Lea Luna: Hey, Dirt Monkey! How’s life out in Colorado? Excited
for your set at Beta this weekend?
Dirt Monkey: Life is great! Very excited for this weekend at Beta,
sounds like all the homies are gonna show up so the crowd will be
ideal. I’ve never put an album out on my own, so this is a big deal
for me to have the release party at such an awesome place with
all my friends.
Lea Luna: Your new album Chroma is dope! How long have you
been working on it?
Dirt Monkey: Why, thank you. I’ve been working on it off and on
for the last year and a half. It wasn’t until the end of last year that
I actually decided to put all these songs together as an album.
It’s been countless hours of work though, so it feels good to be
wrapping it up finally and releasing it to the public. It’s kinda nice
getting to the point of no return where you can’t make any more
tweaks on your art, ya know?
Lea Luna: There are all kinds of sounds and tempos on this
album. Would all these songs fit into your typical DJ set? What
would you self-proclaim is your style or genre?
Dirt Monkey: Yeah, this album is quite eclectic. For me, putting
this out is more of a statement to the EDM world that it’s ok to
make different styles of music, and an artist shouldn’t just have to
release banger after banger to win the hearts of their fans. With
that being said, I’m doing this with the hope of redefining what my
brand is all about, both with the music and the artwork attached to
it. So some of this stuff wouldn’t fit into my sets currently, but I will
slowly be changing my sets to accommodate the more trippy and
chill stuff.
Lea Luna: Tell us about your new label, Kairos Audio and how
that’s going with Jantsen.
Dirt Monkey: We started Kairos Audio a few years ago, and it feels
good to be on our own program and get to release whatever we
want, whenever we want. Between Jan and I, the quality control
is pretty high, so it’s been cool to see our catalog take shape. At
this point, we are not really seeking new artists out, mainly just
releasing our stuff, but in the next year it will begin to take a bit
of a new direction. I won’t divulge too much info here, but we are
starting a new music project together as a new name and brand,
so Kairos Audio will be heading in that direction as well.
Lea Luna: What do you do when you’re not on the music grind?
Any hobbies? Guilty pleasures?
Dirt Monkey: Well, lately I’ve been 100% on the grind, but I also
work part time as a route setter at a rock climbing gym in Boulder,
and climb in my spare time. I’m also recently married to the
woman of my dreams, so I spend all my free time doing awesome
and ridiculous things with her.
Lea Luna: Give us some names and details about the other
collaborators on Chroma. Where’d you find them?
Dirt Monkey: The Wolfe, my collab buddy on “Combination Style”
is my good friend, Connor who used to go by Filthy Disco. He’s
starting this new alias up making really dope night bass kinda
stuff. Brian aka Seraiah kindly hit me up and sent me some clips
of him messing around with some scratch records, which I then
chopped up and used with “Battlestar Dirtlactica.” Clinton Sly is
on “Work It” and we have worked together on numerous records. I
one hundred percent had to have him on the album in some way,
and he absolutely crushed it on that song. Harvey J, who is the
rapper on “Super Saiyan” is also the Facebook/internet sensation
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