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  • Andrea Cortez – COTFG Interview Series

    Andrea Cortez, MM, MT-BC, is a board certified music therapist who uses the power of music to create positive change in the listener.

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    Her work focuses on how rhythm, harmony, and other elements of sound can help improve the health of our mind, body and spirit. She is also a sound artist, composer and sound meditation teacher. In addition to working individually with people, her work explores the relationship between the elements of music and the natural world. She incorporates playing music with both animals and plants demonstrating the presence of music as a fundamental structure found in nature. She is owner of Mind Body Music Center, a sound therapy studio, where she is based in Austin, TX.

    COTFG – Do you think of yourself as a therapist or musician?
    Andrea Cortez – I definitely think of myself as a therapist first. I never really considered myself an entertainer, mostly because I have introverted tendencies. If it weren’t for my love of music, I wouldn’t put myself in performing situations.

    Growing up music was always a personal and introspective experience and it was my safe haven from the world. I think this is why I became a music therapist, because it was part of my journey in learning how to navigate the world around me and in me. So I would say I really don’t fit into the music entertainment category although I am performing in a way as I play for groups of people. In this case I guess I don’t feel like a performer. I feel more like I am creating a space with the listeners, inviting them to participate, and connecting to what it is that they may need. I remember when I was studying music therapy my professor said something that really stuck with me. He said that we would need to be proficient at several roles, being a therapist, a musician, and a scientist. When you mix those together you are able to explore some very interesting perspectives on music.

    What are your influences for your recent work?
    Connecting to Nature has influenced my work. This year I released recordings of harp and plant generated music. And the more I explored nature the more I could see that these are not separate. If you break down sound into its fundamental elements you find frequency, rhythm, melody, harmony, and silence. These are elements that are present everywhere in the living world. So there is music in nature and there is nature in music. I am seeing that many people want to connect more to nature, especially now during this difficult period of social separation. We are looking for ways to connect to life and to be hopeful. I think both music and nature help us to do that. And this is what I aim to do, to express the therapeutic qualities of music and nature so that others can feel relief from stressful times.

    What have you been listening to lately?
    I guess it’s not surprising that lately I have been listening to nature sounds as well as capturing field recordings around my neighborhood. Behind my house is a pond that seems to be a lively ecosystem of insects and animals. The frogs there are my favorite. They have an interesting way that they synchronize their sounds together. I recorded them and they will be featured on my upcoming album.

    All artists are missing the live connection but I would assume your practice has suffered even more so. What ways of expression and connection do you hope to explore using recorded video or live streaming?
    This year was a difficult transition of moving all my work to video recording and livestream. There is an added benefit of experiencing live vibrations and being in the same room as the instruments being played. But I have managed to still offer sessions and sound meditation classes online while maintaining a high quality of sound for the listeners which is very important for this work. I use instruments that produce a wide range of overtones and I want to transmit as much of that sound as I can online. I have received positive feedback that my live streams are helping people to feel less stressed, more grounded, less anxious, more peaceful, and calm. So I plan to continue to offer virtual sound therapy sessions and livestream events as a resource of wellness and mental health support for people. I also have had the opportunity to meet people outside of Austin, which has been a positive outcome of having more of a virtual presence online.

    Find out more at MindBodyMusicCenter.com or on Andrea’s Instagram.

  • Perseph One – COTFG Interview Series

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    Perseph One is “pursuing music and art as a remedy for daily life”.

    COTFG – Tell us how you got started
    Perseph One – Beginning my music entanglement in Kansas City, Missouri in the rap group Ces Cru in 1996 birthed a young rapper that called herself 1st Lady of Ces Cru. Later in high school her mythology teacher introduced her to the name Perseph One and before even knowing the full story she immediately adopted the name as her rap alter ego.

    She as a solo artist has opening for countless big name acts and releasing music on an independent level every since.

    Recent albums releases include Perseph One “Machine Mammal” and Trieyevision “Everything IS Energy“.

    COTFG – What were your musical or general artistic influences for your historical work or current projects?
    Influences with music included for sure Ces Cru forever in my veins and heart
    Aesop Rock a big fan, Mick Jenkins I love his message and cadence
    I listen to a lot of Japanese synth minimalism as a soundtrack to life (Hiroshi Yoshimura, etc.) or producer influences of 14KT or Devante Swing instrumentals.
    Music clears out and charges energy so i choose what’s needed.

    What does experimental/avant-garde mean to you?
    Expiremental / avante garde sounds like 2 people sitting on the floor amidst a jungle of wires and knobs, hair covering the eyes and letting loose the uncomfortable energy in the room. It’s usually something that isn’t of the norm of music barriers or rhythm. That’s just what i think anyway.

    What other ways of expression do you hope to explore using recorded video or live streaming?
    Live Stream soon. Album being pressed and will successfully livestream a performance ie release party in boost of that. The new record is being released under the texas record label El Grande Records as vinyl, cassettes and merch are being handled at the moment.

    What have you been listening to lately?
    Last night i listened to every jam i love by Bjork, i listen to a lot of my production in progress. A lot of 90s r n b cuz i like to sing a long.(Janet Jackson everything)
    Music to Study to girl be getting me. Documentaries and Lectures while i paint.

    More can be found at www.perseph1.com
    Links by COTFG

  • Chorist – COTFG Interview Series

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    COTFG: We’ve been following Chorist online for a bit and decided to find out a little more about him. As usual, there’s always a lot more to know about someone than you can tell from their social media digital output!

    Chorist:
    I’ve been making music here and there for about 20 years in various forms. It used to be playing guitar and songwriting. These days it’s mainly in the form of electronic music. I’ve released a couple of EPs as “Chorist” in the last couple of years.

    Outside of releasing music, I’ve collaborated with friends on projects, such as “Wander” a sculpture/choose-your-own-adventure that you can see/experience at the downtown library. And I did sound design/music for Animal Facts Club’s live performances and videos over the past few years, with more performances to come post-pandemic.

    COTFG: What were your musical or general artistic influences for your historical work or current projects? 

    I listened to a lot of Hot 103 KTFM (shout out to Sonny Melendrez) growing up in San Antonio, and the Miami Bass and Freestyle tracks they played are some sort of deep foundation of what I like to hear.
    A lot of the music from Warp Records in the late 90’s and through to today. Aphex Twin and Autechre are the big ones. 
    Kurt Korthals (The Buddy System) was an inspiration as being the first person I knew to make music that I really liked and was in the vein of what I wanted to make. 

    And then various visual artists’ work and writings have influenced how I think about the creation process. Baldessari’s stuff regarding making up systems of rules and asking yourself interesting questions. Donald Judd’s woodcut prints. Robert Irwin’s biography “Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees”.

    What other ways of expression do you hope to explore using recorded video or live streaming ?

    So far I’ve completely avoided video. I don’t think I want to be on camera. If I did it, I would probably make something sort of didactic, or about showing process. Performance on video isn’t very engaging, but I’ll watch endless videos of people talking about how they work. 
    I’ve thought about doing a podcast where I talk about making tracks. I’d like to do interviews with electronic musicians about how they work at a “bigger picture” level… not so much what gear do they use or where the sounds come from, but rather how do the larger elements come together to form a piece? That doesn’t get talked about as much.

    What have you been listening to lately?

    William Fields’ “Shackamaxon” is something I’m still wrapping my head around.

    AceMo is consistently releasing good stuff!

    Corduroi’s latest EP is right up my alley.

    And the latest Oneohtrix Point Never album is great.

    What does experimental/avant-garde mean to you?”

    Experimental work, in the sense that appeals to me, is about exploring a new idea, learning the aesthetics of it, and creating something beautiful from it. Like having an idea for some new unknown process for creating a piece. You make it up, try it out, and see if you like it or not. And you keep doing that and refining it until it’s something you like. What keeps it “experimental” is avoiding the habit of doing what you already know “works”. I find it hard to do. “Avant-garde” is a historical term. 🙂

    You can find out more about Chorist music on his website and instagram.

  • mari maurice – COTFG Interview Series

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    In this new series, COTFG will be interviewing artists in Austin and beyond about their influences, how they’ve been adapting to the new musical landscape, and what “experimental” means to them.

    For over five years, mari maurice has been performing as more eaze and in that time has become a fixture of the Austin experimental music scene. She has also collaborated with many other artists including local legends The Octopus Project, and has recently stated the imprint label new computer girls ltd.

    COTFG: What were your musical or general artistic influences for your recent work?

    mari maurice: musically, a lot of my recent work has drawn from sources that are equally contemporary and nostalgic. I’m always interested in revisiting and learning from maligned artists or genres from the recent past and often find that there are crucial elements in that work that are being manifested in a lot of the most interesting music currently being made. i love thinking about how different stylistic worlds interact and am always drawn to the idea of blurring the lines in between.

    I’ve also been super influenced and inspired by collaborating a ton recently. this was taking place in more of a live setting last year but covid has obviously shifted that focus more towards recording. actually sitting down and working on a track with someone remotely is amazing and helps me break out of myself so much. I love seeing how other people structure their music as they’re writing it and hearing how personality shines through in decisions they make. also, it feels refreshing to finally let go of some control after primarily working as a solo artist for years.

    more generally, I’ve been influenced a lot by ASMR, reading and watching a lot of heady sci-fi, trying to navigate friendship, romance, & intimacy in the midst of a plague, and exploring the potentiality of quotidian activities and moments.

    What’s an ASMR vid you’d like to share with people who have no idea where to start in that world?

    I think a lot of people truly get freaked out by ASMR because of the regular whispering and the vocal aspect of it. Personally, I love it and truly enjoy how subliminal and barely there the voice in ASMR often seems. I think people sometimes find the use of voice and roleplaying voyeuristic but to me it really invokes the warm sensation of nodding off while listening to a story or conversation. However, I also truly find the sound design and purposefulness of this world very wonderful so, for someone who is interested in ASMR but is maybe intimidated by the vocal aspect, I’d recommend this video and anything else like it. The small panned scratchy sounds are so calming and get me kind of choked up because of how simple and beautiful they are. I like listening to this one with no visuals and just hearing the slight changes in surface and texture.

    I also really love this video which is perhaps more on the side of what people tend to dislike about it but there’s something about this one that just instantly produces a tingle for me. I actually made a track a few years ago that sampled parts of several classroom/language asmr videos because they often involved similar arcs or specific tics and I wanted to randomize them and see how they’d overlap. This video is not the most amazing but it just gets me every time and immediately produces the phenomenon for me (I think a lot of older videos are a bit more consistently conscious of that).

    What have you been listening to lately?

    some things that have been in heavy rotation:
    galore by oklou, “discuss and come” back by AIR Krew, euphoria by insides, the colour of spring by talk talk, spring summer 2020 by special guest dj, hotel nota by Romeo Poirier, dumb luck by dntel, primrose avenue by space afrika, i let it in and it took everything by loathe, more than friends by himera, trash eaters and face down in meta by pet shimmers
    I’ve also been generally revisiting/rediscovering a lot of early 4AD stuff and early 00s screamo/post-hardcore.

    (links by COTFG)

    What other ways of expression do you hope to explore using recorded video or live streaming?

    I haven’t done much in the way of live-streaming yet but I really like how it changes the idea of what a “performance” is. I’d like to eventually perform/record a live set and essentially build videos around footage/audio of me performing. the idea of things cutting out and just becoming more of a video piece is very appealing to me.

    What does experimental/avant-garde mean to you?

    personally, I think that experimental and avant garde are often problematic terms that get thrown around equally for labelling and branding or worse as a method for a politics of exclusion. is there really something “experimental” or cutting edge about a drone or harsh noise record when both of these genres have existed for decades? at this point, there are signifiers in tons of subgenres branded “experimental” that are just as formally embedded as verse/chorus song structure. I often think that these terms are applied to more extreme/obscure genres as a way of othering anything that doesn’t strictly follow a narrow and limited view of what “experimental” means. for me, experimental is when any work of art is trying to challenge or push forward a new and/or distinct conversation about whatever medium they’re working in. to me, records like ar kane’s sixty nine, chief keef’s thot breaker, and farrah abraham’s my teenage dream ended are all a million times more ground breaking and experimental than any record of pipe organ drone or modular synth noodling. I don’t think experimental or avant garde music is fixed to a particular genre or a set of aesthetic signifiers. for instance, all three of the records I mentioned are all so truly bizarre and unidentifiable but all these artists would be excluded from most institutions that claim to champion the avant-garde because they fail to adhere to an antiquated notion of what experimental music is. I am always looking for the records/artists pushing the boundaries of whatever respective world they inhabit and to me that action, whether intentional or not , is what’s truly experimental. I should note that I mean none of my examples listed here to be read as criticisms of any particular style of music as I love many things that fall into the categories of noise, drone, etc… I mostly mention these examples to hopefully illustrate the complicated nature of the term experimental as a stylistic signifier.

    In what ways have you been collaborating? What technology have you been using? What has and hasn’t been working?

    I’ve primarily been collaborating via recording with a number of different projects. Most of it is in the form of direct partnerships where everyone is writing and coming up with ideas equally but I’ve also worked on a few projects where I’ve just been a session musician/arranger and I really enjoy that as well. Personally, I use ableton as a DAW but I use a lot of hardware as well. I frequently use a korg electribe, minilogue, and small modular synth setup as well as acoustic instruments and my voice. Approaching each track as something serious/new and really letting things reach their full potential through lots of editing and just being open to where something “feels” like it needs to go has worked best so far. Before COVID, I was doing a ton of live collaboration/improvisation and I would tailor my live setup for working with specific collaborators so I think for a while I was really married to the idea of starting a lot of things as a “live” improvisation or idea but I’ve pretty quickly found that taking this approach to studio work hasn’t always produced the best results. It’s been nice to step back and get past the feeling that all these ideas need to start as the genesis of something “live.”

    You can hear mari maurice’s work as more eaze on bandcamp and follow her on instagram