Latest / Ghost Cult Magazine Podcast / PODCAST: Episode 811 - Leo and Shaun of Street Sects and Street Sex Talk About Their Two New Albums

Transcript

PODCAST: Episode 811 - Leo and Shaun of Street Sects and Street Sex Talk About Their Two New Albums · Ghost Cult Magazine Podcast

• 0:00
  I think it took a lot for us to get to this position in terms of
• 0:04
  starting some demos for Dry Drunk, taking a bit of a break,
• 0:07
  and now these records are out. I've already started writing
• 0:09
  material for the next batch of wherever those tracks will go,
• 0:14
  and we've got this tour lined up.
• 0:16
  There's momentum right now and we're going to keep it going
• 0:18
  well into next year. What's up
• 0:26
  everybodyitskeithy@ghostcultmag.com I'm super stoked for the first
• 0:30
  time ever to be joined by the gang from Street Sex.
• 0:33
  How are you today? Thank you so much for having us.
• 0:38
  Yeah, and also St. sex. So right off the bat the you
• 0:42
  know, £800 gorilla question is, you know, what an interesting
• 0:46
  time, you know, over 10 years together in a project and we now
• 0:51
  have this double album branch off, You know, why St.
• 0:55
  Sex as well as St. sex now. Well, basically it was, it was a
• 1:00
  way for us to separate the two creative impulses we had, namely
• 1:05
  one, being able to just go full throttle into brutal
• 1:09
  experimental territory, which we've, you know, which youth I'm
• 1:12
  sure you've heard us do with our established St. sex project.
• 1:15
  And also be able to indulge in our more, you know, pop
• 1:18
  fantasies, being able to do songs with choruses, hooks, more
• 1:22
  accessible rhythms, things like that, which is not something we
• 1:25
  were. I mean, it's something that
• 1:26
  we've loosely incorporated into songs before, but nothing that
• 1:29
  we've really fully committed to. So this kind of gave us the
• 1:32
  option to be able to do both of those things without having one
• 1:37
  corrupt the other, so to speak. Oh, I like that creatively.
• 1:41
  And you know, not everybody has that impulse.
• 1:43
  Some people just like, but throw it all against the wall like
• 1:45
  Pollock and see what what jizz sticks and drips down.
• 1:48
  And I like that. You have to, you know, like,
• 1:52
  hey, let's do another creative outlet at the same time.
• 1:55
  I do you envision 1 eclipsing, no pun intended, the other at
• 2:00
  some point. I don't think so, unless one
• 2:03
  demands more touring or some other commitment that could be
• 2:08
  anything. Hopefully some soundtrack work
• 2:10
  on either project, Wink wink. But I we're going to balance
• 2:15
  them both. We, we have a, you know, a
• 2:17
  rapport with our fans from this project that we've been doing
• 2:21
  for a long time and would never want to give it up and stop that
• 2:24
  communication so or keep them going.
• 2:26
  Right on. I think when you kind of build
• 2:29
  the fans expectations over a long period of time, I think
• 2:33
  it's healthy to, you know, push them also to hey, come with us
• 2:37
  on this, you know, trust us to come with us on this thing.
• 2:40
  So I'm not sure what the feedback has been for y'all, but
• 2:44
  I full color eclipse is so fun and so full of bangers and of
• 2:49
  course, like dry drunk is also like another side of the coin,
• 2:52
  like more of more of what we've been expecting.
• 2:54
  So I really dig both approaches and but full color eclipse for
• 2:59
  street sex is a so much fun. It's a lot of fun.
• 3:03
  It could also be that I'd like my brain is I just saw a Nine
• 3:05
  Inch Nails the other day kick off the tour here in Oakland and
• 3:10
  my brain has been buzzing with that kind of vibe.
• 3:13
  But oh so good. I mean, you know, Trent
• 3:15
  especially, you know, you can relate to this like sober Trent,
• 3:18
  this half of his career has been just stellar as a live performer
• 3:24
  and just a beautifully built show.
• 3:27
  And I love boys noise. I was I was so pumped to see him
• 3:30
  for the first time too, or hear them more than see them from
• 3:32
  where I was. But I think that was holistic
• 3:35
  choice by the tour. But yeah, so much fun.
• 3:37
  And I hope you would get soundtrack work off of off of
• 3:40
  either of these projects. I love the music video you guys
• 3:43
  just put out for the double track.
• 3:46
  Like I love that approach. Like, it's just so fun that
• 3:48
  like, here's all of us at once. And these things do work
• 3:52
  together in concert, even if they're divergent, you know,
• 3:56
  vibes. Yeah, thank you.
• 3:59
  Thank you for checking it out. We haven't talked with too many
• 4:02
  people about the music because it's not out there yet.
• 4:05
  Just a couple of tracks. We've definitely been seeing
• 4:07
  positive remarks on the pop stuff and some of that is from
• 4:12
  people who like the other band and some of it is just people
• 4:16
  checking it out. And that's the cool thing about
• 4:18
  each having its own lane is that for whatever reason, if it
• 4:22
  doesn't speak to a former fan, they don't have to go down that
• 4:25
  route. And it's really awesome to hear
• 4:27
  you described as fun because that was part of the process and
• 4:30
  making it is that it would be a little more playful, you know,
• 4:33
  like just step into different tones and expressions that we
• 4:36
  can't do in the other project. Or we we could do and and have
• 4:40
  tried a little bit, but we can be totally free form with the
• 4:44
  with the pop project if we want to, right?
• 4:46
  On I love it. And let's also talk about
• 4:50
  Compulsion Records, your new record label, which is the new
• 4:53
  record label from Health, which we're huge fans of them.
• 4:56
  We interviewed the band of a couple of times, seen them live
• 4:58
  a ton, love everything they do. And I feel like what a natural
• 5:03
  extension this is for the band that their motto is like 100%
• 5:06
  cum metal. St.
• 5:08
  Sex is a very good first. You know, what are their very
• 5:11
  good first releases on their own label?
• 5:13
  And I imagine, you know, sort of a wellspring for their own
• 5:16
  stuff. But how did and I clearly you
• 5:19
  must be fans and friends. How did you guys get hooked up
• 5:21
  with this? Because I feel like the Flenser
• 5:23
  did right by y'all for a long time.
• 5:25
  And I know you know, nobody's, you know, nobody is getting rich
• 5:29
  here in underground music and especially heavy, challenging
• 5:33
  music for listeners. So I'm a fan of that label.
• 5:35
  They're also local to me. So I've been following them for
• 5:38
  quite a while. But how did this new deal come
• 5:41
  about with compulsion and health?
• 5:44
  It came about kind of just kind of spur the moment last minute.
• 5:47
  We had originally planned to go and release these records with
• 5:53
  the Flenser who we've worked with for a number of years and
• 5:56
  who we still love and are friends with.
• 5:58
  But what it really came down to is we wanted to release both of
• 6:02
  these albums simultaneously as we had worked on them
• 6:05
  simultaneously and that we kind of almost got the funds or two
• 6:09
  degree to that. But they kind of got cold feet,
• 6:11
  which as you know is understandable in this economy
• 6:14
  and this, you know, music and marketing landscape that we're
• 6:17
  in. Trying to drop 2 records from 2
• 6:19
  projects on the same day is a is a big ask for audiences to come
• 6:24
  along with and, and it could be a financial risk.
• 6:26
  So they kind of wanted us to do 1 record 1st and then the other
• 6:30
  record down the road. And we were going to go ahead
• 6:32
  and do that even though we were like severely bummed because
• 6:34
  that was just not how we envisioned releasing the
• 6:37
  project. And you know, we've known health
• 6:39
  for a couple years now since we did that collapse track with
• 6:42
  them back in. We, we released in 2022, but we
• 6:46
  actually start working on that like a year or two before that.
• 6:49
  So we've kept in touch with them.
• 6:51
  Like we did that tour with them right after that club record
• 6:54
  came out. And they've, they've hit me up
• 6:56
  on and off to do like random backup vocal stuff for their
• 6:59
  songs here and there. And so it was just like, I was
• 7:02
  talking to Johnny and I was kind of telling them where we're at
• 7:04
  with like not being able to release the two, the two albums
• 7:07
  the way we wanted to. And he's like, Hey, we might be
• 7:09
  able to help you guys out. And within like a week, you
• 7:11
  know, he, he called back with his, with their creative
• 7:16
  director, this guy Joe McKinney, who's kind of basically the guy
• 7:19
  running Compulsion. He's like the Compulsion
• 7:21
  president. And then today we can put out
• 7:22
  both of these albums for you at the same time.
• 7:25
  You know, it's, it's just kind of more of like, we're not going
• 7:28
  to, we're not going to, we're not going to do it like a bigger
• 7:30
  label where we're going to give you guys all this PR and all
• 7:32
  this kind of stuff. It's kind of, you know, we're
• 7:34
  going to put the vinyl out for you and you guys kind of got to
• 7:36
  do the rest and but you will be able to, you know, put them out
• 7:41
  the way you want to. And so for us it was kind of
• 7:43
  like, well, you know, this is like, you know, we knew we were
• 7:45
  never going to have that opportunity again and why it was
• 7:48
  difficult to kind of not do it with the cleanser.
• 7:50
  At the same time, it's like when things line up like that, you
• 7:53
  know, you just, sometimes you just got to take a chance and
• 7:55
  pull the trigger. And it's just been, it's been
• 7:58
  amazing. I mean, within that first week
• 7:59
  of then put that offer on the table, They got the ball
• 8:01
  rolling. Masters were sent to the vinyl
• 8:03
  production plant. Everything was running smooth.
• 8:05
  And yeah, and Johnny, and you know, and, and especially I just
• 8:08
  want to give a shout out to, you know, Joe McKinney, the guy
• 8:11
  who's who's working with health on this compulsion label.
• 8:13
  Like he's just been commutative and, and, and helping us like
• 8:17
  get everything and like really just kind of helping us level up
• 8:20
  ourselves as far as being organized and navigating how to
• 8:24
  market the stuff on a daily basis.
• 8:26
  So yeah, that's that's a long winded answer to say, you know,
• 8:29
  it's it happened. It happened like at the 0 hour
• 8:32
  because we were just getting ready to sign that next contract
• 8:35
  for the Flezer, like we were going to sign up that next week
• 8:37
  or whatever. So if we had done that it, you
• 8:39
  know, it would have been too late.
• 8:40
  But you know, things worked out the way they did and
• 8:42
  everything's been smooth sailing.
• 8:43
  Well. You get very few chances at
• 8:45
  creative freedom in this business.
• 8:47
  And also shout out to Hector and the team over at Chromatic PR.
• 8:51
  We worked with them a lot. They connected us with health
• 8:54
  back in the day. So again, just burning the
• 8:56
  midnight oil, burning the weekend oil and much appreciated
• 9:00
  to get to talk to you today and super exciting because again,
• 9:03
  you don't get a lot of chances to reinvent yourself in this day
• 9:07
  and age. I always laugh at things like,
• 9:10
  you know, the metal archives, the very serious guys that do
• 9:13
  this on the Internet, who I, you know, I rely on as a journalist,
• 9:18
  but also like they don't count much like industrial metal or
• 9:21
  danceable anything or, you know, very, you know, and hardcore
• 9:27
  also, just like they don't consider it a genre of metal,
• 9:31
  which is weird to me, but you know, I've always considered you
• 9:33
  guys heavy and adjacent. And I love the collabs actually,
• 9:36
  and I'm hoping for more of them in the future because some of my
• 9:39
  favorite stuff from you is like the portrayal of guilt collab or
• 9:43
  Reverend Kristen Hader and when she was lingo Ignota, I was a
• 9:47
  huge fan of that stuff too. So and of course, health.
• 9:50
  So I, I hope this is just the beginning of of a very create,
• 9:53
  you know, a continued creative run for you guys.
• 9:56
  I think so. Yeah, yeah, I think it it took a
• 9:59
  lot for us to get to this position in terms of starting
• 10:02
  some demos for Dry Drunk, taking a bit of a break, and now these
• 10:05
  records are out. I've already started writing
• 10:07
  material for the next batch of wherever those tracks will go,
• 10:12
  and we've got this tour lined up.
• 10:14
  I mean, everything. There's momentum right now and
• 10:16
  we're going to keep it going well into next year.
• 10:18
  Right on. What a killer tour.
• 10:20
  This will probably come out while you're in the midst of
• 10:22
  that tour, but I hope we can catch it in one of these cities,
• 10:25
  either myself personally or somebody on the team, whichever
• 10:29
  areas you're hitting. Big King Yosef fan here.
• 10:32
  Yeah. He's he's great, yeah.
• 10:34
  I saw I saw King Yosef open for Health, which was wild and that
• 10:38
  tour was insane. And also, so there's your two
• 10:41
  poles for this music. I feel like it's music that
• 10:45
  appeal. I always felt like you guys had
• 10:47
  that kind of appeal to all kinds of different fans of music.
• 10:50
  Do you feel I don't have a sense anymore that Austin has like a
• 10:54
  scene like it used to have? I know there are cool bands from
• 10:56
  there and a lot of cool labels and cool businesses and things,
• 10:59
  but I don't have a sense that there's a preponderance of these
• 11:02
  kind of bands for you guys to be sort of team up with.
• 11:06
  So it's good that you can get yourself booked on national gigs
• 11:09
  and things like this and festivals.
• 11:10
  Oh, definitely. When we started the band, and
• 11:13
  for a few years after that, there was a thriving electronic
• 11:16
  and noise electronic scene. We threw some house shows and
• 11:19
  had people roll through. We would book shows with some of
• 11:22
  these acts and it was excellent. It it might still be happening.
• 11:26
  I don't hear much about it there.
• 11:28
  There was a pretty extensive house show vibe at that time,
• 11:32
  which honestly were the some of the best.
• 11:35
  But right now I other than the smaller festivals that bring in
• 11:39
  experimental heavy bands, I mean, they're there is a there's
• 11:42
  a metal scene here for sure, but it but it's a type that would
• 11:46
  totally exclude us. I don't think it's I don't, I
• 11:48
  don't think it has anything to do with any blend of electronic
• 11:52
  stuff at all. It's.
• 11:52
  Such a bummer because some of my favorite bands just find a way
• 11:56
  to paint with the whole crayon box, you know, as coloring out
• 12:00
  of the lines or in the lines, but with all the colors.
• 12:03
  And I just feel like that's sad. I know Levitation is sort of
• 12:07
  ramping up more metal than the last couple of editions, so some
• 12:11
  of the posts seriously. Yeah, I saw that as well.
• 12:13
  So who knows, we'll see what happens.
• 12:15
  And then again, you know, I, I some places, I think the old
• 12:19
  music industry and I came from that era also as a band guy.
• 12:23
  And I feel like that industry was very tied to scenes and very
• 12:26
  tied to local economies of music.
• 12:29
  And maybe Austin is less so much now and it's just a cool place
• 12:33
  to live and you can come from there and not play a lot there.
• 12:36
  But maybe when you play like a local show or release show, at
• 12:39
  some point that'll be like, oh, everyone will come out because
• 12:42
  we don't play much in our own town anymore.
• 12:43
  Even though South By is not very fun for those who live here,
• 12:47
  there it was but a week or two after this last South By where
• 12:51
  there was a news headline. Local news where it's like
• 12:54
  considering not even having music next year.
• 12:57
  So that that's kind of where things are going.
• 12:59
  I music will always be here and I'm sure it'll come in waves.
• 13:02
  But the the type of person that has moved here, the money that
• 13:05
  has come into the city, the tech focus and all that, it has
• 13:09
  shifted things for a lot of artists and people have moved
• 13:11
  elsewhere. Even even artists who were doing
• 13:14
  well when we started the band, they've moved to also expensive
• 13:18
  cities. But the LA is out there and
• 13:21
  other places. Sometimes people don't stay in
• 13:24
  Austin longer than 510 years. The also Gentrification albums,
• 13:28
  one through 5 releases, EPS. Yeah, just wild.
• 13:35
  And when I saw the same thing happen in Brooklyn, bands were
• 13:37
  moved to Brooklyn. They don't want to really be
• 13:39
  from Brooklyn, but they want to say they came from Brooklyn.
• 13:41
  So they moved as a band to Brooklyn.
• 13:43
  Then they found out how hard it is to live in New York.
• 13:45
  And then I moved from New York. I was like, forget this, I'm
• 13:47
  going to move to the West Coast. Yeah, and come out here and it's
• 13:51
  about the same. So, you know, just less humans.
• 13:54
  Yeah, I live in San Francisco, less humans, humaning.
• 13:57
  So I like that the most, even though I'm a East Coast guy
• 14:00
  predominantly my whole life. But yeah, down here now that's.
• 14:03
  Kind of like out of the out of the, you know, the, the pan and
• 14:06
  into the fire. Like from Brooklyn to San
• 14:08
  Francisco as far as ring goes though, right?
• 14:10
  Yeah, it's not great. I'm just lucky.
• 14:12
  I gotten lucky in my life. But you know, it's tough.
• 14:16
  And I came here with like a big tech job that I don't have
• 14:19
  anymore. It's funny Leo Leo and I didn't
• 14:23
  move to Texas to say we were from Texas, but we met in Fort
• 14:26
  Myers, FL and I must say it was always cooler to say we're a
• 14:29
  band from Austin, TX rather than Fort Myers, FL where no one goes
• 14:34
  or has heard of. I.
• 14:36
  Don't know how cool it is anymore though.
• 14:38
  I only know if Fort Myers is like a baseball spring training
• 14:42
  city if you're a sports person. So like I have no connection to
• 14:46
  most. Of that, it's got the Edison,
• 14:48
  Ford, Summer Home Estates. People get married out there,
• 14:51
  people. People go there to die and look
• 14:54
  at the beaches. Yeah, let's.
• 14:56
  Get the Lonnie Pie Resort on the beach for Spring Breakers, which
• 14:59
  is. There it is.
• 15:01
  There it is. Not much else.
• 15:03
  So going into dry drunk, let's take let's take each of these
• 15:06
  for a second separately before we bring it back.
• 15:10
  You know, I don't know which did you did you conceive of these
• 15:12
  together and you write them separately?
• 15:15
  Dry drunk definitely feels like a very, you know, a completely
• 15:19
  cohesive, they're both very like, you know, their own thing.
• 15:22
  But I love that dry drunk is so just like double, triple down on
• 15:27
  everything I've ever loved about the group.
• 15:28
  So I love how abrasive it is and raw.
• 15:31
  And I do like that it's experimental for me.
• 15:33
  That tickles all my weird avant-garde funny bones that
• 15:36
  I've always had. But, you know, obviously you're
• 15:39
  the first fan of your new music, so when you make new music, you
• 15:41
  have to dig it first. So were these both kind of
• 15:44
  written side by side, one and then the other?
• 15:47
  And then you decided that we're going to put them out together
• 15:49
  if we can. How did that come about?
• 15:51
  The the timeline here is tricky. It we dry drunk was definitely
• 15:56
  1st and that that I started demos for that at the start of
• 16:01
  2020. We had just gotten off tour with
• 16:03
  portrayal of guilt, some local friends.
• 16:05
  And then of course, the pandemic hit.
• 16:08
  Everybody was in lockdown. Leo and I were in this this
• 16:12
  crappy, crazy house in East Austin.
• 16:15
  And I just said about writing as much as I possibly could, making
• 16:18
  the best of it. And I wrote up to like 30 demos
• 16:21
  or so up until I want to say July, maybe, maybe a bit longer.
• 16:27
  And then the necessary break happened.
• 16:31
  And those were shelved for for a minute.
• 16:34
  And when Leo and I started talking again, the first thing
• 16:36
  we did was talk about those tracks.
• 16:38
  He was set on finishing them. And I thought we were going to
• 16:41
  scrap them because I, I had, in terms of creating music and
• 16:46
  looking into new techniques and being a electronic producer of
• 16:49
  sorts, I, I, I had developed. And so listening to that, the,
• 16:53
  the demos from there, I, I, I would have reworked them in a
• 16:57
  way that might have been taxing. So Leo posed this deal.
• 16:59
  He's like he had gotten in contact with Ben Chisholm of
• 17:02
  Chelsea Wolf. And our arrangement here was why
• 17:06
  don't we collect the best demos we can out of this and the ones
• 17:10
  that seem the most finished and send them over to him and have
• 17:14
  him work his magic. He's he's an excellent producer.
• 17:17
  He works with a lot of bands and take the, you know, take my
• 17:21
  hands off off reworking those. And, and after that we ended up
• 17:26
  talking about working on some pop tracks and I started
• 17:30
  creating demos for those. So that that's quite a bit
• 17:33
  later, though. That's like, when did we, when
• 17:35
  did we officially start those? Leo like 2022.
• 17:38
  It was at maybe a little bit before the health tour, but
• 17:40
  definitely after we. Yeah, we were talking about it
• 17:43
  before the health tour and then, yeah, you know, like
• 17:46
  conceptualizing it definitely during.
• 17:48
  And we, we might have, we might have had a demo or two before
• 17:51
  the health tour. But, you know, once we got back,
• 17:52
  that's when we kind of, you know, I really started to kind
• 17:55
  of materialize. Yeah.
• 17:56
  And it was a learning curve for me.
• 17:58
  I, I never made music like that. So I had to up my skills and
• 18:01
  started listening to a lot more, trying to find electronic music
• 18:07
  that that would inspire me for the sound design, picking a
• 18:10
  little this and that and moving forward with that.
• 18:12
  And at some point we pitched it to Ben like, hey, how would you
• 18:15
  feel about working on this with us, Like collaborate trading in
• 18:19
  a sense. Maybe some tracks I send you the
• 18:20
  sessions, you work in in the session, send it back to me and
• 18:25
  essentially end up producing both albums.
• 18:27
  But. But it was one after the other.
• 18:30
  Yeah. And then and then at some point
• 18:32
  he's been was putting final touches on Dry Drunk and we're
• 18:35
  still working on Full Color. And and they sort of started
• 18:40
  quote, you know, meeting each other in the middle, but
• 18:43
  definitely we were still working on full color for quite a quite
• 18:46
  a bit after dry drug was finished.
• 18:48
  Did I answer all the questions? Yeah, that was great.
• 18:51
  You guys are incredible. I need this kind of vibe from
• 18:56
  everybody, everybody watching this.
• 18:58
  This is what you should do when you interview band.
• 18:59
  It should be prepared. It's hard to talk about art and
• 19:02
  I I sometimes ask double barrel questions, so I'm trying to up
• 19:06
  my game all the time too. I've been doing this a long
• 19:09
  time, but what I love about the Street Sex album is like, again,
• 19:14
  it's a whole new palette of sound.
• 19:16
  It's still you, it's still the both of you, but it's it's got
• 19:19
  this incredible sound and I love Ben's work.
• 19:22
  By the way, I'm also a huge Chelsea Wolf fan.
• 19:23
  It's funny that she's hitting like anniversaries now of like
• 19:26
  her best music from that would be like closely associated with
• 19:30
  what this is. And and then she's kind of moved
• 19:33
  on to some other things and still kind of, you know, doing
• 19:36
  some of her older materials still.
• 19:37
  But it's kind of fun that it's like 10/10/12 years of these
• 19:40
  couple of records she did where she leaned hard into that.
• 19:44
  And I saw her, yeah, tour with Youth Code and I saw her.
• 19:46
  You know, Oh. Yeah, and then and it was like,
• 19:48
  oh, this is cool. And then she took a left turn as
• 19:51
  you want to do as an artist, which is amazing.
• 19:53
  But I love the the the the sex album because it's also like a
• 19:58
  whole different thing. So I imagine you were like, do
• 20:02
  you change your own listening habits?
• 20:04
  Like, oh, you know, I'm gonna go down this road.
• 20:07
  Maybe I should pull some references and listen to some
• 20:09
  similar artists. Was there anybody?
• 20:11
  Did you just make the music you weren't hearing?
• 20:14
  From yourselves in another way. Did you hear it from someone
• 20:16
  else and be like, oh, I would like to do something like that
• 20:18
  someday. That would be fun.
• 20:19
  Well. Just just to back it up a bit, I
• 20:22
  just want to say I appreciate that you hear cohesiveness and
• 20:24
  Dry Drunk because when we when we were working on the demos,
• 20:28
  our intention was to make a spiritual sequel to In Position.
• 20:32
  So that that was the intention. And when I handed those over to
• 20:35
  Ben and some of it came back my way, he was doing mixes of what
• 20:40
  was there. And on occasion I was adding
• 20:42
  things. And then later I added the
• 20:44
  interludes. Those would be the the newest
• 20:46
  additions to that that album. So those the interludes were
• 20:49
  written like years later and and again to to match it with in
• 20:54
  position. We have those interludes so that
• 20:56
  it's an album flow. We're of a certain age where we
• 20:59
  want to, we want to hear that. We want to go on that, that oral
• 21:02
  journey, you know, so that that's part of that for full
• 21:05
  color on the writing. There's so many ways to, to, to
• 21:09
  look at that. On the one hand, I, I always
• 21:11
  listen to music in that way, listening to something for its
• 21:16
  production and then switching it up and, and, and listening to it
• 21:19
  as a song. I'm primarily interested in
• 21:22
  sound design. You can hear it in streets,
• 21:24
  extra stuff being crammed in there.
• 21:27
  Sometimes you may think there's no pattern, but there, there,
• 21:30
  there's always a pattern to to a lot of it.
• 21:34
  It maybe is a a bit crunchy in the mix at the end, but
• 21:37
  definitely always a, a, a puzzle solved.
• 21:41
  But for full color, there had to be a balance.
• 21:43
  Like I, I, I'm very much interested in instrumental
• 21:46
  electronic music, but I, I can't just pursue that because we have
• 21:49
  a vocal in and and Leo, we're trying to with this project.
• 21:52
  We're trying to write songs. It wasn't necessarily we're
• 21:55
  trying to chase down even electronic music.
• 21:57
  This first batch definitely leans on electronic and even
• 22:01
  goes into dance territory. I think there's some tracks when
• 22:03
  people hear the album in full, they'll hear that.
• 22:06
  It doesn't necessarily follow these couple singles that we put
• 22:09
  out. Turn Blue has that a bit of that
• 22:12
  anthemic, raging electronic sound, but there's a there's a
• 22:17
  little bit else. There are other other avenues on
• 22:20
  on the album. And so there was some back and
• 22:23
  forth. We I just didn't a lot of lots
• 22:25
  of new things to learn and writing a new genre and taking
• 22:29
  on different things. So in some pieces I started with
• 22:32
  just melody and some pieces I started with just drums and it
• 22:36
  would change what what came after in terms of music I was
• 22:41
  listening to. I mean, I, I definitely was
• 22:44
  listening to some sound design guys, listening to Floating
• 22:46
  Points, listening to that mixtape by Flume.
• 22:50
  Hi, this is Flume, I believe, just excellent.
• 22:53
  I really love Elangelo who worked with the weekend on a few
• 22:57
  albums and he put out a lot of people don't talk about his solo
• 23:00
  work, but he had this EP he put out called State of Mind and I
• 23:04
  listened to it over and again and just something it just found
• 23:07
  that very, very inspiring. And I can't pick a point in
• 23:10
  color where these records came out, but you know, it, it
• 23:14
  trickles down to some degree. But I, I, I was, I was
• 23:17
  definitely listening for how can I, how can I insert myself into
• 23:22
  pop electronic music as best as I can?
• 23:24
  That was, that was my end of it. It was, it was always very cool
• 23:28
  to send something that is unusual for us over to Leo and
• 23:31
  here, here a demo vocal, come back on it and just see what he
• 23:33
  was going to do, you know, because it was a new canvas.
• 23:36
  Right on. And the same along those same
• 23:37
  lines for you, Leo, did you? Was this freeing for you?
• 23:41
  I'm going to go pursue a whole Nother Avenue, a lane of my
• 23:45
  talent on Uncharted yet. Did you get to like, you know,
• 23:48
  how did it feel opening up for you to get those tracks and then
• 23:51
  send them back with your, you know, a guide vocal or a
• 23:54
  finished vocal? Even.
• 23:55
  Yeah, it was absolutely freeing. It was, you know, it's something
• 23:59
  that, you know, I've been wanting to do for a while
• 24:02
  because, you know, Sean and I have been playing in bands
• 24:04
  together for about 20 to 25 years.
• 24:06
  And you know, before we started St.
• 24:09
  Sex, we played in a lot of kind of guitar driven pop stuff, kind
• 24:13
  of stuff like we were big fans like The Smiths and Pulp Suede
• 24:15
  and kind of more of that kind of sleazy, jangly, kind of up tempo
• 24:19
  but melancholic pop kind of stuff.
• 24:21
  And it wasn't until St. Sex that we actually started
• 24:24
  playing aggressive music together.
• 24:26
  I played him some hardcore bands before Sharon and I started
• 24:28
  playing, but him and I had primarily done melodic type of
• 24:32
  stuff. And, you know, we both love
• 24:34
  that, that kind of, we both love listening to that kind of music
• 24:38
  and, and we, we loved writing it together back then, but there
• 24:41
  just really wasn't like a clear window to be able to explore
• 24:45
  that fully in Street Sex without making it sound like a different
• 24:50
  band. And so really kind of like the
• 24:52
  only way to do that was, was to make it a different band.
• 24:54
  And so for me thematically, like the street section material is
• 24:59
  extremely dark, you know, I mean, writing, writing lyrics to
• 25:02
  that kind of stuff, it, you know, it's in order for me to
• 25:05
  write honestly, which is what I always try to do, Like I have to
• 25:09
  kind of put my, you know, my thoughts and my memories and my
• 25:12
  imagination into some pretty dark places.
• 25:14
  And while that's not, you know, it's not like I'm living through
• 25:17
  that while I'm writing an album, it's still, it still can be kind
• 25:19
  of not like the most fun process, you know, you know,
• 25:24
  screaming and, and, and and you know, you're trying to write a
• 25:28
  dark song and you and you've got to pull from a dark place and
• 25:31
  being able to do this pop stuff. It's like these are pop songs,
• 25:34
  you know, or there are attempt at pop songs.
• 25:36
  I mean, calling something pop is kind of presumptuous because pop
• 25:39
  is actually extremely difficult to do well.
• 25:42
  But these are this is our attempt at like more traditional
• 25:45
  types of song craft. So for me, it was kind of like I
• 25:48
  just the only rule I gave myself was like, whatever's on my mind,
• 25:51
  whatever I'm feeling at the moment, whatever shot, whatever
• 25:54
  the music that Sean is writing makes me feel I'm just gonna
• 25:57
  write from that place. And it doesn't have to fit
• 25:58
  within this pre established, you know, nihilistic Dark World of
• 26:02
  St. sets. So, so yeah, it was, it was it
• 26:05
  was it was it was it was great. You know, it's a great process.
• 26:08
  Right on, and as always, a band that has their, you know, very
• 26:12
  good grounding on a visual style.
• 26:14
  I love the two album artworks and how, you know, they both
• 26:18
  represent, you know, each project and the music video was
• 26:21
  quite the same. It was really well done.
• 26:23
  So I would love to, you know, hopefully get more of that.
• 26:26
  You know, whether it's, you know, you know, this would lend
• 26:29
  its, I know financially, I don't know.
• 26:30
  But I know either of these albums would lend its itself to,
• 26:34
  you know, an animated movie or even a short film or longer
• 26:38
  form, you know, version of each, some kind of storytelling,
• 26:43
  visual, graphic anything, because I feel like you've
• 26:47
  always had your, you know, thumbs on that very well.
• 26:49
  Thank you. Yeah, we'd love to.
• 26:50
  I mean, we wanted to do an animated video for the longest
• 26:53
  time, but I just said like we just never had the budget for it
• 26:56
  and kind of had to kind of kind of set that aside and kind of
• 26:59
  just kind of kind of planned. Like, OK, you know, now is the
• 27:02
  time if we're going to if we're going to spend money on
• 27:04
  something with you got 2 records coming out, like now's the time
• 27:06
  to do it. And we're super excited.
• 27:08
  We finally got to do that animated video with Ben Clarkson
• 27:12
  is an animator and at a Canada who did the video and yeah, he
• 27:15
  did a fantastic job And you know, he did his own it's it's
• 27:18
  very much like recognizable as his own animation.
• 27:21
  Like if you go to his website or look at some of his comics, like
• 27:23
  it's very much his style, but he kept it within like the, you
• 27:27
  know, the pre established St. sex world with like Lizzy and
• 27:30
  and and the themes of the album. So yeah, I couldn't be happier
• 27:33
  with that animated video. But as far as when we can do
• 27:36
  something like that again next, let's hope.
• 27:38
  Hope hopefully sooner rather than later.
• 27:40
  Right on. And so as we wind this down and
• 27:43
  I want to give you back the rest of your days, you have this big
• 27:45
  tour coming up with use code and King Joseph and anything else
• 27:49
  sort of in the works that we can look forward to later in the
• 27:52
  year or next year like you said. Not yet, unless you can think of
• 27:56
  something. Leo, do we have anything?
• 27:59
  You mean we got, I mean we got 2 records coming out next Friday.
• 28:02
  We got a tour starting next Saturday.
• 28:05
  That's pretty much, yeah. That that's, we got a lot on our
• 28:07
  plate right now. But it's, but I know Sean's
• 28:09
  working on demos for the next pop record.
• 28:11
  But as far as when any of that stuff will materialize, I mean,
• 28:14
  you know, not, not, not not too soon, but right now, yeah, we're
• 28:18
  definitely staying busy with with what we got in front of us.
• 28:20
  And yeah, I think that's it for now.
• 28:22
  It's interesting to think about the future.
• 28:24
  I've been at our practice space here putting together sounds for
• 28:27
  for tour since since about 9:00 AM.
• 28:29
  We're putting in a lot of those those days as we're getting
• 28:31
  closer to this, this tour and balancing it with a with a day
• 28:34
  job, but not today. We put it.
• 28:36
  We requested some time off to for this tour.
• 28:39
  So finally getting to settle, settle in and do some long
• 28:42
  hours. But I've been here for a while.
• 28:43
  So I'm we're completely immersed in the present, though I, I
• 28:46
  would love to get back to some of those, some of those demos
• 28:49
  that there's something about just coming toward the end of a
• 28:52
  record. It's good to close it off, but
• 28:54
  then to not stop to to keep going while the others gasoline
• 28:58
  on it. You know, on the creative
• 29:00
  impulse. Right on.
• 29:02
  I love to hear it. Keep it going for sure.
• 29:05
  I like to end these interviews with a wild card question, so I
• 29:08
  was going to ask the either of you.
• 29:11
  Here. My wife, my Wi-Fi is coming out.
• 29:14
  Wait a minute. Get put on the spot sometimes.
• 29:18
  But yeah, this is something I copied from somebody much better
• 29:21
  than I. So I like to ask people a wild
• 29:23
  card question and these interviews.
• 29:25
  And so the one I have for each of you is what is the last good
• 29:28
  movie you each saw? This is an easy one for me.
• 29:33
  I went to the theater the other day and saw that new horror
• 29:36
  movie Weapons, the Zach Krieger movie.
• 29:39
  I was a big fan of Barbarian, his first movie.
• 29:42
  I thought it was like one of the more original horror films to
• 29:44
  come out in years. And this new one he did,
• 29:46
  Weapons, I think kind of improved upon it in every way.
• 29:48
  It was the best movie I've seen in theaters all year and I can't
• 29:51
  recommend that movie highly enough.
• 29:52
  Excellent movie, Leo. Keep talking about it, I'm
• 29:54
  trying. To maybe anything doesn't have
• 29:58
  to be at the movies. Could be, you know, something
• 30:00
  you watched. For any of your listeners out
• 30:02
  there who haven't seen the movie yet, like it's a movie you want
• 30:04
  to go in cold, you don't want to know too much about it.
• 30:06
  So I'm not going to say too much about it because, you know, it's
• 30:09
  it's got a lot of really great, like wild turns and surprises in
• 30:12
  the movie, which are to me the best kind of movies.
• 30:15
  I also heard good things about that movie so I will check it
• 30:17
  out the. Last good movie I saw was A
• 30:21
  Ghost Story with Casey Affleck. That was a real tearjerker.
• 30:25
  I didn't, there were elements of it at the start that I that I
• 30:29
  didn't, you know, that we're kind of pushing me away.
• 30:31
  But by the end of it, it was, it was pretty brutal, pretty
• 30:34
  emotionally devastating. I don't know how to give an
• 30:36
  overview of that necessarily, but I recommend people check
• 30:40
  that out. It definitely is eye opening.
• 30:43
  Everyone had has Will Oldham in it too, doesn't it?
• 30:45
  Yes. Yeah, he's a he's part of a
• 30:48
  party scene. Yeah, that was a surprise.
• 30:49
  I forgot about that. Yeah.
• 30:51
  Nice work. All right.
• 30:52
  Good job. I mean, I'm not sure what your
• 30:55
  trepidation was, Sean. Good job there.
• 30:58
  And Leo, thank you guys so much. So nice to meet you and hash it
• 31:02
  out with you to talk about. Yeah, so cool to talk about
• 31:04
  these two new records. Congratulations.
• 31:07
  Both these records are coming out from Compulsion Records real
• 31:10
  soon. This will come out sometime
• 31:11
  after. Good luck on the tour.
• 31:12
  Be safe, as I always say to everybody.
• 31:14
  And yeah, we'll do it again sometime.
• 31:16
  Thanks so much for hanging out with Ghost Cold.
• 31:17
  Thank you so much.