“I usually tell people to listen to see what they come up with. Some kind of electronic music, that’s what I like to say. I generally try more to come from not a regular electronica background. I try to come more from indie and punk influences.”
Cain MacWhittish – who also goes by Cain WTF – grew up playing in the community orchestra as well as in school bands. After enlisting in the military for a few years, he moved to NYC in the early ‘90s and played drums in punk bands. He would attend shows of bands such as Jesus Lizard and Girls Against Boys, followed by dancing at venues amidst the ‘90s gothic club scene. MacWhittish made his way to the west coast – living in San Francisco for a majority of his life, until moving to Los Angeles and assisting former Thriller co-engineer Steve Bates, working with artists such as Courtney Love and Eric Clapton, while continually making his own music. He now resides in Portland, OR. where he continues to create his eclectic sound.
Cain’s music, which includes 148 releases on Bandcamp, comes from using various synth plug-ins through Ableton live, in a songwriting process that has a play by improvising. “Ouch” implements the artist’s industrial and goth electronic sound background. It’s the darkwave sound of his musical history, ebbing in and out of industrial and ambient sounding almost similar to Aphex Twin. MacWhittish describes “Ouch” as a big representation of his music.
“I feel like ‘Ouch’ really represents the sound I’m trying to create. With all this experimentation, I kind of have an idea of where I wanna go in my head. So ‘Ouch’ is the best installation of that so far.”
And while MacWhittish is a fan of house DJs, he prefers to make eclectic mixes that have gained listeners off of Mixcloud, reaching up to almost 13k plays. Since Covid, he has spent his time in downtown Portland’s Pioneer Square with a synthesizer set-up performing live sets and sets his interests on playing music festivals in the future, honing his DJ skills after attending Movement Music Festival in Detroit.
“The year I went, I was like ‘I should just up my DJ game’ so if I ever by some miracle got invited to play festivals like this, I’d be comfortable saying yes.”
You can listen too Cain MacWhittish single “Ouch” and more, below:
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