DJ Umbilical Cord is the untamable, occasionally shirtless James Fuentes, a 22 year old producer/DJ from Florida. Slowly making a name for himself through deejaying for online live events and coming out with some of the most unhinged breakcore/hardcore productions in recent times (think Nasenbluten meets Society Suckers through a drunken fistfight), he’s got a lot to offer. And he’s only just getting started. Here we have him now, in an exclusive interview by nitroii for the South England Hate Club.

O: Would you like to introduce yourself, and tell the people a bit about what you do?

J: I am LilJerry but I make music more under DJ Umbilical Cord. I make a brand of hardcore that's trying to be a bit more older and raw sounding, like the compressed sound of an gabber tape to the speed of a breakcore tune. I DJ for random shit URL events and host a brand new writhing like a fetus netlabel. I live in Florida but, not the most interesting part of it.

O: Would you tell us more about your music? How did it all start, and what influenced you to continue?

J: I've been making music since high school. Back then it was mainly for game projects my friends online would be working on, but they never really landed anywhere because they were kinda ambitious and big. So it was a lot of really kinda stereotypical indie game music. I was in close contact with a producer who was in the power-noise scene, who did live shows and produced under "Mollusk King" with all kinds of proper synthesisers and hardware. I got introduced from talking to him into a lot of darker and industrial sorta noise stuff way back when. So it really influenced what I was listening to when I was growing up. I found breakcore kinda recently and became hooked to that since then. I'm really interested in that very early sound of breakcore. That very stripped down and raw form of production with a modern day technical touch just seems like what a lot of other producers would be doing, but there's not a lot of older-school sounding hardcore floating like that nowadays. So it's really that sound I'm trying to pursue. Breakcore definitely has that speed that I drift to more, so that's my main pursuit.

O: With this shift in sound, what artists did you discover and how did they impact your style?

J: I started by listening to jungle records, I was a really big fan of that amen-break sound but it quickly got old when you're only listening to jungle records. I wanted something with that precision in drum programming but with that speed as well. I discovered Venetian Snares when I was like nineteen and it changed how I viewed music, but it was really getting into Addict Records, Doormouse and Shitmat that really got me into breakcore. I never really heard Hardcore or Breakcore like that, something so raw like a bloody fist record but with weird ass samples and humor. It wasn't really until I kept digging and found more artists that I went "Okay, this is the craziest fucking music I've ever heard." It wasn't until I interacted with' people in the community like nitroii, Bypass and Wawawa that I was convinced to really dive fully into the genre. I know breakcore gets a bad rep as a community, so it was the most refreshing thing ever to meet these people who cared about breakcore's punk nature and sound that aren't really chasing like "PSX" or "Y2K" like design tropes. I still like those older industrial tunes like Skinny Puppy and Coil, and a lot of early techno really made me interested in this more experimental and kinda underground sound of electronic music. Stuff like Jeff Mills and his label AXIS, and those earlier R&S Records hits. There's something otherworldy with how those early techno tunes were hitting, it felt like when electronic music was still this outsider sorta circle. It was trying to be different rather than something to appeal to alternative chicks.

O: Have these artists that you’ve mentioned shaped your approach to producing?

J: Oh yeah, they changed everything. Like when you hear an Xanopticon record or like those older Duran Duran Duran records for the first time, you kinda drop everything you know about producing from a technical level because it's all kinda bullshit to you at that point. It feels like an army of gabber kicks and music samples you could barely recognize through the terror march of noise, but it's also elegantly put together. There's a huge level of care to manage that kind of chaos to be meaningful to hear. I feel like meeting artists one-on-one made me drop this kinda fixation on what technical aspects of production made a song work, and just start producing. I stopped working with these annoying techniques to try to replicate the breakcore sound, and started just chopping by waveform and by ear. Sampling is like the strongest thing we have in this day, and anything can be a breakbeat or a lead or a really hard kickdrum if you just fuck around a bit. It’s made music less fucking around with synthesisers and knobs for an hour and more of this liberating space of asking this question of like, "How much can I fuck up this more?" to a track and spending another hour creating new details to carve out. It’s definitely made me more obsessed with producing, like I stopped playing games and stuff, I'd rather spend time producing or mixing.

O: How long does it take for you to wrap up a track, now that you’ve seemed to direct your attention towards producing?

J: It kinda depends, there's definitely tracks I know I have a million ideas for with just the sounds I pick alone, so they usually end up taking like months to complete. It's not always consistent as well, I sometimes run out of ideas just where to progress something but I know it's not done yet. Those tracks I usually force myself to spend longer on because I know I'm releasing them for something significant. But like some tracks can be done in a week and I'm usually happy with it altogether. Breakcore tracks usually take the longest as you can guess.

O: Is there anything to come from DJ Umbilical Cord in the foreseeable future? DJ mixes, albums, et cetera?

J: I still plan to release physical tapes of Abyss Pricked Scrap, which is my sorta live noise project. I have these really nice breakcore tracks I've been making I'm looking to push out to SEHC, and I have more traditional digital hardcore coming out on my own label, Depressed Ninjas Anonymous. I DJ a ton in my own time but have yet to put a proper mix out, which I might do first. Right now, I'm trying to pull in as much money to invest into my own music and my own label, hopefully hire some artists with something new and get up to more stuff IRL and URL with my friends and peers.

O: Sick one. Thanks so much for taking time out for this! Are there any last messages you’d like to put out there for the people?

J: I wanna say support SEHC. I lost faith like a lot of other sorta older obsessed breakcore fans when every playlist that pops up has Sewerslvt and fucking Acidgvrl in it, or Femtanyl or some other modern day bullshit, but it was their music and their people that made me give a shit entirely. Stop making your shit look like every other teenage producer online and put some "Fuck-you" energy into it! I'm dedicating my life and soul into breakcore and I'm gonna be as loud and as obnoxious with it, fuck any opposition up.

You can find James cutting up the sound here, and here, and his label, Depressed Ninjas Anonymous, here.