Interview by SUS1ER
London born ENDGAME is known for his dystopian and often industrial renditions of music from genres such as reggaeton, dancehall, grime and club. Involved in the creation of the now defunct Bala Club, ENDGAME has now begun a new chapter spearheading the label Precious Metals.
ENDGAME has recently released an 11 track album Surrender featuring his own vocals and collaborations from close friends. Surrender is the third release from Precious Metals and sets the bar high for the genres that he has refurbished.
ENDGAME [IG endgame_______] has joined #CO
<CO>
Where are you from?
<ENDGAME>
I’m from the suburbs of London originally, and was around London until I moved to Berlin just over a year ago.
<CO>
It seems like Berlin is like this final destination for a lot of people.
<ENDGAME>
The cool thing about Berlin is that it’s that you get what you pay for. So, whereas in London, you can be paying a lot of money for nothing, here, if you’re paying a medium amount of money, you get a pretty sick yard.
<CO>
Would you say that growing up in London had any impact on your art? Like the industrial sound that you sort of go with a lot of the time?
<ENDGAME>
Yeah, I think weirdly, music from London and also British in general often has an intense sense of melancholy, it’s evident in a lot of music, maybe it’s something to do with a lot of rain and darkness, and a more pessimistic outlook. But it’s different from just straightforwardly doomy, because it’s almost like a hopeful sadness.
<CO>
Your music is very forward thinking and very much so in its own realm. Did the internet play any part in this?
<ENDGAME>
Yes, and no. I think the thing is, I feel my inspiration to make music come from all the people I was hanging out with, outside of the internet really. Like, my friend, Felix Lee started at this club night “Endless“, and that’s kind of where I met a lot of people that I ended up making music with, and it was like, we just go there pretty much every week, and hang out and share music ideas and DJ stuff. And so I feel like that’s where I got most of my inspiration and also just excitement for wanting to make music. But then on the other side, just in terms of absorbing music, a lot of that does come from the internet, even back towards when LimeWire was a thing, and I’d just be getting really low quality grime rips and stuff. Like that was all definitely an inspiration. But even to the community that definitely came kind of IRL more than online.
<CO>
When you started making music, how would you say your sound was then compared to now? Has there been some sort of natural progression from then to now?
<ENDGAME>
The thing is, I feel like with music, you have an idea and then depending on what tools you have available, and your level of expertise is what comes out. And sometimes not having any equipment and any expertise makes very interesting music. I think that’s the main difference, that over the years I have maybe acquired more technique and better equipment. I don’t know, the focus hasn’t changed all that much. But the main difference is the technique and what I have available to use.
<CO>
So you would say that the production value has increased?
<ENDGAME>
Yeah, and it’s tricky, because I think, obviously, the more you learn, the more temptation there is just to add stuff. And actually, you know, sometimes what is good, is something very stripped back and I think when I listen back to stuff I originally first made, like my first EP, some of the tracks are technically terribly mixed. And there’s also no real progression in the songs. They’re just, very formulaic. But then there’s a rawness that I really like, that’s quite hard to get back. It’s quite hard to imitate that naivety.
<CO>
The technical aspect of creating music such as mixing and mastering can definitely have an effect on what you create too.
<ENDGAME>
Yeah definitely, I was always a bit anxious about knowing too much technical stuff because of that. But then as I’ve progressed, I feel like they’re just rules that are there for reference, they’re not necessarily set in stone. You can mess around with what you’re supposed to do with whatever EQs or that stuff. A reference I always use is, if you listen to Darkthrone, the way that it’s mixed is almost like paper thin. The drums sound like they’re bits of paper being tapped. But that’s the style, and that’s what makes it good. You know, if it had been produced, like a hip hop record, it would sound like metalcore, and that would completely defeat the point of what they were trying to do. So I think it is actually so much more to do with what you’re trying to achieve musically, than what is technically right or wrong.
<CO>
You touched on earlier about how you used to go to events with your friends to discuss music. From that, how are things such as Bala Club and Precious Metals born?
<ENDGAME>
So Precious Metals came basically, kind of a backstory but I used to work in a clothing shop in Central London around 2006 or 2007, and one of the guys that worked in the online department was Femi Adeyemi who started NTS. When he was going to start NTS, he was like, “oh, you know, if you want to do a show”, because I was kind of DJing, but at the time, I wasn’t really producing, and then he gave me a slot, like from the very beginning. And, basically, I had this show, then I had to come up with a DJ name, then I had to come up with a name for the show. Precious Metals and Endgame came out of having this show.
Meeting Kami (Kamixlo) and Katie (Katie Vick), and doing Bala Club, was a bit later. That was through Felix Lee, he had a night called Endless, which was in Brixton. It was just, as I was saying, like a community vibe. It wasn’t really a club night in that traditional sense. It wasn’t really a club, it was just like the back of a restaurant. So it was only really friends of friends going, maybe 50 or 100 people max, and everyone kind of knew each other, but Felix kind of curated it in a way so that he introduced a lot of people that maybe hadn’t met before. I’m not sure we were even working with Kami and Katie at this point, but he invited them and we all started hanging out and kind of shared music ideas and stuff like that. But yeah, it was very organic. I guess also with my radio show, because I was given this slot without really having any kind of status as a DJ, I was able to just bring in people that at that point had no other way of exposure. You know, they hadn’t really blown up on SoundCloud or anything. So it was all just kind of quite new, and so I just always used my radio show as a way to showcase what I saw happening around where there wasn’t really much attention on it or anything. It was quite a nice time in a way because there was very pure creative energy. I feel like the idea of success back then just seemed very different. It kind of seemed like what we were doing was kind of like an anti-club club, because none of us really liked going to clubs that much, because they were pretty dry, to be honest. Mostly, it was just one genre. Having a spot where we could play like, whatever, like we had stuff from SoundCloud, and Chief Keef and stuff like this was like, that’s what we wanted, and then we kind of modelled everything after that. Bala Club came out of that like about two or three years after that, and then kind of went from there.
<CO>
How about meeting artists that you continue to collaborate with, like Organ Tapes or Yayoyanoh?
<ENDGAME>
I met Organ Tapes when I used to work in a shop, like a bookshop and kind of gallery space, and he came in with his friend, and he was trying to sell a zine for the bookshop. And then he was like “oh, I make music as well”, he kind of recognised me, I think, from NTS and he was like, “here’s a CD.” And I listened to it and I was like, really, really into it. I was just curious as to how he was just using vocal samples, and then I contacted him and I was like, “it’s cool but, where are the vocal samples from?” He was like, “no, it’s all my own voice.” It was presented in a way where it was like the producer, but actually, Tim [Organ Tapes] is the most insane vocalist, and ever since then, I’ve just always been his biggest fan. And then, Yayoyanoh, he came up to me at one of the Endless parties, and was chatting about his music and stuff, and I was like, cool. Usually, I don’t know, sometimes when that happens, I don’t always have the highest expectation, and I went home to listen to it and I was just completely blown away straight away. I was like, “fuck, this is amazing.” Then we just became good friends, and actually, the funny thing is with Yayoyanoh is that still to this day, not many people know that his instrumentals are unbelievably good. Like, he’s one of the best producers, but he’s never really released them, and that’s how I got to know him really, through his production. It was only maybe a year or so after that he started doing vocals. But yeah, definitely a legendary producer that’s not really ever released instrumentals properly.
That was kind of a nice thing at the time, even though there was an online community in London, there weren’t that many people doing it. So the few people that were doing kind of interesting club stuff kind of just instantly became friends. It was just very niche.
<CO>
Yeah, you've got to sort of make your own path.
<ENDGAME>
The thing with London is like the history of dance music and stuff is very heavy there. So I feel club nights up until what Felix was doing, unless they were like art school parties, they were generally very, very genre led, so you’d go to like a grime night, a dubstep night, a jungle night and it was just that all night. That’s all you’ve got, and it was very rigid. I think that that never made sense to me or most of my friends because we were just like, that was not what we listened to when we were at home. We don’t just want to listen to like – obviously there are good grime instrumentals, but an entire night of grime instrumentals is so boring. You need something to switch up the energy.
It’s a tough one, because the thing is like, I think for a lot of people that go to clubs, it’s like the music isn’t maybe as important as the experience about going to the club and having fun and stuff. Whereas I think with the angle we are coming from, we are all just massive music nerds and we loved a lot of different stuff. If we went out to a club, and just heard one thing, we would all just be so bored. You know, I feel like the actual experience of going to a club isn’t the most important bit. The social aspect is good, but the real thing is hearing shit that excites you, and then you want to go home and make music.
<CO>
You said that you started Precious Metals as an NTS show. How was the progression towards it becoming a label? Was that a recent thing?
<ENDGAME>
Yeah, that is a recent thing. Basically, I had the idea for a long time, but I didn’t want to do it while still doing Bala Club because I kind of felt like Bala Club is already representing the music that I would want to release anyway. So then it only really made sense to fully do it as a label once Bala Club was kind of finished as a project. Then I started to take it a bit more seriously. I wanted to try it on a very limited budget and have it as not just an online thing, and have physical records and stuff. I’m trying to establish it a bit. It’s definitely a continuation of the radio show, in terms of selection and everything is the same energy.
<CO>
So it acts sort like a platform for artists that you enjoy?
<ENDGAME>
Yeah, definitely, and also to just showcase artists that I feel maybe haven’t had an opportunity otherwise. Also to try, as much as I can, to reflect the kind of underground music in London, and underground music that is connected to a lot of different things rather than it just being any one thing.
<CO>
Would you like to speak a bit about Surrender, and how the project came to fruition?
<ENDGAME>
Yeah, so I guess it’s been maybe a couple of years in the process. I kind of had this period where I had written a lot of instrumental tracks, and I was happy with them. Then I was trying to work out how to release it, and hadn’t started the label at this point, so I was still kind of figuring it out. At that time, I was living in Canada, and was doing a lot of recording with Ayub (Yayoyanoh), who was also living there. Then after one of our sessions, I had the project file open and was kind of messing around with recording my own vocals. Then, I don’t know, just having that project open, suddenly, a lot of ideas came, and then a lot of the lyrics came quite quickly. With writing instrumental stuff, I’ve always had a very clear idea of what I like, and with the vocal stuff, it was the same energy. I definitely had a very clear idea of what I wanted to say, and what the lyrics are about, and how the vocals are recorded and stuff. So yeah, it kind of came at two different points, but they are definitely connected. It’s the same energy, just two different versions of it.
<CO>
Is record recording vocals something you've been wanting to do before? Or was it more of a spur of the moment kind of thing?
<ENDGAME>
It wasn’t something that I was looking for an opportunity to do. But then again, I’ve always liked writing lyrics and that kind of thing anyway, the kind of poetic narratives to these kinds of things. I guess once I allowed myself to do it, it all just kind of made sense, and I didn’t really question it again if you know what I mean. If I felt like I didn’t have anything to say when it came to lyrics, I probably wouldn’t have done it. I think it’s because I had a very clear idea. Whenever I write lyrics, I have a very clear vision of the atmosphere and the mood I want to create. It just came very naturally in the way that writing lyrics to me is like, you know, you might switch out a word in the same way you might switch out like a hi hat or something. You’re just trying to choose the right words which represent the right kind of mood. When I was younger, I’d be trying to rap and stuff. So I guess I’ve always had it in the back of my mind. I knew one day, I was gonna bring back lyrics to my music. It was definitely a very intuitive thing. It wasn’t very planned.
<CO>
How would you say that creating art helps you?
<ENDGAME>
It’s definitely a type of therapy. It allows me to release, and be a version of myself that I can find difficult to access otherwise. Even more so with the vocal tracks, I feel able to express my emotions and thoughts in way that might be too painful otherwise.
<CO>
Are there any artists that you're listening to currently that you want to give a shoutout to?
<ENDGAME>
Well, I mean, Kamixlo’s last record (Cicatriz) was a masterpiece, so been rinsing that. Yayoyanoh obviously, his EP Pariah was really sick. Organ Tapes’ album last year (Hunger In Me Living) is next level. I’ve also been listening to an artist called StressMusik who’s really sick. I think he’s originally from Portugal, but moved to London. His music is kind of a mix between kuduro and drill, a hybrid. I’m really excited about that. Nammy Wams as has produced some amazing stuff that I’ve been listening to a lot. Also Zini’s last EP (Jesus Wept) is unreal, and Lauren Duffus is a wicked new artist I’m excited about. Forthcoming projects from Palmistry and Egon Elliut are amazing also.
<CO>
What would you say the future is for Endgame at this point in time? What is the endgame for Endgame?
<ENDGAME>
I used to think of it as like an endpoint in music, but I’m less nihilistic now, I just want to try to push things forward as much as I can, that’s always the motive. I don’t want to just stick to one style for too long and just overdo it. I want to continue this trajectory of experimentation and exploration. I’ve got a couple of collaborations I’ve been working on, and a solo project as well. Also for the label there are a lot of exciting things coming.
