A. G. Cook: how PC Music defined a generation of pop

Welcome to Dazed’s PC Music takeover, a two-day guest edit celebrating 10 years of pop music’s most exhilarating label. Head here to check out exclusive mixes, an oral history, and in-depth profiles with some of its key players.

11 o’clock at Spiritland in London. The bar is empty, but the hi-fi system is on full blast. Tucked into the surrounding King’s Cross complex, it’s the sort of upper-tier location where established music heads go to have coffee-meets in the comfort of surround sound and neatly poured beverages. Sitting across from me is A. G. Cook, who tells me about his recent adventures in Dungeons and Dragons. “Sadly, I’m dungeon master,” he confesses, adjusting his circular glasses. “That makes it more complicated, but as a general philosophy, I think it’s fun to always try and give players a lot of agency and make it not too strict. I’m not like, ‘oh, now we’re level 10 we can only use chainmail next week’.” The cogs start whirring in my head, this can’t be a coincidence, surely? 

The man, the myth, the pop wizard, Cook’s presence across the musical landscape is baked in lore. The dungeon master is at what feels like the centre of a vast ecosystem of interconnected artists and internet-born music scenes. He’s the founder of PC Music – ”someone who runs an electronic label with the Beatles haircut” – affiliated with artists such as Hannah Diamond, SOPHIE and umru. A solo artist and an in-demand producer who makes music with Beyoncé and Charli XCX. Until recently, he oversaw much of the label’s management and artist development, which comprises a group of individuals with different musical approaches but a shared aesthetic. “I’m happy that PC’s never had a dogma of what makes someone a PC Music artist,” he says. “There’s no commandment for this kind of thing. It really is just a shared attitude of like, ‘oh, I'll take a bit of a risk, and I’ll explore this’, or ‘I’ll do something which adds to the whole project in some way, or gives it another layer of meaning’.”

Though heavily criticised by critics at the beginning (too leftfield for the mainstream, too goofy for the club scene), the label’s ethos that (1) normal people can be pop stars, and (2) avoid anything that’s not extreme, has become the industry standard in an era of bedroom producers and streaming platforms – think the meteoric rise of hyperpop across the mainstream, or electronic acts like LSDXOXO or VTSS whose hybrid approach to pop and club music is all over the dancefloor. “I think it was always this idea of being a little bit critical, a little bit risk-taking, or wanting to push it a little bit,” he elaborates. 

When PC Music launched ten years ago, social media was still in its infancy and streaming culture had yet to take over. This proved fertile ground for online collectives to emerge, united by their shared interest in music and united via platforms such as Soundcloud, from PC Music to Odd Future and Sad Boys. “A lot of people met each other through SoundCloud and other funny things and various club nights,” reflects Cook. These latent encounters gained traction in the underground and experimental music scenes, heightening the label’s lore through early club nights such as Power Lunches and bizarro mixes strewn across the web. “It was very encouraged to be an internet mystery and then people connecting the dots and really interacting in a way. Whereas now those things still exist, but they're not platformed in the same way, because everyone has to be their own TikTok island. It's all a bit more direct, in a funny way.”

“What interests me about PC Music isn't about becoming the next Domino or Warp Records” – A. G. Cook

Earlier this year, PC Music announced that it would stop releasing new music, instead turning its attention to archival projects and special reissues. “It was on the day that our 10-year anniversary was announced. I had that in my calendar for a long time. I was definitely thinking about lots of different ways of going about it but, in a weird way, PC, especially when it has these grand gestures, it’s sort of cheekily monolithic,” he says. “People use words like, ‘oh, it’s folding’, and it’s not really. What interests me about PC Music isn’t about becoming the next Domino or Warp Records.” He might be waving goodbye to his ‘Personal Computer music’, but Cook insists this isn’t the end per se – but a new beginning. “I haven’t seen any labels that have done this, usually they fade out or sell to a bigger thing and then someone runs it. There’s no great example of anyone who’s made a clear statement like, we are shifting now.”

Having relocated to LA with his partner Alaska a few years back, Cook is currently prepping the release of his debut album as Thy Slaughter, a band he formed with PC’s Easyfun. “The attitude is like a lot of things I’m interested in, this high contrast, taking something as objective as rock and all the things that PC stands for its own journey around pop music,” he reveals. “I think as we unearth more of it, we’ll start having a lot of fun with this notion of lore. But it’s never going to be like a master plan.”

Thy Slaughter’s debut album is out soon! “Bronze” came out back in 2014, so it’s been in the works for a while. How did it all come together?

A. G. Cook: I was very against band music for a while actually, and I was really interested in music and production, I sort of didn’t allow any instruments in the studio. I got rid of loads of stuff. It was a laptop and microphone only. I was pretty purist. I think I learned a lot from it and it felt very utopian like a computer can do anything sound-wise and you can recreate stuff, so I was very deep into that. I kind of came full circle even when Finn [Easyfun] and I did the first Thy Slaughter one-off song “Bronze”.

I’m seeing a general shift towards more producers digging up their teenage guitars lately, any thoughts?

A.G. Cook: It’s such a trope, isn’t it? It’s probably a generational thing. There are all these questions bubbling up about basic things like authenticity. I remember even a few years ago – or definitely when PC was starting – there’d be this idea that this music is less authentic than like Adele or something, so people also felt that there has to be some kind of battle around that. I feel like in the UK too, there’s a lot of gatekeeping around what’s dance music and what’s not. 

How’s that different to America now that you’re living in LA?

A.G. Cook: America’s sillier because of the notion of EDM, but in a fun, trashy way. If some EDM DJ whips out a guitar, everyone’s like, ‘yeah, rock on’, loving it. It’s got this other kind of funny dialogue. I think it is a bit of a trope and I’m someone who’s maybe sometimes easily cringed out by different things. I would say not in terms of guilty pleasures, but in terms of things being a bit too banal.

Maybe what I mean is that if it’s just DJs plus instruments, it feels a bit funnily banal to me, whereas if it’s a band and it’s on the record but it’s ambiguous and everything’s distorted. I don’t want it to sound like a really nice riff or a really nice beat. Things being perfectly balanced is sort of an issue for me.

“Things being perfectly balanced is sort of an issue for me” – A. G. Cook

I’ve been thinking a lot about the beginnings of PC Music and how everything’s so different now with social media. The social and online conditions that gave birth to the label feel very of the moment. How do you think that’s all changed over the decade?

A.G. Cook: Social media is one very outstanding aspect of it but it’s the entire internet and probably most industries, especially the music industry. The funniest thing when I look at 2013 through to now is streaming existed in a small way but around late 2015/2016, it became the norm and that already really changes the balance of so many things – that’s even before TikTok. It’s genuinely really interesting, but I think the exact window that PC had and those early years was because we could do a mini URL web mini site and it would feel as official as a Nicki Minaj website that was out there. There might be news videos or other things, but on a superficial internet level, as long as the imagery was competent, the music was competent, it could operate on almost an uncannily similar level. That’s changed a lot. You could say that about streaming too. Even back then, people cared about a free download or downloading and having things, whereas now it’s ephemeral in a completely different way.

How do you think public opinion has changed around the label?

A.G. Cook: In the early years, other than a few people who were really down, it was pretty negative. The early club nights I would do, or early SOPHIE shows and other things, a few people were loving it, and people who aggressively were flipping. It was honestly either people being like, ‘this is terrible,’ or people being like, ‘why are you playing a pop star like Carly Rae Jepsen’, as if it’s a total travesty. I remember amazing sets I’d seen where people were physically aggressive and oddly gendered as well, as if it was some kind of lad zone that owned the clubs. It was quite ridiculous when you look back on it. I think that’s what formed a lot of strong friendships.

Yeah, like the stuff that used to be considered trashy is now common consumption. I’m reminded of how serious club culture felt in the early 2010s compared to now. 

A.G. Cook: I’m pretty blown away by how much things have evolved. Especially with PC’s fan base, there are just so many people who actually make music and are involved in a very direct way. As well as people who are just enjoying it in general, or it’s becoming important for. I really noticed that over the pandemic, too, when I was doing my own rollouts, and messing around with things like Apple.

One of the nice things about being a producer/artist is also being able to meet up with other people. Someone like Hudson Mohawk, who really influenced us in the early days, is still doing amazing stuff. Maybe I’ll work with him on some other random pop thing, and all these full circle things, but it eventually does have an impact on wider culture because there are actually so many of these individuals that are all having these conversations and banding together.

The myth-making that surrounds the label is pretty impressive. There’s so much lore from early nights and live performances. How much of it was intentional?

A.G. Cook: I think mythmaking is a good word because traditional myths are reused, they come back and forth, they have this dreamy quality as well. That’s personally what I really enjoy. I’m not one of those strict muso people. I grew up being much more visual and then I was messing around with music, but I got into it relatively late compared to friends like Finn or Danny [Harle]. For me, for it to all be interesting, it had to have a bit of that quality of being slightly larger than life. It’s why I’m so interested in songs and artists having a personality, or production matching your personality, but it has to have this kind of dialogue of this sort of a live feeling, an unpredictable feeling, rather than just like, ‘oh, that's a great song’. I do appreciate that too, but it has to tap into something else.

What’s next for PC Music? 

A.G. Cook: I can’t resist things like [celebrating] our decade [anniversary]. I do like things being quite neat. Seeing how much the internet’s changed, even from just pre-2013 to 2016, so much of that [older stuff] is at risk of going offline, if not just pure link rot like mixes on SoundCloud.

There’s so much stuff that is so important to me and I know it’s important to other artists and producers. It’s not just becoming archival – if we leave it much longer, it’s actually going to be impossible to even track it. This idea that PC could change from being something that is a normal label to something that is both doing this sort of archaeological work and unpredictable special projects is how I defined it, but these one-off things, for me, are actually going to really help the culture and the artists and the general music landscape a lot.

“We’re all serviced by these endless subcultures like, can we get increasingly more specific and bespoke?” – A. G. Cook

Safe to say you’re deeply enmeshed in the pop music fabric at this point. Where do you think it’s all heading? 

A.G. Cook: I do think about it a lot, I find it a big motivator. But also, I think the thing that many people can agree on, and it’s not really radical to say – it’s been happening for a while – but the lack of mainstream. This idea that we’re all sharing a few platforms and a few channels. A good example of this is how big Bjork was at a certain era, with her music being absolutely wild, and how it shared a platform with something like “Windowlicker” on platforms like MTV – it felt like a big part of mainstream culture.

There are so many positives and negatives [of this current era]. I don’t think it’s necessarily better. But I think it’s having a massive impact in terms of the scale of different things. We’re all serviced by these endless subcultures – can we carry on getting increasingly more specific and bespoke? The bad thing about that sometimes is that we don’t want things to change too much now. It’s not like you’re a fan of 10 or 20 artists anymore – now, it’s like 200-400, maybe more. So we don’t want artists to change too much, because we see them as only representing a certain thing, or fitting into certain genres and playlists. There’s less attention span.

How do you cut through the noise? 

A.G. Cook: I’m very interested in that, because I don’t think for music to be interesting it has to cut through something in my own head. You see this with the different affiliated artists with PC – there aren’t a huge number of crazy viral moments, but then a lot of them have really strong live fanbases and can tour and do things in a way a lot of new artists actually can’t, because they’re not tapped into any kind of thing. There’s that trope of the person who blows up on TikTok, and then can’t sell 50 tickets or whatever. I’ve seen that a lot. And I think that’s something quite sad, when there isn’t a scene for people to plug into. That’s why I feel PC has a lot of value.