Dirtybird founder Claude VonStroke talks about the inspiration behind the track names from his debut full-length, Beware of the Bird.

“Who’s Afraid of Detroit?”
“There are only about 900,000 people in the actual city of Detroit, while six million people live in the surrounding suburbs, including my parents. So I decided to go live downtown for a year. Basically everybody in the suburbs is afraid to go downtown–but that’s crazy because it’s actually very beautiful in a weird way.”

“Deep Throat”
“My girlfriend, who is now my wife, used to live in L.A. while I lived in San Francisco. We would talk on the phone so much that our voices would totally give out and sound all crusty like the voice on the track. So I promised her I’d make a song about it. Romantic, huh?”

“Seven Deadly Strokes”
“One time, I rented 30 kung-fu movies from this awesome video store in San Francisco called Le Video. I rented, like, so many! And they all have these bizarre, fantastic titles like Ambush From 100 Lotus Blossoms and stuff. I was going to make a song entirely out of kung-fu samples, but it didn’t really work out because the samples just don’t translate that well. Maybe someday I’ll achieve my goal!”

To read the full Claude VonStroke feature from Issue 113 of XLR8R, download a pdf of the issue or click here.