From the heart of Minnesota, Elite Gymnastics answers our questions and hands us a podcast. We’re ready to bet they were pretty wasted both times. And we loved it!

The story goes something like this: on the night of Friday 13th, two friends got wasted with what we could understand was liquid cocaine and recorded a podcast. We have that podcast. And the friends that made the podcast? They were the amazing and talented duo of Elite Gymnastics.

Now, James and Josh are two really funny dudes from the states that are being hurled into that wagon some people call chillwave, glo-fi, or whatever you want to call it. For us, it's just elitewave. We can imagine the recording sessions they have in Josh’s home as a series of loops on pot, procrastination, inspired moments of awesomeness, more procrastination, more pot, etc. For the sake of the music industry, we hope our imaginations are right on this one.

If you haven’t done so yet, you should check the beachy landscape of their music out. You should also visit their tumblr and read the interview. It will make you smile and, in the long run, smiling will make a better person out of you. They might not be the band you need, but the band you deserve. And, seriously, you need them.


The tracklist of their podcast goes as follows and you can download it HERE:

1. Intro to Night Bus Miusic
2. Young Jeezy — Mr. 17.5
3. Miley Cyrus — Party in the USA (Tranny/Swag/Style)
4. How To Dress Well — Decisions Ft. Yüksel Arslan
5. Lil B — I'm God
6. Cat Power — I Don't Blame You (Loko-Hits)
7. Rick Ross  — Aston Martin Music (Extended Only)
8. Elite Gymnastics — Real Love (Night Bus Version Ft. Jay Curry) (Download!)
9. VNV Nation — Arena
10. Lonnie Liston Smith — A Garden of Peace (Ft. Andrea Dworkin's Equality & Harm Speech)

Are you still doing everything from Josh's home? How does it feel to work on the project at home?

James: Yeah, it has its pros and cons. On the pro side, it's free and there's no pressure so we can hang out and smoke pot and do things at our own pace. On the con, side sometimes we have to stop so we don't wake up Josh's neighbors.

Josh: Yep my house — I've done it my whole life so working here isn't anything new. I enjoy James' company but, yeah, my neighbors don't want me banging my 'techno tunes' any later than 11pm.

Have you got a favorite track, or are you going to tell us that you love them all equally?

James: Well, I'm sure on some level we do love them all equally but some stuff feels unfinished to us so we're not as psyched on it as we are with the stuff that feels more fully realized. Like, "Is this on me?" sounds pretty much how we want it to sound, so we are really happy with it. But "If you love me" is more like a demo and some things about it will bother us until we finally finish it.

Josh: yeah my favorite track is this one demo called marks on the wall... it's unreleased but once its out I'll be happy and James will have to sing it all the time.

So, why "Elite Gymnastics"?

James: There are a lot of reasons why we like the name, but initially I got the idea from the Whitehouse song "Ruthless babysitting". It's sort of a dark name to us. If you youtube "elite gymnastics" the first results are videos of super young children crying because elite gymnastics is such a physically demanding sport.

Josh: I think stage moms are creepy and I'm thankful I didn't grow up with one. It fucks a kid up, you know. I can't imagine what all these young kids have to go through on a daily basis to satisfy their parent’s demands...vicariously living through their own children. Like YEAH I COULD HAVE BEEN THE HOMECOMING QUEEN but then I got pregnant with YOU. I dated a girl with parents kind of like that and it messed with her... but yeah Elite Gymnastics... kid of a sIcK 'N tWisTeD name!

Do you go to the gym? do you eat healty?

Josh: Nah.

James: Nah.

How do you feel about this chillwave mania?

Josh: Love gettin' buzzed 'n listenin' to chillwave. Seen Washed Out at the Levi's Fader Fort™ and it was pretty chill man. It's also fun to joke about with your best of friends... TURN ON SOME CHILLWAVE... MAN!

James: My mom doesn't know what chillwave is. The last time someone asked this question the article ended up being almost totally about chillwave, and when my mom read it she was like "it was nice to read an article about you but I didn't understand any of it." Those are my thoughts on chillwave.

(That last answer would have recieved the "Best Answer Ever" award, if we had awards in Vnfold)

I’m hearing “If you love” right now, would you say relationships are a good thing? Have you ever read Bukowski?

James: I read this scholarly paper recently on the phenomenon of grown men in Japan choosing to fall in love with fictional, two-dimensional cartoon characters rather than engage in the dating world, because relationships are increasingly based on money and social status. Like, pure, real love in the real world is impossible, so you have to imagine it. I think eventually this will happen everywhere.

Josh: Relationships are a good thing if both people involved are mature and can respect one another. If there's no trust there's no love. I haven't read Bukowski but I remember The Good Life. Yeah, dude, from Cursive... singing about it. I hear a lot of hip kids name-dropping that.

Who are your greatest influences? Are you very flexible when it comes to it? (Ok, I will now cut the horrible gymnastics puns)

Josh: Haha you're funny man. My influences are all over the map. A lot of hip hop has influenced me. Kanye West, Swizz Beatz, Don Cannon (Cannon, cannon, cannon), J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League, and  90's shit like Nine Inch Nails and Smashing Pumpkins. Then I grew up with my mom’s music so seriously stuff like Tori Amos, and Sarah Mclachlan play a big role in the stuff we make. I love new music too: How To Dress Well, Pictureplane, High Places, Miracles Club, Telepathe, Yacht... we are really big music fans.

James: Yeah I mean rap is huge. Kanye, Rick Ross, Young Jeezy, Drake, fucking DJ Toomp definitely, like Don Cannon he doesn't do that many tracks but they're almost all classics. Big Brother by Kanye, What U Know by TI, Lovin U Long Time by Mariah Carey. Love The-Dream and Tricky Stewart. Love Lil' B. Kate Bush. Nobuo Uematsu. Kenji Kawai.

Hey, the cover of Parachute has a Chocobo on it! Are you in any way video game fans, or you just liked the bird?

Josh: Huge FFVII nerd. Played it all throughout middle school. The sounds, the story, and the graphics still resonate with me to this day. I loved the Chocobo farm!

James: Yeah Final Fantasy games were my life when I was a teenager. I think Aerith from FFVII was my first love. "Is This On Me?" is based on a sample of the love theme from FFVIII. We like RPGs and anime. We're nerds.

How are you receiving all the praise and internet stardomship?

Josh: It's cool other people like what we are doing. I feel alienated in my own city sometimes; so, having the internet is a nice escape. We want to travel. We want to collaborate with people that are riding the wave with us.

James: It's awesome because we love the internet. We read about music on the internet all the time and get stupidly excited over new bands and seeing our names in the middle of that conversation is meaningful to us.

What equipments do you normally work with and which ones would you like to add in the near future?

Josh: We use a KORG MS2000 — it's this cheap synthesizer I bought off Craigslist but it gives a really nice analogue sound to everything. Then we use ableton and a midi keyboard with a shitload of VST plugins. We have a guitar we use sometimes and this super cool chick lets us use her bass when necessary. We want to add a snare/drum pad to our set and a vocal FX pedal eventually. Any recommendations?

James: We have these two friends we hang out with named Dani and Amanda and we want them to learn to play instruments so they can come on tour with us and be our backing band.

What about taking your songs on stage, have you yet figured out your own way to do it?

Josh: Yeah we've played a few live shows here. We are LIVE.

James: yeah, I mean, we're a band. We play live stuff and interact with a backing track and do live vocals and stuff. Minneapolis is sort of a weird city so not many local gigs come our way that we get really psyched about but we're really excited to play some other places.

Speaking about the near future, what are your plans for it?

James: We have an EP we're working on that will be done eventually, and we're working on a couple remixes. One day we'd like to make a beat for young jeezy.

Josh: Hopefully music can take us on the road and expose us to different parts of this sweeeet Earth.

Text by Oscar Gomez Poviña @ Vnfold