OCDJ first blew our mind when we saw him spin at McCarren Pool last summer. Starting as a 14-year-old volunteer at WFMU and soon making his way to the Baltimore scene, OCDJ seems to be climbing that steep, slippery incline.  Aka "On the Up and Up."


Chief Magazine: I think first, when we first spoke... you mentioned you were doing house repairs? What house work are you doing?

OCDJ: I just moved into a new warehouse loft space, so I’ve been hauling out and organizing the mountains of junk and trash that were in here and building walls and cleaning up. I am also still doing work on my previous residence, which was a sailboat that needed its entire bottom redone.

That’s funny, my next question was what's with all the sail boating? Are you from a boating family or town?

Only some of my extended family is into sailing, and certainly not my landlocked home town. It’s always been something I did every once and a while throughout the years, but only in the past couple of years did I decide to get serious about it. It’s more about a personal test, solitude, and excitement than it is upbringing.

Also who's Eric Forsyth? And can I get a spot on his yacht? I make a mean Mai Tai.

Eric is an old Englishman who lives on Long Island and every other year or so sails around the world. There's a lot more I could say, but I think I’ll keep quiet for now... but he sends out crew calls whenever he's readying his next voyage - he takes people with little experience, but don't offer him a Mai Tai - he's serious about tradition and the official 5 o'clock cocktail of the yacht Fiona is Mount Gay dark rum and apple juice with a lemon. After throwing up the first one, I refused to drink it the rest of the trip.

Awesome. Forward me that crew call! I love the water. Do you work like crazy so you can get ready to take time like that off? Or is there work that you can do on the "road"? I guess what I'm asking is how do you work?

I decided to leave my full time job about nine months before I left, so during that time I lived off of just playing shows and jingo and strictly saved my paychecks. Since then playing shows has helped cover a lot of basic costs. Tours for me never make any profit, in fact I’ve lost money in the long run, but at the time they usually are financially self-sustaining. But one of the things that pushed me to get a stationary home is that I need to get a job.

What are you thinking about doing?

Anything. I really wanted to work at this liquor store in town called The Wine Source, but since I quit drinking I don't think that'd be the best environment for me to be in. I think Whole Foods is always hiring.

How long have you been playing music? Was that something you've always been adept at? Or was it something that's relatively recent you started getting into?

I’ve been making music for a long time, but not so seriously. I’ve always been infatuated with sounds, getting into the physics of it and its reproduction far before I got serious about music. But even though I’ve been making music for years, about 80+% of the live shows and all of my published music has happened in the last year and a half. Before then it was mostly personal amusement.

Baltimore has a lot of great DJs. Being from there, what were you always listening to?

I actually grew up in northern New Jersey, so in that area I was listening to WFMU all of the time. It was something I discovered randomly and fell in love with so I started volunteering there when I was 14. $mall change was definitely one of the DJ's that had the biggest influence on me in those days.

 

What’s something that's particular to Baltimore that is important for your music?

Baltimore just seemed to have a fresh and enthusiastic energy to it that I thought was stale and jaded in and around New York. People were just less image and fame conscious and more interested and freaking the fuck out and having fun. That’s definitely played out in the music I’ve written here.

Has Dan Deacon influenced you?

I don't think I’ve been directly influenced by Dan’s music, but I’m sure just from listening to it so much it's become a part of my consciousness like all music that I love. And we've worked together on some bands/projects that I’ve felt worked really well at times, playing off of each other's input. But mostly Dan’s been an amazing source of encouragement. He booked me for the first show I ever played and really pushed me to keep making my music public, as well just assuring me that what I was doing was a good thing.

Who are some people that you've played with or places you've played where you felt really lucky to be doing it?

For the most part any show that people show up to, especially people I don't know, I am pretty shocked and wonder why they came, so I feel lucky at those times. But in other terms I’d say a show I played a year and a half ago at Monkey Town in Brooklyn was a really great experience. I got to perform collaboratively with Chika Imagima, a video artist, and that venue was perfect for the music I was writing at the time, so I felt so grateful I was asked to play that show.

Any awful show stories?

I have tons of awful show stories. I’d say the absolute worst was the one and only time I played in Norfolk, VA, where I got into a fight in the middle of my set with the people who lived at the house I was playing. My friend Benny who performs under the name "Adventure" who had played right before me got hit in the head twice with a bottle and flipped this guy over in a headlock and I got punched in the back and was shoving back and forth with these guys, all while I was playing. I stopped playing and was yelling at them to get hell out and they told me they lived there. I didn't feel like arguing/fighting with drunken bros so I just shut everything down and got out of there.

All while you were playing? That's sort of fantastic...you could've played some theme music for yourself and pretty much create a movie scene. When I was reading stuff about you a common theme seemed to be anonymity, isolation, etc. You even mentioned that that's something that draws you to sailing. However it seems like you’re amped to collaborate. Is that the case? Have you been lucky with most of your collaborations? Does being alone help you make music? Are you very protective about what sound you're putting out?

Isolation is very important to me as uncertainty and absurdity are so prevalent in my life and especially in the lives of people know. It’s become aware to me that you cannot trust or count on anyone or anything. The only thing or person you can count on is you (and even still with psychological complexities that, too, is a bit of a myth) and isolation embraces that. These ideas are extremely evident in my first album, “Pins and Things", but when making dance music, the alternative end of those ideas comes through, which is the simple and genuine happiness and excitement I have for life, in all of its ridiculousness. Kind of like a "fuck it, let's have fun" sort of mentality. When it comes to writing, all of it is done alone, but not necessarily in a studio situation. I’ve written a bunch of songs on the road, on the boat, and on the curb outside 7-11's. Whenever I’ve done collaborations, it's been almost exclusively improvised and always in live settings. With that, the results have been awful and wonderful.

Who’s a dream collaborator?

I think a dream collaboration would be either to perform with Yuko Nexus6 or write with Kevin O’Meara from Video Hippos. I’ve worked with Kevin before in tons of performances, but he's so talented with so many instruments, it would be amazing to have the time to spend time writing things with him.

Your album art caught my eye. Who do you work with for that? If it’s you, do you do other art? Is music your main passion right now?

I did the album art myself, but my attempts at visual art usually stay within CD packaging, show posters, and some web graphics. I like visual and package design, but I split most of my time between music and sailing. Well, now that I need to work, it'll probably be just music.

 

Would you consider what you’re doing mash-ups? How have you noticed your tastes changing now that you're actually making a lot of music and playing shows?

I really don't think what I do as mash-up because I write all of the music that goes with the vocal samples, and sometimes I cut up the vocals. I think of the plunderphoincs songs more along the lines of a remix than a mash-up. I don't think my tastes have changed much from making music, but certainly from playing shows. In a weird way I get exposed to so much less variety and have become more jaded with sounds people make from seeing so many bands live.

What’s a style that you're really into right now? You could interpret that however you'd like...but I was aiming for what kind of music do you think is really on the come up?

Things I’m listening to right now are really the same things I’ve been listening to for the past five years or so. I go through phases now and then and get excited about new things, but I always go back to the same things. Colleen just put out a new album this year, and her albums are always breathtaking. All of her albums are among my most favorite albums of all time. I’ve also been listening to Wang Changcun's album he put out last year a lot these days.

Website
www.ocdjmusic.org

Interview: Stephanie Porto
Photos: Andrew Laumann (portrait), Ed Zipco (outdoors)

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