Interview with DJ Kilmore of Incubus at the Astoria Friday 28th April 2000
So you're the new guy....
Well almost new, almost two and a half years old now, the band has been together for nine years now and they've had a DJ for five years in total. They got rid of the DJ before me for various reasons mainly not seeing eye to eye on various things, so they got me. I was hijacked from three awful bands in LA that I was trying to work with and Incubus found out that I had experience with bands and they tried me out on a Saturday and we left on tour on Tuesday for three months! My lifestyle just changed, like in three days, from being at home just working y'know.... I worked at a clothing store, on a couple of film shoots and then I find myself in a rock band touring the country, it was pretty cool

Were the other bands rock based?
Yeah one of the bands were sorta like RATM and the other two, one was funk and one was like rock and hip hop, not like rap metal like classic rock with hip hop as well, it was interesting. I think all those bands fell apart after my sudden exit

What music do you listen to?
I just like music so I listen to everything, hip hop obviously, you can't learn turntable-ist tricks without being in the DJ culture, hip hop is where you learn the battle tricks, house DJ's are not really tuntable-ists. That's what I consider myself, not a DJ, a turntable-ist because I'm making music out of the turntable which is different than mixing y'know and I love to mix tunes too, reggae, house, drum n bass, I like dance hall a lot too but it's different. I also listen to the Doors, Zeppelin and Sade is in my CD player right now, all types of stuff as long as it's good I'll listen to it

How long have you been DJing then?
Since 1986 thirteen fourteen years ago

Ever want to play an instrument instead?
No, I totally played instruments too, I learned how to read music playing the trumpet when I was growing up and I can play the piano real well. Now I'm learning to play all this bands instruments, I'm pretty good at the drums because I've got real good rhythm and I'm getting better at the bass, the guitar is sorta difficult for me because I don't have the interest in it. I got really into learning the bass, but I think if you're going to learn to write music you should understand all the instruments parts y'know

Soon you can stand in for any member of the band that falls over, now there's a claim
Lot more years of practice yet I think......

So what did you start off DJing?
All kinds, I was a B-Boy and I wore Adidas and Kangols and break danced and all that. I was totally into that scene and I saw Jazzy Jeff DJing a house party when I was like twelve and I thought that's what I want to do, there wasn't a question in my mind, I was like - I want to be like that guy, so then I really started DJing. I started when I was fifteen actually spinning in Clubs I started at this under twenty one dance club, no alcohol or nothing, and I spun there for three years, real free style music and a lot of high energy stuff at that time like Lisa Lisa and the Cult Jam, Janet Jackson all that kinda stuff, then I moved to DC, originally I'm from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a little town just outside called Dillsburg, then I went to DC and started spinning in all kinds of clubs, y'know house clubs, hip hop and they have this music called go-go music only in DC, a lot of drums like with a real swing beat, and then I moved too LA in '96 to go to college. For two years I DJ'd a lot of clubs, I mean it's a good way to make a living, I mean you would know it's a good way to pay the rent, and then in '98 I joined Incubus

How long did the new record take to record because you're touring schedule looks like it's never stopped.....
We stopped touring in March last year and wrote the record all summer long so it took a while, eight months to write it, record it and mix it and then we all got spoiled from being home for a while and then they threw us back on the road and here we are

You were out with System of a Down
Snowcore tour yeah, that was great and Puya and Mr Bungle, I was just amazed by Mr Bungle, I watched them every single night, we were out with Primus before that and I felt the same way about them as when I was watching Mr Bungle, they were amazing musicians and really cool people too.......Touring.....We leave the UK tonight for Europe till mid May and then we get like a whole week off!! Only because we have to ship our equipment so we have to wait for that, it takes longer to ship that home than to fly us and then we're out with 311 and then straight onto the Oz fest so we're booked into the fall but it'll be fun

What's your favourite song off this album
The Warmth it just puts me in a good mood

How d' you pick what records to be playing with in the background like The Warmth has the whales on .....
Yeah it's like when you're DJing and mixing, you listen for beats and you're always thinking - oh that'd go well next to some other track. I hear the guitar lines and while the band play, I go through all my records and I'll just be there listening for stuff and see what sounds good....... I have a pretty extensive record collection I've been collecting for fifteen years now, I've got like quite a library to choose from, but most of the sounds on this album actually came from us. Mikey and I sat around for a while and just had a microphone and a DAT machine and we started making noises. We had a couple of keyboards, old analogue keyboards, a voice transformer so's you could plug a microphone in and mess your own voice up, we'd run the mic. through the guitar pedals and drop stuff, bang on fire extinguishers, whatever and then we pressed all those sounds up on vinyl. It was great fun to do and that's a lot of what we used on the album and I still use!

Thank you