ROCKTOBER FINAL FOUR INTERVIEW: Get to Know Riko + Whaler Collective 

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INTERVIEW BY: Julius Philp

Following the October-long voting for WHIP Radio’s 2023 Rocktober (stay tuned in to WHIP’s
Instagram to get the latest about the Rocktober show which is this Friday 11/10), we’re
featuring the final four bands.
Get to know Riko and Whaler Collective, a Philly area band known for their high energy
performances that get audiences immersed in hypnotic grooves through the interview below.

WHIP: How’d you guys feel when you were picked as one of the final four for Rocktober?

Riko: It was exciting. It was definitely an honor. I mean, just knowing WHIP Radio and WHIP
Radio’s involvement in the scene and how important it is to Temple, and not only Temple, but
the DIY community. It’s brought a lot of bands together in a lot of ways. But, yeah, just seeing
that people were supporting not only all these other cool bands, but what we’re doing enough to
put us through, it was a big honor. Definitely.

WHIP: Did you guys have a strategy for getting votes and getting your name out there?

Raven: I think the big thing with our band is we kind of try to reach out to multiple audiences.
So we’re involved in the Philly scene a lot, but we do a lot of stuff in the ‘burbs. We play to a lot
of older people, like a big older crowd. We feel like maybe it’s to our advantage. I guess we have
an identity in both places; people know us for different things because we do a lot of covers too.
So we could reach out, especially on Facebook, and people were sharing it a lot. So that helped a
ton.
WHIP: How did you guys meet and start playing together?

Whaler: Me and Riko here, man? Like the second grade. Second or third grade. I saw a Kiss
poster, an art project, on the wall and I was looking for a local band. So I had to figure out who
that was.

Riko: That was my art, yeah! We met through a love of music, essentially, from a young age. He
was a grade ahead of me but I would always see him wearing Beatles shirts and talking about the
Beatles and stuff. I was like, who is this guy? We all kind of got together through this thing
called School of Rock. That’s where we learned to perform and play our instruments better and
how to play together as a band. At those School of Rock things, we would always find ourselves
getting into the back rooms, they have these little jam rooms, and we’d go on these jams for
twenty or thirty minutes and just improvise with each other.
I think that’s where we really learned to play with each other and where our minds are going to
be at, how we can kind of connect when we’re in that zone together. We really learned how to be
a band there. We started getting gigs when we were probably sixteen years old, just playing at
parties and stuff. Just little DIY festivals. Eventually we got into the jam band scene in the
suburbs, the Delaware and New Jersey area. We play a lot there. We got into the DIY scene
probably right after COVID and it’s been awesome, just seeing all the people music can connect
and the artists that it brings together.

WHIP: What’s your guys’ creative process?

Raven: I think we can all speak for ourselves. There’s a couple different approaches. Riko
especially, or even Whaler, will bring stuff to the table and we’ll kind of all workshop together.
We have so many moments where we’re improvising and we’ll bring stuff back. Like it doesn’t
even have a name, we’ll just all know what it sounds like and we’ll start to incorporate it into
actual compositions. We’ve been doing a lot of stuff recently where we’re just sitting on
Ableton, not even having a preconceived idea, and just making a section and making another
section and making a demo like that.

Whaler: Each of us brings an idea for either a song or a piece and maybe it just sticks or maybe
all three of our minds work and see: oh, should we add this? Will this sound good? How will this
play?

WHIP: What’s been your favorite gig this year?

Riko: Honestly, one of my favorite shows we did was outside at the Philly Stoop, which is a
place I got involved with. I actually co-ran their last couple of shows and a lot of the newer
adventures. But playing the Stoop show was really cool. Not only is it an outdoor show, which is
in our wheelhouse, but we just love playing on the streets to a bunch of dancing people. That’s
great for the music. It was great because it was a whole scene coming together in a way you
couldn’t ignore: all these artists selling their art and meeting each other and talking about all
these collaborations that could happen. There were six bands and they’re all really, really good. It
was booked by another thing we’re involved with, the Philly Psychedelic Instagram page and that’s become a really tight knit community and having that kind of on display at that show was
sick. It was just really fun. We were really stoked about the show.

Raven: I guess we’ve had a lot of shows where I could think about different reasons why I like
them, but maybe one of my favorites would be a festival we played called Canna Fest. I think it
was in the Poconos. It was like a fairground kind of thing and the stage was really big. We were
playing to everybody walking around at the festival so that time was really cool.

Whaler: There’s been so many. One that definitely had an impact on me was a rooftop gig in
Philly. The concert went well, but the actual visual of seeing the city behind you and being in
that kind of environment is very interesting. Because there’s nothing like that. Just seeing this
massive city behind you as you’re playing and people are watching, it’s a good time.

WHIP: You describe yourself as an “experimental and expansive” collective? Can you tell
us a little more about that? What other creative ventures are you involved in?

Raven: I can start. He (Riko) has the grand idea. I think the idea of it being a collective is we
invite a lot of other people to play musically. There’s a lot of people who’ve been on gigs, who
come and go, it’s like a revolving door. I think it also includes a lot of our friends from school
who are artists who don’t do music. We want to incorporate them into that kind of space where
we can have them be a part of the community and also promote them through our music.

Riko: I guess some of the examples of what he’s saying is we’ll employ tons of photographers,
videographers and we’ll cut them into our profit. We work with a lot of visual artists, like we
have a projector artist who comes around and he’s been getting a lot of recognition. We work
with dancers. We did this whole show at the University of the Arts that was completely improvised music and dance. That also might be one of our favorite gigs. We had to improvise for, like, two hours or so and the dancers would improvise with our sound, and we’d improvise back with them. It just became this living thing. That’s very much what we’re all about: the ecosystem that art can be. It’s just so much more than just being just a band or being just an artist, because when you’re putting it all together, it’s this living thing. We all kind of take up little personas, like in the collective as well. I’m Riko, he’s Whaler, and he would be Raven, and it kind of gives us a chance to put our artistic selves into this and we can leave our real-life selves behind. It’s just been really fun.

WHIP: When can we expect some new music?

Riko: Soon! Very soon. If not by the end of the year, then in the new year.

WHIP: Where can our listeners follow you on social media?

Raven: Check us out on Instagram, we’re on Facebook too. We’re on Spotify, all the streaming platforms. We have some extra stuff on Bandcamp too.
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Instagram: @rikoandwhalercollective
Facebook: Riko and Whaler Collective
Spotify: Riko and Whaler
Bandcamp: The Riko and Whaler Collective