DEALERS OF GOD - Interview

ETHEREAL.PRESS:

Tell us about DEALERS OF GOD.

NO TRICKNOLOGY:

We are an international crime syndicate of sonic magicians, with members in Australia, Sweden, and the USA. We get our powers for making music by ingesting copious amounts of narcotic substances.

DJ DICKDOCTOR:

Dealers are a gang of likeminded friends and criminals who have formed to create a new wave of psychedelic hip-hop music. We call it ambient crunk.

DJ CHEESEWATER:

I think we all assembled by sheer proximity, the sheer desire to partake in a lot of substances, needing one core activity to tie us all together. Little did we know that we’d end up with so much music and committing to each idea for such a vast number of further sessions of revision and editing. Dealers of God is in some ways making music that maps the very sessions it was created in, which are then decorated and structured to our desires.

JOHN CITY:

I think what defines Dealers of God is that we’re just a bunch of fellas with unlimited access to the Internet, being exposed to so many different types of music and art coming together to contribute with our own twist of all the weird shit we have consumed through our years of deep diving to create something weird as fuck.

What makes Dealers unique is that no one really gives a fuck, we do what we want, and we create the kind of music that we want to hear. And if people like it, that’s cool; if not, that’s understandable.

FUELGOD:

No comment.

ETHEREAL.PRESS:

We listened through your release on the Dismiss Yourself YouTube Channel titled Dealer’s Choice and thought it was unique.

Tell us a bit about the project.

NO TRICKNOLOGY:

Well, we certainly appreciate the compliment! After we finished Visions of Fuel in 2021, we started our own Discord server so that we could keep in closer touch, took a few months off, and then started pitching ideas for the next album.

I wanted to call the album Weird Therapy, after a line from a SpongeBob SquarePants episode that was very funny and had a lot of potential. I even used the line (“The weird therapy is working!”) in the concept that I had constructed for the album intro, but the Cheesy One and Li’l Meatus had already picked out the title that was finalized and started pre-production in that direction.

The final intro, however, uses some of the concepts from those ideas

LI’L MEATUS:

WE SPENT TWO YEARS PERFECTING THIS RECORD. SOME SONGS ARE OLDER THAN SOME OF THE TRACKS FROM VISIONS OF FUEL. DURING THE LAST ALBUM, A LOT OF US WERE IN THE SAME COUNTRY SO WE COULD JAM TOGETHER IN PERSON, BUT FOR THIS RECORD WE COMBINED OUR IMPROV JAMS WITH BEATS AND VERSES SENT BACK AND FORTH BETWEEN MEMBERS FROM DIFFERENT COUNTRIES.

THIS ALBUM IS A LOT MORE EARNEST IN MANY WAYS.

DJ CHEESEWATER:

Well, it was definitely the continuation of the rush that we got from making Visions of Fuel. But in the ways in which that album felt like it came naturally and as a whole piece, this album was a much more concerted effort, in some ways painful for all of us, as our desires to fix some of the problems we saw in VoF turned into a whole different attitude.

I think we enjoyed the difficulty to an extent—to lay out each song in a way where there was always something occurring that we deemed mostly necessary, and with a bit more variety in the sound palette within each song, trimming the fat. We really wanted these songs to be quite aggressive and confronting at times.

NO TRICKNOLOGY:

I thought that we would finish the album in just a few months, but being older than the others, and kids being kids—and all of us having full-time jobs on top of that— they have to have parties and time to socialize with their peers. So weeks turned in months, and months turned into 15 of ’em, the wait of which was agonizing at times.

DJ DICKDOCTOR:

Just like Visions of Fuel, our music is created to make the listener inebriated. The first demos of each song are created under the influence of various substances, and we try to harness the power of that mental state and transmute the effects of these narcotics into the music we create.

That way, even if you’re sober as fuck, the Dealers will aurally supply you with a potent and noticeably psychedelic high.

FUELGOD:

No comment.

ETHEREAL.PRESS:

Talk to us about the visual design of your collective’s album art + branding.

DJ CHEESEWATER:

It truly comes from a blend of pictures of dudes’ faces, old-style Myst/Riven/The Longest Journey point-and-click adventure games, stretched things, and religion, among intense drug hazes. I think it’s everyone’s tastes combined and formalized. It sucks that we only really have the two album covers to show for the aesthetic, as a whole lot of ridiculously nightmarish images have been created, but also mystical stuff, too.

John Baird, former Foreign Minister of Canada, for example.

DJ DICKDOCTOR:

Like DJ Cheesewater said before, we all have so many influences that end up fusing together to create something totally unique. DJ Cheesewater is a painter and does these really incredible landscapes, so that influences a lot of the shapes and colors we use in our artwork.

I draw from a lot of Pen & Pixel-style artwork, with bold 3D text and lots of bling, shadows, and embossing. No Tricknology, born and raised in NY, adds an old-school hip-hop vibe to a lot of our art. John City and Fuelgod are both graffiti writers, and apply influence from the Melbourne and Swedish graf scenes.

Obviously, a lot of the imagery we use comes from psychedelic experiences, trying to replicate the inebriated feeling of the music in visual form and the state we made it in.

We use a lot of found imagery—digging through Internet archives to find hidden .pngs and faces of people we don’t know exist.

NO TRICKNOLOGY:

You’ll notice that there are several thematic elements in our visual aesthetic, à la Al Hirschfeld and the use of his daughter’s name Nina. On top of that, we have several constants that we try to include in everything that include Jackie Chan, John Baird, and Sister Souljah.

I don’t know the reasons for Chan and Baird— you’ll have to ask the others about that, and I never even heard of Baird until I joined the Dealers—but I worship the ground on which Sister Souljah walks. Her album and writings are pure prophecy that will cure the ills of humankind.

Basically, she screamed, Bill Clinton misquoted her, and I said, “Marry me!”

FUELGOD:

No comment.

ETHEREAL.PRESS:

Do you think there is a message behind your music?

DJ CHEESEWATER:

For me, the message is a little bit existential.

Honestly, we’ve all been through some changes in life, and we’ve seen people go down; we’ve struggled with and are still struggling with addictions, and yet there are still so many larger pits of hell that anyone can reach at any given time in their lives.

And as they say, all comedy is tragedy, if you only look deep enough into it. But music, humor, and storytelling are all things humanity needs to find reasons to keep going.

We were privileged enough to have the tools to work with all three.

JOHN CITY:

The message behind the music from my end at least is basically just to not take yourself or your art too seriously, be free, and explore the things you want to explore.

Do the things you want to do, but make sure you put some effort into it, too. Don’t put too much thought into it—if you like it, then do it, do it for yourself first, and the result will be genuine and people will appreciate it.

If they don’t, fuck them. They don’t matter anyway.

LI’L MEATUS:

I THINK A LOT OF OUR MUSIC COMES FROM A VERY SUBCONCIOUS PART OF OUR BRAINS.

WE USE A LOT OF IMPROVISATIONAL TECHNIQUES TO CREATE OUR MUSIC.

WE HOLD JAM SESHES THAT SOMETIMES GO ON FOR MULTIPLE DAYS WITH HOURS UPON HOURS OF FREESTYLING AND RIFFING, AND THEN WE TEND TO FIND COMMON PATTERNS WITHIN THEMES OF SPIRITUALITY, FRIENDSHIP, TRAUMA, NOSTALGIA, REGRETS—THE COLLECTIVE UNCONCIOUS COMING TO THE FOREFRONT.

NO TRICKNOLOGY:

You can be as goofy as you want without sacrificing quality or musical sophistication.

We have the latter in spades.

DJ DICKDOCTOR:

I think what a lot of people get wrong is the idea that we’re trying to make fun of something.

On the contrary, we are specifically attempting to challenge this false binary that something that is strange or funny can’t be raw and emotional. We despise a lot of the snide irony that pervades much comedy and music.

What we try and do with our music is show a revealing honesty, our genuine love and fear, and wild bizarre minds.

If the ops see that and think we’re simply making joke music, that’s on them.

FUELGOD:

No comment.

ETHEREAL.PRESS:

What’s next for the Dealers of God?

DJ DICKDOCTOR:

We have some plans with Dismiss Yourself to release some physical merchandise really soon, so keep an eye out for that. I’d really love to get creative with our physical stuff: a Dealers blotter sheet or pill press would be fresh.

NO TRICKNOLOGY:

We had so much material that was eventually cut from Dealer’s Choice that we want to revisit, so we’re in the process of constructing an album of B-sides. In addition, because a lot of compromises were made during the recording process, and too much time passed between albums, that we want to do a director’s cut of the album that’s more in line with everyone’s vision.

After this, we’ll start to record some brand-new songs for our third album. I want to explore more dissonance and turn that into the band’s style of comedy gold, but it’s really too early to say anything else at this point. I’m hoping that the band is signed by a label, although it’s ultimately more important that Monsieur le Fromage eventually signs a deal because people really need to hear this visionary artist and his prodigious music.

JOHN CITY:

There’s a crime wave coming to your area. Be prepared.

FUELGOD:

No comment.

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