Downupright is Bill Boulden (they/them), from Buffalo, NY. Bill started making digital music around the age of ten by goofing with Microsoft MIDI Studio and some Casio keyboards.
Across the next thirty-one years, Bill would go on to learn Cakewalk, Sonar, Reason, Serum, and Ableton as each became the next big thing. They released many projects across those years under a variety of different artist names, each one getting them closer to what would become their pinnacle project: We’re Doomed We’re Dancing.
We’re Doomed We’re Dancing: Sixty Apocalypses, is an album truly unlike anything else. It explores the end of the world sixty different ways across sixty different genres, each with their own reaction to their own unique apocalypse.
Bill adores collaboration and experimentation, and on We’re Doomed We’re Dancing, you get to see that idea taken to its extreme as the vivacity of Crunk, the beats of Jersey Club, and even an unexpected Opera all weave their answers into the nonstop party mix.
In 2022 they fully crowdfunded We’re Doomed We’re Dancing through fan support, earning it a spot on Kickstarter’s “Projects to Watch.” As a result, We’re Doomed We’re Dancing is a celebration of collaboration: backers played a pivotal role in bringing this album to life, shaping its direction, and choosing themes, tracks, and guests, and the final product accordingly features a full fifty different musicians.
In their “spare” time, Downupright is a serial startup entrepreneur and fractional Chief Technology Officer of between four and ten startups at once. They have developed 22 distinct tech products in five years and sometimes their engineering passion comes through in their music!
When did you start writing music?
My Windows 3.1 pc in 1994-ish had the Windows Bonus Software Pack or whatever that included Microsoft MIDI Studio, which let you click notes to make MIDI tracks. I reverse engineered understanding staff notation through trial and error, then stunk for about ten years. Then I mostly stunk for another ten years, then I was competent, and now I think I am actually comfortably pretty decent. The journey of a lifetime. Along the way, I got a formal education in Music Composition, but it wouldn’t “take” for a while.
What would you be doing right now if it weren’t for your music career?
Exactly what I am doing! I don’t know if music is as much a career as it is a hobby that I mostly found a way to make decent money at. Most years I make next to nothing, every couple years I make a few tens of thousands on a notable release and usually try to expense it all away on new plugins when that happens LOL! My day job is as an entrepreneur where I launch tech startups for nontechnical founders. If somebody is a founder with an idea for a new tech startup, and they have deep and abiding experience in their field but no experience in how apps or platforms get launched and maintained, I’m their go-to cofounder-type partner for getting them off the ground without making any huge mistakes. I’ve launched 22 different tech products in five years and worked with over 50 founders.
How do you feel the Internet has impacted the music business?
This one is a heartbreaker, because the answer just changed so, so significantly in the last decade. There was a sweet spot between the release of iTunes and the launch of Spotify where digital downloads were a real and viable way to make money; all my highest-grossing releases are from the 2010-2015 zone, when the main way a fan consumed your music was a digital purchase, even though those are far from my best releases in any sense (i mean, I have 15 more years experience now)!
Now, of course, it’s well-documented, the new model is you get pennies forever and if the plays stop the pay stops. And that’s if you can bear to fight through the fraudulent flood of AI-generated or low-value music (somebody field records a meadow for 24 hours, puts it on the platform, and because it does that one thing well, it’ll get one million times your streams). It’s funny, some people I collab’d with on this album, We’re Doomed We’re Dancing, wanted to talk revenue splits and it is like, trust me good friend, if you want to get in the weeds on how we share this junior bacon cheeseburger be my guest, but I think you will be better off with the straight $200. What’s bonkers to me is how a lot of licensing hasn’t even caught up yet. About once a year I make an honest effort to license something that has a royalty and it’s all like “Ah yes, how many Digital Copies are you making? How many CD’s or DVD’s are you printing?” and it’s like uhhh… one and, um, zero?
In your opinion, how do artists in this industry stay on top of the game when faced with so much competition? What is the secret to making yourself noticed?
You absolutely have to truly, truly not care if you’re noticed or not. Trying to get noticed is inherently hungry behavior, and it shows, and you’re the worse off for it. Plus, it’s bad for the soul. I used to be obsessed with numbers and engagement back in the early days of social, before I realized it was all a giant potemkin village anyway, and it truly ruined my heart and authenticity for years before I burned it all to ash and decided I was just going to do my thing and try to enjoy my passion. I think the difference is palpable now; in We’re Doomed We’re Dancing, I like to think you can almost hear the joy I experienced while composing it.
Are you creative in other disciplines?
I would like to think so! I think of coding as an artistic activity. Many business people view it as fungible or quantitative, but I really see the qualitative side to it, a perfect balancing of the feature needs today against the engineering needs of tomorrow. I also have played racquetball for 20 years and yet I am still not very good at it, and I really think you could call some of the ways I miss serves or fall over on the court very “creative” as well. Finally, I am trying my hand at board game design. (One monumental project at a time tho…)
What has been most challenging aspect of your current releases?
Where to begin? Sixty genres- how do you even choose them? it was great to have help from the backers, first of all. They were promised involvement in the product via polls, surveys, and direct requests, and they didn’t disappoint: we have them to thank for the opera, chorale, pastiche, jam band, Eurodance, goth, and many more. But I would say my biggest challenge was measuring up which genres to subdivide and which not to. And really, I’m looking at YOU, metal and EDM.
I think honest to god a metalhead could make this album out of sixty different genres of metal alone. But I don’t think my intended audience wants to have me describe how the grind-gore track was technically different than the speed-death track. Same goes for EDM. And yet, hip hop and reggaeton, which are these massively important international sensations, we just call hip-hop one genre? So I had to get a little more specific. I settled on four metals (black, hair, symphonic, and nu) and six EDMs (jump up dnb, pure techno, ambient trance, bass house, dubstep, and jersey club), but I made sure that I attacked hip hop from six really different angles, because it’s so important. I went with a sample-based 2008 type one, a crunk, a funky radio friendly style, a late 2010s sparse 21 savage style, a UK grime, and a pretty traditional Cardi type beat. I definitely didn’t want to parody anything, or try to put my name on anything that I truly didn’t love. There would be nothing worse than wading into the world of another culture and simply imitating it without truly understanding what it sounded like at its best and training myself to truly enjoy it. Who wants to hear a country track from somebody who secretly thinks country is stupid? I’d be making fun of my listeners rather than sharing joy with them. I can truly say that every single track on this album, all sixty, comes from a place of true and genuine appreciation for how much fun that genre can be. And if I didn’t like something at first, I listened for weeks on end until the joy clicked. Only then was it ready.
Some stuff, particular the EDM, industrial, and pop stuff came easily enough as I’ve been listening to that my whole life. Making the beats for the various hip-hops wasn’t too tough with some study, although I’d never write the actual bars for the rappers- that has to be in their own voice.
Some of the ones that required the most research, though, were the Black Metal, Reggaeton, K-Pop, Country, Crust Punk, Rockabilly, Folk, Dub Reggae, and Rat Pack. Also, you could technically say that the Opera and Atonal Chorale actually required the most study, it just doesn’t feel that way because I got a BA in Music from the University of Buffalo twenty years ago. So in a sense, it took about four years of study to be able to compose, it’s just old news and I had to summon it back from the vault.
Was anyone else involved in writing, recording, or producing the songs?
Uhhhhh… let’s say yes, for the purposes of this project. I had help from a few people along the way. Specifically, Colony, Trina High, Lucci Damus, Nicolas Dus, Chris Weeks, Dante Velour, Kimberly Boulden, Bear Budzinski, Lee Gibson, Alex Hamilton, Hollyhood, Josh Gideon, synth_coven, Taurus Savant, Digital Geist, Crimson, keybeaux, Rachel Maxann, Andrew Sulley, Corva, Sarah Glann, Rocz Nice, code_pig, Mayank Thanawala, The Vicken Studios Orchestra, HangOnGetReady, Story Time, TheDavidGage, miroshland, Martin D’Alesio, SingTrece, IRIS, Brian Platter, Eva from Rajut Studio, Matt Manera, Miro, Nocturnum, Hubris, Romany, Fabien Myles, Ruru, Rossanac, and about fifteen more that I can’t credit by name. So, I think I did have some help 🙂
What are your musical plans for the next 12 months or so?
I have to be honest, I’m probably going to give it a brief break. We’re Doomed We’re Dancing was a full 18 months in the making and the slog at the end to finally herd every last cat and push everything over the finish line was enough to make me feel I’ve earned a respite. But more than that, I just don’t know what more I have to say, in an artistic sense, at this time. Like, if you listen to it- sixty different approaches to sixty different genres exploring sixty different emotions- what else is there to be said? I’m listening to my preview mix right now and I just don’t know that there is any unfinished business, honestly.
You know, for a long time, I used to make a lot of music that focused on my depression and anxiety, how I was struggling and tormented inside, and it always kind of bubbled under the surface of everything I did, so the year before last I just indulged myself completely and released Repeated Phrases Mostly Laments, where I just let myself go the entire whole hog on sad, depressing beats, and that was really cathartic. I like it but I actually think I’m done making music like that, possibly permanently. I got it all out, I said every last thing I’ll ever have to say about being sad, I can move on now. So this is kind of like that, but for uh, everything at once? Anyway, I’m going to refocus my energy on getting back playing live DJ gigs, since I let that lapse during the pandemic and then never updated my library with the last five years of new music. I want to do live mashups this time around!
Do you sing in the shower? What songs?
Usually I brainstorm new melodies there! I wrote the combo “tree/book” from Side 1 of We’re Doomed We’re Dancing in the shower 🙂
What would be a good theme song for your life?
I have a brain-poisoned thing where I listened to so much “Get Low” in college that whenever I hear any three numbers in sequence, I hear it to the cadence of “three six nine, damn they fine”. I usually then go on to try to rhyme it. Like I’ll be on the court and the score will be “three, five, eight” and I’ll mumble under my breath “uh, damn they great” before I serve. I wish I could be free of this curse. Also, I don’t have one for “twelve” yet. I tried “damn they delve”, but like, are the people fantasy dwarves mining in this case or something?
What makes you nostalgic?
I’m a smells guy. I have this bottle of cologne that’s the scent I wore all through college that I was hanging on to because if I wear it, I’m 19 and in my industrial band again. Smelling that scent is transformative. Somebody got me more of it for last year’s holidays, which was really nice. Now I feel younger!
What is your favourite board game?
I am really in to strategy board games, so I’m going to answer this question two ways, both of them annoying and precise. The first is my favorite of all time, which is Century Golem from 2017, which displaced Agricola. It’s balanced, engaging, breakable, fun to play, and a good time whether you win or lose, plus the gems have great hand feel. The second is my current favorite, which is my newly-acquired copy of Beer vs Bread. It’s got good mechanics, it plays two very well, and I am delighted by both beer and bread, so you really can’t lose.
Are you a valuable asset on a Pub Quiz team?
I was the captain of our Scholastic Bowl team in high school and was undefeated! I wonder if that kind of stuff holds up today- the way in which one absorbs new trivia is pretty different than 25 years ago.
