We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

90% Good Fox Dude

by Ixvo-Exvo

supported by
Fengir
Fengir thumbnail
j_mat
j_mat thumbnail
/
1.
Bloor 03:23
2.
Yonge 03:21
3.
Dundas 03:02
4.
Spadina 03:04

about

This is an EP I was inspired to make in memory of Perttu Häkkinen, AKA Randy Barracuda, whose life has ended way too soon.

...

As I've just relocated to Toronto from the UK, the only thing available to me here to produce music with is my budget phone. So in the skweee spirit of "skweeezing out" sounds from whatever you have to hand, here we go, 4 tracks of phone-funk made with a $3 app. Normally I like to imagine my music played loud in a club but to he honest these tracks probably sound best via the tinny phone speaker.

...

I guess it isn't until someone is gone that you realise how important they are to you. Perttu Häkkinen started off as an artist I admired from a distance (as part of Imatran Voima, and of course as Randy B), but turned into someone that I really clicked with as a person, just a great guy who brought such warmth, insight, and passion into every interaction.

As the saying should go: "Never meet your idols.... except if they're Randy Barracuda".

Of course, with that comes the proviso that every real person has multiple dimensions. After one controversial incident, a friend of a friend on Facebook commented that Perttu was "90% good fox dude,10% transgressiivinen virtual wolf" (via wonky auto-translation). Well, frankly that sounds awesome, and who wouldn't want to be "90% good fox dude"?

...

I want to say thanks especially for the skweee, the music and the scene, of which Perttu was so influential in creating.

I've always enjoyed writing music but for years all I did was either try and imitate whoever I dug at that point (really failing to get even close to respectable pastiche) or aimlessly noodle away with a million half-formed ideas. (A common story I'm sure). Honestly, I loved music, I loved writing music, but I had nothing to say.

It wasn't until I watched the "We Call It Skweee" documentary at the Sonar festival (in 2009) that I really understood what I wanted to do, how to find my groove, to find my voice. (Yes, even though I was at Sonar the year before I had actually been elsewhere and missed the skweee showcase, pretty sad about that, but didn't even know what skweee was at that point).

As I see it, skweee is somewhat unique as a genre in that it isn't really about a certain palette of sounds so much as unleashing an intuitive, immediate musicality. Just to be in front of a keyboard, feel your way around the keys and navigate whatever strange melody emerges. This is a process that really works for me - liberation, action and connection, everything music should be.

Despite making some nominally skweee tracks I don't think I really sounded that skweee-y because whatever melody is in my heart is not really that funky compared to the deep funk of the skweee originals. A skweee champion like Perttu could easily have taken a gatekeeper role (as happens in many other scenes) and ruled by my efforts as inauthentic, insufficiently skweee-y for recognition. But that wasn't how he operated, and in fact my proudest moment was hearing him spinning one of my tracks on Finnish national radio, a moment which really inspired me to continue to develop my sound.

...

IV-B-001

credits

released August 31, 2018

Cover art by me (also drawn on my phone!)

license

tags

about

Ix-Vo-Stx-Vo image

Ix-Vo-Stx-Vo London, UK

the sound of
"http://huose.house"

| body music
| ideology of dance
| finding a voice
| progress via failure
| making spaces
| collaborate in joy

---

footnote to a footnote in an ever fractured scene / only ever part of a bigger machine / I'll never be a star, just an image on a screen / but as long as we can party, I'll be living the dream.

--- ... more

contact / help

Contact Ix-Vo-Stx-Vo

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this album or account

If you like 90% Good Fox Dude, you may also like:

Bandcamp Daily  your guide to the world of Bandcamp

On Bandcamp Radio

Featuring Riley Pinkerton (aka The Rat Queen) from the theatrical NYC rockers, Castle Rat.
listen now