Conversational analysis of music comes easy to me, maybe that’s a good thing. Or maybe not, maybe it’s better to just feel something and let it stay unarticulated. I don’t know–explanation can kind of suck the magic out of something.

TESS POLLOK: You DJ, archive music, write and you co-host the podcast Clout Farm. All these projects are done under the Madjestic Kasual banner. How did you come up with that name? What’s the genesis of these projects?

MADJESTIC KASUAL: Are you familiar with the original Majestic Casual?

POLLOK: No, I’m not.

MADJESTIC KASUAL: There’s a YouTube channel called Majestic Casual, spelled the conventional way. They had a really simple formula, a glossy image of a beach babe paired with a woozy deep house song, or something like that. From the early-to-mid-2010s, they rode that formula into millions of followers. It was really ubiquitous when I went to university; the whole formula was so funny and transparent and insulting that it kind of lodged in my head. In 2015 or 2016, their channel got copyright struck and taken down. I had a less than rudimentary understanding of how search engine optimization works so I assumed that if I adopted a name that was a slightly misspelled version of theirs, all of the traffic that was to the former Majestic Casual would go to me. Instead of using an image of a beach babe, I would use an image I thought was funny or dumb or inexplicable and pair it with a song I was into. I haven’t accrued the same millions of followers yet, but it’s coming my way, I can feel it, I’m spiritually owed it.

What I do has nothing to do with the original Majestic Casual at this point. Over time, as people became more aware of my incessant uploading of music to YouTube, people would reach out to me; I started hosting mixes and premiering songs for people on SoundCloud. For reasons that are still unknown to me, I kind of landed on the idea of making the outward-facing presentation be beanie-based. I don’t quite know why. There’s no real intention to it. And it just organically grew to be an all-encompassing umbrella for the vital and relevant work that I do. Deejaying, writing, the podcast, whatever else. I do this because it’s important to me to try to preserve things that are meaningful to me, in my own meagre way. I put on for a lot of music that would probably otherwise slip through the cracks.

POLLOK: Brands have more porous boundaries than they used to. A lot of artists I’ve talked to have done exactly what you’ve done and built out a brand that lets them explore multiple interests. What about the podcast?

MADJESTIC KASUAL: [Laughs] I can’t not be embarrassed to be on a podcast. It’s embarrassing to deem the contents of your mind worthy of broadcast. That in and of itself is mortifying. Clout Farm was initiated by my friend Rob, also known as DJ Pitch, who runs the labels TT, All Centre, and urtruimage. He’s been a pivotal part of the London underground for like 10 years. I’d been helping him with TT a little and I guess he trusted my sensibilities as we came to know each other better. When he put the idea of a podcast to me, at first it was a resolute no. But he kind of persistently hit me up until I came around to the idea. I deferred to his instincts against my better cowardice. Our friend Dom, Denglord, joined a few eps in and we got better at it gradually.

Podcasting, like anything, is a skill–and I don’t know that it came naturally to us initially. But fast forward a year and a half and we’ve talked to tons of people I probably wouldn’t have otherwise. We made new friends. I like it because it’s expanded the music and social universe I inhabit. It’s opened tons of doors and I’m a lot more comfortable doing it. More than anything, it’s a pretext to sit on a couch and engage in frothy discourse with people I find interesting.

POLLOK: What’s the long term focus for you? Music or podcasting?

MADJESTIC KASUAL: I’m kind of anti-strategy. Maybe that’s self-defeating because it would be good to wake up to a defined intention that you’re working towards. For whatever reason, I’ve always preferred just letting things unfold whimsically and organically. It’s probably hampered me in the short term but it’s the way I’m most comfortable working. I’ve already far exceeded the exceptionally low bar I set for myself. It doesn’t take much for me to have a good time or feel accomplished–that fact that I’ve gotten to talk to a bunch of people I respect, that I’ve carved out a place for myself in a scene I’m interested in, and been able to travel and DJ in cool places is enough for me. Whatever happens next, happens. Maybe it’s preemptive cope, but I feel like I’ll be fine with whatever goes down, because I’ve already had a lot of nice things happen to me. The fact that you’re deliberately talking to me on the basis of what I do is astonishing. It’s great.

POLLOK: [Laughs] Aw, thank you! I like the energy. Life is about the journey, not the destination. Who do you think are the coolest people making music today?

MADJESTIC KASUAL: I really need to think about that. Deleted is a great label. I think they’re extremely special and I love what they do. Their approach to putting out music is intuitive but also really discerning. I feel a real kinship to them both on a personal level and in terms of their musical sensibilities–that team is forever fc, Lilic, and wish. The homie Ian Kim Judd’s label OST has yet to miss. This kid $quib. bambinodj, White Poppy, Camille Keller, jackzebra, Pretty V, Ana Roxanne. Fall River Music Project is an insanely sick songwriter, crazy how more people aren’t on his tunes. I just had my friend Linus staying with me, he makes music as Chickenmilk dot com. He’s the most offline guy I know. He played me some stuff he has cooking right now, I’m in awe of what he does. Salt_server and ANTHEM are probably the most insane DJs going right now, absolute blend gods. DJ RISH is the most underrated DJ in London, he’s fire. AF85 could be collaborating with Fakemink if he put out more music. I feel privileged to be friends with those guys. I love what Seedlink is doing in Amsterdam. So much more. An embarrassment of riches out there right now.

James Ferraro, Dean Blunt, and Chief Keef were really important to me in my late teens and early twenties. SahBabii too. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t shout out Organ Tapes. He’s one of my longest-running friendships and someone who did a lot for me early on; he has zero interest in playing clout games or social climbing industry shit, arguably to his detriment. But I think he’ll be vindicated somewhere down the line because he’s next-level talented and influential in a slow-burning but kind of universal way, at least in the world I’m in.

POLLOK: What are your strengths and weaknesses as an artist?

MADJESTIC KASUAL: Strengths: I smell good, I have a symmetrical face. I have naturally dense eyebrows. Weaknesses: Sadly, most of my strengths are superficial and physical. My mind and spiritual core are lacking.

POLLOK: What kind of spiritual deficiency do you have?

MADJESTIC KASUAL: I’m not actively spiritual, unfortunately. I think the screen has consumed me. It’s detached me from an active level of spirituality that I feel strongly is absent. I feel a gnawing hunger for something, I don’t want to say the transcendental, but for something that feels meaningful and immaterial. But I’m just way too wrapped up in superficial stuff. I experience a deep lack on the inside because I’m paralysingly online. My interiority is under attack. I suspect I’m not alone.

POLLOK: Spirituality is important. It’s critical to have an inner light. Do you feel more earnest and optimistic about life or more dour and cynical?

MADJESTIC KASUAL: A little bit of column A and a little bit of column B. I have days where I feel hateful and cynical and cruel, but I think I’m better than most at romanticizing the mundane. It’s why I’m good at having a good time with very little. Just the act of walking around in a place listening to music enables me to elevate that experience beyond what it would normally be. I guess I can draw from a broader emotional spectrum than most. That’s just the burden of genius, I guess. [Laughs]

POLLOK: Are you a reader at all? Do you like books?

MADJESTIC KASUAL: I was a pretty voracious reader as a kid, but I fell off for a long period. I hopped back on reading some years ago. It’s so predictable, but I loved David Foster Wallace, his stuff drew me back into a period of intense reading. I was in awe of what he could do and the uncompromising density of the way he writes. Do you know who Mark Leyner is?

POLLOK: No, who’s that?

MADJESTIC KASUAL: He’s an author from the ‘90s who wrote this book Et Tu, Babe, which I think, pound for pound, is maybe the most exhaustingly entertaining book ever written. It’s very slim, maybe 150 pages, and it’s just this maximalist hyper-absurd novel that wove itself into my mind’s makeup and is a big influence on how I approach what I do. I remember reading an interview with him where he discussed his method and he was obsessed with packing in as much entertainment value as he possibly could into every sentence. As a result, the book is crushingly funny, but also really demanding–every sentence is overstimulating and intense in a way that I haven’t experienced with writing since then. I recommend reading that book.

POLLOK: I have to read that. What other art are you interested in? What inspires you?

MADJESTIC KASUAL: I don’t know. Inspiration is mysterious. I’m obsessed with walking. I like walking, I like my parents’ dogs, I like hanging out with my friends because they’re smart and stimulating and I feel like they always leave me with inputs that seep into my mind and inform what I do. That’s the trick to inspiration. Surround yourself with once-in-a-lifetime generational geniuses.

I live in a world where everyone is a gigantic music head. I’m very music-focused. Obviously, I like reading and writing and stuff, but music will always be at the centre of what I do. I often find myself frustrated when someone takes me to a gallery and I’m confronted with my inability to articulate what I’m feeling. I kind of start slamming my head against the wall due to my own visual ineloquence. [Laughs] Conversational analysis of music comes much easier to me, maybe that’s a good thing. Or maybe not, maybe it’s better to just feel something and let it stay unarticulated. I don’t know–explanation can kind of suck the magic out of something.

MADJESTIC KASUAL is a DJ, music archivist, writer and podcaster based in London. You can listen to his podcast, Clout Farm, here.

TESS POLLOK is a writer and the editor of Animal Blood.