Category Archives: Interview

Interview

After Years of Collaboration, Solo Artists Laura Jinn and Tatum Gale Formed New Duo Mercy Land

Tatum Gale and Laura Jinn of Mercy Land in cover photo for "Kid A" Photos: Mia Teresa @howboutmia Creative Direction: Virginia Walcott @virg________
Mercy Land “Kid A” cover photo. Photos: Mia Teresa @howboutmia Creative Direction: Virginia Walcott @virg________

Laura Jinn and Tatum Gale were set on making music as solo artists. The catch, though, was that the music they made together was really good. “It was obvious to our close friends much earlier and we were really rejecting it,” says Gale on a recent video call. 

For a handful of years, though, the two New Orleans-based musicians would play as solo artists who collaborated with each other. “It was a little bit confusing for the audience,” acknowledges Jinn. The performances, though, helped shape would become their new project, Mercy Land, whose debut EP, Termites, dropped on Halloween. “I think the process of playing together also built a lot of trust between us, in the sense that, together, we were something different and better than we were individually and the music that we had made together was our best music and all that stuff,” says Jinn. “So, it emerged from that process.”

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Interview

David J Sings of History Repeating in New Protest Single, “ICE Too Cold to Thaw”

David J and Shepard Fairey "Ice Too Cold to Thaw" press photo by Angel Enciso.
David J and Shepard Fairey seen here with copies of the “Ice Too Cold to Thaw” vinyl and print. (Photo: Angel Enciso)

David J was in Asheville, North Carolina for a gig when a protest erupted right under his hotel window. “I was woken up early in the morning with the sound of it,” the L.A.-based musician says on a recent video call. “I just went down to the street and joined in.”

The event provided a spark of inspiration for J, who was already troubled by what he had been seeing in the United States. “Just being amongst that community there, just really good decent people speaking out against this authoritarian horror that’s being visited upon us, that was the galvanizing moment,” he says. Lyrics for what would become “ICE to Cold to Thaw,” the recently released single from David J and the Resistance, began to take shape. 

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Interview

Kommunity FK Returns to L.A. for Independent Project Records Anniversary Shows

Patrik Mata of Kommunity FK press photo by Kevin Estrada
Patrik Mata of Kommunity FK (Photo: Kevin Estrada)

It’s been six years since Kommunity FK has played Los Angeles. To be specific, they haven’t played live at all since 2019. This week, though, you’ll have two chances to see the seminal goth band, who came up in post-punk L.A., this week. Kommunity FK is set to perform live on both nights of Independent Project Records 45th anniversary— Wednesday, November 5 and Thursday, November 6— at Gold-Diggers in East Hollywood. The concerts foreshadow an exciting 2026 for the 47-year-old outfit, helmed by singer Patrik Mata,. Kommunity FK’s 1983 debut album, The Vision and Voice, is planned for a reissue next year via IPR.

“We get so many requests for it,” says Mata on a recent video call from Albuquerque, where he has lived since 2005. 

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Interview

Pets Fuse Dance Beats and Melancholic Pop on Debut Album, Spiral Question Mark

Pets Press Photo by Mika Lungulov-Klotz
Photo: Mika Lungulov-Klotz

It’s nearly dusk on a chilly-for-L.A. Saturday when synths and sax float through the breeze in a small nook of Elysian Park. A handful of people, and a few dogs, are crowded on blankets spread across the leaf-strewn ground. Pets, the East Coast trio, are in town for a weekend of gigs celebrating their debut album Spiral Question Mark, one of which is here, under a tree, where dark green leaves hang above them like the valance of a stage curtain. Their sound is smooth and rhythmic and more than a little melancholic. It’s a good fit for a day like this one. 

“It’s not really about wallowing in that feeling,” says Jonny Campolo of the sad song-heavy debut. “It’s about a solitary kind of confidence that you can have when you’re alone or when you’re sad or emotional or melancholic.”

He adds, “Melancholic music, raw, emotional music is absolutely my favorite kind of music, the kind of records that you can just fall into and live in.”

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Interview

HAAi Contemplates the Future of Humans and Machines on HUMANiSE

Haai Humanise press photo by Sophie Webster
Photo: Sophie Webster

It’s an unusually muggy September afternoon in Los Angeles and HAAi (aka Teneil Throssell) is in town for a brief stay in between gigs in Miami and Washington D.C. “This city has been really kind to me with support, with everything,” she says, mentioning that she was planning a free pop-up party in town with her friend, Warpaint drummer Stella Mozgawa, during her stay. At the moment, though, we’re talking about HUMANiSE, the album that HAAI was readying for release. By now, you might have heard it. HUMANiSE came out on October 10 via Mute.

For her sophomore full-length, HAAi considers the rapidly-evolving connection between humans and machines. She describes her relationship with technology as fickle. “It’s one of those things that I’m fascinated by and terrified by it at the same time, like, I think, most people,” the London-based DJ, producer and singer says as we chat in the lobby of a downtown hotel. 

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Interview

Colin Newman and Malka Spigel Ask “WTF??” on New Immersion Album

Immersion Malka Spigel Colin Newman press photo
Malka Spigel and Colin Newman of Immersion (photo courtesy of the artists)

A funny thing happened last year for Colin Newman and Malka Spigel and their project Immersion. “We suddenly had a tour last autumn and we only had a half-hour set,” says Newman. “Instead of adding a few oldies and fleshing it out, we wrote a bunch of new material.”

Newman and Spigel have made a lot of music. Newman first gained acclaim with Wire in the late 1970s. Spigel co-founded the post-punk band Minimal Compact in the early 1980s. “If you try and sell Immersion as being somebody from Wire and somebody from Minimal Compact, they come with with a whole expectation that it’s going to be those things or both and it’s neither,” says Newman. “Immersion is Immersion. It’s its own thing and for us it makes much more sense to build that organically.”

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Books, Interview

Jeff Copeland on His Memoir Love You Madly Holly Woodlawn

Jeff Copeland author of Love You Madly, Holly Woodlawn press photo
Jeff Copeland tells his Hollywood story in Love You Madly, Holly Woodlawn (photo courtesy of Jeff Copeland)

Jeff Copeland was, maybe, 12 drafts deep into Love You Madly, Holly Woodlawn when he took a step back and reflected on one particularly awkward dinner scene. There is no shortage of awkward meals in Copeland’s memoir. After all, it’s Hollywood at the turn-of-the-‘90s and the writer is a broke twenty-something with big screen ambitions who befriends a middle-aged former Warhol star. On this particular night, though, Copeland and Woodlawn meet up with a neighbor, Maila Nurmi, you might know her better as Vampira, and her friends. An elderly theater director hijacks the conversation, steering it into dark, and, tbh, hysterical, terrain. Copeland’s younger self is mortified. His present self, though, has an altogether different take.

“Fame was fleeting! Money dwindled! And so what if their youth and beauty was gone forever. It was their ebullience that remained, and it was as bold and incandescent…and as bright and vivid as any theatre marquee on Hollywood Boulevard,” he writes.

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Interview

The Cords Channel Classic Indie Pop and Shoegaze Sound on Debut Album

The Cords press photo
Photo of The Cords by Marc Tedeschi

It’s not every band whose first gig is opening for the Vaselines. The Cords, though, did just that at Glasgow venue Mono two years ago, not long after sisters Grace and Eva Tedeschi had formed their duo. 

“We had just made social media, so I think someone there might have seen us on Instagram or something, a video,” recalls Eva. 

“It was busier than I expected it to be,” adds Grace, the elder sister by two years. “It was scary. It was like, oh my god, there’s like a million people here. I was just nervous.”

The two banter back and forth about how many people might have been in the venue when they played. “It was full,” says Eva, who plays guitar. “I don’t remember. I was so nervous I think I just stared down at my drum kit,” says Grace.

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Interview

Moviola Captures the Difficulty and Absurdity of American Life on ‘Earthbound’

Moviola press photo by Carrie Klein
Credit: Carrie Klein

In the video for “Slage Wave,” the first single off Moviola’s recently-released eleventh album, Earthbound, the employees of Don’s Tiny Weenies toil over the grill as they dish out Doge Dogs and Pigs on a Golf Course.  “You’re a wage slave, from the cradle to the grave,” the song goes, “you don’t work, you don’t get paid, you don’t get nothin’.”

Fate- or, rather,  the labor movement- intervenes in the form of a customer in a Johnny Paycheck, who hands over a “Take This Job and Shove It” sticker. A Pete Seeger-like musician follows, sliding a union handbook across the counter. It’s a video that almost has a happy ending, until the hot dog vending machine arrives.

“We debated on how to end it,” says Jake Housh, who plays guitar and piano/keys in Moviola and also shot and edited the video, “but it seemed kind of realistic maybe that the machines will win.”

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Film, Interview

Decoder Is the Punk Sci-Fi Film, and Soundtrack, You Need in Your Life

Christiane F. and F.M. Einheit in Decoder
Christiane F. and F.M. Einheit in Decoder

Sometime during lockdown, I stumbled upon a movie called Decoder via Tubi and streamed it not knowing what to expect. By the time I reached the end, I wondered, how did I not know this film existed? Released in 1984, Decoder is a German sci-fi film with serious counterculture cred. It stars F.M. Einheit, then a member of Einsturzende Neubauten, and Christiane F. and also features appearances from Genesis P-Orridge and William Burroughs. P-Orridge composed the film’s main theme with Dave Ball of Soft Cell, whose song “Seedy Films” is featured prominently in the movie, alongside music from Neubauten, Einheit and The The.

The Decoder soundtrack, which was just re-released on CD via U.K. label Cold Spring, is killer, which one might expect with that caliber of contributors. The movie, though, is even better. In it, Einheit plays a young man who realizes that the muzak playing in the fast food restaurant is a form of mind control and that he can manipulate the sounds to elicit a completely different response from the public. 

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