Interview with Jarred of LifeAquatic

Houston: …What is the process for getting these tracks are you finding them or people submitting them. How does that work?

Jarred: It’s a bit of both. I get them mostly submitted on Soundcloud via Dropbox. They’ll drop a track in there and I’ll check it out. Other ways include following artists on Soundcloud. Soundcloud is the best way right now for finding music. It’s the most dynamic platform out there.

The blog started as a Tumblr?

I have my own URL but it’s still hosted on Tumblr but I’m still followable on Tumblr. It’s a really good thing. Pretty handy.

Do you feel like the people who are dropping these tracks in your Soundcloud, Are they wanting to get their track on life aquatic, or are they friends? I noticed half of the artists you post about are Australian. What is your thought on that?

It’s a bit of all that. Most of my submissions are artists flooding blogs with music.  Other ones, the best ones, will search out blogs they dig seek out blogs they dig. They’ll like the aesthetic on it so they’ll ask me to post one. Now, the last 9 months or so I’ve been hanging out with mostly Sydney-based, and Australian artists. I’ve been to Melbourne a few times and hung out with some Melbourne guys. A lot of friends will drop me their tracks. It’s been good that way. It’s becoming more personal.

I noticed you have a label you’re starting. What’s the deal with that?

I started about a year ago but I haven’t done much with that. I released one Melbourne kid, a 16-year-old guy. We released it on 7-inch vinyl. It’s just a friend of mine and I who do it. We get them pressed in the UK and then we shipped to Australia. There is no actual vinyl press in Australia.

Would you say, in terms of the music, there seems to be a certain zeitgeist-heavy style of music? You can’t say what genre it is. You could start from Post-Dubstep and go down. At the same time it’s cohesive and has a certain aesthetic.

It’s less genre-based and more atmosphere-based. I am conscious of that now, how I choose music to post on it to fit into a certain vibe. It’s not like this my entire taste of music; it’s the life aquatic taste in music. I’ll search out tracks to suit out that style. It’s a chicken and egg thing, I don’t know which came first.

Obvious question, the name, does it have anything to do with the movie?

Yeaaaa. It sorta does. I couldn’t find a name to start it. I think I just watched life aquatic for the 6^th time or something. It’s pretty boring, I was pretty upset about. Afterwards When I first started getting hits to the website, I was like “aw shit, I should have chosen something a bit more original”. Something a bit less sue-able. Oh well, I guess it works to the mood.

Amazing movie.

I would like to get Bill Murray to do a guest mix. That’d be a dream of mine. I should send some emails out to people.

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On the pictures, I noticed that you linked to the photos. You can go straight to the flickr. Are you personally going and finding these pictures/

I hit up some tags on Flickr and find the photos that fit the blog mood.

I’ll have this huge pile of favorites. When I’m listening to the track I’ll flick through and find one that fits it nicely.

I find that an interesting thing with is that in souls sampling tracks or hip-hop tracks, I’ll generally find pictures of pretty women. That’s just what I generally associate with hip-hop. Just swag. I find myself doing that.

You’ve got the hip-hop inflected tracks.  It seems there is another side to that spectrum, the more ambient tracks. Is that fair?

I just have a soft spot for instrumental hip-hop. I was about to wack up something before. It’s this artist from the UK called Handbook. I don’t know if you’re familiar with his beats but it’s some downright Ninth Wonder Stuff. It doesn’t really fit the blog but I might put it up anyway.

So it happens that sometimes you like a track but can’t put it on the blog?

Oh yeah, all the time, definitely.