The Ion Pack were the masked podcast duo of Lower Manhattan, interviewing talents established and emerging – from Julia Fox to Rachel Sennott, Matty Healy to John Wilson – while hiding their identity with black masks. Their irreverent, DIY voice cut through the noise, aiming a curveball at the creative industry’s gatekeepers. And then in 2022, while FaceTiming Jonah Hill, The Ion Pack – Curtis Everett Pawley and KJ Rothweiler – scrapped the masks and finally revealed themselves.

It all began in 2018 as a burner Instagram account meme’ing NYC’s film culture – some with affection, some with a jab – and soon evolved into The Ion Pack podcast. Post-anonymity, the duo have taken The Ion Pack further – on the road, holding impromptu DJ sets in Brooklyn, Paris and London, on stage, performing live podcasts, and on screen: KJ co-directed acclaimed indie film Salamander Days alongside filmmaker Rebekah Sherman-Myntti. On America’s West Coast, LA electro-duo The Hellp are stirring their own sonic revolution, turning their cult following into international acclaim. Chandler Ransom Lucy, one half of The Hellp, joins the call with The Ion Pack to discuss matters of state – and things are in one hell of a state.

Chandler Ransom Lucy: Hey, man!
KJ Rothweiler: Yo, bro. How are you?

CRL: Slightly hungover, we shot a big music video last night, and fucking… You saw the video, dude, we destroyed the whole room with feathers…
KR: They just gave you that room?
CRL: Long story short, we filmed this music video like, six years ago where there’s this 1994 Calabasas High School video of a kid at senior year going around everyone on the last day of high school, being like, “Oh, it’s your last day of high school, blah, blah, blah,” with a VHS camera. We made this video where we got the same VHS camera and it’s Noah [Dillon, The Hellp] at Calabasas High and it’s his last day of high school. We made it six years ago, and at the end, it gets all Criterion [Collection], all weird and shit in Chateau [Marmont]. But now we’re too old to drop that video, so instead we got the same room and when we got there they were like, “Hey, we’re upgrading you to the penthouse.” We’re like, “What the fuck? OK, we’ll take it.” It was cool. But next thing you know, a bunch of weirdos are there and we’re like “What the fuck?!” And then everybody’s inviting their friends and they’re like, “You can’t have more than eight people here.” And we’re like, “We can’t have more than eight people in the most famous hotel room?!”

KR: Is that room really famous?
CRL: Yeah, Penthouse 64, bro.
Curtis Everett Pawley: You guys are peaking. It’s amazing.

CRL: What’s up with The Ion Pack? Are you going to keep doing interviews and podcasts? Are you transitioning?
CEP: That’s the big question. How does it feel out there [in LA]? Because I feel like everyone in New York feels kind of stuck. Or feels a little less excited than usual, I guess. Maybe it’s just New York, but everybody needs a little kick in the pants. They need something exciting. It feels like things were exciting for a second but now everyone’s looking for the next move – us included.

CRL: I agree with you. Not to get political, but specifically with this election, I think people are all like, hella uneasy. I really think people are subconsciously really uncertain and really scared for the future of America. It just makes everything else fall flat.
KR: Did you watch the [presidential] debate? [this conversation took place in early July 2024]

CRL: I watched like ten minutes of it and I was like, “Dude, this guy looks like my grandfather right before he died.”
CEP: I watched the whole thing at Sweeney’s house.

CRL: I know, he texted me. The debate was… I don’t know, man, I can’t stomach that shit. It’s not even like a fall from grace, it’s just such a conscientious move on the part of some type of narrative that’s being spun to us. Obviously, the debate happens, and then they go, “Oh, Joe Biden isn’t competent enough to stand for office.” And it’s like, that was the whole reason you put them on stage, just so you could do that, so you could try to get Gavin Newsom in there or something. You know what I mean? Now we can get a real young guy in here. Then Trump’s saying nonsense the entire time. You just sit there with your popcorn or post on Instagram and act like you’re involved in some type of dialogue, when the reality is you’re still paying taxes and they won’t fix the roads, and your grandma’s going to be fucking homeless in ten years because Social Security is going to run out, and there’s no future for you as a person in America. So why the fuck should I care about the debate? You know what I mean? That’s kind of where my philosophy is right now. What the fuck are you guys observing in New York? Dude, I just ran into a few friends recently, and they were like, “I hate New York in the summer,” and all this shit. I haven’t really enjoyed New York in a while, so I’m curious.
KR: I actually quite like it when it warms up in New York, even though it’s sort of unbearable, there is a nice week-long period where the weather is super nice and you can see everybody looking hot and congregating outside of some shitty bar. I mean, it’s a disgusting place, but the social aspect of it is… In winter I just hibernate, I’m in my car driving around, listening to Colorado [The Hellp’s track].

“Everybody’s very suspicious because most things are just fucking astroturfed in…”

CRL: That makes me happy. But I’m talking more socially, what’s the vibes out in the streets in motherfucking New York, dog? Is it still just corporatised, fake indie artists and shit like that?
CEP: Honestly? Yeah. [all laugh] I think New York had a moment when we were super active. There was something slightly dangerous or covert about it. It also just felt really homegrown. Nothing feels homegrown anymore. But also, all three of us probably do this, no one trusts that anything is homegrown anymore. Everybody’s very suspicious because most things are just fucking astroturfed in and it’s so obvious now, you can see it. You can clearly see that everyone’s trust has gone down. The Internet has become such a suspicious place, rightfully so, but it’s also become a really fucking hostile, negative place. And communication has been completely destroyed. I actually think that is unfortunately true in real life as well as online.

CRL: For sure. Even what you guys were doing with the podcast. When did you guys start that? 2019?
CEP: 2020, yeah.

CRL: When I think about doing what you guys were doing in 2020, now, you just instantly know that it would not fly. Everybody would immediately think that it was suspicious, or that you guys were trust-fund kids or the kids of the fucking guy from the World Economic Forum or something. It would never quite connect, right? I feel like our
project, music-wise, was like the last cut-off for something ridiculous like that – this off-the-wall, new shit. I don’t think we’re the freshest band, I don’t think that at all…
KR: But you are.

CRL: Thanks, man. [all laugh] But you know what I mean? Just where it’s these crazy music videos and it’s all art driven. It’s the same thing with your podcast.
CEP: In that time, maybe four years ago, things felt exciting – now it’s a more hostile environment. Dude, look at the brain dead comments that are posted everywhere. There’s no insight, there’s no excitement, it’s all negativity. It’s all anger.

CRL: I look at comments and I’m like, “Dude, is this even fucking real? Are these literally bots?” But to that effect, you guys had a true social effect on the streets of New York. It was clear as day. This is what I really think about [a lot], find me other people besides Playboi Carti who have real boots on the ground, and cultural weight with young kids on the streets of the two major cultural hubs of America. You don’t see kids going out of their way to dress like Billie Eilish. You don’t see kids going out of their way to dress like The Weeknd or Drake. You know what I mean? You don’t see that shit anymore. That’s my measurement of whether something is successful, if kids are identifying with it. But when shit only exists as Instagram likes and comments, that doesn’t seem like it’s real at all.
CEP: With music, it’s crazy now because you can look at stats, some people have crazy streaming numbers and then like, no one will come to a show. Then the opposite of that is true, too. That’s never happened [before]. Like, imagine someone selling millions of records who couldn’t sell out a show. So that’s kind of what I’m saying, where the split of Internet versus reality is making people suspicious and not able to trust things anymore. They can’t trust the numbers they see, or they’re inundated with numbers, and it gives them a different idea of what’s actually happening in reality. People feel that shit.

CRL: What you guys are talking about is something that endeared me to you and Noah initially. It’s interesting because we’re both doing something that started in a very homegrown, organic way, and we are, maybe you guys more so, transitioning out of that into actually having some sort of support. Whenever we threw a party or did anything, it was just us fucking doing it, which is part of what made it feel cool.
KR: I mean, it’s still us doing fucking everything, dude. I’m sure it’s still the same thing with you guys.

CRL: That’s true. Maybe this is pessimistic, but it’s hard to imagine another thing really having cultural weight. I think about how Playboi Carti’s got that cultural weight, other than him just being a really sick artist, he played all the fucking rap festivals across America and people saw the rave beats in real life and saw the vibe and they wanted to adopt that. There’s still something so important about seeing things in real life and being able to identify with them, obviously. But now everything’s on the Internet, and you’re viewing it from a very voyeuristic third-person view. I think the most important thing as a consumer or someone who wants to be a fan of something is the imagination that’s involved in understanding why that artist is doing what they do. Back when we had CDs you were like, “Here are the songs they sing. Here’s a photo of them, I saw one interview with them on MTV, and maybe I’ll see them in concert once,” but that’s it. Now, you see everything on Instagram, 24/7, there are news articles. What the fuck are those rap pages where it’s like, rapnewsbeef.org, and it’s the cat photo of Drake and you swipe right and it’s the blurred photo of his dick. You know what I mean? All that shit. To sum that up, my opinion is subculture is completely destroyed and everything’s becoming incredibly refined and based around just nostalgia. [laughs] There’s like no fucking new movies anymore. There’s hardly any new fucking music. Everything’s really contrived and, as with you guys, we’re just trying to make something pure and honest for the world to consume and hopefully make one kid’s life better.
CEP: I think so. Dude, I didn’t realise you guys had a discord. Discord is still my favourite thing on the Internet. Our Discord is good, but this is a big picture thing I’ve been thinking about, I think the Internet has become so bad, and everyone’s become so inundated and paranoid and all the shit we’re talking about, I think breaking off into smaller Internets is the only way to go.

CRL: Fractional Internet?
KR: I mean, it’s kind of already like that. I don’t actually feel a hyper-negativity around it, so much as I just feel like nobody feels cool to be in anything, everything has been prescribed and vetted by public metrics. There’s no feeling of stumbling upon something. Only a few years ago, it felt like you could actually go to something that not everybody instantly knew about.
CEP: The only music that feels like there’s still real boots on the ground, genuine DIY shit going on, is hip hop.

CRL: Oh, for sure – always.
CEP: You fuck with all the Shed Theory shit?

CRL: Do I fuck with Shed Theory? I fuck with Joeyy. I think he is a prophet of some sort. There’s something very interesting about him, and I think he’s at a point in his career where he could really blow shit out of the water. What inspires you guys?
KR: Gus Van Sant has been heavy on my mind with the way he worked the studio system, getting huge budgets and then kind of trolling and going Béla Tarr-mode and doing whatever he wants. Doing something for the big money people, and then you can go and fuck off. That mentality of working the system – I really jive with that.

“New York had a moment when we were super active. There was something slightly dangerous or covert about it.”

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