INTERVIEWS
This Raver Has Become an EDM Darling—Because of His Stank Face
Fortune favors the bold in the weird and wonderful world of electronic dance music. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Nick Wise captured the hearts of the EDM community when he went viral for—well, just being himself. Thanks to a serendipitous appearance on a livestream, Wise, a dubstep fanatic who also produces music under the moniker Biotechnick, has become a darling of the bass music festival scene. One of the constants of these fests are the battalions of head-bangers maniacally riding the rails at any given stage—but they quake just a little bit harder when Wise is there. If you attend Lost Lands, Bass Canyon or practically any other major dubstep festival, odds are you’ll see an afro whipping like a dandelion petal in a hurricane. That’s Wise, w...
“No Rules”: Anfisa Letyago Reveals the Muses and Methods That Skyrocketed Her to Techno Stardom
She’s been dubbed the “new generation” by Carl Cox. Tapped for remixes by the likes of Stephan Bodzin and Alan Fitzpatrick. Streamed nearly 800,000 times via her Cercle performance in Malta. Simply put, Anfisa Letyago is a force to be reckoned with. And, according to an exclusive interview with EDM.com, she’s running entirely on instinct. “I have no rules. I simply follow my instinct and try to stay true to my natural female evolution,” the Class of 2022 inductee and N:S:DA labelhead explained. “I need to feel free to express myself at best.” It’s a doctrine that has taken the techno scene by storm, marked by a spellbinding sound both hard and soft, escapist and in the moment. Likely, this unique point of view was shape...
Shining Vale Creators Sharon Horgan and Jeff Astrof on Combining Horror and Comedy In a Whole New Way
The new Starz series Shining Vale opens with some bold decrees: that women are roughly twice as likely as men to suffer from depression, that women are also twice as likely to be possessed by a demon, and that the symptoms of depression and possession are pretty much the same. Thus begins Sharon Horgan and Jeff Astrof’s tale of Pat, a troubled writer (Courteney Cox) moving with her family to a massive — and potentially haunted — new house in Connecticut, in search of a new start that may or may not get complicated by a ghostly presence lurking in the walls. The series features an unconventional blend of horror and comedy, what Horgan (the critically lauded co-creator of nuanced relationship dramedies like Divorce and Catastrophe) has dubbed a “shit-com.” When speaking with Consequence abou...
Aisha Tyler on Getting to Join The Boys Universe With Her Diabolical Animated Short
Despite a long career as a voice actress, Aisha Tyler swears that she didn’t write one of the lead roles in her animated short for The Boys for herself. Yet she’s flawless casting as Nubia, one of the two superheroes featured in “Nubian vs Nubian,” the sixth short in the new animated anthology designed to keep The Boys fans happy until Season 3 premieres this June. All of the shorts in The Boys Presents: Diabolical take on unique aspects of life in this surreal universe overseen by executive producer Eric Kripke, utilizing different animation styles and some star-studded casts. In “Nubian vs Nubian,” Don Cheadle voices Nubian Prince, a superhero whose initial connection with fellow supe Nubia (Tyler) leads to marriage and a young daughter… and also the sorts of marriage issues that affect ...
Sebastian Stan Is a One-Man Mötley Crüe
Mötley Crüe ruled the metal scene in the late ‘80s, going on to sell over 100 million records. However, by the time Sebastian Stan was the right age to appreciate the glam band, the metal heyday had passed. “Unfortunately, I didn’t really know Mötley Crüe when I was growing up,” Stan says, “because when I was in high school, it was already a grunge world.” But that didn’t stop the Romanian-born actor from discovering the band later, telling SPIN, “I personally gravitate towards the ’80s.” So, despite not growing up on the iconic group, he eventually came to love them. Eventually becoming intimately familiar with one of the band members by playing him on TV. Stan, 39, is currently garnering praise for his portrayal of Crüe drummer Tommy Lee in the Hulu drama Pam and Tommy, a fictionalized r...
Band of Horses’ Ben Bridwell Isn’t Convinced Things Are Great, But He’s Trying
Ben Bridwell is just waking up from a nap between interviews. Five years after his band’s last album — a span that felt even longer due to the pandemic — the Band of Horses frontman is back on the press circuit, and it’s tiring. If fielding repetitious questions from journalists weren’t wearying enough, the topics up for discussion have been weighing on Bridwell for years. Written pre-COVID, the stories on Band of Horses’ new record, Things Are Great, are about depression, darkness, and divorce. Singing those songs live is something he looks forward to as meditative (“It’ll probably be more joyful than reflective on what the story is,” he tells Consequence. “It’s more like paying attention to the goddamn chords and shit”), but speaking about them is something else entirely. “I had a Z...
Rhys Darby on Finally Playing the Lead and Collaborating With Taika Waititi Again: “We Have Kindred Spirits”
At the end of Consequence‘s phone interview with Our Flag Means Death star Rhys Darby, the veteran comedy actor felt the need to apologize. “Sorry for rambling on — I’ve had two coffees and you’re the first person I’ve spoken to today,” he said, before adding, “I’m a lead actor now, I’m going to do way more talking!” This is Darby’s time to shine, as after decades of appearing in projects like the Jumanji films and his iconic role as Murray in Flight of the Conchords, he’s for the first time ever number one on the call sheet for a TV show. Specifically, Darby stars the HBO Max period comedy about real-life historical figure Stebe Bonnet, who abandoned his family in 1717 to become a pirate, assembling an eclectic crew on board his well-appointed ship for one of the weirder mid-life crises o...
Nostalgia Is Not Gang of Four’s Passion
Being the lead singer of a strident rock band has virtues both public and personal. In his role as frontman for the perpetually influential post-punk unit Gang of Four, Jon King has generated his share of both intellectual napalm and rock history bona fides. But he seems positively giddy about his band’s latest acknowledgment. “Well, this is one of the greatest moments in my life,” he begins, sitting down with SPIN via Zoom, casual and bespectacled yet dapper in a blue zip-up sweater and dark pants. “There’s a book by John Niven called Kill Your Friends that is set in the music business of the ‘80s. A great book. There are people in it like our former manager Chris Briggs and [major-label executive] Tracey Bennett and all these other people. The story is about a fictional A&R man who t...
We Took a Moment to Question the Nature of Reality With The Dropout’s William H. Macy
The Dropout is a true-crime story that happened right in front of our eyes, as a young woman named Elizabeth Holmes (played in the Hulu series by Amanda Seyfried) became a Silicon Valley darling with her concept for a blood-testing device that could revolutionize the health care industry — if it worked, that is. One of the first people to decry Holmes as a fraud was Richard Fuisz (William H. Macy), a family friend of the Holmes who took offense at his neighbor’s daughter getting involved in medical technology — his field of expertise — without consulting him. His investigation into Holmes’ work ended up being key to the reveal that her company was raising a billion dollars of funding for fraudulent devices, even while his obsession with exposing Holmes as a fraud coincided with the end of ...
Band of Horses Survived…Barely
It’s taken nearly two decades, but Band of Horses frontman Ben Bridwell finally feels he has the capacity — and the Goddamn right — to follow his creative intuition. “Hopefully during this maturity process, I’ve learned to exert my own right in the band to say, ‘This is what the fuck we’re doing,’” Bridwell says of the long journey through Band of Horses’ history, one dotted with shifting lineups, various producers and a slew of record label deals. He pauses. “And I’m not going to listen to someone else’s fucking opinion, honestly. I’m tired of that.” It’s this no-nonsense path forward that guided Bridwell and Band of Horses to Things Are Great. Their sixth album, out on March 4, as Bridwell explains, is as much a lesson in relieving himself of the pressure he’d built around himself throug...
Light of Day
Given a few beats to think it over, Erin Rae — whose enchanting second solo album, Lighten Up is out now — concludes that she is, in fact, a happy person. Based on her lilting voice and the gentle smile on her new record’s cover, it seems easy to accept that at face value. Folky and folksy, her pleasant style pervades all 12 tracks, along with the alluring and disarming production from Jonathan Wilson that adds a feel of psychedelia. And it’s helpful, perhaps therapeutic, to consider the question, as she notes during a smiling and easygoing Zoom call with SPIN. Because her songs offer a message that “would be so much heavier if the music also conveyed that.” Rae knows better to just dump music and perform into a personal blend of therapy. “I definitely need other therapy,” she says, laughi...
Why Better Things Is One of TV’s Messiest Shows (On Purpose)
Pamela Adlon wishes her toilet worked. Not the toilet in her home, but the toilet seen occasionally on screen in the home of her Better Things character, LA-based actor Sam Fox. “Only when we had that super toilet in that one episode, did it flush,” she tells Consequence. “But I want everything to work. It has to be authentic all the time — everything.” Authenticity is a key part of the FX comedy, which ends its five-season run later this spring. The series, created by and starring Adlon, chronicles the ups and downs of Sam’s world as she tries to provide the best life possible for her eccentric mother Phyllis (Celia Imrie), and her three daughters Max, Frankie, and Duke (Mikey Madison, Hannah Riley, and Olivia Edward), despite all the frustrations they might inspire. While many creators f...
