Radio.com Interview with Mike (Feb 25, 2020)

[LPLStaff]

Mike did an interview with Kevan Kenney from Radio.com on February 25th and we're here to recap it for you! Check out the full 25 minute video here.
 

- Mike listens to new music by jumping on streaming platforms and checking out new releases, but also follows playlists of artists that typically have around 5,000 followers~ who are releasing new music. 

 

- He's talked to Brevin Kim about collaborating; he found them on Pigeons & Planes which he follows. Jacob, the founder of P&P is really involved with Brevin Kim but didn't want to really bother Mike about them but Mike wanted to talk to them.

 

- When a new collaborator/artist is a super big fan of LP, it's an uncomfortable situation for Mike. He's had sessions where the artists can't get over who he is and it's weird. Sometimes the artists are able to get over it, but sometimes they can't.

 

- He has been in a phase of "research and development." The entire afternoon after he streams on Twitch is composed of writing new songs (for himself, or with someone else). "I've got a couple of other things I'm not really ready to talk about yet."

 

- "The idea of just going out there with one song and knowing that if this song does well, if the fans like it, I've got other songs that I can start to mold into an album. I've got other things and ideas that I can develop to follow it up with. And I'm ready to go regardless. It's a matter of keeping your tools sharp. I'm in here every day, everything is always sharp."

 

- Mike says he is like a "creative director" of the Hybrid Theory 20 remix project. The label is who pitched the idea to him but he wasn't big on the project until artists like 100 gecs started getting tossed around. He thought at first that just remixing more Hybrid Theory songs was not interesting since the band had already done Reanimation. "We are not treading familiar territory at all by doing a 100 gecs remix." He said, "We have a few things. It's not fully formed yet, but there is some other stuff coming together." And finally about 'Crawling' remix: "In terms of the energy of the song, we'll try to go small. Delicate and introverted. I imagine it with a female singer. We've never really done that, so we'll see what happens."

 

- "The support on 'Happy Endings' has been spectacular. I had written it with a couple of friends, one of them Upsahl. It wasn't like we made it and said, "Let's put this out!" We made it and it just sat on a hard drive. A little while later a couple of other people had heard it and they were like, "Yo, what is that song? It's so good." And I was like, "Oh! I forgot about that song." And then it ended up being other people who were like, "Put out this song." Originally Iann was not on it, it was Sam and Pete." Upsahl was introduced to Mike by Sam and Pete since they had been writing with Upsahl already. Someone else had already mentioned Upsahl to Mike around that time so he was very interested in getting a collaboration going.