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Nov 19, 2018 By Mark Redfern How to Dress Well

My Firsts is our email interview series where we ask musicians to tell us about their first life experiences, be it early childhood ones (first word, first concert, etc.) or their first tastes of being a musician (first band, first tour, etc.). For this My Firsts we talk to How to Dress Well (aka Tom Krell).

How to Dress Well released a new album, The Anteroom, last month via Domino. It is the follow-up to 2016’s Care. Joel Ford (Ford & Lopatin, Airbird) co-produced The Anteroom with Krell. “I wrote the record after moving to Los Angeles, which is a crazy and maybe dreadful place, right after the 2016 election, with hell and death gaining ground all around us on every corner of the globe,” Krell explained in a press release announcing the album. “The Anteroom is testament to a two-year period in which I felt myself slipping out of the world and into a cosmic loneliness in which I would eventually be dissolved. In order to give myself a way back, I began to try to understand my station as some kind of anteroom—a space between—a chamber that separates the known and the unknown, stable life from total disintegration.”

Read on as Krell talks about his first broken bone, the jazz concert his dad took him to that he didn’t understand, and the hardcore hip-hop album a family member bought him when he was a kid.

First pet?

My first pet was an all black kitten that I named Baby—I got her when I was like five. She, sadly, died an untimely death. R.I.P. Baby.

First broken bone?

I fell off the top of the playground in fourth grade and broke my femur!

First record your parents played for you?

When I was four I was obsessed by “September” by Earth, Wind & Fire and demanded it played ALL DAY LONG.

First album you bought?

My grandma bought me Bacdafucup by Onyx, hahaha, when I was like tiny.

First musician you had a crush on?

Adam from Taking Back Sunday.

First concert you went to?

My first concert was a [Herbie] Hancock and [Wayne] Shorter show my dad took me to. It was MAD abstract and I was confused.

First music festival you went to?

KTCL’s Big Adventure, in Colorado in 1998 to see The Crystal Method.

First car you owed?

LOL, my current car.

First country you visited outside of your own?

I moved to Paris for eight weeks in college—I was the first person in my family to ever go abroad, it was so exciting.

First time you voted?

I turned 18 the year W stole the election. That was dismal.

First recording device?

A simple Tascam four-track—I still have it and have used it on every single one of my records!

www.howtodresswell.com

Also read our recent The End interview with How to Dress Well.

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