Austin – Seeing Mystery Skulls name in the SXSW music guide was liking seeing a high school classmate on the news. His name was familiar from the time we overlapped in Dallas—me going to college, him working on a nascent music career—but he was always one of those artists you tell people you’ll “check out later,” only to forget.
Boy, what a mistake. As far as contemporary four-on-the-floor pop acts à la The Knocks and Chromeo, Mystery Skulls, is among the most exciting. His music earns that praise largely on its own merits. The LA-via-Dallas producer has the disco chops that make The Knocks a personal favorite, while really making his home in the throbbing, bass heavy sound of 80’s pop. But something is added if you see him on stage or in person—a democratic sensibility that, by all indications, is pushing his sound in a favorable direction.
“I want people to hear a story in my music,” he said, when asked about the process of writing a debut record. Mystery Skulls, a.k.a. Luis Dubuc, seemed almost as excited to meet me as I was to meet him when I got the chance to interview him before his set at Stubb’s in Austin a few weeks ago.
Will Jukes: Hi! So I remember you from Dallas, but my timeline is a little off. How long have you been Mystery Skulls?
Mystery Skulls: Well, I started Mystery Skulls in 2011.
WJ: And you had had other projects before that right? How long had you been working on music?
MS: My whole life, I’ve always known I wanted to do music.
WJ: Did you see yourself making this kind of music though?
MS: No, not quite. My goal has always been to make music that inspired people. It just happened this way. But I’m very happy to be doing it!
WJ: Were there phases though, with different genres and different bands?
MS: Yeah absolutely, and I think a lot of people do that. It’s how you explore and try things out. Not listening to every kind of music is like going to a buffet and only trying one thing.
WJ: Nile Rodgers and Brandy seems like a buffet-style list of collaborators. What got you into working with Nile? How was it working with him?
MS: That came about because the man who signed me to my label just called me up and said “hey I’m hanging out with Nile tonight, and I’m gonna play him your music”. I didn’t really expect anything to come of it but I got a call just an hour later from Nile saying he heard my music and he wanted to work together. It was insane! He said come to Calabasas and we hung out and we’ve been friends ever since.
WJ: I think I heard that’s how he started working with Daft Punk.
MS: I think a lot of collaborations are born in that way. They’re just very organic like that.
WJ: And what about Brandy?
MS: That was different, actually. I asked. I kept saying, “I wanna’ do something with Brandy” to everybody who would listen and finally one day someone said “I know her!”. So I sent the music over and she said she really loved it. So, she came to the studio and we started working. Then she told me she really liked “Magic” so we started working on “Magic” together as well.
WJ: I’m asking this assuming you’re about my age—was it kind of surreal working with someone you saw on TV as a kid?
MS: It was definitely surreal. And with Brandy in particular, working with her you realize that she’s kind of a special person. It blew me away, I felt very lucky for the entire experience. Like you know, when she asked to work on “Magic” it was crazy to realize she knew my demos.
WJ: How were the lyrics composed for those songs? Did you write them all beforehand?
MS: Well for “Number 1” I had all the lyrics written beforehand. On “Magic” I didn’t have anything written yet, so we had to come up with it on the spot, but it wound up sounding really special and perfect right there.
WJ: I’ve actually been itching to ask you about Dallas, since I know you came up there. What’s your favorite venue to play?
MS: Trees is probably the one I played the most, but most recently I played House of Blues and it was great.
WJ: Do you feel like you get a lot of support there?
MS: I do. I just played there last night and it was fantastic. To me it’s kind of like having two home towns. My family is there, I have friends there still, I went to high school there. Dallas claims me, but so does LA.
WJ: In Dallas did you feel like you were doing something very different from the other people there? Electronic music was never big there.
MS: I did, yeah. But maybe that was a good thing.
WJ: Do you think any of that comes from other backgrounds? You’ve lived in Venezuela and Toronto too, right?
MS: Yeah, I think so. When I lived in Venezuela I was really young. We lived in a village, basically. When I moved to Toronto it was crazy, I hadn’t ever seen a music video before. And the 90’s radio in Canada was great. They played Daft Punk, Chemical Brothers, all this other beautiful amazing music. I think a lot of influence comes from that music.
WJ: Do you think the shock and awe of seeing a music video for the first time influenced your desire to be a musician?
MS: Definitely. You know a lot of people say they grew up with their parents playing records all the time, but I didn’t have that. So when that hit me it was a big deal. And you see that in a lot of Mystery Skulls videos to this day—they’re awesome, each of them is next level in their own way. I’m really proud of “Magic” especially, you should look at that.
WJ: Yeah, that seems like a lot on top of a debut record—have you ever done something as long as Forever?
MS: I’ve never done something that big, making it was quite the undertaking. But it was more difficult to have to make something that’s just that good.
WJ: To me it seems like an album is a little artificial for electronic music—I don’t see why you can’t just release singles all the time. That feels much more natural for the music’s nightclub habitat.
MS: I make art, though. I made this album because I felt compelled to make this album. I wanted to tell a story, you know? And it’s not to say that you can’t tell a story with a single, but you can take a deeper more complex story with a record.
That was all the time we had before Dubuc needed to get ready (you can read about that phenomenal set here).
Mystery Skulls has a few more dates this summer before he takes a break to recover from his spring tour.
Mystery Skulls by Sarah McColgan
Will Jukes
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