Author: Ty Fox

Posted: Sep 29, 2024

Jampak photographers Evan and Ty got to sit down with artist, DJ, educator and producer Bad Snacks on site at the Same Same But Different Festival. We got to chat about the gatekeeping, electric violins and more!

Check out the video here!

Ty: Hello! We are out here with Bad Snacks. We're at Same Same But Different here with Jampak. We are right outside Grandma's Garage in front of the Same Stage. Hello, Welcome! Tell us about yourself.

Bad Snacks: I go by Bad Snacks; I'm a DJ, violinist, and producer, and I'm here at Same Same But Different, and it's a beautiful day out!

Ty: Love it! Yeah, and you have a set here right?

Bad Snacks: I do. I have a set here today at 5:30.

Ty : Love it, in which stage?

Bad Snacks: Different stage!

Ty: Perfect! Well, let's get into it. Tell us a little bit about yourself, yeah, DJ artist, producer, violinist.

Bad Snacks: Yeah, yeah, that's yeah, that's definitely some of the bullet points, I'm based out of LA, full-time producer, I do like a lot of kind of hip-hop derivative down tempo dancey stuff; it's like a cross, like a smattering of a bunch of different styles but, it's really just like things that you know that I can play violin with, yeah, a lot of tracks like that just kind of I call it vibing music.

Ty: Okay, yeah! A little vibe music, I love it. We gotta ask what's Bad Snacks? Where did that name come from?

Bad Snacks: It's an inside joke like deeply awry where like I was working at a studio and we hadn't named the session yet and, the producer asked if like I was hungry or if we had any snacks and I was like well I have like a bag of hot carrots in my car, and that ended up becoming the name of the track, and then after that point every time I came into the studio he'd be like, 'What's today's bad snack?' and it stuck.

Ty: Okay nice! So it started in the sesh then, in the studio. We heard you had some software classes for this group called Femme House? Can you tell us a bit about that?

Bad Snacks: Yeah, it's actually not just Femme House but Femme House is an organization that I work with a lot because it puts kind of like femme and gender-expansive producers and creatives kind of at the forefront, giving them a safe space to learn about music technology. Which historically, there like haven't been those kinds of spaces, so I love Femme House for that reason. But, I teach Ableton kind of all over the place. I've also done like my own workshops; I actually did a series of them kind of recently. But I've worked with a bunch of different organizations kind of also in that vein, like We Make Noise, which used to be Beats by Girls and stuff. And I used to teach production at Berkeley College of Music, so production and teaching is like a huge part of my ethos.

Ty: I love that. I feel like we're kind of entering a wave of 'no more gatekeeping' right, and it's like really cool to see you kind of at the forefront in that, you know, kind of teaching everything out, you know, you mentioned hip hop earlier. I did see in one of your interviews online in a podcast that you were in where you talked about like hip hop and jazz influences. Do you have any kind of artists that get you really inspired to create music?

Bad Snacks: Oh yeah, it's 100% I mean basically anybody off of Brainfeeder and anybody from like the Low-End Theory scene of Los Angeles which was a series that happened weekly at the Airliner so you know, producers like Flying Lotus and then Robert Glasper is an amazing pianist who actually does a fantastic video about how jazz is the mother of hip hop, and I highly recommend anybody watch that video, it's like very informative but it's also gorgeous, but yeah it's really for like hip hop meets jazz meets experimental music and that's so much of like the LA ethos that I just like thrive on.

Ty: Yeah! Personally I'm a huge lover of like bringing analog sounds into a non-analog space, right? I shoot film photography, I saw an artist earlier Dirtwire who used a mouth harp to play on stage and mix it into the music, I know you do violin, we've got a lot of music lovers like listening. Can you walk us through like your pedal setup that you plug into your violin?

Bad Snacks: Yeah, absolutely. So my violin it's an electric violin, so I have like a direct signal that goes into my pedal board, and then the first couple of pedals are actually audio to synthesizer processors. So it kind of it's almost a little bit the antithesis of bringing analog into a digital space; it's actually bringing analog to a digital space, like making it more digital, but it's cool because there are actual like real sounds inside the pedal that gets triggered. It turns into an actual functional synth, followed by things like drive, I have an EQ pedal which isn't like super exciting, and then I have like an echo reverb delay combo, but that's it's a very minimal setup actually it's only a few pedals.

Ty: In terms of like the violin music and the pedal boards, I really had a curiosity when I was listening to some of your music. Obviously you have like really beautiful violin compositions that go into the music itself. When you're creating a track does it start on the electronic side and then you feed the violin into that or do you start with like a violin piece and then build the electronic music around that?

Bad Snacks: Oh, it totally depends. It totally depends. It's usually the former, okay, um, you know I look at the violin as kind of like a ticket to liberation, that's like a way more poetic way of putting it than maybe what it actually is because it's basically, I just like jamming on stuff, I really love the electric violin up there to like let me do that, but as a producer sometimes I'll start with like string compositions and chop them up and do stuff like that, but oftentimes what happens is I'll make a you know an entire song that almost has no strings in it whatsoever. Then strings are the last thing that I add. It really it really depends.

Ty: I love a process so like it's really interesting to hear kind of like how musicians go through different processes. We read about an upcoming music competition you have with one of your songs can you tell us a little bit about that?

Bad Snacks: We actually just ran it. It was a remix competition for “iiwannabe” which is a song that came out on the Home Music EP. We had 95 submissions, 95 like just shy of 100 submissions of all genres like all genres welcome and then the winner is this producer named Wongii who's based out of New Zealand which is cool, SUPER interesting remix. Really well done. I mean, there's a reason why we chose it as the winner. But it's going to be coming out, I think, either end of October or November, but it's, like, it's a really cool track because it's, like, kind of, like, I call it, like, an estuary track of two very different bodies meeting where it's, like, half electronic but also half, like, thrashy indie rock. It's cool. It's cool.

Ty: Yeah, that's really awesome. I love, like, bringing it to the community again, right? That's not, no gatekeeping allowed, right?

Bad Snacks: No gatekeeping.

Ty: It's really awesome, so that's really cool to see. Do you have any new music videos or videos that you want to talk about coming out?

Bad Snacks: New music videos? No, I do not have any new music videos coming out at the moment. Right now, I'm very much working, like, I'm working on the next project. I'm in studio wrap. As the fall and winter approaches and the weather gets colder, I go into the studio. There will likely be a visual chapter to come. Sure. But at first, it's, like I'm just really focused on the music right now.

Ty: Keep an eye on it. Love it. All right, well, that's pretty much all the questions I had for you today. Where can they find you?

Bad Snacks: All over social media. I'm most active on Instagram, so it's Instagram, /lilbadsnacks, L-I-L BadSnacks. And then same handle across socials, like, Twitter, TikTok. All that good stuff. But Instagram is, like, where I'm the loudest.

Ty: Okay, gotcha, yeah. LilBadSnacks. Sounds good. And you have any upcoming shows in L.A.? Outside of Same Same?

Bad Snacks: Not in L.A. I'm playing in New Orleans in a couple weeks. In New Orleans. Yeah, but it's really exciting. But I think, really right now, it's just like after a pretty busy festival season, we're kind of winding down and getting back into the studio.

Ty: Sounds great. All right, well, thank you for joining us today! Excited to see your set. We'll have some photos and videos coming from that as well. This has been Jampak. Have a good day!

Interview shot and edited by Ty Fox and Evan Kelley