Photo credit: Matt’s Music Mine
Mankid is the direct product of Sean Kelly’s resistance to his whitebread upbringing. The oxymoron is both the title of Kelly’s solo breakcore project as well as his music persona as one half of experimental digital hardcore duo Machine Girl. He and his counterpart Matt Stephenson were both born and bred in the suburbia of Long Island, New York.
“As a kid, growing up there is nice. I had a lot of access to resources to learn how to play drums,” Kelly said. “But pretty much anyone getting into being a musician had to choose between classic rock, beatdown hardcore or anything emo that’s associated with Hot Topic.”
Landing on the former, Kelly started taking lessons when he was just a Kidkid, learning to count and read sheet music by playing along to Zeppelin songs. Though, come high school, he’d all but lost interest in the instrument.
Enter Stephenson.
Both misfits, the two discovered experimental music together and became obsessed with bands like Lightning Bolt and Hella – so much so that Kelly’s love of drums was reinvigorated by Brian Chippendale and Zach Hill. From then on, Kelly studied their approaches intimately, teaching himself to break the mold with his own playing.
These were formative years for the Mankid. Kelly decided to pursue drumming professionally, studying classical music, music education and contemporary percussion in college.
I consider Kelly’s playing a middle ground between the traditions of drum technique and the unorthodoxy of experimentation. I think there’s this idea that experimental drummers usually don’t have the best technique. (Perhaps that’s because they’re usually heavy hitters who are entirely self taught).
Take Chippendale. Don’t get me wrong, he’s one of my favorite drummers ever, but if you look at his hands after a show, they more closely resemble those of a guy who accidentally turned on the disposal fishing for his wedding ring than those of a drummer. Likewise, Hill’s kit is often stained red with his blood.
As skilled and creative as these players are, they aren't exactly drum technique poster children.
Chippendale’s hand after a Lightning Bolt show
While the more pedantic might say these freaks of nature don’t have proper technique, one could argue that they wouldn’t have the same effect if they did things by the book. And we all know that Chippendale and Hill are superhuman, so maybe the importance of technique is secondary to their playing.
Anyway, for Kelly, these categories are not exclusive. He is able to balance the unrelenting intensity of his experimental forefathers while keeping technique intact.
“Sometimes I don’t really understand what drummers mean by ‘good technique,’” he explained. “I can’t relate to what most teachers say about that stuff; I have to play loud.”
For a while, Kelly was playing too loud — and too often. For nearly 10 months, a bout of tendonitis prevented him from picking up the sticks. Following his recovery, he started doing a lot of breathing, stretching and exercising.
Kelly mentions in our interview that you can play as loud as you want and still hit hard as long as you stay relaxed and focus on your breathing. Of course, that’s easier said than done — a reassuring take nonetheless.
Kelly doing his drum breathing!
If there’s one thing I learned chatting with Kelly, it’s that good technique is not just about being economical with your movements. It’s also about taking care of your body so drumming can really be pleasurable, not just taxing. Much of Kelly’s intensive practice routine involves working to get his technique consistent. This is an ongoing process for him, but he’s well on his way to becoming a master technician.
One last note, while I’ve always been impressed by Kelly’s drumming on recordings, it wasn’t until I saw him live that I really understood him as a drummer. When Kelly performs, he controls the room. In everything from the spectacle of him convulsing behind the kit as he shreds thrash metal licks to him captivating a room with the catchy pulse of his breakbeats, Kelly is a performer at heart.
I stood a mere foot away from the Mankid when MG performed in Santa Cruz. I’ve never had more fun just watching a drummer play. And what’s great about Mankid is that he makes every performance feel as though he’s never had more fun either.
Interview with Sean Kelly
What was it like growing up in Long Island as a musician?
Long Island is a very typical suburbia. As a kid, growing up there is nice. I had a lot of access to resources to learn how to play drums. I took lessons down the block, and there were kids at school that played different instruments.
Pretty much anyone getting into being a musician had to choose between classic rock, beatdown hardcore or anything emo that’s associated with Hot Topic. My drum teacher mostly just taught me Zeppelin songs, which I can’t complain about. That guy was nice, affordable and he got me reading sheet music and counting.
Long Island did have an underground music moment, but I was too young to experience it. It was frustrating because by the time I started high school, that had ended. There was virtually no music scene.
What was it like getting into experimental music? Did meeting Matt in high school play a part in that?
Well, before I met Matt, I didn’t know anyone that liked weird music. Matt and I went to different schools in the same town. Really it was this third friend we had that was our gateway to experimental music. To him, bands like Lightning Bolt and Hella just sounded weird, but Matt and I would hear that stuff and completely lose our minds!
That’s what made us want to take music more seriously.
How’d hearing that music shift your drumming style?
Right before discovering that, I was kind of not taking drumming that seriously anymore. I had been playing since I was a little kid. I spent most of high school learning other instruments and listening to all different types of music. I was interested in trying to write songs. Matt and I would jam, but I would sometimes play guitar or piano.
When I heard Lightning Bolt and Hella, it was kind of this wake up call that I really should just be playing drums all the time – that I had to be a drummer. It reinvigorated my love of the instrument. I think I was already playing too fast, too loud and with too many fills, so when I heard those guys I figured I’d keep doing what I was doing. It justified the way I really wanted to play.
What do you do for work?
Up until six months ago, I was teaching private drum lessons. MG is pretty busy right now, and we’re always planning our next move. So, currently, I’m just keeping up working with MG. I’m also trying to start a couple bands.
I want to eventually return to teaching, but it's hard right now. It was stressful teaching in New York over the pandemic. I hate video lessons… can’t do that shit. I also don’t like teaching adults, never been a moneymaker anyway. I like working with kids. I’ve had students for five to six years straight doing weekly lessons. I’d like to go back to doing that.
What sort of stuff do you start kids out on? Do you get them into weirder drummers right off the bat?
I start them with a lot of pop music, dad rock, jazz standards. Mostly I just hang out with them and make sure they're having a good time. I’ll sometimes show them some weird stuff, but I feel kind of mean; in my opinion, you have to know about all of this other music first. Then the weirder stuff can make sense. I usually tap back into classics when I teach or keep up with the top 40, which can be interesting.
Did you go to music school to become a teacher?
I was trying to get a teaching degree, but I ended up falling back and just getting a performance degree. I mostly studied classical music, music education and a lot of contemporary percussion.
Did you learn any production skills at music school?
No. My music school was entirely for classical music. It was just about playing, listening and having good technique. There were no digital or analog production classes available. I just took a lot of music theory classes.
Now, whenever I learn something new with production, I always have some bitterness toward my college experience. I wish that one of those old classical professors just admitted that recorded music is the dominant form nowadays. They were so obsessed with performing.
I learned a lot from some of those people, but college was definitely a bubble. The minute I graduated, that bubble burst, and I had no idea how to make a record.
Let me ask you a bit about Mankid. How’d you get into production?
It started really early in college. I’d just try to record myself playing various instruments on Audacity. I wanted to make noise music, so I started recording different levels of feedback along with my drums. I didn’t get into Ableton until I’d gone on a couple MG tours. I was inspired by all the producers I met making janky, ridiculous, disgusting dance music. That’s really how I got into it.
Do you ever contribute to production in MG, or are you specifically the drummer?
I’m specifically the drummer in MG. Matt will either show me songs that are basic ideas, or he’ll produce things in front of me. We’ll kind of jam and talk about it. That’s usually the case with stuff I play drums on. Sometimes Matt does production first and I figure out my drum part after. Then there’s stuff like the “MRK mix” and “RePorpoised Phantasies.” That’s all stuff Matt comes up with on his own. I only hear it once it’s finished.
So rhythmically speaking, even though you play drums, is Matt the mastermind? If so, what do you offer as the band's drummer? Surely you bring something to the table that Matt’s production by itself does not.
Matt is definitely the mastermind. It does feel like I’m the drummer of this weird metal band. Even in a lot of good metal bands, I feel like it’s usually the guitarist who writes the main parts, and everyone is contributing by adding in these little details and narrowing down an overall sound. It’s a lot like that in MG.
Matt will write SO many songs. What I do is kind of look at everything and tell him what has potential. There have been times where Matt is about to throw a song away, and I’m like “no, that one’s good.”
It’s difficult to sculpt a full-length album alone. There’s a lot of nuance that I add to our songs with acoustic drums, but I think what I really bring to the table is I help widdle everything down.
“Ugly Art” seems like it was really a step into experimentation. Was that the first album on which you recorded drums over electronics?
Definitely. That was a lot of stuff that neither of us had done before.
It actually wasn’t the first album I recorded drums over electronics on though. Have you heard Kiddy Pool? That was the band Matt and I were taking very seriously up until he made “Wlfgrl.” The only Kiddy Pool music you can find online is this proto “Ugly Art” sounding stuff where it’s just some stretched out samples and synths over my drumming. It sort of sounds unfinished. Kiddy Pool would rehearse at my music school. People would be practicing classical music while our digital hardcore band rehearsed down the hall. Pretty funny.
That band fell apart, and then Matt started taking MG more seriously. “Ugly Art” was sort of like us really trying to take the Kiddy Pool idea and really make it good.
How does performing with MG translate to recording? I know you improvise a lot.
I improvise, but the way I play live is very similar to the way I play when I record. That’s the case with “Ugly Art” and “U-Void.” I want to try things differently on this next album. I might layer my drums more – do a take when I’m only hitting a couple drums, one where I just go crazy, another where I don’t play fills. We would stitch things together.
What’s been fun about MG is that we’ll work on new material, play it on tour and then record it. When we play it in front of people, we know immediately if a certain part of a song is unnecessary or if the whole song is pretty sweet. On every tour a handful of songs are the window to our next release.
We were talking about what you use in-ear monitors for after the show. Do you want to explain a bit further why they’re important for the sort of stuff you do?
Yeah. I used to use these big black isolation Vic Firth headphones. I would only hear the synths and samples. That started to pose problems because I couldn't hear myself at all. Now I have these Shure in-ear monitors that are much more sophisticated.
Not only am I hearing the instrumental track, I’m hearing my own drumming, and I can manage my mix. I play along to a click on some songs. I can control the level of that and the track, and I can even EQ things really easily depending on the venue. In-ears have made playing in MG ten times easier. I can play much quieter now, which is good because I used to play too loud. I’d fuck my muscles up.
The only annoying part is that the in-ears fall out constantly. Sometimes I’ll take them out if the monitor is good. Even if I can’t hear the click, MG songs are all set to a metronome, even the ones with meter changes. My sense of time can’t be wavering. It’s better to be right on the beat or to rush; I sometimes rush on purpose.
Do you think your classical training helps with meter changes? What time signatures are some MG songs in?
It does. Matt sometimes produces songs that are complicated. I’ll draw my parts out on sheet music. It doesn't look good, just chicken scratch, but that doesn’t really matter because once I draw the rhythm out, I have it in my head forever; if I try to play something by ear, I might forget it the next day.
To answer the other part of your question, some songs are in 6 and 7, and sometimes Matt does this thing where a few phrases are in 4/4 followed by a measure of 2/4. So then there’s a longer phrase at work, which comes a lot from Ableton production and trying to get the beats to dovetail into each other a little more. A lot of them are also in 4/4 though.
If you’re able to memorize a part from writing it out, do you still have to practice a lot? If so, what sort of stuff?
I practice so much. It’s ridiculous. These days, I do a lot of metronome training. I’ll do long bouts of improvising – playing thrash metal licks and breakcore drumming at different metronome speeds for one to two hours at a time. I’ll also usually run the MG set three times. I’m hyper focused on my technique and breathing. Specifically, I work on getting my technique consistent; it used to be that my technique was hit or miss depending on the show or song.
I feel that there’s this idea that you can’t really have good technique if you play loud and hit hard, or maybe style and approach is restricted by the different techniques you use. Can you tell me more about your perspective on technique?
I can’t relate to what most teachers say about that stuff. I have to play loud.
Sometimes I don’t really understand what drummers mean by “good technique.” I’ve listened to a lot of interviews with this guy Dave Elitch. I love the way he talks about technique. The way Elitch talks about breathing and using your arms is a lot more practical and applicable. He argues you can play as loud as you want and still hit hard as long as you stay relaxed and focus on your breathing.
I was actually having trouble with my muscles for a while. I had been practicing with 5Bs, playing maximum speed and power. I got carried away, and my muscles got fucked up. During the pandemic, I stopped drumming for nearly 10 months because I got tendonitis from constantly practicing and recording. A big change I made was switching from Power 5Bs to Classic 7As. I didn’t need to switch my grip or anything. My technique is much more consistent now. I’ve also started doing a lot of breathing, stretching and exercising. It’s about not overworking yourself. You can still work for long hours, but you need to take care of yourself.
What’s your current setup? Do you ever play double pedal?
I was rocking kick, snare, floor tom for a bit, and I just added a rack tom. For cymbals, I use a hi-hat, ride and a broken crash stack. I didn’t intentionally make my kit so minimalistic; I was just more so focused on groove changes and song structure, and I didn’t want my kit to be excessive. Now I'm playing more of a classic setup a composer would want to have available to them.
No, I don’t play double pedal, but I’m able to get some double kick sounds from alternating between kick and floor tom. I actually want to get a double pedal because I might start playing in a metal band soon.
I want to play a bigger kit in general – definitely want to add the double kick and maybe another rack tom.
Who’s your favorite drummer right now?
I saw Full of Hell recently. Dave Bland blew me away. At that same show, he did vocals and played drums in Jarhead Fertilizer. I don’t think I’ve ever been more impressed by a drummer in my life. I learned a lot about the grindcore and death metal genres not really from watching him – I could barely see him – but from listening: the sounds of the drums, the groove changes and how what he was playing was working with the songs themselves. It was highly educational.
MG may not sound or look it, but in my mind you guys are very much a hardcore band. At the same time, you’re part of the fledgling freaky electronic community that you, along with artists like 100 Gecs have helped cultivate. What’s the response from the more established punk community regarding your music?
I think a lot of the hardcore guys are into our music. It’s funny, I don’t really see MG as being in the same scene as 100 Gecs. New York City has a bunch of laptop noise industrial music that seems to be pretty similar to MG. There’s a lot of breakcore in Brooklyn and around the country. Friends of ours have been booking raves and noise shows with a similar DIY approach to the hardcore community. New York has a really interesting scene because there's a lot of crossover now. Sometimes MG will play a hardcore show and then those guys will all go dancing at some crazy breakcore gabber rave after.
MG is more so in the electronic scene, but we’ve played with Code Orange, and Hate5six has filmed us. I feel like we’re pretty well received in multiple worlds, which is one of the best parts of being in this band.
Do you think the electronic scene you’re part of has become a safe haven for the LGBTQ community? It really seems to be embracing progressive ideology.
Definitely. It’s been like that from the beginning. when we were first hanging out in Brooklyn we didn’t feel welcome in the hardcore community. It felt that the queer community was where we belonged. I don’t identify as queer, but a lot of my friends within the LGBTQ community see the electronic scene as home. It also comes from a place of going into aggressive shows where no one is really getting hurt – like a Lightning Bolt show. When I was going to Lightning Bolt shows as a teenager, those didn’t feel like queer events, but they kind of were. People could mosh without it being from a place of anger. I’ve always wanted to create a safe environment for people where they could feel like they were at a hardcore show without having to constantly one up eachother and flex masculinity.
MG shows have been a safe haven for queer people, and it really feels like we’re doing the right thing.
Related:
Official band website: https://machin3-gir1.com
Link to tickets for Europe and Australia tour: https://linktr.ee/machin3gir1
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