I don’t consider myself an authority on Thai music or the Thai music scene, but I do have my own limited perspective.

Thailand is a major tourist destination, so there’s an unfortunate emphasis on commercial electro house for drunk international tourists with no taste. In my neighborhood, nearly every Friday and Saturday there’s a very loud live band that plays psychedelic freakout music with tons of solos and no riffs. It’s kind of good, but I don’t really know who else it appeals to.

My favorite sandwich is probably the 2nd Place Medal Sandwich. It’s about eating your failures and making peace with them. Also, it has wheels and Sriracha sauce to cheer you up.
Or did you mean sandwiches for actual ingestion? If so, my favorite sandwich comes from a restaurant called Native Foods. It’s called a “Chicken Run Ranch Burger” and its temperature is on the warm side. Hillside Quickie has some serious contenders too.

Thank you. The concept just arrived while I was waking up and in a state of semi-consciousness. I wake up from a lot of my dreams laughing.

I don’t have experience as an actor, but I have studied film making a bit and I’m a graphic designer by trade. My girlfriend and I shot the video in our Bangkok apartment using her camera. I bought nearly all the sandwich ingredients and other props from Daiso.

When you ask me to make a video, this is pretty much what’s going to happen. I want people to enjoy their lives, so I’d never try to ruin something as important as sandwiches. In a way, the idea worked because I didn’t know what the video should be. What visuals belong with this sound? Nothing really, so let’s try to show people something they’ve never seen before.

Bass quilting in my treble hammock.
Feral cat seduction.

I’d rather not name names because I’d feel terrible if those people Googled themselves and found this interview, heard my music, hated it, and then cursed me silently under their breaths for associating myself with them. If you ask me privately, I’ll tell you.

So I’ll just say punk, especially from DC and San Diego, noise, especially from Japan, metal from the US, (French) Canada and Japan, electronic music from England, and techno and house from The US, UK, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, and Spain.

A record label from San Diego called Vinyl Communications had a big influence on me. The music and people were always inspiring and stimulating, and I got to use a studio for the first time thanks to Bob. He also let me join his band as their live bass player when I was 16. Tit Wrench was one of my favorite bands, and the members all happened to be brilliant and kind people who indirectly forced me to keep up with them.

I learned about most of them through friends. We also had some great record shops in San Diego called Lou’s Records, Off the Record, and Elevator, where a guy named Mark curated and fed us incredible techno. The Ché Café in San Diego was also really important for me and for a lot of other people there. It was and probably still is the best place for underage shows.

Somewhat stupidly, I discovered a good percentage of my favorite music by just buying it based on cool cover art. There does often seem to be a connection. Or conversely, the appeal of white labels sometimes overtook me and then rewarded me handsomely.

I spent about 24 years there, so quantitatively and qualitatively San Diego has to come in first place. But I did go to LA (and north of LA) for a lot for raves and such, so that was important too. KR, Shameless, Pleasure Boat / Bonkers, and Decibel Festival have all given me buckets of wonderful music events, so Seattle has a huge place in my heart. The first event I played in Seattle was a “Show and Tell” put on by DJ Verse at The Living Room. Seattle has a reputation for being inhabited by cold people but if you’re into techno, the stereotype is revealed to be bullshit.

5U modular analog synth, analog mixer with built-in A to D, some hybrid analog/digital synths, monitors, and computer. Yeah, I think Live 9 will be good but I’ll probably find things to complain about. It helps to remember that the first sampler I used was an Ensoniq EPS 16+ that I borrowed from a monk.

I’m playing “live” and DJ’ing at the same time.

I basically have two “decks” in Ableton.
Each deck is up to 8 channels of clips.
Each set of clips in a deck are controlled by a Launchpad.
Each deck sub-mix is fed to a channel on the DB4.
Within Ableton I’m playing “live” using song parts (drums, synths, noises, etc.), and on the DJ mixer, I’m mixing whole songs into each other, kind of like a DJ — mixing mixes.
Sometimes I’m using all 8 (Ableton) channels for a song and other times it’s just one. The DB4 gives me access to really good effects, plus I use it as a MIDI controller for effects that are sitting in Ableton. I also have low pass and high pass filters plus a looper on each DB4 channel, so filtering and phrasing can be done on each song, which helps to mix things together that might not otherwise make sense. That’s important when you’re only mixing your own music and your own music is kind of all over the place. There are tons of possibilities.

The future for me looks like it’s in Japan starting next year.

I’m also working on an EP. It’s got a little under-the-radar attention right now, so I’m encouraged and really grateful for that. I have tons of unfinished tracks, so I’m always trying to wrap them up. It’s difficult because I usually don’t have time to finish them in a day or two. It’s more like months and even years, mostly due to my job. When I come back to the tracks, I instantly have more ideas and spinoffs, so it’s very difficult to say “okay, this is final”. That’s good for live sets though, because I have tons of stems to play around with.

I want to play out more and release more music. I want to see people happy and freaking out, sweaty, sexually excited, and maybe a little confused.

Thanks for the interview Joe, and thanks for being a big part of what makes Seattle techno a reality.

You can catch Gunnar Lockwood Saturday December 22nd at the Electric Tea Garden for the monthly party “The Social.” Also Joel Pryde will be preforming along with your favorite Shameless residents.