From Baltimore to L.A.: The Transcendental Travels of Silk Rhodes

In conversation, Michael Collins, music maker and producer from Silk Rhodes speaks honestly; “I’d rather discuss the constant theme of transiency in my life. I’ve been footloose almost to a fault.” Silk Rhodes, a recent addition to Stones Throw’s independent dynasty, is comprised of two kindred spirits, Michael Collins and Sasha Desree. They make eerie, psyched-out tracks full of depth and personality. Their debut album released in December of 2014 is a musical sketchbook of Beach Boy-esque vocal harmonization; sneaky drum breaks, blissed out chords and taped conversation snippets. Their twelve track LP unfolds like a minimal soundtrack swollen with sweet soul, a stream-of-consciousness surrealism and velvety melodies. (Hyperlink: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50knYHJH1ng)

Here are some loose pieces from their abbreviated backstory: Collins dropped out of art school in Baltimore and proceeded to wander the in-between spaces of the map. Later on, he devoted himself to musical experimentation, met Sasha while on tour and eventually the duo coalesced and found a home at Stones Throw Records on sunny Griffith Park Boulevard. Sasha is a native New Yorker, who while as a student at LaGuardia had dreams of pursuing a career in opera. He is an innovator of looped vocal harmonization and a no joke crooner. In conversation Desree summarizes Silk Rhodes’ musical development; “The music Mike and I have made has evolved a lot, from psych rock to car pop to funk and disco experiments. We want to make music that gets past the reverb and into the heart.” Michael and Sasha’s creative symbiosis flowered out of numerous impromptu jam sessions mixed with an assortment of psychedelic tablets.

From his childhood days, Collins was first and foremost a cinephile. He recalls, “I had dreams of directing movies. This was my initial creative impulse. I love film because I have a passion for stories. With music you can create cinema for the ears. I make music for the narrative aspects of it.” Collins hails from an unmusical family (both of his parents are research scientists who study a freshwater algae called Spirogyra); in his adolescence he was a skate punk who also watched a lot of screwball horror flicks. He explains, “I was a skateboard fanatic and rode for the Coliseum shop in Boston. PJ Ladd, a Bostonian skate don, was propelled into stardom from a well-known video called, ‘PJ Ladd’s Wonderful, Horrible Life’. (Hyperlink: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emzOoZ8_2zo) PJ and his team inspired a lot of us to actually pursue our dreams. That entire lifestyle and the success of those dudes is the main reason that I do what I do today. Also, the soundtracks in those skate videos shaped my musical taste and made me more curious about hip-hop and psych pop.” He continues, “Growing up, I felt like I didn’t really fit in. Before music, all I had was skateboarding and film. I was always looking for something deeper.”

Later on, Collins enrolled in school to pursue film, but more often than not skipped out on class to chop beats in his dorm room. “I met a lot of rappers outside of the Baltimore DIY world. When it comes to emcees, Baltimore has them for days and they’re hungry.” Michael befriended some notorious street hustlers and produced tracks for them. (Hyperlink: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miJ7_zqtgQ4) Over time, Collins became bored with the monotony of day-to-day life and tapped out of school entirely. He states, “I was stuck in my own head and needed to break free.”

After he derailed from the conventional university path, Michael moseyed from place to place. He started to hop trains off and on and sleep outdoors in unison with the eternal cosmos. He was twenty-one years old and had no money to his name. “I focused on myself and my actual being. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. I learned so much. When you’re young; you are told that you have to figure it out and decide what you’re going to do. This pressure often breaks people. I concentrated on surviving and self-reliance.” He continues, “My most Zen state was when I was in shitty Nowhere-sville, or somewhere between point A and point B.” From these formative exploratory trips, Michael’s artistic spirit flourished.

After these restless probes into the unknown, Michael boomeranged back to Baltimore. He explains, “I stayed in Baltimore for maybe five or six more years. Baltimore is a depressed city economically — a rustbelt victim and it’s really cheap to live there. There are massive warehouse spaces with shows in them almost every night. The music scene was mostly experimental noise. Baltimore is insular; it feels almost like a vortex. Folks in Baltimore do their art for other people in the community and it doesn’t really leave the city limits. (Hyperlink: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyyFrU4ET8I) Dan Deacon, Panda Bear and Beach House are all from there. I moved into a house that was owned by a professor who was an avid supporter of the local arts scene. It was an entire two story house for only two hundred bucks a month.” From these low-cost headquarters, Collins ran a cassette label with Sasha and further burrowed down dark, dank rabbit holes of musical experimentation. (Hyperlink: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lk6NI_84U-o)

He further recalls his stint in B’more, “I’d regularly explore abandoned structures. There was a coat factory behind the warehouse we lived in. It was five floors of industrial nostalgia with a million tweed, camel hair and pinstriped suits in it. It was waiting to be burned down. I also ventured into an abandoned discotheque, which looked like a playboy paradise from the ‘70s. It was full of velvet booths, disco balls and coke mirror tables. In the basement, there were old arcade games and boxes of police reports.” Collins resumes, “Because the city is empty, artists can live in enormous, cheap places. Also, the scene has a lot of freedom; there is not much pressure to ascend in the art world. The community is small, supportive and open. The weirder and crazier people get with their art, the more people appreciate it. This helps artists grow into their own. There is a lot of struggle and pain in Baltimore. The city has a lot of fight. It has an air of an underdog that won’t lay down and roll over.”

Stones Throw’s recent wave of talent was directly influenced by and raised on the previously released music from Stones Throw; millennials swayed by their label mates who came before. Michael Collins reflects on the formation of his musical taste, “I wasn’t an avid music listener, in general, until I got into Stones Throw. I became obsessed with Stones Throw. I listened to Donuts almost every day. Madlib and Dilla are both major musical inspirations to me.”

Fast-forward ten years and Collins is face-to-face with the Stones Throw head honcho himself, Chris Manak. Collins describes their initial encounter, “When I first met Wolf, in my head, I was like: ‘This music is way too weird for these dudes’. Wolf looked me directly in the eyes and basically said: ‘The weirder the better.’” Manak is known to embrace creative risks and trust his knee-jerk instinct. This has more-or-less been Stones Throw’s simple formula for continued success.

Collins elaborates on his early connection with Wolf, “I had kept up with Matthew David from Leaving Records and was featured on the Leaving Records x Stones Throw: Dual Form comp. Run DMT is my side project, which was picked up by Domino (Salvia Plath was just a one-off). Wolf liked the track, ‘Bardo States Dream Walker Version’ and wanted to hear more Run DMT material. (Hyperlink: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xueb4CFySbk) Collins explains, “That track was my minimal, psyched out Velvet Underground Venus In Furs tribute. It’s drone-y, had deep bass and scratchy violins. I played all the instruments and basically howled on top of it all.” Manak immediately heard seeds of potential.

Silk Rhodes is a key player in Stones Throw’s new wave of artists and a central addition to L.A.’s outsider, oddball music scene. Desree and Collins are totally open and free in their approach to music, but all the while keep it stripped down to the bare basics. Collins and Desree, two nomads from the East Coast, will further musically bloom and artistically push the envelope forward. As Silk Rhodes swims into the deep end, the weird world excitedly waits for their sophomore follow-up.