Hard Drives and The Human Condition: In Conversation with Vegyn
Interview by Dagny Tepper
It doesn't feel like a stretch to call Kilburn-raised electronic musician Joe Thornalley, a.k.a. Vegyn, the defining producer of this era. Hearing his glitchy and off-kilter takes on melancholic electronic music for the first time felt like stumbling onto Jai Paul in 2012, or Aphex Twin in '92. It's only around every seven years or so that some mad scientist comes around and actually reinvents the wheel.
Many of his fans, including myself, first encountered Vegyn on Frank Ocean's Endless back in 2016. The hypnotic chords and syrupy yet metallic hi-hats on tracks like 'Mitsubishi Sony' and 'In Here Somewhere' became my personal vision of what future-facing production should sound like. Despite having produced for global superstars like Frank, JPEGMafia, and Travis Scott, he still carries an air of mystery with him. Such is the insular nature of Vegyn. He's a self-professed anxious person. His friendship with Hackney rapper John Glacier who he frequently collaborates with, for example, blossomed at the back of multiple parties, where they bonded over their mutual disdain for parties in general. Video and audio interviews of his are hard to find and frequently deleted off of the internet. It's an essence that, after years of him working for other artists, makes each of his solo releases feel all the more monumental.
For his second full-length album The Road to Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions, Vegyn's range as a producer is on full display. Previously, frantic drum patterns, sidechained bleeps, and fragmented samples were some of his main weapons of choice. They're still in the toolkit on here, but these tracks are given a lot more space to breathe. Hypnotic melodies and chord progressions lead the way, guiding the listener into pensive/nostalgic headspaces. As per usual, the percussion is near perfect, assuming various forms like 90s west coast trip-hop on "Everything Is The Same", jazzy breakbeat on the journeying "Path Less Travelled", and deep house on "Makeshift Tourniquet". Elsewhere, organic instrumentation like the austere piano chords on "Trust", or the cascading string quartet John Glacier raps over on "In The Front", make for a deeply evocative sound palette. A seamless meeting between Vegyn's most heady and accessible sensibilities occurs on "Stress Test", where punchy kicks and whirring electronics combine with balearic guitars to paint a lush, tropical soundscape.
It's not rare for new artists to be haunted by the dreaded 'sophomore slump', where questions of 'will they lose their magic' and 'will they change their musical style' can result in them overthinking and under delivering. Vegyn focused on avoiding these pitfalls on the album by taking a Rick Rubin-esque, or 'Wu-wei' (the art of not forcing) approach to his creative process.
“I think that classic pitfall is that you end up focusing too much on trying to work on the things you feel like you should be better at, or what you personally think is missing. And really, I can only speak for myself here, but I think there was a lot of, kind of, egoic desire from me. And so really what I ended up doing was just kind of looking to kind of play to my strengths instead, hone in, and work with other people who are good at the things that I'm not good at, you know vocals or otherwise.
When I let my subconscious project itself onto what I make and don't try too hard, I find those ideas translate a lot easier to other people… I found that the less I would push, the easier it became.”
These subconscious projections beautifully translate into his music. Whether it's via childlike wonder or melancholic optimism, The Road To Hell is teeming with raw emotion. As Vegyn sees it,
"Some things are just fun, some things are just free and silly, and other things are overtly sad. With this project, I was trying to kind of explore that grey area and challenge this desire to always live in a simple world when things are so, so complicated".
Each track on The Road to Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions is cathartic enough to leave you feeling like something within has been resolved. Listeners are submerged in kaleidoscopic daydreams where feeling is the primary focus. Speaking on the guest vocals, Vegyn explained, "I think that a lot of the vocals have the same kind of through line to them. There's definitely a kind of narrative throughout the record". Whether it's Lea Sen singing 'Lifeless, it's a hot mess/Do I get another spin?' or John Glacier rapping 'Sun still shines/Birds still fly, the water still flow/And the clocks steal time’, each verse is an existential meditation that implores letting go of the ideas we have of ourselves and surrendering to the fleeting nature of life.
Vegyn is as contemplative as his production, and as melancholic as The Road to Hell. When asked the most recent thing he learned, a discussion about his hard drive meandered into what he plans to do with his music after he's dead and gone.
"I lost some files recently, so yesterday I was learning more about setting up separate volumes and different backups for different things. So I’ve got one for my computer, one for my working drive, and so on. You only learn this stuff through experience — once something happens and you lose everything.
But I'm really trying to kind of be archival with all of this stuff; A, because I need to, and B, because when I die, I kind of have this idea of just putting it all out, just giving it away, you know?"
It's this strong consideration for equity and fairness that trickles down into PLZ Make It Ruins, the label he runs where artist-friendly deal terms and full control of the artist's masters are guaranteed, allowing them to continue profiting off of their own music post-retirement. In spite of his latest album's title, his agenda still seems to be chock-full of the best intentions.
When told that a Pilot reader soundtracked their life from the ages 16 to 21 with his music, Vegyn seemed genuinely flattered, “Oh! That's sweet”. The fact that his music is used in this capacity for so many speaks to something beyond just how enjoyable it is to listen to.
''What interests me the most, maybe because it's something that I struggle with a lot, is when there’s forced compartmentalising of thoughts or feelings into something that's good or bad, rather than just it being what it is. I've really struggled with that a long time. But then in my music, I am able to kind of get to the core of it, where a lot of it seems to be about the grey area, you know. Whether it's the silver lining to a cloud or the pain of saying goodbye, you can still think on things fondly, even if they may have been, or might still be distinctly painful… There’s joy too.”
As the moods in his songs oscillate between these varying states of being, they encapsulate the nuances, or 'greys', without committing to being happy, sad, or any one thing in particular. What results is a personal soundtrack that beautifully channels both the feelings we struggle to articulate, and the formative memories we can't quite bring to mind. Compared to his earlier releases, where one minute long ideas with BPM's and version numbers in their titles flew by, The Road to Hell feels more intentional, grandiose, and accessible. There's still a nicheness to what he does that will always live outside of the mainstream, but on this outing, Vegyn proves that he can dip his toes into that arena without compromising on his core sonic mission — plucking at the heart strings while speaking poignantly to the human condition.
Photography [In order of appearance]
Thumbnail, Img 1: Joshua Gordon (2023), Img 3: Eddie Salinas (2024)