Where do I begin? I bought my first HFM album in February 2018 but I believe I started listening to HFM around December 2017.
The first album I purchased is the above. The album title is “Underground Karaoke”.
HFM has a somewhat familiar technique of slowing down music to have a nice, bassy, flavorful and enjoyable sound that most people can enjoy. It’s great for driving, working on anything, great background music at parties, great in restaurants, great anywhere!
The range of sampling consists of everything from Kanye West to Taylor Swift and so much more. When I started listening to HFM it helped improve my outlook on many things in life and focus on things that mattered most. It helped clarify scenes of my life. It helped continue discussions with house guests that were pleasurable at best and honest but kind not at their best.
I truly believe music has a massive effect on the human mind and HFM always tends to lead me to positive thought. I’ll leave how it affects you up to you, however. Here is the interview recorded around November 30th, 2019. Answers are directly from HFM with little to no editing involved…
How did you come up with the name “Haircuts For Men”. What inspired that?i used to dj under the name jim jones but decided to switch to haircuts for men because honestly it just sounded cooler to me and no one had or has a name similar to that. when i started to make music just in general, even before vaporwave, i started to use hfm as a moniker.
Which song that you’ve created means the most to you?none of them. i like them all. i will never put out music i don’t like because i make it for myself first. actually i only make it for myself, but people also like it so i keep sharing.
How do you come up the with the names for your songs?whatever i’m feeling when i’m relistening to them before i package them into an ep or lp.
Anyone familiar with your work knows you aren’t on Spotify due to copyright issues. Will you unpack the problem you had with them and explain what exactly happened to ban you from their platform? Is there anything you would or could have done differently to keep it from happening?um no never. that’s no one’s business. but you can go listen to blair adams. in fact you need to listen to blair adams because i hear he has, uh very similar taste in style to hfm *wink wink*…
Do you want to be on streaming services like Spotify, by which I mean, do you feel that they truly do anything beneficial for artists financially or do you think you’re better off using bandcamp.com to host your creations?being on spotify was amazing but nothing lasts forever. bandcamp truly sucks. it sucks a lot of money but then again i don’t pay for much so it’s a give and take i guess.
You don’t produce many physical copies of your work. Why?because when i want to do a physical i want to do it my way. and i’m very busy with work or playing video games. so it takes me forever to design the product. then i have to decide if i’m going with a label or just do it myself.
Is all of your work one big pirated composition or do you create original music too? I assume the latter is true but I just want to give your fans an idea of what is truly your creation from scratch vs what isn’t.most hfm is strictly sample, but there are releases where i add quite a bit of production. i won’t say which is which so if you can’t tell i think that’s pretty amazing on my end.
Who inspired you to get into music?i’ve just always loved music and from the very beginning got into chopping and screwing music. but if i had to pin it down it would have to be this hip hop act ages ago that i made some beats for..god i wish i still had them…they are probably so bad because i was using garage band at the time.
What music do you listen to?right now i’m hardcore into early uk jungle, but in general i just love mostly everything. why limit yourself to only certain music. there are genres i can’t stand like country or boring house music, but really there isn’t much i won’t listen to at least once.
How long have you been producing music (not just vaporwave but when did you start).i guess i started in the early 90s and just kept going. i have so many unlabled tracks just sitting on hard drives but i’ll probably never put that out. or maybe i will like on soundcloud or something like my favorite artist (aphex twin)…
What’s Hawaii like, how do you feel about ukuleles?hawaii honestly if you are not a tourist is a slum and it really sucks for locals. i don’t play any instruments so no comment on that.
How old are you?no comment.
What do you do outside of music production? Do you have a “day” job? (We don’t need specifics just an idea of what you do).lol of course i work. everyday in fact, almost.
What production equipment/software do you use?currently strictly ableton, but since reason has been integrated, i’ve been fooling with that which is has been really fun.
What inspires your album art?all the amazing graphic artists out there that are making way nicer things that i just rip off.
It has been observed that the movie “Hereditary” was sampled throughout one of your albums you put out under the Forbidden Cremme alias. What are your thoughts on “Hereditary”?i love that movie and i think about it daily. i’ll be doing something with midsommar at some point.
Finally, besides “Haircuts for Men” and “Forbidden Cremme”, are there any other alias’ we should know about? oh yea probably…;)
Support HFM here:
https://haircutsformen.bandcamp.com/music