New York-based artist Proper Villians has reinvented himself throughout his career while always staying ahead of the curve. His latest remix for fellow New Yorker QRTR is another example of how his intelligent sound design and impeccable grooves can elevate an already stellar piece of music.

"Nossa" appears as an interlude on QRTR's 2021 album infina ad nausea. The haunting choral arrangement is accented by clips of dropped calls and an equally haunting backdrop of chimes, swells, and hits. 

Proper Villians take is a warped late-night ride to a dark warehouse lit only by a strobe light. The drums are crisp, and as the vocal sample washes out, a devastatingly dirty descending synth plunges you deeper into the rave. The icing on the cake. The voice asking, "Are you fucking serious?" before the last drop. It's a simple touch that's beautifully effective.

When QRTR finished her album and asked him to pick a song to remix, it seemed like an odd choice to choose a two-minute interlude. However, the choral sample was something he knew he could work with. 

Initially, the remix flowed from him organically. "I spent like one day on it. And like I got the weird string crazy drop thing and then the intro thing. " 

What's remarkable about the source material revealed itself when he asked QRTR for the original sample. You won't find the choral sample on Splice or in any sample library, for that matter.

"I asked her about it. She recorded it in a church. She just took a field recorder and recorded the choir." 

The creativity behind both the original and the remix are hallmarks of these two remarkable artists.




Track Of The Week: Proper Villians Remixes QRTR's 'Nossa' into a Rave Ready Masterpiece

United States

Proper Villains

Many artists find their lane early in their careers and stick to it for years. Maybe slightly drifting off course at some point, but never really straying too far from the sound that made them fall in love with dance music. 

—aka Jon Shulman—has spent two decades politely destroying conventional wisdom and writing whatever he wants. As a result, his catalog runs deep, brimming with genre-spanning gems from dubstep to drum & bass, tech house to breakbeat, minimal to trap. And despite his meandering genre fluidity, his music still carries with it a cohesive string. It’s part of the reason why his music appears on lauded labels like Classic Music Company, Box of Cats, Southern Fried, and Fool’s Gold.

His eclectic ear formed early. He says he grew up with “the most non-musical family.” Nevertheless, the imprint that his parents left on him is indelible. 

I imagine an old Looney Tunes cartoon as he endearingly recalls his mom playing all the wrong notes on the piano. However, she insisted that he take lessons starting at eight. And even though Shulman has developed a discerning ear, he says he didn’t get his innate abilities as a selector from his dad either.

QRTR

QRTR, aka Meagan Rodriguez, has a sound that is drenched in emotion, layered with wavering synths that drip with sultry sophistication. Intentionally heartfelt yet innately dancefloor focused. 



She has managed to stand out with a unique take on house music. And in a genre that often relies on recycled tropes, she bravely injects her music with a meditative sensuality that refreshes mind, body, and soul

Her debut album Drenched dropped just as the pandemic had eviscerated all hope for an immediate sense of normalcy. It was composed during a dark period in her life. She intended to open a window to her emotions and ended up holding a mirror for the state of the world.

Her music reflected her life at the time. Her job in film was grueling. She spent over 10 hours a day in an office with no windows. Exhausted and confused, she intentionally isolated herself.

Things felt dark. And she said, “I [was] creating this whole world in my head about how things are so dystopian right now.”

She engaged in a strange dance with herself. The album was another source of stress, but she insists, “It was also a release and a creative outlet. So, it's just this weird kind of Tango [I was] doing.”

She never pondered her mental health. It was the first time she recognized her depression and anxiety. "And I let that come out in the album. And I wanted to live in it a little bit because I felt like I needed to just for my own sort of evolution.”

Her goal was to express how difficult it was to be human and how existence can be painful. She never expected her emotions to reflect what was happening on a global scale. She says, “It was just a really fucked up. coincidence.”

It takes courage to lay your emotions bare the way that Drenched did. Her strength and resolve are qualities she is admittedly modest about.

“I feel like I have these moments where I suddenly have intense courage and bravery. And those moments are usually pivotal for me [in] gearing me into a new direction or a new chapter.”

Her affection for melody has always been with her. She fondly recalls her dad blasting freestyle in the car when he picked her up for the weekend. It didn’t embarrass her, she just bopped along. Somehow those broken beats have now snaked their way into her music. 

Rodriguez grew up tri-lingual and mixed race. Her young mind often comingled English, Spanish, and Portuguese. One thing she was never confused about was her love for singing. Her parents always supported her passion for the arts and bought her instruments for birthdays holidays. 

They never stopped encouraging her. She was always inside as a child, creating songs and videos. In middle school, she started to play with production software when her dad bought her a computer.

“I had a PSU USB microphone. I'd plug it into my computer and sample knocking on my desk and shit. And I would make music in middle school and bring CDs and give it to friends.”

It’s hard for her to imagine her success without her parent's involvement. “I feel like, my mom was super encouraging. She was like, ‘You're an artist, you need to be an artist one day. You're a creative person.’ And always was telling me to embrace that. And then my dad gave me the tools to be able to embrace it. He got me my first computer. He was the one who pushed me to go to NYU and move to New York.“

Moving to New York was a catalyst for her artistic growth. She ended up there for film. And even though she carried a lifelong passion for music she insists, “I never thought to pursue that further than just enjoying it.” 

She didn’t become a New Yorker until she graduated. That’s when she started to explore nightlife for the first time. The seed was planted when she went to an open-air in Portugal at 16. And when Spotify notified her that Chrome Sparks was in her hood she went and the seed began to grow.

That summer she went to her first festival, Bonnaroo 2014. And as a spontaneous (now legendary) late-night art car set from Mija and Skrillex blurred into the sunrise, she had a full-on rave revelation. This was what she’d been missing from her life. 

“Sunrise is about to happen. And we're all partying still. And this is everything I didn't know I needed and now I'm hooked. And then immediately I came back from Bonnaroo and I was going to as many raves and club nights as I could.”

A friend she’d met at a work function joined her on the quest for the perfect night out. Jenny had also been there for the transcendent experience at Bonaroo. After several months they agreed it was difficult to find their people. So, they decided to create the perfect party themselves.

Wavcave was their creation. A party in what was ordinarily a punk rock venue, with no expectations or boundaries. Rodriguez and friends provided the sonics. Jenny was the badass promoter. “Our whole mission was to let people get weird. We want people smiling on the dance floor. We want people to be goofy and enjoy themselves.”

The brand organically transformed from a monthly event to a shared studio space to full-on artist collective and record label. All of which are rooted in creating the inclusive and tolerant space they desired. 

As the world begins to awaken, she’s excited to see more of that. “I'm seeing parties that [are] not a bunch of white guys. And it's amazing. It's queer people, black people, brown people. It's people that are fucking talented and weren't getting shine that absolutely deserved to be getting shine.”

It excites her that more people will experience the creativity, love, and inclusivity that she shares in everything that she touches.  

“I don't think I've ever seen such diverse and enthusiastic crowds,” she says with a touch of sincere sentiment in her voice. “It is so exciting what's happening right now. And I don't know that it would be like this if it weren't for everything that happened in 2020. I think in a weird way that was one of the only positives. That maybe we're inching toward something that makes more sense and is more equitable.”

“My dad ran a laundry company in Brooklyn. So, he would just get whatever the dudes with the blankets on the sidewalk were selling as far as CDs. He would come home with like, Kenny Loggins, 50 Cent, and Enrique Iglesias. That was just what he listened to. There was just no filter.”

What sparked his love affair with music was their record collection. Hiding between his mom’s Simon and Garfunkle albums were records from Ozzy Osbourne and Led Zeplin.

“I was a super metal and punk kid. And then I got into industrial metal like Nine Inch Nails.” The intersection of synths and heavy rock was fascinating. Eventually, his love of synths took over.

Proper Villains & Nasty Nigel - Vacation [Official Video]

Listen: foolsgold.ffm.to/vacation

Proper Villains (the bass master dropping chunky tracks on Classic / Defected, Southern Fried and Psycho Disco) and Nasty Nigel (the multitasking Queens MC, DJ and producer bouncing between grimy World’s Fair raps and epic jungle sets on The Lot Radio) team up in the spirit of chatterbox club jams from Green Velvet and Sagat for “Vacation,” a brain melting body mover. Or is it more of a body melting brain mover? Whatever part of your physical gets scrambled, PV and NN’s hypnotic and memorable collab is must-have, mixed up house music for our manic times, complete with one stock footage nightmare of a music video.


Follow Proper Villains!
https://www.facebook.com/propervillai...
https://www.instagram.com/propervilla...
https://twitter.com/propervillainy
https://soundcloud.com/proper-villains

Follow Nasty Nigel!
https://www.facebook.com/NastyNigel
https://www.instagram.com/nigelthreet...
https://soundcloud.com/nastynigel


Follow Fool's Gold!
http://facebook.com/foolsgoldrecs
http://instagram.com/foolsgoldrecs
http://soundcloud.com/foolsgoldrecs
http://twitter.com/foolsgoldrecs


© 2020 Fool's Gold Records

“I played guitar in two or three really awful bands. We ended up being an industrial metal band just because we couldn’t find a drummer,” he explains. Although it was more like none of his friend’s parents would let them have a drum set. So they improvised. “We’d loop up Rage Against the Machine breakbeats on a computer. And after a while, I was just like, well, this computer never shows up late to practice or stoned, so fuck y’all, I’m just gonna like roll with this computer.”

He grew up in the storied 90s New York club and rave scene. And as he reminisces on the iconic nightspots he spent hazy nights at (Twilo, Limelight, Exit, and more), it becomes clear that he’s been harvesting this eclectic sound in dark rooms for a good portion of his life.

By the time he was a senior in high school, he’d made the natural progression to D&B. After being so into metal, the high-energy drum breaks and grinding synths seemed natural. By the time he went to NYU to major in music business, the young DJ was building an arsenal of vinyl.

“I kind of joke [that] I got a minor in dance music. I stayed at the commuter dorms that were downtown. And between classes ‑ these two hour breaks ‑ I would just go to record stores. It was four years of going to every single record store in the city.”

By the time he graduated in 2001, the music industry had vastly changed. The first tech bubble had just burst, and the demise of Napster hinted at a burgeoning online music community. It was right around then that Shulman began to sign his first records.

Throughout the early ’00s, he continued to embed himself in the music scene. By the time the blog house era rolled around, he was a fixture on message boards like Diplo’s Hollertronix. Which is where an A&R for Fat Boy Slim’s Southern Fried Records discovered and signed “Trick Baby,” a sleazy sub-grinding breakbeat.

Around the same time, a friend of his introduced him to a way he could build a career out of his immense library of genre-spanning beats. He started working for a library company, a clearinghouse of sorts where producers can sell their beats to appear in movies, TV, and commercials. It gave him a way to put all of his unused material into the world. It ended up drawing him away from DJing between 2015 and 2018. But ultimately, he wanted to get back to the dancefloor.

“It’s relatively lucrative. There’s no glory,” he explains. Part of the reason he went into the corporate world was that after a short foray into dubstep, he stopped having fun making music. He felt dance music had kind of jumped the shark. It had become too aggressive, there was no more groove. But, he says after the break, “I just wanted to get back into DJing.”

The last three years of his career have been some of his most fruitful. In 2021 his track “Don Dada” with rapper Cakes Da Killa was remixed by Honey Dijon and Luke Solomon. And Eat’s Everything released a remix of “ICU” featuring Naomi Ruiz on his 

 on the tastemaking HE.SHE.THEY imprint.

His remix of QRTR’s “Nossa” takes a moody, atmospheric interlude from her album and flips it into sweltering, late-night tech house. His roots in drum and bass are evident in the grimy descending bass swells. But the thumping bassline and crispy percussion make it perfect for a peak-hour dance floor. It’s a masterclass in creative sampling and inventive sound design. He says that his goal when remixing is to take the best parts of the original and make it his own.

“That’s why I want to do the interlude. I asked her about it, she recorded it in a church. She just, took a field recorder and recorded the choir. I was like, ‘this is awesome. Where’s the sample from? And she’s like ‘this is the original sample.’”

As he looks back over his journey in dance music, he feels lucky to be here. When he first started going to raves in the 90s, it was a place for misfits. 

“When I got into DJing it wasn’t like, ‘Oh be a DJ [to be] super cool. It was like, ‘oh, you’re the dude who wears like goofy pants.’ It’s so weird to me that this stuff’s cool.”

Gray Area Spotlight: Proper Villians

Many artists find their lane early in their careers and stick to it for years. Maybe slightly drifting off course at some point, but never really straying too far from the sound that made them fall in love with dance music. Proper Villians—aka Jon Shulman—has spent two decades politely destroying conventional wisdom and writing whatever he wants. 

As a result, his catalog runs deep, brimming with genre-spanning gems from dubstep to drum & bass, tech house to breakbeat, minimal to trap. And despite his meandering genre fluidity, his music still carries with it a cohesive string. It’s part of the reason why his music appears on lauded labels like Classic Music Company, Box of Cats, Southern Fried, and Fool’s Gold.

Read the full Spotlight: https://grayarea.co/artists/proper-villians

▪️Follow Proper Villains▪️
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/propervillains/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/propervillainy
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/propervillainsbass
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/artist/2mVUdPq7evlUNzq2rYys8S?si=qJpUzsqGSr-uW-XJMKv0ng
Soundcloud - https://soundcloud.com/proper-villains
Beatport - https://www.beatport.com/artist/proper-villains/44725

Connect with Gray Area:
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/entergrayarea/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/enterGrayArea
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/entergrayarea
TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@entergrayarea
Spotify - https://spoti.fi/3nGJIfQ
Website - https://grayarea.co

Gray Area's mission is to build a bigger house music community in North America by helping fans discover exciting house music artists, event brands and festivals that are new to them.

Timestamps:
00:00 - Intro
02:41 - Early childhood music
05:06 - Transitioning from metal to dance music
07:14 - First club/rave experiences
10:16 - Growing up in New York
11:40 - Starting to DJ
12:57 - Going to NYU's Music Business program
13:45 - Music industry changing
16:05 - Sending CD demos
17:20 - DJing multiple genres
19:28 - Forums & social media
23:37 - Producing and working in licensing
25:38 - Coming back to DJing
27:31 - Rollerblading
30:33 - Working with HE.SHE.THEY
33:55 - DJing becoming "cool"
36:18 - QRTR
38:36 - What excites him about the future of dance music
40:50 - Speed round

#grayarea #propervillains #housemusic

Gray Area Interview: Proper Villains

Many artists find their lane early in their careers and stick to it for years. Maybe slightly drifting off course at some point, but never really straying too far from the sound that made them fall in love with dance music. Proper Villians—aka Jon Shulman—has spent two decades politely destroying conventional wisdom and writing whatever he wants. As a result, his catalog runs deep, brimming with genre-spanning gems from dubstep to drum & bass, tech house to breakbeat, minimal to trap. And despite his meandering genre fluidity, his music still carries with it a cohesive string. It’s part of the reason why his music appears on lauded labels like Classic Music Company, Box of Cats, Southern Fried, and Fool’s Gold.

His eclectic ear formed early. He says he grew up with “the most non-musical family.” Nevertheless, the imprint that his parents left on him is indelible. 

I imagine an old Looney Tunes cartoon as he endearingly recalls his mom playing all the wrong notes on the piano. However, she insisted that he take lessons starting at eight. And even though Shulman has developed a discerning ear, he says he didn’t get his innate abilities as a selector from his dad either.







“My dad ran a laundry company in Brooklyn. So, he would just get whatever the dudes with the blankets on the sidewalk were selling as far as CDs. He would come home with like, Kenny Loggins, 50 Cent, and Enrique Iglesias. That was just what he listened to. There was just no filter.”

What sparked his love affair with music was their record collection. Hiding between his mom’s Simon and Garfunkle albums were records from Ozzy Osbourne and Led Zeplin.

“I was a super metal and punk kid. And then I got into industrial metal like Nine Inch Nails.” The intersection of synths and heavy rock was fascinating. Eventually, his love of synths took over.

“I played guitar in two or three really awful bands. We ended up being an industrial metal band just because we couldn’t find a drummer,” he explains. Although it was more like none of his friend’s parents would let them have a drum set. So they improvised. “We’d loop up Rage Against the Machine breakbeats on a computer. And after a while, I was just like, well, this computer never shows up late to practice or stoned, so fuck y’all, I’m just gonna like roll with this computer.”

He grew up in the storied 90s New York club and rave scene. And as he reminisces on the iconic nightspots he spent hazy nights at (Twilo, Limelight, Exit, and more), it becomes clear that he’s been harvesting this eclectic sound in dark rooms for a good portion of his life.

By the time he was a senior in high school, he’d made the natural progression to D&B. After being so into metal, the high-energy drum breaks and grinding synths seemed natural. By the time he went to NYU to major in music business, the young DJ was building an arsenal of vinyl.

“I kind of joke [that] I got a minor in dance music. I stayed at the commuter dorms that were downtown. And between classes ‑ these two hour breaks ‑ I would just go to record stores. It was four years of going to every single record store in the city.”

By the time he graduated in 2001, the music industry had vastly changed. The first tech bubble had just burst, and the demise of Napster hinted at a burgeoning online music community. It was right around then that Shulman began to sign his first records.

Throughout the early ’00s, he continued to embed himself in the music scene. By the time the blog house era rolled around, he was a fixture on message boards like Diplo’s Hollertronix. Which is where an A&R for Fat Boy Slim’s Southern Fried Records discovered and signed “Trick Baby,” a sleazy sub-grinding breakbeat.

Around the same time, a friend of his introduced him to a way he could build a career out of his immense library of genre-spanning beats. He started working for a library company, a clearinghouse of sorts where producers can sell their beats to appear in movies, TV, and commercials. It gave him a way to put all of his unused material into the world. It ended up drawing him away from DJing between 2015 and 2018. But ultimately, he wanted to get back to the dancefloor.

“It’s relatively lucrative. There’s no glory,” he explains. Part of the reason he went into the corporate world was that after a short foray into dubstep, he stopped having fun making music. He felt dance music had kind of jumped the shark. It had become too aggressive, there was no more groove. But, he says after the break, “I just wanted to get back into DJing.”

The last three years of his career have been some of his most fruitful. In 2021 his track “Don Dada” with rapper Cakes Da Killa was remixed by Honey Dijon and Luke Solomon. And Eat’s Everything released a remix of “ICU” featuring Naomi Ruiz on his 10 Years of Eats Everything compilation. He also released Muvaland, Vol. 2 on the tastemaking HE.SHE.THEY imprint.

His remix of QRTR’s “Nossa” takes a moody, atmospheric interlude from her album and flips it into sweltering, late-night tech house. His roots in drum and bass are evident in the grimy descending bass swells. But the thumping bassline and crispy percussion make it perfect for a peak-hour dance floor. It’s a masterclass in creative sampling and inventive sound design. He says that his goal when remixing is to take the best parts of the original and make it his own.

“That’s why I want to do the interlude. I asked her about it, she recorded it in a church. She just, took a field recorder and recorded the choir. I was like, ‘this is awesome. Where’s the sample from? And she’s like ‘this is the original sample.’”

As he looks back over his journey in dance music, he feels lucky to be here. When he first started going to raves in the 90s, it was a place for misfits. 

“When I got into DJing it wasn’t like, ‘Oh be a DJ [to be] super cool. It was like, ‘oh, you’re the dude who wears like goofy pants.’ It’s so weird to me that this stuff’s cool.”



Proper Villains

Articles

Alexander Dias