Name: Jenny Pulse
Occupation: Musician, singer, producer
Nationality: American
Recent release: Jenny Puls and Timmy Kinsella's Gimme Altamont EP, harbinger of a full length LP slated for release in 2023, is out now.

If you enjoyed this interview with Jenny Pulse and would like to find out more about her work, visit her on Soundcloud. For a more expansive look into her thoughts and processes, we recommend our earlier Jenny Pulse interview.

Jenny was also a member of the Joan of Arc collective, whose members over the years have included Joshua Abrams, Theo Katsaounis, and Ben Vida.

[Read our Timmy Kinsella interview]
[Read our Joshua Abrams interview]
[Read our Theo Katsaounis interview]
[Read our Ben Vida interview]



Jenny Pulse: "Here are a handful of ways I like to think of curation:

1. Homage. Artists who deal with tradition. People who work with human mythology. Those who stand on the shoulders of those who have molded history. This might be a ritual. It’s a tradition that can’t be helped. It moves us. I don’t think we’ll ever escape this process and it’s vital that we don’t.  

2. Modernism. Taking what’s here and saying—“I see things this way”, altering the perspective. Taking an image and challenging that image. Cutting it up and repurposing it. The thing is, even though it may be completely new, you will still see the lips, the feathers, the grapes, the buildings, the smoke, etc. of the original image. It’s still there, but now we can see it in a new way, the world anew. It asks “what do we really know?”.

3. Ghost world. As ghosts do, they roam our world, and yet, they are OF a world unseen to us. Familiar and simultaneously terrifyingly unlike us. They’re also a trick. They seem human, but are not. They allow us to see the space between all that is knowable to us to reveal something unknown.

4. Humans are messy. There is no reason not to make a complete mess. Last night I watched a free jazz set and it blew my mind open. It was full on madness. No space to tell what’s going on. Eventually my mind started turning keys and opening doors to new ideas on my own work. Witnessing something incomprehensible can be very refreshing. So in this case, the collage is—EVERYONE FOR THEMSELVES. And that’s totally cool. Why not?

Being an artist is a noble path. It is very hard to make a living on art. You have to work hard. If you don’t have anyone supporting you, sometimes you have to grind. To continue being an artist, and know this, is a political act. It’s advocating for a job that isn’t really seen as a job generally. It’s imperative to fight for this job, do the job, if you want it to BE a job. That is what I believe absolutely.

There’s a sickening lack of funding for the arts in the United States, especially for music. Streaming has stripped away the rights of not only musicians, but labels. It has thrown the whole ecosystem into a frenzy that hasn’t been sorted out. COVID-19 hasn’t helped. Everyone in the industry is trying to figure out what is going on.

I hope more and more people begin to understand what Tim and I are doing. We feel like we’re contributing something very important to society. We do not dull down, buffer or shine up our songs to be more palatable to a broader audience. Doing that is not helpful to society! We do not need clean, we need music that makes the country, the world, feel how it really is. Kinda chaotic and confusing! Unbalanced! Strange! Moving! Delightful! Horrific! Yadda yadda.”