered on top of each-other, just going for this incredibly fucked sound. It was heavily influenced by Triad God who’s this British Hong Kong rapper, who's music is produced by Palmistry, who released a bunch of records in the ‘10s. His first record was released by Hippos and Tanks, rest in peace, and definitely had a lot of influence. Again it was still sort of exoticizing. I mean…I was 16 but it's still iffy. Half of what became “FINAL TEARS” was emailed to a bunch of random email addresses. I think I sent it to Gatekeeper, Megazord, I just sent it to a bunch of idols. I might have even sent it to a random email address that I made for plausible deniability 'cause there's nothing connecting it to me. It's just some random shit I made. I'm pretty sure I only got one response back. I don't remember who but they were like “What?” In their email. Then I returned to this record just as is and bolted on a bunch of new stuff. There’s also a lot of influence from elite gymnastics like Jamie Brooks and I sampled some shit from there but yeah, it's a big assemblage of things and it doesn't go together in a good way, but it also doesn't go well together in not a good way. I'm kind of like “meh” about it. I know a lot of people really fucking love it and I appreciate that, although sometimes I feel like the rest of it didn’t do enough like the newer material in which some of it feels half-baked. It feels like very much a transition because I was basically transitioning to what would become Wakesleep at that point.
Internet Club - "FINAL TEARS" (2012) album cover
Image Courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: You also made what I assume is a visualizer for “FINAL TEARS” and another album of yours from around that time, could you explain how and why you put that together?
Robin: Yeah, it was “FINAL TEARS” and then the “WEB FANTASY (REAL ESTATE OUTSIDE OF EUCLIDEAN SPACE MIX)” track that was released alongside it. I guess I wanted a visual to accompany what seemed like the end of IC, just kind of making it into this spectacle. In terms of visuals, the first part is taken from the movie, “Fallen Angels” (1995), Wong Kar Wai, which also provided a couple of sample sources for the album itself. Then it goes into that whole limo van. You have “FINAL TEARS” as a sort of nocturnal city zone and then “Web Fantasy” as this real-estate outside of Euclidean space. It's sort of business casual, not the label but this casual day-off zone of business casual transcendence. I don't remember where the video came from. I think I was just searching crap on YouTube. It's probably early 2010s. That reminds me, another key influence for the 2012 IC records was Ryan Trecartin. He's a video artist and filmmaker. He has this hyperkinetic, queer, corporate 2010s hell. It’s really beautiful but that business casual corporate zone definitely influenced those last bits of Internet Club.
[cyberia]. (2012, September 15). INTERNET CLUB - FINAL TEARS + WEB FANTASY (REAL ESTATE OUTSIDE OF EUCLIDEAN SPACE MIX) [Video].
INTERNET CLUB - "WEB FANTASY (REAL ESTATE OUTSIDE OF EUCLIDEAN SPACE MIX)" (2012) album cover
Image Courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: So transitioning from that to Monument XIII, what were you trying to convey in the album, “Honestly?” it seemed a lot more emotional than your previous work.
Robin: Yeah, it's the depression era. All the early 2013 internet club records definitely came out of that place. I don't know how to describe it without getting personal, not that it's anything crazy. It's like that Spongebob gif that's like “imagination,” except it says depression.
Nick: Do you know where the name, Monument XIII originate from?
Robin: It originally started on a mixtape, like a DJ Internet Visions kind of thing. I was going to have a name, just this really fucked up, sort of blown out “FINAL TEARS” thing. I ended up canning that, although I used it in a bunch in different mixtapes. Monument XIII doesn't really mean anything. I guess more than anything, it just sounded kind of cool I guess.
Monument XIII - "honestly" (2013) album cover
Image courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: Probably more appropriate than DJ Internet Vision for an album about depression. I know that Patryk Films really went to town with that album. They made, not just a few, but four visuals. One of those I would like to highlight is the one they did with the track, “Therapy” If you’ve seen that, what did you think of it?
Robin: That is a motherfucker. I love that one. I never actually saw that until a few years ago. It really hits you. I was like, “oh shit!” but yeah, I really liked that one.
[[PATRYK FILMS]]. (2013, March 30). Monument XIII - Therapy (MV) [Video].
Nick: Could you explain what the idea was for the Suncoast WebSeries project? From what I can tell, there was only one full-length release that came out of that. Did you decide to pull the plug on that early on and if so, why?
Robin: It was always meant to be like a limited kind of thing. You have the full-length and then you have those three index tracks that were released beforehand. I don't remember what the idea was. I don't really like it too much myself but there was a lot of different possibilities I was exploring but not really elaborating too much on that I would end up exploring later to far greater success. I think the insight NetProject from six years after that was a better fulfillment of the potential of that record. I originally meant for it as an actual final for Internet Club but I don't think it came out right. It's not that it came out badly, It's just that there's so many different zones. The last track, sound generator, is literally me on a keyboard, might've been the same one that I made “Rainfall Gradient” with. I actually unplug the output at the end of it and you could hear me throwing the mic cable and then turning off the Audacity recording. You even hear me clicking the track pad. That sort of grand gesture doesn't really work out all that well. There's a lot of samples from the last couple of years from 2011 or so. It's like an attempt at a full circle since, at this point, it was two years since IC started in earnest. So yeah, I think it was meant as a closing the book kind of thing, even though I think the early 2013 releases did a far better job with that.
SunCoast Web Series - "Digital Water -Perfect Edition-" (2013) album cover
Image courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: Why did Internet Club go on a prolonged hiatus, and what were you up to during that period?
Robin: I don't think I ever considered it a hiatus. I don't remember the wording I used but I think I was talking about it as if it were ascending or evolving. It did, I guess, evolve into Wakesleep. The whole album a month thing definitely hurt my brain and I was doing stuff in school as well. I was also trying to get some stuff together for Wakesleep by applying the craziest glitched out parts of IC into things that are like more modern composition influenced, more music concrete and more abstract.
Nick: Wakesleep represented a period in you career when you wanted to give yourself more time to create more challenging forms of music, no offense to Vaporwave of course. What albums do you feel like were the biggest achievements of that in the Wakesleep discography?
Robin: I know that some people got the impression that I was purposely moving away from vaporwave which I might have, to an extent, consciously or unconsciously. I know that “Three Thousand Flora” is what I thought of as the big album I was really proud of although parts of it seem undercooked in hindsight. I think if anything, "Four-year Span" works as the best full-length document since it covers such a wide span from 2012 to 2016 and how all of that evolved. Every record felt like a step towards something. Wakesleep both utilized samples and original stuff. However, with “Three Thousand Flora,” I believe I was mixing samples and electronics of my own and really processing the shit out of and playing things back on laptop speakers, recording that and vice versa. I do feel like to a certain extent it might have became too clinical. However, when I was assembling, four year span, there's so much stuff I made that didn't end up on any albums or was straight up not released in the slightest that really hit this perfect spot where there’s a lot of experimentation with form and structure but there wasn't as much of a clinical feeling.
Wakesleep - "Three Thousand Flora" (2015) album cover
Image courtesy of Bandcamp
Wakesleep - "Four-year Span" (2018) album cover
Image courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: I know that "SOUND CANVAS" served as the official comeback for IC. Why did you decide to bring the project back?
Robin: So I started assembling a little bit of original synth stuff because I had gotten a Roland D-05 Linear Synthesizer which I love. Then I was combining scraps of sampled audio for a year or two which turned into insight NetProject. I think if I hadn't made that, I don't think I would've ever brought IC back in earnest. “Emulators Plus” is the name of that album. I'm still not sure if I consider it an IC record but IC as it is now would not exist without it.
insight NetProject - "Emulators Plus" (2019) album cover
Image courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: Transitioning from that, Patryk Films also made a visual for one of the tracks, “Big Core.” I personally found it to be a contrast from how they visualized your previous work and I'm curious to know what you thought of it.
Robin: It works really well but it's also kind of funny because it's almost like a shoot ‘em up sort of thing. I think it works even better with some of the other tracks on the record. Tracks that are a little more frantic and dense but at the same time it works quite well with using a frantic sort of shoot ‘em up style but then recontextualizing it into something slower and rhythmic.
[[PATRYK FILMS]]. (2021, November 9). Insight NetProject - Big Core (MV) [Video].
Nick: What was the rollout like for "SOUND CANVAS" and how was it announced?
Robin: So basically George Clanton emailed me around July or Aug 2019 like “hey, we're doing 100% Electronicon 2, electric boogaloo and we are interested in maybe bringing you over.” I was like, “holy shit, what the fuck?” I had never even considered playing live. I was like, “how would I even do that as IC?” Then I ghosted him for around three weeks.
Nick: You ghosted Clanton?!
Robin: Yeah because again, this was new territory. I talked to a friend of mine and she was like, “just fucking do it.” I was like, “oh shit actually yeah…I will do it.” I replied to George Clanton like, “I'm not sure how I'll do this but I'd love to. I just don't know how.” Then two minutes later, like literally two minutes later, I was like “I'll do it. I'll figure something out.” That and “Emulators Plus” fed into what I see as a return to IC because I never really conceived that it could ever come back but as I started sketching things out for what would become “SOUND CANVAS,” it started to make sense and I just got back into the grove. I started digging for samples, thinking of things in my head and assembling them with effects and chopping or whatever. In the meantime I had learned a little more about actually making clean loops although I do love the nasty and experimental loops of the original IC records and I've learned to use those purposely as well. I just love fucking with both things in ways that are both correct and extremely incorrect. It's all the same to me really but yeah "SOUND CANVAS" didn't feel like it could happen, then it just happened. Next thing I know I'm burning like 50 to 69 something CDrs while blasting Luxury Elite tapes and shit.
Internet Club - "SOUND CANVAS" (2019) album cover
Image courtesy of Bandcamp
Internet Club - "SOUND CANVAS" (2019) CDr front cover
Image courtesy of Discogs
100% Electronicon 2 poster
Image courtesy of ra.co
[Snappyapple632]. (2019, October 21). INTERNET CLUB at ElectroniCON 2 [Video].
Nick: Returning to “Emulators Plus” there were two distinct versions. I'm curious to know why you decided to do that.
Robin: So insight NetProject started when I was in a creative jam, I guess. I wasn't really doing anything with Wakesleep anymore. I'd just go a couple years without doing much of anything aside from a couple mixtapes and whatever. So I just started assembling, blending and throwing crap together, both original and sampled. I'd do this on and off from 2017 to 2019. Eventually in early 2019, I started assembling it into an actual, I wouldn't say album but it was more like I wanted to make a little CDr document and send it to friend and it just evolved into that. I did send out some copies to friends. I'd be using samples and stuff in some cases and other cases. I got a Roland D05 linear synthesizer. It's basically a small version of a Roland D50 synthesizer which has this FM synthesis. You kind of need to connect your computer to it in order to actually edit it with anything. There was also a newsletter that I had with it which was a little website. I still have that on my page but a bunch of this is right before flash got depreciated. So there's some flash elements on it that don't show up unless you have Ruffle-Flash Emulator or whatever. I really liked that record and I feel like the whole process of doing that got me geared up into making more stuff. Fast forward to Oct 2019, 100% Electronicon 2 happens and I meet, just out of the blue, Thor, who runs the Fish Prints label. I had no idea who they were. They came up to me and were like, “Hey, big fan etc.” and I was like, “oh cool.” We got to talk and they're really into minidiscs and shit. After that we became friends and we started dreaming up a potential release. I started to get into minidiscs a little bit because of them and I thought nature of a lot of the tracks on “Emulators Plus" really lends itself to being shuffled like you can do on a minidisc player. I just had a bunch of these tracks that you can just shuffle and then I put a bunch of other tracks that aren't listed anywhere that are only on the minidisc. This is that second version of “Emulators Plus” that you had mentioned, the “Emulators Plus Blue Digital Winter Music Edition” or whatever. It just felt perfect for the medium. So I went ahead and got that assembled. The minidisc is so niche. No one really goes crazy trying to find minidisc releases since only psychos really get into it. I am one of those psychos.
Fish Prints logo
Image Courtesy of Bandcamp
insight NetProject - "Emulators Plus Digital Winter Music Edition" (2020) album cover
Image courtesy of Bandcamp
insight NetProject - "Emulators Plus Digital Winter Music Edition" (2020) minidisc front cover
Image courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: Going from that, what was the “Explore the Vapor DJ Mix” and what record spawned out of that?
Robin: That was sort of like an online vaporwave showcase. Hiraeth Records set that up and 猫 シ Corp. got in touch with me. It sounds interesting and it's mostly older stuff but there’s also a couple of things I was toying with then. There wasn't a record I had in mind but obviously I assembled that into “EXPLORE 2.” The tracks are definitely a little bit bare-boned and meant to be layered on top of other stuff.
[cyberia]. (2020, November 22). INTERNET CLUB @ ~Explore the Vapor~ November 2020 [Video].
Internet Club - "EXPLORE 2" (2020) album cover
Image courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: Obviously this wasn't the only thing you released in 2020. Could you explain Prevue Guide and what you released through that?
Robin: “THOUSAND ONE HALF STARS” came a month afterwards. I love that record. Luxury Elite was talking about bringing back Prevue Guide. They hit me up and I was like, “oh shit!” I think there was a point in time where it was like a secret Lux was behind Prevue Guide but that hasn't been the case for a long time but yeah, that one (“THOUSAND ONE HALF STARS”) is definitely a lot more nocturnal, I suppose.
Pervue Guide logo
Image courtesy of Bandcamp
Internet Club - "THOUSAND ONE HALF STARS" (2020) album cover
Image courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: You've already referred to this album earlier with “SPEED DIALER !” but in a similar way, was “FORMAT BLUE” meant to serve as a sequel to “VANISHING VISION” or something entirely different?
Robin: Oh no, nothing like that. It wasn't meant as a sequel to anything.
Nick: What was the theme behind it then?
Robin: First and foremost, I was meaning to put a lot of words down a couple years ago around the time of the release but I forgot pretty much immediately. With that one (“FORMAT BLUE”), the first thing was the extreme low fidelity of it. “FORMAT BLUE” was informed by early digital tele-communication. The way that I encoded all the tracks on there was eight kilohertz, Microsoft ADPCM, which is roughly the way that a lot of early digital telephone calls would be transmitted, encoded and decoded. I wanted to see what I could do with that sort of limitation. The actual wav. files for those songs are crazy small and they’re not compressed, just very encoded like the sounds of a digital telephone or early digital sound recording with those sorts of low quality sound formats and codecs that would be used for playing back audio in software programs. I was also using all of that in order to explore something very natural. It's meant to be a very organic and there's a lot of different things that I had never really done before. I started experimenting with chopping up samples into little pieces in Ableton so I could like treat them like they were notes so I could arpeggiate them and send them out randomly, treating them like any MIDI note would be treated. I could just have them fire off randomly and that is something I've been doing a lot of ever since. The last track on the “THOUSAND ONE HALF STARS,” “Pulsar,” is one of my favorite tracks I've ever made. That track was made by chopping up a sample randomly by hand. So “FORMAT BLUE” is a mix of doing stuff by hand and also messing around in Ableton and layering and layering things more and seeing how much I could get out of so little headroom. I mean, it's an eight bit audio depth, eight kilohertz, so it's basically what it would sound like if it was being sent through a telephone line, that's pretty much literally what it is and seeing how much I could do with that. What sort of color it would give the sounds and vice versa because it's not like I made stuff and then converted it to extreme low-fidelity, I was actually working in super low-fidelity. I was very much immersing myself in making music in such a, I wouldn't call it constrained. I don't think constrained is the right word because if anything it felt very liberating, liberative from the world in a way. It was a really good thing to do while my brain was short-circuiting. I mean, it's a hopeful record but also sort of ambivalent. It's a very outdoorsy sort of record but also sort of a homebody, shut-in kind of record.
Nick: My cat is literally sleeping the same way near me.
Robin: (Laughs) Yeah, I just love that record so much.
Internet Club - "FORMAT BLUE" (2022) album cover
Image courtesy of bandcamp
Nick: I guess going from that, you also released later that year, an album called “Ribbon,” through the name, Multiple Choices on Computer. Is that an alias you're planning on using more in the future?
Robin: No, that was just like a funky one-off thing but it was made around the same time as “FORMAT BLUE.” So I guess you could say it's kind of another part or component, I guess. There's another component that's like a mixtape that hasn't been released yet but I want to in some form. It’s just DJ mix or whatever but an important one nevertheless. I guess you could say it's like three prong of the same thing and I guess you could say "SPEED DIALER !" is an extra fourth part since that was made at the same time.
Nick: It's the 2022 collection.
Robin: Yeah, I guess.
Multiple Choices on Computer - "Ribbon" (2022) album cover
Image courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: Going into 2023 I know that you've managed to compile a batch of rare material throughout the years dating to as early as 2011 and released all of it around February of last year.
Robin: Yeah, every track has a sort of description of origin that you can click on if you want to. There's some stuff on there I wanted to put on but I wasn't able to find. Like if I had access to “FUCK THE POLICE II,” I would have likely put most of it on there except that it completely disappeared.
Nick: I was a bit disappointed with that. I was like “man…it's lost.”
Robin: Shit happens. I wasn't thinking about that sort of thing when I was 14 or 15 but yeah, it's definitely a very expansive collection. Works out very nicely.
Nick: Why did you decide to make that at the time you did?
Robin: I was thinking about it for a while. I had a whole stack of compilation joints, as well as loosies and unreleased stuff just lying around that no one else had or had maybe been uploaded to YouTube by a friend as well as a bunch of straight up B sides. I was like, “what if I assembled this and just like released it on Bandcamp Friday?” So that's what I did and it was really nice putting all this stuff together and sequencing them. It's kind of like four year span in a way, but maybe less structured.
Internet Club - "NOW PRINTING" (2023) album cover
Image courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: Circling back to live performances, I know that 100% Electronicon 2 wasn't your last rodeo. You also performed at Flamingo Fest back in November.
Robin: Flamingo Fest is my second time, of course, but it was also after a four year gap. COVID just completely motherfucked everything and I just feel like I regressed, not from an artistic standpoint, but as a person. I never got COVID, my parents never got COVID but there's other stuff but I won't go into it. It’s just brain shit. I'm pretty sure I was quite certain early on about doing Flamingo Fest so I don't think I was pussyfooting too much with that. My Pet Flamingo was emailing me about the compilation, “Flamingo Funk Vol.3,” which “░▒▓新しいデラックスライフ▓▒░” (New Life Deluxe) appeared for the first time on physical. Then they were like, “we're planning on doing a festival. Would you be interested in playing a live show?” and I was like “a festival?” It was a big “yes” although it took me a month because I am incapable of processing information. At that point I was back in full-force like I never left. It's a very comfortable zone to be in and at the same time Flamingo Fest was lovely. I met Luxury Elite for the first time in real life and other people. It was amazing but at the same time though, I do feel like I was stuck within in my own head. I felt like I was overthinking things. The actual set came out quite nicely for the most part and I enjoyed it but I do feel like it didn't really translate as well just because I was in such a weird zone. I was not out of it, just into it too much. I was also wearing a sweater that was way too warm. That was a skill issue on my end but I mean, it's a good sweater. However, I also sometimes wish I could just go back and do things a little bit better. Less from the musical standpoint and more from an interacting with people standpoint because I feel like I spent too much time behind my merch table looking zoned out. I was beyond the zone in a bad way.
My Pet Flamingo - "Flamingo Funk vol.3" (2023) album cover
Image courtesy of Bandcamp
Flamingofest 2023 poster
Image courtesy of ra.co
[CSRH]. (2023, November 6). INTERNET CLUB - Full Live Set @ FLAMINGOFEST 2023 | November 4th, 2023 [Video].
Nick: I know that your most recent album dropped in that same month that you performed at Flamingo Fest, “Windy I/O” by Monument XIII. I know that project was attempted a decade prior. What was the concept behind it?
Robin: I was joking about the early 2013 IC records being my big depression albums but with “Windy I/O,” that is from a process standpoint like “FORMAT BLUE.” Like I said, I was starting to do a lot more stuff with chopping up samples and arpeggiating them with Ableton. I wanted to do more of that, so I did it with “Windy I/O” and I wanted to dig deeper into this sort of like digital analog in-between mind-meld. I described the track, “Angel Potion" being like wind chimes like chopping up a sample in a way that has a rhythm that approximates like the rhythm and tonality of wind chimes that has that breezy sense to it. “FORMAT BLUE” is like this in a way as well. It's kind of like this digital analog and natural trifecta. There’s also a sort of emotional resonance to it trying to pin down where I am and where I was from an emotional standpoint.
Monument XIII - "Windy I/O" (2023) album cover
Image courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: You also made a promo video for “Windy I/O.” Is that something you want to bring back for future releases?
Robin: It's nice to have visual elements especially because there was going to be a visual component to the live set for 100% Electronicon 2 but I formatted my USB drive incorrectly, so I fucked that up. I put it up on my YouTube channel. I definitely wanted visuals for this new record and the visuals for the promo video were part of the visuals that I made for Flamingo Fest that I then gave to a couple of the visual people there like Videodrometv and Jumper Kimmons and Moirebender They were chopping stuff up live and it was super fucking cool.
[cyberia]. (2023, October 21). monument XIII aka INTERNET CLUB new album「windy I/O」& INTERNET CLUB LIVE 11/4/23 promo [Video].
Nick: What are you wanting to do more, not just for music but life in general? What are some goals that you hope to achieve in the near future?
Robin: I don't really have any grand statements. I just make things as they come up. I don't like forcing myself to be creative. I just let it naturally happen. I also don't like being too complacent, obviously, and I do want to still make things just for the hell of making things, just doing random shit. I don't have any regard for audience or whatever. I've just always liked to approach things with the mindset of making shit for friends or whatever. I'm still randomly releasing shit like it’s 2012 but obviously I have a bigger audience now, you know?
Nick: What's a dream collab that you would want to make happen in the near future?
Robin: I haven't really collaborated much with others, really. I've never really been able to conceptualize how a collaboration would work so I'm not really sure. I was thinking of sending elements to of “Windy I/O” to a couple different artists but I never followed through on that. It’s something I could think about more but I'm kind of thinking about other stuff at the moment. Yes, there's a couple of things I've thought about but nothing I really want to go on record about. I don't really like speaking things into existence publicly because a lot of times I'm not even too sure myself.
Nick: I want to thank you for doing this interview. Any final words?
Robin: Thank you. It's still hard to process that stupid bullshit I did when I was 15 had this much of an effect on audio-visual culture. I'm grateful for all the people I've met and shit. I’m just super fucking grateful, Jesus Christ. It’s nice, it’s weird, it’s uncanny.
It’s beyond the zone