Artist Q/A (March 2025)

Q: Why did you start making music?

A: When I was in middle school, some of my classmates had a punk band that I thought sucked & it inspired me to try and get some of my own friends together to make something better. It didn't last very long, but in highschool I ended up getting into synthesizers and whatnot.

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Q: How would you describe your music?

A: It changes a lot. I make a lot of noise, industrial, dark ambient, sound collage, plunderphonics, etc. but I have dabbled in IDM & Trip Hop.

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Q: What initially drew you to your music genre, and how has your understanding of it evolved since you started?

A: When I was younger, I was obsessed with Salvador Dali & wanted to find "surrealist music" . Eventually, I discovered Industrial Music, and through that got deeper into various forms of experimental music and sound art.

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Q: How do you choose your instruments/sound sources for your music?

A: I choose synths/ROMplers/samples based on a gut feeling, and let each decision inform the next one that I'm going to make. I do have a preference for bass synths that allow you to get a lot of harmonic content out of them easily...I like some of the harsher tones that FM Synths can make, and wavetable synths are good for everything. I default to using a lot of Native Instruments' classic plugins, like Monark, FM8, and Massive because I know their range & how each of them will usually fit in a mix. They're also tightly integrated with Maschine, which means I can just scroll through a list of my own presets using the encoders on the controller...I basically try and think as little as possible. When I'm not writing actual songs or programming beats, I use VCV Rack to create "generative systems" that spit out music, beats, or strange noises.

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Q: What album could you listen to everyday?

I don't think there's an album I could listen to every day of my life...my tastes & mood changes a lot these days! I've listened to a bit of Jim E. Brown & Blorg's "Mousetrap" (AI Mickey Mouse Rap) recently.

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Q: Are there any musicians or artists from other genres who have particularly influenced your work?

A: Probably Kirin J Callinan...that guy's on a whole other level & has very likely stolen David Bowie's soul through some strange voodoo ritual.

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Q: What do you aim to express or provoke with your music, and how do you gauge if you've achieved it?

A: Most of the time I make noise/sound/music for the sake of it and song/album titles are inspired by the process that it took to create them. So usually I am expressing transient thoughts, the subconscious, free-association...most of the work is about the moment in time that they were made, and what I was feeling/thinking in a general sense. I don't really worry about whether I succeed or fail anymore...I have this confidence that things will come together in the shape that they're meant to be.