Speakers and The Love Below
with Devon Turnbull

In 2000, I started making clothes under the name Ojas and I was writing graffiti. This streetwear brand grew into Nom de Guerre in 2003. We were super young, pretty naive in a lot of ways, and very untechnical. I was the only partner that was coming from a design perspective. None of us were garmentos by any means. We started trying to make clothes in New York—a place that’s difficult for the garment industry. So I had this idea to go to Japan and try to find people who could help us make clothes, low quantity and high quality. Through doing production in Japan, I was exposed to the hi-fi scene, which has been extremely inspirational for me.

For the Supreme stores I did, I knew that these systems were going to play every kind of music at pretty high levels and play it all day, and all night. So I started applying a lot of what I had learned from my trips to Japan and the importance of tonality.

When I got really into hi-fi building, my listening habits changed for the better. The range of music I was listening to broadened in a positive way. You realize when you start trying to make audio components in realistic natural sounds, you tend to use music that has natural realistic instrumentations.

What I really want out of a system, when I sit down, is not to feel like I’m looking at an accurate representation of the music, but rather that I’m in the music. The music is so present—it’s not like I’m sitting in front of the stage, I’m on the stage.

I never stopped liking electronic music, but it’s important to not lose sight of that beautiful mid-range where tonality and texture lives. When you want to listen to music with sub-bass—such as music from the 90s onwards—you really need to reproduce down to at least 30 Hz, in order to have satisfying results. A lot of these vintage-type systems that I’m really passionate about don’t do that. They do acoustic music really beautifully, and you put on something with deep sub-bass, and it doesn’t translate.

My thing is to supplement subwoofers that are designed to match the upper harmonics of the rest of the system, and not to augment the speakers that play beautiful frequencies. One way is to redesign the system so they play lower frequencies, but I prefer to bring in another speaker, so you can listen to hip-hop, dance music, and bass music, but you still get to react to this lifelike mid-range.

I built an amazing network that I definitely can’t do this without. A lot of that is finding older engineers who have mid-century audio technologies. I’m fascinated by Asia soundsystem technology from the 60s through to the 90s. A big part of my operation is my relationship with this guy from Fukushima named Koji Wakabayashi. I made a pilgrimage 13 years ago to his vintage audio museum—he has the biggest collection of neurophonic audio equipment in the world. It is the holy grail of audio. Our friendship dates back 20 years.

There’s a gap in this lineage, where a lot of skilled hi-fi hobbyists in their 50s are aging out of the scene, and people in their 30s are very interested in this hi-fi culture again. A big part of what keeps me going is preservation.

Home audio has always been my passion. I'm very fortunate that it happens to be my main interest. I didn't have to pivot. As for the DIY Kit, it was like week one of the pandemic and Virgil called me saying, “Now is your time. Right now is the time when people are going to be receptive to the work you're doing in home audio.” I started thinking, “What could I offer people right now?” I spoke with my cabinet maker and we started putting our heads together, designing the system for how we could produce these flat-pack kits that people could put together at home.

I thought, at best five to 10 people may be into this. I voiced out this idea on Instagram, within like a few hours, I had 350 customers putting in orders. I have never run e-commerce before, so Virgil offered to build a page for me on his e-commerce site, Canary Yellow. He has some of the best and brightest working with him. Before we announced it, it was sold out. I sold out of all the drivers that were accessible in the US. We restocked them and again sold out in a day or two.

Exactly, it’s this “homebody movement.” Like, “Yeah, I'm thinking about getting into baking bread” or other trending hobbies. But people really miss going out and listening to music, so something affordable and fun to build fills that void.

What sounds good to your ears? What makes you want to sit down and just intentionally listen to music? There's no such thing as “good,” “best,” and “better” sound to me. It's about crafting something which is unique and personal and finding your sound.