After moving to Los Angeles, Hawaii native Zac Carper co-founded FIDLAR as a band and a lifestyle. In addition to his singing and guitar duties with the group, he is also an accomplished producer ( The Frights , SWMRS , Dune Rats – #1 album in Australia) and songwriter. Zac’s passions include surfing, macrame and scrubs.

In place of a more traditional year-end best-of list, Talkhouse has asked some of our favorite artists to choose their favorite album of 2018 and tell us all about it.

—The Talkhouse Team

I’ve recently been looking into what is the new punk rock shit is—something I’ve been totally into is this whole SoundCloud world. Basically to me, it’s the new punk rock with the way these kids are learning how to rap. They’re making beats off of really cheap software; they’re doing everything as DIY as possible. There are a couple that come to mind: LVE, who’s got this song called “Stadium,” featuring one of his friends, LEE. I think that’s an amazing track. Also, this other kid Prxjek. He’s got a song called “I Am God’s Mistake” that’s kind of more like screamy-rap, trap-metal kind of stuff.

After I do a FIDLAR record, I usually try to find artists who produce. They’re usually garage rock artists, but this time around I just wanted to do something totally different. I was catching up with the first guy Elvis Kuehn and I jammed with back in the day, and he showed me this subculture, and LVE, and I was blown away. I thought it was so fascinating. You can only find LVE’s stuff on SoundCloud. Just the way they make music—everything’s on the laptop now. It’s wild. It trips me out.

It’s the new generation: instead of sitting in your room learning how to play guitar and singing and writing a song, you can go on SoundCloud and search for a beat. These kids sell beats for $35, $45—they send it to you, and you write a song all from that. That’s it! You just created a song, and that’s mind blowing to me. It’s so artistic. Basically, you’re cutting out all the bullshit; You’re cutting out the music industry.

This new generation of hip hop has become the new punk rock—it’s about as DIY as you can get. You really can’t get more DIY than that, even in punk music, because when you’re in a punk band, you have to go play shows. These guys aren’t even doing that. They’re just going straight to the internet. The internet has become their DIY space.

As told to Annie Fell.

(Photo Credit: Left, David Black)