An Interview with Yob the Delectable

This is a transcript of an interview with Yob the Delectable — DJ, musician, and figurehead of the Tallahassee rave collective GRIFT. For the last year or so, Yob has been curating and hosting raves all around Tallahassee, the first of which was in the now condemned Coca-Cola warehouse off of Gaines St. Void Network, the latest of his events I attended, was held earlier this year and cohosted with fellow local rave collective Subsidian Presents. Yob and I sat down a month or so after the event to chat about GRIFT, hard-earned lessons from his first year of event organizing, his own performance at Void Network, and more. Please, enjoy.

WA: So, the first time we met was at the warehouse [during GRIFT 1] and I forgot after — and I have very hazy memories of that time just because I have a terrible memory. So A: sorry, I feel bad for not remembering our conversation —

YOB THE DELECTABLE: Oh, all good. 

… and I think that that was one of the last raves — like a pure, actual rave — at the warehouse, which is interesting.  

Yeah.

But for people who are unfamiliar with GRIFT, what is GRIFT and when was the idea for GRIFT born?

So, GRIFT is a rave collective that myself and my two friends and collaborators Justin and Alex started in January or February of 2025. Which, Justin and Alex have their own event organizing company [SCAMS, or SUPER COOL AWESOME MUSIC STUDIO], as well as a music studio which also functions as a production company — in the sense of AV. 

I am into a little bit more obscure genres of electronic music, and I wasn’t happy with the shows that I saw going on in Tallahassee. I wanted to start doing something different and safer than a lot of the more popular raves I’ve seen in Tallahassee. That’s pretty much it. I just wanted to see the events that I wanted to go to happening here. 

And what’s the relation like with SCAMS? My understanding is that you are pretty tightly related, or [GRIFT] is a facet of it, so how do talent, resources, and help flow between the organizations?

It’s tight I would say. I live with Justin and Alex. They’re my best friends — 

Oh — well (laughs). 

And GRIFT is — (laughter) — it makes things easy. GRIFT is sort of a part of SCAMS. The difference is basically that I plan the vision for the events and they help with their connections and audio equipment. They’ll help with planning production and they’ll get me connections with venues or artists. As far as relationships go, we’re really tightly knit. 

Did it take you a while to realize, “Okay, I have to do my own thing”? It’s just that there is a big difference between “I’m not seeing what I want to see in the scene I’m in,” and going out and organizing something. 

Yeah, we actually slid into it, and it wasn’t a super concerted effort to get things going. Initially, Justin from SCAMS was working for a different rave crew in town. He was running sound for them — for money, he was providing a service — but somehow they had a thing where we were going to book half the acts for a show they were doing, and they were going to book the other half of the acts. I ended up being the one who was booking the acts.

But the music that I like is pretty weird, and the music they play is more house or wub. So they were like “Yeah, this shit is just not — this is too weird for us,” and we just ended up doing our own show on that day, and hat was the first GRIFT show. And from there, that was a lot of fun and a really satisfying experience putting that event on.

I knew that the [abandoned Coca-Cola warehouse] was not the original venue for GRIFT 1 — or at least that was my understanding then and now. I was wondering what was the story of coming up with that event, what happened, and how you ended up at the warehouse. I had fun [working] the door, so at least from where I was it was a lot of fan. Any big lessons for that first show?

Yeah, every show we — I — learn things about how to put these on a little better. There were a couple errors. One of them was just being too ambitious from a monetary side of things. Before knowing how much money we were going to make, we just committed to paying people how much they should be getting paid in a world where we actually have a lot of people come out, and we can afford to pay everybody. We ended up losing… that show cleared my whole savings account. I lost over a 1000 dollars. 

(Agonized noises)

And in general I think the show lost around 2000 dollars. 

(Continued, agonized noises) Oh, God damn, that sucks (Laughter). Okay. Okay, hard lessons. 

Oh yeah, (laughs), and we actually ended up in the Coke factory because we were going to start in Rail Road Square and move to the Coke factory —

As an after-hours?

Yeah, an after party. But I posted on the Tallahassee [subreddit], some promotion for the show, but I called it a rave happening in Rail Road Square, and one of the Kayes — who own [Rail Road Square] thought that no, we can’t have a rave happening here. So they cracked down on it, we weren’t allowed to have it, and we had to move it last minute. So that was another lesson, which is navigating around politics that you don’t want to care about about, but kind of have to.

Unfortunately, yeah. Which the irony is that the last [GRIFT event] I went to was a rave in Rail Road Square, so a year later you’re having raves in Rail Road Square — so I don’t know what changed.

You just can’t call it a rave. You can call it anything else. There’s just a stigma around that word, especially with older people. 

Yeah, it’s just a light show with some musical accompaniment I guess. Whatever you want to call it…

I know the warehouse is not exactly the easiest place to throw a show at. Did you guys have a generator running in the back? 

Yeah, yeah. 

That’s what I thought. Rest in Peace to a wild spot… But fast forwarding to now—those are the lessons from the first event, big lessons. My condolences to your savings account. What are the other lessons that you’ve learned in the last year?

It’s kind of a sad reality, but you have to think about it like a business, and you to be thinking about money through every step of the process. Even though, I don’t think anybody, any of us who are involved in putting these on are doing it for money — it’s barely profitable. It’s the same lesson as the first one; it’s a constant process of optimizing things so you can use the money that you get more efficiently and pay the people who are involved better. You can pay the DJ’s better. Maybe you can make a little bit of money and put it away for one day, you know, [you’d] like to buy better equipment for these shows.

And another thing is the more people that I hit up for shows that are DJ’s or artists, I find that people are, no matter how big they are, usually really chill and down to do a show if they can make it work. As long as people’s expenses are getting paid, most people are more into the idea of playing music than they are into the idea of making money. That’s been a pleasant process of getting in touch with people who I’ve been listening to their music for years and years, and then meeting them and working with them, and they’re all super chill. It’s very wholesome.

That’s always a nice experience where you meet nice people and you can actually work with them, and you get to put on really cool events with them. Absolutely. Any other lessons from the last year?

On the flip side of what I just said, if the show loses a bunch of money and not a lot of people show up, that doesn’t make it a failure. If only 20 people show up, and they’re all having a blast, then who cares. It’s worth it. Those people got to have a fun night because we made this event happen.

Speaking of, the set you had. I loved the Void Network show so much. You guys — [Ryan Lunar] and [Ben Danner] back-to-back and then you was probably a top 5 ecstatic moments of my life. It was really an amazing show, and felt like exactly what I want to feel when I go to any kind of live music sets, but especially dance and electronic. One of the things I loved about your set was the structure of it where you had your own music — which from what I understand is in the Gabber micro genre?

Yeah — I mean, I’m all over the place.

Okay. How about we start with that? How would you describe your music under Yob the Delectable? 

I’m still trying to grapple with that one. As far as genre goes, I really like chopping up sampled break beats and I like kick drums that are super distorted. That’s where the Gabber element comes in. I also like footwork and to blend the things that I like together and try to make crazy music. I guess crazy is often what I’m going for.

(Laughter). Absolutely. This is not something I’d thought about, but [after Ryan and Ben’s set] I was sitting on the couch, and you open up with this fucking insane xylophone rip. I don’t even know what that was. I felt like the world was ending. What was that sample from?

That was a song from Oneohtrix Point Never and the title is … [Tales from the Trash Stratum]. I can send it to you.

Please do. Sorry for always harassing you for track ID’s. Everything from that set was great.

No, that’s the most gratifying experience of playing a DJ set,  people wanting to listen to the music.

And very rarely do you have the chance to. To go back to the original question — so one of the things I loved about your set was the structure of it. So you’d have a hard-driving, high bpm song. [We] were going crazy on the dance floor. But then there would be breaks, something like [Mana Pool’s track Error Dialect] or — and my French is terrible — the Aujourd’hui song, Marguerite. It would bounce in between these things, and I’m curious how much you are planning your sets going in, and if you’re thinking about structure.

So there’s a lot. Not every set I play is a DJ set. A lot of the times I’m playing original music. But I’ll just answer the question for that set. For most DJ sets, most of my planning [is that] I’ll spend most of the month trying to find new music, or listening to a bunch of music that I already know I like and making a playlist of music that I want to play. Then I’ll buy all that music, and the actual structure just comes from practicing with those songs and seeing what works and what doesn’t. I usually will have a few elements that I know I’ll want to do at a certain time. I’ll usually know what I want to open with and what I want to close with. I’ll have a few songs where I will definitely need to play this song at one point. Other songs, it’s more “I’ll play this if it makes sense” and if it doesn’t then I won’t. So that Marguerite song and the Mana Pool song — I want other people to hear these songs. The Marguerite song, I just thought it’s just so silly to play this between a bunch of crazy ones. 

I loved it so much. I felt like a kid. It was crazy.

That song is so good.

So good. I’ve unironically listened to it on repeat, and I’m working through his other ones. So thank you. There’s some more silly songs in the other [albums]. Have you listened to his other albums?

I’ve only listened to the one. 

They’re really good. Do you remember how you found his music, and more generally, how are you finding new music these days?

With that song specifically, my friend Derek just sent me that song, Marguerite, and I was just like “Wow, this is such an amazing song,” that eventually I listened to the album. I don’t think I listened to that album until I was planning for my set for Void Network.

In general, a lot of what I’ll find is on band camp. I’ll look around and try to find net labels. I find music through Reddit sometimes. I’ll look at subreddits for various genres of music I like, like jungle or breakcore, and I’ll look at what people are talking about and give it a listen. Other friends will send me music. People at this point know what I like to listen to, and I’ve been obsessed with this kind of electronic music for the last few years. I use Spotify and sometimes I’ll just listen to it’s algorithmic recommendations, and occasionally you get some hits. 

Sometimes the algorithm is moving right. Are you seeing anything else interesting coming out of France right now? Sometimes I’ll dig down on an artist like that and find a local scene or another artist. Did you find any other artists connected to Aujourd’hui that you found interesting?

Specifically with — I’m not going to try and pronounce his name.

The forbidden French word. 

Yeah, but I do sometimes do that. Portland, Oregon has a really crazy scene for hardcore electronic music. I’ve found a lot music through New York, obviously, and I know a lot of different countries in Europe have a lot of thriving scenes for some more obscure genres of electronic music. I don’t often dive into a region specifically. Usually I look more into artists that are related to each other through the label they’re on, or I’ll see their social media and that they’re playing shows together, which is sort of regionally connected. 

How much of the talent or artists for your shows are you drawing to Tallahassee versus local talent?

I’d say it’s 40% out of town people. It’s kind of hard to find local DJ’s or artists in the vein that I’m trying to push with GRIFT. There are a few DJ’s here that I really, really love. But only a few.

(Laughter)

I mean there are a lot of really great DJ’s, but in the specific niche I’m looking at there aren’t that many people playing that kind of music here. So, to put on the events that I’m envisioning, I’m often pulling from Atlanta or Central Florida. The last show that we did we flew a person out from Boston.

Cool. Who was the person from Boston?

Lil Kevo 303. They make crazy hardcore, breakcore stuff.

Wow, a year in and flying talent in to Tallahassee of all places. I love it. 

It’s only able to work because of our relationship with another rave crew out of Atlanta, Netsphere, and flights into Atlanta are so much cheaper. 

I loved the Hi-Vis jacket fit during the set. How much are you thinking about personal and visual presentation going into a set?

Usually not very much. I’m trying to work on that by being a little more animated during my sets. Not to the point of like those cheesy DJ’s. But [the jacket] was an intentional choice. I thrifted that jacket because I thought it was funny, but I’ve been wearing it a lot lately because it’s an extremely well made and warm jacket. But I thought it might look cool in the dark with the lights.

100%.

One of my friends called it stolen valor because it’s from a construction company. 

(Laughter) You’re stealing the lineman’s valor?

Just a silly joke. I used to work construction, so I’m okay.

Yeah, you earned your stripes, it’s alright. Amazing. So you had GRIFT’s first birthday party. What’s coming next?

We’re rolling into the summer right now, which as you know, most of the college age people are going to be not here, so we’re going to put on some more chill shows throughout the summer. I’m thinking I’ll do 5$ tickets, chill, mostly locally DJ’s — nothing crazy, no headliners — through the summer. Just because it’s hard to get good turnout in those months. We did a thing six months ago, an open AUX, which is like an open deck but for anyone who makes electronic music to come do their thing. I want to start doing that every month starting next month. Just a free thing to help promote more electronic music in Tallahassee, and to get more people an opportunity to play without having to figure out getting booked. Once school starts again, we’ll start putting on some bigger shows. 

That’s the nature of the beast in Tallahassee, unfortunately. So I’m curious on your opinion. Pre-pandemic, there was a pretty good house show scene. Maybe I was just younger and went to them more. There were more venues, the Wilbury still had a stage, and then during the pandemic I feel like we lost a lot of venues. Now I see organizations like SCAMS, GRIFT, Subsidian as responses to a lack of a music scene post-pandemic. How have you seen the music scene recover, and what are the next steps or challenges for the music scene in Tallahassee?

I feel like I’ve seen a number of people trying to make things happen, because like me they were frustrated with not seeing what they wanted to happen here, happening. There is this person, Riley, who I think their business is called Cracked Shows, which is putting on cool hardcore stuff. There’s Subsidian, and Ryan who runs that is a super chill guy. I keep seeing more organizations popping up and putting on DIY shows, which is good obviously. I think the thing that Tallahassee needs right now is a mid-sized music venue to put on smaller national acts to help our scene grow. Right now, we have a lot of stuff happening in the DIY space. Then we have The Moon and Cascades Park which are booking bigger acts like T-Pain. But there’s not much space in between for the mid-level acts that aren’t going to draw 10,000 people, but might draw more like 600 people. There isn’t a space for that here. It kind of inhibits a lot of acts from stopping here and seeing it as a viable place to go if they’re on tour. 

SCAMS has some plans in that direction. At some point, fingers crossed, we’re going to try to start renting a building. It’s not going to be big, but hopefully it will fill the lower end of that niche a little bit.

(Post Interview Note: Yob would like to make it clear that this take on Tallahassee needing a medium-sized venue should be credited to Justin, one of the cofounders of SCAMS)

That’s exciting news. That’d be awesome. So what’s next for you as a musician? 

I want to keep making more music. I’m going to be releasing an EP in the next few days. From there, I’d like to make an album, maybe. I just want to release more music. I’ve been in a lull for the last year and haven’t released anything. I would really love to play more shows out of town, because mostly now I’m just playing GRIFT events. Which a lot of the time, I feel like I need to do DJ sets. I’m fine with doing DJ sets, but I’m a lot more excited about playing my own music, doing it my own way. I like getting a lot weirder and more chaotic with how I present music on stage, and how I play the DJ decks. I don’t want to just be transitioning from one song to another or playing a few songs on top of each other. I really like playing four songs at the same time and fucking with it, but I don’t feel like I should be doing that when I’m DJing for my own event, and I want everyone who is at this event to have a good time. The direction I like to go with my own music when I’m playing live is a little bit … less palatable. I just want to get booked for my own music and play some crazy, scary music for people in a space that is there for that to happen.

I understand. You want to cut loose, and you want everyone there to be there to watch you cut loose for this very specific style of music. 

I know it was more of a DJ set, but I really enjoyed your set. I loved being able to go nuts. I’ve been enjoying listening to your music. The last EP — what is the title again?

“Inside My Stomach is a Compact Disc Containing Irrefutable Evidence of Alien Life”

Thank you. Exactly. 

Don’t ask me where that came from.

It came from the irrefutable compact disc in your stomach, I imagine. 

Yeah, it’s a true story actually.

(Both laughing).

This is nonfiction. 

You think I can come up with something from my brain?

Something wacky like that? No way. 

There are important things happening inside of my stomach.

So next couple days, the EP is dropping? Exciting. Please send that to me.

Yeah, just waiting on streaming services. I will.

Any words of advice before we go, maybe specifically advice for people wanting to get involved in the Tallahassee music scene?

If you’re looking at it and thinking you want to do stuff, the barrier for entry is really not as high as you might be imagining it. It’s really just a matter of effort. There’s nothing stopping you from putting on a show. It’s basically just getting in touch with people, shooting people messages until someone gets back to you, and you have everything you need to make something happen. Find some friends who are down to help you do it. It’s usually too much for one person. It will take up a lot of your time if you’re the only person involved in putting on your thing.

Whether you’re trying to put on a show or be an artist and play shows, all it really takes is just hitting people up, and you can make something happen. And I implore you — if you’re reading this you’re probably in the Tallahassee scene — if you’re not happy with the Tallahassee scene, then start putting on shows. You can do it. We need more cool things happening here.

Well, I had a blast. Thank you very much for agreeing to talk with me.

Yeah, this was fun. Thank you.

Author’s Note: This interview was edited for clarity and length. 

— 

GRIFT RAVES

YOB’s IG

YOB’s New EP “corruptedwavelengthmemeticwaste_ep”