Writing!
I started writing more for myself last year when I discovered how amazing and customizable the site rateyourmusic was. I saw people making personal diaries, documenting short bits of their day alongside a song or album they listened to that day that left an impact on them. I wanted to explore how the music I listen to shapes my day, thoughts, and self discovery and I started using this tool more and more. I will not link those entries here because they are cringey so instead I will have to write new ones and share some pieces I did for Ugly Hug :)
I would love to write more so if you have a musical project feel free to reach out to me! I prefer to do interviews and turn them into features because I like learning about others creative processes but if you want me to write a review or something I will TRY my best…
Good Flying Birds
“Good music comes out of Indianapolis because there's nothing else to do except get in your basement and try to do something that is interesting to you and your friends,” Baker says. “It gets harder and harder when there's nothing to do and you keep showing each other your music. I think that drives a creative spark, but it's just a handful of people making really cool music and no audience for it so there’s not really a scene.”
DIY-by-necessity echoes through the Good Flying Birds project. There was no central sonic blueprint, more like a constellation of influences ping-ponging around in Baker’s head. “It wasn’t like one band or song was the guiding light,” he says. “It’s a mix of stuff from the 60s to now. I guess ‘indie pop’ is the closest term, but even that feels too narrow.”
What holds it all together isn’t genre, but emotion. That’s what Baker consistently returns to. The ability for a song to hold something that a diary or conversation can’t. “Songwriting is the closest I can get to actually understanding what I’m feeling,” he explains. “Sometimes emotions don’t make sense in a straightforward way, and you can’t really write them down clearly. But with songs, especially when things are abstract or fragmented, I can land closer to what’s actually there. It feels more accurate.”
Feature on Tanner York
“Tanner York doesn’t walk into a studio so much as he drags it with him, through Asheville apartments, the recording studio at UNC Asheville and his parents’ attic, leaving behind a trail of tape hiss, cheap snacks and a surprisingly serious collection of pop songs. York is your music obsessed friend anxiously waiting to leave a party to sing along to Beach Boys Instrumentals in his Subaru after sipping on his patented “Tanner Two,” a self-prescribed two lager limit. He spends his days obsessively scrolling through microphone reviews on one tab and a high-speed game of bootleg Tetris in another, thinking of all the different ways he can create the perfect drum sound. But when he plugs his guitar into the AC30 tucked away in his closet and presses record on his Tascam 488 MKII, all that scattered energy coalesces as he reveals himself in this sacred space as a budding hero of modern underground pop. On Welcome to the Shower, his joyfully weird and emotionally sincere debut album, released July 20 via Trash Tape Records, York transforms his obsessive ear and chaotic charm into something startlingly clear: lo-fi pop songs that sound like inside jokes until they suddenly hit like memories.”
“On “Bike Uphill” he sings helplessly, “I wanna be the one to live outside the world” creating an eerie almost apocalyptic feeling while contemplating a world in flux, where cities “melt away” and familiar spaces shift into surreal, dreamlike landscapes. Keegan reflects a sense of waiting, as though he is unsure whether he will be consumed by the unraveling of the world or find a way to belong within it. He imagines a world of isolation and loss, “is there a dream that i have not let pass through my hands” creating a sense of foreboding as the absence of certainty about our world and his place within it creates a dystopian feeling of being adrift in an unknown, shifting reality. “
Interviews w/ Kitchen
“You can engage in the same level of spontaneity live, it’s just completely different because the spontaneity live comes from having these limited things to work with and a limited amount of time. You get a different kind of recorded spontaneity when you have infinite options and time” McMurray said. “When you record, you have the ability to do things with instruments and vocal layering that’s just not possible to do live. If you create this kind of intense or manic energy by doing a lot of layering and getting sounds that wouldn’t typically be allowed, you can get that same idea across live if you just sell it the performance. The manner in which you perform something live is a really big part of the arrangement, and you can capture a lot of what is presented by a recorded arrangement just in how you deliver a live performance.”
