Real as Can Be with Cooper B. Handy

December 13, 2024

Since 2009, Cooper B. Handy has been releasing music as LUCY, a project that feels more like an experiment than a static identity. Along the way, he’s formed and collaborated on a multitude of other ventures, deviating wildly from any one genre: Club Casualties, The Taxidermists, and Safe Mind. The most incredible work flows out of him at an amazing rate, and not without a throughline: his ability to instill his spirit into melodies that stick with you, lingering in the quiet moments, like a tune you hum absentmindedly but can’t quite shake.

I caught up with the long-standing DIY enigma and Cape Cod native over the phone the day before his latest record’s release to talk Vol. 9, his many collaborations, discovering melodies in unexpected places, and naturally, digging holes.

Interview Sofia Castillo
Photography Lauren Davis

A lot of words come to mind when I think of his music—boundless, relentless, choppy, alluring, profound—all of them reminiscent of the ocean. It’s an apt comparison for Vol. 9, his latest record, which opens with Strange As Can Be. On it, he sings about a tale as old as time: conflicting desires. He begins with a reference to Adam and Eve, and follows it with the lines: “Try to be wholesome/We all have different ideas/We have different ideas/Of what it means to be wholesome.” That’s the magic of Lucy. He’s totally out there, and as real as can be. He paves his way charming together aphorisms, cautionary tales, and flashes of wry wisdom, all delivered with a disarming ease. They’re the kind of tracks that have me zoomed in on Bandcamp lyrics, or rapping over a Titanic sample he’s tweaked out. It’s liberating, you should try it. There’s a lot of laughter here, but not the ironic kind. It’s the kind born of genuine awe, of being hit over the head with something at once familiar and wholly unexpected. I recommend getting battered.

So, it's been almost a decade since Vol. 1 came out.

Yeah, pretty much.

Very exciting. Congrats on Vol. 9.

The first single you released is called 2nd Wind. Does that have anything to do with the decade mark?

Thank you. I don't know. I hadn't really thought about that. (Laughs) Yeah, I think that can be thought of like that for sure.

You're from Massachusetts, right?

Yeah, I grew up on Cape Cod, so I’m definitely around the ocean a lot.

Can you sail?

I actually could not sail. I went out sailing one time. I had some friends in high school who were instructors for a kid's sailing camp, so we had access to the boats and took one out. But aside from that, I wasn't really in a sailing family.

Do you like the ocean?

Yeah, yeah. Totally.

How do you think your Vol. albums delineate from the other projects you’ve released?

I think it's almost just a way of naming them without putting too much emphasis on one idea or something. I feel like most of the projects that I've put out solo are these volumes. I've made a bunch of other records with other people that are called different things and I've put out a few projects that are called other things, but most of my releases have been these nine volume albums. And I feel like it's mostly just an easy way for people to know what order they're in.

Do you like to go back and listen to them? You have a massive body of work out.

Yeah, I feel like I do. Every now and then there'll be certain projects I kind of forget about for a while. It's hard for me to listen back to music I made a really long time ago, like from when I was in high school. It sort of cringes me out. But with the Lucy project, I still like how it sounds. I don't feel cringed out listening to stuff from 10 years ago, which is good. I'm glad that I feel like that because I think that means I'm doing something right.

Can you pinpoint the cringe?

When I listen back to stuff that isn't even out, stuff from when I was, I dunno, 14, 15, 16… Obviously no one knows really what they're talking about at that point.(laughs) I definitely listened back to music I was making in high school and I'm like, ‘why was I talking about this stuff?’ Also, I think I was still trying to figure out what I wanted to sound like and it's hard to listen to that process.

Would you say you're a nostalgic person?

Yeah, for sure. But not in a way where I want to relive the past or something.

[Laughs] Right. Do you have any particular artists you’re listening to or are there any other mediums that inspire you at this moment?

I don't know. Not really. I sort of feel like there was a bunch of music I listened to when I was, I don't know, in between 10 and 16 that sort of still feels influential. I'm always influenced by new things, but I don't really listen to as much music as I should. I'm working on music all the time, so I'm listening to all these different things I'm making. I used to listen to music with headphones, but I’ve overdone it a little bit [laughs]. I need to listen to less music or something.

I recently lost my headphones and just let that be a catalyst for me listening to not nearly as much music as usual. I miss it, but it’s nice to actively listen to your surroundings sometimes. And if you're not really taking a ton of outside influences in, it’s easier to deeply connect to yourself as a source. The Lucy projects and a lot of your other collaborations feel very immediately recognizable to me as you.

Yeah, it's true. I feel like also things are- at least for me- things I hear when I'm out and about definitely play a big role in ideas of stuff I make and things I want to make. Even if I’m at the grocery store, a lot of times I get inspiration to either sample something that I hear in a store or by the self-checkout sounds and stuff. There's so many funny little melodic things around.

You love the store.

Yeah, there's definitely a lot to learn at the store.

Your sound is persistent, and self-assured. I love it just as much as when I first encountered the earlier volumes a few years ago. I’d like to know more about your approach to songwriting and if it’s morphed over time?

Thank you. Yeah, a lot of the time I'll have a melody or some ten second vocal melody. Sometimes it doesn’t have words, but most of the time it’s a phrase I’m singing to myself. I'll just make a voice memo and then go to the piano and see how I can make it work. Most of the stuff that's not sample based music that I make is pretty much all written on the piano. And then on this new record, there's definitely a handful of songs that have samples in them. Usually with those, I'll be making the beat before I have an idea for what the vocals will do. Making beats with samples has been a lot more fun for me in the past few years and it's good. But I sort of hope to move along from that after this record and have it be more of my own compositions, not just beats with clips of old songs or whatever.

So this is probably not the most evolved version of your sound so far?

Yeah, I wouldn't say that. I feel like I've been sitting on some of these songs. Some of the ones on this album are almost three years old, and then some that are four months old as well. So there's a bunch of new stuff and there's a bunch of stuff that feels really old to me. I think there's 17 songs on it, and usually I put six or seven songs on a project. It feels sort of mixed tape-ish to me. I'm just so used to it and I've been sitting on it for so long that it's hard for me to think of it as evolved or something. Friends who I showed it to seem to think it's more cohesive than I thought it was, so that's good.

I almost didn’t notice that there were 17 songs on it. I really like that it’s a 30 minute listen. And I agree with your friends, I wouldn't have guessed that you made them across different timelines. It’s a cohesive purge.

Yeah, totally. I feel like it'll be good to get it out and kind of move along.

You use a lot of aphorisms and story-book style language in your lyrics. It’s all very sincere. I really love it, and I think that might be why I've had such an affinity for it for so long too. At the end of the day, it's dealing with those things that never really go away, take as old as time.

Yeah, thank you. That is what I'm always going for. I feel like there's never going to be a shortage of content about those kinds of topics.

Were you in love when you wrote a lot of these songs?

[Laughs] Yeah.

Yeah.

Probably, probably all of 'em in different ways. I don't know. I feel like I try to infuse the music with that. When I think of the songs on there, I feel like you can hear that energy in the happier songs. Then there's a bunch of sad songs, or songs that sound sad- to me. And I don't think I'm showing an in-love side on those, but I don't know. That's kind of a tricky question.

I hear that. It’s not that you’re specifically singing about love, but the melodies on a lot of your tracks kind of lift my heart in that certain type of way. It’s all clearly involved, and there’s humor in it. It puts me in this perfect mood, that comes with good communication. Even the sadder songs.

Alright- Easier question. What are you working on right now?

I guess things are feeling a little bit more chill right now than they’ve been, just because I think I have three projects finished. I have this solo record coming out, and then I have a record with the Taxidermist band that's done and going to come out in March. And this Safe Mind project record that’s also going to come out. So right now everything's lined up and I'm just sort of waiting.

And we wait.

Yeah, I'm excited to start on a new batch of music and try to…I don’t know. I feel like I need to be learning more than I'm learning right now. I want to take the next bunch of months to try to maybe learn something.

What do you want to learn?

I'm not quite sure. I want to learn some new skills. I should be reading more.

For some reason I assumed you read a lot.

I really don't. Honestly, I really enjoy it when I’m into it, but getting to that point isn’t always easy for me.

Right, makes sense. You’re working on a ton of music projects.

I mean, I'm definitely trying to continue to focus on music as much as I do now. I'm just in a position where everything's about to be a clean slate, it’s been a while since I’ve not had files that I keep going back to.

Do you like being outside?

I like being outside, yeah. I walk a ton.

Do you have a favorite walk you do?

There's this range in Western Mass called the Holyoke Range. There’s a bunch of different mountains, and I sort of bounce between a lot of them. I go hiking almost every day, and a lot of the hikes out there only take an hour or two. I feel like that's as consistent as music for me for my life in Massachusetts. I spend a lot of time outside.

Do you have a typical “day in the life” right now?

It's always different. I feel like I'm really bouncing around. I'm in New York now and I'm going to go back to Massachusetts, and then I have another show in New York on the 10th.

Oh really?

With another project, Club Casualties. It’s me and my friend Nick Atkinson. He's completely off grid. Never was on social media or smartphone or anything. And he's a producer, but he's on the mega outskirts of the scenes. We're opening for that group Kassie Krut. Then a couple days later, I’m coming back to New York to do another show with the Safe Mind project.

Lots of movement. Have you ever made a time capsule?

Yeah. When I was a kid, I did one.

What did you put in it?

I put my school picture and some little Legos or something. I just put a bunch of toys that I liked. At the time, it was in a peanut butter jar. I think it had one of those wallet size school pictures, and I don't know what else was in it. I feel like I put some little notes, but I dug a really deep hole because I was obsessed with that book Holes.

Legendary book.

Yeah. My dad was like, you can dig a hole in the yard if you want to. I really wanted to, and I wanted to make it the same depth as the ones in the book, which were, I think they were six by six foot holes. So I was out there with my neighbor digging for weeks, and then it was deeper than my head, and then I buried the capsule in there.

I'm obsessed with that. That's so cool.

Yeah. It was before the movie came out, but the trailer was out, and I think I was like, this looks really cool. But the book was a big inspo.

What would you put in a time capsule now?

Probably some, probably like a flash drive. I don't know. It's hard to know. I feel like lots of stuff is going to be obsolete, so it's sort of hard to know what would be good to leave in there.

Yeah, that's true.

[Laughs] But maybe a more contemporary school picture.

Sweet.

Music

office x Apple Music: DEMIIGODDESS

Music

How Not Being Invited to Cool Parties Inspires Emerging Artist, Groupthink

DANIEL wears LONGSLEEVE by MIU MIU, JEANS and SHOES by TALENTS OWN

Where did the name Groupthink come from?

I thought it sounded sick. I could see it on a poster immediately. I texted my friend about it, and he said, “That’s kinda lame,” which made me like it more. I knew I didn’t want to be just a person—like a Frank Ocean, first-name switch thing. I wanted it to be more of an idea.

What are your thoughts on the actual ongoing groupthink culture on the internet?

Everyone’s a creator now, so no one knows how to be a fan anymore. Instead of appreciating something, people copy it. But they’re not even stealing the right way—they’re just repeating. I even stole this ideology from someone.

As we’re on a kick of revitalizing old sound, past imagery, and archive clothing on the runway, what would you hope the 2020s would be known for?

It feels like we’re at a breaking point. Technology is speeding up the cultural wheel of things becoming revitalized to where we reach this continuum of time being a flat circle.

People right now are craving two things at once. They’re craving complete inauthenticity in terms of caricature and they’re also craving authenticity. Either what you’re doing is authentic and personal, or it’s fake and a joke that everyone is in on. The value judgment depends on what’s clear. In my music, I don’t aim to present myself as a person—it’s freeing that my music is really stupid, and everyone gets that. My next song, on my upcoming project, is all about being sexy, featuring these robot voices. On one level, I thought, this is so fucking dumb; I shouldn’t do this. But on another, I realized, this is awesome precisely because it’s so dumb.

Is sex and relationships a low or high priority for you right now?

Everything is a priority, I’m trying to break space-time.

DANIEL wears SUNGLASSES by CELINE, T-SHIRT JEANS, SCARF and SHOES by TALENTS OWN.

Electronic music has long dominated the underground scene but has recently reemerged in mainstream culture. Where do you see music going next?

I had this experience in a studio in New York where we used a computer to send signals to an interface, then to a drum machine, and finally to two synths. Electronic music resonates because it mirrors the way we communicate. We interact through commodified social exchanges on social networks, and that’s essentially how electronic music is created—it’s networked communication through machines. I see parallels to this on Instagram, like when someone dumps their boyfriend and starts posting sluttier pictures—it’s all part of this interconnected system of expression.

What do you like right now, and what do you not like?

Clothing-wise, I’ve been wearing a pair of Visvim moccasins, a red Yankees flat-brim hat, and a YMCMB hoodie that a friend gave me. When I’m working on a project, I usually find a few clothing items during the recording sessions that help me channel the vibe I’m going for.

Lately, I’ve been into Adderall, noise-canceling headphones, audiobooks about quitting smoking, and TSA Pre-Check. On the flip side, I’m not into drinking alcohol or influencers—they should just get a real job.

I’ve been measuring how successful I am based on how much fun I’m having, and on that note, how much fun are you having right now?

I’m having the most fun I’ve ever had. I feel super confident and successful. Over the past two weeks, I’ve been going to these amazing studios with friends to make music. We’ll create insane songs, then leave at 5 a.m., pick up a chromed-out G-Wagon rental car from a drug dealer, and drive to Boston. We cruise around, blasting the music we just made, and then the dealer hands me, like, 200 Adderalls.

You recently tweeted, 'Denim expresses something words cannot.' What is it about denim that makes it so meaningful to you?

I really love how denim reflects life—it shows how your body wears and tears on it over time. It’s like looking at an oil painting that has gradually chipped and aged, telling a story through its imperfections.

A social media post of you playing live decks while walking down the street went viral across all platforms recently. Does that reception change how you’ll approach your image going forward?

I had no idea the meme would go viral. My approach is still the same as it was before—it’s all about being myself. This hasn’t affected my strategy; if anything, it reinforces that I should keep creating content that’s authentic to what I’m thinking about. I’m always chasing the creation of things that make me happy.

I heard you’ve been working on your album while in New York. What’s different about making music here versus in L.A.?

There’s this studio in Williamsburg called S1 that has such a cool vibe. I like making music in L.A. too, but it feels more corporate because of the strict time frames for recording. In New York, there’s a live room filled with tons of equipment, and you can stay up for hours making an insane amount of sounds with no specific goal—it’s way more freeing.

DANIEL wears LONGSLEEVE by Uniqlo, SUNGLASSES by GENTLE MONSTER and BAG by PETERSELIE

What unconventional things or experiences inspire you?

I get really inspired by not being invited to cool parties and not knowing many cool artists. I like to piece them together from the little information I do know and use that as a reference. It’s this fragmented form of inspiration that comes from gaps in knowledge.

Is there something specific that helps you unwind?

Lately, I’ve been into breathwork. I’ll do a bunch of poppers, which cuts off oxygen to my brain for a moment, and then I feel like I have excess air afterward.

Outside of music, what comes naturally to you—something you’ve enjoyed for a while but haven’t fully explored?

I like coming up with campaign ideas and directing commercials. I also wouldn’t mind helping other artists with their visuals.

Are you a cinephile? Would you ever consider scoring a film, and if so, what kind of movie would you see your music in?

I wouldn’t consider myself a cinephile, but I’d love to do a score for a TV series. Labyrinth for Euphoria was amazing. This might sound corny, but I’d like to work on a coming-of-age film or a romantic comedy—mainly because I wouldn’t know where to start, and that challenge excites me.

Lastly, do you happen to have any guilty pleasures?

Honestly, I feel guilty about everything, so all my pleasures are guilty.

Music

Uncomfortable Listening

December 05, 2024

Everything is moving in circles. History repeats itself; humans are creatures of habit. Richie Culver knows these circles well, and that they don’t have to be perfect ones. On Religious Equipment, he explores the ways we deform them or place them on different planes.

Each track on the record—released under the moniker Quiet Husband via Drowned by Locals—takes its name from opiate blockers and substitute drugs: Methadone, Kratom, Klonopin, Antabuse, Subutex, Temazepam, Suboxone, Naltrexone, Buprenorphine. Those track names are weighted with meaning, pointing to the pain and pleasure and numbness that come from repetition and filling space. But Culver wants you to completely disregard those meanings, listen to the record without any context at all, and experience it in a way that is totally and completely your own.

By Megan Hullander
Photography by Brett Walker

BBC Radio 6’s Mary Anne Hobbs called Religious Equipment “void core.” It’s abrasive and all-consuming, disarming you and forcing your gaze inward. That’s the beauty of noise music, Culver insists. “I just wanted to make a record that has no meaning,” he says. And in meaning nothing, it can mean everything. It’s not supposed to be familiar. You don’t even have to like it. It’s meant to provoke, to make you think in a way you haven’t yet.

Maybe listen to the record before you read this or do your research on Culver. You can enjoy it or despise it before you understand his history and his context. Then do your reading and try again. See if it changes form. It’s okay to love art for reasons the artist never intended. And it’s okay to hate art before you know the artist. Anyone who says otherwise is being pretentious and probably regurgitating a review from an equally pretentious critic. Culver values your honest reaction above all else. DM him that the record made you take a pair of scissors to your headphones because you couldn’t bear another second of it, or that it inspired you to paint a tree. He’ll probably post a screenshot of your message for an Instagram discussion forum about the meaning of art today.

Megan Hullander — Last we spoke, you said you’d maybe adopt an alias once your music got abstract enough. What brought it to that point?

Richie Culver — I think it was more for admin in my head, for keeping everything—the little details that no one really gives a shit about—separate. But of course, as the creative, those [details] are life or death.

And I can’t make noise and techno under my government name. It was time to unleash the Quiet Husband. I’ve been sat on the name for ages and it fit perfectly for this. But I’m not going to do any more aliases. I think this is it.

So what does the name mean?

Quiet Husband is based on my best friend’s stepdad when I was maybe eight or nine. It was the way he would look at you—I’d catch glances and it’d freak me out. And, of course, it bleeds into all kinds of people. It’s that figure you don’t fully trust.

That feels connected to the text that accompanies the record—which references a lost man and loneliness and melancholy. It all points to the fraught nature of masculinity now, what it’s “supposed to” be. I imagine, especially as a father, that’s something you are grappling with a lot.

I swim in those worlds constantly in recovery, and being a dad to two boys and a girl. I’ll just speak about the boys in this particular sense. There’s a lot of pressure to raise them into the world. It’s a really fine line to walk. There are things that I relate to in them and that I’m trying to harness and push and not push too much and rein back in. There’s a whole PhD topic within the name Quiet Husband, probably.

Do art and academia go hand in hand for you?

I’m in my 40s now. As an artist, I’m continuously trying to educate myself and push my work in different directions. I’m making a trap record next, for instance, pushing the spoken word into a lyrical flow kind of thing. But I’m at a stage now where I need to be teaching as well—not necessarily in a school or anything like that, but I’m aware of people looking at me. I’ve been using social media as a way of that recently, dropping little insecurities and struggles—struggles that every artist has, but not everybody wants to talk about publicly.

It feels like every exhibition is going to be my last, every record is going to be my last. So I’m not thinking, How am I going to continue to do this? There’s so much insecurity in this lifestyle that we choose as artists and creatives and writers and anything under the umbrella of art.

How do you let something go with that feeling that it might be the last thing that you put into the world? I’d imagine that feeling would have the opposite effect on most.

I realize that I am prolific and that a lot of the things that I do could just stand as one thing in a year. But it’s just my process. I don’t know what I’m working towards. I don’t know if this is all going to culminate into something—if the best is gone, if I’m declining.

I’m [working in] the music world and the visual world, and one overtakes the other sometimes. Music seems to be leading the way at the moment. But I’ve always seen the art world as five steps behind the music and sound world, so it feels normal that that would be the case. The Quiet Husband alias has managed to make the gap further apart, as in, I’ve got space now to do more and not look like I’m a workaholic.

The concept of substitution is super prevalent on the record. Listening to the album almost had that same effect: When it finishes, there’s this sort of void that you are left wanting to fill.

I was aiming to bridge noise in techno and make it one genre. The techno on the record is pretty industrial and almost undanceable, and the other parts are like segues, but quite intense ones. The text for the record, by Charles [Teyssou] and Pierre [-Alexandre Mateos]—two French curators—is an important part of it. It also kind of sits completely random within it all. I think, having just finished at the Royal College of Art and [being] in the art world, everything needs to have a concept and a “what it means,” and the “why did you do that?” I fall into that trap. It needs to be there, I guess. Even when my kids are drawing a picture, I ask, “Why did you choose the color red?”

But for this, I just wanted to make a record that has no meaning. It’s a record about nothing, that challenges how you listen to it, why you are listening to it. The titles are all extremely important, of course, the blocking and substitute element, and a concept comes—quite a heavy one—but as I was making it, I felt relatively free and almost like I was on the brink of a new genre, which, incidentally, Mary Anne Hobbs called void core. We wanted it to be an unfriendly record. Not in a pretentious sense, but I don’t want it to go around the parameters of what is acceptable for a dance floor. I can’t imagine anyone putting it in their set.

Maybe it’s more approachable because there’s no “right way” to go about it.

I think that’s always my goal, even with the spoken word stuff. What I love about the noise world is there’s kind of nowhere to go from there. As much as I love music and all its genres, as soon as you start hitting the noise territory, you’re kind of at the summit. I’ve been obsessed with how can I educate myself into listening to noise and accepting it as a texture and not necessarily a melody or anything that has any rhythmic value. I don’t think there’s a musical expression that is more academic than noise. It’s like an abstract painting. It’s people thinking not even outside the box, they’re thinking outside the planet.

Your mom was featured on it—what does she think of it?

It just goes as far as, “Are you still doing the music stuff?” or “Are you still doing the art stuff?” I say yes, and that’s good enough. She’s approaching her 80s now so we don’t go into much about it. She’s the sort of woman who would give you a birthday card and cry herself because of the writing on the front of it—because of why she chose it on your 35th birthday, because of the man you’ve become. So I think, I just said to her, “What’s the most important thing to you?” and then pressed record. And she was like, “Family, being healthy is the main thing in your life.” And then I just took it on loop, and pitched it down. I’ve kind of stuck with it in the same way that noise is just kind of like one tone or just absolute hecticness.

Where did you look for inspiration in making it?

Because I’m a painter, I see the parallels hugely between conceptual, minimalist painting and noise. Even just in the band names—Climax Denial, Cheapest Coffin, Straight Panic—it’s always really intrigued me. You know when something just touches your own creative pulse or makes something inside you smile? I’ve always seen it very much like painting when I’m in the studio, in a flow with the music. There’s nothing better than being lost in gestures. When you’re making noise, you’re questioning your own sanity while you’re doing it—doing something that no one’s gonna want to listen to or be able to sit through. And that links to horror films and as a kid watching Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers. Like, Why do I want to keep watching this? I’m not going to want to go to bed. But still, I was just obsessed with seeing it through. It’s the same with the noise thing. I’m questioning why I’m doing this, and there isn’t an answer. I love that.

Music is maybe the only thing where I would feel any hesitancy telling an artist that their work made me uncomfortable. Your’s did and it’s intentionally unsettling, but it still feels awkward to say it—even though it wouldn’t with a painter or a filmmaker.

If I sit and listen to a Climax Denial record, it brings up emotions and parts of my inner dialogues that I wouldn’t have ever imagined being able to go—really positive places and really challenging places. I’m listening to the roar of white noise or screeching or metal clanking, and it’s visual. I owe so much to the noise world in my overall output. It’s almost like a secret that I don’t want to give people. It’s like, Trust me, go and listen to this record. Just sit down in a dark room with your headphones on and listen to it. You transcend.

And don’t get me wrong—I love as much as the next person to put Radio 1 on and listen to Central Cee and Adele. I definitely have space for that. I’m not a purist in any way. Actually, I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’ve never been a purist in anything. One of the main things I’ve learned through my creative journey is to watch other people, especially young artists, and embrace that. If you don’t understand it, try to understand it. I love not understanding things. Like going into a museum and instantly dismissing stuff because it’s figurative, or because it’s too colorful and, all of a sudden, you realize what seems a basic painting of a sunset was done by some outsider artist.

That’s interesting because, at the beginning of our conversation, you said you wanted people to experience the record without context.

That was a big conversation at the well, for me at the Royal College: Can a painting just be a painting? Without it, it just becomes about the artist’s skill or lack of skill. I guess you do need more information.