Anton Glamb

Hey wassup Anton I know your originally from Hawaii let the readers know what in god’s green earth are you doing in New York?

I came out to New York to go to school. I started studying pre-med but I found I was spending all my time writing music, so I switched to study that, but I really didn't like studying music all that much. There's a cool graduate program in Computer Music at Columbia, and I got to take most of those classes as an undergrad, but the academic music world's totally different than the pop-scene or even a compositional scene, and Columbia's way more on an academic music tip than I am. But now I'm just living with a dance company, skating, writing music and partying to feel out the scene out here now that I'm done with school and I still go back to Hawaii a couple times a year.

So basically this is a music review on you. I randomly found your music and was super hyped on it. How did you get into making your own music?

I started writing music in like first grade I think, or at least that's the first time I wrote it out as notes or whatever, but before that in preschool I would push all the buttons on toys that made sounds and not really play with the toys right just playing with the sounds on them, so much so that my mom kind of worried about it a little. I used to play in punk bands in highschool and stuff, and got into jazz trumpet and had an interpretive dance band that would play covers of Daft Punk stuff on marching band instruments, but the drummer for that moved away from Hawaii so I got a drum machine and then started singing instead of playing trumpet over the beats I was making.

How would you describe your music to our loyal subjects?

In some ways I don't know what to call it besides pop, but I know a lot of people think of like Backstreet boys kind of stuff when they hear that, so if I had to get more specific I guess I'd call it electrofunksoulrapdancepunk. I'm hardly ever going into a song thinking I want it to sound a certain way. A lot of the songs were totally constructed as experiments and a lot of why I make songs is so that I can hear something new and because wonder if it's possible to use certain synth timbres and still make a song that feels like a song. I just like to get deep into all the sounds I'm using and see how they're interacting with each other.

Have you done any tours yet?

I haven't done any real tours yet to any places I wouldn't otherwise be at anyways, so I've pretty much just played shows in New York and in Hawaii, but I'm leaving for Peru tomorrow to write music for a collaboration between a New York dance company, Public Dance Theater, and a Peruvian company ANDANZAS. I'm super psyched, I got linked up with a bunch of Peruvian musicians and am going to be doing remixy kind of stuff with the more native Peruvian sounds that the musicians are going to let me record. I'll be playing a few shows out there too so I'm pretty pumped on the whole thing including checkin out the Peruvian girls because I heard some are pretty fancy. I really want to hit up the west coast for a tour as soon as my next album's done. I was supposed to play some shows in California a couple summers ago, but I got really sick when I got out there and had to cancel them all.

What music are you hyped on right now to listen to when your skating, love making, studying and partying?

I was really in to Dancehall for a while because I like that it's super fast and will have totally crazy voices on it, but I don't really vibe with a lot of the messages in the music and some weird topics of righteous attitudes against going down on chicks or homo-hating or anal sex with girls. I kind of like to stay out of other people's business and I think people should do whatever they want if they're trying to get off and have fun, so it's weird that people would sing about other people's interests being immoral or wrong or gross, but I still like the hype vibe of it anyways, even if it's coming from a belief system I don't really share. I've also been really into scary sound kind of stuff, like halloween music. I like playing it in the car because it feel like something's going to go wrong just from hearing atonal sounds coming in arrhythmically and that's pretty cool that music can actually creep you out. One time I was listening to it and I was standing on a rickety ladder using a hammer drill to put up curtain-rods in the brick in my room and I totally thought something bad was going to happen.

A lot of people might not know but you fucking rip on a skateboard. How’s the skate scene out in New York? I know that only less than a handful of skaters actually reside there. Are there still spots to skate?

There are tons of spots to skate in New York and you really don't get harassed for skating out here. I like that you can skate from spot to spot or take public transport or hang onto trucks and taxis to get where you want to go quicker if the roads are smooth and you time it right. A lot of the most fun spots are little weird things you wouldn't try and film a trick at, but just feel fun to skate like little wall-ride things or banks to stall on, but there're tons of spots that are sick and people haven't really killed yet and you don't get tickets here unless you skate in the subway.

How does the skate scene differ from Hawaii?

The skaters are way more laid back in Hawaii, but Hawaii's also a way more laid back place so it's tough to blame it on the scene. The skaters in New York are way more laid back than most New Yorkers. Except for the winters being too cold to skate for a lot of the time in New York, it's a pretty rad place to live and skate. I'm not trying to turn pro or anything, I just like to push it on a fun level and it's cool to be able to go back to Hawaii because kids are all psyched on dork-tricks, which are my favorite kind to do. I'm stoked that the skate shop I ride for in Hawaii, 808 Skate, has still hooked me up even when I was getting through Columbia and didn't have time to skate all that much, but New York skaters are cool and down to have fun skating too, so it's not like I can really say I prefer one scene to the other, although I definitely feel more at home skating in Hawaii.

Who are your some of your musical influences?

I lost all my Nirvana albums way back in like fourth grade but my friend just sent me their stuff recently and I was so stoked to hear it again and it's weird because I think they've had a lasting influence on me even though I haven't heard it in so long. But I've been listening to a lot of Prince lately and I like how he mixes racy sex with sweetness. Production-wise, earlier Basement Jaxx stuff (like the Remedy and Rooty albums) was kind of what got me to be pumped on singing over electronic stuff and not just trying to make tracks that sounded like other people's stuff or that would fit in the dance music sub-genres like house or drum and bass or the more specific things like deep house or whatever. I also used to listen to a lot of Tom Tom Club and Devo when I was in preschool and that's stuff that I'm still psyched on today.

What does a typical day entail for Mr. Anton Glamb?

I usually wake up and grab some food from a corner deli across the street, come back and eat it in my room and either poke my head in and see what the dance company upstairs is up to or go skating, work on music for a few hours and then maybe go out at night and kick it at some clubs with some model chicks because my friends Slim and Nima are doing promotion so it's all free drinks hooked up and stuff. But every day's pretty different and a lot of nights I'd rather stay home working on music or hanging with my friends than go out. Parties go really late here so sometimes I don't end up feeling like skating because of the night before. But I'm still recovering from bruised bone and torn cartilage in my right knee, so I'm having to get it back in shape since I was out for two months this summer, which is when and why I slipped so deep into party world.

Do you have any groupies? And if you what is the craziest thing they have done?

I always got attention from girls since mid-high-school, so it's not totally new and it's hard to tell what's due to music or what's due to me just going out and being psyched on dancing. Although, after I opened for Mickey Avalon in Hawaii all these girls I never knew before started to holla, which is pretty rad I guess. Myspace has made weird stuff happen like certain girls keep messaging me on it but never hang in real life or sometimes I'll get naughty photos sent to me, which is always funny. There's this one girl in Hawaii who'll show up to shows in Sailor-moon type porn-star outfits and write on herself in sharpies stuff about wanting to touch my scrot, but she's kind of goofing around too. I like Hawaii though because people occasionally get kind of nuts in the club like cluster-freaking and dog-piling on the dance-floor. This one girl tried to take my pants of in a club but I don't think she ever saw me perform or knew I did music or anything but it's not like that every night over there.

What are some future plans for you?

I gotta get this next album recorded! I've had enough material for an album for a long time, but I'm in the middle of setting up a super sick studio I got hooked up through that dance company that's taking me to Peru and a 3D motion capture studio, Worley Works, that I'm working with on a composition tip. I want to learn that gear well so I'm not rushing things too much right now. I'm gonna self-release the next one like my last album and then see if any labels wanna pick it up after. I'm also gonna try to come to California for a tour soon too. I'm writing music with this J-Pop singer Alygator who's on Avex in Japan and did stuff with Christina Milan and some big acts in Japan, M-Flo and BoA, so depending on how that goes I might try to go to Japan soon if I can. Also I'm working on a cover/remix mixtape that's gonna be sick, probably gonna finish that in the next year or so, but I'm taking it slow on it because it's a lot of illegal samples and I'm not going to be able to release it properly for sure, but it's just something I want to do.

Any last words sir?

Not soon I hope!

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