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Flosstradamus really nails it with DJ beats

Katjusa Cisar  —  9/17/2008 1:04 pm

Chicago DJ duo Flosstradamus is one of those music phenomenons to rise up out of MySpace.

Their popularity has sprung from street and virtual word-of-mouth: They've never released an official album, but they have almost 28,000 friends on MySpace, and their songs get tens of thousands of plays. To get an idea of just how popular they are with the Wicker Park crowd and beyond, check out an article from the Chicago Reader, which describes the mania outside one of their monthly parties.

Scenes like that got the attention of Vice Records, which released a record of Flosstradamus' mixes for a sampler series sponsored by Toyota's Scion, and it got them slots at all the name-making festivals -- Coachella, South by Southwest, Lollapalooza and Pitchfork.

Flosstradamus is J2K, aka Josh Young, who grew up in a Chicago suburb, and Curt Cameruci, aka AUTOBOT, from Kalamazoo, Mich. They say they're just "normal Midwest boys," and they play up their Midwestern roots. Their triple-layer mash-ups stack house, crunk, early '90s Jock Jams, punk, indie pop and a grab bag of whatever clips and beats strike their fancy. It all translates to a jumping, fist-pumping party.

They'll be bringing that party to the Majestic Theatre, 115 King St., this Saturday, Sept. 20, at midnight, closing out the Forward Music Festival. Preceding them at 11 p.m. will be OCD Automatic.

77 Square talked with Josh Young recently as he tagged along with two nail-bent women on the streets of Philly.

How are you doing?

I'm all right. I'm in a nail salon right now.

Getting your nails done?

No, my girlfriend and her good friend are doing an art installation. They're turning a little space into a nail salon for a weekend. It's going to be called "Nail Me." They are doing hair and nail and makeup.

As performance art?

Yeah, yeah, it's in Philadelphia, so they're performing it as two South Philly ladies. They're doing nails as performance art. It's going to be really interesting, but I'm not going to be in town for it. So I'm a little bit bummed. But I'm shopping for all the good stuff with them. They know all these little nail depots in Philadelphia. I'm sitting in one of those chairs right now where you get your pedicure, you know, where you put your feet in a little tub.

Have you gotten a pedicure before?

Yes, I have had a pedicure. One in my life. The technician told me that I have beautiful feet. She asked if I got pedicures regularly, and I told her "Absolutely not. But thank you for the compliment."

How did you and Curt meet?

I was DJ-ing with a crew in Chicago called Life During Wartime, similar to the Talking Heads' song. A friend of ours, who I was living with at the time, had told me, "Hey, you guys sort of do the same thing. You should hook up." I was looking for a partner to DJ with, because I wanted to start a DJ group. So, he and I hooked up, played in the bedroom with a turntable setup, and it just took off from there.

What appeals to you about the tag-teaming kind of DJ-ing?

With four turn tables, you have greater options as far as mixing. You can do really, really quick mixing, like while I'm cuing up two records, he can be cuing up one. We can do something that involves more layers of music.

Initially, that's what I wanted to do. Now, it's kind of evolved into being almost a band with all the technology. We use Serato, which is a program that (allows you) to use turntables and mixers, and scratch mp3s live. You can also set cue points to trigger certain parts of an mp3 so you can jump to certain parts of the song.

How do you make the show visually stimulating when you're essentially just in front of a computer?

Yeah, yeah, I mean, well, not really. Technically, you could say that we are, but we're DJ-ing. Girl Talk, for instance, uses a program called Ableton -- it's just him and a laptop. But we have four turntables and mixers and samplers and all types of different things going on at once. The computers are up there, but they're on stands and kinda off to the side. So the show is really us, and us interacting and us interacting with the crowd. We'll get on the mic and yell at people -- "Put your hands up!" and "I love this song!" and "Make some noise!" and whatever, or "You're crazy!" or "You're not crazy enough."

When we're up there, we just feed off the crowd's energy. We put out what we get, and then they kind of feed off that and they give more and we give more. It's a performance just like any kind of band is. We like to be on stage. We like to be up in front of everybody. It's not really like we're in a booth tucked away somewhere. We really like to get into it.

Where do you go to look for beats and samples?

A lot of our friends are DJs and producers. It's a nice little tight-knit community that we trade music with.

Do you work with vinyl at all?

No, we don't. Used to. When we put out singles or if we do a remix, a lot of times it'll get put out on a record, but it's more of a collector's item now than it is actually usable. There's this shop in Chicago called Gramaphone that has really good house records and electronic techno stuff, and a lot of times if I do buy records, I'll go there. Then I'll just record it onto my computer from the vinyl.

What is specifically Midwestern about Flosstradamus?

I feel that the whole attitude that we bring to the table is very, very Midwestern. Midwestern people have a way about them -- a little slower. We and everybody around us all came from blue collar upbringings, you know, meager beginnings. And there's a level of appreciation for what we have that other people don't have. When you see Lindsay Lohan as a DJ, it's not like she had to work up through the ranks. We started out doing this in bedrooms for ourselves and with our friends. Now we're doing it for a living and doing pretty well with it. When someone comes up and says, "Hey, can I get a picture or an autograph?" I don't think there will ever be a day where I say no to that or give someone an attitude. We appreciate being fortunate enough to do this on this level, 'cause I know there are a trillion DJs and not all of them are getting paid for it.

If you had to choose one decade of music to sample from for a night, which would it be?

For right now, for today, Monday: '80s. I'd stick to the '80s. My girlfriend and I have a side project called "I Love You," and we make Latin and Puerto Rican freestyle music, and a lot of that is very, very, very Jheri Curl '80s. But, yeah, that's where I'm at right now.

What else should people here in Madison know?

Being from the Midwest, we haven't honestly played enough shows in the Midwest. We're extremely excited to play Madison, because my sister went there for Halloween about five years and she said she had the best time she's ever had in her life. I'm going to expect that kind of attitude. I don't want people to dress up -- well, they can if they want -- but I'm going to want that kind of energy.

Katjusa Cisar  —  9/17/2008 1:04 pm