A Chat with Company Town (04.09.2026)
With the EP beautiful things are disappearing every day, Company Town is expanding the production style of the man behind the music, John Gallagher. With layered spoken samples, he uses both new and classic sampling techniques to make something truly unique. With an experimental touch, he blends electronic beats with eclectic samples. We had the chance to chat with him about his music, his creative process, using samples and much more.
OSR: You have a very unique musical style and sound, but what first drew you to making music?
Company Town: I’ve been drawn to making music since long before I could actually play any instruments. As a teenager, I started to get serious – first on drums and piano, then guitar, bass, and whatever other instruments I could get my hands on. And then at some point I just became obsessed with creating and it’s been that way ever since. I started sampling about a year and a half ago and that’s opened up a world of creative possibilities for me – kind of the opposite of how that story usually goes. The medium doesn’t matter nearly as much as the process, but I do feel a powerful connection to sampling. It rekindled my faith in the endless possibilities of creativity at a time when I think I was a little burnt out on the way I was making music.
OSR: You create sample-based music covering multiple genres including hip-hop, psychedelia and folk. What made you want to explore this style of music?
Company Town: It’s mostly just a natural result of my listening habits. I got really into hip-hop and the art of sampling somewhat recently and just followed my interests. In order to make creative and unique music, I have to constantly be discovering things that blow me away. I was a casual fan of hip-hop before, but by taking this deep dive, I’ve given myself countless new sources of inspiration. At the same time, all the other dives I’ve taken into different musical areas over the years are still here and influencing what I do, even if it’s subconscious. But the psychedelic/folk piece of it just felt natural to me for whatever reason. For me, there’s a huge element of nostalgia in the sounds of sample-based hip-hop and 60s psychedelia, so in my mind, they just fit together perfectly.
OSR: Your EP beautiful things are disappearing every day leans more heavily into spoken samples. Why did you choose to do this?
Company Town: It wasn’t necessarily by design. I’m working on dozens of songs at any given time and sometimes I decide that I’d like to put some of them together for a release. These songs felt like a nice cohesive bunch to me, so I made an EP out of them. I love spoken samples because I can use these disparate sources out of context to create brand new statements while also paying tribute to the sources themselves – not unlike what we do with musical samples. I also enjoy playing with the rhythm of spoken samples and almost treating them as “MCs”. It’s a cool reminder of the fact that basically all sound is just a step away from being musical; by combining pieces of sound in the right way, you can find the musicality in pretty much anything.
OSR: Not only are you exploring different samples in this EP, you have also widened your production style. What is your creative process that allows you to explore and experiment?
Company Town: I just try to avoid creating “templates” for myself. There are a million ways that an idea can start. And once I’ve started, I just try to follow each idea wherever it goes without worrying about the process that gets me there.
OSR: Each of the songs in the EP tells a story, but is there a unifying theme that resonates through the whole?
Company Town: I think this goes for a lot of my music – not just this EP – but there’s often a unifying theme of what art means to me and the whole experience of making art. On this EP, the last two songs pretty explicitly delve into this. ‘Fiesta’ uses the words of one of my favorite producers to describe my approach to making music. And ‘Sunbathe’ is a fun track that kind of illustrates both the challenges and rewards of making art for yourself in an authentic way. Overall, I think this EP is also pretty fun and playful, which is a side of my music that I wanted to emphasize this time around.
OSR: Classic and modern sampling techniques have been used for the tracks of this EP, but which do you prefer?
Company Town: It doesn’t really matter to me as long as the result is something creative and authentic. The only things I try to avoid in sampling are clichés (see chipmunk soul) and rip-offs (I like to call this “karaoke sampling”). If I’m using samples to create something new that nobody else would have created, then the method isn’t really important.
OSR: As your music is different from what people might usually hear, what is it that you are hoping they will take away from the listening experience?
Company Town: That experimental music can be fun and catchy. The way I construct these songs might not be instantly familiar or easy to compare to something else, but they can be immediately accessible and enjoyable. I think we need more of that.
OSR: Is there a specific genre of music that you feel more comfortable with or do you consider yourself a multi-genre artist?
Company Town: I really have no idea what genre I would apply to my music. In my head, it’s basically hip-hop because that’s the entire foundation of how I approach making it and it’s where most of my influence comes from for this project. But I don’t necessarily think that’s how everybody hears it. And although the foundation is hip-hop, I’m incorporating a lot of influence from the other styles that I’ve loved over the years – psychedelic, indie rock, dream pop, and so on. I never set out to fit any particular style, so I really have a hard time describing my music in a way that would make sense to a first-time listener. Suggestions are welcome.
OSR: If people could listen to only one track from the EP, which would you recommend to best understand your style?
Company Town: That’s a tough question because any time I decide to put several songs together for a release, it’s going to be eclectic. One of the main reasons I like releasing multiple songs together is that I don’t think my sound can be understood through any single song. This is also the reason I prefer to listen to albums and EPs. On this EP, I think ‘Great Things’ is a good place to start, but it’s also a bit of a departure from most of the other songs I’ve put out. ‘Uncle’ is a fun song that probably fits a bit better with other songs I’ve done – chopped up samples on the MPC with lines from a classic 80s movie telling the story.
OSR: Do you have any advice for other artists who are looking to use sampling in their sound?
Company Town: I’m gonna give a piece of advice I really wouldn’t have taken that seriously if somebody told it to me two years ago. Get some physical hardware. I know it may seem inconvenient and cumbersome compared to using a modern DAW like Logic or Ableton. You can technically do everything you need in any of these DAWs. But getting a physical sampler or a turntable with a bunch of throwaway records is something I can’t recommend enough. It removes you from the digital point-and-click world, and it forces you to make decisions and limit yourself in a way that we almost never experience in modern music-making. I also love that I feel more connected to the producers I’ve learned from by using these pieces of hardware.
OSR: What can we expect from you in the future?
Company Town: I think my listeners need to be ready for surprises. And I like to think that they are. Stylistic and thematic cohesion are important to me, but I’m always going to follow the song where it takes me. I’m never going to settle for making one song over and over. I can promise that I’ll keep putting out songs that I love and producing them in a way that feels right to me. I trust the people that connect with my music to join me on that journey.
Many thanks to Company Town for speaking with us. Find out more about him on his Instagram, TikTok, SoundCloud, Bandcamp and Spotify.
This artist was discovered via Musosoup #sustainablecurator
