What was it that made you aspire to go in a creative direction instead of something that’s viewed upon as a more industrious career, going back as far as you can remember?
I remember being very blank-minded when I was very young, until I got a Nintendo Entertainment System for my birthday in 1986. After that I started paying more attention to visual and audible sensations and harbored an obsession with drawing and making sounds that lasted well into adulthood.
If you could pick a few people, bands or ideas that made you pursue music, what would they be? What about them inspired you so?
Black Sabbath was the first band I paid any attention to, mainly on the album “Sabotage” with its unique mixture of sullen and enraged songwriting and spectral textures. Beyond that, the work of Swans, Diamanda Galas, Gorecki and Penderecki demonstrated how much more passion and emotion can be infused into sound and song and people like Keiji Haino, Never Presence Forever and Wrnlrd helped refine exactly how and why music can exist as art and emotion at once.
How much of your work comes from an external influence and how much is internal? Do you have trouble balancing the two?
The influence is almost entirely internal. But for certain emotions that are triggered by outside events or personalities (“An Eternity Without Pain” deals with women that I admired), the sounds and images come from internal drama and aren’t inspired by what other artists do.
How entwined is your artwork or visual approach with your music?
One does not exist without the other.
Do you expect that listeners will pick up on any of your personal inspirations for your songs? Is it at all important that anybody would?
It’s not important that a listener knows exactly what event or image drives a particular song as much as it’s important that there’s an emotional resonance connected to it, whatever that may be for whoever decides to listen.
In your live performances, how well do you think your work came across in the setting?
After a lot of trial and error i’ve reached a point where even a lackluster performance is at least conceptually and aurally apt, if not indicative of something you’d hear on an album, but it took a lot of fuck ups to get here. At my best, I can feel the tone of the environment change as my performance changes suites and I lose myself in the aether.
What do you fear the most?
Loss is the bane of my existence and the one thing I truly fear.
Do you think there exists an invisible world?
As much as I reject the idea that there are hidden forces motivating and shaping the world as I perceive it, there are moments when I can’t help but heel like a divine hand is pushing me in a certain direction. It feels great to think that there’s a meaning to what i’m doing in this world, and that maybe after enough failed ambitions and false promises i’m finally going to reach that comfort point. Unfortunately these instances haven’t worked out in my favour at all. A tattoo of Medusa on my arm represents this idea that if there is a hidden hand shaping the world, some of us are meant to fail so that our failures can be utilized by someone else to achieve their own goals. I completely hate this concept but the imagery serves as a reminder to not make certain mistakes for certain types of people ever again.
Did you have any aspirations when you started making music that have been met at this point?
One of my main aspirations was to come into contact with like-minded artists, which i’m very thankful to say has been fulfilled.
Of your current body of work, what makes you the most proud?
An unreleased collaborative album with Wrnlrd called “Palimpsest.” It’s the album I always wished I could make but never actually could without assistance from the right person.
If by this point you can't find a post with a link to any of my music or art on my own fucking blog, you're too far gone for me to help.
2 comments:
Palimpsest NEEDS to be released!
Oh shoot, I almost forgot, we actually got copies of our first tape from the label recently if you'd like a physical copy.
Its the least I could do for all the cool stuff you sent me while I was laid up sick.
Shoot me your address if you want one and I'll mail it right out.
best
Moz
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