“When our dad busted out his Ramones vinyl, things were a little bit different. I don’t know if anyone’s truly ready to have something that badass in your face for the first time. Vinyl was really important from then on.”
“The first rock song that I was ever REALLY into was “Monkey Wrench” by Foo Fighters. When I was like 3 or 4—something like that. I consider that my first rock song. The Colour And The Shape is an album that we’ve pretty much kept in our lives all the way up until now. It still kills, man. Some time after that, Dad had been playing a ton of Weezer’s Blue Album, and that was really amazing because that record really changed our lives and totally influenced the way that we write music.
He showed us the movie School of Rock, which had a full on “Immigrant Song” scene—that was another life changing sound. Then it was time to find Led Zeppelin III. And that led us to Zeppelin IV. It was really inspiring to us when we learned that there were Lord of the Rings songs on that record. They dug some really cool stuff, and they wrote incredible songs about those things. It was just really clear that they were doing what they wanted to do, and that’s the whole point.
Listening to vinyl is really just one of the most enjoyable things that you can do as a person with ears. We sometimes spend multiple days off just hanging out in the basement listening to vinyl all day. I can’t ever really see myself just hanging out, popping in CDs or listening to MP3s all day long. Doesn’t sound like fun. Maybe for like background music or something while your playing Fallout or something. Or taking a road trip.
I could go into some huge detail about the process, and the needle sound and all of that, but it’s as simple as this: It just sounds fucking better than everything else. Why wouldn’t you be in to it?”
—Isaiah Radke
Radkey’s debut album, Dark Black Makeup arrives in stores on August 21. Preorder the vinyl here.
