Striking Out: Temporex on His New Album 'Bowling'
By Maria Staack
By Victoria Ortega / Courtesy of the artist
21-year-old Joseph Flores makes music under the moniker Temporex. Working out of San Diego, California, where he grew up, Flores creates scintillating bedroom pop and his own captivating visuals to go with it. The playful and catchy songs on his new album, Bowling, perfectly encapsulate his uniquely whimsical style, inspired by Prince and Pee-wee Hemerman, among others. Just days after Bowling released, I had the chance to speak with Temporex about imposter syndrome, his new album, and his artistic process.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Maria Staack: How did you get into making music?
Temporex: I've been experimenting with different mediums my entire life. I started out making little movies with my friend as early as first grade. That kind of evolved to photography. When I realized I wanted to shoot not just landscapes anymore, but I had no friends to take pictures of, I decided to try graphic design. By the time I was I was doing graphic design I was about fourteen and I was just starting to get into music and listening to music for pleasure. I actually hadn’t liked music before that. I didn't realize I could discover music that I would like. At that time I started listening to Boards of Canada and that was one of the first few artists that I discovered on my own that I really liked, so I started making music that sounded similar. Then Cherry Bomb by Tyler the Creator came out and I was like “let me try making something like this” and that was when Care came around.
I saw on TikTok that you said you don't really know what you're doing musically and you don't know a lot of music theory, but you have gained quite a large following considering that. To me, that sounds like a recipe for imposter syndrome. Do you have any experience with that, if any?
I definitely struggle with imposter syndrome. A lot of the time I’ll write music and I'll listen to it afterwards and I'll just be thinking to myself “how did I know from start to finish how to do this?” And then people will ask me for advice on how to make music or stuff like that, but I won't really know what to say other than just to follow their taste and just keep practicing and if it takes five weeks to make a song, commit to it. At the same time it's also a weird position to be in because I really want to form relationships with other artists and work with other people, but because I don't know really what I'm doing, I feel like the pressure of working with other people would totally mess me up and I wouldn't be able to give my best during a session, so I definitely have imposter syndrome. It's also weird because there's a lot of people in the music business who have been making music longer than me and know a lot more about music than me and have toured the whole United States, but they somehow weren’t able to get my level or it’s taking longer. So that’s a hard thing for me to deal with too because its hard to feel deserving sometimes for the things that I have accomplished.
Do you think through everything before you create it, or do you prefer to just do something because it feels right?
I'm definitely more and hands on and I'll keep experimenting until I come back with something that I'm happy with. It’s all guided by instinct. I basically follow my nose if that makes sense. I’ll be working through a chord progression and if the third chord in the progression isn’t exciting me enough, I'll try and switch it out for something that's more interesting. Then I’ll continue building from there.
Are you interested at all in learning more about music theory, or the “correct” way of making music?
I think I would only learn the stuff that you need to learn in in order to work with people who are well-versed in music theory. There a lot of people like that who I want to work with but I'm just scared of making myself seem like a fool because I noticed I've made up my own words to describe a lot of stuff and they're not exactly technical. But I would rather take singing lessons or guitar lessons than I would want to take a music theory class.
You create your work pretty much entirely on your own. Is there something that draws you to that?
Not really. It's kind of just a product of my unfortunate social life. I don’t really have that many friends or close music friends so I make music by myself because nobody who I really highly respect has shown interest in working with me. At the same time, there are people that that I would like to work with that are on the same level as me and that I know might want to work with me too, but I’m a control freak when it comes to music, so I’d always be worried about making it a hard time for the other person just because I’m so particular about my music and my art in general.
You wrote your first album Care when you were 15 or 16 years old. Since then, what has changed about your music making process or entire artistic process in general?
Since Care, I’ve taught myself how to write a song. It was my first project where I was writing songs that were easily digestible, had lyrics and pop melodies. I barely knew what I was I was doing back then, so Bowling was a lot more calculated and thought through and I was a lot more selective. I expanded my library of gear, but I still work mostly with virtual instruments. My knowledge of music making and production has grown a lot since then and I think the music has matured a lot more overall.
Before any of the visuals came out for Bowling, I primarily thought of you as a musician. But it’s very clear that you have a lot more to offer creatively than just your music. Do you consider yourself a musician or a visual artist first and foremost, or something else entirely?
I think I would consider myself just to be an artist in general. I used to just say “oh yeah I'm a graphic designer,” but now I'm putting out video content that I spent a lot of time on. I would consider myself an artist in general because my goal is to basically be able to do anything, where I’m skilled enough to do whatever I put my mind to. I'm not saying I could do that now, but that's my goal. I wanna be able to do whatever I want and have people enjoy it.
I think that’s something cool about the Internet. It allows us to do whatever we want.
Yeah!
Your visual aesthetic feels very physically tangible, like the objects are in the real world, but simultaneously very digitally constructed. How did you arrive at that meshing of two mediums?
Whenever I'm making art, just like every other artist I’m kind of mimicking something that I've seen in real life or that was done by another artist that I respect, but in my own way. For the ‘Delete’ video, I wanted to do what would seem like a full big-budget video back in the 80s. If that came out in the 80s, you would assumed it had a huge budget behind it and a big pop artist would be in the video. I wanted it to seem realistic—maybe not for this period of time, but realistic in general. I tried to contextualize it in a previous era, so that it could be appreciated in a different way present day.
You took Pee-wee's Playhouse as a major inspiration. How did you come across that show?
I was introduced to Pee-wee by my mom when I was a kid because Pee-wee’s Big Adventure is one of her favorite movies. She made me and my sister watch it a bunch of times and I always really enjoyed it, she wasn’t forcing me to like it. I was sitting there and loving every second of it because there’s so much to look at. The art team on that show created a whole world. That show, even down to the music, inspired me. Mark Mothersbaugh from Devo and—I can’t remember the other guy’s name—did all of the music, or most of it, for Pee-wee’s Playhouse and it was just so good! He also did the Rugrats music, and I think that my music would live in the Rugrats world or in Pee-wee’s world as pop songs. That's kind of what I was picturing when I was writing the album.
Why is the album called Bowling?
I called it Bowling mostly because I'm a big fan of unique shapes and I like the shape of bowling pins. They’re a really recognizable shape. I’ve gone bowling a few times and I’m not great at it, so it’s not really because I have a love for the sport. There’s a specific vibe to bowling alleys that I really like. I’ve been to a few that have arcade carpets with the squiggly, colorful lines. If I ever owned a house one day, I would put those carpets in my house because they're just so nice to look at. There’s also a metaphorical meaning behind Bowling too. Every song is me throwing a ball down the lane and seeing if I get a strike. A strike is determined by the audience's reaction. So if everybody likes “Plastic Lester” or “New Lane,” then I got a strike. I if everybody likes the entire album, then I played a perfect game and it's time for me to start the next one.
Do you have any musical inspirations?
First and foremost, it’s always gonna be Prince. His music from the day he started writing to the day he died was. Particularly his album, Sign of the Times, really inspired the formula I followed for the sequencing. Some more contemporary inspirations were big pop artists like Harry Styles. You can tell that he’s in it for making good music, the songs have love in them, and he enjoyed the writing process. It makes me happy to know that huge artists like that still have pride in the process.
You have said that you don't want to write long songs because you don't want someone to be listening to it then get to a certain point and skip it, and that you don't want filler music. Do you enjoy long songs, or have a favorite one?
I don't think I could listen to a long song, unless it had a bunch of cool changes and different switch-ups, that's longer than maybe 7 minutes. There are some Prince songs where the pop portion of the song stops and the jam begins, and for some reason I get really impatient once the jam starts. I'm like, “I'm sorry Prince. I love you, but I can't listen to you do this guitar solo right now. I want to listen to your other stuff.”
The main reason why I don’t write long songs—there are two reasons. It’s because I lack the confidence that to want to take up that amount of space and time out of somebody's day. I'm terrified of being annoying. It would hurt my feelings if I wrote a 10-minute song and I thought it was the best thing ever, then somebody's like that guitar solo is three minute long, I’m not gonna listen to it. And then the other reason is, it’s already so hard to extend my thirty second song into a two minute track just because I'm an amateur producer. So it’s a big struggle for me technically and confidence-wise.
What do you think makes people gravitate towards your music?
I think maybe my production style is is different enough for people to want to engage with it but even that is a product of my lack of skill. I would hope that everybody has a different reason. Maybe it makes them think a time in their life or the visuals remind them of something cool that they saw when they were a little kid or or if they think they can just relate to me in general. I think that as a mixed kid, Chicano and white, I hope that someone can see me and say “this guy's doing this thing that I want to do and I've been treated weird my entire life where I don’t have that many friends just like this guy does and he’s doing okay, so maybe I’ll make it through and be able to do whatever it is that I wanna do.”
You tried to create a clothing line in high school. Is that something you're still interested in doing now that you have a larger platform?
Yeah I do really want to do that still! I have merch right now, but I wish that I had enough of a big enough fanbase to where the quantity of people that were buying stuff enabled me to make really really cool and like custom clothing but cheap. I can do that right now, but it'll be an insane amount of money. I don't want to force my fans to spend $100 on a sweater that I thought people would like and maybe people don't like. One day I hope I can do custom cut and sew stuff, but for now I’m gonna stick to t-shirts and keychains and all this simple stuff until I'm able to make affordable really cool stuff. ◆