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Pink Skull are a collaborative effort based in Philadelphia. Mostly the brainchild of Julian Grefe, the group formed in 2003 with Ian Kelly and Justin Geller. Their sole intent was to create a universe of quirky, danceable and psychedelic house. Drawing from their past experiences in punk rock, electronic music and insatiable record collecting they did just that. Between these three members and over the past ten years their personal discographies range from punk and emo to housey electro and downtempo.

We got Julian to tell us about his time in the dance world, the Pink Skull project and his take on recording before he goes on the road to do a few DJ sets and than take the full band on the road for the Fu*# Yeah Tour!

NECODO: Julian, thanks for taking the time to talk with us. You have a lot going on right now with the full length remix record ("Zeppelin 3" on Free News Projects), your single with remixes on the Savant Guard ("Drugs Will Keep Us Together") and trying to put together some tours with the band. Why don't you tell us about those?

Julian: No problem, thank you for this. This is the first record on The Savant Guard label. I really liked the song but it didn't fit on the album and I really wanted it to get out. I sent them some extra material from the sessions with that being one of them and they jumped on it...

Pink Skull are a collaborative effort based in Philadelphia. Mostly the brainchild of Julian Grefe, the group formed in 2003 with Ian Kelly and Justin Geller. Their sole intent was to create a universe of quirky, danceable and psychedelic house. Drawing from their past experiences in punk rock, electronic music and insatiable record collecting they did just that. Between these three members and over the past ten years their personal discographies range from punk and emo to housey electro and downtempo.

We got Julian to tell us about his time in the dance world, the Pink Skull project and his take on recording before he goes on the road to do a few DJ sets and than take the full band on the road for the Fu*# Yeah Tour!

NECODO: Julian, thanks for taking the time to talk with us. You have a lot going on right now with the full length remix record ("Zeppelin 3" on Free News Projects), your single with remixes on the Savant Guard ("Drugs Will Keep Us Together") and trying to put together some tours with the band. Why don't you tell us about those?

Julian: No problem, thank you for this. This is the first record on The Savant Guard label. I really liked the song but it didn't fit on the album and I really wanted it to get out. I sent them some extra material from the sessions with that being one of them and they jumped on it. I am pretty picky of who I would want to do remixes. Trevor Lovey (House of 909) was at the top of the list. He is fantastic and I am a huge fan of his work. Savant reached out and pulled it off. I knew Ming (from Ming + FS) but I wasn't that familiar with 33HZ but they did a great job. We will have another club friendly release coming out in September as well.'

NECODO: Pretty smoking stuff. Your kind of the head or at least spokesman for this collective group of skulls how did you come together?

Julian: Ian and I have a funny story we were at the same "life changing" rave ten years before we started hanging out. I think it was in '93 when certain things were going around the scene that we both tried for the first time and we both heard Josh Wink drop "Don't Laugh". That sealed the deal for "club music" for me. We later had a connection from roommates and girlfriends and discovered that we had both sort of lost our minds for the first time at the same party. Justin and I had been playing out and seeing each other at allot of the same gigs. We started hanging out and were asked to to curate the inaugural mix for renegade dance purveyor RVNG INTL's series of hotshot dj compilations. The idea was to bring friends together that get along well. We got along so well we decided to set some guidelines and genres and see if we could make a record together and it worked.

NECODO: It seems you all brought something from your own back ground and versatility that makes it work. How does that work for the live show?

Julian: Ian is no longer with us but now with the addition of the live players it is a more dangerous group we are dealing with. Jeremy Gewertz plays drums, Mike Hammel plays bass and Sam Murphy plays guitars. All of those guys came from a serious rock school of thought and don't really listen to electronic music per se. I think they add a visceral quality this is lacking from a laptop p.a. or a DJ set. The current five piece has been together for a little more than a year. With the additional elements we can get into more dubby guitar overtones, chuggy bass lines and live percussion that just gives everything a more disco like sound. We also have a video component to the live set where we mix our own animation which is video synched to the music in Ableton Live. It just feels like a party. Our backgrounds are all weird, hard, quirky and diverse but at the same time it generally all makes sense together.

NECODO: How does that effect your writing process when you are coming from an electronic musician's solo computer and some gear style set up?

Julian: It's certainly a more labor intensive process but it is very satisfying to be able to nerd out and record with a group of friends. We record analog 15 track to one inch tape. After we record the drums like that we dump it to pro-tools and than take it home and edit the drum tracks to loops and phrases to build songs off of. I have been collecting synths since the early 90's. I like my Moog, Novation and Roland analog sounds. We go back to the studio to add those and continue to edit and mix until we like what we have. I like to run everything through processors and API preamps than tweak it out to get as full a sound as I possibly can.

NECODO: Can you tell me some of the things that pushed you in the direction to make funky exciting and strange dance music?

Julian: My Mom was a huge fan of commercial disco. The usual names like Rick James and Donna Summer. Her copy of "On the Radio" was played all the time. At the same time there were Prog Bands and some classical music played in my childhood home near the swamps of New Jersey. I think what really hit was my Aunt bought me a copy of Stakker Humanoid in 1988. It blew my mind, I still have that same copy today! I got really into hard core and punk when I was a bit older. I bought the cro-mags. There was some serious brutality on that record. That was the scariest music I had ever heard and I listened to it intently every day for some time. The fact they made and recorded that record and loved doing what they were doing and were able to survive doing it made me believe I could do the same. Even though I still have a day job I love my current situation. It allows me to stay free of burning out.

NECODO: Thanks for your time Julian - I think things are going to continue going the way you want this year.

Julian: Thanks!