When PC Music began as a London-based label and collective over 10 years ago, few could have imagined the cultural heights the group has now achieved. Maybe PC Music itself couldn’t handle it either; in early 2024, the label announced it was halting output, instead focusing on archival projects. As PC Music was laid to rest, its members took the stage at Charli xcx’s PARTYGIRL Boiler Room. Yet another cycle of mainstream absorption had been completed; this time, it happened on its pioneers’ terms.
Finn Keane, also known as EASYFUN, has played a role in PC Music since its nascent days. Producing some of the label’s most daring and iconic tracks like “Be Your USA” and “easyMix,” he also worked with A.G. Cook on Thy Slaughter, a PC-minded take on an indie record. He has also been crucial to PC Music’s relationship with Charli xcx, producing key tracks on Pop 2, Charli, and Brat. His work on “Speed Drive,” Charli’s contribution to the Barbie soundtrack, and Brat’s “360” offered him his first placements on the US Hot 100 chart.
The collective, founded by A.G. Cook in 2013, included like-minded producers from Danny L Harle, Hannah Diamond, GFOTY, and Danny L Harle, as well as orbital artists like Kero Kero Bonito and SOPHIE. Like his collaborators, EASYFUN is hellbent on manipulating, exaggerating, parodying, but fundamentally deifying the sounds and images the collective grew up with. Of course, nothing could have anticipated the runaway success of Charli xcx’s Brat, which has allowed PC Music to add electoral influence to its laundry list of accomplishments, which saw Cook and Keane, alongside a slew of like-minded collaborators, achieve the sonic and cultural apex of PC Music’s dialogue with mainstream pop culture.
Fresh off his warmly received DJ set at MoMA PS1’s Warm Up, we sat down with EASYFUN to discuss Stravinsky and Albini, his DJ methodologies, and how artists communicate history with listeners.
BENNY: There’s DJs like Autechre who only play live material and Jeff Mills who layers four records at once. You find something down the middle. You’ll play songs with lyrics but you’ll also introduce your own sound design material into that. What’s your methodology, where do you pull that from?
EASYFUN: I love anything that goes between extremes. I love the most poppy, poppy pop song and the most horrifying, alienating sound design next to each other. I think those have always been the themes I’ve been drawn to in music and what I try to take into everything: production, songwriting, DJing…
BERNARDA: You said in a previous interview that a lot of how you found your sound was contrast: that bright, poppy sound compared to the super melancholic electronic that was taking over, like Oneohtrix Point Never. What do you think the new subversion will be now that that brighter sound has gotten mainstream in electronic music?
EF: I’ve always got a feeling that there’s going to be something that’s super anti-Internet, really pro-live space… I feel like there could be something exciting and radical that’s completely off those platforms and much more in a real-world space, or much smaller, Internet forum kind of environment. I feel like Internet forums are still very alive and exciting. Me and A.G. Cook, who’s a longtime friend of mine, we have this project called Thy Slaughter that is more guitar-led mixed with electronic drums and I feel like that’s also an avenue that hasn’t been explored as much and feels quite fresh. Does that answer your question?
BENNY: Yeah! That’s a very good point because now we’re seeing a lot of digicore artists, artists that started completely on the Internet going full live band and hitting the tour, reversing that spree the industry tries to do. As the subculture PC Music cultivated expands to the mainstream and the cycle starts again, are you interested in pushing for rediscovery of what is now once again subversive?
EF: Oh, definitely! 100%. It’s hard not to talk about Brat. I say this with no bitterness, but I feel like pop has been really great, acceptable songs. I remember hearing Brat before it came out, we were doing a listening session, and thinking, “This just sounds crazy, this is crazy. How’s this going to be received?” For that to do so well on the commercial level, I’m super excited about that. One of my favorite bands is Nirvana; it’s obviously very different, but that was a very exciting moment for me where it’s genuine subculture coming forward. [Brat] actually a potentially alienating and strange album, you know?
BERNARDA: Did you expect that reception for Brat?
EF: Not at all. I mean, who could ever predict that? Fucking, Kamala Harris doing Brat HQ, what the fuck?
BERNARDA: Kamala is brat!
EF: But you could never predict it. The other thing about Brat, to be fair to everyone involved, everyone has been making music like that for almost over ten years. I guess everyone’s come around to it rather than it being some radical departure for anyone. I remember hearing Pop 2 thinking that was pretty exciting and strange and a lot of those songs would work on Brat. To answer your question: I’m super excited about that, and it’s an incredible thing. It’s one of those moments that you could never predict, super special.
BERNARDA: You mentioned internet forums, those sort of sects, and that this music has been around, it’s not necessarily new. People in the mainstream might be hearing it for the first time but this has been around for decades. How has the shift been, going from PC Music being something with a very cult following of people who are in the know to now being associated with this mega pop star moment?
EF: That’s really funny, I think it’s the same. I don’t think I have any more fans, in all honesty, which I’m totally cool with! I’ve always loved the very dedicated fandom of PC Music. I feel like it’s just the same people and they’re excited and gassed that it’s the same people making this pop record. But I don’t feel like anyone has a different response to me. I think Charli’s in a new realm of insane success, where they’re saying “what it is to be Brat” on CNN, which is so… Have you seen that piece? You should watch it, it’s amazing! It’s Wolf or whatever talking, it’s so funny. I don’t feel there’s any change to the PC or my cult fandom, it’s just they’re really excited.
I don’t see much difference. I think it’s really fun for people that have been following. Someone DM’d me before this show being like, “coming tonight, Brat’s amazing, I’ve been following this from day one, I’m so excited to see how you guys have all done.” I’m not a household name. [PC Music] is still tiny, cult artists, but it’s really been rewarding for certain people to see that turn, that impact in the mainstream.
BERNARDA: Maybe not a household name until that remix drops…
EF: [Laughs] Right, right.
BERNARDA: Speaking of remixes, I won’t ask when it drops, I –
EF: I can’t, I don’t know anything! I’m so out of the loop, no one tells me anything!
BENNY: [Laughs] There’s 70 NDAs…
EF: It’s not even NDAs, I wish it were NDAs, it’s just chaos!
BERNARDA: Speaking of remixes, what makes a good remix? Your remixes are really a different body; it’s not a spin on the song, it really becomes its own living thing. What goes through your head when you’re starting that?
EF: That’s such a good question. I think a really cool remix is when it takes something that’s quite extreme about the song and exaggerates that throughout the piece. That’s something I always notice is “that could be a top line” or “that could be a harmonic progression”. Say there’s a top line that’s quite simple, two or three notes, then doing a really elaborate chord progression underneath that or taking something about the track and exploding that into a wider structure. Something that takes the essence of a song, what’s quite strange about it, and then turns it into a wider concept.
BERNARDA: You’ve talked a bit about space. You play a lot with minimalism; in the set tonight there’d be moments where you would just go silent and slowly give the audience back the sound a little bit at a time. How does space play into your creative process?
EF: You mean in terms of… that’s a very intellectual question for someone who’s had two beers. That’s a good question.
BERNARDA: You’ve also mentioned Stravinsky and I’m sure that –
EF: You guys have done your research. I like Stravinsky a lot.
BERNARDA: This is like modern Rite of Spring, I think!
EF: No, I mean, I fucking love that shit, so don’t get me started! Now you’ve brought it up. No, no, that’s great, I mean, I love that stuff. Ok, ok, so the question is, am I thinking about the space. You mean like, real world environments?
BERNARDA: That, and also space sonically.
EF: Right, erm, that’s a really intellectual question. I love it, I love it! It’s so challenging. I think silence, in a club particularly, is really jarring, and I think that’s really funny. A lot of the way me and other PC Music people have done DJing is by creating quite sharp, aggressive transitions rather than a very smooth beat-matched thing. I’ve always really appreciated and tried to stay true to it even though it can be quite confusing. I think that’s a really exciting thing, this feeling of jarring moments. I love – to bring up Stravinsky – juxtaposition and extreme contrast. Something being really sentimental and pretty and then really ugly. You can do that a lot with having aggressive transitions or having loads of silence in a club; that can be quite confusing and alienating.
BERNARDA: People don’t know what to do. I saw in tonight’s set people would just sort of start cheering in the silence.
EF: Yeah, there’s a shock! That moment where you hear everyone talking a bit, I find that quite exciting. Then you know there’s moments where it’s not going to be like that. I’m not anti-mixing, I’m just saying there’s moments that are going to be mixed and moments that are quite aggressive in their transition and might have a second of silence. I guess it’s just about, again, exploring the extremes. I really enjoy that approach to DJing ‘cause I’m not a very talented DJ. I’ve always really enjoyed a more disruptive attitude towards club music and DJing.
BERNARDA: Stravinsky came to mind in the parallel of his pieces getting more acclaim after years of them being out. PC Music has already been this thing for a while, now people seem to be getting more into it.
EF: I’m actually really interested that you say that; do you really think that PC Music has got bigger? I don’t think it has!
BERNARDA: Maybe not PC Music but the sounds; the sounds SOPHIE made, those textures are now more commercially viable.
EF: Totally, totally, I just think that a lot of people who know SOPHIE, like know… I mean, shit, SOPHIE was doing that shit before everyone. But I think people don’t really know it. You can’t really see it related; it’s almost like people like Charli have taken it there but I don’t think people are really aware of the wider context. It’s not my perception. There’s always the same level of fandom about it. Maybe I’m wrong, I don’t know. I hope I’m wrong.
BENNY: I think it’s similar to when pop punk and grunge got huge in the 90’s, with Green Day and Nirvana. Punk is big, pop punk is big, but are people listening to Black Flag, are people listening to Bad Brains like that? Do people understand the context?
BERNARDA: Ouh, coconut tree.
EF: Here we go, and it starts. On the campaign trail.
BENNY: I think it’s easy to, especially in this streaming age, to play through “Immaterial,” it’s easy to play through “1999,” but to really get there… It’s a really rewarding process but it’s a really taxing process to dig through two decades worth of blogs, or Tiny Mix Tape’s yearly Top 10.
BERNARDA: Not to say people aren’t doing this.
EF: There was a funny moment around lockdown that created a new, a second wave. I think there was a feeling of going and then people were excited again. I can’t explain that. The whole experience of the last 10 years is you don’t really know what’s going to happen. People think you can predict it and you never really understand or know.That’s something I love about pop music, it’s so surprising and you see it all the time. It’s not even just this. For me, it’s funny to be closer to it, a pop moment that’s like this. But it’s always like this!
BENNY: Pop music in itself being a subversive medium is very interesting because it’s kind of this unending cycle of once something gets big the zeitgeist has to ditch it but the zeitgeist was never really onto it in the first place. What’s on your radar? What are you listening to that really excites you that’s on the fringes of the fringes?
EF: Obviously, there’s a lot of artists who are great right now. To be totally honest, a lot of the stuff that’s exciting me, again, this is very cuttable because it’s not very useful for you guys, but I’m going to be honest. I love a lot of the early 90s grunge stuff, guitar stuff. It’s very rough, it’s very minimal. I feel like Brat’s got a lot in common with that, personally, that’s how I see it. My interpretation of it, maybe other people don’t see it. Things that really excite me… Nirvana, Pixies, The Breeders. I listen to a lot of that. Always the white album, The Beatles, I think is one of the greatest, most rough pieces of music ever made. I love stuff that feels crafted but the presentation is very immediate and quite rough, which I think is really Brat and really grunge.
BENNY: I really resonate with that; I’ve been listening to a lot of Pixies. The cool thing about that is you listen and it sounds very loud, very big, but you think about it and it’s one guitar, one bass. The White Stripes does that.
EF: I mean, I love The White Stripes. That’s a great example.
BENNY: The throughline being Steve Albini, do you have any thoughts on him, his ethos and his work?
EF: Absolute king. There’s so many producers that are trying to make something perfect but capturing enthusiasm, capturing roughness, capturing energy… It’s so cliche and boring but that’s genuinely what you’re doing as a producer. People feel like that’s just a band thing and that’s very… sorry to bring it back to Brat but that’s a big part of Brat and a big part of the music I’ve been trying to make with other people. Very minimal, exciting, and vibrant; capturing personality. To be more specific on the Steve Albini thing, because now you’ve brought him up – you’ve brought up Stravinsky and Steve Albini, I mean, come one, these are cool people. These are my favorite people! They’re so cool. They should’ve made an album together! It would’ve been so insane.
BERNARDA: They just missed each other!
EF: I know, I know… couple of years. I can’t remember what I was going to say.
BENNY: Something I saw a lot when Albini passed was people would bring up “How do you make a guitar sound like this? How do you make a snare sound like this?” and I think that translates well into PC Music, which is, how do you make anything sound like this? SOPHIE was very big on pushing the limits, synthesis –
EF: And SOPHIE’s the fucking GOAT, you know. To make a point on SOPHIE, imagine one of those SOPHIE synth sounds that is fucking chaotic and mad. But also, simultaneously, the cleanest thing you’ve ever heard. I think there’s something very Steve Albini about that, which is directness. It’s three sounds, it’s one sound, it’s incredibly clean and minimal and such excitement and energy. People are very afraid about seeming professional and seeming “pro” and neat. It’s a challenge to myself, even. I’m saying this to myself, to be really crude, to be rough, but also to try to craft that roughness into something that’s really immediate and beautiful.
Our interview seemed to end there, so the recording ended. As we prepared to wrap up, not wanting to keep him too long, the conversation was struck back up, and the recording was eventually restarted. In the interim, EASYFUN expressed his frustration with pop music generally not being seen as a serious genre.
EF: People always ask about PC [Music], is it a joke? Are you taking the piss? No, no, it’s really serious. Everyone fucking loves pop music. Like, Domino is a love letter to Max Martin and Jesse J and people are like “you’re taking the piss out of it”. But now, everyone accepts that pop music can be really cool and gorgeous and emotional. It’s been a really exciting thing that happened over the last 10 years. It’s so cool.
BERNARDA: I was just talking about this with Benny, about what Steve Albini said about pop music.
EF: What did he [say]? I don’t know.
BERNARDA: He really did not –
EF: That ‘cause he’s such a fucking purist! The problem is you can’t ask, I mean, he’s going to have his purist views. He’s so extreme. I love him, but I don’t agree with him. [Laughs] He’s going to have a ridiculous fucking opinion on shit. But it’s cool, you want him to have that conviction. Music is all about conviction, and he’s got it. Sometimes it’s fucking wrong, it doesn’t matter.
BENNY: I think music critics fear the “poptimism” word.
EF: I love poptimism!
BENNY: Right, or they don’t consider Cher or Celine Dion “serious music”.
EF: It’s very serious.
BENNY: It’s serious just by virtue of being music but also, you know, Cher, everything that she’s pulling on. She was 60’s soul, she was disco.
BERNARDA: I do wonder how much of that is sexism. It’s a female-dominated genre…
EF: Oh, totally. 100%. The other thing to remember is pop music consumption is dominated by girls. And it’s 100% about sexism. Young girls have been on it before everyone else, in my opinion. Young girls saw the Beatles. Young girls saw… they got it before the art fuckers. They get it. It’s a sexist thing, it’s an ageist thing. It’s all this crap.
BENNY: It has been fun to see the critics go along with PC Music. Pitchfork, still kind of occupying the landscape –
EF: They’re so kind to us. Did you see the Vroom Vroom thing? I mean, with Pitchfork.
BENNY: Oh yeah. 4.5 to 7.8?
EF: Yeah, yeah, like “We got it wrong, sorry, LOL!” Fuck you guys. Like, you really didn’t get it. I remember reading a Guardian article about Product, SOPHIE, being like “Oh, 2 stars”. I mean, you’re just an idiot. You just don’t get it. Like, what the fuck? How can you give that 2 stars? It’s all, who cares, not even worth being upset about, but… It’s really, the whole thing has been really satisfying and eye-opening about everything, about culture.
BENNY: But also, to me, that was the most apt reaction to it.
EF: It’s also cool if people want to fucking hate it.
BERNARDA: That’s the thing, do you think if something so cutting-edge were to be received warmly that it would’ve been interesting?
EF: Right, it hurts a bit but it’s also really fun to piss people off. It’s also quite fun for people to get angry and to not get it. Stuff that is polarizing is really exciting, for people to be alienated. Identity and conviction is everything in music. In music, in Stravinsky. Stravinsky is all about conviction and identity and about mixing sentimentality and ugliness. It’s all about these extremes. It’s everything and therefore it’s very exciting for some people not to get it. It’s kind of a win. It’s like that David Bowie thing: you’ve got to keep going, keep going, and just when you’re slightly out of your depth, you’re a bit scared, that’s when it’s really something exciting. I have really experienced that on a few occasions, particularly with PC and with Brat. Pop 2 even. Like, fucking hell. That was a really huge turn with Charli.
BERNARDA: What scares you now, if you’re at the forefront of it all?
EF: What scares me? Fucking hell. I’m not very afraid of anything. I love most stuff. I actually probably do have an answer. I want to hear your answer. You guys are so fascinating. I mean, this isn’t even an interview anymore, it’s an actual conversation. I’m so interested in what you guys have to say.
BERNARDA: What do you listen to in your downtime?
EF: I listen to a lot of classical music. Do you guys like classical music?
BENNY: [Pointing to BERNARDA] Classical cello major.
EF: Are you actually, really? Oh my God. I’d love to chat with you about this. Well, what, who do you like?
BERNARDA: Besides the more traditional classical, I’ve been coming back to the Mishima soundtrack, [Philip] Glass’. I recommend. There’s some Glassian stuff in what you do, I think. You’ll take a microscopic bit, half a word from a song and piece it together. I do recommend the Philip Glass Mishima soundtrack. “Closing” is one of the most… it’s the same line, like what you were talking about in a remix, taking one line and building off of that. That’s the entire piece: one thing, and it’s devastating.
EF: Right, right. That sounds amazing. I can’t wait to hear it.
BENNY: There’s this kid out of Atlanta, LAZER DIM 700. It’s just on the brink of being unlistenable but it’s also so exciting and very visceral. Also in New York there’s the, I mean, evilgiane who just played, it’s very crude and very furnished. I think that’s their form of raw self-expression. They’re also what, 20? 19, 20? It’s crazy what you can do if you get a kid on a computer.
EF: Yeah, it’s so cool. All that Soundcloud stuff is so great in that respect. Insane talent.
BERNARDA: Right, and you asked us how we got into PC Music and like I said, I got in through SOPHIE but I got to her mainly through neoperreo and all the Latin electronic. Personally, I got there first through Arca, because she’s the GOAT, forever.
EF: I mean, Arca’s incredible. Did you see Arca’s Boiler Room? I thought it was so aggressively troll-y. So alienating.
BERNARDA: Yeah, the comments were like, “She’s done better,” but they just don’t understand!
EF: The engagement with the camera was so fantastic. Anyways, I loved it.
BERNARDA: Her engagement is always beautiful. I saw her at LadyLand and I love the way the crowd is alienated in a way where this spectacle is not something that’s accessible at all but it’s also so intimate. You’re in the bedroom with her but this is not somewhere you’re supposed to be. I think that’s peak performance.
EF: I mean, Arca’s incredible. It’s really exciting that you guys have found something in it. It’s so cool, that feeling when you’re making music and you make it because you want to communicate something. I always thought that with David Gamson? You might not know, you know Scritti Politti?
I really love Scritti Politti, Alex [A.G. Cook] loves Scritti, Dan loves Scritti, a lot of our friends love Scritti. We grew up, before PC, listening to Scritti. There was this amazing moment being like “I know this is related to Webern and Stravinsky and fragmentation and about mixing pop and weird art” and then feeling all of that. Then I had the privilege of meeting David Gamson who produced a lot of their stuff and I was like, “I know you like Webern” and he was like, “You’re right” and he communicated that through the music. I think it’s such an exciting thing when you listen to someone’s music and you really get it. You know them a little bit. It’s an amazing feeling. That feeling is what music is about; you want to make the thing to connect with people and for them to get it. It’s a very precious thing and it’s got to be one of the most rewarding things about making music.
BERNARDA: That goes back, too, to what we were saying earlier that I don’t know if people know the context of what they’re listening to but they’re taking it in. It seeps in somewhere.
EF: Totally. It’s amazing that music is communication. It’s really rewarding to make something and that feeling of “Well, someone’s gonna get it. Someone’s going to understand what I’m doing here” and then someone actually genuinely understanding that. That connection, and having that information about you that you didn’t even know you passed on is very –
BERNARDA: It’s very English teacher analyzing a book.
EF: Right! Have you seen The History Boys?
BERNARDA: No.
EF: It’s an English play; there’s a really nice thing which is when you’re reading a poem and you really connect with it, the hand of history reaching over the generations and touching yours, that moment of connection. I feel that way a lot about pop music.
BERNARDA: I feel like that is what pop music is.
EF: It’s really beautiful and the fact that you guys have got PC Music and you’re hearing Stravinsky and all these things, and the Glass, we fucking love that stuff. It’s really cool that that conversation is already taking place over music. I’m very inspired by that, because I’m very inarticulate, to be honest. It’s a really amazing thing… that’s why you do it, to communicate. To say something about the world. It’s very ideological. I don’t mean that in a kind of radical way, I mean it in a very positive way. You have things you want to express about oneself, then you put it into music and you hope other people connect.
BENNY: It’s also very fun when I have been listening to something for a long time and I read something that recontextualizes it. I read this interview about how A.G. and SOPHIE went to meet Yasutaka Nakata in Japan, and that made so much sense! With Capsule and “Free Free,” this made so much sense in the wave of that era of electroclash; analog but now digital. I think it’s always so enlightening getting to learn something like that.
EF: Oh, it’s so cool.
BENNY: I would never have drawn that connection, but also just knowing that it’s there…
EF: Totally. You know more about your heroes than you think. The reason you really connect with it is actually because there’s something in common between you and them. I mean, maybe that’s not true. I’ve definitely felt that to be true. When you really connect with something you’re like, “Wow, you’re like a family member or a friend that I can talk to”.
BENNY: There’s a Kim Gordon essay I always think about where she basically says you pay to see yourself in –
EF: She just did the Apple dance, sorry to –
BERNARDA: I saw that!
EF: Insane! What were you saying? Sorry, didn’t mean to cut you off at all.
BENNY: She has this essay about Glenn Branca that’s like, “You pay to see yourself perform in someone else”. So, maybe I’m not totally in the same realm as Charli or SOPHIE…
EF: I think you are, you are! You’re in dialogue with them. You know what they’re saying, you know what they’re trying to say and you’re connecting with that. You’re like, “I know what you’re trying to say about being fucking confident and also hating yourself and loving extremes”. Loving being challenging but also common ground, kindness and empathy… All those things. It’s all in there. I mean, that’s why Brat’s so fucking good. I mean, it’s an amazing album, and it’s not really because of me or anyone else; it’s all ‘cause of Charli, really. She’s so good at being simultaneously arrogant and then also really honest.
BENNY: My favorite part of this whole thing is where she’s like “I don’t actually really listen to music, but she knows her references so well. She’s citing Gregg Araki, she knows exactly the vision she creates:
EF: She’s a delight; she’s lovely to hang out with. I feel like, God, I’m so lucky that I got to interact with these people that I look up to. I guess the thing that I’m noticing more and more, the thing that gets me off is that you can have a hit song people love and you don’t really care but when you really look up to someone and respect someone like I look up to Charli, and Alex, and SOPHIE, and [Danny L Harle], I really love those people and I really look up to them. They text me like, “Oh, this is really cool, what you did there,” and that’s kind of it. That’s the moment when you’re like “Fuck”. A lot of making music is being in dialogue with people and I feel very lucky to have been able to interact with those names. I mean, fucking hell, look at those names. Jesus Christ. SOPHIE, Charli. Incredible, incredible artists.