Interview : TRIDACT

© D. Calamar

Tridact is an electronic music producer who comes straight from Southern Oregon. His music is a ray of sunshine that illuminates our rainy days. He agreed to answer some questions... 

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 WAS : To begin with, can you introduce yourself ?

Tridact : My name is Brandon Johnson.  I'm from Santa Barbara, California but I've been living in Southern Oregon for the last five years or so.




WAS : Can you explain how did you come to make music ? 

Tridact : I've played music since I was eight years old. I started with the bagpipes and then the trombone.  Later I played the guitar and messed with cheap keyboards, four-track recorders and any instruments I could get a hold of.  After playing in some bands over the years, I bought a sampler to make hip hop beats, but the synthesizers took over pretty quickly.




WAS : Where does your nickname come from ? 

Tridact : It's kind of random and doesn't really mean anything.  It's Latin for three fingers or three toes.  You can see it as part of some animal species names - sloths, birds, lizards, and marsupials.  I don't know anything about zoology, but I usually only play a keyboard with three fingers, so there you go.




WAS : What is the musical style you find the nearest to yours ? 

Tridact : I'm not sure.  It's electronic and some of it's dancey, but some of it is more like pop.  There are elements of disco and house in some songs, but not really in any proper sense.  Getting grouped in with the Nu Disco thing might give people the wrong impression.  I'm okay with being filed under "other."

© D. Calamar

WAS : Which artist(s) inspires you ? 

Tridact : I'm lucky to be inspired by friends and acquaintances such as Windsurf (Sorcerer and Hatchback), the Beat Broker and Antonionian, whose recent album is my 3am comedown soundtrack. I could go on forever about other music that's influenced me.  I try to keep up with newer music, but I'm also into older house and techno, hip hop, classic pop and soul groups from the '60s, disco and funk, old reggae and rocksteady, lots of '90s electronic music - breakbeat, IDM, and dance music.  Of course it would be impossible to list everything - I'm a music junkie.  Some things I've been listening to lately are Oriol, Virgo Four, B12, the Zombies, Bjork, Solar Bears, Eddie Kendricks, Love, U-Roy, Panacea (the hip hop group), Model 500, Luke Vibert, Kim Weston, Blackbelt Andersen, Lee Perry, and the list goes on.




WAS : What do you do when you don't make music ?

Tridact : I like to spend time with my family and friends.  We take road trips to the coast and the mountains.  I like riding my bike through the woods in the evening to unplug myself from the world and clear my mind.  I also enjoy getting together with my friends to play some of the worst basketball you've ever seen.

Other than that I'm probably pursuing music in some other way - buying records or searching for old audio gear.  I like to go out and hear music as much as I can or just play records with friends.  I DJ occasionally - mainly older soul, funk, disco, boogie and whatnot.




WAS : Can you remember the first record you ever bought ? 

Tridact : I think it was a live album by Bad Brains.  I still have it somewhere.  I'm not sure why I bought it on vinyl.  I think I was mainly buying cassettes back then.

WAS : Can you tell me more about your last album (which is just amazing) ? 

Tridact : Wow thanks!  I had been messing around with old synths, samplers, sequencers and drum machines for a while.  The goal was to make the kind of tracks I would want to hear, meaning lots of melody and no particular style or tempo in mind.  I probably go a little over the top, but that's what I like.

A while back I posted some tracks online for friends to hear and got some encouragement in return.  One of the tracks made it to a compilation on Moodgadget and then Ghostly International.  Later I received an email from Prins Thomas, who had heard some of the tunes online.  He offered to release all the tracks on his label, Internasjonal.  It's quite an honor to be associated with him and all the great artists on Internasjonal and Full Pupp.




WAS : Who made the artwork cover ?

Tridact : All the photos on the releases are by my friend Mark Regester, who I've known since our younger days in Santa Barbara.  I've used his photos to go with my tracks since the beginning.  Mark's now living in St. Louis, Missouri.  Check out his photography at http://dothejerk.wordpress.com/




WAS : When was your best musical memory ? 

Tridact : One that stands out is seeing the legendary Big Youth play at a small veteran's hall in a tiny coastal town in California in the mid '90s.  He played a lot of his Trojan Records era hits.  At the time he hadn't played live in California since the '70s.  I'm a huge fan, so I was starstruck.  He's a larger than life personality!




WAS : Do you have any plans for the future you would like to tell us about ? 

Tridact : I've recently begun to play live.  I'm hoping to develop the set and play more dates on the West Coast, the greater Pacific Northwest and beyond.  I'm also working a bunch more tracks that I hope to release eventually.  Also the vinyl samplers from the album should be out by now - a 7" and a 12".




WAS : Anything to add ?

Tridact : Thanks for supporting the music and thanks for the interview!


  Latest tracks by tridact