INTERVIEW: Mensa Deathsquad
Mensa Deathsquad
The Photo Ladies Interview - by Emily May
Having spent much of his life as a part of the Kansas City music scene, whether as a musician, band leader, label owner, or label manager, to name a few, Brandon Phillips encapsulates many different genres of music as a musician. From the ska-punk sounds of The Gagjits, the more aggressive, rock-based punk of The Architects, the Motown-flavored 60s pop sounds of Brandon Phillips and The Condition, or the alt-electro sounds of Other Americans, he has spent the past 25+ years steeped in the music industry. Most recently, Phillips has embarked on his first solo project, the darkwave/alt-synthwave band Mensa Deathsquad. With the past few years spent in and out of the hospital fighting illness, he released his first Mensa Deathsquad album Patient Zero in the winter of 2019-2020. He faced a challenging feat in releasing and promoting an album following post-operative infections and a pharmaceutical haze. The only thing he had to look forward to in the absence of tours, live appearances and music videos was the release date and album premiere. Although the emergence of Covid soon after dampened what should have been a successful album release, Phillips, upon release from the hospital, holed up in apartment to write his follow up album, Cyclist. The isolation and illness that he emerged from resulted in a garage-rock take on darkwave that is a perfect continuation of Patient Zero. He has released two singles from the upcoming album, due to be released on February 23rd. The first single he released was "Nothing Is Ever Enough", followed most recently by "Famous". “Don’t get me wrong. I don’t have some weird chip on my shoulder about famous people. I won’t pretend to be so urbane and sophisticated that I no longer have any use for people who are both great at what they do and well known for doing it,” says Phillips, when asked about the basis for "Famous." “That said, I loathe, detest and revile celebrity influencer culture so thoroughly that I believe it should be garroted to death at the earliest possible time and pushed into an unmarked grave,” he continued with a smirk, gritting his tightly-clenched teeth. Cyclist carries both a powerful music punch, a cultural rummaging through pop culture, and a run through his ever-evolving intellect. A knowing wink to fans of the seminal vampire flick The Lost Boys, “Join Us, Michael” is at once a seething appraisal of a world scorched and defiled by an older generation and a musical love letter to that pivotal ‘80s vampire movie soundtrack. “Leap Year (Chaos Reigns)” which began as a Siouxsie & the Banshees-inspired jam serves as Cyclist’s true north – the story of a drug-fueled wrinkle in time that brought the entire cyclical nature of existence into visibility one fateful night. “End Of The World” is a dance-floor nihilist electro-rock blending angular post-punk guitar with the nostalgia of neon synths and electroclash drums, while “Takes One To Know One” slowly approaches the thunderstorm of toxic relationships, soulful vocals, tech house kick drums, and grimy-as-hell bass. As a fitting conclusion to the tour de force through his psyche, Cyclist closes with yet another two-track charge, the swaggering post-electro sneer at celebrity social media, “Famous” followed by the throbbing Giorgio Moroder-via-Tech House cover of Iggy Pop’s classic “The Passenger.” “It was important to me that I cover ‘The Passenger’ as a letter of intent,” says Brandon. “The electronic music that I daydream about always has that Stooges layer of dirt and shop grease on it. That’s what I wanted for Cyclist.” With plans for a live stream event and the hope of some outdoor shows when the weather turns warmer, Phillips is ready to get back to touring. You can connect with Mensa Deathsquad and stay-up-to-date on the upcoming album via the following links:
Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Spotify | SoundCloud | YouTube | Bandcamp
You've had quite a journey in sound as a musician over the years with your various bands, doing all different kinds of music. With regards to Mensa Deathsquad, what led you to want to go the EDM route?
Ok. So, the list of things I've always wanted to do but have never done is mercifully not that long. It's kind of a shortlist. The other things that were on this list, at one point or another, it was like I'd love it if I could come back in my next life as a party rock MC. Like a total Mike D style, or MCA...just that kind of MC, right? I just love it, but I won't do it. Like, I won't do it in this lifetime. There are just some pools I can't bring myself to jump in, either because I'm a coward or some other reason (laughs). Or, like, I'll never take up the violin because I'm aware that's a lifelong pursuit and I'm already a little long in the tooth to take up a new instrument. But with this, it was just doing something by myself, with just drum machines and a bass guitar and a keyboard. Can I do that? Of course, I can do that! And then there was a pandemic and it was like yeah, it's all I'm doing. That was just a thing I always really liked and I felt like there was certainly room for my voice there.
What was it like for you to do a project without any other band members since you have always been in bands?
That part is kind of fucked up, honestly! There's a membrane there that you kind of have to push through, or at least I did. And I'm going to go ahead and call myself out for using the editorial you when I actually mean me. That's like a thing I need to stop doing (laughs). So there was a membrane there that I needed to push through. In a band, you defer to some kind of democratic structure. There are votes and it's like nobody but me gets to vote on the lyrics but other people get to vote on this or that part of the arranging, or whatever. It's weird to suddenly have all of the decisions come down to me and it's unsettling. It's like I'm making these decisions about drums and it's like "You may not be the right guy but you'd better become him and grow into him real fast" (laughs). It was really weird because suddenly you can't just look and gather from the look on your bandmate's face whether or not what you're doing is cool.
You have said your love for the sounds of EDM was kind of hampered by the festival EDM formula that kind of bored you. Can you talk a bit about what it was you didn't like about EDM and how you went about creating a sound that was more you?
I kind of looked at festival EDM as a problem that I needed to solve. And I don't mean like I'm trying to solve this problem for the world like the world needs my version of EDM or whatever, but I needed to solve it for me. I don't want to pick on anyone in particular, but I could listen to somebody's set from some festival and it's like everything follows this pattern. It's like a shitty suburb. Every house is built on the same fucking floor plan, using the same stones and foundation and exactly the same stucco and countertops or whatever, and you end up with a whole neighborhood that looks like a Home Depot showroom. That's exactly how EDM was feeling, like that festival big room house. It felt like that to me and it felt like people were just hiding behind this architectural blueprint. It just lacked songiness. You'll have EDM producers that have awesome musical ideas but the musical idea that was awesome is about 4 seconds, so you don't really get a lot of development and there doesn't tend to be much of an arc, except for this really predictable romantic comedy or shitty action movie arc. I just found that really boring. Songs can do more than that and music can do more than that. A good song has a story arc that's kind of like a movie. There's a false defeat and you don't just go from tragedy to triumph. You go through phases of it and songs do that, but just DJ-produced EDM doesn't, usually. It's just "we're just going to keep recapitulating this drop". Which is like "Well, fine. But you're only going to have me for like 10 minutes", and then I'm sick and tired of it and I want to hear something else. In order to make it work, it's like I love those sounds. I love gnarly-sounding synthesizers and gigantic, stupid, in-your-face kick drums. Those things sound great to me. I was just like "Somebody has to make songs with this. I can't keep listening to non-songs.
You were in the hospital at the start of last year as your debut album Patient Zero came out. What was it like for you to try to promote the album at that time and then to right into Covid and the ensuing shutdowns that happened as a result?
It felt like getting mugged and it was the point in the mugging where you just have to, like, cover your head because they're just going to keep kicking you and you don't have a chance. Just cover your head and try not to take many shots to the face and hope that nobody shoots you or stabs you and that all you take is an ass whipping (laughs). It was like "Ok. Well, I'm fucked. I'm just going to cover my face and when the muggers are gone, I'll check for broken bones or whatever." That was pretty much how that felt, and that sucks. I hadn't really begun to recover from all of that, and it was really a mercilessly protracted process of one shitty secondary infection after the next, and going back to the hospital then back home then back to the hospital. I had barely started to recover from that when Covid hit and was like "Oh Jesus". I was already tired of being in the house and wearing sweatpants and all that kind of shit (laughs). I had already been essentially quarantined for like 4 months before Covid hit, and then Covid hit and it was like "Oh, wonderful. What do we have to do now?". I was like "I'm at least going to be quarantined for a few more months, so I guess I'm making another record. What else do I do with all of this pent-up energy but make a record?". I finished this record then was sitting on it like "What the hell do I do? Do you release a record in the middle of a pandemic?". It didn't really seem like anybody cared about entertainment that isn't like a Netflix series that will kill three nights of boredom. I wasn't sure if it was smart or not to put a record out in the middle of this disaster and sat on it as long as I could before I was like "I can't stand it anymore!".
How do you feel that the new album compares to Patient Zero?
Hmmmm. I can tell the difference between the sorts of compositions that I was attempting on Patient Zero and the sorts of compositions I was attempting on Cyclist. I feel like Patient Zero was an experiment and I was really trying to make them work. It was like whatever I had to do to make it work, like "I don't quite get how this works but I have to figure it out." I don't think I did a shitty job. I think I did a fine job. It's cool and it's a good record. But I think that what I learned from Patient Zero was what works really well...which parts of this idea of Mensa Deathsquad actually work well and which parts are still not quite baked. On Cyclist, I just tried to go with stuff I knew worked well. It was like "Ok. I really like this, so I'm just going to go with that and I'm not going to do some introspective journey of trying to figure out if it's actually good or what the artistic merit is." I was just going to do it because it works. It made it a little bit easier because now I'm not second-guessing everything I'm doing. I'm just doing it because it was cool.
You have said that you are as close to being a professional patient as one is likely to find and that those experiences are reflected in the darkness of the music. Do you feel that doing Mensa Deathsquad has helped you as far as being an outlet for those feelings and experiences and having a darker arc of music than some of your other projects?
Yes! I do. It's kind of a...I'm about to say it out loud, and as I say it to myself in my head, it sounds like super Jewish guilt. I want to do something where I can talk about anything...any dark thing...I can deal with all of this dark, difficult, uncomfortable material and I'm not dragging any bandmates with me. I don't have to ask anyone else to cosign stories of trauma or of illness or of death decrepitude. I don't have to ask anyone else to sign off on it. It's just me. If I can work up the courage or the moxie to do it, it's just me. Because sometimes...I know in the past, in different band situations, I would definitely second guess whether something was appropriate for the band. It was like "Well. I don't know if I want to say that, because then everybody else has to agree with it and I don't want to ask them to do that". Do you know what I mean? I'm just by myself now, so I'm just going to say what I want to say.
You did a cover on Cyclist of Iggy Pop's song "The Passenger" and have said that you covered it as a letter of intent. How do you feel it personifies the kind of electronic music you want to play?
So, somewhere in the arc of punk and alternative music...underground music starting with The Stooges and The Standells and whatever we would call underground right now...somewhere in there, the dancing got lost. Dance became, like, something you feel guilty about. You can get punk kids to dance to PYT in a bar. They will dance. If you put on Michael Jackson, there will be punk people and they will dance to it, but they won't dance to, like, Gang of Four. To me, Gang of Four is like a punk band trying to sound like Michael Jackson's Off The Wall. You know, like trying to put a weird Quincy Jones disco thing on punk music. Trying to make their own kind of jerky angular dance music, right? But people don't dance to it and it drives me crazy! I don't know. It seems really unfair. There are these normies who go to Ultra Fest. They're the ones who get to dance and enjoy that release of dancing in a giant throng of sweaty, dancing people and, like, us weirdos...we're the ones who invented this shit. Dancing doesn't have to be some, like, cleaned up and polished Ultra Fest kind of thing. Dancing can be greasy and dirty and grimy. Probably the coolest dancing you'll ever see in your life happens in some filthy shack in the middle of nowhere. So, yeah. I don't know. I want dance music that exudes that dirty, Stooges-y, MC5-y vibe. I want dance music that exudes that kind of like sad, slushy Gang of Four thing. It should do that. It should be able to do that. It's plenty flexible enough for that.
You just released your new single "Famous", about the celebrity influencer culture we live in and more specifically about Trump having been our social media influencer-in-chief. What can you tell me about writing that track? How do you think we got here and why do you feel so many people get swept up in that and in a sense controlled by it?
You know, it's insidious, but before social media showed up and became so fucking important, we were all primed for it anyway. We were all hungry for it, even though we didn't know that we needed it. We were hungry for something and were ready for this thing to come along and basically tell us to monetize our social connections and to start measuring them. Keeping track of how many likes and thumbs up vs love vs care vs whatever reactions we got. Now we're supposed to count that shit, which even if we're not earning a dollar, that's still monetizing it. We've still turned it into a transaction. So now every friendly exchange we have, casual or intimate, is a transaction. So naturally, when people come along who can get 60 million people to follow them on Twitter, they must be super good at this and we should listen to them. They are an authority on things and they should be worshipped. And yes, they are a God Emperor that we should elect to 15 terms, or whatever it is. If it's that or if it's Gwenyth Paltrow telling women to steam their vaginas. You know, we created this bubble inside which all of this really unhealthy mold is going to grow.
People get so obsessed with celebrities. It's bizarre!
Yeah. There's this idea that, like, "Oh. Gwenyth Paltrow. I loved her in the movie X, Y or Z. So obviously I should go to her with questions about gyno health. Obviously, if she has something to say about how to feed your baby, I want to hear it." It's like, well no. She's not a doctor or a nurse. She's a movie star. But we assume because somebody is saying this that they know about shit and they know better than we do. I mean, how did they get famous, right, if they didn't know better than us? It's like, "I hate to break it to you, but they got famous because they are really lucky. They won the genetic lottery and look a certain way and happened to get cast in something and got lucky. That's it." They aren't smarter than you or better than you and you don't owe them your attention. It's just gross to see the ways in which celebrities, and I really don't just mean Trump...literally 75% of all the blue check marks on Twitter are in some way abusing the power dynamic they have with their followers. And that is just disgusting. That's the sort of thing I look at and I would be happy to light the match that burns that entire empire down. We're better without it. But I don't know. Somebody else might say that I am making too much of it. But I really see it as a nasty, metastasizing cancer on the world.
You have talked about how for you, going forward post-pandemic, that a new normal is going to mean a new underground. What does that look like for you?
I don't know. I wish I knew. I don't have the blueprint for that, but I know that's what I'm hungry for. I want spaces for weirdos again. I want spaces where no one is being gatekept by scene kids or by media voices or by celebrity influencers. I just want spaces that are absolutely weird-positive. If you're not hurting anyone, be as weird as you can and as weird as you need to be comfortable. I recognize that those spaces probably need to be below ground because it's always better and safer and more fun for us if we're doing this shit without anybody's microscope. So, I don't know how that works. I don't know if we just go back to doing barn parties. I just don't know. But it has to be something. We can't pick up where we left off. It's just not going to work.
Having been such a big part of the music industry for so many years, in all different capacities, what do you see the industry and state of music looking like post-pandemic? Are there any changes that have happened over the past year that you see as positive?
I think a lot of artists kind of had to double down on themselves and I think that's really, really important. That's a place I kind of got to a few years ago where I just realized "I have to be the one who bets big on me and on what I want to do." I can't ask people to get on my level. I just have to do what I want. I kind of see a lot more people doing that, or at least tilting in that direction. I find that kind of heartening because that means artists are not all a bunch of solipsistic dicks (laughs). Some of us are still kind of, like, oriented towards truth-seeking, or whatever the hell it is we're doing. So that's positive and cool, and artists have been really, really good and have stepped up and been incredibly giving and generous with their time and their resources in their craft in order to try to help other people and other marginalized communities. All of that is really super cool and positive. But by the same token, you look at the high level of the industry and they are doing a lot of marketing. They're trying to do a lot of reputation rehab right now and not look like the rapacious predators that they've always been, like "Oh, well the music community has been impacted and that's why we're asking Congress for the whatever." It's like, you're asking Congress for the whatever and you're probably going to get it and are asking people to sign this petition under the auspices that it's going to benefit individual musicians and union stagehands and whatever, and it's not. It's going to benefit you and you're going to keep all of the fucking money." Warner Brothers and Live Nation and AEG are going to keep all of this money that they are asking for from Congress. I will see not one dime. Most of my friends will not see a dime of this. Certainly, if there are stagehands or artists in the blue-collar end of the entertainment industry, they are not going to see a dime. So, I don't know. You've got to kind of take the good with the bad. The bad is that all the people who were dicks are still dicks and the good people are at least stepping up and being good and are not letting themselves sink.
Aside from working on new music last year for different projects, I read that you also worked on some writing for a couple of different film projects. What can you tell me about that?
Yeah, I do that and I don't know. I'm maybe 30 or 40 percent good at it (laughs). I'm not great at it yet. It's a thing that enormously rewarding to do and if I ever get to the far end of producing any of these projects, that would be fantastic and you will absolutely see me strutting like a peacock, shouting it from the mountaintops! But right now, I just kind of hammer away on these projects that are just, you know, totally speculative. I've done some cool things and some things I thought were fun. I wrote a horror movie that I like and I wrote a pilot about ecoterrorism that I thought was really cool, and I wrote a libretto for a ballet that I think is really neat. It's a really rewarding hobby and it's really rewarding to learn another craft, but I have better chances playing scratcher tickets than I do with a screenplay.
You did some Mensa Deathsquad remixes on the new Other Americans EP. What was it like to incorporate Mensa Deathsquad into your other band?
I really love doing remixes and I'm really grateful that my bandmates in Other Americans were amenable to me doing that and haven't really put the kibosh on any of my remixes yet, which is great (laughs). It's hard to ask people to trust you with their song. At least, that's a hard ask for me. I know I'll do my best, but it's still hard to ask, like "Hey. Let me reorganize and reimagine your music." But it's great and I've been doing remixes for other people now that will slowly start trickling out this year. I've done 3 or 4 remixes for other artists now and I'm trying to do a lot more of that. It really is fun and it's a completely different orientation to making music than composing or writing or anything like that.
What's next for you? Aside from the new album, what else do you have coming up?
I'm going to do a livestream thing. Mensa Deathsquad and Other Americans are going to do a livestream show together later this month at the Lawrence Arts Center in Lawrence, KS. I think it will be cool, but I don't know. I've never done a produced livestream event for anything because it was never a thing you had to do before. So, I'm doing that, and then it kind of remains to be seen what else happens. I don't know how other cities are, but I know in Kansas City we have at least one place that's doing an outdoor, socially-distanced venue thing. Once the shitty weather goes away, my hope is that will come back and be strong enough that I can at least play a couple of shows. Under any normal circumstances, literally, all I'd be doing is just booking shows in every shitty chicken coop and public bathroom from here to Florida. It's really weird to not be doing that and to release an album and have no emails or phone calls involved because there's nobody to bother about going on tour (laughs). I can't do anything. I have to stay home. Things are going to change and absolutely will improve. At this point, anyone who's still saying that they are being patient is just a liar. No one can be patient with this anymore.