Ice Crimes is Requesting a Video Call

There is a palpable nostalgia for the early days of the internet: Tumblr, MSN Messenger, Vaporwave. In comparison, the internet is so streamlined, with every social media site looking the same in user friendly blue and white. Every interview has the same format - bait questions proposed to formulate a potential Viral Moment for TikTok.

This is where Iman Muse aka Ice Crimes comes in. A Somali-American journalist, DJ, programmer, music manager, producer and now a world class interviewer. Her YouTube series, The Ice Crimes Show, showcases Muse interviewing eclectic musicians from every corner of the world. It’s a refreshing change from the same old formulaic questions and answers. In her own words: “The Ice Crimes Show is a curated music discovery program and interview show. Each episode highlights an artist, a subculture, an aesthetic.” The episodes are spliced with video clips contextualising the conversations and Muse uses green screen to elevate the interview experience to emulate a chat room. The whole project feels DIY in the best way - like some pals gossiping over webcam. 

The first series featured guests from all over the world: from Alice Longyu Gao to Cobrah and series two stars Urias, Eartheater, Xiu Xiu, Uniiqu3 and Myss Keta - Ice Crimes is determined to transcend genre, countries and borders when she picks her guests. Eden Young sat down with the host to discuss the new series, championing the diverse and different and why we need to move on from the phrase ‘world music’.

Hey Iman! How are you?

I’m good! I'm visiting family in Dar Salaam in Tanzania, East Africa. It's so nice and warm. I’m not made for the cold at all. It's really calm here and we’re near the ocean - I’m in paradise.

Sounds gorge! I love the YouTube series. When I saw you’d got Jamie Stewart from Xiu Xiu on I was so excited - what a legend. How do you go about finding the guests for the show? Is it just people you appreciate or do you try to branch out?

He was a great interviewee. So sweet and really funny. I wasn't expecting it! When I’m finding guests I do a bit of both. I look for musicians I really love and I feel are influential to a scene and then I look at it in a global way. I want to make links between artists, especially from different nationalities, eras and cultures and link everyone together.

You’ve got such a wide scope of guests on the show. There’s musicians from Italy, East Africa, America, Brazil. In the first series of the show you featured musicians from Sweden, Japan, everywhere really. Is it important to you to try and showcase a worldwide range of art and culture compared to an industry that is very Eurocentric?

It's so important! When I moved to France after university, I'm from Washington, DC originally, I felt like I was one of the few people of colour in the alternative music and underground scene. That was really isolating for me. And I realised I had a really closed view of what is avant garde or experimental because of where I grew up and what our occidental Western society ingrains into us. I thought I was someone who was really open but I had to really go out there explore. 

“I want to make links between artists, especially from different nationalities, eras and cultures and link everyone together.”

There’s music from East Asia, Brazil and East Africa that have influenced the Western experimental music that people are listening to now. That's what is most important to me. To show that the avant garde sound you're listening to now in London was influenced by this sound in Tanzania or Rwanda or Mexico. I want to bridge gaps between scenes and show that everyone’s borrowing from each other. It's not just this Western idea of what’s experimental and avant garde. It’s international!

Totally. Everyone’s influenced by each other.

I want to give credit and highlight people who would maybe be lumped into one category of “World Music”. I really don’t like that as an umbrella term! It doesn't give credit to the different types of scenes in each country. I want to destroy the phrase “world music” and put everyone on an equal playing field.

World music sometimes seems like it’s used in such a condescending way? I mean you can't really lump the whole world and so many different cultures and countries together into one category just because it’s not part of the West.

I know, it’s mind blowing!

You say you want to bridge gaps and this is definitely reflected in the show with the layering of video clips in the background of the interview. How do you go about picking the clips?

For the  references in the background I like to ask the artist what they're listening to or what inspirations they have. When I was growing up I really loved the musician Devendra Banhart. I would read every interview he did because he would always mention a band or a book he liked. Then I would go out and discover it. Nowadays all these algorithms are really digital and soulless. With the Ice Crimes series I want to go back to music discovery and cultural discovery in a more organic way. And have artists share what they're really inspired by and then be able to transmit that back to the listener.

So true - the algorithm forces culture upon you now. It's sometimes harder to find things organically now or find music that you actually want to listen to, rather than just what you're being told to listen to by the machine. Talking of algorithms, the whole show has a feel of the early days of the internet - before the algorithm, clicks and likes defined our experience on the internet. The production value is so sick - is it all you?

Thank you so much! I edit all the raw footage together, my friend VAMPI, who I also manage, created the background music for the show and edited the audio and my other friend, DJ Fingerblast, edits the after effects. He brought a really dynamic and fun way to showcase the interviews. It really elevates the Zoom interviews but in a chill way. I feel some media is so overproduced these days and a bit of an eyesore? I like a more intimate and lo-fi vibe. I want the viewers to feel like they’re on a FaceTime call with us. Media feels so fast now and I want to project a more chilled, conversational vibe.

You can really feel that. So how was it creating the series?

I did these interviews a while ago at the end of 2021. It was a really hard process, we were mid COVID, some countries were going back into the quarantine phase, etc. So that gives context to the Zoom feeling of the interviews. A lot of artists were really open to having a conversation with me because that was something they were lacking. And COVID meant I got to access these artists who otherwise would be travelling and touring and performing with no free time to even chat. Looking back the series is very quarantine nostalgic.

It was also a time where everyone was going through the same experience together. I don’t think we’ll get that experience again. A collective consciousness. Which reflects what you’re doing in the interviews - connecting everyone’s experiences together.

It was almost like this, grand equaliser in a way. For one moment we all had the same destiny. So having all these artists at home and stripped back with nothing to do created this environment where I could actually ask them these questions and they were really open. That’s one good thing that came out of the whole situation.

So what’s next for you?

I’m organising a finale party for the end of the series airing and I’d love to have some of the artists I’ve interviewed DJing. I also want to do some Twitch streaming and branch out into Discord. I started the PC Music Discord so I want to explore that a little more. There’s so much potential with these “new” social media sites. I love Discord because there aren't really any passive users compared to other social media sites. Everyone who's on the server is already a super fan and they're all ready to chat and have a really rich discussion. It’s reminiscent of the forums of the early internet days. Which I love!

Words: Eden Young | Safari Photos: Cherrie B