This week we have an interview with a very special guest, the Drain Gang CEO himself, Bladee. Benjamin Reichwald, known by many as Bladee, is a Swedish musician and founding member of artistic collective “Drain Gang”, consisting of himself, Ecco2K, Thaiboy Digital, and Whitearmor.

So, 2022 was a busy year for you. Can you give us a quick rundown of everything you got up to?

Yeah man! 2022 was such a wild year, man. We dropped Crest early in the year, that was the record with Ecco2K and Whitearmor. That album was really inspired by our times growing up in Sweden, it’s an identity we all sort of rejected as kids. The album was all of us really getting in touch with our roots.

We were on tour for most of the year, our first world tour actually. That was crazy. We got to see a lot of really cool places. We even filmed some videos on the road with Gus.

One of those videos was for my second project of the year, Spiderr. I really enjoyed this record; it wasn’t like anything I’ve done before. That’s what we like to focus on as musicians, pushing our sound forward, you know? With every record I have this like, idea in my head that I’m trying to push forward, my work is always trying to express this perfect thing I’m imagining.

Spiderr, like a lot of your recent output, sounds much more spiritual than your early work

Yeah, I’ve been getting into really into the spirituality stuff these past few years.

Do you prescribe to any specific belief system?

Not really. I sort of just take pieces of different ideologies that I like. There’re certain things that I just find divine, you know? Things I’m attracted to. It’s about finding things that inspire you and following that path.

What type of sources have you drawn your beliefs from?

Really anything man. Like on The Fool, there’s a lot of songs where I invoke sort of Christian imagery. I wouldn’t call myself a Christian, but I find a lot of those things beautiful. There’s also places that we as a group find powerful. We sometimes record in this place we call “the Witchtower”, it’s an old water tower outside of Stockholm. It’s a place we all find special, it inspires us.

We have to wrap up now, but what can we look forward to from Bladee/Drain Gang in 2023?

It’s going to be an exciting year for sure [laughs]. I just did that song with Skrillex, he’s a super cool guy to work with. Really fun vibes all around with him. Shoutout to Thaiboy and Ecco on the YEAR0001 Rift 2 project, they each put out music for that. Besides that, I can’t say much, but we certainly have some new stuff in the works.

Stream Bladee’s new single with Skrillex, “Real Spring”, here