Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder
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Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder
20 Questions with the Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder
We talk with BMC about their days as a wee Cylinder, what Alex and PJ are really like, and who might play them at a live event.
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This week, the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder (BMC) released a new album, REMIX 3 . For anyone who can spot a BMC theme song right away, this new release will feel like familiar territory (see: “ Morning Edition Remix” ).
Recently, I invited BMC to drop into the Bello Slack channel to answer questions from the editors and our members. The result? More mystery and more adoration for our favorite anonymous musician.
Alex [Goldman] and PJ [Vogt] brought me with them when they left WNYC Studios to go make Reply All , ’cause they’re nice like that. The show is great, and it took off immediately, which gave me some name recognition. From there, I think I’ve just tried to take pretty much every job request anyone’s thrown at me. I’m not sure why people reach out to me, honestly, but I’m honored. I guess the anonymity is interesting. That wasn’t my intention, but I’m sure it helps.
I don’t know, it doesn’t feel like I’m not getting credit. You don’t need to know the real names of the people in bands you like to say you like them. It’s just as though I’ve chosen to go by a really ridiculous name half the time. My face (if I have a face) doesn’t matter.
The Reply All team is lovely! Truly kind, passionate, interesting people. I dig ’em. They give me freedom to be creative and rein me in where necessary.
Honestly, if I have any free time I’m going to spend it writing. When I’m flying around and physically can’t write music, I’ve been really enjoying Today, Explained . Their musical parodies are spot on. Noam Hassenfeld has an incredible Brian Johnson (of AC/DC) voice.
When I’m traveling, I’m probably flipping through Spotify as fast as I can. I like any music where I feel addicted and have to restart it immediately.
I just put out a mixtape of all the loops of music I retreat to when the world is ugly. They’re all songs I’ve had on endless repeat at one point or another, stapled together for about 50 minutes. This is totally therapy to me.
I don’t really have a genre I listen to more than others. Well, maybe I favor some fuzzy West Coast beats. Or literally any country’s 60s psych rock. But mostly I think every genre has something they do well. There are always good songs waiting to be found.
It’s a long story. Can we say it’s a tribute?
My knee-jerk response is I’d like to work with Busdriver . I think he’d be down for making music of the cosmos. I feel most alive writing intricate, weird time signature, transcendent kind of stuff, and that feels like something he’d do in his sleep. Can’t plan for the transcendent part, that just happens accidentally from time to time. You can set it up though.
Well I have a ‘Nina’, which is to say I’ve stuck the exact same melody in different albums all over the place. It’s nine notes that just feel right to me. I think some of the really sample-heavy albums just have so many dumb little references that made me happy, but the connections aren’t obvious unless you’re me, sitting there listening to it 100 times. Let’s say whenever I use a sample, it’s mostly an inside joke.
I do make the little sci-fi episodes at the end of Reply All . Dog and I are lost in space without internet and can’t get home. Also a magical piano that bends space to travel to other planets. Also musical phrases that act as a language to conjure objects or choose destinations. Also Steve Bannon in a sexy Santa outfit. 6 episodes after introducing the piano, I realized I was actually doing “ Pontoffel Pock, Where Are You ” from maybe your or someone’s childhood.
A narrative podcast would be difficult because the vocoder voice gets grating after a while. On the other hand, there’s nothing that says the narration has to be using spoken language.
I have a lot of ideas for shows, just focusing on the sci-fi thing for now though. I think it’d be fun to push the line between a fictional, episodic podcast and an album. Even without words you could follow the sound of someone traveling from location to location, track to track, picking up objects and battling things and figuring out puzzles, but all presented in such a way that it’s still a collection of songs. Including the room atmosphere and the sounds of a protagonist navigating each song could give it an overarching plot to follow.
Speaking of Easter eggs, I sort of did this in Blithering Heights 2 : If you listen closely Dog and I are sitting in a room playing the mixtape for you. Somewhere early on we leave the room to get tea, I break a television in the first few seconds, and Dog fixes it a little while later, and so on.
Oh interesting! I don’t know if I’m consciously pushing humanism. That resonates with me though.“ Singable Songs For The Increasingly Enraged ” was a consciously political EP.
Someone sent me some Raffi tapes and I was blown away by “ Down By The Bay ”. That song says it isn’t safe to go home because Mom will say some crazy shit to you, which is a weird message for a children’s song, but is actually how many adults I know feel about [going home for the holidays]. I crowd-sourced super-talented women on Twitter saying horrible, bigoted things and remixed Raffi, and hopefully now it’s a therapeutic little ditty you and the family can sing on the drive down to Christmas dinner or whatever.
I have a lot to say about that album, but I guess an underlying belief that our similarities ought to dwarf our differences feels right. This is a continuing reason for the helmet and anonymity: that BMC as a character can stay reasonably inclusive and you can just imagine them however you want.
Way back when I got Fruityloops and started producing I was making trance albums for my raver friends. Those are all gone, I think.
Long before that though, I had a keyboard which had some rudimentary layered loop-recording capabilities and I’d just spitball there.
Wayyyyyy long before that, as a wee cylinder , I used to make choptracks on a two-deck tape recorder: Insert Sesame Street tape into Deck A. Record one or two words to blank tape in Deck B. Replace tape in Deck A with a new one, search for a sentence that would connect sensibly to what you’ve recorded so far, and add some more to Deck B. Repeat until you end up with a rapid fire series of twisted words to form new, (probably filthy) sentiments on your once blank tape.
The majority of themes I’ve written have been for podcasts. You’re looking for 90–120 seconds, recognizable intro, catchy melody, and some manner of expressing the show’s theme (subtly or not). That’s not much different from film/advertisement/video game work I’ve done, except I guess that there’s no visual element. And the length, maybe.
In some ways, podcast music is probably much more freeing; your theme song is indirectly constructing the listener’s visualization. It seems more likely they’ll take your music cues and mix it with their own ideas and biases and expectations; the whole experience should naturally appear to them in a way they already understand. The host and the theme of the show color that too, but you’re not directly competing with (or trying too hard to match) a visual component.
I try to say yes to as many as possible. Maybe I have a soft spot for science/nature/feminist/identity/experimental kind of stuff. If your show sounds like it might be potentially problematic to me, I’ll ask some follow up questions, but as far as I know, I haven’t written a theme song for Nazis.
There’s a difference in how hands-on different producers want to get with their theme. Some take three or four drafts, others take like, thirty. Neither one is an inherently bad way of going about it though. The whole theme-writing process is an exercise in admitting I’m not a mindreader, and then hearing what they’re trying to communicate in whatever language they use to describe it. There are a ton of little drafts as I try different things, and then the back and forth between my drafts and their feedback.
This was my absolute favorite ‘describe your ideal theme’ answer from a show though:
“Something fun and girly, but powerful. Like Sex and the City, and 90’s Veruca Salt, and if our vaginas could play an instrument… but also, we’re feminine. Like we go to church, but we don’t wear underwear there. Also we’re in a coven.”
I have duties and responsibilities that often pull me from the tireless pursuit of trying to shoot music out of my fingertips all day. That said, it’s a large part of my life. I feel lucky to be able to keep expanding it.
Even if I have to pretend to be a real live person for a while, there are sometimes opportunities for music and mystique in the way you interact with the surrounding world.
I don’t know, really! I like talking about music and directors and things. People grew up with, or currently have their days shaped by, music I’ve never even heard of. That stuff, someone’s really important, ingrained, nostalgic music is always interesting to me.
Or when someone can break down the math of how we got somewhere, I like that too. Like how arguably:
continuing to slow down with a heavier halftime feel = reggae
reggae stripped down to drums and bass + reverb and delay fx = dub
dub sped up and made more electronic = drum n’ bass
drum n’ bass with halftime drums = dubstep, and so on.
Also, someone explain the 5,000 different metal genres to me, please.
I’m not sure what would represent me on stage! There have been discussions as to how I could get away with appearing at one, or how I could get away with appearing to appear at one.
Some listeners have theorized I’ll show up to Gimletfest incognito and just mingle, with a name badge like ‘Fred Podcast’ or something else equally not-at-all-suspicious-as-hell. Anyway I encourage people to do this. Let’s all be Breakmaster Cylinder.
I scored a horrific documentary on Trump and online hate (I actually did those simultaneously and the effect on my mindset was not insignificant).
Dog and I visited a mono planet once, which was a place where only one sound could be heard at once. So now I’m working on an full ep of tracks like that.
I have a weird VR album I’ve only just imagined.
I’m writing a supplemental campaign for SPELL: The RPG , which is literally a board game.
Someone just asked me to write a hymn.
I’m hosting beat battles with insane structural constraints on Indaba Music this year.
The other 99% is just cross-stitching.
Alexa, quit stealing my thunder. No that’s ok, you can stay. If anything she’s more legit than I am.
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Introducing Breakmaster Cylinder (BMC), a mysterious and secretive online music composer with a fondness for beetroots. So little is known about the true identity of BMC, that (s)he could be anyone, or anything. The gender non-specific musician claims to be an extra terrestrial, floating about in the cruel empty void of space. (S)he or they composed music for PLANETROMEO last year, and the final result was, well, out-of-this-world. It’s hard to describe BMC’s music in one word, so let’s go with electronic-fresh-digital-glitch-dance music.
Intrigued? Let’s get to know BMC a little better.
BMC is a musical composer who likes to keep a low profile, (s)he has only been photographed in a motorcycle helmet and composes secretly online. No one is sure what BMC looks or sounds like as (s)he can only be contacted via email.
Why not listen to BMC while you read?
You’re pretty anonymous, is there a reason you stay out of sight?
It feels right. Everybody has band names anyway. It’s not so different. I want it to be about the music.
Choose your own adventure! BMC is whatever you’d like them to be.
And do you have a preferred sexuality?
It is my preference that everyone have tremendous sex, all the time.
When you create music do you have a preferred audience?
I composed music like this for 10 or 15 years before anyone listened, so I think my audience is just whoever finds it as amusing as I do. All are welcome. I’m really honored that anyone cares.
What are the essential ingredients to an excellent track?
Melodies should be catchy! Transitions should be slick. Something should be surprising. Generally the whole thing needs to be something I’m addicted to listening to for at least a few days. If I’m not interested in hearing it again in an hour it gets scrapped.If you’ve ever heard an album of mine, especially lately, I do have a handful of repeat elements though:
Piano
8bit bass
Heavy sub bass
Some kind of swooping reverb-y melodic instrument
How about some marimba? Why not.
Deep hip-hop kicks
Nice snare – and I usually prefer claps here
Glitches and strange noises and found sounds
…and then really regardless of whatever the hell is in there the most important part is the flow. So hours of polishing the same little moments over and over.
This is a playlist of BMC & his inspirations
Yeah… I definitely think it’s mutated over time – my albums span something like 15 years of writing though so they ought to. I think listening to them in order I can hear styles being dropped or polished as they go. Each release is an attempt at something new, at least.
When composing, do you now go in with a definite plan or do you improvise?
Sometimes I have a plan, often I don’t. It’s just very cathartic writing music and I’m more interested in seeing where it’s trying to go, than trying to mold it to an idea I had before starting.
What are your favorite parts of the music you compose?
I like weird time signatures and catchy melodies and putting things together weirdly. If I click or drag or create something accidentally while I’m writing I make sure to listen to it first before hitting ‘Undo’. I’d like a computer I could just shake in the air, and the notes would scatter and land wherever they might.
When you listen to music in your head it isn’t so restricted. It wraps around you and does its thing and continues to move and evolve without limit. Jumps from instrument to instrument. Breaks apart and reforms. That’s what I’d like to make.
Of the music you have already produced, what track is best suited to a romantic night in?
Oh! Excellent question. Here is a very sweet little ditty about rewarding sexual prowess with moderately priced seafood dinners:
I think it’s probably possible to fuck to this (and if anyone does they should feel free to tell me about it).
‘Reply all’ and ‘outside/in’ are two very popular tracks here at the PLANETROMEO office, what tracks are you most happy with yourself?
Thank you! I like those actually. I was given interesting instructions to begin with and that helped. Outside/In asked me to write them some ‘Appalachian hip-hop’. Now that’s a thing.
I’m happy with the new album , actually. Like I said, I’m trying to write music the way it’s imagined, like thoughts that wander into deviations and weird time shifts and so on. I think this was at least a step in that direction.
You can follow BMC on twitter @brkmstrcylinder , or i f you need music they have a production company .
We’ve collaborated with Breakmaster Cylinder on three projects in total. They’re entitled, Date, Friends, & Love, respectively. Friends was released last fall and the other two are coming soon. Check out the music video for Friends below.
If you have a favorite artist, hero, porn star, queer public figure you’d like us to interview send your suggestion to social@planetromeo.com
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