Office Culture

Photo by, Max Heimberger

Meet Office Culture

Gather round ye old water cooler and give this crew a gander. Hailing from Brooklyn, Office Culture delivers jazz-infused, sophistipop tunes that go down real smooth. Smoother than the smoothiest of smoothies. We chat with the ringleader, Winston Cook-Wilson, about their latest release, Life of Crime, their former pizza alias, and the perfection of long-established bagel formulas.

Give it a read and get back to work! 

A Self-portrait by Office Culture

Would you rather…

have everything you wear always be three sizes to big or two sizes too small?

Three sizes too big. Comfort over everything, especially in the times we are living through. Also, I'm having trouble conceiving of the hypothetical person who would want their clothes three sizes too small.

Some questions with Office Culture

How did Office Culture come to be?

Everyone in the band has known each other for a long time, and played music in other combinations before. Pat [dummer] and I have been playing music together for around 18 years, and were in a band called Ball of Flame Shoot Fire up until 2015. Charlie [bass], Ian [guitar/keys], and I met in college and have made lots of music together. We once had a band called Pizza, and it was probably better than this band.

What are your top three used emojis? Do you have any?

Just your basic stuff mostly. I do like the one that is just a gray void to illustrate some real cosmic bleakness or detract from conversations I don't want to be having. I use a skull when I'm actually laughing uncontrollably—that's the real LOL for me. I used to be really into popping a yin yang in, which seemed either totally meaningless or like it signified being super chill and in balance. But I've stopped with most of this funny business: emojis are too central a form of communication now. You could really mess up your whole life with an ambiguous emoji.

How did the creative process on A Life of Crime differ from your 2017 debut, I Did The Best I Could?

A Life of Crime was a highly collaborative effort from front to back. The first album was building directly off of electronics-heavy demos I had made on my own over a good stretch of time, systematically replacing elements with live instrumentation. That record feels very much like a "figuring out what this band is" project. Even in the early stages, I had a much clearer idea of the target mood and aesthetic for this record and who I wanted to record and mix it: my friends Christopher and Jeremy McDonald, at Mason Jar Studios in Brooklyn. I also knew that I wanted to write songs that kind of preserved an atmosphere—thematically, too—rather than jumping drastically between textures and styles of arrangement song to song. I'd done that grabbag thing a lot over the years, and now it's hard for me to imagine ever going back.

How does the concept of identity play into your music?

A lot of my songs are about people not having a fixed sense of who they are at any given time. More often that not, they are about feeling like you don't have enough space to figure it out. It's often really hard to know exactly what you want from life, especially when you're online and constantly being confronted with these simulacra of people you know, or kind of know, or don't know at all. Sometimes you might be watching the Instagram story of someone from high school you talked to three times and it feels like a Powerpoint on a particular model of being a person, like it's a class you could sign up for for. I am more susceptible to being like "Maybe that's what I should be doing, hmm" than a lot of people. Some people see that kind of thing and get mad instead and talk about how, actually, they are doing it the Right Way.

When I get specific in the songs, the "you" or "our" obviously illustrates a very limited perspective. I want to be clear on that, since "identity" was part of the question. Often it's the perspective of someone very much like me, and often it's in the context of a relationship—textbook stuff. But sometimes on this album, I tried to write from the perspective of people who I think are defining the bad socioeconomic conditions I see in the world, and indict them a bit. But I rarely assume that I'm the dude who can accurately distill the perspective of a person who is really suffering from the way the world is. It doesn't seem to bother Billy Joel, but it bothers me.

What is the next milestone you hope to hit in your career?

Honestly, I just want to keep making records and meeting great musicians and learning from them. That's what I've been deeply into the past few years. I've got a Winston C.W. record pretty much done, with my friends Ryan and Carmen from the band Scree—just an absolutely incredible band—playing on it. I'm really excited for the world to hear that. I'm also working hard on writing new Office Culture songs.

What is your favorite office-related item?

I like a hole punch. I try to be a paperless kind of fellow, but sometimes I like to print my lyrics and put them in binders. I am really scared of forgetting my lyrics on stage. It's because I used to do theater when I was a kid and I still have stress dreams about forgetting my lines.

If the price was no object what would be the perfect bagel?

I wouldn't flatter myself to think I could overhaul the art form of the bagel sandwich with some exotic new formula. I'm not aiming to disrupt the bagel industry. I live in New York, and people here have literal centuries of experience with experimenting with and honing their bagel concepts. I like lox, scallion cream cheese, and capers on an everything bagel.

Any final comments? (This is your electronic soapbox for one last answer.)

Support new music during this insane time—pay for it, if possible. Let the artists know if you like it and tell your friends about it. It makes a huge difference to musicians. I want to list all my friends' awesome projects but there are too many. I'd just say go check out the Whatever's Clever and Ruination Record Co. sites and peruse what they've put out during this past year. They are pretty amazing catalogues, barring my dumb records. Pat from the band has an amazing record out that I helped out with. I also play keys in Adeline Hotel and our new album is out May 8.