Latest / Ghost Cult Magazine Podcast / PODCAST: Episode 718 - What's Behind "The Loss" Album, with Therese Lanz of Mares of Thrace

Transcript

PODCAST: Episode 718 - What's Behind "The Loss" Album, with Therese Lanz of Mares of Thrace · Ghost Cult Magazine Podcast

• 0:00
  I think it's a pretty, a pretty common trajectory.
• 0:02
  Like in your 30s, priorities, like a conflicting priority
• 0:05
  start pulling you in a bunch of different directions.
• 0:07
  And then sometime later you really, I mean, some people call
• 0:11
  it the midlife crisis, but I have really come to view it as a
• 0:14
  gift. Like you really start assessing
• 0:16
  what is important because like this is the, this is the back
• 0:19
  half, right? Like this is we, we got to make
• 0:20
  this mean something. And I just, I'm not, I'm not
• 0:24
  myself on this. I'm making gross rifts.
• 0:35
  What's up everybody? It's Kefi at ghostcultman.com.
• 0:39
  I'm super stoked there for many years to talk once again to
• 0:42
  Therese Lance of Mayors of the race.
• 0:44
  How are you doing? I am fantastic.
• 0:47
  There's a part of the like the first warm day in April.
• 0:51
  Everybody I know, myself and everybody I know with seasonal
• 0:54
  affective disorder, which is quite common this far north.
• 0:56
  Like we all feel our personalities coming back and I
• 0:59
  just want to go like like double backflip down the street in, in
• 1:03
  the sunshine. It's great.
• 1:04
  It's amazing. Awesome I'm glad to hear it
• 1:07
  yeah, we are also spring is springing out here in
• 1:10
  California. We go way back, you and I, back
• 1:13
  to before I I even worked at Ghost Cult and now I'm the
• 1:16
  co-owner. We, we.
• 1:18
  Congrats. Yeah, I thought, well, yeah, I
• 1:20
  mean, you know, it's been oh, year 13 and my partner may
• 1:24
  regret joining me as the co-owner someday, but any who
• 1:26
  here we are still plugging away. And I have been, you know, so
• 1:29
  fond of your work in this band for so long.
• 1:32
  And I really I didn't get a chance to talk to you about the
• 1:35
  last record, but it was obviously my comeback record of
• 1:37
  that year. And I, I know you know, your
• 1:40
  career and other things in life get in the way.
• 1:42
  And I think the days of every except for the upper echelons of
• 1:46
  people and I think the days of everybody doing a band full time
• 1:49
  forever is not possible. So first of all, great to see
• 1:53
  you and just thanks for continuing to keep going.
• 1:56
  In the words of my friend from Chicago's band, too dumb to
• 2:01
  quit. No, I that's, that's, that's
• 2:04
  actually more glib than I'd intended.
• 2:05
  I I did take I did take a good long time off for a moment.
• 2:09
  I was like, what will I will I feel like a bit of a goofball
• 2:12
  returning to music like at this point in life.
• 2:14
  But The funny thing is so many of my peers are also doing the
• 2:18
  same thing. And so I think it's AI think
• 2:20
  it's a pretty common, I think it's a pretty pretty common
• 2:23
  trajectory. Like in your third is
• 2:25
  priorities, like a conflicting priorities start pulling you in
• 2:27
  a bunch of different directions. And then sometime later you
• 2:31
  really, I mean, some people call it the midlife crisis, but I
• 2:34
  have really come to view it as a gift.
• 2:36
  Like you really start assessing what is important because like
• 2:39
  this is the this is the back half, right?
• 2:41
  Like this is we got to make this mean something.
• 2:43
  And I just, I'm not, I'm not my cell phone, so I'm making gross
• 2:49
  riffs. Please, more, thank you, please
• 2:54
  more. I live on gross rifts.
• 2:56
  That's what I'm here. That's why I do what I do still
• 2:58
  to this day. And I also am randomly back in
• 3:02
  music like after a very long hiatus where I never thought I
• 3:05
  would do music again, even just as a as a, you know, a side
• 3:09
  thing that enjoy myself and I I was very liberating.
• 3:11
  I was like, oh, I forgot what this feels like.
• 3:13
  This is with people that making music with people I like.
• 3:16
  This is weird, isn't? That just fantastic and that if
• 3:20
  anything, I appreciate it more now because of the break.
• 3:23
  Right, of course. And you know also, no one could
• 3:26
  have blamed you. You know, I was going to say,
• 3:28
  you know, more than 20 years in music for you at least.
• 3:31
  And the molting came out 15 years ago and the pilgrimage was
• 3:36
  13 years ago. So like that break between, you
• 3:39
  know, you have to live life and nobody stays in like, you know,
• 3:42
  encased in amber. We're living beings and we have,
• 3:44
  we have to grow and change. And I think the artist journey
• 3:48
  is to kind of fall. If you're not always, you can't
• 3:50
  always fall in love with yourself.
• 3:51
  I think you have to kind of keep it real.
• 3:53
  And like, if you're not feeling it or something else gets in the
• 3:56
  way, that has to take a priority, like adulting, you
• 3:59
  have to do those things right. I am actually pretty proud of
• 4:03
  like this is this is a fun era where my day job and my music
• 4:08
  stuff and art stuff actually get to support each other.
• 4:11
  I, it's funny thing you should say adulting because the most
• 4:15
  adult job I could possibly come up with for myself was video
• 4:18
  game developer. And, and so that's what I do now
• 4:22
  and I eventually like after after 11 years of making video
• 4:26
  games for other people, I actually founded my own indie
• 4:29
  studio and Casey is our, my drummer.
• 4:31
  Casey is our sound designer. I can't wait.
• 4:33
  It's not really. It's not announced yet, but I
• 4:36
  will give a hint that our first title is heavy music related.
• 4:40
  Amazing. I'm so stoked.
• 4:42
  That narrows it down. Let the guessing game in my
• 4:45
  brain, my journalist lizard brain begin.
• 4:47
  No, I'm sure we'll sit tight and wait for you to announce
• 4:50
  anything. And and of course we'll support
• 4:51
  you always. I've always felt like you were
• 4:54
  always much missed, even during the break.
• 4:55
  And then like I said, you know, the exile came back.
• 4:59
  It's such a a really great year for music and a really good time
• 5:02
  when we need just gross heavy riffs like you said.
• 5:05
  And this isn't much different. And, and I think all your music
• 5:08
  has always been personal, but the loss is, you know, following
• 5:12
  the, the something you know, it's a, your journey, right, as
• 5:15
  an artist and a lyricist and, and a storyteller.
• 5:18
  But I feel like this is a very personal story, is something I'm
• 5:21
  very familiar with. And I didn't know how much you
• 5:25
  wanted to leave it up to the listener or break it down a
• 5:28
  little bit. You know, I'm, I'm so happy to
• 5:30
  get this concept record from you, but I also want to know if
• 5:33
  you're OK. I am OK, I'm totally OK because
• 5:40
  like in large part because I have this outlet, because I, I
• 5:44
  can get it out. And I encourage everybody who's
• 5:46
  going through some shit to, to find an outlet.
• 5:49
  You know, also, I'm not too bothered by talking about it
• 5:53
  because one thing that I discovered in this process,
• 5:56
  grief is the most universal human experience.
• 6:00
  One thing that again, one fun little surprise about this part
• 6:03
  of life is our parents start dying.
• 6:07
  And every like all, all my friends are going through
• 6:10
  different variations of the same thing.
• 6:12
  And it runs the full spectrum from people who their parents
• 6:16
  are their best friends to people who haven't talked to their
• 6:19
  parents in 20 years. And so of course, the loss of
• 6:22
  your parents is is a very, very different experience.
• 6:24
  But and the song titles on the album are they're named after
• 6:27
  Elizabeth Kubler Ross's famous stages of grief.
• 6:30
  But then there's a couple bonus kinds of grief in there that
• 6:33
  that I encountered in my readings.
• 6:34
  And one of them is complicated grief.
• 6:36
  Complicated grief is like when your parent who sucks, who was
• 6:41
  the worst, dies. You still grieve, but you're
• 6:43
  grieving not necessarily them. You might be grieving the
• 6:46
  relationship you never could have had with them, like the
• 6:49
  opportunity to have like a mom or a dad that you never had,
• 6:52
  like you're grieving, etcetera. And I've had a lot of friends,
• 6:57
  like everybody's so afraid to like to be vulnerable and to be
• 7:01
  real. But the more real I've found I
• 7:03
  am about this, everybody around me was just desperate for a
• 7:06
  chance to go, Oh my God, me too. And to share some part of
• 7:10
  themselves. So like, we're all, we're all
• 7:12
  going through the same shit. Like we're all, we're all human,
• 7:14
  we're all, we're all suffering together.
• 7:16
  And that makes it for me anyway, that makes it a lot easier to
• 7:18
  bear. But like, yeah, but like, damn,
• 7:20
  I'm, I'm great. Oh good, yes, thank goodness.
• 7:24
  But like I also appreciate this because this is a topic very
• 7:28
  close to me. Actually.
• 7:29
  I was going to say the real surprise, not just the great
• 7:31
  opening track, but the anticipatory grief is something
• 7:34
  I've felt several times and then the actual grief happens and
• 7:37
  you're like, I don't even know what.
• 7:39
  I can't even cope because I already grew.
• 7:42
  I've been grieving for so long before the grief was actually in
• 7:45
  me. You know, it was pre grief.
• 7:47
  I don't know but it's such a good pre gaming.
• 7:50
  My grief at the bar at the crack house.
• 7:53
  I don't know if this is. Vittorio grief is that that was
• 7:56
  another one of the kinds of bonus griefs.
• 7:57
  If if anybody listening to this is not familiar, it's when you
• 8:00
  see the loss coming a long way off and as you exactly as you
• 8:04
  said, you, you pre grieve it. And many, many people have said
• 8:07
  that it's much worse than the real deal.
• 8:10
  And that's actually why it's the first track on the album, and
• 8:12
  it's also why it's the heaviest track on the album.
• 8:15
  Noted and also very apartment for a game designer to have a
• 8:18
  side quest in several side quests.
• 8:23
  But I like I like it so much. Disenfranchised grief is another
• 8:26
  one I love to unpack without like, you know, obviously
• 8:29
  breaking down. People should look up the Kubler
• 8:32
  Ross book on Death and Dying I think is the official title of a
• 8:35
  full book. There is actually no real rule
• 8:37
  book on on grieving. Hers is the best recognized and
• 8:40
  known. But I think, you know, if you've
• 8:42
  lost someone personally or close to you or had a slip, the whole
• 8:46
  world went through a psychotic break where we had a series of
• 8:48
  just gaping wounds. Oh, yeah, In humanity and people
• 8:53
  you hadn't thought about passing away, People you love passing
• 8:56
  away, you know, just crazy. But I'd love to hear about
• 8:59
  disenfranchised grief. Also, before we talk a little
• 9:01
  bit more about music. Disenfranchised grief.
• 9:04
  This is an interesting one. It's when you're grieving
• 9:06
  something that you you shouldn't, and I'm putting this
• 9:10
  in airports. You shouldn't grieving.
• 9:11
  You're not supposed to. This can be like I've had
• 9:15
  friendships end and I mourned it worse than a breakout.
• 9:18
  You know, I've had people realize, like I've had people
• 9:21
  come to the end of a career and realize that it was not working
• 9:24
  for them anymore. They they grieved that enormous
• 9:26
  part of their identity. Disability is another one that I
• 9:29
  think, again, that's something every single person just about
• 9:32
  is going to be staring in the face sooner or later.
• 9:35
  Like the loss of ability. That's that's definitely
• 9:38
  something to grieve. And I guess one thing that I
• 9:40
  wanted to say with this record is like, it's all real.
• 9:44
  Like it's all if you're going through this shit and you keep
• 9:47
  telling yourself I shouldn't be this broken up about it.
• 9:50
  Like if you, I had a friend who had to call in sick for a few
• 9:53
  days because he was so fucked up over his cat dying and he
• 9:55
  thought he felt so bad about it. He was like, it's just, it's
• 9:58
  just a cat. Like nobody, nobody at work is
• 10:00
  going to like listen to me. Like fuck your Co workers and
• 10:04
  they don't if they if they don't, at least have some
• 10:07
  compassion for the fact that like an important part of you is
• 10:10
  gone now and again. It's we're we're all, it's so
• 10:13
  universal. It's all, we're all struggling
• 10:15
  through this together. And like, Flynn's a tough guy
• 10:19
  doesn't help anybody, right? Yeah.
• 10:21
  Noted, I just had a recent, not my personal dog, but a dog I
• 10:25
  cared for a lot passed away suddenly and it was rough.
• 10:28
  And no, no puns intended, they're rough.
• 10:30
  I think anybody that's ever had a pet that is almost like a
• 10:33
  family member, it can be, you know, at, you know, equally as
• 10:37
  as jarring and painful as a close human loved one.
• 10:41
  And maybe pets are better than people.
• 10:43
  I think also shocked denial and anger are so potent that that
• 10:47
  usually usurps the other like it there takes so long to get out
• 10:51
  of your system, at least for me and some other people.
• 10:54
  And definitely denial is one I've I've definitely dealt with.
• 10:57
  So do you have a personal one of these that in in the general
• 11:02
  sense, do you have a personal one of these that you identify
• 11:04
  the most with I? Was I was raised by my mom is
• 11:10
  from like my mom grew up in a one room shack in poverty
• 11:14
  district in urban Manila in the Philippines.
• 11:17
  So she grew up a tough guy and she raised me to be a tough guy.
• 11:21
  So you know, tough guys like they don't let on to anybody
• 11:24
  that they're suffering and they get over things quickly.
• 11:26
  I am actually trying to unlearn that now.
• 11:29
  Like the only way to really the only way to really heal is to
• 11:33
  really go through all of the stages and just let yourself go
• 11:36
  through it. Like don't try to hurry yourself
• 11:38
  out or like I mean most people you reference to crack house
• 11:43
  earlier coping mechanisms like most people try to suppress
• 11:47
  feelings, especially feelings that they feel they shouldn't be
• 11:49
  having with whatever your coping mechanism of choices.
• 11:52
  I don't I don't drink anymore, but work was one of mine work
• 11:57
  and like going like crazy obsessive and like various
• 12:02
  hobbies is another one like like completely unhinged shit.
• 12:07
  I mean, people would like it. On the surface it looks less
• 12:11
  self-destructive than like, hidden the bottle.
• 12:12
  But like you can, you can fuck up your life just as bad by
• 12:17
  working working yourself to death as you can by drinking
• 12:20
  yourself to death. Girl saying for real workaholic
• 12:25
  here. And it's definitely like avoid
• 12:27
  all my problems, but I head down for 10 hours a day now.
• 12:30
  Let's like the music. Obviously you know, Casey is is
• 12:34
  back and you've been in other bands together.
• 12:36
  This record. I like the journey this records,
• 12:39
  I think a little more adventurous maybe than the
• 12:43
  exile. I think there's a lot of peaks
• 12:44
  and valleys, which helps tell the story sonically.
• 12:48
  And it's just like I just gross heavy rifts that we're just
• 12:50
  going to hashtag that and but also like great trimming and
• 12:55
  really like powerful emotional dynamic shifts that I think are
• 13:00
  going to really grab people and, you know, even give a bigger
• 13:03
  platform to your voice. A big difference between The
• 13:06
  Exile and the loss is that The Exile was written when I lived
• 13:11
  in Halifax, which is just north of Maine, and Casey still lived
• 13:15
  here in Calgary, which is just north of Montana.
• 13:17
  And so we had no intention of ever being a live band again.
• 13:20
  We just wanted, wanted to kind of like fart the record into the
• 13:22
  universe and then just like call it, call it a day.
• 13:25
  But like one thing led to another.
• 13:27
  And like this, like I, I was not thinking about playing stuff
• 13:31
  live. So I was like playing, I was
• 13:33
  writing riffs that were more ambitious than usual and I don't
• 13:35
  have to ever have to play this live, so I'm not going to worry
• 13:37
  about it. Whereas and then we wrote it
• 13:39
  like I just wrote my guitar riffs, like alone in the
• 13:42
  basement. Whereas with those laws, we
• 13:43
  wrote everything together. And there's so much more of
• 13:45
  Casey in it. And like, I just, I loved it so
• 13:48
  much more because of it. Like, I do not, I do not fucking
• 13:51
  get the auteur mentality. For me, so much of the joy of
• 13:54
  creating any kind of art is the collaboration.
• 13:57
  Like it's other people's ideas, other people's ideas that I
• 13:59
  would have never thought of. And yeah, nicely done.
• 14:03
  Caseys background is there's definitely a big Venn diagram
• 14:06
  overlap of our musical interests, but Casey is very,
• 14:10
  he's much like more techie proggy than I am.
• 14:14
  I'm like one chord is plenty, just one gross chord is fine.
• 14:19
  He's more, he's more of the he works the tech handle a little,
• 14:23
  but we agree we meet that botch, botch, botch is where we
• 14:27
  converge. Is that also a pun, Converge?
• 14:30
  Anyhow, no dad jokes. But I also know you like
• 14:34
  Converge because I saw you, you know, I'm seeing you live.
• 14:37
  And who doesn't like Converge? Most everybody likes them with
• 14:41
  good taste and sense. But yeah, I think there's also
• 14:44
  some very adventurous guitar stuff on here.
• 14:46
  It's not just like pounding riffs.
• 14:47
  I think there's some beautiful stuff in there that you put in
• 14:49
  that I I has always kind of seeped in here and there,
• 14:52
  whether it's clean guitar or some very cool, like dirty open
• 14:56
  chords or things that give layering.
• 14:57
  So. And I think he took a lot of
• 14:59
  chances vocally too. So I didn't know if that was
• 15:01
  also on purpose or just went to this material better.
• 15:04
  I've never been in a band with a really, really strong singer who
• 15:09
  could, who could really nail harmonies before.
• 15:11
  In case I'm gonna, I'm gonna lightly embarrass him here.
• 15:14
  He has the prettiest voice I've ever heard.
• 15:17
  And so sometimes it's fun to like do the classic beauty and
• 15:21
  the beast metal vocals formula in which he is the beauty.
• 15:27
  But I do really like vocal harmony.
• 15:28
  So now, now that I have somebody who can who can pull them off
• 15:30
  live, it's really, really fun. Like we've we've leaned in the
• 15:33
  backwood a bit a bit here and we do it, we do it live quite a bit
• 15:36
  too. And that's really fun.
• 15:37
  So yeah, there's there's a lot more clean vocals and there's a
• 15:39
  lot like the clean vocals are a bit more load bearing than on
• 15:42
  previous records. Right on.
• 15:44
  I think every drummer is a frustrated lead singer in
• 15:47
  disguise anyway. My personal experience as a
• 15:50
  singer and a bassist. So everybody behind the kit
• 15:52
  wants to be in front of the stage, Every one of them.
• 15:54
  That's their personality if they can only sing, and some of them
• 15:58
  can and some of them can't. But it's cool.
• 16:01
  And I love that you said Techie Proggy right about Casey's
• 16:04
  drumming. I think there's some the
• 16:06
  contrast between like where the vocal parts come in and then
• 16:09
  there's like just an insane death metal part or a black and
• 16:12
  death metal part that I really like hearing blast beats on this
• 16:15
  music. Like it's a treat.
• 16:16
  We both. Another thing we both are in
• 16:19
  hard agreement on is we both really really need dynamics
• 16:24
  music. Like if anything is all the same
• 16:26
  feel or the same tempo all the way all the albums or even all
• 16:28
  the song through, we both get bored.
• 16:30
  So that's great. So we both, I I once likened
• 16:36
  being in a band with Casey to, you know, how tigers at the zoo,
• 16:41
  they're like very intelligent and complex creatures.
• 16:45
  So in order to keep them from getting bored and destructive,
• 16:47
  you have to give them like enrichment activities, like you
• 16:50
  have to take a hamburger. I I this one zoo took an empty
• 16:53
  pumpkin like a pumpkin and stuffed it full of like raw
• 16:56
  hamburger meat and just let the tiger roll it around its
• 16:59
  enclosure. And I've often joked that Casey
• 17:02
  is the tiger and my songwriting is me stuffing a pumpkin full of
• 17:06
  raw hamburger for him to roll around his enclosure so it
• 17:08
  doesn't get bored. That is amazing.
• 17:11
  Wow, no notes. Perfect 9:50 analogy there.
• 17:17
  Yeah, I'm thrilled to hear that. And again, I really think this
• 17:20
  is the very powerful record for the early part of the year here.
• 17:24
  Since you are talking about playing live again, I I'd love
• 17:27
  to see this entire thing be performed in one go as a piece.
• 17:30
  I don't know if that's in the works.
• 17:32
  I know you have a whole years of material and and you haven't
• 17:35
  toured a lot and people probably want to hear the older jams who
• 17:38
  play the old shits. One square guy in the back of
• 17:40
  the room with his arms crossed yelling play the old shit and
• 17:43
  shouting out song titles. But I think this, you know,
• 17:46
  obviously you have a concept record and your brain starts to
• 17:49
  percolate. Like I would love to see you
• 17:50
  stage this or something. I have actually thought to my
• 17:54
  say that because I have thought to myself, would people actually
• 17:57
  want to hear us play this whole thing?
• 17:58
  Probably not if like we're on tour and it's like a Tuesday
• 18:01
  night in Nebraska or something. But I personally I like to play
• 18:06
  like 1/2 hour set. I love not out staying my
• 18:09
  welcome. Right, that's it's not a bad,
• 18:11
  it's not bad advice, you know, to younger musicians like, you
• 18:13
  know, get a very good it's like a comedian get 5 good minutes.
• 18:16
  If you're a band, get 25 great minutes and live.
• 18:20
  Yeah, absolutely. We do a damn.
• 18:23
  We have a like a six week U.S. tour with a pretty major
• 18:28
  headliner coming up. It's just every single fucking
• 18:31
  day somebody texts me, oh, did you hear this Horror Story that
• 18:35
  happened to the US border? And so, I mean, there have
• 18:38
  certainly been questions like, are we still going to do it?
• 18:39
  But like, yeah, we're going to try.
• 18:42
  Yeah, my fingers are crossed for you.
• 18:43
  I'm on behalf of all Americans, I am really, truly sorry to all
• 18:47
  our fam up north and down South and everywhere else.
• 18:51
  A lot of bands we've been talking about the impact of
• 18:54
  global relations in America. Unfortunately that I think
• 18:57
  you're going to see, the price has gone up tremendously, the
• 19:00
  visa prices, last minute visa questioning, cancellations and
• 19:04
  obviously you've been a visitor here many times and we'd love to
• 19:07
  have you back. I know as a fan I want to have
• 19:09
  you back, but you know, hopefully it goes as smooth as
• 19:11
  possible. I've had my share of border run
• 19:13
  insurance myself going each way because I Yeah anyway, long stay
• 19:18
  at the time. I have a strong policy regarding
• 19:22
  this that I believe in solidarity with American people
• 19:27
  who are going to be suffering because of this.
• 19:29
  Like people who do do stuff like take a, like a principled stand
• 19:33
  or a boycott or whatever, like don't take it out on like what's
• 19:37
  that? What's that?
• 19:38
  One quote from the graphic novelist Marjane Sastroppy.
• 19:42
  Canadian people and American people are very similar and we
• 19:45
  are not our governments and our governments are very similar,
• 19:48
  but we have stuff in common with each other, just not our
• 19:50
  governments. So I'm I would never take it out
• 19:55
  on other cool people who like growth rifts.
• 19:58
  That's what I'm trying to say. Yes, yes, and and the same goes,
• 20:03
  you know, both ways, like obviously look like Canadian
• 20:05
  businesses will also be impacted.
• 20:07
  Granted you guys make more stuff than we do, but like the
• 20:10
  absolutely, you know, businesses are being crippled and it sucks
• 20:14
  and there's no and there's no reason for it.
• 20:15
  It's like if there was a reason for it, I could get behind a
• 20:18
  reason for things, but this just seems nonsensical and said to
• 20:21
  ruin our our economy. So awesome.
• 20:24
  Luckily we have music to fall back on.
• 20:27
  I just have a couple more for you.
• 20:28
  This has been such a treat for me to get to see you and talk to
• 20:30
  you again after many years. And like I said before, Ghost
• 20:33
  Cult, even I was following the band and saw the band live when
• 20:36
  I lived in Boston and other places.
• 20:39
  And I think in the industry has changed a lot now.
• 20:43
  I was personally surprised that vinyl would ever make a comeback
• 20:46
  and I'm so thrilled it it's so it's so cool.
• 20:49
  But you know, what are your feelings about like in that?
• 20:51
  I don't remember if your earliest records were out ever
• 20:54
  out on vinyl, but I would imagine this will be.
• 20:57
  The molting is still not on vinyl.
• 20:59
  I'm sorry to say that our label would our current label would
• 21:01
  have done it but in one of my like inter country moves the
• 21:06
  masters have vanished which is the dumbest problem I've ever
• 21:10
  had. I think that I love the return
• 21:14
  to physical media and I have found I don't ever want to take
• 21:19
  the boomer stance of new technological developments are
• 21:22
  bad blah blah blah blah blah. In my life and because of my
• 21:25
  habits and in my artistic practice both to look
• 21:28
  professionally and personally. I have found doing things slowly
• 21:32
  and doing things analog and doing things the inconvenient
• 21:35
  way and doing things the mindful way where I really, really have
• 21:39
  to be present has only made me better and has only been better
• 21:42
  for my mental health. Actually, one one of the one of
• 21:46
  the many things that the loss is about the loss of I was I was a
• 21:50
  little, I was a little melodramatic at the time.
• 21:52
  It wasn't as bad as I was expecting, but it was the loss
• 21:54
  of my career in illustration to AI and I was so disgusted at how
• 22:00
  quickly companies that I wanted to work for, I jumped on the
• 22:04
  fire all of your human artists and hire robots instead.
• 22:08
  How quickly they jumped on the that train and how some bands
• 22:12
  who could have afforded the best human artists in the world
• 22:15
  started making their album covers with the eye.
• 22:16
  So I was like, out of spite, I was like, I'm going to make our
• 22:19
  album cover the most analogue way possible.
• 22:22
  I looked into stone carving. I looked into like like unboxing
• 22:27
  and metal, but I had to be realistic.
• 22:29
  So I landed on embroidery. And so our album cover is hand
• 22:33
  embroidered by me and I actually did it in the van while on tour
• 22:38
  with Conan, who are just about the sweetest people on earth.
• 22:41
  And at one point Dave Riley from Conan sat on my needles.
• 22:46
  And so there is a little bit of Dave's butt blood in our album
• 22:49
  cover. And I think that's a, that's a
• 22:51
  pretty good back story. Yikes.
• 22:55
  But to actually answer your question, fuck analog.
• 22:58
  Fuck analog. Like, it's just like a piece of
• 23:03
  something tangible and real in an era where everything is this
• 23:08
  disposable commodity that like has three seconds to get your
• 23:12
  attention and then the the Instagram algorithm gets it down
• 23:16
  the road. Like all this shit is precious.
• 23:18
  And I feel like I never appreciated music so much as
• 23:20
  when I was 12 and I had to say about my allowance and go buy
• 23:23
  ACD at the CD store. Nice.
• 23:26
  Yeah, this record artwork is fantastic.
• 23:28
  I was just looking at it again. And yeah, just I look forward to
• 23:33
  holding this thing. A shout out to Artifact Records,
• 23:35
  by the way. I'm a huge fan.
• 23:36
  Everybody knows, and many of my favorite physical packages have
• 23:40
  come from them from across the world to my mailbox, beautifully
• 23:43
  shipped, beautifully laid out, amazing care and details.
• 23:47
  And they've always been a very a very solid label.
• 23:49
  So thank you again to Artifact. Thank you again to Looters PR.
• 23:53
  I always try to end these with a wild card and so I've picked a
• 23:55
  fun one for you. Wild card question which is what
• 23:58
  is your favorite video game of all time as a player?
• 24:01
  There's like there's a 500 way tie.
• 24:04
  I can name some, I can name a couple of recent ones that like
• 24:07
  that. I there was a minute where I I
• 24:08
  was contemplating quitting the industry because for much of the
• 24:12
  same reasons that for much of the same things, like same
• 24:14
  things I've been talking about. Like I've worked on some games
• 24:17
  that were very a Co worker of mine calls it cynically
• 24:20
  designed. Like they weren't designed to be
• 24:21
  fun. They were just designed to be
• 24:23
  addictive and extract like microtransaction money from
• 24:25
  people. And so some recent video games
• 24:28
  that made me not want to quit like that made me want to stick
• 24:31
  around in the hopes of making something similar.
• 24:33
  Disco Elysium is a really good one.
• 24:35
  It's. Are you familiar?
• 24:36
  I don't think so. If I go back to gaming, I'm
• 24:38
  never going to leave the house ever again.
• 24:41
  Oh no. I'm one of those people.
• 24:45
  No, I get it. When when we get into something,
• 24:48
  we go hard. I I get that Disco Elysium was
• 24:51
  made by this weird team of people in Estonia who had never
• 24:55
  made a video game before. On the surface it's like this
• 24:59
  alcoholic self loathing cop in an A slightly alternate reality
• 25:04
  of like this alternate universe like post Soviet Eastern
• 25:08
  Republic in the 80s wakes up naked and the voices in his head
• 25:13
  are talking to him and there's a corpse hanging from a tree in
• 25:17
  the yard. And that's where it starts.
• 25:20
  That's that's where it starts. Well shit, maybe, maybe they're
• 25:25
  not OK. Oh no, he's not OK.
• 25:27
  He's. Not OK again like.
• 25:29
  Any, any art where you can really you, you can feel the
• 25:33
  existential weight that was on the creator's mind at the time
• 25:36
  instantly hooks me and you can you certainly could with that.
• 25:39
  Right on. All right.
• 25:41
  And do you have a favorite game you've ever designed so far?
• 25:46
  The one that we're working on right now.
• 25:47
  All right, that's a good answer. I'm not.
• 25:49
  I'm not opposed. Be proud of the current thing,
• 25:51
  just like the current thing. You have this new album.
• 25:54
  What? Again?
• 25:54
  What a treat for me to chat with you.
• 25:56
  I always enjoy it. You've you've been a great guest
• 25:58
  of mine several times and I I can't wait for this record to
• 26:00
  come out and for everyone to hear it.
• 26:02
  The loss is coming out from Artifact Records, from Mares of
• 26:05
  the Race. Therese, thank you so much for
• 26:07
  everything. I It's lovely to see you again
• 26:09
  and chat with you again. Yeah, fantastic.
• 26:11
  Thanks so much. Take care.
• 26:12
  You too.