Is there any significance to the band’s name? Dan: There is significance to us! More importantly, we hope it means something to you, too. Band names are kind of a stressful thing, considering having something representative of the world you are trying to build that is not too hard to remember, especially since every name is taken. So we came up with the name first a few years ago, and once that was out of the way, we spend no time talking about the name. Our time is spent talking about the ideas that drive the music direction, songs, and albums.
What are your musical influences and your musical inspirations? D: We're very inspired by early no-wave, then we grew up with a lot of respect for the indie and grunge scenes before we each went down our own musical paths. While Charles ended out going into more melodic obscure indie and more soundscapes, I stayed into the indie rock sounds but ended out going further down the math rock, metal, and especially alt R&B route. Which has given each of us a different flavour in our approach. While each of us has created hundreds of songs through the years, we have ended out very inspired by the music of one another, which creates a positive feedback loop of inspiration of music that is both very much our own, and very much completely unreleased and does not exist in the world.
If given the chance, who would you like to collaborate with? D: David Lynch. He's a true artist through and through. Whether it is music, film, or a painting, he can really create a sense of mystery and of a place that is unique. We try to bring some of what we experience of consciousness to our art, so we would be interested in how our approaches do or don't blend.
What's the album Cacoon about?
D: Our album Cocoon is pretty deep to us, and it covers a lot of ground. We would much rather you listen and find your own personal experience with the content than anything, but for some context on the title, there's a quote from a lady named Elisabeth Kubler Ross who worked with the dying for a long time, she's the one who laid out the theory of the five stages of grief, and companies and consultants use it to teach change management too. She had an interesting quote, "the death of the human body is identical to what happens when the butterfly emerges from its cocoon. The cocoon can be compared to the human body, but it is not identical with your real self, for it is only a house to live in for a while. Dying is only moving from one house into a more beautiful one. So the record isn't about that quote in particular, but with this being a very vulnerable album that explores some of the complexities of the human condition and the impact it has on all of us in a very honest way, the cocoon that is our human self, for our soul is just kind of an interesting representation to us.
It just opens so many questions too. Like what happens after we leave? What happens before we get here? Something interesting like organic bodies being cocoons, but also how they are vehicles for souls that just occupy them, and souls maybe we know less about if they are organic or not. And how much friction there is in being a human. And how can you do it in a way where there's hope -like the last thing you would see entering a cocoon is light fading, the first thing you would see emerging from a cocoon would be the light poking in and a new start. Like a cocoon is created and then leaves behind an organic shell. So does our body. A very interesting thing I learned is that studies have shown that an insect's memories remain from before their time in a cocoon, transforming -even though their entire organic bodies are liquified during the transition.
What's something you hope people take away from the new songs off the album? D: We hope you can find a new perspective on something meaningful in your life from our sounds and lyrics.
Do you have any favourite songs from the new album? D: "Lightning" is one that hits home as it combines our original collaborative style of a linear but ever-changing musical journey while figuring out how to remain cohesive from a musical and narrative perspective.
Do you have any favourite songs to perform live? Could be your own music or even a cover. Any reason why? D: As kids, we used to cover "Inhuman" and "I Dreamed I Dream" from early Sonic Youth. The way Sonic Youth turned stringed instruments into percussive sound devices was always fun to try and reinterpret.
If you could perform a show this very second anywhere in the world, where would it be? Is there any particular venue or city that comes to mind? D: Anywhere in Brazil or Mexico. The music culture is really something else in these countries, and people are really moved by music, so it would be a great reciprocal experience. What do you currently have planned for the remainder of the year? D: We are doing some work on about ninety-six songs. Kinda pruning process in identifying which of our next records will come out in which order. A little bit of a sampling period to find out what's right, and once it feels right, things move very quickly.