In Room Z1 with Sub Urban
Are you in L.A. at the moment?
Yeah, I'm in Los Angeles. I just came back from Mexico where I was doing a guest appearance at a Bruses show. I also did a writing camp there with her.
Before you left you did a shoot at The Hotel Chelsea. What was it like to shoot at that location?
It was cool. It’s a very ornate hotel. I don't know very much about the history of it, but I do know someone was murdered there. I was convinced that it happened in the room we were in.
Just a feeling?
Just a feeling. We were in room Z1, and I thought they may have renamed it with a letter because they didn’t want to scare people off with the original numbers. I didn’t end up staying there even though I paid for the night. I had all my stuff at another hotel, but honestly, I should have slept there.
Yeah, because I heard the on-set team did a girls' night there after the shoot, so you were banned.
They did have a girls' night? Oh, they totally used the room, but it’s okay, I told them they could.
Where does the name Sub Urban come from?
I wanted to be a DJ when I was younger and my name used to be Toxin X. Then I realized I wasn't just going to produce, so I felt like the name Toxin X would age out of existence. It’s funny; I feel it totally would work now, though, because we've had a full circle of electronic music irony.
As for Sub Urban, it came from my last name, which is Maisonneuve. In French, it means “new house”, and I was like, oh, suburbia? I didn't think very much about it, but a lot of people make their own meanings of the name. One of the popular interpretations that my fans have is that “Sub” is “under” and “Urban” is “the city”.
[Laughs] I thought you would say something else because your email just comes up as “Sub”.
When my friend was helping me set up my MacBook, he named the computer “submissive”.
You grew up in New Jersey. Did you live in the suburbs there?
Yeah. That also adds to it.
When you go back to the East Coast, what do you do as soon as you get off the plane?
My best friend lives in Brooklyn now. He grew up with me in New Jersey and we met in fourth grade. He was the only friend I had after I dropped out of high school around the age of fifteen, so he's really close to me. I always go visit him.
What was it like to experience success with your music at such a young age? Did you see it coming?
I held on to the song "Cradles" for two years. I wrote it when I was 17 and had management who came from EDM at the time. They didn't know what to do with me because every EDM label kept rejecting my music. This is something I actually don't talk about, but because I grew up within underground SoundCloud and EDM shit, I was listening to a lot of beat makers who were inspired by Mr. Carmack and Flume. Then, I was friends with all these melodic dubstep kids over Skype and Discord. It was really frustrating because my sound design wasn't technical enough. It wasn't parallel with what anyone else was doing, so it was amateur in a way that people liked, but I just kept trying to master it.
There was a tipping point where a label wanted to sign me because they heard "Cradles" immediately said this song is a fucking hit. I knew there was something to it. I didn't have any following and was like, I think this will get 10 million views. And we kicked the door down. We put that song out and immediately it was streaming well.
How old were you when you released that song?
I was 19.
Wow.
Nobody really knew what was happening, how "Cradles" would take over the world in the way it has, but it was a fucking Fortnite dance. BPM-wise, the song was timed perfectly with the dance.
That's all it took. After that it was flying and every label was bidding for me. It was unbelievable.
Do you think that success had something to do with the recklessness you have when you're that age?
Back then I was a dumbass. I didn't know what the hell I was doing, and because of that, I was throwing shit at the walls without thinking. Now, I'm trying to realign with that feeling. These last few months have made me realize, whoa, I don't know shit, which is a really beautiful feeling. The difference is that when I was younger, I was susceptible to the illusion of authority. Everybody around me ended up being vultures. I fired my whole team in 2022 and disappeared for two years because I was redoing everything.
This is a rite of passage for most young artists because they don't know that you don't listen to somebody else telling you how to do your art. I listened and it compromised the vision. I ended up making songs that I honestly venture to say were furry-core music. Though, this last album that I just put out, If Nevermore, was made after I got Long COVID and was trying to fix my brain with random psychedelia because I could not make music or read during that time. It was very intense.
What was your go-to?
I haven't done LSD yet, but I took a lot of shrooms. It was the only thing that gave me my taste back. After Long COVID though, what gave me the ability to focus and read again was honestly Ketamine. But unfortunately, that became a problem because it was a curse lift. I thought, I should just do this all the time. Then, I realized I just needed to eat more and change my friend group. I really took my whole life and twisted it.
After all this time, what does looking back on "Cradles" mean to you?
I think "Cradles" is a great song. I go on TikTok occasionally and I see the new kids being like, oh my God, you remember this, guys? I keep seeing a mixture of comments like, I can't believe I thought this shit was tough in 2020. All this stuff is noise because the reality is that I was very honest with that song. I wasn't trying to make a hit. An Oak Tree has those inner rings and one of the inner rings is that song.
I was very lonely after dropping out of high school, so that song is a product of loneliness. It's alienation and at the time, I think a lot of youth aligned with it. The internet was really threading a needle of despair.
In 2026, you're going to go on tour with Two Feet and brothel. What should people expect from that tour?
I haven't opened for somebody in a while, but Two Feet and his producer are friends of mine and they were just like, dude, just come out with us.
I remember when Two Feet’s song “Go Fuck Yourself” came out. I had like 2,000 streams on SoundCloud and I was like, holy shit. Nobody was doing the saw bass with the indie blues guitar strums back then. It really ended up shaping me, but it got crazy.
Home Depot apparently reached out to Two Feet to try to use one of their songs and ended up ripping it off. That ended up causing this whole chain reaction, and now truck commercials have that sound. It's really fucking funny because that was never the intention of the song.
Do you guys have any favorite pit stops or road stories?
Every time I've toured so far, our van has broken down or gotten into an accident. So we’ll see what happens. As for pit stops, The Big Texan or Terry Black's Barbecue in Texas.
Do you have any memories from going to concerts when you were younger?
Most of my concert memories are from the last three years. I didn't really go to concerts before COVID happened. I was very much a stay-inside, computer kid. The moment I got a chance to see concerts, it was DJ shows that my managers would take me to, and I don't even remember half of them.
For my favorite show that I've seen in the last two years, Gesaffelstein was fucking insane, Hans Zimmer too. I also really like Frost Children and there's this one band I like called They Are Gutting a Body Of Water. It's a shoegaze band.
If Nevermore came out in 2025, but you just dropped your single, 555. What does this track say about how you want your sound to evolve?
It's definitely a dance song with that really strange cathedral shape to it, which is prevalent in my music. I'm always trying to search for this feeling of something bigger than myself. I've always loved dance music, but I honestly think I'm actually going to go in a direction people aren't going to expect.
