There aren’t any girls in Machine Girl.
The project was created by producer Matt Stephenson in 2012, who eventually recruited Sean Kelly to play drums in 2015, making the project into a duo. The music created by the duo has been described as “hardcore electronic punk”, “punky breakcore”, and other similar genres, but it really stands on its own as hardcore electronic music inspired by the digital age and the state of the world today. The music is full of sampled pop culture references, tongue-in-cheek lyrics, and fast-paced beats that greatly appeal to their fans, who are mostly internet natives themselves.
I was able to sit down with Matt, the producer and lyricist of the project, to discuss their ongoing tour, their new album, MG Ultra, and how this once small DIY project evolved to become the successful band it is today. Their story is one that proves that you don’t need the backing of a major record label to find success.
Brookie Stardust: What inspired you to make your new album? Did you have any specific musical influences that made their way into it?
Matt: It was inspired by a bunch of different stuff. It was definitely partially inspired by touring with 100 Gecs a year and a half ago, watching them perform every night and performing [myself] for those huge crowds and stuff. I was trying to make more anthemic songs with bigger hooks and stuff… There is definitely a theme of insanity and just like the psychological state of the world from my own viewpoint and just how people are kind of losing their minds and the internet and technology… is manipulating people and there’s so much misinformation and propaganda and how that has just created a total rift between people. People can’t agree on what’s real and what’s fiction and it’s just getting worse, and it’s sad and scary. A lot of the record is about that. I also tried to put a couple positive spins on that. “Until I Die” is kind of about that and mental health issues and persevering through that and fighting the good fight. The track “Cicadas” is a track that I mostly wrote, lyrically, back in 2021 when shows were happening again for the first time. [It’s about] this whole new generation of kids that just appeared out of nowhere because of lockdown and it’s an optimistic pro-Zoomer anthem. That was the intention of that track.
Since you were talking about how the internet and online culture has a lot to do with this record, I was wondering if you think the internet has altered your fanbase in any way? I know TikTok is a massive platform, and a lot of artists say their fanbases completely changed after their music was exposed to young people on the app. I was also wondering what your opinion on these new fans is since you said you’re pro-Zoomer.
The internet has changed the Machine Girl fanbase massively. When we first started and we were doing DIY tours and stuff, it was just our peers, and now it’s like kids that are half my age, which is crazy. Definitely, during lockdown, multiple Machine Girl songs going viral on TikTok sort of changed things… But that’s also been what’s really cool about our tours and live shows is that it’s all kids that discovered us on TikTok and a lot of them have never even been to a show before, and our shows are pretty intense and high energy and it kind of shocks them in a good way. Still, there’s nothing better than connecting with the music in person. We’ve been lucky to have a lot of bumps in our fanbase because of the internet but then [we’re able to] reinforce that with the live shows.
What inspired you to start DJing?
When I first started making Machine Girl music it was by myself and it was instrumental ravey dance music, so the only way I could perform it by myself was DJing, so I had to learn how to do that. It took a couple years for me to feel confident DJing and for it to really click. Now I really love doing it. It’s really fun and a totally different experience than a performance.
How did the scenes you were a part of when you were first coming up as an artist influence your musical and artistic trajectory?
Early on, there was really no scene. I was in kind of an internet scene for a bit early on, which was this huge, vast, loosely connected artist community on Facebook and SoundCloud back in 2013 and 2014 which was colloquially referred to as “Weird Facebook”. There was tons of Facebook groups, there were all these pseudo-meme pages and groups to share music and art in, and it honestly was pretty cool. It was crazy deranged. When Facebook first started, for a lot of people, it was only to connect with people that you knew in person, but “Weird Facebook” was the start, for me, of connecting with total strangers across the world. It was like this collision of all these different styles of music and art and stuff. [There were] a lot of art school kids, and I remember that was when footwork was kind of popping off, and there was a whole footwork community and all these weird niche, wannabe SoundCloud producer collectives. There were all these attempts at having an aesthetic identity to claim and use. Seapunk was a thing, witch-house, even to some degree I think Young Lean came out of that too. It’s still happening, it kind of didn’t go anywhere. It’s funny it’s become this weird, omnipresent, internet aesthetic thing that’s still around, like people using anime girl album covers and [stuff], and it all started back then, and I was a part of that scene.
Then there was also a New York scene. It wasn’t really a scene, it was like a group of friends that I had that were all different kinds of artists and stuff, and we would throw these cheesy anime rave kinda parties. Then that eventually kind of fell apart and at the same time I started playing with Sean, the drummer, and then we started to move into the New York underground noise scene. But it was a newer noise scene of younger artists and bands at the time like Dreamcrusher and Lovespread. We were all kind of playing together and definitely rubbing off on one another. All of that has kind of congealed into what Machine Girl is now. The last form of that, to me, was right before lockdown was us, Dreamcrusher, Deli Girls, Kill Alters, and a couple other bands that were all making industrial, noise-punk [stuff] and playing shows together and that was really cool, and lockdown really [messed] that up.
Machine Girl has gotten to the point now that it’s so big that we can’t really exist in a scene anymore. I still have all my friends in New York that are all artists that I work with and stuff, and we all support each other, but its not like it was back then where we were playing multiple shows sometimes, even in a week, in New York, with the same bands and stuff. That for us is now in the past.
Do you miss being a part of a scene like that?
Totally! And the same can be said for touring. We used to tour and do it all DIY so we’d be crashing on couches and meeting people in other cities and other scenes and making friends everywhere. Now, its so disconnected. We’re in a bus, we play Live Nation venues and stuff. Its still fun, but its different and I do miss that older feeling.
I know a lot of your music talks about mental health struggles, so I was just wondering if you’ve ever struggled with performance anxiety. I know a lot of big artists still struggle with that, especially performing for large crowds.
Totally, especially at first, I had horrible stage fright for a while. I really had to force myself, like taking a cold plunge or something, I had to make myself really uncomfortable and force myself to embarrass myself in front of people and learn to be okay with that. Even still I get performance anxiety, and it’s different in a weird way, but it’s still there. I still sometimes get nervous or get stuck in my own head and overthink everything. That still happens to me.
Are there any current artists you’d really like to tour or collaborate with in the near future?
One artist I love right now is Hakushi Hasegawa. [Her music] is crazy, its like psycho, noise-jazz, breakcore, it’s cool. She’s awesome. She’s the first person that comes to mind. All three of the artists we’re touring with now are all artists I was stoked to tour with. Lightning Bolt, Snooper, and Femtanyl, and all for different reasons. Creatively collaborating with any of them would be cool.
Who are you listening to right now?
Truthfully, I’ve fallen off a little bit and I haven’t been listening to that much newer [stuff]. Autechre is always in my rotation, Hakushi Hasegawa, I love the new Chatpile, they would be a band I would love to play with. The new Magdelena Bay record was cool, that one song “Image” is really sick, that’s a great track.
AI is a hot topic these days, and I was wondering, as someone who makes electronic music, how do you feel about AI infiltrating music and other arts?
I think it sucks. Admittedly, in the beginning, like two years ago, the first time the image [stuff] was getting useable, I used it a couple times for flyers. I had a policy of not using it for anything I’d ever sell, but it’s so quickly gotten so out of control. With late-stage capitalism, the combination of those two things is just such a recipe for disaster and extreme exploitation. It’s really made me look and reflect and [think about] what is the purpose of art, like consuming it, creating it, and when I think of the tech bros that have a hard-on for AI art and music, they fail to realize that part of why people make art is not just about the end result, it’s the process involved, that’s what gives it that humanity. Without that it’s nothing. I see [stuff] created by AI that on the surface is “cool”, like aesthetic, but its empty, I can’t engage with it, there’s nothing there to engage with and there’s no intent. What makes me sad is that all the highest-level people that own media companies are obviously going to shove this down people’s throats. It sucks. And it’s so unpopular, that’s the crazy thing. Most normal people think AI is creepy and weird, it’s like NFTs.
Are there any big projects that are pipe dreams for you? Any kind of concept albums or anything that you would one day want to create?
Theres definitely a couple concept albums I want to do eventually. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but at some point, I’d like to make a collection of songs that have been on [my previous] albums that I’d love to remix and reproduce and make a compilation record of. [Theres] tracks that I still think there’s something there that just weren’t executed at the level I wanted them at at the time. I’d eventually love to get into film. I want to direct or something, I want to make the movie. That’s a pipe dream. Some of the ideas I have can be done in a more art-housey, low-budget way and DIY it. It’s not like I need to make a Hollywood movie or something.
If you are interested in their music or are already a fan, you can see Machine Girl on their North America tour happening right now until mid-December. Both of their Portland tour dates are sold out, but if you are willing to drive a bit farther to see them, they are also stopping in San Francisco, CA, and Vancouver, BC before playing in Portland and in Seattle, WA, and Boise, ID after their Portland shows.
MG Ultra is also available to listen to on Spotify, Apple Music, and all other major streaming services.
