Porches' Beautiful "Goodbye"
Porches is currently on a North American tour in support of his last album The House. Watch the video for "Goodbye" below.
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Porches is currently on a North American tour in support of his last album The House. Watch the video for "Goodbye" below.
When Taraneh was writing her first two albums, she was making music for people to listen to in their rooms.
New Age Prayer is an amalgam of cross-genre references that come across as an entirely new sound, that while ethereal and a little moody (perfect for listening to in a bedroom) is better heard in person. When the album drops, she, Scarlet Rae and Prints will grace the stage at Mercury Lounge so keep an eye out. ;)
COAT, archive fur, BIKINI by MOSCHINO, BOOTS by PRADA
The singles you've put out so far sound wildly different from your past projects. How would you describe this record?
Yeah for sure, it's super multi-genre exploring a lot of very new sounds for me in terms of genre and the way that things are presented. And it's really exciting because we've entered this era where genres are almost dead in a way. I don't know if it has to do with the way that we consume media, but that genres kind of blend in this interesting way that I've never really experienced before, at least in my lifetime, or as far as I know in the past. I feel like I'm seeing more artists who are more and more kind of liberated in terms of what they present in their music. And this record is very much that as well. I wanted to do grunge tracks. I wanted to do a tele-disco. I wanted to do industrial, lo-fi, whatever. It's a bit offbeat to have an album that is so all over the place, but there is this cohesive thread of the voice and the songwriting ultimately bringing everything together.
I've been hearing people say that — that genre is dying, but it feels like more and more people are just realizing that music is just sound, and so artists are more open to experiment to create sounds that evoke feeling rather than fitting into a specific genre.
Totally. And no shade to the artists that do stick to a genre, it's cool and valuable to find a niche but I feel like we've entered an era where it's gone steps beyond that, in which genre and subculture are just blending in such a new and interesting way. I feel like we're going to see more and more multi-genre projects.
Or maybe just no genre. Would you say that it's something you're doing intentionally or it just happens naturally?
Yeah, no genre, just something completely new. I'd say that's kind of my goal as an artist in a lot of ways. I don't think there's any point in doing something if you're not bringing anything new to the table, whether that be a new feeling that you invoke for an audience, or a sound. I'm not going to sit here and call myself a pioneer or anything, but I do think that the way that this record specifically crosses genres and almost circumvents them is something that is relatively new. Some people get it, some people don't at this point, but I don't know, I'm sure that will be something we see a lot more of.
How do you feel about some of the more energetic songs on the record, like "Artificial" with Evanora:Unlimited?
I feel like this record is the first time that I brought my singing voice above a certain place in terms of volume. My past work is very soft and intimate, which is the writing style that feels very comfortable to me. But with this one, I wanted to get louder and louder. There's something very powerful about singing soft songs, but there's obviously something equally as powerful about being able to yell and scream and so songs like "Artificial" are super exciting to me.
Which song was your favorite to make?
So everything is co-produced by me and my friend James Duncan. He did all of the drum programming, he did all of the synth patches, he had all the bass parts, and I did the guitar. The most fun I had writing was probably on "Superstar", just because for that song in particular, I wrote the bass line, and bass isn't really my instrument. I know how to play, obviously, but that day, James and I swapped instruments, so he did guitar, I did bass and that was a really fun experience, taking a different approach to songwriting.
When did you write "Superstar"?
"Superstar", we wrote, I think February of 2023. So a little over a year ago. The first song I wrote for the record was actually the title track, "New Age Prayer", but we recorded that one last. I wrote that in 2022 when I came back from the first tour I did in Europe with Evanora. I actually wrote it originally with Evanora and Ivy in mind as features for it, and they both wanted to hop on the track but the timing didn't end up working out. But it's super exciting to see everyone reflected in the features. So I played this show in January of 2023, and it was me, Evanora, Ivy Knight, and LUCY (Cooper B Handy), and that show honestly changed a lot for me. It was the first really big show I played where audience members were actually singing my songs.
Is that where the four of you met?
No, we didn't meet there, but that show almost represented an era for me. The features say a lot about what that specific event and coming together of sound really represented in my life and career.
This being your third full-fledged project, what made you choose the title New Age Prayer? Are you a religious or spiritual person?
I'm not religious, but I am spiritual, and honestly, the title just kind of came to me. I was having a really hard time thinking of a title for the album, but I wrote the album already knowing that I wanted this to be the album art, the one that we selected. It's an image that was on a poster in an apartment I moved into in Boston just hanging on the wall and it would never come off when I tried to take it down. The night before I moved to New York, the whole poster fell off the wall. I have it in my room now. So this was on my wall the entire time when I was writing this record.
Did you find out where the image is from?
I had no idea what the origin of the image was. The front of the poster says 'Death Community,' like some monastery having funeral processions, and the back says , "You will die here," which is very ominous, but I did a reverse image search, and it's from this publication called The Whole Earth Catalog. It was in circulation in the seventies, and it was the publication that inspired Steve Jobs to make Apple or something. It was his favorite publication. I knew that I wanted to use the image before I found all of that out, but I was like, Holy shit, that's so sick.
So I guess you're the next Steve Jobs? [Laughs]
Maybe? You heard it here, folks, I'm the next Steve Jobs. [Laughs] But back to the question. I'm definitely a very spiritual person. I was raised Muslim, and even though I don't follow any sort of institutitional religion, I am culturally Muslim so that's imagery that has presented itself again and again in my work. But one day, I was looking out that window [points] and I was like new age prayer, that's it, that's the title. Grant Lepping was the engineer, and Kris Esfandiari, King Woman is the executive producer on the record and we were all in a group chat where I sent the title, and everyone was like, What? No, that's not it. I was like, No this is it, trust me guys. It just resonated.
HAT and TOP by DENIZ BLUEMENSTEIN, GLASSES by CELINE, BOOTS, talent’s own
Do you pray?
I do pray. For me, music is prayer in a lot of ways. I think music is magic and the words that we speak are prayers in and of themselves.
Like the opening track, "Ask and Receive”.
Totally. Our words hold immense weight and meaning. When I'm writing songs, it's not even an intentional thought process for me. It's more like I'm channeling a message. Not to sound totally offbeat, but lots of times I'll write something and it won't make sense to me until years later I'll listen back and be like, Oh my God, that is what it means for sure. You know what I mean? And this is the first record where I don't have very dark, depressing imagery in my lyricism, and that was a very intentional move on my part, just because I've spoken with so many friends who also make music, and the consensus is that what we put into our songs does really come true in a way. So the imagery in this record is very intentionally calling in what I want to experience.
Our words are so powerful. Even our thoughts and dreams.
Yeah, for sure. dreams are also such an important part of how I navigate my life. I honestly determine who I work with based on my dreams. If I say I'm going to work with someone and I have a bad dream about it, I just don’t do it. And it happened three times when I was choosing who to work with on the release of this project. If something is not meant to be, I'll just have a nightmare the night before. I'm supposed to sign the contract the next day, get this message and wake up like, Sorry, I’m not interested anymore.
I believe that, it’s how you align with what’s actually meant for you.
Totally and in my family lineage, we definitely have very intense and guiding, almost prophetic dreams. I was named based on a dream. My dad had a dream with the wife of Abraham which is why my middle name is Sara. It’s not common in Persian culture to have middle names. My dad wanted to name me Sarah but my mom was like, No, we're not going to name her daughter Sarah. They decided to make it the middle name.
Remind me what your first name means.
My name is "Taraneh" in Farsi. It means "melody".
That’s beautiful.
So "Prophet" came out in January and you've released two singles and music videos for each. Talk to me about that process a little bit.
Yeah, "Prophet" came out in January. "My World" came out in February, and then "On Repeat" just dropped a few weeks ago. Prophet is also a song that I wrote later in the process of making this record. And it's just a very exciting, totally new sound for me personally. It's really fun to perform. It's very energetic in a way that a lot of my other songs haven't been, which is really exciting. I wanted to make music that people can dance to. That's another thing. When I was writing, like my last record, like A Fleeting Feeling, which I wrote before I ever played my first show, I wasn't writing with performance in mind. I was writing songs to listen to in your bedroom. That's what I was doing with it. But I started performing and I was like, I want songs that people can dance to.
Yeah, you can't play some sad shit in the middle of an amped up show unless people are expecting it. Everyone's going to think you're being weird.
For sure. I mean, if that's the show that you're signing up for, then definitely, but I feel like I always play with friends who make crazy, loud music that's really energetic. So I feel like it is kind of dope to be like, okay, you were just dancing to some crazy shit and now I'm going to play this really sad song. The music finds its audience for sure.
What do you feel threads the entire album together?
As multi-genre as the record is, each song has a sister track. That's kind of how I played it out in my mind. So "Prophet" and "Artificial" are like sister tracks to me. And then "Ask and Receive" and "Superstar", "Reckoning" and "Burn". That's definitely a thread that I wanted to continue throughout. Then "New Age Prayer" stands on its own as the title track. There's nothing that's really quite like that one.
Have you done that before?
No, never, but looking back, I'm really glad I did. Like "Ask and Receive" and "Superstar", James did the drum programming and it was just a long project file that continued so I was like, what if we wrote a second song with the same drums from the last track, but it's a completely different song?
Now that you mention it, I do see that, and love that intention behind the pairing. How would you compare this to your last two projects?
So I've put out two full albums; all of my albums are 13 songs, that will continue forever. But my last two records, the first one I wrote when I was 15, then I recorded it when I was 21. I did all the production, if you can even call it that. It was very lo-fi, and that was intentional. I was like, I just need to get these songs out. That was Grab Bag. And then A Fleeting Feeling was a little bit more advanced. James was my co-producer on that as well. And I had a full band for the recordings. But this is the first one that it’s really like, I'm doing this. The fact that I got to work with so many of my favorite musicians and my closest friends on this has been such a pleasure and privilege.
How does it feel to be increasing your output in terms of rollout this time around?
Like the videos, the photo shoots. That's new. That's all new. When I released A Fleeting Feeling, I was still working for USA Today as an investigative journalist. Wow. I never really thought of music as something that I would do. It was just something that I wanted to do and it gave me a lot of pleasure and joy to do, but I was never thinking like, oh, rollout video, press, whatever. And this is the first time that I'm doing that. It's fun. It's cool. It's definitely very different. There is power in not really trying to play the game. And not to say that I'm playing the game now, but I’m definitely being very intentional in what I’m doing.
I was speaking to someone the other day who — not in music, in fashion — that has been fairly influential but still considers themself "uninvolved” in the industry. They said that there's a danger in feeling too involved. Is this what you mean by 'the game'?
That is interesting, well my biggest goal as an artist is to reach as many people as will resonate with my music as possible. That is the intention beyond the artistic intention of trying to generate an entirely new feeling in terms of how I'm presenting my music to the world. Playing the game is figuring out how to hack the algorithms or whatever. The single drops are never something that I thought I would do. And in the past I was very against that. I was like, I want to present an entire body of work that's super cohesive at one point, and who cares if no one listens to it? That's still kind of a principle that guides me. I do the work for the sake of the work, but this time... I want to be a musician. And I mean, I am a musician, but I want to really pursue that now at this point in my life. I shouldn't even say playing the game, it’s not like I have a label or anything, but the entire process, and being super intentional with it does bring a lot of attention to the work.
Do you feel like you’ve gotten to a point where you can be selective?
I'm starting to get there. I'm really excited. I just got a booking agent which was a huge goal of mine. I’m working with these girls, Natasha and Andrea. Natasha's also Persian, which is really cool, and I'm just excited to have representation because it's just been me and my band who are all amazing. We’ve been doing all the bookings ourselves up until this point and I don't say yes to just anything. I say things to the things that really excite me, which is a huge privilege.
Does that feel like the next step, being able to say no?
Yeah it does feel like the next step for sure. Although, that's always been a principle of mine. A tenant is never supposed to say yes to anything that doesn't resonate with them. I've always said, If it's not hell, yes, it's no. It definitely has to resonate deep within me for me to say yes to it. But it is so exciting to just get booked for bigger shows and see more people streaming my music this time. Last year, I had a thousand listeners on Spotify.
I noticed that, your streams have gone up so much since last year.
Yeah, it’s really exciting. Not that streams are getting me money or anything at this point, but it is just really cool to see people in like small towns across America listening to my music.
Does it show you how old your listeners are?
Yeah, my listeners are mostly 16 to 30, which is so cool. I very much write music for my younger self, so when I see teenagers streaming my shit, it's so exciting. That's honestly my target audience. It's the kids.
That must be such a nice feeling, to know that somewhere you might be inspiring younger people exactly like you at that age. And it’s cool that this is your first time putting out singles before a full project, because those tend to become the most popular tracks on a record.
Yeah definitely, it means the world. And it's so funny because even on my last record, there are so many songs that I wrote that I love, and it's easy to forget them in the mass of a body of work. I feel like I'm very much someone who will consume an entire album. I'll listen to it from the first song to the last song, but that's not how a lot of people consume content. There's playlists. So this time around, and this goes beyond playing into the algorithm, it's fun to be able to show people which my favorites are, the ones I really want them to listen to.
I was surprised to not see Thoom or Comet as features on the record because I know you’re friends and have worked together before.
Thoom and Comet are two of my favorite artists. Comet and I actually did a song together, "Bunny" on her last EP which is really special. I feel like one of the treats of making music is definitely being able to collaborate with artists that you respect and that's something I want to continue doing so I’d love to see them on the next project.
You mentioned consulting an astrologist to align specific dates with your roll out. What was that like?
Yeah, so my friend Tamaryn, who is this iconic shoegaze legend as well, did all of the astrological elections for the record, which is something I'd never done before. That was super special. I would tell her which week I wanted to release something and I’d tell her my intention with each single then she’d pick a date and time for when I should drop everything. I would absolutely love to continue doing that. I do believe in astrology.
A lot of early Persian spirituality is based around astrology as well, so it's something that definitely resonates with me on a cultural level. Obviously, the work needs to speak for itself, but being able to go in and fine tune these specific things has been a real treat. And it makes sense, right? Putting out a record called New Age Prayer and then having all of this astrological work behind the rollout. If there are any musicians who believe in astrology and want to work with an astrologer, hit up Tamaryn for sure.
What do you hope the impact of this album will be?
I hope it reaches all the people who need to hear it at the perfect time. This is my prayer to the world at this moment and in this era of my life and the intention here is about channeling power — personal power more than anything as I face the world. I hope everyone who sings along is able to access that power within themselves as well.
office — Tell me about what happened in the woods. How’d you come across that house? What were you feeling when you first started filming? At what point do you remember the energy shifting?
Orion — The two primary scenes were shot in two different wooded locations — the one of me bloody and tied to a tree was shot in Berlin 2023 in the woods of Tegelersee, a few feet away from a famous tree known as Dicke Marie the oldest tree in Berlin (which unfortunately was too thick to tie me to). The other primary scene with the chainsaws, lake, and woodchopping was shot in Mendocino, California at my friend Angus’s (who shot the video) stepfather’s cabin which we used as a getaway in 2022 to work on projects. Both had very pure wholesome energy as usual. This might be just me and maybe from a 3rd person perspective it's different, but I take pride in knowing that, no matter how crazy or dark I make something, no matter the amount of horror, guns, blood, and gore, there is still some sort of wholesome undertone. That also felt true for this shoot. But I didn't feel any shift in energy until specifically finishing the shot of me tied to the tree, as we walked out of the dark woods to where we could call an Uber home.
What do you think happened to you? Possession? Accidental rituals?
What happened still remains a mystery to me. It felt like a form of possession or accidental invocation of some sort of force, but I can't fully comprehend or explain it. It was a moment of profound disorientation and loss of control. A little bit of half and half. I definitely think I did some sort of something, not a ritual but just something that put further power, belief, and whatnot into the work and its meanings to me. Possession is a little bit of a reach, but it’s really the only word I can use to describe the experience.
You say martyrdom is a throughline for your work — can you talk about that?
Martyrdom has been important to me and my work because it represents sacrifice, suffering, and a willingness to endure pain or persecution for a greater belief or cause. Conscious or not, I feel that’s an important part of all human experience in different ways. It would be important to quickly explain the basic plot of Evanora:Unlimited to clarify this specifically in relation to the project.
“Evanora:Unlimited” is not a person, but an anomalous unknown power or energy. It’s the overall cinematic world and bigger picture. The current focal character in this world is my secondary project, Marjorie W.C Sinclair, who is an accentuated version of my true self and a shapeshifting amalgamation of my life and past lives. Marjorie is a sort of anti-hero Tony Montana or Tetsuo from Akira archetype character — some weak kid who has found or been taken over by some sort of energy or power. They’re on a lifelong self-destructive voyage in search of “understanding Evanora,” trying to gain control of it and find enlightenment and peace. They gracefully spiral in a slow-motion car crash toward a tragic fate and loss of all they love, as they quickly begin to lose control of this unknown force. The project and its plot are very much an analogy of my real-life beliefs, fears, delusions, and experiences — myself being the weak protagonist character, later to have a power inside them awaken changing everything. Just like Marjorie chasing Evanora, or Tetsuo chasing Akira, I myself will also spend the rest of my life on an endless journey for understanding and control of “Evanora.”
Evanora, simply put, is the fundamental power of belief and universal programming that all life possesses within. It lays dormant, but when activated and harnessed, it can be a nuclear reactor of energy to be directed. Yet, even when careful, this energy has the possibility to grow into something far beyond control. A personal and literal example of this “power awoken” could simply be the ability that I've gained via therapy through my projects — turning my fears, insecurities, pain, and mistakes into positivity and strengths. My projects have changed my life and bestowed me with all I could ask for and experiences I could have never imagined — even just simple things like love, self-love, confidence, happiness, freedom, etc.
However as I see the puzzle pieces of my life and story align and signs and symbols appear, I often have this strong sinking feeling of impending doom — that my path and my dreams hold a tragic end with a watery hell awaiting me in place of its fantasy. That the dark Scarface-esc ending story I'm writing for myself is pre-written & has never been in my control. As what I create grows beyond my control, It will engulf me in its inescapable growing nuclear flames just as it’s done to so many throughout history much stronger than myself. I’ve come to terms with it more but at times I still can get completely consumed by this feeling, with a strong premonition and every feeling in my gut telling me that I should quit while I'm ahead. However, the chance at life I've been blessed with is one in a billion, and I know that I have an opportunity beyond the art, a possibility to build something bigger than myself, to build a platform of genuine resources, connections, and wealth that I can spread to others to build further upon and share, creating a butterfly effect of change on larger scales; to give voice to others to tell stories and show visions of worlds unseen with beauty that brings me to tears — that I wish for the world to know but may never be. I think it would be an absolutely selfish waste of life and blessing for me to give up on this path just because the road ahead might be dark. It’s what I chose and I will endure anything that comes with it and if it takes dying and losing everything I love behind the dream, so be it, but hopefully not lol.
Before filming No Country, what was the writing process? Walk me through the lyrics.
The writing process was just kind of spontaneous and unplanned as usual. I mostly start by writing things as poems with no instrumental — just a cadence in my head left to sit in my notes, sometimes for years. I’ll later separately create a production and the pieces will snap together and make perfect sense exactly when they are meant to.
Lyrics:
“Trust me, the candles won't burn very long”
A reminder warning that a flame, just like everything else, won't burn forever.
“Lusting for a life after tasting her”
Expressing desire to have a life after loss of the sweetness you grew accustomed to
“No country for old men let them die alone”
Could be taken different ways, but I think I initially wrote it in the sense of ‘when I'm no longer young and beautiful will you still love me?’ like Lana Del Rey
“A machine celebrating anything at all”
Pretty straightforward — the human machine senselessly celebrating at every chance they get.
“Plum trees, she can’t tell summer from the fall”
Apples and Oranges
“The sun bleeds, reflecting something very wrong”
Red flags all around
Were you religious / spiritual before filming? Has that changed since then?
I don't think my views have really changed since the experience, but I’ve definitely always been both spiritual and religious – everything and nothing type beat, you feel me? You name it, I believe there’s some truth in it.
Prior to this, have you ever had any paranormal / unexplainable experiences?
Absolutely. I have had a lot of paranormal experiences and unexplainable ones. I mean, just waking up is unexplainable. But yeah the apartment I live in currently with my partner actually seems like a hotbed for this kind of shit. I feel like it would be insensitive to get into specifics, but a previous resident of our apartment died inside the house and it’s still completely full of his belongings. I don’t know if this has anything to do with it at all, but everyone who has spent time in our apartment has felt some spirit or energy is still in the house. There’s also a specific corner of the apartment that often has strange anomalies — that’s also specifically where I had my exorcist moment.
How are you coping now? Do you still feel that same unease or has it subsided?
Initially, I felt like the experience was negative. But after my research and with time passing I've come to feel that it actually was something positive and protective.
If you could communicate with whatever possessed you, what would you say?
“Im finna hit the store rite quick you want anything?” I don’t know, probably force it to listen to some music I’ve been working on or some dumb shit.
Though it's in the name, Los Angeles is not home in Blue Angeles. L.A. is what sits on the other side of home: a mirage of past desires. Haux, who grew up in Massachusetts, started to put the album together after returning to the woods of the East Coast, overwhelmed with Los Angeles' overstimulating urbanity. Finding a home in his good friend’s grandmother’s spiritual retreat amidst interspersed trips out west, he finished what would become Blue Angeles alongside a team of tight-nit collaborators and old companions.
Blue Angeles is an impressively cohesive sonic universe. In an era where consistency in records is often undervalued in favor of single based collections which utilize disparate teams of producers and songwriters, Blue Angeles stands apart in its pointedness.The record’s ethereal palette and cinematic song selection feel like natural developments of each other. This is in many ways a product of the record's reality as it is a product of stagnated isolation and an organically cultivated team of contributors.
On the day of Blue Angeles’s release, Haux hopped on a call with me over Zoom from the woods of Upstate New York to delve deeper into the story behind the album's creative process, his relationship to LA, and his growth as a person and an artist.
I know that the title of the record references LA, and from what i’ve read about the album leading up to its release it sounds like the album is in part a reflection of a contentious relationship to it in the sense that the city is in part what you’re reacting to and/or growing apart from in the record. Am I catching something real with that?
It’s funny because LA is kind of interspersed throughout the whole record. I went there to try it out back in 2020. I got a good feeling from it, it was a place I always wanted to go. I wrote a couple songs there, mainly what would become the second half of the record on that first trip. Then throughout the process — mainly over the last three years — I'd stay there in the winter and return to the Berkshires in the summer. But yeah, throughout that process LA was the place I realized that I didn’t want to stay.
The record feels like it reflects that. You can tell when an album is a product of the LA session grind — not that there’s anything necessarily wrong with that — but this record really feels like you built a world with a small community. It sounds really intentional. It’s apparent that you really took the time to be with yourself during its creation away from LA, which I really appreciated.
I know exactly what you mean. Sometimes a record can be finished in one session or a couple sessions. These songs are on the completely otherside of the spectrum. You know it’s been three years and some of these songs were written in 2020. I’ve had them in my soundcloud forever. It’s really funny, because it’s hard to relate to them now because it's been so long. But at the same time, I think it’s important to put it all together for me because it encapsulates this transition, this season of my life in one fell swoop I guess.
Right. And that season is a period of around three years right? What do you feel like you were processing in that three year period?
I guess this album is adolescence for me. I’ve had a lot of time to think about it and my thoughts have changed a lot over time, and as we change we have new ideas, but this one has stuck around like a good melody does. The last album, Violence in a Quiet Mind, I always felt like I was writing songs from the perspective of like an 8 year old to a 12 year old. They were all songs based on my childhood: what I went through as a kid with a single mom who was working really, hard, dealing with substance abuse, and these bigger heavier topics: really figuring out how it felt emotionally. But this album, Blue Angeles, it's really the adolescence chapter, the chapter of stepping out into the world and being myself, wearing clothes that don’t fit, and thinking of myself as an individual. Rather than thinking of myself as this kind of insular part of someone else's life.
Totally, like fostering a kind of autonomy. And given that you’re from Massachusetts it makes sense that the east coast would be an integral part in that process. Were there particular places on the east coast that aided you in that process?
Yeah totally. There’s this place I called “The Mountain,” it's over in Great Barrington. It’s my friend's grandmother’s property that she ran as a spiritual retreat center. It’s right off the Appalachian trail and it’s also a hikers quarters. But that kind of shut down when she got older and for Covid. I would basically return there from LA in the summer with my friend and his grandma. We’d basically live up there, I wouldn’t leave often. He’s also a musician and a producer on this record, my friend Aug E. Rose. So that place was really influential for me coming back to the east coast.
Wow, that's really interesting. Were you practicing at the retreat? Like was there a regimented spiritual nature to what you were doing? Or was it more free?
It was really free. I kind of knew the context of where I was but I wasn’t thinking about it in any structured way. I knew I had been in LA for a couple years and really had been beaten down by the concrete and the noise. I’m a pretty sensitive person, and I was living next to the freeway in Silverlake and the freeway was just killing me. So coming back to this place was a way for me to rest and recover. It was really quiet because it’s up in the woods. I guess the way life unravels sometimes you don’t know why you chose something but all of a sudden you’re there and it feels good, so you’re just like “well I might as well stay.” So it was free in that sense.
I can hear that freedom in the songs on the record too. I’m curious in that regard how that experience formed the way the record was produced. Both in terms of the literal process but also what you ended up going for sonically and artistically with the project. When you were in the midst of returning to this place and writing the songs for the record were you thinking about how you wanted the world you were aiming to create to sound when it was produced? I’m curious about the differences between the perspective you embarked on your journey with the record with and where you ended up at the end.
I think it evolved through the course of making it. So I put the part I wrote first for the second half of the record and the part I wrote second for the first half of the record. I think it breaks up for me into these two sections of time. The part that I wrote first I worked on with Thomas Bartlett. He’s a friend, and we worked on Violence in a Quiet Mind together. And so I had this working relationship with him. I wrote those songs in LA in the beginning and he just felt like the right person to bring it too. After we kind of figured out what those songs were I sat on them for like a year and a half. I was in the midst of writing new stuff in LA and just going through growing pains out there so I started writing new songs, and eventually I put everything together and felt like I had an album. I then sent it to my friend Maxwell Byrne who’s a producer from Australia. I had an idea about what I wanted him to bring, but I think it was really about giving him everything and just kind of let him take a stab at it. He brought a lot of texture and grittiness and that 90s feel which was a part of a lot of the music I was listening to at the time. He brought this summer attitude because it was summer for him at the time in Australia. And so I think a lot of what he brought represented that L.A. feeling to me. But I never really go out wanting it to sound a certain way with my songs. They kind of take on a life of their own as I build them. And who I work with has a big influence on how they sound as well.
Well I think it ended up sounding really cohesive. There’s also a really existential element to what you’re tackling in the record. I’m curious if you could elaborate on your relationship to the existential or spiritual condition that you were channeling into your process of creation at the time, and what you hoped to be received through that?
Blue Angeles really gave me the time to explore myself and my old pattern of taking care of others before taking care of myself. And through that deep self-reflection I noticed my old patterns more and more until I outgrew them. So, yeah I hope this album gives other people the time and space to practice their own self-reflection. And that this spirituality is based around the idea that if we take the time to care for ourselves, we make space to care for the world around us.
My last question is about the title of the record. I can cerebrally understand the title in the sense it definitely feels right, but as an interviewer I’m curious about what specifically went into choosing it.
It’s funny because naming things is really fun to me but it’s also really challenging. I went through a million names for this but “Blue Angeles” I felt encapsulated it in a way that recognized my time in LA and how it felt. I think that basically it was just this feeling of unavoidable blue skies in Los Angeles and that was really the only nature I was able to connect with out there.