MUSIC .

Auf Wiedersehen, Good (DJ) Night

Sean O'Neal hits the road.


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Published: May 8, 2007

TAKING IT FROM THE STREETS: Sean O'Neal, CP's departing DJ Nights columnist, makes a field recording.

(CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

For the last seven-plus years (since February 2000, according to my records), Sean O'Neal has been your man with the night-club plan, condensing the city's myriad DJ nights into a cheat sheet of blurbs and freaky icons in our DJ Nights column. Over the last several years, however, O'Neal, a minimal techno hero in his own right (as Flowchart and then as Someone Else), has been spending more and more time overseas. With the release of his gorgeously chill and clicky Someone Else album Pen Caps and Colored Pencils (on the Foundsound label and composed of, well, manipulated found sounds), O'Neal is going abroad for good, starting in Berlin to hang with folks like techno super-god Richie Hawtin. Which means he'll relinquish his DJ Nights gig, if not his grip on our hearts. Since I introduced DJ Nights way back when, I've been charged with bidding it adieu.

City Paper: So, you're leaving Philly â€” like for good?

Sean O'Neal: Well, it might end up that way. Or it'll just be for a year or two. No idea, really. It's time to relocate because I'm much better off financially and mentally if I live in the area where I perform most and sell the most music. (I think somewhere near 80 percent of my music sells in Germany alone.)

CP: Talk about brain drain. Is there anything Philadelphia could have done to keep an enterprising minimal techno demigod like yourself here?

SO : Well, Tom++ and his Funkshun crew are doing quite well lately. Their events are becoming more and more like what I see abroad. But in order to keep me here, I guess the whole scene would need to grow so that it's something that I could live off as I can in Europe. But as long as we have a law where bars and clubs are forced to close at 2 a.m., there's hardly a peak time at Philly events, musically speaking. People who really have a passion for underground music seldom have a good time when they go out around here. Without a peak time, a club night is often simply about getting drunk as fast as you can for two hours while trying to find a hottie to take home with you.

CP: Explain this concept of peak time.

SO: Peak time is when the night peaks, energy-wise. If a party goes all night into the next day, peak time is around 4 or 5 a.m.

CP : So where are you going that's so much goddamn better than Philadelphia?

SO: I'll be living in Berlin at first. I am not sure if I will stay there. As far as minimal techno goes, Berlin is undeniably the world's mecca. ... But that's not exactly why I am choosing Berlin. In fact, I plan to live more on the outskirts of Berlin so I don't get too caught up in the party scene there. (It happens quite easily there.) The other thing is that a huge chunk of the city's population is jobless. There's not really much homelessness or crime there â€” just joblessness. The government bails them out so that they can still live and eat and appear to be living normal lives. And many of these people just party all week long. And this joblessness makes Berlin the cheapest major city to live in Western Europe. And moving is expensive.

CP: Your sound has always struck me as a bit more Euro than Philly anyway: the cool beats, the click-click-click, the deeper-than-deep feel.

SO: A German would argue that my music does not sound European at all. Well, maybe French. But not German. The only German thing about it is that it falls into the techno category. A German would say that my music sounds quite American. And maybe that's why I appeal to people over there. Europeans often tell me that my minimal techno is soulful and Philly-style to them. Of course, that sounds completely funny to me. In Philly terms, my music is not soulful at all. I suppose what they actually mean is "emotive" â€” maybe due to the heavy amount of vocal samples that I use â€” and the way I cut them up and arrange them.

CP: On the other hand, your music has always had more of a sense of humor â€” the punny song titles, the occasional scatological and sexual references â€” than a lot of stuff I hear in the minimal-techno/micro-house realm.

SO: I have always been a silly dork who talks about nonsense such as poop and buttholes â€” and I can't help it. I guess it's just a reflection of who I am â€” a goofball with a foot in his mouth and unable to grow up in certain ways. So when I pick up the microphone to sample my own voice, I usually can't avoid being goofy. But lately, the humor in my tracks is so submerged and disfigured with effects and processing that it is almost nonexistent in the final results. But at least I still know it's there. And after traveling the world, I now know that potty humor is universal. If someone farts â€” whether it's in Japan, Russia, Chile â€” it's fucking hilarious to at least a few people in the room. After all, you can't deny that it's a very funny sound if the fart comes out with some nice vibration. But of course I am digressing here. My album is not about potty humor at all. So please don't assume it is! I'm just making conversation here. About buttholes. Because they're funny.

CP: Back in the day, you introduced me to so many "electronica" subgenres (and their corresponding zapf dingbats). I know I always got a kick out "Happy Hardcore."

SO: Does anyone play happy hardcore anymore? I think a few people do. But that can really just fall under the "trance" category these days. Categorizing the music that DJs play into specific genres was always one thing that made DJ Nights hard for me. All genres are so loaded with subgenres and sub-subgenres. And it can be misleading to say that a DJ plays progressive house when he actually plays some kind of fusion of electro, house and techno. Or a DJ plays neo-soul, but he gets tagged with the "funk/soul" or "trip-hop" icon. Maybe I would have been better off to narrow down the genres to just a few simple ones.

CP: Any genres you just made up?

SO: Xonel Smart and I made up "experimentabooty." This would entail IDM-style clicks and cuts with some kind of gansta-style vocal chanting raunchy lyrics like, "Tear that pussy up, tear that pussy up."

CP: Make a genre up now.

SO: Minimal happy hardcore.

CP: A running joke in DJ Nights was for you to give yourself ridiculous nicknames for the nights you spun.

SO: Again, that was the potty humor that I could not resist. Stuff like Sean "Pretty Pee-Pee" O'Neal, Sean "Poop-In-The-Butt" O'Neal, Sean "Super Penis" O'Neal, Sean "Stick-It-In-The-Butt" O'Neal, Sean "Massive Boner" O'Neal. And actually, this is exactly how I came up with the name "Someone Else." Since I was also DJing quite often in Philly while doing DJ Nights at the same time, sometimes I would find myself listing my own name in three or four listings in just one issue. So I would list Someone Else as the DJ so that it didn't look like some kind of shameless self-promotion in the end.

CP: If you were going to spin a goodbye show, how would you write it up in DJ Nights?

SO: THE GOODBYE SHOW 1 !! ## $$ @ Poop Club w/ Someone Else, Miskate, Diss0nance, Fidget and Accidentally Gay Andrew, n/c. Minimal techno goodness from the ones that know.

(bhoward@citypaper.net)

Someone Else will perform a record-release party on Sat., May 12, 10 p.m. -2:30 a.m., $5, with Miskate, at Siam Lotus, 931 Spring Garden St., 215-769-2031, www.funkshun.us.