KHLOARIS Meets Meercaz and We're Still Far Out in Tijuana
Zoinks! It's The Athenian Mercury, Vol. 4 (Finally)!
Welcome to the tardy and long-awaited 4th issue of The Athenian Mercury!
We had too much content for one issue, so expect Vol. 5 in the next week or two. We'll keep this one brief and get right to our features.
Today, we focus on the latest Brain Drain Industries-made video for Meercaz’s “In Your Pocket” (with FX by KHLOARIS) and the final episode of Josafat Concepcion’s “Greetings from Tijuana” photonovella.
We should have new streaming, screening and other news in the next one, and some new features. Thanks for reading. Feel free to forward this electronic digital newspaper to interested parties.
Yours always,
-Kenneth Gentle Breeze, Editor-in-Chief, The Athenian Mercury
Meercaz Lives!
Catchin' Up with Muzz Delgado of Meercaz
About a year ago KHLOARIS was introduced to the music of Meercaz, the alter ego of Oakland-based musician Muzz Delgado. The beats aren’t normal, they shift and slide and pull at you, as if under the influence of some distant tectonic magnet. So when Brain Drain Industries invited KHLOARIS to do some VFX assets, naturally we wanted in.
For the music video to “In Your Pocket” Brain Drain has shuffled the frames and devised a spontaneous game of cues & cuts. It’s like watching a backroom dance that is in line of sight from main-stage seating. The graphic elements of the Meercaz album art were animated and matched to clip selections provided by Brain Drain. Ideas about attraction and momentum guided this contribution process.
To celebrate the video release of “In Your Pocket,” we asked Muzz to tell us about the making of his fantastic new instrumental beats album “FIENDISH EROTICA.”
HOW DID THE FIENDISH EROTICA PROJECT COME ABOUT?
MUZZ:
FIENDISH EROTICA sort’ve happened as an accident. The title of the album wasn’t some sort of weird science I came up with. It was more like what is the grimiest or punk type thing I can think of? One day I found an old Swedish Erotica VHS in my stuff and then it clicked and I decided to make a title that was a play off of that. Plus it showed my love for 60s, 70s and 80s grindhouse, erotica and exploitation films of that time. It also kept in with the style and visual of an album I did that was released back in 2020, titled George Heroine “The Man You Love To Love”. I added the skits on FIENDISH EROTICA to give it that grindhouse flavor but also to make up for no vocals on the album. I would say Brian Eno’s Discreet Music and Mikey Dread was an inspiration for it. In fact the cover is a tip of the hat to Dread On The Controls hence “Meercaz On The Boards” on the front cover.
I had an idea of putting out a tape of my best beats. I started making beats in 2014 but I have wanted to since 1990. So the album is a bunch of musical ideas I’ve had since I was 12 years old! "Sand and Sex" was the first beat I made in my mind way back then and then in real time many years later. When I started making beats on my own I was playing in a band called Sleeper Cult and was learning obsessively on an MPC while writing songs for that band. I learned the basics of my 2500 and then threw the rulebook out the window and just took my approach to songwriting to beat making in a similar way which is trying out a bunch of ideas, not thinking too much and going with what sounds best. I always think about what the rhyming could be like, just like my songs, although a lot of the time the vocals always sort’ve end up as an afterthought. I write a lot and half of the time I’ll just find the lyrics or strange poems that fit the music.
TELL US ABOUT THE TRACK “IN YOUR POCKET”
One of the first beats I ever did appeared on The George Heroine record. I originally did it as a pause tape and it appears twice on that album. It’s called “In Your Pocket.” Me and a friend named Ellie Erickson then did a proper version and it appears on the FIENDISH EROTICA album. It was done way back in 2015 and is still one of my faves. Ellie played bass in Erase Errata back in the day. She is a great musician. I really dig the music video Brain Drain Industries did for it.
WHAT’S THE ORIGIN OF THE NAME “MEERCAZ”?
Well to make a long story short, a friend wanted to start a band called The Meercata. Me and the drummer didn’t like it and I thought let’s add a z at the end and call it Meercaz. The Caz comes from Grandmaster Caz from the Cold Crush Brothers but for years I lied that I got it from The Nazz. I do love The Nazz tho. Originally I was going to use another name for FIENDISH EROTICA, but then I realized I still loved the Meercaz name, so I kept it and added “Worldwide” to it so there was an edge and projection to the universe to think big. It’s also a reinvention of sorts. Sleeper Cult had an album recorded that was going to be released after the George Heroine album, however the band broke up and I thought I should just release an album of beats instead, not only to get my ideas out there, but to have a demonstration album for rappers to flow to.
WHAT’S NEXT FOR MEERCAZ (WORLDWIDE)?
I have a new album that's coming out later this year. It’s a split record with one side of beats and one side of rock songs. There is a video of one of the songs already out. It’s called "Robot Lust." I’m working on finishing a bunch of recordings I started back in 2020 and I have part 2 of Fiendish Erotica in the works. There are a lot of surprises music wise. I’m also about to get out and perform again as well as DJing. I’m definitely taking a step up on the production side this year. Just you watch. You can check my other beats on my soundcloud and youtube and stream the George H. and FIENDISH EROTICA album at the Love Anthem records Bandcamp.
FOLLOW MEERCAZ ON IG:
FOLLOW BRAIN DRAIN INDUSTRIES:
@brain_drain_industries
@braindrainindustries
braindrainindustries.com
Greetings from Tijuana, Chapter 3: A Woman on the Run!
The Exciting Conclusion!
By Josafat Concepcion
(To contact the KHLOARIS mothership, do so at production@khloaris.com. To follow us on annoyingly corporate social media, we're @KHLOARIS everywhere, but most active on Instagram, very occasionally on Twitter, and incredibly rarely even on Facebook. Watch some KHLOARIS content on our Vimeo page. Visit the KHLOARIS Spotify to hear KHLOARIS playlists here. Our soon-to-be-updated website (we promise) is at www.khloaris.com.)