Power Player #31: Dream Fox

Michael ‘Pugbath’ Snarzyk & Josh ‘Turbo Tiger’ Cameron are two parts of Dream Fox. They roxxed and fuxxed BRKfest into submission. Driving lo-fi leads and ass-shakery bass, they had us mesmerised in rhythm and cock-shaking awe. Nobody puts baby in the corner. Unless baby is us, cowering. The guys made time for us and talked to us about their style, flare and musical roots. Lock up your Aunts.

So what part of the US do you hail from?

Josh: I’m from a suburb right out of St. Louis Missouri called, O’fallon.

What’s the Chiptune scene like around there? Do you get to play many shows?

Josh: The chiptune scene around here is super small, almost non-existent. When I first met Mike, he was the only other person I knew in real life that knew about chiptunes, but there are also a handful of other great artists around here (Shitbird, Overthink). We’ve played several shows around here, and we usually get pretty good feedback because not many people around here know what chiptunes are and they’re just excited to see us using gameboys and dressing funny.

Mike: We’ve played around 30 shows in the last two years, and have had a lot better luck playing with bands and DJs as opposed to chiptune artists. Like Josh said, there isn’t really a chip ‘scene’, but I think we’ve kind of used that to our advantage.

How did the both of you get into Chiptune?

Mike: I was really into circuit bending around 2006, and started seeing posts in circuit bending forums about gameboy modifications and started to really get into it. I was just really bad at saving money and it took me a couple years to buy an lsdj cart.

Josh: I got into chiptunes back in 2007 when I was a senior in high school. One day I came across Sabrepulse’s myspace page. I’d always loved like video game music from classic games, but I had never heard of anyone writing their own songs on a gameboy. My mind was blown, I fell in love and a few months later purchases my first LSDJ cart.

You perform on LSDJ and DS, do you swap it up or do you have assigned roles?

Mike: It really just depends on the song, but for the most part we use DS10 for the Drums and bass and LSDJ for leads… But it just depends on where the idea stems from.

You’re both bassists and play in different bands. What’s the appeal of playing outside of a traditional band? Does being bassists effect the
way you guys write?

Josh: I’ve been playing bass since 2004. I’ve always been in and out of bands since high school. Gameboys were always something that seemed fun. Like a project that doesn’t involve as much time or money, but is still just as rewarding. I wouldn’t say being a bassist effects the way I write per se but it definitely doesn’t hurt. I just write beats that I think ladies will shake their asses too.

How do you usually write tracks together? What’s the process?

Mike: It really changes from song to song…

Josh: Basically whoever comes up with an idea the other person usually finishes it. So like if I come up with a beat on DS and Mike likes it, I’ll send it to him and he’ll shit out this whole song and then i’ll sprinkle some LSDJ on top of what he’s done. It’s kind of like that.

Mike: Yeah, there are a couple that we’ve actually written together, like, in the same room jamming together… But, with the tediousness of electronic music, it’s more of a back-and-forth, by-yourself-in-your-mom’s-basement type of process. Sometimes we’ll trade cartridges and keep building on each other’s ideas, sometimes one of us will just write a complete song.

Your outfits at BRK were pretty outrageous. One lady fainted and a fight broke out over some of the garments in the car park afterwards. Where do you obtain your threads?

Josh: A lady fainted?! Damn.

Mike: Are you serious? I’m glad I didn’t just come out with my garbage in a ‘Crown Royal’ Sack.

Josh: Most of our clothes we get from 1981. My uncle has this pretty sweet time machine that we’ll usually hit up a couple nights before a show. My boy Chad at the Jc Penny that used to be up the street usually hooks it up pretty good.

Mike: Yeah… And I go to a lot of thrift stores, too.

You were playing as The Lame Boyz for two years. What prompted the moniker change?

Mike: Oh shit…. I just really didn’t like that name.

Josh: Basically haters, Mike being one of them. When we went with the name I didn’t know about Low-Gain or Lame Boy or anything. I just thought it was clever. Since many people around here don’t know about chiptunes, they also thought it was clever, so even after I found out I was still set on keeping the name.

Mike: I disliked that name so much that I emailed Low-Gain with secret hopes that he’d say something like,”Fuck you turds, I AM LAMEBOY! Change your names”, but that didn’t happen… He was really cool, and, basically said that he thought it was a pretty dumb name and didn’t care if we used it.

Josh: So we kept it. Then all summer last summer we tried to think of new names.. We couldn’t come up with anything that we both liked. So we decided to just keep The Lame Boyz. One day I just absentmindedly shit “Man, I bet if we were called something like Dream Fox or something people would respect us.” out of my mouth. We were both really into it… The rest is history.

Have you got any gigs lined up for Dream Fox (and your bands) that we should know about?

Mike: Actually, this is the first time in a while that we don’t really have anything lined up… It’s pretty nice. We do have one thing set up in the north east in November, but I don’t know if we’re supposed to talk about it or not.

What would you guys do if you inherited a Pizzeria from a lost uncle?

Josh: Eat all the food in in there until it was gone… Then I guess hit up my aunt and see if she would be down to get weird in the back

Mike: I’ve been in the pizza industry on-and-off for like 12 years, so I’d really like to try out some of these experiments I have in my head… And then, I’d probably get weird with Josh’s Aunt in the back.

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Pop on over to their Facebook page and show some love. You can also check out Poon Goon on disk 3 of the noichan’s White Compilation. There’s a few oldies but goodies at their Soundcloud page.

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