Waxlimbs, Behind the Masks and the Art of Music Creation - The Lorenzo's Music Podcast (Transcript)
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Tom Ray: Hi, and welcome to another Lorenzo’s Music Podcast. I’m Tom, and this is a show where I talk to musicians, people who make things for musicians, and a lot of the time skewed in the realm of open source, Creative Commons and the federated realm. And today I am talking to musicians that I found in the Fediverse. And, they are here to tell themselves. Tell you guys about themselves. I don’t know where I was going with that sentence, but really what I wanted to say is, why don’t you introduce yourselves and tell the people who you are and what it is you do.
Paul: Go, Lex, go.
Lex: So I’m Lex. I started Waxlimbs as a solo project back in 2010, 2011, and then slowly accumulated, a lineup consisting of my best friends. So Paul joined, first in 20…
Paul: Okay. That means it’s my turn. Oh, yeah, go ahead. Okay. As long as you don’t have anything more to add. I am the second member of Waxlimbs consecutively. I play those circular things that you hit with sticks, and I also play, computery stuff and knobs and buttons and stuff. and now, it’s liv’s turn.
Olivia: Paul is also generally just like a hero. I’m Olivia. I am the most recent member of Waxlimbs There’s one other member that we’re missing named Will, who came in after Paul and before me. I sing and I mainly play keys and synths, though I have been dabbling in the world of guitar for a couple years now, which has been going swimmingly. And, yeah, happy to be here
Tom Ray: So I have done that too. I sing and play keys and I can play other instruments, but I, use them more just for writing purposes. But I do keys just because nobody else plays keys. So I have to sing and do that. That’s fun. And then I tried to do guitar, and I’m jealous of the fact that you said your version is going swimmingly. Guitar is the one instrument where I’m just like. I touch it and I’m like, well, that sounds like garbage. I know too many people that play guitar well. So the second I pick it up and I’m like, if I’m not instantly good at it, hell with this thing.
Olivia: I’m the same way.
Tom Ray: So the band here now, I want to explain how I came to find out about you and then also reach out to you. So I talk to a lot of bands that are Creative Commons, as I said, or, in the Fediverse, and I was a lot of the bands that I speak to. The thing is, is I’m in a band. I will meet musicians where I’m like, oh, I want to talk to those musicians and then find out that it’s a solo artist, which is totally cool. I’m okay with that. But rarely do I run into other bands. So there is a site on the Fediverse called it’s either Nahm or Nham. it is, I don’t know which way to pronounce it but they have a list of releases that come out and releases that are on open networks such as Mirlo, or on Suddenly the names are escaping me but like you know, self hosted or non corporate music sites. And one day I was on there and I’m like wait, why don’t I just search for bands? And I did and you guys had a release that just came out. So that was why I decided to reach out to you now, for the people that are listening to this. Where are you guys located?
Paul: We are physically in Toronto, Ontario.
Paul: No, it’s a good place to be. It’s, it’s decent. You could do worse.
Tom Ray: Okay.
Paul: Yeah.
Tom Ray: And I’ve always wanted to go to Canada. Never have. I’m actually in one of the northern states, in the United States, in Wisconsin. So we’re considered kind of the Canada of the northern nems. No, we’re not. I’m making that up. That’s.
Paul: No, that’s fine. We’ll adopt you.
Tom Ray: I’m okay with that.
Paul: Yeah.
Tom Ray: But no, I’ve never been there. I’ve always wanted to, but I don’t know. That was where I was going with that. So. Now you said, briefly in the beginning that you started a band, Lex, you started a band with your friends. Now how did this come about? Why did you want to start the band? How did the band get started in general?
Lex: Yeah, I was, I was doing this solo, I was doing the laptop and MIDI controllers thing and Paul and I had kind of met and started making music together around this time and we both ended up in Montreal together. we took a, a program called Electroacoustics at Concordia University. And pretty quickly we just, it became routine that we would always be hanging out, making music at each other’s places. And eventually Paul kind of turns to me and goes like, you need live drums for. And I can be your drummer. Because Paul was a drummer and always has been. So that’s kind of how that started to happen. It became electronic with drum elements kind of mixed in. The production became more of a collaboration. And then eventually we thought it would be really nice if our friend will sing because he’s got a great voice and he also happens to be a guitarist and a keyboardist. So we were like, oh, you know, we should just, like, kind of bring him in permanently and include. Turn this into a band. And eventually we needed. Well, we did a collaborative song with Olivia in 2017 called Faces in the Fog.
Lex: we had you on stage for one show, and we were like, yeah, Liv’s just gotta be a permanent member. Because first off, we had, like, a problem where Will was trying to do too much and I was trying to do too much. We needed some keys, and you were already, like, pretty solid with piano, so we thought, let’s bring you on for that as well. And then it just became like a permanent thing very quickly.
Tom Ray: So what were the influences when you were first starting out? you said you were doing more of the electronic music before adding the drums. What were the influences that you were doing then? And then also. Yeah, musical influences.
Lex: Nine Inch Nails, I think, is a pretty constant one. Over the years, back then, especially Massive, Attack have been a hugely formative band for myself. And, like, I still go back to, like, Heligoland and Hundreds Window, and I’m just still in awe of the production and songwriting on those albums. Yeah, those are. Those are the big ones, I think.
Tom Ray: Okay. And then, Olivia, were you doing any music or other bands before you started singing for them?
Olivia: yes and no. I was. So Lex and I actually went to high school together, which is how she knew that I played keys and how we, you know, had that relationship beforehand. And she actually had sent me an email out of almost out of nowhere, saying, hey, I remember you used to play the piano a lot in high school. do you think you might want to, you know, help with this band that I’ve got going? And, I was doing music, but I certainly was not doing this style of music. I’ve always been really firmly rooted in, conservatory stuff and classical repertoire, and I was doing a lot of musicals as well. So I was a music musical person. But this is my first, sort of project that was outside of that wheelhouse, sort of firmly in the rock world. And even back then, it wasn’t in the rock world either. It just had slightly heavier influences. And I thought, wow, a rock band. So the Difference between, you know, playing classical piano and doing, like, a lot of Stephen Sondheim musicals. And this project was. It was really, really fun switching between those worlds.
Tom Ray: Okay. For some reason, when you were saying switching from that to rock, I don’t know why, but instantly I just was like, oh, it was like Phantom of the Opera, you know, Exactly. Like, that was considered, like, the rock and roll show of the musical world, definitely.
Olivia: And between that or Cats.
Tom Ray: So Cats. Have you ever. Okay, slight tangent. Have you ever seen that? I want to say it’s. Oh, maybe it’s not Family Guy, I don’t know. But the one where it turns out that Cats is actually just. They started the show because somebody went backstage and the show goes on so long because people just get lost in it. And then they just live backstage and put on the show Cats. And it’s all made up every time that they do the show. And there really is no real musical. It’s.
Olivia: That, sounds believable to me.
Tom Ray: I forget what the reference is. Popped into my head, and I said it anyway, even though I can’t back it up now. So, now, Paulie, you said that Lex should have real drums. Now, did you guys meld the drums with the programic drums? Like, how was that working if you were doing that and you were planning to do it live? And this is something that I always am fascinated with because I just haven’t been able to successfully do it. Like, backing tracks, programic drums along with live performances. Like, were you guys doing that when you first started out?
Paul: well, the way she described it is not what I remember, but it is plausible. So, yeah, we were in Montreal together. That was my first time being kind of away from, like, the drum kit. I couldn’t actually play my drums back then.
Tom Ray: You, were longing for them.
Paul: I think I wanted an excuse to just play. But, yeah, we were just producing a lot together, and, I had this solo project where I was playing drums and backing tracks together. I still have this project. And, I don’t know. I just liked the music we were working on, and I thought we should play it live. And if I was gonna play live with Waxlimbs limbs, then it would have to be on drums, because that’s what I. That’s what I played.
Tom Ray: Okay.
Paul: So, yeah.
Tom Ray: Well, do you. So do you have a mixture of electronic and acoustic drums when you play, or are they all electronic drums? Like, what is your kit setup?
Paul: So it has changed, over the years, of course. lately it’s been completely acoustic. and we, we play back like, we have some playback elements. And so there’s electronic drums sometimes happening in the tracks occasionally. And they just, they just happen. because if they’re electronic, then, I find that like, I used to play the sampler, in this band. And like a lot of the time electronic drums don’t sound quite right if you hit them like 5 milliseconds too early or too late. so it’s just like, okay, just let the loop loop. don’t be such a. Try hard, you know? like maybe play a filter on top of it or something. Yeah. so I’ve been playing just the acoustic kit. Good old fashioned classic acoustic drum set.
Tom Ray: Okay.
Paul: I don’t know, there’s some electronics.
Tom Ray: Is that a DW kit?
Paul: no, it’s a Tamboro.
Tom Ray: Okay.
Paul: It’s from my teacher in Italy. he sold it to me, my sensei.
Tom Ray: So you fly out to Italy to take lessons every week?
Paul: Yeah, exactly. That’d be nice.
Olivia: Rehearsal is really difficult, what your life is like.
Paul: Yeah, no, he, my, my teacher, is from Rome, but he lived here when I was learning and he was sponsored by that company, but then he got sponsored by a different company so he couldn’t play those drums anymore. So he sold them.
Tom Ray: Oh, the poor baby. Yeah, I know many drums for him to play.
Paul: I mean, that’s, that’s how it goes, I guess.
Tom Ray: Ah, no, that’s a great problem. I wish I had it, one day. When you guys go about writing a song, how. What is your process, though? Let’s talk about your most recent single, the one, by the Neck, I believe it’s called Now. you released that this, year. And what was the process for writing that song? How do you go about when you’re doing and producing a song like that?
Olivia: It’s funny because that song I think marked marks a turning point where we were like, let’s do it completely differently this time. Okay. so I think part of the hallmark about by the Neck is that we didn’t stick to our regular writing or recording or producing, you know, techniques or. I mean, like, I think we still got a lot of stuff the same, but we took a lot of detours with our process this time that I think really helped in the long run. usually when we write something like, I, I can just speak on like the writing process. It’s usually a, series of messages sent back and forth of like, I wrote this demo. Oh, I recorded something on that demo. Oh, I thought of lyrics for that demo and just like sending, sending, sending, sending. And for the writing process for this one, we thought, well, let’s. Let’s meet up somewhere in person in a different location and just try to write something together. Like change of scenery, change of studio, change of process. So that was like, how the writing process differed. I mean, like, obviously recording and producing. I think Lex and Paul can speak to a little more clearly than that. But, I think we kind of flipped everything on its head in terms of how we usually do things for this song, like to. To the benefit of the song. I think it turned out really, really well. I think we’ll. We’ll probably do something similar for the remainder of the songs that we’re currently working on as well.
Paul: Well, this. This is a bit of an atypical band, the way it started as a solo studio project and sort of turned into a band. As opposed to like most bands start with friends jamming, in the basement and then like, end up writing cool songs and then bring it to the stage and then refine everything and then hit the studio and we. We’ve done it backwards. but yeah, we had this, like. I think we wrote this song just like jamming in the rehearsal space. and then we played it live and then, you know, it sort of became something. And then we wanted to capture the kind of live energy of it. We got tired of recording tracks, like, to the click, one instrument at a time. So the way we did this one was, ah, me and Lex came here to my room and plugged in the bass, plugged in the drum mics and played through the song. just the two of us live off the. Off the floor.
Olivia: I was also there. I just wanted crystal clear.
Paul: Yeah, you did a scratch vocal to keep the, like, structure of the song.
Olivia: Basically whispering into a mic so that they could hear the lyrics but not really singing it.
Paul: so we did that and one other song, that session. And we’re. We’re happy with things going that way. So that’s more. We’ve eventually got to the. More like kind of classic, rock. Not classic rock, but like, traditional rock approach recording.
Lex: Yeah, I think it’s worth kind of touching on the fact that the. The reason we went live off the floor, like, aside from being tired of kind of recording off the click, is it just didn’t work to a click. this song has such like an ebb and flow to its rhythm. I guess it’s just a lot of like, it’s dotted quarters like, for most of the first half of the song. So for that to feel good, there really needed to be an interplay between the bass and the drums and allow dynamic tempo kind of stuff to happen. And the best way to do that was just to do it the way we had been playing it live, with Paul and I just kind of feeding off each other. So it was good. Okay.
Tom Ray: And with the recording process too, because I know both of you had met going to school for music. You were both producing music because that’s what you were learning at school and you said you recorded in the basement there. what is, first of all, what, what daw are you guys using or what are you using to record? the tracks?
Paul: We are Ableton Live Die Hards.
Tom Ray: Okay.
Paul: Yeah.
Lex: trying to, trying to kind of take on a bit more variety right now. Like, I’m in the process of kind of mainlining Reaper when it comes to, like, contract work and stuff like that because, like, I’m a sound designer for games and that does a lot better for doing batches of audio files really quickly. it’s a much better, like, editing tool. But when it comes to writing music in the box, I think Ableton has been extremely, extremely good for us. So for the moment, I don’t see that changing. But it would be nice to kind of be a little less down to it.
Tom Ray: And do you guys take, turns or different takes on the production and the mixing of it? Like, are you sending the DAW files back and forth and taking passes at it?
Lex: Yeah, we’ve got a shared drive. we used to use Google Drive a long time ago and we got fed up with Google for obvious reasons. And in addition, like, it’s just broken software. the sort of desktop syncing stuff where you hit save and the files should sync to the cloud and then get pulled down on everyone else’s machines. It just wouldn’t work. We would have a ton of basically merge conflicts all the time. It just could not. It was not set up to handle what we were doing. And so I remember Paul found a Canadian, sorry, Canadian company called Sync, like Synchronization Sync. They, essentially have the same thing going on. They’re smaller, they’re, you know, local to our country. So we were kind of interested in that from A Principal standpoint and also a pragmatic standpoint. We knew, we really liked the whole, like, I can open up the project and say, okay, I’m in the project right now. Everyone else stay out. I’m going to do some stuff. And then I hit save once it uploaded. I go, okay, go nuts. And that’s been generally pretty good for us. When we’re working on stuff like mixes or saying, hey, can somebody throw in like a vocal track or a piano part or whatever? That’s been extremely beneficial for us. It’s slowed down a bit though, because we’ve. We’ve. We used to be entirely that way around, you know, in 2020, we kind of had to have this reckoning of, like, all right, if we’re not going to see each other in person for quite a while, how do we continue? And we took that approach. We already had the approach kind of set up because we, you know, Paul has a studio. I have, you know, my own little home studio. And so we needed a way to collaborate, especially when it came to mixing. But, we really kind of formalized the approach, I think, at the start of the pandemic. And then that became our bread and butter up until, I want to say, like 2023, when we started to go a little harder into the live off the floor kind of approach.
Tom Ray: Okay, I love it. Paul just got up, somebody came in. so this. It’s interesting because we also did a very similar thing. We, my band, we use git. And, what we.
Lex: Interesting.
Tom Ray: Yeah. So we actually. I actually got flown out to do a talk about it in, at the Ubuntu Summit in Prague right after the pandemic. Because during the pandemic we released six singles because we had already. I was testing it out and we had planned for it and we were setting it up with. And this is when you originally used to set things up, especially for developers and things like that. The joke was like, you know, set it up so that anybody can use it in case you get hit by a bus or something. And I always hated that comparison. And now we can say, you know, in case none of us can ever be in the same room again together because of a pandemic. Anyway, so, we had been messing with this and the process is actually very similar in the sync thing that you’re talking about. This is what solved the whole process. So if you use git, first of all, you can use large files by using Git LFS for the WAV files. Now with the syncing thing, you can all use it whenever you want. What you do is you create a branch every time you’re going to do something. So you go, I’m going to work on vocals. You create a branch. Now here’s the thing. You don’t merge it back in because then you will get conflicts. Especially if somebody else is working on something. You create a branch and then when you’re done with it, you create a branch off of that or somebody else switch. Everybody switches to that new branch after you’re done and you’ve backed it up and you synced it. So that way anybody can use it anytime. And yeah, so you just keep using branches and then when you’re done, you turn the final mix branch into the main branch and then that’s how you have the whole thing. So you just keep branching, branching, branching. Like say, vocal line, branch, guitar line, branch, remixing branch. And you just keep doing it from that. And it’s kind of like the way I described it is it’s like, the timeline and Back to the Future. So there’s one timeline where there’s no guitar in this song ever, and that’s the way it goes. And then one timeline where there is. And you can go back and forth and you can start from the beginning. You can always keep the different versions. If you decide you don’t like the version you’re doing, you can go back to the other one. It’s actually been quite, it’s been a very successful thing for us.
Lex: So anyway, you’re treating branches like commits.
Tom Ray: Yes, we’re treating branches like saves. another way to say it is, you know how if you have a file and you do save as so you can keep the original file. It’s like a less complicated version of save as. And so, yeah,
Lex: I use Git for work all the time. So it’s kind of. It’s the kind of thing where we’ve actually tried experimenting with git and specifically Git lfs back in the day. But we did run into the problem of, you know, massive binary files not working or just constantly having issues like anytime you did anything in the project. So the. It’s interesting to hear that your solution was to just never merge anything. yes, that’s kind of novel.
Tom Ray: It’s one of the. And the thing was is it was literally suggested by my. It was a offhanded not knowing how git works comment that my bass player said where I was like. Because he’s like. Because I go like, oh, I’m worried though, sometimes, like, we may get a conflict when merging and then it’s going to be, a nightmare and we may not be able to fix it. And he’s like, well, why do you need to merge? And I was like, well, because. And then I thought about it and I’m like, no, we don’t need to merge, do we? This is a music file. We’re not making software. We’re not publishing this to a site. We’re not making this public. It’s like, yeah. So the whole thing became that. And it was just this one comment he made where it was like, yeah, duh, don’t merge. Anyway, sorry, we got into a technical conversation there. Back to the music.
Paul: Never merge.
Tom Ray: Never merge. Everybody never merge. so the song, had been, put out, and then you had released a single before that too. So are you working up to releasing albums? Do you focus on just making singles? Like, what is the process for the band as far as releasing songs? I know you’ve been releasing since, like, 2017. You had mentioned.
Paul: Yeah, we’ve been technically releasing since way before that. okay. But the project changed so much that, that’s our earliest, like, public music. but, yeah, I. We’ve had a successful period where we did 12 singles, one single every month. and then sort of at the end of that said, oh, that was an album, by the way. No, no, that’s an album. and we may do something like that again. We’re planning to make an album. We are in the early. Ish stages of that.
Tom Ray: Okay.
Paul: Yeah.
Tom Ray: And do the singles that you release become part of the album or are they considered separate?
Lex: It depends. There’s. We have sort of a way of categorizing which is an album track and which is what we’re calling, like, interstitials, songs between bodies of work. And we’re. We’re in this kind of process right now where we’ve been just working away for a couple years on. On a bunch of new tracks, and we’re very excited about them and we know we want it to be an album, but we just had the conversation the other day of like, okay, we need to think about how do we manage the lead up to this. So, you know, the discussion is kind of a. A singles discussion. So how many singles are we releasing? When are we releasing them? At what point after that does the record come out? Do. Do we consider 50% of the record? 30%? So this is sort of the. Where we’re at right now.
Tom Ray: And are you doing them in a waterfall style? Or are you, you know, like, when you release one, is. Does that become the main one and then the previous one got released on it as well? Are you doing anything like that.
Lex: I’m not sure I understand what you mean.
Tom Ray: So a, waterfall style. I want to say the Chain Smokers invented this concept and it’s especially for singles and digital singles. So you release a single, you promote that, and then you release a second single. So then that second single is there, but then also it has another track on it which is your previous release. So that way they both get promoted and then. And so on and so on with the third release. And then eventually after like say five songs get released, then you can go, here’s an album that has just all the rest of the songs you were going to do or that you’ve been working on while these singles were being put out.
Lex: Yeah, we’ve. We’re a little too early in sort of figuring out how we want to release things to, to have gotten to that point. That does make sense, I think. yeah, it annoy me when artists I like do that. I’m always a little bit like, okay, this is the song and the song before. I kind of almost would prefer a unique release in each case because for us a big part of it is the artwork. So when we release, like when we did the 12 songs in a year thing, a big opportunity we, we discovered in that was the ability to commission a lot of artists. We were really excited to work with. So 12 artists. Some of, some of the covers are by us, like members of this band. But we got to work with a lot of really cool people that if we had kind of been putting things out in a waterfall style, might have been a bit tricky because it would have been under a single banner sort of release image. And we really like to showcase the work by the artists that we commission because, you know, it is a multimedia project, this band. There’s a lot to it on. There’s the music production side of things. There’s the physical stage production side side of things. And then there’s the visual and like writing side of things that we’re trying to kind of lean on a lot more lately, especially you know, in environments like the Fediverse and, And other online communities.
Tom Ray: And speaking of the, the physical performances, I have seen some of the videos that you’ve done. I have not seen you guys play live, which I mean, I would like to someday. But the, the stage setup that you have is really cool. And you have a, I want to say a, ah, dedicated light background. the, the. Yeah. What is that? First of all, tell me about that, that light setup. as someone who always Likes light setups especially. Like, I remember right. before we got started, Polly had set up his lights, and I was like, hey, lighting. So I don’t know why I went into that, but what is the setup for those? I want to say beams of light, hexagons of light. Tell me about the backdrop.
Paul: They’re diamonds.
Tom Ray: diamonds.
Paul: They’re just squares on a 45. we. I. I am currently in a back room of a lighting store. This is the family business. Oh. we make custom LED lights for, you know, whoever needs them. Restaurants and art galleries and stuff like that. so. And Lex had worked for us, for quite some time. Will work. Will has worked here as well. but anyway, so we have access to lighting stuff, and, a workshop and like, crafty DIY tools and stuff like that. And it’s like, okay, we have this stuff. We’re in a band. Let’s make some lights. because we’re so special.
Olivia: Very DIY too. Like, not only. I think Paul’s underselling the work that he’s put into this project. Like, not only did. Did Paul and Lex build this rig from spare parts, they also figured out how to program it to work with Ableton, and they figured out how to make it reactive to the kick.
Lex: And they’ve.
Olivia: They’ve built and destroyed and rebuilt and destroyed and reinvigorated the setup so many times now it’s fully collapsible and so much easier to set up. And, you know, it really was just like scrap parts that got thrown together. And now they’ve become quite elegant over the last nine years of playing with them. Or I guess it would be closer to eight, seven and a half or eight years playing with them.
Lex: Yeah, that’s.
Tom Ray: That is pretty handy, though, that it’s, you just happen to be connected to a lighting store and you guys are. It’s what people in the business world would call synergy. so it did work out.
Paul: Yeah. It’s a competitive advantage that we’re leveraging.
Olivia: Yeah.
Tom Ray: And on those performances. Performances as well. Another thing that I’ve noticed is that you guys have, I want to say bird masks, the. The Waxlimbs logo.
Tom Ray: What it kind of reminds me of is you remember the old, Japanimation cartoon, G-Force, or some people know it as Battle of the Planets. it’s from like the 70s. If you ever get a chance, watch it. It’s fascinating. but it’s. There’s an evil person and it’s literally, it’s Kind of like a colored version of the mask that you have. They talk to it on a screen, and it’s just hovering there and giving its evil orders. And it kind of reminds me of that. So I know one of you right now.
Olivia: Not familiar.
Tom Ray: Well, if you.
Olivia: But I like the sound of giving evil orders, though. I could do that. I could pivot.
Tom Ray: Yeah.
Tom Ray: It’s definitely a.
Tom Ray: It’s a specific thing that I’m mentioning. But tell me how the masks came to be. you guys wear the masks on stage. And, how did that come about?
Lex: I’ve told this story a thousand times. I want to hear Liv or Paul, describe it. take a crack at it.
Paul: Yeah, you do it.
Olivia: Well, I remember Lex starting this project when we were in high school together. And there was an event in which she had to perform the soundtrack to a movie, a movie live. And. And it was, from what I understand, a bit of column A, a bit of column B, where it was one part, I wouldn’t say stage fright necessarily. but I would say, like, one part stage fright and one part, I gotta give the. The audience something else to look at that isn’t just my face while I’m performing all of these.
Tom Ray: You don’t got to.
Olivia: You know, it’s just something. Something else to look at. And she. Like those early masks. She put so much work into cutting them all out of these, like, foam sort of bristol board with a foam center, and just cutting out all this foam core board into, like, all of these different polygons and hot gluing them together and making sure it sat just right. And so, those early masks were such a labor of love. But, yeah, and I guess when Paul joined, Lex was like, well, I guess you need one, too. And then got one for Will. Got one for me. And they’ve been through so many iterations now. They’re so much lighter. They’re so much more comfortable to wear. So much less hot. You can breathe.
Lex: Yeah. All the good stuff. They no longer shatter if you look at them wrong.
Olivia: I’ll never forget there was one particular day in rehearsal where you. Lex, you mentioned something about how uncomfortable it was when the point, like, you know, pressed into the side of your shoulder. And then I just remember Paul going, well, I mean, I’m getting stabbed, like, every time. And we turn and looked, and Paul had, like, a lower point that had. That was like creating a big red mark right here. And everyone at the same Time was like, why didn’t you say anything for the past, like, months that this thing has been stabbing you while we’ve been playing? She didn’t want to make a fuss. So I think we, like, chopped it off that day, I think.
Lex: Yeah.
Olivia: Just like with an exacto knife.
Tom Ray: It’s true. Drummers do have to look down
Olivia: A lot more. Just like, a lot of.
Lex: Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, we’ve moved into, like 3D printing them now, so.
Tom Ray: Oh, really?
Lex: Yeah. Very, very low infill, so they’re super, super light. You’ve kind of picked. Settled on. I think we’re using ABS right now just because it’s so, so much lighter than anything else. But, you know, we’ve gotten away with pla and it’s been fine. Just we’ve referred to the design a bit. We had, a 3D modeler and game dev friend in Toronto named Indigo Doyle design, a model for us based on those original, like, sculptures that I had made.
Tom Ray: Okay.
Lex: And that we did four variants and eventually kind of just settled on one as, like, this is going to be the one that we use for all of us and we’ll just kind of fine tune it until, it works for all our. Our faces. And, you know, it looks.
Tom Ray: Yeah. Because it would have to be a one size fits all, wouldn’t it? If you’re essentially.
Lex: Yeah.
Tom Ray: Okay.
Lex: So that kind of became like, I. I moved in with somebody who had a 3D printer and got some prints made, and those lasted quite a while until eventually they just all shattered, like. And then I eventually got my own 3D printer and have been kind of tweaking and experimenting with the actual. The models themselves. And they’ve come a long way. They’ve changed a bit. They’re less. They used to be very, like, low poly. Inspired by the original. I’m using a flat material that’s, you know, it’s a planar material that I’m kind of creating joints on. And so now it’s less. So it’s more organic and, exemplifies the vibe of the original design, which is sort of like the barn owl. Eye shape is really important and everything else can kind of move around, but we know, like, the eye shape is sort of the iconic thing about it that has to stay. Okay.
Tom Ray: All right. Now, when you guys, set up shows and are releasing these songs, how do you go about promoting yourself? What are, what are ways that you get the word out there about the band? I mean, you’re doing all this stuff you’re putting all this effort into it like most bands do and then it’s like, well, now what do you do? So how are you getting the word out there? nobody’s quick to answer on this one.
Paul: Yeah, we, we try a lot of stuff. Not everything is successful. one thing that has been successful, I think, well, not so much for local shows, but just about getting the word out about us in general has been, Lex’s like Expedition, ah, into the Fediverse. like a lot of people have found out about us that wouldn’t have checked us out otherwise. and like, yeah, being involved in smaller communities, people that are more passionate and more have worse skin in the game or something like that. but in terms of. In our city we just talk to people that we’re talking to, let them know that we’re playing a show. You know the classic stuff. Instagram does, does work for now. every. Yeah, it’s a multi pronged approach and we’re not like packing stadiums. So it’s just like get some people to come. we do have ah, like a relatively large percentage of like the sort of younger, queerer people that you don’t usually see at the indie rock shows, coming out or like the techie kids that like usually stay home. just through, I don’t know, through word of mouth.
Lex: People like me. I’m just, it’s nice. I, you know, I found there was a moment where our audience kind of shifted in demographic and it started to get. Yeah, we had, we had a bit of a younger audience all of a sudden, like Paul said, a lot more. At least like outwardly queer people that was. And that started to feel really nice. Like just we really put ourselves out there on stage, myself included. And I think that feeling like the audience is kind of meeting me where I’m at is a really, really big part of feeling comfortable on stage. Okay.
Tom Ray: And another thing too, and I just remembered this. You also just relaunched your website.
Tom Ray: so tell me About the process of doing that.
Lex: Yeah, I, I’m a web developer so I have been wanting to get us like we’ve been using Shopify as our merch store forever. And that of course comes with a theme that is, you know, a website. But I have gripes with Shopify and I would, I’ve been really for a long time kind of going, you know what, like, we could just have our store be like a grid of products and it’ll still work. In fact, it’s probably better if it is a simpler thing. And by building something from the ground up, we could have a lot more fun with it. Like I could have built a Shopify theme that was, you know, fully custom and did everything we wanted to. But it kind of felt necessary to get on our own architecture or to, to design our own architecture. So I’m using a static site generator called Loom, which I’ve been using since 2024 I think, and I’ve been very, very happy with it. It’s very, it’s, it’s pretty typescript heavy. you can use a templating language called Vento, which is really nice. It’s by the same person who makes Loom, Oscar Otero. And it’s small. That’s the thing I like about it. It’s a small open source community. So there’s a lot of, you know, you go and ask a question and someone will actually be able to work through your problem with you. So it’s, it’s been great and I kind of opted for that. But aside from Tech Stack, it was really just kind of going like, what do we want this to look like? I love a sidebar website. I’ve, I missed that era of websites kind of having a dedicated sidebar. Yeah, I really wanted it to feel kind of stark and simplistic, but at the same time, like there’s all these little details hiding in the corners. So it was a lot of using a component library I built, using LOOM components, which are basically JSX components. So just bundled up and kind of going, hey gang, what do we want on our website? Like, like the sky is the limit. Let’s, let’s, let’s kind of think big about, you know, what can we do with this? It’s an ongoing project. It’s sort of a living document. Right. So we knew we wanted an EPK to be something that was responsive. before we were using a Google Doc with a bunch of formatting and stuff.
Tom Ray: And you weren’t using Sonic Bids.
Lex: Yeah, like, you know, we kind of wanted to get away from these really rigid design constraints and just formatting issues. And I was like, well, like a website is just a text document and we can just change how it looks on different screen sizes. Why don’t we do that and make it a more accessible, but also be more usable for the people who actually look at APKs.
Olivia: Right.
Lex: So, you know, I built a Terms of, sorry, table of contents component that eventually got rewritten by Oscar, the guy who Writes Loom. And now that’s a plugin that you can get with Loom, which is really cool. So there was like a little bit of a feedback loop there that I really got a lot out of emotionally and I learned a lot doing it, so. But you know, aside from things like contact page and embed widget with like shows coming up and a newsletter thing and all that stuff, it was like, great. We have the minimum viable website. Why don’t we start to think about what we could do that’s fun. Like, you know, there’s hidden links, there’s random kind of chance based occurrences on certain pages. And we started to think more recently about what else could we do. Could we have. We’ve been kind of touting the idea of a demo graveyard, which is.
Tom Ray: I was going to suggest you have one where you have a boss fight that you accidentally walk into or something like that.
Lex: Yeah, it’s.
Paul: Yeah.
Lex: At what point does it just become a game? But you know, we’re kind of like thinking about all these ways we can sort of have fun with it because I’m very much a. The web is a fun medium and it’s been. Oh yeah, it’s been like salted by corporations and I think that we can still have fun with it and make our site something people actually want to visit. Like our fans are the kinds of people who might actually go to a website and not just stay on Instagram or Blue sky or whatever. Right. That’s kind of what I want to. Those are the kinds of people I want to cater to and those are the kinds of people I want to design things for because they’re the ones who will appreciate it.
Paul: Nice.
Tom Ray: Yeah, no, I like the. I like the new site and I noticed when that came up, first of all, I was like, this is gonna be great because then I can ask them about it on the show. And second, I just really like the design and that is a good point. it didn’t even occur to me until you mentioned it. I’m like, oh yeah, that is a sidebar sidebar nav, isn’t it? You don’t see lot of those anymore and when you do, they’re one of those hidden ones where it’s like a big just multi menu or what if super nav or whatever the hell. Anyway, so. No, I really like it. I wanted to, I wanted to discuss that. So are there other things coming up that the band is doing? Things, that you’re planning in the future, Things that you want to tell People about that might be coming up that you’d like to mention before we wrap things up today.
Paul: We, have a show coming up.
Tom Ray: Now, just keep in mind, this will be released in a couple of weeks, so if you have one coming up.
Paul: Like, we don’t have a show coming up anyway.
Olivia: We don’t have a show coming up. We’re actually so deep into the, like, caves of producing and recording right now. And by so deep, I mean, like, we’re in the cave of producing and recording. We’re there. And so we’re trying to focus a lot more on that, simply because
Tom Ray: if we don’t colorful with the analogy there.
Paul: Ah, yeah, we’re lost in the cave. We don’t know how deep we are.
Olivia: And we’re basically right at the entrance and we’re already spelunking too far. It just takes a lot of. It takes a lot of time and effort to make an album. And if anyone disagrees, it’s because they’re not making a good album. In my personal opinion. Like, you can’t. You can’t just say, oh, well, we’ve had these songs written. Let’s just record them this weekend and then release them. Like, you can do that. That’s not what we really want to do. I don’t think if I can speak music.
Lex: We’re writing just to, kind of like, you know, add a bit of an angle to that. The kind of music that we’re writing really benefits from a long time and a lot of iteration. So we are. We have, like, a lot of these songs have just been through different versions, like, many, many, many times. And it’s just about trying to find the thing that fits the best, especially in the context of a record. So we have been talking a bit about releasing another single soon and starting a sort of release schedule for singles for a record. But I think it’s a little too early for us to have a date attached to that.
Paul: Okay, so there’s nothing we want to promote at all.
Lex: Go to our website.
Olivia: go to our new website.
Tom Ray: That’s true.
Olivia: Maybe. Maybe what we could do instead is just, reiterate to the people who are watching, like, where they can listen to our stuff because they’re not going to find it.
Tom Ray: That’s going to be my next question. I always end with that question. Of course.
Olivia: Yeah. I think the thing that I really love telling people about is our concert film, which, you know, in terms of you were asking, how do you promote yourself? And how do you get the word out about what you do, I would say that our concert recording, our concert film, is my personal favorite thing we’ve ever done to let people know that we exist. And we are so, so lucky to have a large following in America, and we have no plans to go to the United States anytime soon. and so having that recording out, you know, people have sent us messages about how much they appreciate they can basically come see us in concert without actually physically being in the same room as us. And so seeing. Seeing that concert kind of travel has been really, really cool. and yeah, that’s where I always tell people to start if they’re.
Lex: We want to do it again.
Olivia: We do want to do it again. Yeah, we were really. We were really gunning to do another one this particular, summer, but it just never clicked.
Lex: Okay, it’ll happen, though.
Paul: All right.
Tom Ray: Where could people go see that concert footage that you’re speaking of?
Olivia: it’s called from the Garden, and it’s on YouTube.
Tom Ray: Very well. It’s. I had watched some of it earlier, and, Yeah, no, it was. I really like the way it turned out. It was very well done. A lot of good camera work. very active, too. Yeah, it’s almost like. Yeah, it’s hard to explain, but it was. And also how the background. So black. I don’t know how you got the background so dark.
Olivia: A lot of fabric.
Tom Ray: Okay.
Paul: Black fabric. Yeah, it was.
Tom Ray: Yeah, no, it was very well done. It was black, you know. What was that? I’m sorry.
Olivia: I was gonna say you were talking about how well it was shot, and I just wanted to say shout out to Zach Silverstein, who is the one who shot it, with a, ah, second camera operator as well. We had a couple of cameras stuck up in, like, the rafters of this, you know, Parkdale garage, alleyway house. And then we had the two of them just kind of zooming in and out on stage, offstage, between people, through people. and, yeah, it was so beautifully shot.
Tom Ray: Yeah.
Olivia: And such a hot room. It was really hot.
Lex: 33 degrees in there or something like that. It was way too hot.
Olivia: Yeah.
Tom Ray: And for people listening, we are already gone through this when we started. They mean Celsius. Yes.
Lex: Yeah.
Tom Ray: I asked. I asked how warm it was today, and they said 27. And I’m like, wait a minute. That’s not warm at all. Anyway, no, it’s because I’m doing. Let’s say I’m doing the incorrect Fahrenheit. I don’t know. We don’t need to go into that we had a whole discussion about before
Olivia: the show started, double it and add 20 or something.
Tom Ray: Oh, you have the method. That’s what I was saying is I was like, I bet you there’s a method for it, but I don’t know what it is. So you’re saying double it and add 20?
Olivia: I think it’s double it and add something. It might not be 20, but I
Paul: don’t think they scale at the same rate. Like 1 degree difference at like 70 for you and 20 something for us. Like that difference is different than when it’s cold. Like, I don’t know. There’s a point where they both like cross over. I don’t know.
Olivia: 30, 32, I thought.
Paul: Doesn’t make sense.
Tom Ray: Yes. That was the point I was trying to make.32 is technically what freezing is in Fahrenheit.
Tom Ray: And that’s what it’s based on.
Olivia: I see.
Tom Ray: Anyway, I said we weren’t going to get back into us.
Olivia: We had no plans to go to America. So let’s. We’ll keep it.
Tom Ray: yeah, you guys don’t need to know it and we don’t need to know your made up Fahrenheit Celsius stuff.
Paul: Well, we do need to know your units, actually.
Olivia: It’s unfortunate.
Tom Ray: True. Yeah. Yeah. We. We kind of have a tendency to make everybody learn our stuff. Sorry about that.
Paul: That’s how it goes. We’re used to it.
Tom Ray: We’re not all like that. Just it happens somehow when we just kind of go. I didn’t vote for it. but anyway, I want to thank you guys so much for talking to me today. This has been great. Yeah, thank you.
Olivia: Thanks so much for having us.