The Pursuit Of The Telos: Fresh Finds Podcast Season 4 Episode 1 W/ Allapartus

Hello, and welcome to Season 4 of the Fresh Finds Podcast, the show about discovering new music with good people. I'm Ryan, and joining me for the first episode of the new year is Adam from the New York alt-rock band All Apartus. How are you doing, man? I am doing excellent. So blessed to be here. So excited to chat with you today. Good to hear, man. I think it's going to be a good one. It's going to be a good start to 2024. At least, I sure hope so. Do you want to take a minute to introduce yourself, talk about the kind of music that you make, the band, any of that kind of stuff? Absolutely. Sounds great. But yeah, my name is Adam. I'm from New York. I was born and raised in the Hudson Valley and then moved into Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn and have been here the last seven years. But yeah, I have this band, All Apartus, that I started way back during college with a couple of friends. And over the years, it kind of evolved through a couple of different, you know, eras, a couple of different Taylor Swift eras, as Taylor would say. And yeah, in the more recent years, it's taken on. It's taken on this kind of this new form where I'm the primary producer and songwriter. And then I have a lot of friends who are collaborators who kind of come in and bring different flavors to it. But yeah, it's All Apartus or All Apartus. There's no right way to pronounce it. So yeah, all pronunciations are welcome here. Ain't that the great thing about made up words? But yeah, I mean, I call it alt-rock, alternative rock. People call it pop-punk. People call it, you know, post-hardcore. People call it post-pop. I mean, there's a million genre names. I feel like the best way to keep it simple is it's just alt-rock music. Well, and that's the thing is you kind of juggle around with the sounds. You've got some stuff that's a lot more spacey and kind of like ambient sounding. And you've got some stuff that's a bit more poppy. You've got some stuff that's a bit on the heavier side. So, I mean, it's hard when you make such a wide breadth of different sounds to really bring it down to just one label. So I think alt-rock is a great way to describe it. Yeah. And, you know, when I was kind of writing, like, what's the pitch of All Apartus when I was working on, like. I was working on, like, my Spotify bio. What I liked was the idea of, like, atmosphere and catharsis is what it is. I love beautiful atmosphere. But when it comes to especially playing live shows, I don't want to be chill during live shows. You know, I'm more of a lunatic during live shows. But I think that there's a good balance of both. And that also just speaks to where I come from, where, you know, growing up, I loved, like, beautiful atmospheric pop music. But then going into high school and then into college, I spent a lot of time in the hardcore scene. And so I saw, you know, a lot of the benefits and the beauty of, like, you know, pop production. But also a lot of the, you know. Kind of untethered, unhinged catharsis of more extreme music. And I was. And I related very deeply to it. So bringing that into my music is super important. But yeah, All Apartus, we're just like a New York rock band. And my, you know, my tagline that I use for people is, you know, it's rock music meant to be played on the International Space Station. I like that. So looking at Spotify, it looks like the earliest release that you have goes back to 2019. Is 2019 when this started or did it start earlier? And that's just the earliest release on Spotify. So it's the earliest release. So on Spotify, we started, I mean, the first, like, incarnation of All Apartus traces back to, like, 2012. Oh, right on. Back when I was, like, a kid. And I met a couple friends in school. And we started a band. We ended up putting out one little EP with, you know, the original members that we put out on Bandcamp. You can still find if you search All Apartus. It'll pop right up. It was very representative of the time. And it definitely leaned much more towards, like, post-hardcore kind of punk music. And yeah, I mean, I'm still proud as hell of that EP. I still, to this day, I think something I'm blessed with is, unlike most of my friends who are writers, you know, you look at something, you made two years ago, and people kind of cringe and go, oh, God, that was so bad. But I kind of have the inverse of that, where I look at stuff that I wrote back in, like, 2014, and I'm like, damn, I was so good. I was a genius back then. I feel like it's one of those things where, like, you have to give yourself some distance to truly appreciate what you've come up with. Because when you're in the process of writing and recording and you're on the 17th mix revision, you know, you get to the point where you're just like, do I just suck? Does everything I do, is it terrible? And then you listen to it, like, you know, a year or two later after you haven't really listened to it again, and you're like, yeah, that was good. Okay, I stand by that. Yeah. No, I think I'm lucky in that I've been doing it long enough that I give myself a lot of grace now. But yeah, we started way back then and kind of had, like, a messy form. And then we put out a release in 2014. And then, you know, in the second half of college, like, you know, we'd play a show every once in a while. We'd, you know, kind of get together and write something. There was a demo here, a demo there. But then it kind of, like, you know, just kind of fizzled out a bit. And then after college, I met up with my drummer, and we started. We started writing again and started, like, messing around with some stuff. And those first two songs that we put out were those 2019 releases, was Treehouse and Avow, which are two songs that I still think fucking rock. After that, it was like, oh, my God. Right after that, I had gotten laid off from a job, which sucked, and I was on the job hunt. And then right after that was COVID. And so it's like we weren't writing. We weren't hanging out together. So after that process, it kind of fizzled out a little bit. My friend Kurt, who was my drummer, he moved away. And then it took about, like, you know, two years for me to get up the gut. To start writing again. And I started writing, and then I started producing, and then I started getting into mixing and mastering. And then the incarnation of that was 10 years and No Conviction, which are the next two releases where I totally wrote and recorded them, you know, just in my bedroom during COVID. And I was, even though I was working full time, I was still doing all this other work and stuff. I was still so desperate to put out music, and I realized that it wasn't going to go away. I kind of had to make something. It was just at, you know, a snail's pace. And then a little while after that, made the music, thought it was great. After a few years working. You know, corporate jobs, I just kind of came to a realization that I needed to spend more time invested in the art. I didn't, you know, I didn't think that I'd always be able to go back to a corporate job, but I wouldn't ever be able to go back to my 20s being a musician in New York City. And so it was kind of like a no brainer to decide to take time away from, you know, I gave my game all my early 20s to corporations. I decided to take the latter half of it for myself. And so took some time away, met a good friend who ended up being my producer, Colin. And then we ended up putting. Out the next two singles, which is it's not that bad in spinning the driveway as well as the next singles that will be coming out. So, yeah, it's kind of gone through a couple different incarnations, but there's been, you know, a steady through line of me songwriting. And then, I mean, the people who are in the original band, the bassist is my best friend, who's a, who's a film director. Who's unbelievable named Tom Vince, the drummer is my friend, Kurt Linegar, and he, you know, it's like a photographer who lives out in Connecticut. They're all so good friends of mine who I still collaborate with and talk with all the time. So allopartist has become a little bit bigger than just me. And it's become more of a network of people. And I'm just the person at the front kind of pushing stuff out into the world. But yeah, that's kind of like the brief, that's the brief elevator pitch of the history of allopartist. Gotcha. I like it. So are you still the, how much collaboration do you have when it comes to songwriting? Are you still the primary songwriter? Do the people who play live, do they often help with arrangement and coming up with parts or is it typically you'll cook something up kind of in the studio, so to speak. And then everybody else gets it together for the live show? Yeah. So what it is now is that it's when we do live shows, it's me and it's my drummer, Danny. Okay. With, uh, with the processes, yeah, usually it's me demoing out and producing the initial kind of like, you know, the initial version of the song in my, in my house, just here in my little studio. And then I'll bring it to my producer, we'll work it out. I will always do some really bad drums because, you know, I can play guitar, I can play bass, I can sing, I can produce, I can play piano, I can do lots of random instruments and I can play drums, just, I can't play them well. And so I write the drums. And then Danny writes the good drums is the way I would put it. So the, definitely the bigger collaboration is that, uh, me and Danny, when we started with, it's not that bad, wrote the initial drums for it, it's like two or three drum loops and then brought him in the studio and was like, Danny, like, just do your thing, do whatever you think feels good. And in like, you know, one take, he just like wrote the most killer drums ever and it was effortless. So from then on with Danny, usually is I'll, I'll come out with an initial drum, you know, part and initial demo of the song. And then Danny's the one who will really send it home and give it a groove and give it kind of a pocket. But yeah, as far as like the song. The content, the melody and stuff, that's all stuff that's me. And then, uh, and then Colin, my, uh, my producer who was like a choir guy back in high school, when he was younger, he'll take the harmonies and melodies and stuff that I make. And he'll actually like add technicality to it and, you know, kind of tell me, Adam, you know, this harmony that you have is cool, but if you did a nine instead of a seven on this chord, it'll sound even better. And so Danny adds the percussive elements that I'm weak in. And then Colin definitely adds besides, you know, the, the, the, the production, which is, he's a master of also definitely a little bit more like music. Technicality, which is also something I'm lacking in because I was just a garage band musician. Yeah, right on. There's definitely something huge about having, uh, even if it's, you know, small little bits, having collaboration on different things. But when you're recording drums, it sounds like you actually go into a studio for that. Is that correct? That is correct. Yeah, we do the initial. I'm sorry. Is this a pretty like even split of like kind of bedroom production with like the guitars and things and then doing more of like the vocals and the drums in the studio? Or is it mostly just. It's mostly demos that you're doing at home at this point. It's mostly demos. I mean, as far as time, it's like all the time is spent writing. I'm definitely like more of the Leonard Cohen variety of like some songs I'll write in five minutes and they're done. And some songs I'll spend three or four years on. So it's all over the place. But yeah, no, like the initial demo is there. And then what I do is I just build out the framework so we don't have to figure out what the song is when we're in the studio. But we definitely take the song and then elevate it. So yeah, as far as the recording, like, you know, I do all the ideas at home. But then when I go to Colin's studio, which is this studio called Sword and Dagger in Bushwick, which is a 20 minute studio. It's a 20 minute walk from my house. Yeah, I just walk over and then we do the drums there. We do guitars. We'll actually do like tube amps rather than just all the plugins and stuff. And then we'll do vocals with, you know, are not the mics that I bought for a hundred bucks back in, you know, 2016. Yeah. So some actual like nice microphones as opposed to like an AT2020 or something like that. So you put out two singles last year, which was It's Not That Bad and Spinning in the Driveway. Are those. You're free. first two that were that were collaborative with your current drummer yeah both yeah both those were with danny and like you know kind of took some elements and you know he'll take styles from the initial demo and then just add his own variety and i'll say that i mean both those songs were great and he added a lot of texture to it and a lot more drive to it because my my drums when i demo them out they just sound dead danny just like you know is an electric shock to the system he's just a force of nature but especially with the next single that we're putting out um his drums are just like outrageous it's like the initial demo just doesn't even compare he just like makes a adds a totally new formation but yeah to answer your question yes um danny was uh those are the first two songs i collaborated with him on right on yeah this new track coalesce is that correct i've been listening to that the last couple days and man i absolutely love the arrangement of this one man the way that it starts out nice and soft and then just really gets gets into it there uh it's it's such a fun one is there anything that you specifically want to say about the background of that track and anything that went into recording it so it's a song that again going back to that idea of like there's some songs that take no time at all and there's some songs that take like years this song took years um i started this initially like me and kurt came up with ideas for this back in like 2018 and started like messing around with it and then it just lay dormant and then like you know after a couple years i brought it back and i was just like this song is amazing and and i started like messing around with it messing with the mix mixing with some aspects of the arrangement and then yeah which is like let's i i want to i want to put this out and then especially once there's kind of the drive of what's the sonic kind of direction that i want to go with with alipartis but then once i started playing live shows with danny it was the idea of like what is the energy that i want to communicate when we play live shows and when we started playing coalesce it felt so so much like the direction i wanted to go into because like you said there's these really beautiful moments that especially like live just like fill up the room it feels like extremely and it feels extremely vibey very atmospheric very uh very ethereal i like that the the verses feel very ethereal but then the choruses and the endings are just like crushing it's just so loud and so heavy and that's stuff that i i love i love uh integrating both of those kind of aspects of the spectrum i was listening earlier today to your episode with uh cacophony kid uh which is amazing oh it's a great episode um i listened to like the first three quarters of it and he brought up a lot of references of stuff that i love that are very similar wood kid is one of them wood kid has stuff that is like really beautiful and orchestral and huge and cinematic but also parts that are so industrial and hard and tactile and another example is uh yeah is angels and airwaves which is uh you know kind of like one of my secret like greatest influences i i feel like i feel like a nerd liking angels and airwaves to some of my friends who are like that stuff is soft um but i love it i think it's incredible it's some of the most influential music to me and the the balance again between these like soaring guitars and really really really heavy beats underneath so yeah with coalesce it was very much just about kind of taking that concept of allopartis of atmosphere and kind of like heavier catharsis and elevating that to a you know a more extreme level and it's also just like a song that i remember the first day that i went in to record vocals it's one of those songs that i feel like for probably most vocalists uh vocals are hard and you kind of get in your own head but it's a song that i love to sing and when i i rewrote some of the lyrics this time around and just going through what it's about and kind of what are the feelings and what are the emotions and thoughts that went into it feels so earnest and so authentic i don't feel like there's anything that's put on in this song it feels so deeply a part of me that yeah whenever i play it i it just like it feels like the best thing in the world and i'm like oh my god it feels like a the most like the truest version of myself when i play it it just i feel like the best version of myself um so yeah coalesce no i i i totally understand that because there are definitely certain songs that i've written that like not necessarily about one of my experiences so i'm just kind of like you know i i wrote about this thing but it's not something super close to me and it's like it can be hard to get in the zone to sing those sorts of things and then something that's like so deeply personal it can be so cathartic when you're singing those say just like you were talking about the the catharsis of of the heavy music and i i think that that's such an awesome quality and you really are somebody who has the same sort of thoughts as i do as far as like what makes a good song which is the dynamics and the difference between the heavier parts and the soft parts i i cannot get enough of like a good dynamic arrangement you know like like that's one of my favorite things in music and i think that this new song is exemplary of that it's great i don't want i don't want to put you on the spot what do you think is a you know when you think of some of your favorite bands what do you think is a band that does that really well i can think of like a couple but i'm curious to know like what are some bands that you feel like as far as dynamic range that they just kill it with it's funny the one that i always think of because it was such a big part of uh my musical vocabulary like growing up is led zeppelin oh yeah because i forget exactly what it was if it was a book or an article or something like that i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't but there was an interview with jimmy page where he talked about light and shade and the idea of of having both and having this uh you know sort of almost like a battle it is kind of how he described it and when i read that when i was you know like a teenager that had such an impact on me and the way that i think about music that it's insane i i think uh i don't know if you ever saw like it might get loud with jimmy page and and and the edge oh yeah uh i don't know if you ever saw you know i think about that movie all the time i can watch that movie any day of the week i can watch it finish it and then just watch it again because it's so much fun and again on the other lists of like bands that i it's like not cool to like but that i love i love the edge and i love you too i feel like the edge is like one of the coolest guitarists ever i catch so much shit about that all my friends roast me for being a youtube fan but watching that movie though watching uh watching jimmy page talk about the music and kind of his philosophy of music i mean also the fact that he comes from a production background if i'm not mistaken it's like the first time i've probably some of the others i'm not a huge zeppelin fan but i have a very surface level love of it he uh yeah he has a lot it's obvious that he has a a rich understanding of production and you can feel that kind of again spectrum that spread across the song from stuff that goes from super subtle to the super super not subtle um but nah man jimmy page is so cool for a long time he was a studio musician so he was he was just a studio rat for for a long time and so definitely like got to got to understand like those those elements of production that a lot of people uh even when they have spent a bit of time in the studio still kind of chase after and some people just they they spend that time and that's just i feel like i have been talking about this a ton recent on recent episodes but just like the arrangement is one of the biggest parts of songwriting that i feel like gets overlooked especially when it comes to like modern kind of pop punk music it's very much like the same sort of like style of guitar part yeah i think it's kind of like the same sort of like style of guitar part the entire time and then people wonder why they don't have these really dynamic songs and it's like well you didn't really change anything throughout the entire thing you played a different riff but it was still the same intensity i'll tell you man if that's something and anyone who's listening like is interested in like the idea of like pop punk or like post hardcore that kind of genre where it can feel very formulaic very like just the same thing kind of over and over again and a lot of just repetition i was going to put them in my in my top five songs but i didn't because i wanted to do some homies and and some other people who are not as big but okay but crime is the same thing so i'm going to put them in my in my top five songs but i didn't because i wanted to do some homies and and some other people who are not as big but okay but crime and stereo uh long island hardcore band is maybe one of my most influential artists of all time they started way back in day like 20 years ago but they're still playing and they just put out a new album for the first time in 13 years but these guys were doing things back in like 2007 2008 that just no one in the scene was doing they had so much guts and it was low-key so ahead of its time but yeah just like they had these these song structures that just blew me away and at first i hated it because it felt so unfamiliar and so uncomfortable and over time i was like oh wait these guys are just making songs that are so unfamiliar and so uncomfortable and so uncomfortable and and and again doing the arrangements of the songs without any assumptions on how it has to be and because that some of those songs again became some of my favorites of all time um but crime and stereo is like a great version of like i mean they're kind of some of their stuff is pop punk but it's definitely more like post-hardcore kind of stuff or like just just general like long island hardcore but it's it's hard to get out of that because the scene is yeah just very uh it's it's definitely saturated with that but there's also nothing wrong with like structure and people who are just set with kind of knowing what they are and what they like to write but it's fun to kind of find the people who stray away and the kind of the the cool music that comes out of it yeah a lot of my picks right now are actually um for this episode are going to be bands that take kind of those uh genre formulas and flip them on their head yeah so that that's definitely some stuff that i'm really into i've never heard of crime and stereo but uh that's definitely something that i'm going to be looking up right after this because based off of that recommendation it sounds like it's going to be awesome it's good it's super good and also speaking of that i was again going back to the uh the cacophony kid episode i can't remember what that it was is a race car bed it's like the irish band that you guys yeah oh my race car better fucking dude i was listening to it and i was just like on the train i was like all right what's the first song gonna be and it started playing and i was like oh man this is like crazy it almost reminded me a little bit of like i don't know if you listen to like break-ins at all on like tiktok oh absolutely but it really reminded me of that and i was like yeah man this is just so fun and just so like unabashed and like outrageous and out of pocket and uh yeah man i had a blast listen to it it was such a good pick i appreciate that so much so another thing that i'm kind of interested in is i feel like a lot of your production recently has been leaning into on top of the guitars and traditional like kind of punk instrumentation been leaning into a lot of like uh synthesizers and like pads and soundscapes and things like that is that something that you've been getting into recently or is that something that your uh your producer that you've been working with brings to the table oh it's twofold it's a great question that's very insightful well the first thing is that i've been obsessed with like ambient music uh since forever i have just i i have an eight hour playlist of ambient piano music that I listen to when I read and I'm adding to it constantly. It's just like a monolith at this point. But yeah, me and my family, I mean, I grew up listening to like Philip Glass and Steve Reich. And then as I got into college, got super into Brian Eno, got super into Nils Fromm. So I've been always into like synths. And I remember being in like in high school and like in middle school even and like friends laptops, like going into GarageBand because I didn't have it and like messing around with pads. So I've always done that. And I mean, there was even a point where, again, I mentioned my best friend Tom is a director and for his first short film that he premiered at a film festival, he actually asked me to compose the score for it. And so I've done composition like that before. So ambient music and particularly like cinematic, like kind of like widespread ethereal music is something I've always had a passion for. And also one of my favorite musicians of all time is Trent Reznor. So I love Nine Inch Nails. And I love his soundtracks, even though Alapart is like couldn't be farther away from that sound. It's so much more intense and extreme. So there's that aspect of like, I just love atmosphere and ethereal music and synths and stuff. But then on the other hand, I've got my producer Colin, who also writes soundtracks and is a huge synth maniac in a level that I could never even touch. The first time I ever went to his studio, I mean, his walls are just covered in synthesizers. And on the side of like having his band in contrast, which is gonna be one of my picks for today, he also has a second project called Be Hold. It's B-E slash H-O-L-D, where he writes soundtracks for like, like, like D&D podcasts, where he's doing like medieval synth wave. Really? He has, he's like 90,000 listeners. He's, he's huge. Like this, like this soundtrack project that he has like blew up and he doesn't promote it. Like he's just on these podcasts and enough people find it through like radio and stuff through Spotify, looking through like Dungeons and Dragons podcasts that it just pops up. So yeah, it's definitely a combination of, there's a lot of common ground between the two of us on synthesizers. With him, it's like definitely much more a kind of like, synth wave, kind of more analog kind of stuff. And with me, it's a lot more kind of atmospheric kind of stuff. But between that, yeah, you're, you're, I think that's very astute of you to pick out from there that, yeah, the kind of like more atmospheric stuff on the soundtrack very much comes from me and Colin coming, you know, together and then, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That's something I've, I've always wanted to get the chance to mess around with like hardware synthesizers a lot more because like it's, it's already super fun downloading, you know, getting like, like software synthesizers to play in Logic. And stuff like that. You can lose hours in that. But like something about having the hardware and getting tactile with being able to press buttons and turn knobs and move sliders and stuff like that is just so much more satisfying than, you know, clicking on a screen to move stuff. It's something that I've been wanting to get into, but you know, there's a bit of a financial barrier there. Well, the good thing I think is that when it comes to artistry and like the act of like being creative, which can sound so like douchey and so esoteric and like weird, but I do think like the act of like creativity is something that's so vital. And it's just the reality that, I mean, anyone knows, which is that like having more is not necessarily better. So having infinite choices, if anything can actually like be a huge issue for creativity. And one thing that I love about hardware and, you know, my one, my one analog synth that I have that you can see like in the corner here, I bought it for $50 at, at, at, uh, the music shop that I worked at back freshman year of college. It was just some random used eighties synth. And it just makes cool sounds that is just like not ordinary sounds that you'd hear in logic so i bought it and i use it and it's great but what's amazing about is that there's limitations there's this whole kind of idea like i like that uh i'm on top of like loving music i'm a huge like film nut and just like every other person who would describe themselves as a film nut i really like christopher nolan but chris but christopher nolan has oh my god i'm like i'm like listening to myself i'm like adam you're insufferable but no christopher nolan is very cool and there's this element that he brings up of like uh you know everyone says that you know to become like great you have to break the rules to become great and what he says is it's actually kind of the opposite to become really really great what you do is you start making your own rules and that's a huge part of his filmmaking technique is that he develops boundaries for himself that he has to work within and by doing that he utilizes like the maximum amount of creativity within that defined space and i'm sure there's a point where he does break through those boundaries but the idea of like set a framework for yourself you'll find out that you know by climbing scaffolding you'll do a lot more than trying to do it yourself you'll find out that you know by climbing scaffolding you'll do a lot more trying to like just build up a giant plateau that just extends forever but yeah just the idea of again going back to what you were saying of the idea of like messing around with something that's hardware is like yeah man i'll take one or two pedals over like an infinite supply of logic pedals that i will never be able to listen to all of them you never really know which one is best because i'm overwhelmed by the infinite uh choice between all of them so yeah man it's like anyone who has limitations it's like embrace them and see how much you can expand you know inside of them and i think people will always be surprised by what comes out of that anyway that's my that's my creativity i think i've heard people call that like uh like choice paralysis which is such a big thing because you're like i need this tool and then you're like but i have 17 different things that all do that and so you're like which one do i want and you don't necessarily you know learn how to exactly what each one does if you've got that many um it's it's funny i've uh talked about what i call gear acquisition syndrome uh which which is just the the idea that like you're working on something and you're like i i just need this piece of gear and then i can make it and i i felt like i was kind of in a rut for a long time with that and once i got over wanting to buy new shit all the time was when i actually buckled down and learned how to use the stuff that i already had yes and i i think that for people especially if you're just getting into production that's a big thing is like you know the these pieces of software like have so much good stuff baked into them that you should learn how to use that before you know moving on to these other things and i i feel like this kind of sounds like like such a like an old head thing to say but it's like it's just something that as you progress you i feel like you just kind of like figure that out for yourself in your own time you know i i mean it's like rick rubin or someone equivalent i mean i'm sure a million people have said something similar or you know he just took it from someone else but just the idea of like you know if you if you're in the song and like the one thing that's driving you nuts is that you don't have the right snare sound um it's not that you don't have the right snare sounds that your song isn't that good like if that's if that's what's going to come down when not the song is good is when not you have the right snare hit like i got bad news for you it's not the snare and also the just the idea of like um i remember like reading an interview of like dustin kensrew from thrice who's another one of my all-time favorite musicians lyricists just writers in general but he talks about during before artists in the ambulance they were looking for a producer and they were talking to rick rubin because both of them were just big at the time and the thing that they agreed on was just the idea of like ultimately a song comes down to if you can play it on a piano or a guitar just one or the other and sing to it and it's good then it's a good song um if you're able to strip away all the production and it's good song then it's a good song if you need the production without it the song falls apart then it just means that the song is not is not complete or is not a good song to begin with so the idea of like simplicity you're totally right that it does sound kind of like a luddite old head thing to say but i think what that is is not like not rejecting new technology or new formats or new ways of doing things but understanding your arsenal and having mastery over a few tools is better than being a jack of all trades with a thousand um so understanding and making uh it has to do with like decisiveness and presence and i think both of those play two of the greatest roles when it comes to creativity so having the presence of mind to be like this is the thing that i want to use this is how i want to use it rather than let me just see what i can do because then you just get lost you get lost in the process of what ifs and what could be best and maybe it's around the corner it's like just focus on here like you know right here right now what's going to be the best song just kind of end up changing it and then you just get lost in the process of what ifs and what could be best chasing the dragon a little bit to an extent yeah for sure so is there anything else about the uh the stuff that you've put out over the past couple years that you specifically want to uh talk about or do you have i think that you had mentioned that you've got some more songs uh in addition to the one that i've heard cooking up for next year's or this year now is that correct yeah totally right now me and me and colin have been working on a batch of songs over the last couple years so we have to do vocals and then it's done and then after that i have another batch of like five songs that you know right now i'm like completing but are pretty much close to being done that are ready to start getting recorded and that's just like you know that's just the industry right now is that you know people are just always making songs and like preparing them so it's just gonna be like a constant flow of seeing what goes out there you know what's the success what what what are we going to drive and uh and also like just what feels good to play live and stuff but yeah there's there's yeah for sure less is coming out than a couple other songs but i'm really excited about it i think over these last couple singles i'm really excited about it i think over these last couple singles i'm really excited about i've been able to really narrow down on allopartis is like an artistic identity which you know people talk about things like branding which you know can have kind of like you know not a great connotation but i really do think about like what is the identity what is allopartis what is allopartis not um and understanding what that identity is and there's a lot of stuff that i'm writing about right now that i'm really excited about coalesce i chose very consciously um because it was kind of the initial seeds of that of talking about things like alienation and isolation um in the modern world and the idea of like finding and determining self-worth and self-acceptance which is something it's like very interpersonal and coalesce is very much about like you know i don't want to dive in too deep because you know i want anyone to have kind of their idea and their interpretation of it but for me at least you know there is a definite you know kind of idea that i take from it which is this idea of self-acceptance and this rejection of self-sacrifice particularly for systems that don't care about you you know that think that you are disposable and think that you are just another cog and also the acceptance of self and past self the idea of like kind of accept who you are accept the decisions that you've made and love yourself for them not in spite of them and you know you listen to like the bridge of coalesce and what it was for me when I was writing it was just this idea of like looking at the version of me you know a couple years ago and even 10 years ago or even 20 years ago that version of Adam that I used to maybe kind of cringe at and kind of like you know it used to make me you know I used to not like talking about that version of myself really realizing that's like man that kid that kid was a great kid and I owe my whole life to him you know he just did his best and he didn't do everything perfectly he didn't always get everything right but he was a good guy and like you know the idea of living a life like it's like you know I became who I am not not in spite of that kid but because of that kid and all the songs that are coming after this I think are going to become extensions of that of the idea of like self and are going to expand beyond just the personal self and into things like alienation in the world in the market in the economy a lot of the songs that I'm writing right now are very focused on things like you know the concept of freedom you know the concept of like rights and stuff in the last few years I got involved in like labor and union politics in New York City and I've been involved in like labor and union politics in New York City so working for people to get more workers rights and doing more mobilizing and organizing around doing stuff like that doing strikes and and uh speaking at rallies for other unions in the city and so a lot of the songs that are that's awesome a lot of the songs that are coming after this are very much about the idea of just like you know a lot of the system seeks to invalidate you and seeks to you know this this idea of like us feeling like we don't feel like we have a sense of self-worth and I think this is something that's so prevalent in our society and we'll be gen alpha of this idea of like I'm not enough especially with the dawn of social media but the reality is like that's not an accident that we feel that way it's not an accident that we don't have presence of mind that we don't have an attention span that we don't have a you know any kind of self-worth it's because there's a system set in place that profits from it and so I think the songs that are coming out are me thinking about that and what are the ways that we can you know have a more generative production view on the world and ourselves and I'm really excited about it the whole concept of allopartist has to do with exploration and I'm excited for that next step of exploration going kind of beyond the self and into the actual world itself um and yeah so yeah I I really like that because I I've kind of been going over that you know I feel like it's something that is a perpetual thing but you know kind of uh learning uh how to you know uh accept your self-worth and uh that it's not tied to you know a number going up on the internet or or anything like that because like as an artist or somebody on social media or whatever it's so easy to just get deflated when something that you put all this time and effort into doesn't get the numbers that you want and it's such a big thing learning to uh accept that that's just a thing stuff's gonna fluctuate and that that doesn't make you any less worthy quote-unquote because something that you put out didn't do as well as something else and you know kind of being able to divorce yourself from your work in a way because of that but also getting closer to it at the same time if that makes sense there's a there's there's it makes me think of so many things that is that is such a vital point and that's something that you need to learn and you never stop learning throughout your life there's no point that you understand that challenge and overcome it because all of life is just overcoming that challenge but there's this concept and you'll see it in alapartist art if you look at like the alapartist instagram you'll see it hidden in the art is this concept of telos t-e-l-o-s which I think was Aristotle uh who talked about this idea of telos which like kind of you know this is there's there's a lot of different interpretations of it but the kind of like general translation is end purpose what is the ending purpose for what you're doing and the reality of it is like you know there are very few people who work for the end purpose of working there's very few people who work because they just love the pleasure of working they're doing because they want to make money and why do they want to make money they want to buy food why do they want to buy food or pay rent they want to survive they want to live and ultimately at the end of it what's the last thing that it's like why do you want to live well I just want to live like living is nice I just want to live that's the telos and for me like the thing I always come back to is like the act of creation and particularly with like making music is the telos for me it's the end purpose so whether or not the numbers go up or down the act of making music is pleasurable and productive and generative to me so in doing that I'm never losing I'm never going to be a failure at least not in my eyes because that act of creativity is like the best part of being alive so trying to pay attention to those things in your life that you take pleasure in just for this act of doing them are the most important things that you'll ever do and I think people experience that all the time in so many ways it doesn't even have to be a big purpose like being a musician or being a scholar or being a fucking architect it can be anything it can having a it can be having a best friend a telos can be your your best friend it can be a partner it can be you know doing yoga in the morning it could be sitting on the couch and you know playing call of duty it can be whatever um but understanding like what is the uh what's the purpose that you get out of it what's the you know kind of value that you get out of it and as long as you set yourself up that way that was really the whole incarnation of like meeting my friend Colin realized that I was a good person I was a good person I was a good person I wanted to put more time into music quitting my job and then starting music and then taking jobs that were more flexible was all about spending more time and leaving more room in my life for the telos and so I think that act of kind of finding value in yourself and if your life is all about chasing that and that's again another very deep concept for all the part is that uh yeah I think that that's super on the money I love that I'm always into these discussions about like the philosophy of being a creative person in a modern world that very much uh does not value that enough um and I I think that this has been extremely insightful um is there anything else that you specifically want to bring up before we move on to the second major part of the episode Ryan what's your favorite song that you've ever written uh right now it's one that's unreleased that's going to be coming out on my EP hopefully in February it's it's one of the last ones that I have to to mix before it uh goes out but it's uh it's called move on and it was it's about a time in my life a few years ago that I was kind of kind of in a dark place uh you know there was COVID I had just gotten laid off you know um I I still had still do but um you know still had debt from going to school and things like that and I was just like I did everything that I thought I was supposed to do I went to school I got a degree I did all of these things and you know shit's still in my head I'm not going to working out for me and it's it's kind of about the the catharsis of uh creating music and using that as a way to kind of heal yourself in those moments Ryan I mean the one thing you need to remember is that uh you know you went to school you got all that debt you got laid off COVID happened you need to realize that that that wasn't a waste ultimately you created so much value for for the shareholders who owned that debt and even though your life was miserable just remember there's probably like a quarter of a point on their portfolio value that's all because of you man that's all you and no one can ever take that away from you um but I like it that is my legacy on the real though it's like there's so much there's so much bullshit that everyone has put through that all has to do with money making money and sucking money out of working class people and giving it to people who the last thing they need is more money but the act of kind of taking that process that pain and that struggle and making something creative and again generative out of that is like the coolest and the most punk thing that you can do is taking oh taking that something that they can't use it as a profit center that has nothing to do with them and everything to do with you and your act of creativity that's fucking rad dude that's amazing I can't wait to hear it that's incredible that's thank you so much that's the last thing I wanted to hear about that's what I needed to know hell yeah after we're done recording I'll send you a link to listen to it early because I'm I'm sure that you'll dig it oh yeah so moving on to the uh the second part of the episode here we're going to share some tunes that we've been listening to some stuff that we think uh deserves to have a bit of a spotlight on it uh stuff that's being underappreciated I'm gonna go first and we'll go back and forth which will give you the closer at the end of this my first song is actually one that was submitted to me directly it's been super cool as the podcast has been uh getting bigger I've had more and more artists reaching out to me directly to feature music on an episode if you are listening to this and want to do that fresh finds pod at gmail.com this is a band called obscure animals they found me on twitter and shot me an email and they are a four-piece alt rock band from austin texas and this is their most recent single which came out back in august called it'll be fall soon the sun is up seven o'clock the days stretch on too long it's hot the thermostat is working far too hard the sweat on my brow pulls salt into my eyes I stare at the sky begging the stars in the moon to please come around I can't escape an evening time not even for a while Sweated out Fans on high The AC can't keep up The sweat on my brow falls soft into my eyes I stare at the ceiling, cursing the morning light outside my door I look to the ground Frustrated and tired Say to myself It'll be false soon It'll be false soon Short and sweet one there, but I like that tune a lot. Holy shit, that was good. Oh my god. I really like the going back and forth between the, like, heavy chords drums and then this little, like, staccato guitar part because it's a more minute scale, but just the difference between how those two parts feel is such a cool, like, back and forth. There were so many, like, there's so many things that come to mind listening to that. I mean, it's, like, the number one, and I hate that this is always what, you know, everyone does, but it's just the normal way of, like, understanding. The music is that you put it in a context and relate it to another band, but it's, like, the vocalist reminds me a lot of, like, you know, like, Julian Casablanca's from, like, The Strokes. A lot of that vocal delivery, and honestly, I love it. I think that, if anything, this is, I've never been, like, a huge fan of Julian Casablanca's. I feel like this is him if I actually liked his voice more. I feel like this is just the better version of him. I was kind of thinking Smashing Pumpkins a little bit, but yeah. Yeah, for sure. And also, very much in the Smashing Pumpkins wheelhouse is that this, the way that it is mixed, it feels like a four-piece band in the best way possible, which is something that takes a lot of guts, honestly, because no one can hide if you're doing, like, it feels like a four-track where you got vocals, drums, guitar, and bass. And I feel like this could have been on, like, a four-track cassette recorder. And the way guitars go so heavy, vocals cut through so deep. And then also, like, the bass during the chorus sounds incredible. The bridge is so heavy with the change-up. But this very much is, like, there's nothing. It's so straight and to the point. We were talking about, like, simplicity and creativity. This feels like if maybe they had 100 tracks and they cut out everything that wasn't necessary, and the song rocks because of it. It's dope. Yeah, for sure. I definitely find it interesting because there is the tendency to layer and layer and layer with modern music production that is so enticing. You're like, well, this part, I'm not, like, it sounds good, but it's not super interesting. Maybe if I do this on top of it, then it'll sound more interesting. Sometimes that's the case, but then other times you're just overcomplicating shit, because you wrote something that you don't like. It's exactly what you were talking about earlier. And I think that this is definitely, yeah, it's, like, the sound of alt-rock kind of, like, distilled. You know, it has that vibe of being very raw and, you know, really just showing off what you can do with only a few tracks, seemingly. Yeah, for sure. For sure. I think that, again, just, like, I look at songs and, number one, like, you know, you were talking about the idea of, oh, it's so easy to get tempted. It's so easy to get tempted into, like, layering and adding all this extra stuff to kind of make it a little bit more rich, which I know nothing about. I don't know him. But every time, I mean, if I'm struggling with a song, I'll try to break it down to its most base elements to kind of break through and finalize it. And this is, like, the kind of song that I would dream of writing, is, like, if I really wanted something heavy that was simple, that was right straight to the point, like, this song kills it. So, yeah, I'm definitely, I'm impressed with how effective it is in its simplicity, but it still is so rich and hits so fucking hard. Yeah. I do like this one a lot. I also think it's interesting that the lyrics are very much like, they seem like they're literally, like, about, oh, it's the middle of summer and I hate summer. I can't wait for, you know, cooler weather. But I feel like it could also very much be, you know, a metaphor for times of stress and, you know, the feeling of, like, oh, just one more week and then things will finally slow down and it'll finally be chill. And, you know, the idea that that's not necessarily always the case. I honestly, I was, like, I was barely listening to the lyrics because I was just so obsessed with the melody. It's, like, all I was paying attention to, which is not normal. I'm usually so, like, locked up in the lyrics, but because I like the melody so much, I was, like, barely taken into it. But the idea, I love the idea of, like, being sick of summer and waiting for cooler weather. I spent my entire life in New York except for 10 months when I lived in California. And the number one thing that drove me crazy was the weather. I'm, like, the one person on earth, I fucking hate California weather. Just give me a boiling hot summer. A perfect autumn and the most frigid, hellish winter of all time. Although right now we're, like, we're 15 degrees above the median for the last 100 years, so it's not good. But that being said, I love the song about hating the summer and wanting to get to the winter. I feel a deep relationship to that. No, I totally do as well. Like, being from Michigan, we're definitely similar latitudes there. And so, yeah, I've been disappointed by the lack of snow. So, so far this year, which, granted, I've also just moved five hours south of where I've pretty much lived for most of my life. And so the climate actually is surprisingly different being only five hours further south. Wow. But, you know, a lot less, a lot less snow as well, which has been interesting to get used to. I'm used to just these crazy drifts and shit, you know. Man, snow. I love snow. And can I tell you that getting rid of my car and moving into New York? City, where all my commuting is on the train, getting snow and not having to worry about snow traffic is like the greatest thing on earth. It's the beautiful cheat code of New York City. Anyway, that's my obnoxious tangent. Let's move on to the next, next track. All right. Well, the next track is yours. So that's going to be for you to queue up there. All righty. So for the next track, we're going to be moving on to my good friend, Colin McClutchie, who is also my producer. He's got a band called In Contrast. And it's incredible. This is actually the reason why I met Colin. It was that. I randomly saw, like, some friend of a friend post this song from the EP that he was going to release. Came out and I listened to it. And I was just like, holy shit, this is so good. And it was at a point in my life where I was still working at my job. But I was, like, trying to reach out to people just to collaborate. I was so desperate to have, like, creativity in my life. I was just hitting up people. And a lot of it just didn't end up working out. I'd hang out with someone. It's like, eh, there's not really any magic here. But I heard this record and was so shocked by how good it was and how well it was put together, how well it was produced. But also, most importantly, how well it was written. And I was like, I've got to talk to this guy. And, you know, lucky enough, I have no idea why. I DM'd Colin. Even though we went to the same college, we never met. And we were just like, hey, this is, like, an amazing record. Would you ever want to, like, hang out and maybe collaborate? And he's like, do you want to have dinner tomorrow night and just, like, chill? And the rest is history. Two weeks later, I told my boss I was leaving my job. It was really that big of a deal. But a lot of that and a lot of Alapartis kind of is because of this EP. But it's fucking good. This particular song is called Lafayette Park. And, yeah, let's check it out. Lafayette Park The last six months have been a turnaround What I thought I was up was only falling down At the edge of this cliff, am I a jumper now? It's a bottomless pit, I'll never hit the ground The one that I've let go Down the most Is myself And the monster I've become Is a product of my long-neglected mental health I want to get you back But you fade into my past And I've always had a bad memory I've always had a bad memory Slow dance with me In Lafayette Park I'll let you take the lead As we fall I'll let you take the lead I've been talking to strangers on the internet I've been telling the feelings that I can't suppress I've been talking to strangers on the internet The therapist says I need to get some rest Don't give out my number waiting for your text The thing that I miss most Is my side of your bed When I sleep with your ghost I don't know if it's in my heart or in my head I wanna get you back But you fade into my past I've always had a bad memory Slow dance with me I'm not far yet I'll let you take Take the lead As we fall apart And waltz among the trees Cause I can't dance alone And watch the fall Falling leaves And I'll watch as you drive Everyone tells me I'll get better But I'm not better yet No, I'm not better yet I'm not better yet Better yet Better yet Better yet Better yet Better yet that's such a unique sound i love that so much it's like cinematic grungy emo music yeah it's such a cool combo it fucking rocks and it's just like yeah there there was so much right off the bat that like when i first heard it like you said it's it's so unique it felt so much like colin and tapped into something that felt like you know you can you can hear the influences i mean you can hear where a lot of it's coming from but it felt so um it felt very special very personal and i mean it's just like yeah like there's parts of this that feel like just like an emo track it feels like it could be something off of like foxing or off of like the hotelier and then there's aspects of the violin which feels like it could be out of like a death cab for cutie song or like you know out of like one of my favorite bands is stars from montreal from like the early 2000s but oh my god yeah the instrumentation is just fucking sick there's so much stuff all over the place but i remember hearing it being like oh my god this is special and the production is crystal clear too you can hear everything so well like and that's another thing is that like production often comes down to you know a good arrangement like we've talked about before and having elements that you know support each other well and i think that it's really cool having the strings along with the like kind of emo-ish guitar and everything it's it's a really cool very unique sound i like that a lot yeah for sure and and this one again it's like the last one i wasn't listening to the lyrics as much as i should have been but the first time i listened to this it's the same stuff man it's something that i mean we i mean you were just talking about with kind of like a couple years back having that really difficult time and when i listened to this it was like i was working a job that i hated i didn't hate the people i didn't necessarily like you know i hate hate the company i just i hated the work that i was doing i knew it wasn't what i was supposed to be doing but that idea of kind of like isolation lacking wholeness that kind of day after day of just kind of your day's not going the way you would hope they would and it was funny because it's like i felt so seen and then when i was like oh my god i'm like oh my god i'm i just when he told me about writing this ep turns out he was going through all the same shit that i was and that's why when we connected it felt like he had you know like i can't remember if it was like a year or so prior had left his job just to pursue his passion full-time and he's a full-time engineer now oh that's awesome so when i saw that i got one hit of that and it's like he didn't have to ask me twice i saw that and i was like holy shit like this is all i need and i just jumped off the boat into the ocean of uh of doing something other than just the typical nine to five that i've been doing for years at that point but no it's him describing that point in life of just kind of life not going your way and feeling that hardship is like so potent and the ending of it of that that line of you know i'm not better yet better yet and then it fades off into the reverb with the violins it just fucking crushes me every time and he killed it kills it with it i think it's really interesting too going back to your your story and how just one moment in that way can kind of like set a whole new trajectory for your life and the goals that you have and your aspirations like that one moment is such a defining aspect of what your musical career is now as opposed to what it was a couple even just a couple of years ago you know i think that that's awesome i i know that like i'm gonna say this in colin i know exactly what colin's response to this would be which is adam it wasn't the song you were gonna end up doing this no matter what i just happened to be the person there at the time and i think that's what i'm gonna say to you guys and i think that's what i'm gonna say to you guys and i think that's what i'm gonna say to you guys this or ever like you know listens to this it's like if there's some random person on instagram or online that you think is really cool that you'd love to work with just fucking ask them to work with you just do it the worst thing that's gonna happen is they're gonna say no and if that like if that person thinks you're lame or something or they like you know like you know if they talk trash about you or something it's like that was someone who was never worth working with to begin with but when you find your people when you find like someone who might become a very close friend of yours that person's gonna be like hell yeah let's do it and i went through oh yeah at that time i talked to i talked to tons of people i never ended up working with and you know a bunch of things that ended up going nowhere but that like one in ten it's so worth it trust me it's so worth it just dm someone and say hey you want to hang out sometime and make music just fucking do it it's worth it i promise that's one of the things i've learned doing this is that so many people probably like you think about like oh this person they're probably so far above me like i'm not even gonna gonna send them a message because they won't get back to me or whatever but think about you if somebody reaches out to you directly and goes hey i like the thing that you're doing you're gonna feel good about that you're not gonna talk shit about them you know and and everybody's just people at the end of the day and i i think it's i think it's such a funny thing that especially with social media because you see you know a big number somebody's got like you know 10 000 followers or something like that and so you're like oh man they hit the big time it's like at the at the end of the day they're just a person if you message them more than likely the worst thing that's gonna happen is that they just don't get back to you like yeah it's so funny and i find myself messaging bands that i'm into all the time now because i'm just like oh yeah i mean if if they're like me then they'll take five minutes to just be like oh yeah cool you know and you've made a new contact you know potentially a new friend everyone is just some guy that's that's the thing that we say a lot in like union work it's like there's no person at the top everyone is just some guy everyone is exactly the same as you and you know i think that's literally how this ended up coming to be like you you randomly found me through like a tiktok that i posted and i just ended up like messaging you back and i just saw your stuff i was like yeah this is cool let me just message him and see what happens then i followed your stuff and it ended up being really great what happens is and this is honestly one of like the wonderful things about especially when you're starting off that i think about all the time is like man no one cares who i am like like i'm nobody like what's the worst that's gonna happen someone's gonna say no then i'm exactly where i was when i started i have everything to gain and nothing to lose by asking someone exactly do you want to work on something like it's fine there's there's so much beauty in being nobody at the moment so take advantage of it use it as a superpower oh 100 you're nobody take chances you've got nowhere to go but up at that point it's it's great yeah it's it's once we get successful that's when it's gonna get terrifying once we have something to lose then oh my god i have to start being conscious of repercussions i never want to have to deal with that all right so my next tune is by a connecticut pop punk band called cinema stare they're a band that i found and i've been listening to them for a long time because somebody that i followed on twitter uh i think it might have been cacophony kid going back to that episode posted about them and they were just like oh man the guitar tones on this record are just amazing i had never heard of this band before and so i'm like why i have to check that out then if they've got these you know amazing guitar tones and this album which is called uh the things i don't need came out back in may of 2023 and after i discovered it quickly became one of my go-to like just put it on when i'm doing stuff albums because it's just so much fun to listen to this song is called remember by cinema stare so you're way past now and your eyes were boring me last forecast said it was summer but it takes seconds to change More than anything before But don't you throw yourself away Remember staying up all night Give your hands a mind Remember tripping over time Lose your state of mind And when the words don't come out right You are still the only one on my mind Gotta remember You can let a fool impasse in your car doesn't have a place It makes me nervous to think I'll have to see your face But then you'll call me which makes it sound so easy I've not been thinking clearly and so you'll say Remember staying up all night Give your hands a mind Remember tripping over time Lose your state of mind And when the words don't come out right You are still the only one on my mind Gotta remember Gotta remember You can let a fool impasse in your car doesn't have a place And when the words don't come out right You are still the only one on my mind It makes me nervous to think I'll have to see your face And when the words don't come out right You are still the only one on my mind Gotta remember You can let a fool impasse in your car doesn't have a place And when the words don't come out right You are still the only one on my mind Remember staying up all night Give your hands a mind Remember tripping over time Lose your state of mind And when the words don't come out right You are still the only one on my mind Gotta remember You can let a fool impasse in your car doesn't have a place And when the words don't come out right You are still the only one on my mind Remember tripping over time You are still the only one on my mind Gotta remember You can let a fool impasse in your car doesn't have a place And when the words don't come out right You are still the only one on my mind Did you even fill up before we left? We got a stockpile of momentum going That took a while to get I think we'll find the gaining ground So don't try to stop me So it'd be smart to put the phone down Take a guess as to where we're going Too many places we'll have to choose from Take a guess as to why we're leaving Too many phrases we'll have to choose from We're getting closer We're getting closer We're getting closer We're getting closer to the end Take a guess as to where we're going Too many places we'll have to choose from Take a guess as to why we're leaving Too many phrases we'll have to choose from We're getting closer We're getting closer to the end Take a guess as to why we're leaving Take a guess as to why we're leaving Where we're going, I feel like, is so good. It brings you in. It sucks you in right away, which is why I wanted it to be my choice. But A Simple Breeze, the newest single that he put out, is as good or even better in certain respects. But yeah, dude, Big Nitro is so good. It just goes straight to the point. It's so hard. And it also just, because he's a drummer, you listen to the music, and it's very similar. I compare him a lot to Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters. Okay. In that it's rock music that you can tell is written by a drummer. Because it's not just straight. It's not just straight, like, you know, four on the floor, kind of like beat drumming. There's lots of great little, like, upswings. There's lots of little chains-ups. There's amazing transitions. But it's very rhythmic, guitar-driven rock music. And it fucking slams. That's the thing. I heard this song. I've heard it one time, and I'm already like, I would go see them live if they came through town. Absolutely. Yeah. This would be fucking rad as hell. Honestly, them and Cinema Stare, I'd go to that show any day of the week. That would be a fucking sick-ass show. Those two bands together would be a great lineup. We should book a tour. Done. I mean, hey, they're right around the corner. And yeah, man, I mean, I would call out a sick. I would stretch. I'd be stretching all day getting ready to come out of Mosh retirement for this show. Oh, for real. And ruining everyone's night. For real. Yeah, dude, I love Big Nitro. It's almost like a meme with all of us. It's like kind of a joke how much my whole friend group, we're all obsessed with Big Nitro. Danny was like, yeah, I just wrote these songs. I thought they were fun. I just wanted to put them out into the world. And we're all like such hardcore Big Nights. Big Nitro stands now. That's funny. No, I will definitely be following this band because they just fucking kill it, man. So my next song is by a band that another one that I found on Twitter. Twitter has kind of been like my main social media recently. For a little while, it was Instagram. For a little while, it was TikTok. I feel like it's like every six months to a year, I just kind of like move on to another thing to be what I'm addicted to on my little screen. But this band is called. It's called The Welcoming. And I remember I was debating back and forth about whether I was going to play this song or a different one. And the thing that made me choose this song was that you mentioned that you really like Thrice because these guys also specifically label Thrice and A Perfect Circle as some of their big influences. It's kind of they're in between like rock and metal. It's one of those things where like if you told a metalhead that this is a metal song, they'd get upset with you. But like it's heavier than like hard rock, if that makes sense. It's a joke amongst my whole crew that like I go to the hard. I go to like the hardcore shows and everyone thinks I'm like the cute like pop kid because I make like pop music. And then I go to like my friend's indie show and everyone thinks I'm like the really brutal like heavy head. And so in every group, everyone thinks I'm just like some weird guy when it's really like, I mean, the hardcore guys probably have it more right. I'm just like a little soft boy. But yeah, I totally know those kinds of genres and those people who exist in those spaces. I feel that. I always find it so funny. Because it's like I have trouble labeling my music as well. Because I'm like, yeah, it's kind of kind of punky, kind of metal, but also none of those things at the same time. So it's like I've mentioned it before. I think that we're kind of in a post-genre era where everybody's just taking influences from everything and you can just kind of call it whatever, whatever ethos you fit. I feel like it is really, really where it lands. But anyway, so this song is off of this band's most recent EP. Called Neptune, which came out back in October. A lot of these last couple songs that I'm going to play are going to be bands that I meant to feature and then just never got around to it for one reason or another. But anyway, yeah, I would I would call them like melodic, progressive rock. So this song is The Unknown. The Unknown. The Unknown. The Unknown. ♪ Down your ass ♪ Dovetail with the waves Whoever we obscure Waiting till the time is right When bounty is assured We're just shifting at this rate Struggling to stay afloat As killers wait below So what is there to gain When we hide from the unknown Witness the quiet sound of the tree Under the surface of the sea At the first sign of frailty The sharks will feast upon us as we bleed Hurricanes inhale Iron turns to rust Water pouring in As we're battered by the wind As the tide of chaos Now it's quiet We're sinking further in the ocean As we break our bandages of the rocks As we hide beyond the horizon We can't dwell too On the seas where they won't beat our blood and soul Their teeth will tear you in from them So band together On this sinking trail Heart beat up now they're growing near To face the unknown we must kill our fears On the seas where they won't beat our blood and soul We're just shifting at this rate Waiting till the time is right Struggling to stay on board As carolers wait below So what is there to gain When we hide from the unknown When we hide from the unknown When we hide from the unknown We're just shifting at this rate Oh my god One thing that's just like I mean it's like immediate It's like right off the get-go Is um I have I'm like Because we've been playing more shows I'm like updating my rig And I've got a tiny little pedal board So that way it's easier to just run around New York City Rather than Because I don't have a car to lug it around in I need something I can put in my backpack And jump on the bus And I have this little rack clone That I built myself That I love That's an amazing pedal That I'm super proud of But it's a little finicky And it's like sometimes at a live show It'll kind of like cut out for a second or something So I replaced it with a great Walrus Audio like Eras pedal Which is just a drive pedal So I've been listening to drive settings constantly And I've become so obsessive now And it's destroying my life And there's some songs I listen to I'm like oh god This drive is just so not good This comes on And immediately I'm like Oh my god The drive is perfect Yes The guitar tone is so immaculate No that's one of the things Like when I hear this song My first thought was Guitar Hero Yes Like Oh my god Like it kind of harkens back To like that era Of like progressive rock And also just like This dude shreds Man Yes Like the harmonies at the very end Fucking like just cherry on top So good But like I also really like In this song too And a lot of their stuff Which is that they've got these Very cathartic choruses But then these like The other parts of the song Are kind of like brooding And they have this like weird groove To them that's like off kilter In a way That like builds a lot of tension And I think that that's a really cool way That they play with Like the dynamics of a song Is that they build up all of this Like brooding tension And with this song I think it works great Because it very much matches The theme of the unknown And like deep below the ocean And you know all that kind of stuff But like just the way that they Put those two things together Is so much fun There's one of the things That I was writing down Is the idea of When it comes to like More progressive Kind of heavy music like this You have a lot of like Syncopated stuff Like you know you listen to something Like Animals as Leaders And it's like lots of Syncopated drums and guitars and stuff And it's very The one thing is like One thing that Animals as Leaders Like they were smart with Is they never added a vocalist Which is brilliant Because it's really fucking hard Writing vocals onto that music That sounds good But the way that this That the instrumentals Are so staccato And so driven and rhythmic And kind of sharp But then the vocals Are so smooth Yeah It gave me a lot of like A lot of like I don't know I mean I was thinking about Like Chino Marino Along with someone like Dustin Kensrew From Thrice But yeah I just wrote super smooth And then as I was writing Super smooth The heavy vocals came in And I just wrote in all caps HEAVY FUCKING VOCALS Yeah So good Do you know Whether or not that's the same Is that the singer Also doing the heavy vocals I believe it's the same guy Who does both Yeah Either way it's impressive If it's the same person It's outrageous I believe that this project Actually The first Which I believe Is a full length I'm gonna I'm gonna check So that I don't make myself Look like a doofus Yeah It's a full length That they put out back in 2021 But this was actually A solo project Initially And then And so it's The one guy Who played guitar And I believe Did bass And like the whole thing I don't know What all of his credits Were on the first record But I know that he at least Like wrote most of it And performed most of it And yeah He's I believe The main vocalist And guitar player And dude just killed it Kicks ass man Oh my god It's so good And listening to like the lyrics It also again Like you know They mentioned like Thrice As a You know An inspiration for them The idea of like Dustin Kensler uses a lot of things From like Greek mythology In a lot of his writing So we'll talk about like Daedalus and Icarus And stuff like that And I'm not sure If they're talking about A specific thing But the whole idea Of like the ocean stuff And the idea of like the depths And even looking at the art Like the idea of like Neptune And stuff Using concepts That are like From culture From whether it's ancient Or contemporary And using it as a way To expand on a concept Of like a personal journey Is like one of the coolest It's one of the oldest tricks In the book I'm sure they were doing it Back in Macedonia In prehistoric age But they're doing it today And honestly it's like Man it hit 10,000 years ago It still hits today Oh yeah For sure That shit fucking rocked Oh my god That was so good Again Highly recommend Checking out Both this whole EP And their Their first album It's so funny actually How I found them Because I think the first post I saw That I interacted with Was They called it Shameless self-promotion Playlist Was something That they were making And it was literally Just this guy Was compiling a playlist Of a bunch of Like independent artists Who wanted to Have their song Put on a playlist So the idea was You submit a song It gets put on the playlist Everybody listens To the playlist And then you've all got Some cool ass new music And They put They put that together And their stuff Definitely like Stood out from the pack In my opinion Because it was just So tough Height So heavy And that was before This EP came out That was the first album Which is also A great album to listen to Like at the gym And stuff like that too So good And that kind of like Community building Is so vital Because honestly It's like Especially for people Who might like You know be starting off Or getting into music It's like Without a doubt Like from my experience And the people I know Who are successful Who I wouldn't necessarily Love myself in As a successful person But the best fans The best people Who will appreciate your music Are always other artists Other musicians Always end up being The people Who love and are so Dedicated to your stuff So it doesn't surprise me That again Someone like this Would make like Kind of like A community building playlist And then that would drive them Because again It's like the people Who will love and appreciate Your music the most Are other people Who can appreciate creativity So where are we going What's next in our Heavy musical arms race So this is This is going to be I think this will be The pinnacle Until the very very end Like two tracks later But this is a band Called Chain Twist And the drummer From this band Is an old friend of mine Ryan Who is a Who we used to play together Like ten years ago Like Ryan saw Allopartus way back in the day And Ryan bought Like the CD we made Of like the initial EP He's also been Begging me to put it on Spotify For the last ten years I told him One million dollars In my bank account I'll put it on Right now Sounds fair So far he is not He's not obliged I think he's being unreasonable But he's got this band Chain Twist That he plays drums in That he's been sending me Like mixes And he's been sending me Like just little like snippets Since it started And they're They're their escalation in sound is outrageous. but this is chain twist out of new england and they fucking slay let's check it out all right so you are nothing to me i will be the one to tear your world apart you are nothing to me nothing to me you are nothing to me you are nothing to me you are nothing to me you are just all the same you are nothing to me you are just all the same i count on my sympathy i'll burn i'll burn i'll burn i'll burn i'll burn i'll burn i'll burn holy fuck fucking new england hardcore man i swear to god oh dude this shit is oh god i i like the the beat at the beginning like that little just the just the just like gets you so ready from the get-go when the vocals come in it's just like just like it just sets the house on fire man this whole track is outrageous i also really like the sort of like uh industrial kind of sound at the very beginning too with like all the sound design and things like that yes and the way that it incorporates like you were talking about the beat which is kind of like a it's almost like a like a muted 808 kind of sound and yeah i think it's really cool how a lot of metal and hardcore and metalcore and like all this stuff is pulling from the ideas of new metal but like adapting it to the modern times and the modern sounds of hip-hop and the way that you uh put them together i think is so cool and i think that the new metal ideas working with the more extreme metal genres as opposed to more like radio rock kind of like how is fucking sick yeah no they and they like they kind of like brand themselves as new england new metal but they spell i saw that i thought that was funny which i think is amazing um but no it's it goes back to what i was saying with like cinema stare where it's like these ideas of these genres that back in the day were like oh these are just like trendy this is just like trend core and people are going to feel the same way like like like pop punk is becoming its own genre that has like a rich tradition at this point yeah new metal has the same thing slip knot sells that arenas all the time and they have for 20 fucking years like these bands are institutions at this point and i'm sure honestly i mean i mean like genres like hyper pop are going to be the same way hundred gex like could very well become like a similar type institution but when you have these moments that are just like a part of a style it is so rich and just goes to show that there still is like so much that this genre could put out and really you know take it to the next level in the next like 10 years which i get really excited about but there's a lot that you can hear coming from like slipknot and also me and uh me and ryan have talked about the band my ticket home which put out strangers only you know years back which were like originally they were like a crab core band but they kept on innovating really honestly this kind of sound they put out years ahead of everyone else like they really kind of saw around the curve what was coming and they really kind of uh yeah they they they jumped on the trend before anyone had even smelled it but also like just the idea of like the the record scratches and stuff in it just the slamming drums and i i like i'll say like i was joking about the idea of like snare sounds that like hey if your snare sound it's not that big a deal if you're worried about that you don't have a great song ryan is the one exception the snare sound on this is fucking perfect and it means the world to this song i also really like do they have two vocalists or is it one guy doing two different like vocal styles two vocalists yeah they've got a clean singer then they got the heavy singer i like how even the quote-unquote clean singer has so much grit and attitude yes to it but i also really like as far as the production goes that they are processed very the back and forth between them in the section where he does a line and then the other guy does a line back and forth they occupy different places in the mix because the one guy has a lot more atmosphere and so it sounds a lot more like it's part of i always think of like mixing vocals as like they can either kind of be like in their own space or they can be part of the mix and like often for for like rock and metal you tend to have the vocals a little bit lower and have a little bit more ambience to them so that they sound like they're just another instrument as opposed to like a pop mix which the vocals are going to be a bit more separate and i like how they kind of did both on that where the the clean singer was a little bit on top and and a little a little bit you know a little bit more polished and then the unclean what whatever you want to call it harsh vocalist does has a lot more of that like ambience and sounds a lot more like he's part of the band if that makes sense no i i i 100 agree i think you're right on the money it's almost like the when when when the vocalist is like screaming it feels like it's coming all around you i feel like i'm running through the forest and in the trees i can hear the voice coming from all around but then when the clean singer comes in in the course i feel like someone's grabbed me by the shirt and is like yelling in my face piercing it's like dead in the middle yeah and it's so good it hits so hard it cuts through the mix so well it's like and it feels effortless it's such smooth production but yeah man chain twist they fucking kill it like i'm dying for them i've told them like the moment that they want to book a new york show like i would i would give anything to get them in with some of like the hardcore metal bands in new york city because they would crush it like i tell them all the time these guys could do a national tour in a heartbeat all he needs is the right audience so these guys that was the first thing i thought of when i heard this was i was like this would go hard as fuck live yeah absolutely absolutely nah man chain twist they kill it ryan's the man so cool all right so my next one i'm gonna bring it down a little bit uh the the the arms race is over we've declared a winner perfect but uh these guys these guys definitely do their fair share of uh of heavy stuff as well this is a band called statements and they are from baltimore these guys are a modern pop punk band in every sense of the word it's like hyper compressed in your face pop punk they put out their first ep in i believe september of last year and oh yeah phenomenal batch of songs but this next one is actually the it's the middle track of five on the ep and this is a bit more of a somber one and i think that it stands out from the rest because it's so different as far as how it's orchestrated and put together but unfortunately i feel like looking at the streaming numbers it's uh severely underrated so i wanted to show off this i think it's sick and everybody should listen to it so this song is called meantime the city's keeping tabs on the weather Now the parking lot's a mountain of salt It sprays my windshield, creeps into the air And I can feel it in my lungs I don't know anyone else here At least the furnace arm is keeping me warm And I've been trying to plot the outcome It gets me closer to the door I've been reaching my limit Of all the fucks I could convince you I give About your new job down on Church Street How it ain't much, but it's a way to live I'm trying to keep together And now the alcohol is making me sick I don't have much to remember, another song to forget Shitty end in December, inside a night to regret I drag my carry-on down each apartment step I couldn't remember the time or place or how we met this band like like in the last couple she she started writing music in the last couple years like she has not been doing this since high school it's not something that just like you know she's been like really like honing her craft over decades she just started getting into this but the big thing though is that she's like maybe one of the deepest music appreciators i've ever met and so she just started putting out this music but um she's got this band big head and uh put out this song and and she's had a couple different singles but this is the most recent one and it just fucking kills um but anyway yeah this is big head and uh it's fucking sick you're like tango's heartbreak music grab my eyes out every time i hear autumn sweaters still in my closets taking up space inside my mind so i'm gonna sell it for money i'll trade it for cash i heard you i play that song just one more time every album sounds the same nothing to say so i'm gonna sell it for money i'll trade it for cash and that's when love can turn itself inside out effectively. It's just something I'm very impressed by. And I just, I fucking love this song because of it. Yeah. I always enjoy stuff that you can go back to and extrapolate meaning and ideas upon further listens. I think that that's awesome when you can really dig into something, you know, sink your teeth in it. So my final song of the evening, I think you're really going to dig this one. It's a, uh, I would call them, uh, experimental post-hardcore. Yes. This is the band from Virginia that I was thinking of. The band is called pulses. They recently did a song with callous Dow boys, but they also put out an album called it wasn't supposed to be like this. That is absolutely phenomenal. I can see in your face that you've heard some of this before. I think run the ghouls. It's pulses, baby. Oh my God. It's so much fun. So this is, this is one of my favorites for, for people who aren't initiated. This is, the most fun experimental record you've ever heard. It's post-hardcore, but they pull on elements of like funk and rap and ska and like all of these different things. So the song that I'm going to play is my personal favorite, which is them phones featuring Jer also known as, uh, Scott to network on the horns. And this thing is incredible. ♪ But looking at me funny ♪ ♪ Hold up, just wanna know what's the day I win ♪ ♪ The winner's not the winner, you're chasing fish ♪ ♪ Give a breadwinner, hold up, hold up, tell me what he said ♪ ♪ I think I, think I, think I ♪ ♪ I'm spinning up ♪ ♪ What it costs ♪ ♪ Play in prison ♪ ♪ 'Til everything feels right again ♪ ♪ Misapprehend ♪ ♪ And fall into the later side ♪ ♪ Which otherwise ♪ ♪ There's no surprise ♪ ♪ But you and I, we take to the skies ♪ ♪ Every now and then, it goes according to plan ♪ ♪ 'Cause our world sure isn't such a spin ♪ ♪ Let me surmise ♪ ♪ This black device ♪ ♪ Some reason to lie ♪ ♪ And none of us know what we're doing here ♪ ♪ Nothing to hide behind the veneer ♪ ♪ Yeah ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Burn up, tell me, and I ain't gonna run it ♪ ♪ Shove it, I'm resting perfectly ♪ ♪ Burn up, tell me, and I ain't gonna run it ♪ ♪ Take a time to burn it ♪ ♪ Shove it, burn up, tell me, and it's always out here watching ♪ ♪ Men and I, speaking ♪ ♪ Tell me, is it time to be real ♪ ♪ Or love, tell me, slipping ♪ ♪ Burn up, tell me, and I ain't gonna run it ♪ ♪ Shove it, I'm resting perfectly ♪ ♪ Burn up, tell me, and I ain't gonna run it ♪ ♪ Shove it, I'm resting perfectly ♪ ♪ Burn up, tell me, and I ain't gonna run it ♪ ♪ Take a time to burn it ♪ ♪ Burn up, tell me, and it's always out here watching ♪ ♪ Men and I, speaking ♪ ♪ Tell me, is it time to be real ♪ ♪ Or love, tell me, slipping ♪ ♪ Burn up, tell me, and I ain't gonna run it ♪ ♪ Shove it, I'm resting perfectly ♪ ♪ Burn up, tell me, and I ain't gonna run it ♪ ♪ Take a time to burn it ♪ ♪ Burn up, tell me, and it's always out here watching ♪ ♪ Men and I, speaking ♪ ♪ Burn up, tell me, and it's always out here watching ♪ ♪ Men and I, speaking ♪ ♪ Burn up, tell me, and it's always out here watching ♪ ♪ Shove it, I'm resting perfectly ♪ ♪ Burn up, tell me, and I ain't gonna run it ♪ ♪ Take a time to burn it ♪ ♪ Burn up, tell me, and it's always out here watching ♪ ♪ Men and I, speaking ♪ ♪ Burn up, tell me, and I ain't gonna run it ♪ ♪ Shove it, I'm resting perfectly ♪ ♪ Burn up, tell me, and I ain't gonna run it ♪ ♪ Burn up, tell me, and I ain't gonna run it ♪ ♪ Burn up, tell me, and I ain't gonna run it ♪ ♪ Burn up, tell me, and I ain't gonna run it ♪ I swear, these guys are like one of the most fun bands ever. I so desperately want to see them live. Because all of their songs are such crazy bangers. Like, and it's all like so unwieldy. Oh my god, Pulses is so fu- I hadn't heard this song yet. And this song is killer. Oh, you haven't heard this one? Oh, man. You have to check out the whole album. It's phenomenal. I mean, it's like, you know, you hear, my best friend is like a huge Dance Gavin Dance fan. And you can hear kind of the swan, kind of like the swan genre of kind of like guitar playing, which is dope. But I've just never been a fan of like the singers of Dance Gavin Dance. I love this singer. I love him so much. There's such like, the heavy vocals have such concise delivery and texture. It's something that like, it feels so good. It feels so like Wiley. But at the same time, there is so much more to it. There's so much precise control that is going into it. It doesn't feel like someone just screaming into a mic. It feels like there is such careful control and development of the style and the delivery. It almost like, I have kind of like my red, my red lines from, I've got my Charlie from It's Always Sunny lines talking about Pepe Silvia. Oh, yeah, yeah. My giant conspiracy where I can point to all these different things. But another person who I feel like is very similar to this vocal delivery style is the lead singer of this band Gatherers, which I saw back in college. They're an amazing band. I believe some of the members do like production now in Jersey. But their singer has like a very similar vocal delivery that I love, that has so much texture and so much power in it, but doesn't feel like it's just a kid screaming into a microphone. It feels like a concise style. And on the other end of it, the guitarist from Gatherers ended up being another band called Soul Glow, which my friend from college, TJ, is the drummer of. And they also just have this crazy, really bombastic style live that is way heavier, like way more intense and way more in your face than this. But also at the same time, it shares a lot of the similar spirit. But dude, Pulse is fucking rocks. Hell yeah. I think one of the things that makes their vocalists stand out to me is that there's a lot more groove in the delivery than a lot of post-hardcore. A lot of post-hardcore is either long kind of like legato stuff or it's like, you know, very like common rhythms and stuff like that. And this dude, like he's almost got the flow of like a rapper with what he, with his delivery, but it's still got that like aggression of it. And I think that it's such a neat cross section, the way that just this band in general deals with rhythm because they have so many cool, like quirky out of pocket rhythms that they incorporate into their stuff. Every time they have a, I don't know if one of them in the band is also a rapper or if they just feature a lot of people, but like any, anytime they do any of those sections, they also feel really cool. And like rhythmically, they're very interesting. Also on, I think it was run the ghouls, but also like, like just several of their songs, they have like extremely comedic lyrics. Like if you, if you listen to it, I think it's that one that, that mentioned something about the fitness grand pacer test, which I'm just like, that's out of nowhere, but also hilarious. It's just so like, it takes post hardcore is a genre that like takes itself sometimes so seriously. And me and my friends joke about this all the time, but the reality is like, you go to these shows and it feels so good. It feels like such a fun thing. And the idea of like, I mean the idea of like integrating a Scott artist into this makes so much sense because there's the sense of them having this music that is so like wild. And it's such a cacophony, but at the same time though, that they're having so much fun with it, it almost feels like they're doing what everyone like, like what no one is thinking, but everyone should be doing, which is just like having a blast. It's like having a blast with this kind of music. And that's why I like, I so desperately want to go to a pulses show. Cause I feel like you're listening to it. You've only barely tapped into it and then you see it live. And I feel like that's just going to be a crowbar to the face with how much fucking fun it is. And yeah, man, it's like the bridge. It's just such deep pocket, like funk bass that feels so good. And I just want to just like, it slows down there too. It's such a, such a, like normally those types of transitions like bug me, but the way that they did it, there's like so much just swagger and like just the little like high hat thing that they're doing. And then it's just like the, the slap bass is not something that you'd ever think you'd hear in like this type of music. And it's just, it's so cool. They kill it, man. They just totally kill it again. It's like, it just goes like this idea of style. They have so much style. That's something that, I mean, talking earlier about the idea of like taking a fresh take there's people who i feel like are kind of traditionalists where it's not the most novel like and and like you know i i have friends who are in bands that again like they're not doing anything that's totally like out of pocket but it's very traditionalist and and i love them for that reason but this is something that feels very fresh and like there is a unique style to them like you said they got a swagger like there's just like there's an undeniable kind of like yeah man it's just it's a flavor man it's just they got fucking sauce in this music god damn for real yeah i can't believe that you that you haven't listened to the whole album yet i i've looked at it on spotify i think i have like over half of the tracks hearted on on spotify it's so funny all right so what are we gonna end with what's our closure right i'm honestly like i'm like laughing at myself how much like man our fucking cycles must be synced up how effortlessly this is gonna dovetail into this last song i love it like pop pop Pulse is like like what i'm about to play you is is the primordial pulses from oh god what was it so the last band i'm gonna play is a band called milstead and i had to do this because this is maybe one of the most formative and important albums of my life and it's from a band that no one knows about um but in my in my world in my life you look at new york as like as an entity and you've got like public enemy you've got ramones you've got crime in stereo you've got someone like lady gaga you know you have someone like inner pole you have all these huge bands but right up there with the tops with the absolute greats like most influential is this band milstead and i'll go deeper into like what they mean and why they're so huge for me but the reason why i wanted to like put them on blast for this podcast in particular is that they just just like a week or two ago re-released their 2008 album um yeah which has never been on spotify before and they've got this song they've got this song that is like they if you look them up on instagram their description is the larry david of hardcore which i think is hilarious i love that but you want to talk you want to talk about style you want to talk about swagger man i don't know anyone in the world who did it harder than milstead they never got the fucking flowers that they deserved but this is my favorite track off of um yeah and it's called the fucking bronze let's listen let's go you're gonna have to get it right you're gonna go get a like okay believe me when i say there's no better part of me shamefully no truth behind my smile shorty i know you can surely tell all my limbs have been infected and by morning amputated so that nothing in this bed will ever resemble any part of any man you ever can trust me when i say there's no will behind my heart and a fleeting memory darling has been tearing you to shards and we won't focus on the exit knowing there's no way that we'll escape this all of the regret we've been expressing even though it's only temporary you know i've been putting me out of my misery go grab the gun i locked in the basement because i feel i'm not gonna collapse you know how ill i am you know how ill i am don't you know i'm not gonna collapse you know how ill i am? notes but i never could that was like the myspace era where everybody had like the really high high voices and shit yeah yeah and i i listened to this and again there's a part that's like really heavy really cool and he's just singing so softly and he's just leaning into his low register and i was like this guy's singing low and it sounds fucking incredible and you're right he's a total crooner and he has these moments that are just totally smooth vocal like and they have like they've got this one song fuck off of this like little like b-sides album that they put on called notions of storm or a notion of storms where they have that where they have just like it's just soft like rhodes piano and him singing and it's incredible and he could have been like a jazz like like vocalist but over this and you have these like parts that are so chaotic and crazy and them just like jumping around kind of music and then they have that ending where they have like that lead that's that kind of headbanger yeah huge and very spacey and ethereal and it's like as much as it sounds like this whole kind of again it's like cacophony kind of mess of like sound and styles i look back and i'm like this is where a lot of allopartists came from was this kind of music that was like a lot of music that was like a lot of music that was like a lot of this idea of like this high energy but then this huge atmosphere all like mixed in together is so integral to me but yeah man the style of it was something like unlike anything else i heard and because it was a cd that like i had in my hands i just listened to it a hundred times and it left this huge impression and maybe it's like again maybe it doesn't mean anything to anyone else but for me this feels like the whole world and when they re-released it on spotify i didn't listen to anything else for a week it's so good it's so special and it feels like such a special little corner of new york that feels like it feels like just the key to my upbringing and i just fucking love this album fucking love that song i think it's really neat with cds specifically or i suppose tapes but not so much anymore which is that and this is why i still love to buy cds outside of the fact that i like to own physical media because you know companies can just take shit away from you on a dime and then you just don't fucking own it anymore fucking hate that but like god on top of that is like the more you listen to or an album the more you understand it and the more you like you get it on a deeper level and it imprints more on you and i think that it's really neat because like you know having a cd in your car right you listen to it when you're driving anywhere it's just it what it's what turns on and you're like okay cool but you don't realize until you're talking to somebody else about it and you're like i know like every nook and cranny of this record because i've listened to it so many times and i think that that's something that's like really unique to having that one tape or that one cd that's just in your car that you know you listen to for like two months or whatever that like streaming you ox into your car or whatever and put on whatever you feel like i don't know it's something feels lost in there that is not a tangible thing but it's something that i don't know just a part of the culture that feels like it's kind of missing and i feel like that's also part of the reason why people don't have as much respect for albums as they used to ryan ryan ryan ryan ryan ryan ryan ryan number one owning physical media is like the most important thing that anyone can do because i couldn't agree more the idea that like spotify does not care about actually serving you good music what they care about is serving you the music that you are most likely to like that they want you to listen to so there's always some sort of profit motive behind what these companies are pitching you it's the same with netflix it's the same with like fucking video game companies they're not giving you a choice of any music they're giving you the choice of what they are interested in to show you and in that there's always like this this this this kind of whittling down and it's watering down in this diluting of good art and it's bad it's bad for people now i'm i never want to be a luddite and say that the way it was back when i was a kid was way better because every fucking generation in all of history has always said that there's a carl sagan in uh in uh what is it uh fucking uh science like a light in the darkness the demon haunted world is the name of he talks about how the the most ancient essay that exists in in all of human history i want i want to say it's it's not mesopotamia it's it's it's it's an more ancient civilization but the most ancient essay is about how the current generation is entitled and not nearly as intelligent as the generation that came before it's the fucking same it's macedonia i think is what it's so funny macedonian text it's the same as it fucking ever was everyone's always going to say that their generation was better that being said i agree with you that you know there's the pros and cons to everything and honestly i will say that the dawn of streaming the dawn of home studio recording is overwhelmingly has so many cons there's so many kids who never would have an opportunity to a make music and b listen to music that are going to listen to it now and make it now and that's a wonderful thing but you're absolutely right that the like i mean the the almost like desperate connection that you build to music and physical media when you go out you save the fucking money and you spent 15 bucks on a cd back when 15 bucks was a lot back when you when you're a kid and making that was a big deal and there is a devaluation that has happened to art and artistry which is heartbreaking because modern artists deserve to have that valuation of their work but then there's the other end of like also we don't need to be producing mountains of plastic with cds like we did back then that's just gonna plug up the oceans but now i i totally yeah but that being said again like going back to trent resner because i'm just obsessed with trent resner he talks about a lot about how uh yeah the kind of the closeness that you build with physical media and he talks about having like a subscription to a record like you know service back when he was a kid in pennsylvania and how he get records that he necessarily didn't even like wouldn't even like but because he had the record he paid for it he would obsess over and he would listen to it and he would pull value from it so owning physical media number one is important because you can support artists number two it's important because you can build up your own library and corporations you're not at their whim you're not uh under their thumb and you can actually curate your own interests your own style and your own taste yes um and number three you can develop that relationship with the art that you wouldn't be able to in the same way in a digital world and i think about all the time that just like you're not going to discover music or to build a relationship with music looking stuff up on spotify the same way that you did when you'd go into a record shop and that was like i was i i was the very end of record shops in new york city even though they are experiencing like a renaissance we're like i'd go in and i'd hear a song on an album that spotify never would have fed me through an algorithm because there'd be no indication that i would like it and that discovery was beautiful that connection i built was beautiful and that made some of the most lasting impressions on me so back to what you said initially like there's pros and cons to everything that are changes and it's world doesn't end you know the music world isn't going to end it's just going to change and that being said there are pros and cons but i agree with you that the loss of physical media and the loss of that connection is a shame it's a shame and i miss it all the time and on top of you're going into the the aspect of like what people are trying trying to feed you as far as like what you're you know what you're going to consume when it comes to media and art and things like this yeah but i there's also like such a big devaluation in art when it comes to like gets put on a streaming service gets no promotion and then like i i forget i forget the name of it but there were several things that were on like hbo max that just got pulled and they they never got uh they never got a physical release they were put on hbo max and then hbo max went nobody's watching this we're just going to take it down and so the people who like it have no way to watch it anymore because it's not on streaming it never got a physical copy made and so now there's just this amazing project that nobody's going to experience until it maybe gets picked up by another streaming service it's so weird because you you also talked about like the uh you know back when you were first buying your first cds and you finally saved up the 10 15 dollars to buy it and you know all that that's another thing that i kind of miss is like all of the the liner notes and things like that that was something that was such a big thing like i i would i would i would buy a cd or a video game or whatever when i was a kid and you know sitting in the back seat on on the drive home you're reading the manual to the video game or you're reading the liner notes and like the lyrics of of the song and stuff like that and i think that that's it's a shame that all of that has gone away and i i do understand like you mentioned as well you know the the aspect of not needing to produce as much waste and use as much plastic and paper because that's definitely you know a thing as well but i think that there was again just a little bit of extra connection that you had to something when you were reading the liner notes and you know there's just something about that that feels like it's missing and i miss it a lot to to do what i always do which is like bring it back to like promoting allopartist one way or another because you know i was i was trained as a salesman after college it's in my blood at this point yes um but one of like the goals of kind of like i tried to like pinpoint like what are the kind of like key kind of like who are the types of people that i want interested in allopartist what's the kind of person who i think might be interested in allopartist and how can i make art that that you know they might be interested in what that really is that's me just trying to make art for myself like me as an appreciator of music like what would i really really love and one aspect is the concept of physical media so there's a lot of projects that i have and that i've done in the past where when i put out no conviction no conviction is this whole like analysis of like the belief that people have in their own concepts of religion or the world or fate or what have you the way that they view other people and their beliefs and ultimately became me critiquing everyone's beliefs of like religion and stuff and then me realizing that it was just a critique of myself and the way that i viewed the world and that it ended up becoming kind of like a joke but while i was doing it i started writing out a pamphlet for a fake cult and what was the philosophy of this cult and how did they get their members and what were their main goals and i ended up creating this little pamphlet that i thought was interesting i made all the art for it and everything and then i printed out and printed a bunch of copies and then i wrote hidden messages in them and i wrote a bunch of copies and then i wrote a bunch of copies and then i wrote a bunch of in them. And then I had everyone who pre-saved send me their address and I sent everyone a pamphlet. sick and the idea behind it is just like how can you engage with someone in a physical way that's like low stakes it's super like low threshold it's easy to do and if i was if i was someone who just liked an artist if they sent me a letter and it wasn't just a hey scan this qr link and pre-save my new single but was actually like here's something i'm giving to you that if you want to dig into the music more there's more to find there's more for you to dig into and what i did with these pamphlets which is like my cool like secret was that inside the cult there were people who were trying to escape from it and they ended up writing secret messages in invisible ink in the pamphlets and if you put uv light on it you could see people like writing things like it's not safe here please help us and yeah i just like i was like what's something cool that i would find cool that could engage with physical media and attract more people who are interested in physical media because that's the kind of person i want to be working with those are people who i find will find the deepest kind of connections to our music and the music that i make because that's how i connect to music so the idea of having physical media and building your own music is really important and i think it's really important to be able to build your own music and build your own music and build your own music and stuff out like that i think is super important you know who you would get a kick out of is an artist called pacing they are a um kind of like alternative folky act but then they've also got like a harsh noise song and they kind of go all over the place anyway they just recently put out an album uh and they are gonna laugh so hard because the album the album title is so long but i'm gonna say the whole thing real poetry is always about plants and birds and trees and the animals milk and honey breathing in the pink but real life is behind a screen that is the name of the album it's also the first like line of uh the first song on the album which is called bite me but they did a really funny thing where they did physical cd releases and the album art on spotify and all that is this uh collage type of art style and so what they did is for every single cd they took an old dvd case and made a custom collage for every single one that's like the same general aesthetic but it's slightly different because they're all handmade it's fucking awesome it's so rad i i wouldn't even listen to that band and if someone pitched that to me if they're like oh you just missed their set but check out this merch that they i would buy it i'd buy it without without it's so good that that that kind of care and again it's like this idea like like there's so many bands that do it like again trent resner nine snails does it another the band that does it really well is code orange they have such a rich world developed around their music and that's something that i connect with very deeply because when i love an album i want there to be more the more i listen to it i don't want it to just be surface level but the idea of someone who takes the time and energy and care and effort to make something like that that feels like one-off that feels special that feels like i have a connection with us that that shit is so intangible but it's it's it's something that takes a lot of extra effort but it means the world and it can make a difference for a release oh my god i'm so stoked to do it i'm looking at the artwork for this now and it looks so fucking sick oh yeah god this shit inspires me to know when this is like some of the stuff that i really dig into of the stuff that makes me the most excited to create is not just creating a song creating like a vibe you know creating like cool production but making a world around the music that's what's the most exciting to me that shit is so fucking cool creative people are gonna find ways to be creative and new and unique ways and i think that that's just the way that it goes you you know our brains are wired differently and ultimately you know you you see all these uh things as new ways to new ways to just create something and i think that that's such a such a beautiful thing man them artists that they're gonna art yes man this has been a great episode i'm i'm so glad to have had you on is there anything else that you want to specifically mention before we sign off on the uh first episode of season four right i honestly like the only thing i can say is uh thank you like this is this is such an incredible idea for a podcast this is such a vital kind of podcast because it's not just you engaging with your own creativity and making something cool it's not just you collaborating with others with that creativity but it's also you're like putting on other people and building a community around like not just like finding fresh music and sending it out to other people but supporting artists who are not huge like that's such a vital thing and ultimately like i made this whole joke tiktok recently that you know the whole concept of the music industry is about monetization and how can you be as marketable as possible and i think that's a really important thing and i think that's a really important thing and everything seems to be bent around marketing and how can you appeal to marketers how can you niche down how can you like create a new subgenre but the reality is like the most important thing and always has been and always will be is the idea of mutual uh collaboration in community that that's always been the thing that's driven the most success it's always made the best art and you've created a format that on top of i think being something that could be enormously successful is something that is so fucking generative and sustaining for art so i wanted to say thank you i think this is a brilliant idea it's the reason why i followed you initially and it's the reason why i was so stoked when you were down to do it together but i think you've done something really good something that's really worthwhile and i hope that you know i hope to be listening to season 20 because the shit is important what you do really matters and just yeah dude fucking keep on doing it this has been amazing and thank you so much for having me it's been such a pleasure talking i appreciate that so much man yeah it's honestly it's the fact that i'm able to help artists that don't have the budget to be able to do all sorts of marketing and i think it's a really important thing and things like that with this you get an interview you get a you know a couple of tiktoks or instagram reels out of it like and all the and all you have to do is sit down and shoot the shit with me for a couple hours you know and i i i think that that's i i think it's so much fun and every time i always walk away being like that person was so cool i'm so glad i got to talk to them yeah man it's honestly it's incredible i couldn't be more stoked and this has been like such a pleasure and again there's nothing better like music is the greatest thing in the world and talking to people who love music is the best way you can spend your time other than listening to music so being able to do both those things in one sitting i couldn't think of a better way to use you know a random fucking thursday night you killed it this has been the most effective use of my time that i've had all fucking week i love to hear that this has been the fresh finds podcast the show about discovering new music with good people fresh here to heal here to what is the true foundation of our essence and is it true that we're all made in obsolescence because i don't want to live my life i don't want to live my life like all the good in me is just far out starlight like flower petals in red shift like far out starlight like flower petals in red shift and i won't take my claim every time i break it break that frame and retake my name break that frame and retake my name break that frame and retake my name i was so in salt all inside my skin now nothing grows down where i live and i said it was a fault when i took the hit now i know now i know now i know now i know that i'm done with it and when i go yeah go yeah go yeah go we gotta run with it there's more inside of me than just far out starlight like flower petals in red shift like far out starlight like flower petals in red shift and i won't take my claim every time i break it i i break that frame and retake my name break that frame and retake my name You were chosen here I'm here to heal when I'm closing in