Part 2

Making music, in the beginning, is often playful and about discovery. How do you retain a sense of playfulness and how do you still draw surprises from tools, approaches and musical forms you may be very familiar with?  

This is the hardest part for me honestly. My little experience with “the music business” vacuumed up a lot of what was left of the playfulness I had in the beginning, but I’d say it’s just staying curious. About both the world, and yourself.

I don’t ever want to feel like I have it all figured out because that’s how I’ll know I’m stagnant. And when you’re stagnant you become stale. I want to keep learning, and keep finding new ways to be creative.

Not just in music. Making these music videos made me realise that I really dig making film, creative direction, creative writing, set design. I picked up wood working just as a skill to add to my tool belt, and it’s been fulfilling in ways I hadn’t expected … I think the most important thing a creative person can do is have more than one creative outlet so that one doesn’t start to feel like a chore if it ever starts to become “successful” (or doesn’t). Your identity doesn’t need to revolve around one thing, you can do lots of things, and they will also feel like finishing a song does.

But there’s always two sides to a coin. Woodworking for example … makes me want to pull my hair out sometimes because it highlights how permanent a mistake can be. But when that mistake turns into a feature? There’s nothing like it. Same goes for music. You just gotta cultivate that feeling, and apply it to all facets of life.

That’s what an artist or “creative” is. They just embody that sh*t whether they have new art coming out or not. Whether you’ve made something today, this week, this month, or this year. None of that matters. It’s your perspective that is art.

If you choose this outlook, you’re making art out of lemons.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?

Anything can be musical in the right context, I guess. But I don't know, I wrote a paper in college on John Cage’s “4:33” and how, technically, an animal could perform it, and since animals haven’t been observed making music without being convinced with treats, it wasn’t technically music.

But nature is a bit different. There are objectively musical elements. When foley recordings are used in a musical context, the blend of other elements forces whatever alien synth you can make, sound more natural.

I guess I’m also just super rigid in my thinking sometimes, so this could be one of them. But there’s definitely a limit to what is naturally musical and what isn’t - but you can make a soundwave of anything sound musical now. It’s awesome.

There seems to be an increasing trend to capture music in algorithms, and data. But already at the time of Plato, arithmetic, geometry, and music were considered closely connected. How do you see that connection yourself? What aspects of music do you feel can be captured through numbers, and which can not?

If the data were demonstrably accurate, I think it could show patterns that could be valuable but mostly just patterns in taste. I don’t appreciate that all of this data is used to make targeted ads, but capitalism is gonna be capitalism.

I don’t think it’s in any streaming company’s best interest to publicly investigate what streams are real and which are fake because many of these same algorithms are being manipulated, even by major label artists, to end up triggering a boost in exposure. And major labels are the largest investors in streaming platforms. They have the market in a weird position where they get paid from licensing deals with streamers, the majority of royalties to the artists on their rosters, and whatever profits streamers end up producing at the end of the year, as investor ...

So it sounds to me like Major Labels don’t want to touch the house of cards because they’re currently getting paid 3 different times for labor they never did … could never be me but whatever,

The data COULD be used for discovery of smaller artists, and streamers could click a few buttons and prioritise smaller artists, which would end up giving the ability to those artists to consistently release music, and commit to putting it out on their platforms.

But there’s some rule somewhere that any publicly traded company has to have all decisions be made by a white man over the age of 55, and they like profit not music lol. *shrug*

How does the way you make music reflect the way you live your life? Can we learn lessons about life by understanding music on a deeper level?

I like to say, I don’t have opinions, I have principles.

I don’t tolerate certain behaviours, from anyone I support, especially men, and I apply the same standards to everyone. There is SOME wiggle room for symptoms of poverty for example, but everything else is pretty straight forward. I’m against harm. I’m against xenophobia. I’m against exploitation. And I’m not trying to convince anyone that I’m right about it.

The same goes for my art. It will always highlight contradictions, and therefore it will always be political. It will never be sanitised and that doesn’t necessarily mix well with all people. And to a certain degree, I don’t blame them for it.

I’m just trying to share a perspective within modern electronic music that is completely different from the nothing burger statements about being a communal family at events where a water bottle costs $7.

We can surround us with sound every second of the day. The great pianist Glenn Gould even considered this the ultimate delight. How do you see that yourself and what importance does silence hold?

I probably listen to music a few times a week at this point. I’m mostly watching current events, listening to audiobooks about communism, and trying to make sense of the world through my art.

I reached a weird stage during the pandemic where consuming music wasn’t doing the same thing for me, because most of the music didn’t feel like what I was feeling. I still have a bunch of artists that speak truth to power on rotation, but I haven’t sat down with a record and really listened to it since Radiohead’s last album. I choose silence and the news, a lot more than music.

It will change again though, it always does. When I find an artist I like, I juggle 3 or 4 for months.

Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

I haven’t performed since before the pandemic, but playing shows feels a little different than making a great cup of coffee, but I’m learning that both have the same value as long as you allow yourself to feel it.

I am very grateful to the farm workers in Central and South America who grow our coffee. Shout out to the EZLN, buy your coffee directly from Indigenous farmers in Mexico!

If you could make a wish for the future – what are developments in music you would like to see and hear?

If I could see anything, I’d like to see Labor Unions start to host shows of all genres at their union halls.

Instead of making some venue owners rich, we raise strike funds, we serve food, we build community around worker and collective struggle and we let radical art be the fuel that pushes a new world forward.