#it feels too time consuming for an app i use to go 'what shitty 80s horror movie can i watch today'

[t-800]

......Firecracker made me finally post an actual film review on letterboxd instead of my usual bullshit

[knxve]

gif credit @ hekatc-blog

hi welcome back for another edition of here’s another muse’s bio because what is self-control!! tonight we’re bringing arthur seaton (knave of hearts) to the neighborhood; he’s probably been cruising around in his shit car listening to 1970/80s alt-punk rock with an old fast food soda cup on the passenger side floor. 

if you’d like to read the full app, please use this link because i am not reformatting the text for tumblr but under the cut, you will find a string of tldrs about him, his past, his personality, and potential plots!! dm me and we can talk 

arthur seaton (knave of hearts) your local under-achieving 31 year old  

previous bouncer, food mart cashier, courier, and casino floor runner at the heart’s palace. currently falling back onto some courier work and looking for new jobs so hire him for your petty errands i guess. he needs gas money.

on his personality: seemingly easy-going and flexible with a silver tongue to boot, he would seem like someone you could get along with pretty easily but tbh really he’s a mess. he’s doesn’t feel fulfilled by his forays into faith, his dead end jobs, relationships, etc. and continues moving on through his life this way; just doing shit and running to/from things so he doesn’t really have to get too deep into any single thing. long story short, he’s shit at sitting with himself and it makes him flighty and flippant when it comes to his relationship with others. he puts himself first and will do whatever it takes to save his own skin. underneath everything is a greediness and jealousy that consumes him and he finds overwhelming. it’s very at odds with the type of godliness that his step-mom tried to raise him with and what could have been and he is bitter and confused about. oop. we love a vicious cycle here.

after a stint at the heart’s palace which ended not so well (read: they caught on to his schemes aka fraud and nearly threw him in jail for it not to mention how angry qoh probably was), he’s back to floating around, delving more into the under but he pretty much goes where the wind and his shitty car takes him - aka anywhere with a bed and food and something to do

with his sticky fingers it shouldn’t be a surprise he also likes to keep his ears peeled. stealing money is okay, goods, also okay - but the best thing to take is things that people think are well guarded/incredibly secret/near and dear to them. otherwise really what’s the thrill outside of avoiding the cops?

he also has stargardts disease which has progressed to the point that he has begun to lose some central vision; so some details are fuzzy head-on for him. if he gets his license taken away he will flip so honestly this is just another thing he’s ignoring and blaming on anything possible - catch him straight up walking into a street sign since he didn’t know it was that low.

so here are some plots thoughts i had stirring up in the brain, these are by no means complete so hit me with what you got or we can just chat about our babies:

employers/coworkers?? anyone who needs informations or goods or anything run, etc. or like someone to bring flowers to their mom or like someone to stand in front of a door or hold something? your date to a wedding because you feel weird going alone? despite having a rap sheet, he does understand discretion and respects that so long as the pay is good and something shinier doesn’t come along

queen of hearts!! where are you to rip my boy’s head off?? also anyone aligned w/ qoh can shit on him too because he probably duped you unless you were smart enough to catch on and were the one who tipped it off to security 

he can be your informant for the right price

past lovers/current flings for him to suck dry and probably not care too much about ?? or surprise him because maybe all he needed this entire time was some stability in his life?

did he steal shit from you? a family heirloom? just a pack of gum?? 

someone help him marie kondo his tiny apartment and go like appliance shopping with him so he stops cooking instant ramen on a hot plate

there was a time he was interested in god so like maybe there’s that?

[nightwving]

i was tagged by @mollyweasly​ to answer these questions, tysm!! i did most of them the other night but got distracted and am posting them now lmao

1. on a scale of 1-10, how excited are you about life right now? idk, i’ll say maybe a 7 or so? honestly i’m feeling pretty decent for the first time in a while

2. describe yourself in a hashtag? #ohfuck

3. if you could do a love scene with anyone, who would it be? that’s tough... i would never want to actually subject anyone to the horror or doing that with me, but i guess either tom holland or sebastian stan??

4. if your life was a musical, what would the marquee say? “a juxtaposed comedic disaster”

5. what’s one thing people don’t know about you? shit man i usually overshare pretty much everything, but i guess one thing would be that i got hit straight in the head by a golf ball while on a course with my parents when i was in middle school?? it came from way far out but miraculously didn’t seem to crack my skull or give me too bad of a concussion. my dad said it hit so hard that it sounded like it hit the pavement. now i have severe anxiety near golf courses and when things are flying near my head in general lmfao

6. what’s your wake up ritual? i check my phone real quick and then immediately go to pee and brush my teeth. depending on the day and whether or not i’d be late for class back when things were normal, i might shower lol. then either get dressed real quick and go to class or, these days, play video games or get on my computer

7. what’s your go to bed ritual? i’ll usually wrap up whatever i’m doing, make sure my fan is on, lock my door (when i’m at school), strip, take some melatonin, lay down, set my alarm, plug in and then get on my phone for a while until i (hopefully) get sleepy

8. what’s your favorite time of day? i love the evening around sunset or so but i also just love the night in general, especially when things get quiet in the am

9. your go to for having a good laugh? tiktok

10. dream country to visit? ummm... honestly canada 😂 or germany or something

11. what’s the biggest surprise you’ve ever had? last spring i spontaneously won an award in the department that i work for at school because my friends insisted that i get one for all the work i do on the newspaper and for my work study and stuff. they had to work some stuff around because i’m not actually a major and that’s who the awards are for, but they all agreed to give it to me at the ceremony and i was NOT expecting it whatsoever. it was one of the most amazing moments ever especially since i struggle with finding a niche and having faith in myself

12. heels or flats/sneakers? sneakers!!

13. vintage or new? i love vintage but that shit can be hard for me to find

14. who do you want to write your obituary? probably a friend idk i feel like my family would say some dumb corny shit lmao

15. style icon? i have quite a few but slash or duff mckagan from 80s GNR would be a couple ok don’t judge me. and john bender from the breakfast club

16. what are three things you cannot live without? internet, my ps4, and friends

17. what’s one ingredient you put in everything? chili or garlic powder

18. what 3 people living or dead would you want to make dinner for? i don’t even make dinner for myself lmao but if i really had the motivation, probs stan lee, carrie fisher, and my tiny son josh bassett

19. what’s your biggest fear in life? being institutionalized against my will and/or death before i’m ready/feel like i’ve done something worthwhile.

20. window or aisle seat? depends tbh

21. what’s your current tv obsession? i’m not really on a kick with it right now, but i’m slowly making my way through the clone wars in chronological order.

22. favorite app? tiktok

23. secret talent? uhh... i guess a lot of people would assume that i’m not athletic because of my weight but i’m actually naturally pretty sporty and can still be when i really feel like it

24. most adventurous thing you’ve ever done in your life? well i’ve tried to summon spirits in multiple different places, attempted to break into an asylum with my ex, done a pregnancy test with an old friend in a burger king bathroom... idk if those count as “adventurous” but that’s about all i got as of right now in my life

25. how would you define yourself in three words? eclectic, resilient, and real

26. favorite piece of clothing you own? my denim jacket

27. a must have clothing item that everyone should have? also denim jacket lol

28. a superpower you would want? i debate this often... i think shapeshifting would be cool but also telekinesis

29. what’s inspiring you in life right now? movies and stuff i guess

30. best piece of advice you’ve received? probably that it’s okay to do things at your own pace and to not be so hard on yourself when you aren’t doing things the same way as others

31. best advice you’d give your teenage self? wear some better fuckin clothes lmao

32. a book everyone should read? bruh idk i don’t really read anymore, harry potter i guess 😂

33. what would you like to be remembered for? being honest and real but also someone that would’ve been there for you, or to have a good laugh with

34. how do you define beauty? beauty is like something that fills you with wonder and a sense of life or something

35. what do you love most about your body? uh... i have nice legs i guess 😂

36. best way to take a rest/decompress? find something that distracts you and makes you forget about all the shit. get lost in another world in movies/music/etc or just laugh with someone about anything

37. favorite place to view art? i like seeing it in the studios at school when people are still working on it

38. if your life was a song, what would the title be? “somethin’ else”

39. if you could master one instrument, what would it be? ugh i would love to be a full blow pianist but i ain’t got the patience for that. i made it through a few periods of lessons throughout my life and three classes in college but i don’t have the capacity to do more than that. but i would also love to get even better with my voice. i’ve been taking classical lessons for the past couple of years but quit recently because of the anxiety that studio recitals and master classes give me. music major shit is rough

40. if you had a tattoo, where would it be? i have one janky one behind my right ear that i got when i was 16, it’s a bird. but if i wasn’t a fatass bitch, i’d like to get more in different places on my body

41. dolphins or koalas? dolphins

42. what’s your spirit animal? it used to be a coyote according to a quiz years ago lol but it’s probably something different now

43. best gift you’ve ever received? probs my shitty first car that my dad got me last summer. but it’s a hell of a lot better than nothing

44. best gift you’ve given? shit i can’t even remember. i love doing personal little gifts for my friends. ACTUALLY i’d probably say the playlist i made for my friend last christmas because listening to music late at night was our thing

45. what’s your favorite board game? secret hitler is the BOMB

46. what’s your favorite color? yellow

47. least favorite color? probs brown

48. diamond or pearls? diamonds

49. drugstore makeup or designer? drugstore bitch, i’m broke

50. blow-dry or air-dry? air dry preferably but i’ll blow dry if i need to

51. pilates or yoga? neither lmao

52. coffee or tea? coffee unless it’s sweet tea

53. what’s the weirdest word in the english language? all of them

54. dark chocolate or milk chocolate? dark

55. stairs or elevators? elevators bih i got bad knees

56. summer or winter? winter, FUCK the sun

57. you are stuck on an island, you can pick one food to eat forever without getting tired of it, what would you eat? potatoes

58. a dessert you don’t like? a lot of things, i eat like a picky five year old. but i don’t like anything minty

59. a skill you’re working on mastering? singing. but also design-y stuff and videography

60. best thing to happen to you today? i went on a short walk with my mom earlier and there’s always a man across the street from us who sits on his porch every evening and sings with his guitar. i love it

61. worst thing to happen to you today? sitting through my zoom class lmao

62. best compliment you’ve ever received? idk, just when someone has generally called me beautiful? that makes me feel really nice

63. favorite smell? i love the smell of cookies or brownies in the oven. i’m also weird af and love strange things like basement smell and gasoline. also sharpies

64. hugs or kisses? hugs probably

65. if you made a documentary, would it be about? idk probably something about a niche community/town or some cult-y shit

66. last piece of content you consumed that made you cry? avengers: endgame

67. lipstick or lipgloss? i don’t usually wear either very much but probably lipstick

68. sweet or savory? savory

69. girl crush? ana de armas or margot robbie

70. how do you know your in love? i feel like you’d do anything for that person even if it hurt you, and you think about them all the time and want to protect/be there for them

71. a song you can listen to on repeat? i usually avoid listening to things on repeat, but if i had to choose something... idk maybe africa by toto 😂

72. if you could switch lives with someone for a day, who would it be? probs someone like elon musk or bill gates to see what it’s like to be that fucking rich and successful

73. what are you most excited for about this time in your life? just enjoying it and maybe honing some skills with all this extra time. also watching some movies on my watchlist

i’m tagging @verafarmiga, @northuldrra, @tmhnks, @spaceoddly, @breaksfastclub, and anyone else who wants to do it!! but feel free to ignore or just laugh at my answers

[canaryatlaw]

okay. it’s late, obviously. and I need to go to bed. I just took my pills like 10 minutes ago though so it might be a minute before I actually get tired. but yeah, today. I think I woke up around 11, and then for like two hours waited for my sister to wake up and trying to not get annoyed because I know I’ve slept that late plenty of times, like even on this trip, but I was just kinda tense. it didn’t help that on twitter I was repeatedly seeing people doing tribute tweets to their friends or making lists of all their friends who did whatever in 2019 and I wasn’t on a single fucking one, even when people that I know they saw less than me made it and I just like.....I got really upset about it because I felt like shit and like I didn’t even have any friends, which of course I know is not true, but it felt really shitty to see people I’ve expended energy trying to befriend just straight up ignore my existence and I just felt really awful about myself. this year has unfortunately gone from meeting a lot of new friends to constantly fearing that none of them actually like me or want me to be their friend, thanks to a couple of things that have happened. and I just feel like this massively messed up person who must’ve fucked up so badly to have all these people turning against me but like, I didn’t even fucking do anything, and if people had actually been honest about stuff this could’ve all been avoided but they weren’t and now I’m the one who’s hurting because of that and it really fucking sucks when you really feel like nobody cares about you. sigh. I feel fraudulent sometimes posting about how happy I am with my life (which I am! really!) while knowing my emotional stability is not where it should be definitely could be causing an issue. and like, looking back to the beginning of this decade all I can think is 10 fucking years and so much happened and yet emotionally I’m back in the same fucking place? how did that happen? I still obviously care way too much about what people think of me when I know I shouldn’t, and placing way too much of my happiness and value into friends who clearly don’t reciprocate any of those feelings and clearly don’t care about my emotions or how any of this actually affects me. and I fucking hate that because I truly have grown so much as a person but I feel like that same fucked up kid who cared way too much about what her friends thought of her and definitely put a lot more energy and care into her friendships than she got back. and I feel so emotionally unstable and I don’t know how to deal with this because like! I’m not depressed! my overall mental health has been fine and there aren’t really any issues there, this just feels like an entirely separate area and I don’t know what to do with it. It really sucks that just when my professional life was finally getting its shit together my personal life had to fall to pieces. and I know on some level that like all this shit really means that I should be in therapy actually working through all of this, and this is so fucking hypocritical, I know, but like....I just don’t have the emotional energy to deal with going through all of that right now. It’s going to be so much work and I really just don’t want to deal with it. and that’s messed up because I’ve told so many fucking people that they should be in therapy and that it will really help them, and now I’m clearly not abiding by that, so that makes me feel shitty too. sigh. I got on way too much of a tangent here and now I’m ranting. I really need to get back on focus and actually talk about my day before I go to sleep because it’s fucking 3:30 am. anyway. eventually my sister woke up and then she had to go get her flu shot for something with her job but like all of the places they were going to didn’t have it so she didn’t even get it done, then her and her boyfriend returned and we went to the mall. it was alright, not great, and eventually she wanted to split up which I kinda knew was going to happen because we wouldn’t want to go to the same stores, but it still was annoying. I mainly wanted to get jeans and I went to Express and tried some on, but all of their jeans were still so fucking expensive (the ones on clearance were like $50, reduced from $80) and there was a super fucking long line and I just didn’t have the patience to stand through that long ass line to pay too much for a pair of jeans, so I left and concluded I’d get jeans at some other point in the future. I went to Dynamite after that because they always have stuff I like and it’s been a while since I’ve gotten anything from them, and I ended up getting a pair of work pants from them that were on sale and very nice, so I’m happy about that. after that I met back up with my sister and we headed out. back to the house, I had dinner with my parents and then watched some GBBO with them until my brother’s friends arrived. He had asked me if I wanted to go out with him and his friends tonight and I knew if I didn’t go I was just going to end up alone with my parents and feeling sorry for myself so I said what the hell and said I would. my brother is at this new assignment at work though where he’s working a 3 pm to 11 pm shift, so he still wasn’t getting off for some time yet, so my parents ended up driving me and his two friends to the bar where we chilled for a bit and talked until he arrived some time after 11. he was bringing with him this girl who he has apparently started dating (yeah, I found out on Sunday that both of my brothers are apparently dating girls, which is just fucking great for my self-esteem knowing that I’m officially the only sibling without a significant other) which I suspect is the real reason he asked if I wanted to come so she wouldn’t be the only girl there. and she was nice, honestly at this point any girlfriend is probably going to be a positive influence on his life, so unless she was really terrible I’m not going to object. I mean, honestly, his ex-girlfriend was like, the best thing that ever happened to him, but he fucked that one up and hopefully this time he’ll be a lot smarter and more mentally stable about it. I really hope he is honestly. I also really miss his ex-girlfriend since we’d gotten quite close in the time they were dating, and of course she ultimately ended up coming to me for help when things went south, so there was a lot of emotional investment there. sigh. anyway. I was having a pretty good time chatting with his friends before he got there, they were both guys he went to highschool with so I had at least in theory known them for like 12-15 years now, but never had more than like, a passing conversation with them really. one of them I’d talked to a bit over the years, I always thought he was cute but never had like a full blown crush on him or anything, but it was kinda nice getting to talk more to both of them tonight. and of course there was alcohol, and I considered maybe trying some since it’s been like 4 years since I’ve tried consuming any but then I got a whiff of the tequila shots they were doing and I swear the smell alone started giving me like minor chest pains, so that was a no. I was kinda dumb though at midnight because they were passing out little cups of champagne as the ball was dropping and I had a single sip of champagne, which again was dumb being that I just concluded I shouldn’t be drinking any alcohol, but I mean it was midnight and everyone in the bar was doing it....sigh. It kinda burned in the back of my throat for a while which was unpleasant but never moved on to the full on chest pain that’s fucking unbearable, so I’ll count that as a semi-success, definitely not a full success because it really did not leave me wanting to consume any more alcohol, but at least I wasn’t in pain over it. we ended up playing darts for a few rounds, which I’m not particularly good at but it doesn’t really matter. a little after 2 we started trying to return to my house where everyone was spending the night, but that turned into a whole debacle because this is the fucking suburbs and it’s 2 am on new years, so getting an uber was a bit difficult. my one brother’s friend had apparently worked as a lyft driver in the past so he was a bit biased towards that app and then the first driver somehow got messed up and picked up another person but it still charged his phone and he was like, so affronted by this and just not letting it go at all and it was honestly pretty funny, it was obvious the alcohol in his system was contributing to it on some level but it was still amusing. since there were 5 of us they were originally trying to get an XL which proved even more difficult, and we ended up taking two separate normal sized ubers to get home, which still took fucking forever and we didn’t end up getting home till like, almost 3 am, which was annoying. but oh well. once we got home I showered and then had to do all my pills for the week because of course I had to run out tonight, then opened my laptop and started typing this, and now I’m here like 40 minutes later because it’s just a few minutes before 4 am now because I clearly was in the mood to write a fucking novel for some reason. sigh. last 2019 post, even though it’s now 2020 the day was in 2019 so it gets the last December 2019 hashtag. alright, I really need to go to sleep now, so that’s what I’m going to do. Goodnight dears. Hope you had a very happy new year.

[keplercryptids]

response to jesse thorn re: accessibility

someone posted the petition to reddit awhile ago (not me lolol, i stay as far away from reddit as humanly possible), and jesse thorn responded. i only just saw this now so uhh, let’s get into this, shall we?

Jesse: Yeah, we agreed to launch with a transcription service called Gretta that covered ONRAC and Reading Glasses. They're some kind of machine learning startup, their model isn't providing transcripts, it's about using podcasts to get AI to understand talking and how people interact with spoken audio....Ultimately we're grateful they do this, but don't feel it's reliable in the long- or even medium-term.

well, we agree on this point. Gretta isn’t a solution. last i checked, the last ONRAC episode they transcribed was in august.

i put the rest under a readmore because it’s a long one, folks, and content warning: i get really angry at the end.

Jesse: We transcribed The Turnaround through a combination of a startup journalism-oriented transcription service and staff time. We found that both sides of that equation were extremely expensive. 

automated transcriptionist services aren’t super great so again, we agree.

Jesse: A lot of companies doing transcription are opening and closing lately, we've been tracking them, looking at whether any of them could do any of this efficiently and affordably. When Bullseye had a transcriptionist, we found that just the process of editing and posting the transcripts he provided was taking like half a day of the producer's time, and at the time that was like 15% of her total Bullseye workload, and it just wasn't sustainable. 

i don’t know how to tell you this bud, but you had a shitty transcriptionist. a good transcriptionist’s work would not require editing after the fact. they should transcribe and format everything to agreed-upon specifications beforehand, and their final product should be ready to publish immediately. i’m not really sure who was transcribing your stuff before but it doesn’t sound like they were a professional.

Jesse: We are also somewhat hamstrung by the nature of our relationship with our shows, most of which are independently owned and produced; none of this is something we can do unilaterally, and none of it is something we can lay the cost of at the feet of our show creators. Transcripts are a very major expense even for our biggest shows - around a thousand dollars a month per show. That's more than a number of our shows make in total. 

i have no idea where he’s getting this number from but....that’s just not true. to give you an idea, independent contractor transcriptionists make about $1/minute of audio. some make more than that, sure, but that’s a pretty standard rate. (how do i know? i used to be one.) so even for a show posting once a week (many of which do not), that’s about $250 a month per show with hour-long episodes. going through a company would probably be more expensive, yeah, but again, he’s throwing these numbers out without any context or receipts. it seems like another tactic to garner sympathy from his audience because it’s omg! a big scary number!

Jesse: We are still a very small company that is supported by its audience, not a big VC-backed corporation.

and your audience would very much support a drive to raise funds for transcripts.

Jesse: That said, this really is something we have worked on continuously for years. I care very much about accessibility, Bikram cares very much about it, and our hosts and producers care about it. I'm sure as a JJGo listener you've heard about this, but my father is disabled, and he worked for a number of years with his best friend Ed Roberts, who was probably the most significant leader of the independent living movement in the 1970s, 80s and into the 90s. I met Jesse Jackson during his 1988 presidential campaign because my father was writing policy speeches for him regarding independent living. I've also got two kids with audio processing challenges. Accessibility is very personal to me. I've put a lot of time into trying to find a sustainable answer. We just haven't found one yet.

ahh, this. this. i mean, i hope a lot of you see the problems with this without me saying anything. i’ll continue to be amazed by folks with personal ties to disabled people who still do and say ableist things at the drop of a hat. it’s..... just astounding, really.

Jesse: I would love to meet every goal we have as a company, but we have a pretty wide breadth of goals, and we can't meet any of them if the books don't balance. I honestly would just say thank you to those folks like you and ILyr who have shared with us that this is important to them, and ask folks who are calling me a heartless asshole monster on the internet to understand that we are pushing forward on many fronts, and working to run as moral and world-bettering a company as we can, but our resources are what they are, and we have to make hard choices every day.

jesse, my dude? people are calling you a heartless asshole because less than a year ago, you posted on reddit that disabled people are “better off” consuming visual comedy because written comedy wouldn’t translate. less than a year ago, you said you could not see the value in transcripts for comedic shows. you said an asshole thing, and you’ve run an entirely inaccessible network for years now. 

until the petition gained thousands of signatures, you did NOT assert that accessibility is important to you, either personally or professionally. before thousands of people told you this was important, you did not state that it was important to you at all. you ignored individuals who reached out to you about accessibility. your public response was that it cost too much money. suddenly now, with this petition, this is something you’ve “worked on continuously for years.” but before that, you sang a very different tune. your past responses (and lack thereof) are not those of a person who deeply cares about accessibility and who is committed to finding a solution. this is why people are calling you an asshole.

the above two paragraphs are so “woe is me” that it’s actually impressive. i don’t feel bad for you, jesse. i feel bad for the disabled communities who have had to band together to create transcripts for ourselves. i feel bad for the thousands of people that have been completely cut off from podcasts since their inception. i feel bad for disabled people that always, always, always have to advocate for themselves, because even their family members don’t see the value in accessibility. and i hope - i genuinely hope - for a better, more accessible world for your children. i’m gonna keep fighting for that world, even if you discredit me because i called you an asshole.

Jesse: My biggest hope at the moment in this particular area is that the big tech companies (Amazon, Google and Apple) are all working really hard on voice recognition right now, and Google specifically has promised machine transcripts will be built into their app in the future. That and other platform improvements may change the game here. We will be actively engaged from now until then.

waiting for the tech to catch up is a strategy, i guess. it’s a really fucking bad one though. if we all did that, guess what? there would be no image descriptions and blind people would have no access to visual elements of the internet. cool, though. i guess we’ll just have to cross our fingers and hope mega-corporations care about us.

anyway. that’s my hot take. i’m gonna go lie down now until my blood pressure is back to normal.

[umusicians]

UM Interview: Mother Mother

Canadian Indie Rock band Mother Mother have made their imprint in the Canadian music industry. With over a decade in the music industry, the band have carved their own unique niche in the industry, leaving with them a sense of indivdiduality and awe. Last month, the band recently released their latest record ‘No Culture’. Of ‘No Culture’ Singer Ryan Guldemond commented "No Culture is about something that a lot of us wrestle with in isolation - identity". Amandah Opoku sat down with Ryan to go into more depth about ‘No Culture’, upcoming tour dates and more! Check out the interview below!

Amandah Opoku: Hello Mother Mother, thank you for sitting down with us! Before we kick off this interview, what is your favourite song on radio? Ryan Guldemond: Currently I’ve been really enjoying “Hands To Myself” by Selena Gomez.  I love the super dry, loud whisper vocal performance, and the production itself is very crisp and spacious.  I can turn it up loud without things becoming brash. I do appreciate when radio tracks achieve size in sparsity. Oh yeah, and the guitar part is killer - very sweet and melancholic, which is my favourite emotional convergence in music. AO: Of the songs that have been released within the last year, what are your favourite lyrics you’ve heard that you wish you had written? RG: There’s this line in a Zola’s song called Swooner that’s pretty clever: “That incandescent girl of Incan descent”. Maybe too clever, but it made me smile, and ponder.  I like punchlines that are at once both humorous and thought provoking, driven by word play.  

AO: You recently released your album ‘No Culture’ what was the inspiration behind the albums creation? RG: I was inspired by a personal transition I was making at the time from debauchery to clean living. In doing so I uncovered how deeply I identified with the former accompanying persona, so themes of identity and authenticity are strong in No Culture, often centering around loss, grief and nostalgia. The title itself was born from this experience: the shedding of culture, or societal affectation as a means to become a truer version of yourself.   AO: How did the studio and writing process for ‘No Culture’ differ from your last album ‘Very Good Bad Thing’? RG: There was more emphasis on the songwriting. I spent a lot of time with our producers down in LA writing, and fine tuning the architecture of each song before we even began recording. It was important that every motif, beat, lyric, texture was “perfect” in that they supported the core identity of each song, and the album as a whole. Nothing was for the sake of itself. Once the songs were ready, the recording was quick and clear. That was a new methodology for us, coming into the studio with an almost paint by numbers approach. Everything was laid out, we just had to connect the dots. AO: Writing and working on this record, did you ever encounter a period or moment of uncertainty? How did you overcome this? RG: The writing process was riddled with uncertainty. The confidence I lost by changing my lifestyle spilled into the creative process, and I began to judge my output severely, effectively creating a condition of good old fashion writer’s block.  But I just worked through it. Kept churning out ideas until the kernels of gold started to appear. Bad ideas, or mediocrity is crucial in the mining of the good stuff. They clear a path for unfiltered, raw creativity to travel through. That was a big lesson in all of this: discovering, or reaffirming that the cure for stagnancy is simply the act of doing. It could be anything. Beat your head against a wall until it takes on a pleasing rhythm. Then start singing over top of it. Before you know it, you’ll have an album’s worth of material. If it’s a shitty album, don’t record it. Just keep beating your head against that wall and gradually things will improve. AO: Of ‘No Culture’ what are you most proud of? RG: I think of how honest it is, and how uncomfortable it was and still is to be that honest, and how that signifies change and evolution. I can easily look back at old writing and think, I miss that devilish irony and sardonic bent. But to do that again would be disingenuous, and easier. So I guest I’m proud that I took the harder path in creating a new body of work, speaking from a new voice, even though I wasn't entirely used to its timbre. AO: Of the sounds on your latest album ‘No Culture’ were there any particular musicians or artists that influenced the sounds/direction of the album? RG: I don’t know about specific musicians, but we were definitely inspired by certain production aesthetics, like the simple and visceral quality of hip hop beats and the lush and dreamy synth-scapes of the 80s. AO: What was the biggest challenge you encountered working on ‘No Culture’? RG: Digging up the themes and finding its sentimental identity. I really didn’t want to write 10 songs about various things that were unrelated to each other. It was crucial that this body of work meant something, had a purpose, and acted as a whole. Considering the shaky place from where I started, this was a challenging and daunting prospect. But somehow it found its shape and its voice. And there really wasn’t an A-ha! moment or grand epiphany. It happened over time, of its own volition. AO: In essence, what does ‘No Culture’ represent to you? Is it a statement? Almost, an act of rebellion? RG: To me No Culture represents peace in aloneness. Finding the acceptance of yourself without imposed identity. So yes, it’s a statement. We are suggesting that this a good practice, and by doing so we are criticizing the way so many of us cling to our identification tags, be them cultural, societal, professional, religious etc, in order to feel validated, superior, and as though we belong. Culture of course can be a beautiful thing, adding texture to the human condition, but when it becomes the source of divisiveness, war and oppression, then we lose the very thing which it aims to celebrate, and the one thing we all have in common, humanity. AO: Why should somebody stream or pick up ‘No Culture’ off the CD shelf? RG: That’s an interesting question. It begs a solicitous response, which is hard for me. Someone from the label would give a much better answer, but I should try my best here. I’m not sure I think anyone “should” do anything with our record, but I suppose if someone was looking for a type of music with an emphasis on melody, vocal harmony, lyrical depth and big production, than No Culture would be a good contender. I feel like this album is visceral first, then cerebral. You can listen to it and react physically and emotionally without dissection. But should one crave a more intellectual experience, that is also available within the lyricism and thematics. Someone recently described the album as a trojan horse to a deeper experience. I liked that. AO: In this digital age of streaming where music fans can now consume immediately thanks to apps such as Spotify, Pandora and Tidal to name a few. What are your thoughts on streaming? Do you think they’ve been a positive or negative effect to the music industry? RG: I guess both, but to be honest I start to snooze when this topic comes up at the dinner table. For whatever reason I can’t seem to care about how the music industry evolves or devolves. But I guess streaming is something that’s still somewhat anarchic, cuz people aren’t getting paid and whatnot, but I assume that will work itself out. They’ll figure out how to monetize this digital shitstorm of free entertainment and I can see that being a very good thing. Not necessarily for the industry, in a capitalistic sense, but for humanity, and the balance of things. I don’t think anyone should be walking around with squillions of dollars. Not for doing anything, but especially not for making music. I think celebrity and rich-people culture is kind of unhealthy for the human collective consciousness, so anything to topple those pedestals I believe to be a good thing in the grand scheme of it all. AO: You’ve been a band for well over a decade, what’s one thing you learned as a band that you wish you had known when you first began? RG: I wish we were better at branding in the start. Understanding what the Mother Mother experience was, and reinforcing that in every aspect of the band, be it music, art, wardrobe, sentiment, philosophy. I think we could still get better at that, but in thinking about it now, it’s not really something someone tells you and bam, you’re good at it. It takes time for identity and cohesion within a group to form. I’d also tell myself to write more. Just fucking write, write, write little buddy. Don’t divide life from art. Meld the two, and write songs about it. But this the same thing I’m telling myself today, and will be telling myself in 50 years. AO: Going back to your bands roots, when it comes to finding a name for a creative or collection it’s often a process. Mother Mother may have not been the name you arrived to initially and maybe it’s meaning to you has changed over the years. Today in 2017, what does the band name mean to you? RG: Well we were originally just Mother, and I called us that because this guy at college wouldn’t shut up about how great of a band name that would hypothetically be. His fervour became mine I guess. So it didn’t really mean anything in the beginning. Then we had to change our name because there were other bands called Mother. So we un-inventively called ourselves Mother Mother. So that didn't really mean anything either. What does it mean today? I really couldn’t tell ya. I guess it’s just the name of our band. AO: Besides music, what are your hobbies? RG: I like cooking and taking photos, Jasmin loves yoga, Molly likes crafting, Ali is a big soccer buff and Mike, the new guy… hmm.  Tattoos? Could that be a hobby? He’s got a body suit, so he’s running out of room. Gonna have to find a new hobby. AO: In support of ‘No Culture’ you are currently on your Canadian tour followed by some recently announced dates with KONGOS, what can fans expect from you on the tour? RG: Tons of energy, a very tight set which draws upon our entire catalogue, a couple of very masculine covers sung by the girls, inane and existential stage banter, a drum solo. We definitely take pride in making a proper show of it. I feel like there’s an art to crafting the perfect set, with a contour not unlike that of a story book. You can expect to be taken for a ride when you see us live. AO: Thank you for sitting down with us Mother Mother! Before we end this interview, is there anything you’d like to say to your fans, your supporters? RG: Thanks for employing us!

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