From TDE to Odd Future, anyone who is anyone on the West Coast has spent time hanging out and recording in Mac’s pool house. When Clash calls Mac to chat about his new mixtape, ‘Faces’ ( news and download), he is uncharacteristically low-spirited. The song previously leaked online on December 7, 2019, under the name 8:21 AM. I’m moving, so we gotta rip this place apart, and I’m sad to see it go. Yeah is a bonus track included in the Faces re-release. It has a lot of soul, but it’s just going to become a pool house again.” He soon enough composes himself. “Whatever though, you know, bad endings are good beginnings.” “The hallucinations have stopped, finally, thank god / But my adrenaline reserves are burning out, and I’m staring straight into the face of a total psychotic freak out,” begins ‘Faces’ closer, ‘Grand Finale.’ The quote is taken from Bill Murray depicting gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson in the semi-autobiographical film Where The Buffalo Roam. 2015's GO:OD AM speaks to this moment in Mac's life. The Mac who's got some answers, who sold the mansion, climbed out of the rabbit hole, and went back home to make his most confident and clear-headed album yet. “This project was like hallucinations and sleep deprivation turning into everyday life and seeing faces everywhere,” explains Mac, speaking to Clash for the first time since his summer 2013 cover feature ( here). In 2015, at 23, we meet Mac all over again. “What is a face? What’s not a face?” explains Mac of the sample – which was chosen by his engineer Josh Berg, who incorporated a narrative into the mixtape’s 24 tracks. “He put all of the samples together at the end,” says Miller. We both love speaking through that type of thing.” “I had so much shit that I had to step away from it, and I sent him the tracklisting and he put it together. “I’ve never recorded something for a project per say, I just create,” he continues. But once I decided that I was going to call it ‘Faces’, I think the music that I was creating.” “I’m not trying to plan so much, I’m just trying to let things take shape and let the universe guide me, if you will. It’s clear from talking to Mac that he’s fuelled by creativity, and the fact that he can drop 24 tracks to the standard of those on ‘Faces’, in the nonchalant way in which he talks about releasing the tape, is a testament to that.