Ep. 22: Seapunk 2 w/ Zombelle

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Music.

(00:50):
Hi, everyone. Welcome to this week's episode of Silent Generation.
This is a very special episode because it's our first sequel episode.
We're going to be doing Seapunk 2.
And also, I'm talking to one of my childhood heroes, or I guess adolescent heroes.
We're joined today by Shan Beast, who did a Seapunk project under the name Zombell.

(01:14):
Flash. flash yeah yeah
so zanbell's joining us from costa rica really fun
so how are you doing today i'm doing great
i'm really happy to be here super happy
for the opportunity and also i wanted
to say like right off the bat how much
i appreciate you archiving and what

(01:37):
you've already put out there because you know with so
many of these websites going bankrupt and people
deleting content myself included a lot of things
have just been totally lost to the
best yeah like definitely we want to touch
on is that like archiving these online things
that we were always told like oh you put something online it's there forever and

(01:58):
that's like increasingly not the case and if it's not actively preserved
it just gets yeah basically lost out there
but luckily we have a librarian in here so yeah i was
doing a second dig this week through like c-punk content
i looked at pretty much every interview you've ever
done and in the process i found like you know
an instagram page for like mainframe and there there

(02:19):
are places i found things documented that i didn't know existed so there is
thankfully a lot out there that is still preserved but yeah i think it would
be fun before you sort of start out by talking and asking a few questions on
bell of just like how you ended up agreeing to do this.
I'm still surprised that I'm

(02:41):
getting this opportunity because I know that for you and other seapunks.
You did eventually stop being seapunk, but you just re-released your album Tropical on SoundCloud.
And then I had posted a comment underneath your post announcing it that was
like, oh, I used to be seapunk in high school and I was on the diving team.

(03:02):
And then you found my podcast and then you saw the Seapunk episode.
And then I like reached out and you listened to it. And that was just like a
really cool experience.
That was a cool experience for me too. And little known fact,
every single person who ever posted about CPunk or anyone who was a fan that

(03:23):
was publicly accessible through a hashtag, I saw every single hashtag.
We were always on the hashtag.
So I actually recognize you from way Way back in the day, seeing you posting
things like when you posted the image of yourself, I think I'd seen that before.

(03:45):
And and so like, it's super cool, though, to have that instant like recognition
of like, I kind of remember seeing us before I post this about and then checking
it out. So it's super cool.
Thank you for doing the podcast.
Yeah. Yeah. I wonder how you found it, because I actually was not on Tumblr.
I've mentioned this on a few of our episodes but

(04:08):
like when i had first found tumblr in high school i was
like oh i feel like i'm late to the game and then
it would be cool still year after year after year i totally
missed the time to join no it
kept strong for like quite quite a good chunk of time until it's like purchased
by yahoo or something i think that was the beginning of the end yeah yeah useful
platform yeah yeah well how did i find you i remember just i'll say this briefly

(04:33):
before we get into some juice but i remember your american of carol co-worker.
Mentioning you to me because it was someone who was like
on our outer circle who had access i
guess to other people and was like oh i know this kid and so when i heard that
i was like this is so crazy because yeah like we always kept an eye on the hashtags

(04:54):
and and there was always like a lot of information coming in i was surprised
how much i could recall from all of that so So how I discovered it,
I actually don't remember things that happened to us. We don't really make them happen.
Yeah, no, it probably was my coworker who I sent that episode to, too.

(05:15):
So he's going to listen to this one, I'm sure. And yeah, he's still a fan of Seapunk.
Nice. Very cool. Do you have any questions before we get started?
Questions, not so much. I will say that I have some things that I would like
to ramble on about initially to lay a nice strong foundation to add a deeper

(05:37):
context so that as I answer your questions,
I don't have to go back in history to pull an archive to explain the answer.
So I'm just going to lay a foundation and then I'll answer all of the like micro questions.
Yeah, that's good. Yeah, like a firm like a background basically kind of blurb.
Yeah, we're totally open.
Doesn't have to be all back and forth all the time. You're more than welcome to ramble and stuff.

(06:00):
We do all the time as well. But yeah, yeah, I want to open it up to you first.
Just kind of give us like your kind of rough, quick oral history of like C punk
and your role in it as on bell and all that.
Okay, so I think the question that has really been overlooked is like,
who is Zombell? And like, where did Zombell come from?

(06:22):
Yeah. I get asked about Seekbunk a lot, but very rarely about like,
my artistic or musical career before that wave happened.
So Zombell wouldn't exist without me, Shan.
I love you. We've never met before. My name is Shan. i was

(06:42):
actually born in mississippi if you
listen to that episode one you're going to hear some like updates
to some information as as we go i'm sure we'll
get into that later and i'm actually going to like get
each of you to listen to me tell you about a
little bit of my personal history because i think it
relates to c-pump ultimately

(07:05):
like hugely and then we'll get
into once we've gotten in a macro foundation we can
get into the micro questions about specifics about who
did what when and all of that and i promise we'll let's talk
about azalea lady gaga we'll talk
about all of it and and i'll answer your questions about whether or not mermaids

(07:25):
are a sea a key question yeah it is the question on everybody's mind so i grew
up in the south in the united states and I always wanted to be a musician.
My father was a musician.
He always had a music studio wherever we lived.
And I remember being in the music studio with him and watching him practice

(07:48):
his vocal lessons and I would play his drums. He liked everything.
And I feel like that imprinted hugely on me.
This time of my life, like pre seven years old, growing
up more or less in the music studio and like
watching the joy that I got my father because he's very
much like the dying hard joyful musician type

(08:10):
so my parents separated when i was
a i was heartbroken and something about that just really really like i said
imprinted and i was like i just want to be a singer with my dad i want to be
a musician it was it was my dna like i always felt this very strong drive to
do this my brother and i started our first band in high school i was

(08:30):
probably 16 or 17 it was called oxygen and
when people asked me in interviews because we
were oddly popular when people asked me in interviews why
oxygen i would say you know because it's like music because you like need it
to live oh that's really good that's so earnest that's great ridiculous my brother

(08:52):
and i still laugh about that so this band and i can send you It's like if you
feel compelled to play it on here, it's hilarious.
But I used to sing in this like really deep growling voice. Like people would
hear us and they're like, that's a woman or that's a girl. That's 16.
And so that was my first time really getting up on stage and performing for

(09:13):
people. And I just knew that that's all I wanted to do.
In high school, I was listening to like Billie Holiday, Marilyn Manson,
Radiohead, and Leonard Cohen.
And I always have been like an outsider, like just on the outside of whatever
everybody else thought was popular.
I didn't get into grunge. I was like Nirvana, who's smashing pumpkins.

(09:35):
I want Radiohead. And I got made fun of all the time.
You know, dressing like Marilyn Manson and listening to Way to Go Ahead.
It's never been a problem for me to be that person.
Way down the line, I ended up following my dreams and moving to California at age 19.

(09:56):
And all I wanted to do was teach myself how to play guitar so I could sing.
Because I wasn't an instrumentalist. I was just a singer and a songwriter.
And I've always loved writing and lyrics.
Huge passion. progression so i did that i
set out to do it i totally achieved it i taught
myself to play basic chords and i began writing

(10:17):
a few songs one of them one of my first
songs i ever wrote i actually just uploaded last
night to my soundcloud and so if
anyone wants to hear like early song of all stuff you can hear
it there what's the name of the song it's called
wake up you're dreaming and so i

(10:37):
wasn't songbilled quite then i was just learning but i met
some really special people at this time of my life who were phenomenal musicians
and i happened to move from los angeles to riverside in the inland empire in
california so shout out riverside people you know who you are because you were
there with me at this magical another magical crest of special time for music

(11:01):
and art, there was a lot of people coming out of the Inland Empire at the time
who now are very popular and have a great following.
This is like our inception like we we came up
together there's like we there was a music label
that came out of this with limited 4b5 releases a
lot of ben bedtram recordings and like myself that's how i started and and just

(11:24):
phenomenal musicians so i ended up living with my now husband and he was in
a band called the sesh if you know anything about the san diego music the
sesh was my now husband at then boyfriend's
band and i lived with him and andrew
the drummer also songwriters and

(11:46):
they taught me so much about music like real music i felt like oh my god like
this is where i want to get my juice like this is where i want to get it from
so So Andrew taught me how to record. He taught me how to play drums.
He taught me a lot about sound. He was super into the Beach Boys and production.

(12:09):
And we would just like get super high and we would listen to music and like listen to it.
Like not just let's put on music and chat. Like we would put on albums and we
would just be like, oh man, do you hear that sound? Like we would obsess over the sounds. Yeah.
So it was at this time that Zombell was created. Zombell was originally a band. It was a three-piece.

(12:32):
I played guitar and I sang. And my friend Emily, who was dating also another
member of the sesh, she played bass.
She knew how to play bass. And then Jeremy, my then-boyfriend who played in
the sesh, he played drums.
And we had this amazing house where so many different musicians would transiently
come through where they live.

(12:52):
And we grew parties. And it was one of those places where like,
you know, everybody came through there.
And I played my first show with those guys.
We played like our three songs and I wanted to like pee my pants. I was so nervous.
And and and then you know
from there that band disbanded eventually

(13:13):
and we all kind of went our separate ways i ended
up continuing to be involved in the music scene
in that area the sesh kind of like
migrated back to san diego and i remained in the in an empire which is more
of a northern well it's southern california but san diego but northern vibes
so it's very low And so then I helped with the Silencio recordings label was

(13:39):
playing at times I was playing drums in a band called the Seabeasts.
My father, who I like hugely admired, even though I had no relationship with
him growing up after my parents separated, we ended up reconnecting.
He bought me my first computer and my, my then my next boyfriend installed the

(14:00):
acid recording program on my computer.
So I was able to record and he really pushed me super hard.
And like, he was such an inspiring person to so many people.
He brought in so many artists who became really huge.
He had that eye and ear for talent and he was really good at it.
And he would always push me like, oh, keep writing, keep writing,
don't stop, keep practicing.

(14:20):
Here's how you record on a computer. Here's how you use this ATSID program.
And that's how I began recording my first album, which was technically a demo
at the time that I gave to people at Stowe's.
And it was called the Gurkelbeest demos or Dead Notes demos.
Dead Notes demos, which is a reference to my terrible guitar playing.

(14:41):
So there's so many like, so, so then I really, I was like five nights a week playing shows,
either drumming, either DJing or performing by myself on stage,
which terrified me and I had horrible performance anxiety,
but I pushed through anyway, because I knew that this is what I wanted to do.

(15:02):
If you've ever been on a stage by yourself holding an instrument and everyone
is staring at you and you're not expected to open up and make a noise,
it is kind of terrifying when you first start doing that.
So at this time, I was working in record stores almost constantly, living in California.
I was working at Mad Platter in Riverside. Then I moved back to Los Angeles.

(15:27):
I began working at Amoeba Music Hollywood, which is the largest independent
music store in the United States.
And it was in Hollywood. So there's always, you know, famous people coming through.
And all the employees were like musicians or artists in their own right or like
film buffs who ran cinemas.

(15:47):
And it was just like a really beautiful time.
So I was working at Amoeba. I was still playing shows and it was at this time,
roughly around like 2007 or 2008,
that I finally took a lot of those original demos that I had recorded and have
been playing live for like many years.
And I released it on a cassette label called Living Tapes.

(16:11):
And all of their releases were limited to 100 cassettes.
And we the the owner of
the label jason he worked at amoeba with me and
he had released so many amazing artists when he asked me
if i wanted to release gurgle beast on his label i was like i feel so cool that
you would even ask me because it was like this is a label that is highly respected

(16:36):
by like witch house heads but it's not a witch house label it's very bedroom
recordings experimental experimental,
weird, dark, vibey stuff that is right on the outside, again, of that.
It's edging on Wichita, but it doesn't quite drop in.
So I got to release that. It sold out in five days. I was like, whoa.

(16:56):
So that is out there. Some people have that.
And I also have a lot of those tracks uploaded to my SoundCloud if people want
to hear those there also.
It's pretty clear which ones those are. And then from there,
I ended up having to leave Amoeba.
And then I became spiraling downwards in this huge crisis, emotional crisis,

(17:22):
financial crisis, like a dark shadow of the soul moment where I was like,
why am I messing up so bad? What am I doing?
I'm so lost. One of those moments. I didn't know how I was going to pay my rent.
I was just like, I had an apartment walking distance from work.
I was like, I don't think I can keep this place. What's going to happen?

(17:42):
My father and I had maintained some semblance of a relationship,
and it was at this time that he had a heart attack, and his wife was like,
your father had a heart attack.
He's in the hospital. We're going to fly you out to see him.
I hadn't seen him since I was eight, so I was like, cool,
I guess I'm just going to leave everything in my apartment that I have because
I can't take it on an airplane,

(18:03):
and what am i going to do with it i lost everything into a suitcase i left everyone
that i had spent the past over a decade getting to know loving and learning
from the scene that i was heavily a part of venues my ego of a performer you
know like what am i going to do take it to wisconsin so

(18:23):
i'm like okay i'm gonna go see what's up with my dad and if he survives this
i'm gonna have to get get my stuff together.
So I go to Wisconsin, and I see my father, my brother comes as well.
I eventually am like, I don't know what I'm going to do. My brother invited
me to come stay with them in Topeka, Kansas, which is where we grew up.

(18:44):
We lived in Mississippi until I was around like seven or eight.
Then we moved to Kansas and I lived there until about 19th in California.
So this is where my Kansas roots come from. I spent my teen years all throughout in Topeka, Kansas.
So I'm staying with my brother. I have nothing. thing i have
like uh i have a little corg that i

(19:04):
was recording on and i'm like well i'm gonna do what i know i'm just gonna go
to music i'm gonna i didn't even have a computer my brother like
let me use his laptop which i ultimately killed from
so many files and overuse i just like
i was going through such a spiraling crisis i went
full into internet fully i
was like i think i think it was because of living

(19:27):
tapes that i then was like algorithmically easily
inserted into the witch house scene and
began meeting people independent artists from
that scene and other people and making friends and i
started collabing with a lot of people online this
is when you were in wisconsin still or no this is when you're in topeka topeka kansas

(19:48):
so i was like living in
a spare bedroom in my brother's house it was very luxurious but
I like didn't leave I was just working all the time
I was recording music I was writing songs I was meeting people I was creating
these like community building online events like I started a rave cave the rave

(20:08):
cave I mentioned in interviews before you probably read about it it was a video
a tiny chat video room and.
And I hosted what I knew to be the first international live music and DJ event on video chat.
A couple of years later, people started doing it, but it was everywhere.

(20:29):
There was like a kid in Mexico City projecting the screen of the chat onto his cafe.
And it was like people were taking it into the real world from the Internet.
They were inviting people over because I had DJs and all these people.
And it was like an exciting event.
You could be at home and invite your friends and all hang out and be a part of this thing.

(20:50):
So I started to build this kind of like network through the witch house community.
I was also modeling for a clothing brand called Nevermind.
I remember those old pics.
Yeah. Yeah. So I, for a couple of years, I was at least a year and a half. I was doing that.
They made our tour t-shirt that we can talk about to send any questions about that tour.

(21:12):
And so it was at this time I was, let's see, my tribe at this time in that group was teams,
Sean, who's actually Eve's tumor, Ian from Slow Head, Mascara,
Merkaba, Albert, Ultra Demon, and Travis Agadie, Picture Flame.
And those were like, those were like my, my buddies.

(21:36):
And so we did a lot of stuff together and we were all hive minding really hard.
And I feel like with the exception of Travis, I won't lump him into this,
but Travis, I would say everybody else was kind of like a person who was suffering.
A person who was in some type of crisis, who was an artist and was really struggling.

(22:02):
And somehow we all found a way to come together and start creating things via the Internet.
So I was sending vocals to people left and right for different tracks.
I did like a bunch of collaborations.
I did a track for Phantasma Discs for a Twin Peaks compilation,
which was really special.
Special I'm a huge Twin Peaks fan so that was really special and I was like

(22:25):
driving cross country back and forth too because I had like zero money I was
putting everything into my creative space I just knew it was that time like
I felt the drive to create so we did that.
I drove to LA to like do a job I had committed to and come back.
I was driving back and forth to visit Travis and Colorado to hang out at Glob

(22:45):
and Rhinoceropolis because there was shows there happening all the time.
And Travis and I were friends.
And then I got to know Albert and he invited me to a, my life was a thrill kill
cult concert that he had organized with some friends.
And I met him there for the first time. We both had blonde hair and then,
and then we started hanging out.

(23:06):
The first time we hung out he like dumped a bag out and
it was full of makeup and i was like i was like what is going on
and then he fell asleep and i was like well i'm gonna go home now and
it was like an hour-long drive i was asleep
i just got here bro that was like the first time we hung out one-on-one and
but we were still like part of the same groups and seeing the same stuff that

(23:26):
is eventually how the culmination of c-punk happened because we really started
like getting into this space together.
And we had a lot of similar friends. And so we're seeing the same things all the time.
Basically, Julian was a friend of his little internet.

(23:47):
And we both followed him on Twitter. So when he posted Seapunk Barnacles,
where the studs used to be, Albert saw that and was like,
oh, snaps, like this perfectly fits a label on something that we're all experiencing.
And we're just having fun. Like me and Sean from teams, we're just having fun.

(24:09):
Like we're like dressing up and having parties online and like doing all this
stuff and just having like the best time.
So for us, it was like how fun we're going to like put a label on it and just
really take it to like the umpteenth level.
And so it was at that time through those connections that I also had a connection

(24:29):
in Los Angeles with Robert DeSaro, who was a label head. and I was like.
Release this album it's gonna be so great
and he's like yeah let's do it and i was like we'll do a tour and he's like
yes let's do it so i wanted to bring slow head i wanted to bring teams i wanted
to bring all these people from the internet together and i wanted to force them

(24:51):
out of their computers into real life and see what happened because it was a fun exciting time.
Albert didn't go we visited that's the picture
you saw that i posted recently and so ultra
demon didn't go on that tour but but we did
visit and then kind of like jump off from kansas
city at that point funnily enough the tour

(25:14):
didn't work out very well with the sorrow it ended in absolute chaos and mayhem
because of the sorrow and not because of us because we were all doing great
but however that's not fair there was a lot of like weird stuff when you take
Take a bunch of people out of their bedrooms.
I was going to say, yeah, that's kind of a recipe for disaster.
Yeah. All of the anxiety, all of the tension, especially when you're like weeks

(25:39):
together, it starts to come out in different ways.
I ended up kind of getting hooped on that whole tour. I drove my car.
I organized the whole tour. I did everything. All of our tour money was stolen.
We were like struggling, struggling. But my knight in shining armor was Sean.
On and so i ended up hanging out

(26:01):
with sean and venice he was staying at this awesome
venice with this other grateful head guy who was like kind of releases like
venice beach yeah yeah in california and so she and i started really like formulating
together a lot of the fashion aspects of c-punk and no many credits sent with
it but those old pictures of me and sean where he's like holding

(26:24):
up the Seatongue HQ sign and I've got a Clear Vibes Only sign.
Yeah, I've always wondered about those pics. I've always...
I mean, was there a C-Punk HQ? C-Punk HQ was his place where he was staying
at the time because we were creating it right then and there.
Like it was being created. And a lot of people didn't want to be pigeonholed

(26:45):
because it became kind of oppressive because some people wanted to use it as
a springboard for their career and didn't care about anybody else.
And other people were just having fun. And like, this is so much fun.
We love this aesthetic. and it feels so good to like
share this yeah so anyways that that
was at that point where c-punk became a thing albert

(27:07):
and i ended up living together for a
period of time and then we traveled around and we did our thing and
from there i could probably answer more questions specifically
yeah yeah so it sounds like
you were coming from a real like in real life music scene
in riverside this like kind of like ever-flowing group
of artists and then personal tragedy you have

(27:29):
to go and disconnect from that you then hop online kind of
reconstitute an online kind of musical scene out
of all these disparate people and then you try and export that
into the real world by way of this tour with mixed results but that is like
that is what brings you to the start of this right yeah correct yeah it's sort
of like you're a transitional you're in this transitional period in a way because

(27:53):
there used to be more localized music scenes.
I mean, there's musicians alive today who will argue that their local music
scene is as vibrant as what existed in the 90s or 80s. But I'm of the opinion
that it's kind of died down.
You don't get musical genres popping out of cities. It's more national and global.
But yeah, you had this community that then could be translated online and feeding

(28:17):
off of each other seemed to be really effective. Yeah.
Yeah, it was a fun time. Here, I'll show you. If you're not on video,
you're not going to see this.
But for you guys, you're talking about archiving.
There actually are like a few IRL artifacts that still exist. And this is one of them.
It says Coral Records up top, but there's names.

(28:38):
Yeah, Shanna's holding up a button of, I think it's the Splash 001 EP, right?
Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's right. Yeah, there are some rare Seapunk artifacts out
there. I mean, I have one mainframe shirt. I really wish I had more.
Yeah, I've got mine. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, mainframe sticker.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there's still some real stuff out there. I have a stack of magazines.

(29:01):
I collected every paper magazine that came out in my stash, shoo-away, and zip-lock bags.
There's still some stuff, but it's a shame that so many things have been removed,
including the Wikipedia that kind of is just like totally tore apart.
I got written out of the Wikipedia completely.
And I think the only people credited are like Julian and Alter Demon.

(29:21):
And they mentioned picture playing for coining the term witch house.
And then there's a really terrible picture of these like random girls with like
bad, bad style that somebody put up there just as a joke to be like,
yeah, who cares about this? They're not going to put the beautiful picture they're going to put. Yeah.
No, the picture looks like it might be maybe from like a Comic-Con or something.

(29:45):
Yeah, they don't. They're not Seapunk at all. That's it. But yeah,
I don't think it's accurate at all.
I mean, it's not for Wikipedia not to credit you more because like you were
so instrumental in like the Seapunk sound, but also the aesthetic.
And then you also coined Slime Punk too, right? Yeah.
Yeah, there's like so much that needs to be included there. But I've never,

(30:07):
I've never edited a Wikipedia page.
I don't think I know anyone who has. I have for little things.
But I think that's such a tricky thing to do.
Like, I mean, as we talk about archiving and stuff like a Wikipedia page,
its strength is that it is so editable by random people.
But it's also like these are such hard sources to cite, like to find a primary
source involving this besides a screenshot of a blog post from years ago.

(30:31):
Yeah, you wrote in the docket that you alluded to someone intentionally writing you out.
I mean, you probably don't want to clarify, but do you kind of know why that
might have happened? Oh, absolutely.
There's a lot of people who participated in that whole scene who,

(30:51):
for a number of reasons, like I kind of went over previously,
it's like artists are people in vain.
Comedians are depressed. crest like these people they
are constantly seeking inward consideration
and more consideration for everybody around
them that creates this pressure and anxiety for them not being good enough or

(31:12):
succeeding or failing in reconsideration for what color their hair should be
and how they should dress and what they should sound like and what they should
say and and that's the curse of the artist that's why there's always so many
tragedies for people who are like why they had it all.
It's like they were N-word considering their entire lives. That is literally
like have an army in your head against you your entire life.

(31:36):
So, yes, there are certainly people around there who might be like, we're done with this.
And so we're going to kill it like it's dead officially.
But that was kind of happening towards the end of 2014.
There was some like tricky dicky stuff happening in the Brooklyn scene or the

(31:56):
Bushwick scene specifically with like the MTV vibe stuff that was coming. I mean, yeah.
And people somewhere in there, there was a shadow that was like an energetic
shadow of sorts that was trying to like totally squash it.
Who was consciously involved? I don't know.

(32:16):
But I do know that there's plenty of reasons for certain people to want to do
that. For instance, the Wikipedia, I wouldn't be surprised if it was Ultra Demon
because I had sat beside them plenty of times watching them edit that exact
Wikipedia to write other people out.
I've sat beside them plenty of times watching them try to delete images they
didn't like of themselves from the internet by sending cease and desist notices.

(32:41):
There's a lot of that stuff. So I accepted it. I was like, I don't really care
that much right now. I'm just going to let the wiki be there.
This is something we kind of touched on. We did an episode on Electro Clash.
But the second you can put a name to a scene, it feels like the timer is now ticking.
As you said, some people saw the genre or the name or the scene or the aesthetic

(33:01):
as something they could use as a springboard to just like, oh,
look, I'm a part of this. Give me visibility.
Now I can run off and do my own thing. I think that people start to kind of
start pointing guns at each other a bit.
And I don't know. There's only so many eyeballs and ears for content, for art.
I hate using the word content. And so I think that sometimes people can get
a little nervous once a scene is established and like, okay,

(33:21):
how can I extract the most worth out of this and still get out with my identifiable,
like, you know, artistic repertoire. Yeah.
What's cool though is that like C-punk, I mean, the Wikipedia says this, but like.
It is true. I mean, the only really like local scene was in Chicago.

(33:42):
It's one of the cool things, I think, to come out of Chicago in the last like,
well, now it's over 10 years, like 11, 12, 13 years ago is when C-Punk happened.
And so like with this podcast, we are trying to do like we're trying to make
Chicago look good amongst many other like things in our agenda.
And so far thus far we've only interviewed like chicagoans and you i mean didn't

(34:05):
grow up there but you were chicagoan at some point and it means a lot that it
came out of our city yeah totally chicago is an amazing city too and it deserves
a lot of respect there's so much creative energy that comes out of that space and we definitely.
Appreciate when we were living there we lived there for a number of years in
pilsen And so after Kansas, we went to California.

(34:27):
And then after a few months in California, we went to Chicago to meet up with
Molly Soda, who invited us to move to Chicago.
And and so I remember we got there totally disheveled from the drive and like the house was full.
These like internet celebrity like raver looking

(34:50):
art school kids and we're like damn like
weird we just want to unpack but everyone looks
so good like what's happening yeah they were like kids
right everyone was stunting everyone was right
out yeah yeah yeah so the whole
group kind of uprooted from kansas city for a
brief foray in california and then all to chicago

(35:12):
like localized in pilsen or it was all kind of people coming
and going just me and ultra demon oh yeah
yep so everybody else fell off and it
very quickly became just me and ultra human
when we got back from tour it was a mess like shark tank like red ocean vibes

(35:33):
yeah and and and we were like we're gonna just do this so we just did it and
did started doing interviews interviews. I really just started like putting it out there.
And, and then from there, you know, we're like, I'll use some of my Los Angeles
connections. We'll go to LA, we'll play some shows and see how that feels.
And we just started feeling it there. So when Molly was like,

(35:55):
just come to Chicago, we're like, okay, cool.
So we did. And I knew Molly from playing New York. I think it was like one of
her parties that she drew or something.
And so, yeah, that's when we met Zayn from Teen Witch
and Jimmy and Molly and Claire
and that was like four very big
personalities at the time doing different things creatively

(36:19):
but we we never Ultra Demon and I never really like fit in with other people
it was always no matter where we were and what we were doing me and Ultra Demon
giggling about inside jokes that nobody was going to understand a scene of two
people yeah it was a scene and a sea of two people.
Everybody was always trying to like, I don't know what they're doing,

(36:41):
but we're like, we're just doing our thing.
I mean, I think that's one of the features of mass indie,
which is a term that I like to use to describe the period between 2010 to 2015
and beyond of just internet aesthetic people.
It's this term that was coined by K-Hole in their report where they also coined

(37:04):
normcore as a reaction to mass indie. But yeah, with people who I describe as
being mass indie, it's like they have individual aesthetics.
And like, when they're individually on their own, you can't really infer like,
what they're trying to go for.
But then when they're in a group, it's like the differences. Yeah.
Yeah, you start to see that they're celebrating the differences.

(37:26):
But yeah, I mean, even for just two people in a room like that to match it,
like, that's the way to match.
Actually if everyone's going to be different and there's two of you that
like synchronize like then you stand out yeah so
yeah and then the whole thing that started all this was the re-release of tropical
was tropical recorded during this period in chicago no actually tropical was

(37:49):
recorded before the tour when i was still living in topeka kansas so i met merkaba
at the time when When I was living at my brother's house in Topeka, Kansas,
we started sending tracks back and forth.
So we did Cray Sean Pumpkin Pumpkin, which is a cover of Cray Sean's Bumpin' Bumpin'.
And we used to like go into Cray Sean's live video streams because she'd be

(38:13):
like, who's up? Who wants to chat? And a hundred people would show up.
So we would be there and we're like, what's up, Cray? And we ended up kind of
like having a repertoire with her.
And one day I was like, I want to do a cover of one of her songs.
Like let's do bumpin bumpin but we'll make it witch house because that was witch
house we we all on our end we all were finding.

(38:36):
Entertainment and everything that was happening even though
we were highly enriched parts of what was happening
and took our ourselves somewhat seriously we also
like any other group we found our ways of celebrating it
through a joke so we're like we're gonna do this so spoof
reworking and so that's how we began our producer and performer career so it

(38:59):
was files being sent back and forth when we did tropical we did it differently
we did it in person and mark about had an arrangement with me,
which was like, if we're going to do this,
you're going to be with me to produce this whole album.
I'm not going to be over here doing everything by myself.
So I ended up picking them up from Los Angeles, driving them back to Topeka

(39:22):
to stay at my brother's house with me, where we continue to smoke weed like
caterpillars in Alice in Wonderland and record it.
But that creation was actually recorded in Los Angeles at Merkabah's apartment.
Department and that was actually fully improv
on acid in a closet i
was like i'm ready let's go and just like

(39:44):
went into the closet and recorded all the vocal takes and that was
our first song so that's the song you guys likely heard
at the beginning of this interview and and
so do you and murkaba still talk
oh yeah we've been
talking a lot lately yeah so you you
re-released tropical in collaboration with them

(40:05):
again yeah yeah and it was actually their idea so
it was really kismeti with your podcast
coming out and this resurgence of interest in
the aesthetic and randomly merkabau was.
Like i just remastered tropical which
i had been told all the files were lost and we
didn't have them anymore like years ago and i was like this is

(40:27):
just how it is and they sent me the files and i
was like this sounds great and they're like i would love to hear
your input anything you want to like do differently and
so i made the cover art we released it it's
on spotify yeah that's where i was listening to it today it's on
youtube yeah so i really like the song you sped up which one was that again

(40:47):
blanket yeah blanket yeah it sounds really good sped up i think i was about
to ask like what spurred this whole kind of like re-releasing of all this but
it just sounds like it kind of came out of nowhere like i don't know things
can be very kismetty and just yeah.
I fully believe that. Okay, so these days, I haven't been making music,

(41:08):
but I'm an energy healer, not surprisingly to those who know me and actually
specifically a sound therapist.
So in the time that like everything ended, I've been going through like educational
processes and getting certifications.
So I'm certified energy medicine, yoga, certified biofield tuning,
and I'm a modern esoteric healing educator.
Educator so as just to preface that

(41:31):
i don't think that things happen even though i coach
people on how to manifest because that's the person i am
i'm like the great manifester literally so i
coach people how to manifest but there's a huge misconception about
manifestation and i truly do not believe that we make
things happen things happen to us we
are too mechanical and too robotic as human beings as

(41:52):
organic life on this planet to consciously make
every decision in full consciousness things just
happen to us so when you know when the
album was remastered and about to be released when your stuff is
happening i'm like the planets are aligned like it's just happening so i just
accept it i'm like i think i learned a bit from that i'm always like no what's

(42:13):
the reason what's the source but i think i need to kind of take a step back
and things do just happen yeah i mean the way joseph and i sort of met we won't
get too detailed but it's we both
had very long internet journeys where basically there's this podcast that we
like that had a subreddit that then a discord in Chicago spawned out of,

(42:33):
and now I'm in charge of it and there's almost 700 people in it. And that's how I met.
And then you have your own foray into it, but yeah, it's like the most bizarre way to meet a person.
And I'd been wanting to start a podcast, but yeah, I feel like for,
for me in my life, I always feel like the biggest signs I get are through technology.

(42:54):
Like if I'm about to send a message and it doesn't send, I like really pause about sending it again.
I'm like, I don't know if I'm supposed to. But yeah. What about you though?
But no, I feel like technology is how that happens.
Is there any other like intro stuff to get to? Is that the final?
I think I just want to keep picking your brain on like, on C-punk like origins and all that stuff.

(43:18):
Because like it really did. We did an episode on Vaporwave, which is such a mass market thing.
I mean, there's just shirts everywhere and music. But this seems like it was,
as we said, a scene of two people that developed an aesthetic around it.
And then it kind of became this like germ that people realize like,
oh, it's an internet aesthetic.
Like that means you can take it, make it your own thing.
Like put it out there for free and just

(43:40):
kind of like further the conversation what does this look like
was it sound like yeah and so i don't know like i can't think of an earlier
example than c-punk for this kind of like semi-organic formation of an aesthetic
well there was witch house witch house yeah yeah but that gets to something
i wrote about in the docket how i think that you

(44:02):
might be the person to attribute the idea of like an internet subculture formula,
because, you know, there's, I'll lay it all out.
But basically, you know, as someone living in the 21st century,
we have access to an unlimited number of images, it's easy to get bored with
our everyday surroundings.
And so when we see like, even a small collection of images that that are visually

(44:26):
stimulating, what Seapunk did with, you know, then spawning Slam Punk and sort of Ice Punk.
Ice Punk was really never quite a thing. But those two things where it's like
the Seapunk formula, where like you can translate imagery into music and fashion
and culture, that has been like, unlimitedly invaluable.

(44:48):
Like, you know, I feel like so much of the art and music that has come out of
Gen Z and us as cuspies in between Gen Z and millennials.
It's like the amount of art and music that has been spawned just from you figuring
out that idea of you can translate images into music.
And even if, say, someone wants to make the argument that Witch House did it

(45:11):
first, that was still the same idea of imagery can inspire sounds.
And it's been so powerful. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. And so we can kind of hop into this other part that I like here,
which is in our effort to be archivists of this, we just want to know,
like, where did we miss the mark?
And we want to get like kind of the true answers on some, yeah, on some seapunk stuff.

(45:32):
And so first up, we want to talk about mermaids. What is set the record straight
on mermaids? Okay, so here's the thing about mermaids.
Oh boy. So the reason that mermaids are not seapunk is because even though the
seapunk aesthetic is very oceanic,
it's ultimately a subliminal slip into a neo-cyberpunk world,

(46:01):
which is what we were creating.
With my Rave Cave and trying to be a pioneer of online events and bringing people
together, the tour that we did, that was all part of that.
This cyberpunk mentality.
Everyone was talking about sipping internet, hacking the planet, and this and that.
So mermaids are basically sirens who historically have sang melodious songs

(46:28):
to near sailors into shipwrecks and to their death.
And that has nothing to do with seapunk. yeah however however
i do want to clarify that seapunk
is a very specific thing that gets lumped in with a larger aesthetic that has

(46:49):
absolutely nothing to do with the core principles of seapunk created by albert
and myself and other people too and so because of that this other aesthetic
is lumped in as seapunk because of the like.
The checklist you have colorful hair check yeah
reducing it to
like identifiers yeah as opposed to general vibe

(47:12):
kind of yeah yeah i think the mermaid seems like such
a historical thing it's tied into all these like past references
to ships pirates sailors all these things are
just not a part of the very forward-thinking futurist
outlook of seapunk like visuals yeah
i think in a lot of aesthetics that are either nostalgic futuristic or like
a retro futuristic but this seems like a purely futuristic

(47:34):
approach utopian utopian yeah totally
like our our biggest albert's biggest ultra demons biggest inspiration at the
time and pop culture was a movie waterworld with kevin foster i love them yeah
let's see we both me too we both really love hackers obviously oh yeah and And Captain Ron,

(47:58):
we always joked about Captain Ron vibes, but it's like, and, and reboot.
The show that came out, but it was like digital cartoon realm,
hugely, hugely important.
It was the first thing of its kind. And we modeled a lot of what we did after
some of the visuals from reboot.
But yes, it was like a very specific thing. And to me personally,

(48:19):
which is what I can really speak to is just for myself.
It was about creating a glistening, glittery paradise for people to explore
different parts of themselves,
to become more limitless through the internet, the same way that I was doing.

(48:39):
In my real life, I was incredibly limited, or at least I felt that way,
and I was putting a little suppression on myself.
I was trying to create something that felt good, that looked good,
that made me feel expansive.
And the way that I knew how to do that at that time was to create this fantasy realm.
And Seapunk was hugely about fantasy. It was all about fantasy,

(49:01):
right? But then there became rules.
Yeah, it was very escapism.
Yeah. But people are always going to want to make those rules. We want identifiers.
People can't live on vibes alone sometimes.
Times they're like no we want like a checklist of things yeah the checklist
is this idea that kind of pops up repeatedly of like i know

(49:22):
it's hard for us to want to document and not want to document too much basically
like over document ourselves and be very reductionist as to like what is and
isn't yeah and i think with c-punk music especially you see how it really wasn't
that boxed in that much there's so much variety in like the sounds that you
hear like someone Someone actually,
I was at the gym today and I mentioned I was going to do this interview today.

(49:46):
And someone, I mentioned I'm going to interview a founder of a musical genre.
And they asked what it was. And I said, C-punk.
And then they asked me to describe what it was. And I was like, tropical.
It took me like a minute to figure out how to describe it.
And then I finally was like, okay, rave. It's like electronic, kind of like rave music.
But yeah, it's really not boxed in. There is quite a lot of variety within it.

(50:11):
Even, I mean, I feel like the way to misinterpret sea punk is to think it's, like, all blue.
It's, like, it's just, like, I don't know, beats with, like,
what do you call those Caribbean drums that you, like... Steel drums.
Yeah, like steel drums. And that's it.
There's, like, a way to simplify it, but it was never that simple.

(50:31):
Yeah, it was a lot of things to different people who helped popularize it.
I think that's why like for ultra demon it became
heavily informed by personal politics
and and and concepts artistic
concepts that most people did not understand
like ultra demon is like telling people i have a
44 000 year old demon that lives inside of me whoa comes out of my back and

(50:56):
has completely conceptualized and this is like a real thing this isn't like
there's like a there's information so that's where all your demons name comes
from wow it's from this character yeah okay.
And yeah for sure it's an entity and so
all the ultra demon is an entity that they've
lived with and so there's like obviously a

(51:18):
clear separation because my thing is not that
and i really very much was about and this
is something it's like a gift or some some
part of me i've been able to to very effortlessly do in my
life where i can bring people together and create
things out of nothing and even
out of things that seem like not great i can

(51:40):
like flip them and then voila you
have sea punk or you have like hide and go seek at the graveyard and helicopters
come because there's so many people and it was just everybody hanging out in
town and i ran around hopping over fences says hi and seek in the graveyard
like i'm just that was that that was in riverside california when i first started
recording music that was a very fun night yeah yeah,

(52:04):
So as an adult, there's actually this really like interesting account I once
read from this, like, it was like a think piece on childhood.
And they cited this like incident where like this graveyard got swarmed with
thousands of children who are hunting vampires.
They're using it as an example to show that like children in the modern world
don't have agency. But yeah.

(52:26):
So that answers your question about mermaids. That's for sure.
Um yeah and and
i just wanted to say they're trashing our rights to
anybody listening and then
there's a couple other clarifications that i made about episode one is there
anything specifically you guys wanted to talk about one thing that i feel like

(52:49):
popped up sort of halfway through seapunk or at least to me as an outside observer
was that anime started to become more
prevalent, I feel like, towards the second half.
But it seems to have maybe been present, at least for you, as an inspiration
a bit earlier on. Would you want to talk about that?
Yeah, it wasn't really me so much as the Ultra Demon, who's more into some of the anime stuff.

(53:12):
My anime knowledge goes as far as Studio Ghibli and Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z.
I've watched a lot of anime in my life,
But I'm not that person. I'm not a weeaboo. So my appreciation is just like
Bulma was like my seapunk.
Kind of like I love seeing images of Bulma. I was like, this is super seapunk.

(53:36):
That's Dragon Ball Z with the teal hair, right? Yeah. Yes. Okay.
A very limited knowledge of Dragon Ball Z, but I was able to pull that out.
Yeah. I've never watched Dragon Ball Z myself.
The only anime I've really ever seen is Neon Genesis Evangelion.
I mean, if you're going to watch one, that's a pretty good one to do it. Yeah.
Um but yeah so i
guess we kind of talked about this other like before but the

(53:59):
rules do you want to speak on kind of the idea of the
objective versus subjective reality of this i
want to okay so yeah you guys we just we briefed on rules a little bit and for
me like we kind of did discuss this a bit because for me the objectivity was
the creation of fantasy right that fantasy would be

(54:22):
created and people could which is still kind
of subjective i guess in a way but like the things
became very subjective like everything was subject
to something and nothing was allowed to get past the guards the gatekeepers
you know what i mean and and i was one of those too because i was like very

(54:43):
much at a point became a gatekeeper where it's not important to me now but then
i was like Like, I must protect this.
You know, I was waking up at 4 a.m. to work at a juice bar to learn Japanese
in one of the Pilsen subway train stations in Pilsen on the pink line.
I was working at the juice bar in there.

(55:05):
I was doing whatever I could to pay our bills so Ultra Demon could do whatever
it was Ultra Demon was trying to do, like producing music or traveling somewhere to buy fruit.
Because you know we loved a lot of fruit back in those days we would go to the
produce warehouse and buy like boxes and cases of fruits that's all we ate where we're all vegan.

(55:28):
How is the fruit in Costa Rica? Do you have access to any rare fruits?
All of it. Anything that you can imagine, we have here.
Nathan had a rare fruit phase where he was trying to try all the fruits possible.
Yeah, I was during the pandemic when too much money.
And I got a subscription to this company called Miami Fruit.

(55:49):
And I'd get a couple dozen pounds of fruit from Miami Fruit in the mail.
Wait, but you used them as well?
I did. I did. I used them right before I moved to Costa Rica.
I was using them to get a specific varietal of banana that I really like that they always have.
The fat ones that are really like, you know, spongy and delicious.

(56:11):
Wait, are those the vanilla bean ones? Or do you know the name of it?
I don't remember the name at all, but I get them all the time here,
just like on the corner and they're like everywhere.
But yeah, I was spending like $80 on Miami for subscription
a month because bananas shifted me
from miami florida like to detroit where

(56:31):
i was living at the time oh my god yeah yeah no
they are honestly the quality is pretty good like i when
i find exotic fruit here in grocery stores it's not
quite as good as what they would send no yeah they
spray it with chemicals to prevent it from ripening naturally and they do a
lot of treatments to fruit so the fruit that you get anywhere that isn't a tropical
paradise is not going to be as good so here it's like tree ripened everything

(56:54):
is like you can't have a guacapaya in the states yeah you pick it off the tree and it's like oh yeah.
But yeah, have you had any like new fruits for the first time since moving to Costa Rica?
That's really, yeah, I have. I've had like different types of varietals of fruits,

(57:15):
like different dragon fruits.
There's lots of sapote, which I think is called mamey in Chicago.
And it's like $8 for a fruit. Worth it.
It's like if coconut and banana had a baby or something.
It's all good. good um to me to
me that they may taste a bit like pumpkin personally

(57:35):
wow yeah i'm blind to this
whole world over here you guys are just shooting back fruits these are amazing oh
man yeah yeah what's crazy
too with mamey is like most i feel like half
the time you get one it's already sprouting on the inside and
so i actually have an ex-boyfriend who owns a plant
store in chicago but when we were dating i gave him like

(57:57):
these sprouting mamey pods and i was like can you grow these
into a tree he wasn't able to do it but yeah
probably yeah it's cool i love costa rica
because you can throw a seed out and it just grows like
nature takes over here it's lovely there's no culture like mexico but but the
culture is nature and nature will always overcome everything else that tries

(58:21):
to thrive here it's amazing yeah so one thing i I want to kind of touch on from
our little list here is like,
everyone just wants to know like, Oh, was it all a joke?
Were they joking with this? Like, I think that question comes up a lot.
And I think the answer is a lot like more nuanced.
And I just want to like, cause you guys are having fun. You're making serious
music, serious art with a fun aesthetic.

(58:42):
Like, where do you, what are your thoughts on this? It depends on who you're talking to.
Cause like I said, for me, I was like having the time of my life and also creating really
interesting things that i was enjoying but
we all always were joking like we we always
had inside jokes and funny things we're friends so of

(59:04):
course things were funny to us and when c-punk became super popular
overnight there was a part of that that was very humorous to
us because we're like oh my god like we did it was never
supposed to do this like the joke became real like it crossed the
like the barrier basically like when it broke containment exactly when lady
gaga is as wearing a wig identical to my hairstyle and then holding up another

(59:27):
wig identical to my hairstyle on a live concert or dressed up like a Gucci mermaid
in a music video with long turquoise hair.
I was like, crazy, we did this, that's amazing.
And like, there's tons of instances like that that we thought were funny.
But what we were doing was not a joke. I think that there were like different
conversations going on with different people of which information was harvested.

(59:53):
But but c-punk i think for like maybe for
ultra demon for instance it was more of like a catapult
into a more enriched career and out of this place where they had been previous
to that or it's kind of like kind of stagnant and like what am i going to do
next but then it was like all right i've got the platform and ultra demon is

(01:00:14):
incredibly talented and has spent their entire life.
Learning their crap and really practicing it unlike
me like i mean i've been singing my whole life but people
who can really get technical and learn things and concentrate
on one thing like i feel like
i in my life have been like jack of

(01:00:34):
all trade it's master of none but some people really master their
craft and i think that ultra demon is one of those yeah yeah craft is
the word i was thinking of there like a kind of like not a single talented
craftsman but someone who has like you know their their portion
their band of the whole spectrum of you know creation of
like creating art and they just like really drill down
into it you know the feeling of like session musicians like people

(01:00:55):
who are craftsmen kind of above all else yeah i mean
i would say that tropical is a seapunk masterpiece
i think that that and title rave by unicorn kid
i like i actually can kind of listen to them
front to back which i can't do for a lot
of albums i skip you know every song besides
two usually but like yeah it's actually like

(01:01:15):
a pretty cohesive work i really do think
you did a good job with that thank you so much
for saying that because we put a lot into it and
and i actually lost sight of the fact that
i had a fan base for me through all of this and i became very detached from
the music that i was making i felt like it was being overlooked and overseen

(01:01:37):
and i forgot but there's people like you who were like i love the music that
you're making make more of it and i was too busy you know running an apparel
company and a record label.
Yeah are you thinking of making music again
now at all yeah i am i actually went through
my hard drive and i pulled a bunch of old songs and old
sounds i was going through them this week and i.
Music.

(01:01:59):
Definitely have ideas about what that is going to be but i do not think it's
going to be anything like the work i've done with america bought for tropical
it will likely revert back to me producing my own songs and playing everything
myself like i always have done in the past That feels better.
And it's more experimental lo-fi. Do you envision it being more like acoustic or electronic?

(01:02:24):
It's hard to say at this point, but I tend to be somebody who doesn't want to
have to learn new things when it comes to music.
And if you could see my files when I'm recording, there will be like 85 vocal
tracks and they're each EQ'd in a very specific way and sampled and sequenced in specific ways.
And then it's like random noises that I've made and just put them together and

(01:02:48):
made a guitar because that's easy for me.
I don't want to have limitations where it's like oh i have to learn how to
play this to make this song yeah you already
have the tools that you like you just want to like you know apply them
in different ways basically and work with that i think
we can kind of go into like what what you call the end
of c-punk i know the future or

(01:03:09):
the future but yeah and then into the rebirth as well yeah yeah i
mean i feel like c-punk didn't go out with a bang
i feel like it was this very slow like
release but you can
speak to that more so this is probably
roughly around 2014 when all of this started happening
things were getting really rocky between ultra demon and myself there were a

(01:03:33):
lot of problems within our relationship that weren't finding a result and a
lot of confusion and kind of payoffs and i think also some resentment happening
so things were going pretty well for For them,
they went on a Japanese tour and the label was doing well.
And also my apparel company, Mainframe, is doing really well.

(01:03:55):
If you know about Coral Records Internazionale, I was the co-founder of that record label as well.
If you have a CD-R from us, then likely I cut your cover art out and packed it myself.
Myself but so basically what
I'm trying to say is things got a little bit rocky
in personal life we're really focusing on

(01:04:17):
business at that point but when everything
started happening with Azalea and
Rihanna it really started to like put a dividing line too because we had we
were also surrounded by a lot of people in Chicago at the time who didn't have
our best interests in mind because they were getting publicity and they were
getting attention from kind of like being around this like.

(01:04:41):
Thing that we're doing right but they kind of are always trying
to instigate us to react to things online in
ways that maybe we wouldn't have but it's like when something
happens like rihanna surprises you coming on snl and
she's clearly using visuals that seem
to be ripped off by kevin heckart and you're just
like whoa this is crazy where's this coming from or azalea banks

(01:05:03):
does a music video where she's riding a dolphin and she's wearing a
bindi and she's like doing this whole thing it's kind
of like whoa what's happening and i think because we'd
worked so hard to hold the reins to keep it going as
long as we could it felt threatening to
see people who had greater audience than us to do something with it and then
when everybody and you're like proud of people it's like oh like i remember

(01:05:27):
zane from teen witch saying like and celia's riding that dolphin like she's
riding me our dick and i was like and it really like got my goat and it should have you you know?
And then I ended up doing an interview on some hip-hop magazine talking about
Sazale Banks, and I was just like, what am I doing?
What am I doing here? This is not what I'm doing. So then all the MTV stuff

(01:05:50):
started happening, too, from the Bush twit crew, and the MTV vibes and all of that had a huge.
Role in dismantling what was remaining of C-punk, and most people don't credit it to that, but that.
Seemed to be a divisive interview where a

(01:06:10):
bunch of people were brought together i was left out
of it and i think in part intentionally because the
person i am i wouldn't have stood for it but i've
just been like yeah everybody else is kind of like i didn't
think the weird vibes documentary on c-punk was very
good i mean the people they include like anna
managuchi i didn't know anything about them

(01:06:31):
until they were in that documentary they weren't c-punk like
maybe they knew about it but i did think that that they
weren't accurate at all really in their portrayal of what was
going on yeah missed the mark onomatoguchi were
friends of ultra demons and so was julian
a friend of ultra demons yeah i
mean julian made sense to be in it yeah

(01:06:54):
and julian did a great job too and i mean they may
not have even known the intention was to kind
of ridicule and whatever whatever
it did it did but there was also an award ceremony that
happened at that time that nobody knows about because it's been erased
from the internet it was an ntv music creators award
and albert and i were given an award by janine garofalo what yeah what a what

(01:07:23):
a get gave us an award i had my cat in the video it was like ridiculous and then we accepted it.
Yeah it's gone but they gave us a physical award they
sent it to us in chicago and ultra demon
i don't know if they sent them the artwork
for the award but the award was literally the cover of

(01:07:44):
ultra demon c-punk album so it wasn't
even like we could share it it was like on the
award but but i mean
amazing like we got that at the same time vibes
happened there's also documentary on red bull that is on everybody's apple whatever
the tv it's called like don't call it tumblr wave right yeah it's called don't

(01:08:08):
don't call it tumblr wave and there's a whole thing about c-punks they come
into our chicago apartment it was like when we first moved in.
And and there's all kinds of stuff in there but basically like
the energy was just leaving the room everybody was moving
on the people who were holding on tightly to it so it
was time for it to dissipate into something else yeah
yeah it was like reaching its like final life

(01:08:29):
stage basically it like blossomed this thing you couldn't control
out there like artists were doing things with it then
it's interesting the people around you did want you to like hey this is your
thing go be enforcers on it and you guys were of mixed minds on that i don't
know and then it's just kind of you know like any good cultural moment it reaches
a moment where everyone kind of like looks at each other and says oh what are
we doing like what are we doing here what's next yeah i mean you were

(01:08:54):
You and Ultradeemon were sort of the last big people from my perspective to exit the game.
I mean, the way I presented my Seapunk slide deck and the Seapunk episode,
episode 12, you know, it's like you two plus Ultradeemon and Leaf were the biggest players.
I know you didn't really get why I put Leaf so much in there.
I think it was just because Leaf had music videos.

(01:09:16):
And I mean, there were people more instrumental to what was actually going on
in Seapunk, like Merkabah, but just as a consumer of music,
when someone's faceless, it's harder to feel like they're as big because it's like, who is this?
To me, it's just like those were the four big players.

(01:09:37):
And yeah, Unicorn Kid and Leaf exited way earlier than the two of you.
Yeah, I mean, there's like Mickey Blanco and all kinds of people who were existing in that scene.
But ultimately, they didn't push the way that we were pushing.
And I feel that Ultra Demon and I were pushing for different reasons.
But ultimately, it was about survival. survival yeah

(01:09:59):
i clearly was in a place where i
was like came back to zero and was
like i am trying to survive this here and
and other people didn't have it and we had a lot of adversaries as
well so it was like constantly fighting against this
current of people who were like you can't
you shouldn't you want you don't and it's exhausting

(01:10:22):
especially when you're in a relationship at the at the same time yeah
yeah on that just as
a tangent so we did another episode
on vaporwave where i'm not as much of a vapor
of kind of sure i had this like high school friend who
joined us on the pod who is or
he was a vaporwave musician and we we got to

(01:10:43):
go into it a bit but in the process of doing it i learned about 10
tricks point nevers mixtape echo jams
and it's still a bit murky for me
but that was really interesting because it
seemed to be vaporwave but aesthetically like that the the album art was more

(01:11:04):
c-punk it also took its name echo gems from echo the dolphin and so with that
i felt like there was a little bit of a dual origin i mean not really but like Like,
can you speak about like where you feel like Vaporwave branched off?
And like, do you feel like they share an origin a bit further back somewhere?

(01:11:25):
Definitely. When we toured the Disarro tour, one of the people who came on tour,
excuse me, their artist name at the time was Worthless Waste.
They were friends with a few other people, like the creator of Palm.us, which was a video game.
And also, what's his name? Sam.

(01:11:46):
Andy something. He was on American Idol. He's famous for going on American Idol
on mushrooms and having a whole thing.
There's like viral videos of this guy, but he also created something called
Scanner Jammer. And he was in the circle and I met him through the witch house scene.
Scanner Jammer was awesome. There's all these different rooms you could go in
and post different videos and different aesthetics and create these aesthetics in there.

(01:12:10):
So these people, in my opinion
were already doing or about to
do vaporwave it was already happening and then
seapunk took off and those people also became adversaries because it was almost
like oh well that's happening so maybe we can't do this and so when seapunk
was like crested then everybody's like oh time is now already started they've

(01:12:35):
already started it the aesthetic is already
pre-existing so and then it's an element of like lifting it
up to be seen which is all anybody ever had to do
in the first place is lifted up to be seen yeah so so so would you say seapunk
came before vaporwave still i would for sure yeah yeah it makes sense no but
that makes sense that like all the parts were there for vaporwave but they had

(01:12:56):
to get they had to wait for like the throne to be empty basically they had to
wait for the first one to go yeah Yeah, well,
they were all people that we knew. Like, I toured with some of these people.
I met all of these people in real life on tour.
Like, there's pictures of us hanging out together, all kinds of stuff.
Like the busts and the columns, those were used by Kevin Heckert also. Yeah.

(01:13:19):
It was just a vibe that was happening. But because C-Punk was so like dictatorship
in a lot of ways, Vaporwave was like, let's do our own thing where like everybody can just do it.
Much more diffuse and it's like less structured. Yeah. Yeah.

(01:13:39):
And then I do want to get into this a little bit before we get into what might
be happening with maybe there being like renewed interest in Z-Punk.
Maybe there's going to be Z-Punk 2, just like the title of the episode.
But I'm curious. So once, you know, I'm familiar with what happened with Izzy,
Leigh Banks and Rihanna.

(01:13:59):
I feel like when I was looking through all the interviews you ever did,
you got asked that every single interview.
So I don't think you probably have too much to add on them but
i do think that grimes i've never
really heard where she came into the picture
because there's pictures of her wearing mainframe shirts i
my guess before you tell me is that maybe

(01:14:20):
it's through molly soda no but that's interesting
because so grimes was
friends with travis agatey a picture plane yeah and
travis and i were buddies and we're hanging out you
know a lot at that time and and so
i found out about grimes and so somehow we became in one
another's orbit when sea punk happened then she.

(01:14:41):
Was like directly reaching out to me on twitter and
we had this like camaraderie she came to chicago to
play a show and i was like i can't wait to meet
you and we met and she was
like she's grime she's clear she's nervous she
is she's gracious she's humble
she's interesting she's funny she's weird and

(01:15:03):
so we hung out in the like backstage room at this
venue just me and her and we were really like getting
into a space where we could share these experiences as
female musicians together and it was really nice but then
everybody came downstairs who managed to get
into the room from the Chicago crew and
that's where you see that picture with everybody all together and

(01:15:25):
Grimes at the bottom because everyone's like let's go let's go
find let's get in there so everybody's down there but we
we still kept in touch a little bit eventually she started
doing like vogue covers and yeah really blowing
up but she because of that meeting she met claire
and molly soda who she had backup dance for her in her festival performance
in chicago wild palooza yeah and we all got no pitchfork yeah it was pitchfork

(01:15:51):
it was pitchfork yeah and we all got to go to that and that was super fun because
you know we were like the the seat box at Pitchfork and people take pictures,
and our friends are performing on stage.
So that was cool but then eventually i don't know what happened but she
just like blocked people and stopped responding and
we lost touch but she did i gave her a

(01:16:11):
mainframe shirt we took a picture of her at the pitchfork music festival
she was a buddy of ours and i mean
continues to do she's cool yeah yeah
wow yeah i feel like she
definitely came out of the mass indie movement you know
she knew all of these people to me what i mean
i'm not as much of a grimes aficionado i of course love

(01:16:33):
visions it's an amazing album but i do think that
like you know after visions her subsequent albums she
claimed that she was doing what she wanted all
along and it was more authentic but to me it felt like she became a lot more
poppy and i do wish she still had that sort of like diy experience indie aesthetic
or edge because i i think that was her at her strongest a lot of people felt

(01:16:58):
that way like she did that song with cray sean too.
That don't smoke my blunt song and i think
like grimes produced it or something and she's got like a phone
and she's like singing they're all together saying that was cute
and that's another like crossover creche on and grimes and like you know we
all kind of had like a thing together but yeah i don't know like what kind of

(01:17:18):
magic that woman worked in this world but she has just yeah the wildest life
oh no it's so interesting that she was in the same environment and then And just, I don't know.
She even had beef with Azalea Banks, too. Well, everyone has beef. That's not a small list.
It was like, I was like, how is this so weird? I feel bad for you,
girl. You don't want Azalea coming for you. Yeah. Yeah.

(01:17:42):
Yeah, I mean, there's even a podcast in Chicago, Thought Topics.
We're starting to learn about the other... Wait, Thoughts and Prayers?
No, there's another one, Thought Topics. We're starting to learn about the other Chicago podcasts.
And there's this one where it's just these two gay guys that like screaming a lot.
But one of them even has beef with Azealia Banks. And I'm like...

(01:18:04):
I have a look too. I know. That to me made it feel like I could even one day
say the wrong thing in cheers about it.
But yeah but yeah now would be a
fun time to get into like whether or not there
could be a potential seapunk resurgence so you mentioned
how you know you just released tropical re-released it we did seapunk our 12th

(01:18:26):
episode like maybe two months ago three months but there are other things that
are sort of going on like there's there's recently like there's another youtube
video essay it's like 30 minutes that just came out there's also this like video
you sent me from PreyFoco21,
a self-described C-punk clown.
And in the video, she has her arms full of C-punk EPs from Kroll Records,

(01:18:49):
and she describes them as being a miracle weight loss drug.
That was, I was watching that, and I was like, I think I'm missing something
here. I don't think I'm sharp enough to understand this cultural concept.
Yeah. It's funny. It's funny. What's crazy is PreyFoco21 does kind of look C-punk.
Yeah. She's more than that. Yeah. yeah they've been

(01:19:11):
around like for so long as
a fan and interacted on a number
of occasions with them and it's so cool because they're like the
envy of anyone who ever liked choral records is you
know all the choral records music was taken down so no
one has access to it virtually anymore so people who have those limited
cdrs are very fortunate it's available on

(01:19:32):
archive.org which is like an internet archive site so
i actually had downloaded splash 0001 this
week and was listening to it yeah and on that i think this is just important
for me to say because i even forgot this but yeah ultra demon used to go by
fire for effect right yeah and now they have a different name for their music

(01:19:53):
but yeah just for archival purposes it's important yeah to just Just throw that out there.
Yeah. Also, I want to add a side note to some of the history of their music
is like as fire for effect. Oh, and then.
They played in a band called Josephine Collective. If you know that band,
they're like a rock, hardcore, stylish band from Kansas. Josephine Collective, I believe.

(01:20:17):
And also wrote songs for, co-produced, and toured with Shun.
Cody Critchulay's group, Shun. So that's like a hugely Kansas group.
They're all from Kansas City, and they continue to work with Kansas Cityans
on all their video productions from way back.
And yeah, Albert actually wrote Earthquake, which is my favorite Shun song.

(01:20:42):
And that's like something people overlook about their musical career, including themselves.
I think there's like a pretty rich history there as well that people don't really focus on.
Empire for Effect was post-Josephine Collective, I believe.
And then Ultra Demon was like a little bit before we met.
Yeah. Oh, sorry. To answer your question, though.

(01:21:04):
No, sorry. Sorry, I started to play that for a second by accident.
I was trying to be like, okay, who is Sean?
No, I've always pronounced it Sion. That's how you say it? Sean?
Yeah, it's pronounced S-S-I-O-N. But no, I'd listen to Earthquake in high school.
Yeah, and me with my weird gay music takes.
I even, I like, yeah, my straight guy friends who are into music even liked Earthquake. So, yeah.

(01:21:30):
Cross appeal. That album is epic. And I actually, I feel like when I was hanging
out with Grimes, it, man, was that the same?
I don't remember. I don't want to miss it. I couldn't remember if they were
like playing together because it was the same music venue. But anyway, yeah, epic album.
And at the time of all of this inception of Seabunk, I definitely was listening to that Shun album.

(01:21:52):
And that Picture Clean album has black nails on it. I was like heavy rotation.
And a Lol Boys, if you know Lol Boys, LOL Boys.
So it was a duo i might just
be at uno now but uh djing and
producing super talented and there was a mix oh
i wish i could remember the name of the mix but that

(01:22:13):
was like all i could listen to that mix that
little boys mix that was like a huge inspiration at the time so to answer your
question about whether or not there could be a resurgence for c-punk i wouldn't
be the one leading it if it had to do again with dyeing hair and doing this
and that I welcome anybody else who wants to take the reins to do that and actually like.

(01:22:36):
I have an email address, so get a little pen and paper.
And if you want to participate in this, you can email me at seapunkpreservationsociety,
which is actually a throwdown or throwback to another group that tried to preserve the choral records.
I had a bunch of stuff that was like seapunk organization preservation group

(01:22:57):
or something in the past.
So mine is seapunkpreservationsociety, and that's at gmail.com.
Anybody who has stories archival information
if you were a c-punk musician at any
point in time and you want to share your music with me please send
it to me i welcome any and all emails

(01:23:19):
it's my email address i'll be personally going
through all of it myself if you have stories about
you know zombell tour or anything like that i'm
in the process currently of working with a co-author potentially
for a book further archiving a
lot of this information just about like the
same things that made you really want to archive and i

(01:23:41):
would love to also have you bring your knowledge in
as well because you've worked so hard at preserving like i
want to i want to really talk about like the social aspects
the historical aspects i want to talk about
artists i'm going to talk about female artists specifically as
well as my personal experience and so
i'm currently getting as much info to

(01:24:04):
jog my memory for the ranking process as well
as to collect these things that have been lost.
And i know that you have them on your hard drives or your
old people like just email them to me was
there anything in my slide deck that you you feel like was preserved through
that presentation oh yeah all of it was all of it was like i deleted so much

(01:24:27):
and i saw pictures from my instagram and i'm like whoa that's so old like i
totally forgot about that because i deleted a ton of that stuff.
Like when i moved to detroit i was yeah i did i was yeah i was as a 17 year
old screenshotting your instagram even though i didn't have an instagram.

(01:24:48):
It's crazy that i was like i i was so into the internet but also barely participating
in it like the fact that i was yeah because i didn't have a smartphone phone
until i was like literally 20.
Yeah i was like but yeah i'm glad you don't you're
happy that i i took random pictures of your instagram yeah
totally yeah but yeah

(01:25:11):
i was used to the public figure yeah but
yeah i feel like if c-punk does come back
around it's gonna happen on tiktok out of the blue and it's just gonna come
full force in like weeks and like we're not gonna see it coming it's just gonna
emerge out of nowhere and just take us all by surprise i do feel like me predicting

(01:25:34):
things Okay, I do think that C-Punk had,
like, a very DIY vibe to the aesthetic because it was very much thrifted.
That was, like, the way you got interesting clothing at the time period.
Now there's so many, like, fast fashion brands and, like, online stores.
And I feel like people will source, like, clothing that is made to look C-Punk

(01:25:56):
as opposed to finding clothing that happens to look C-Punk.
I feel like that is how it would be a bit different. Yeah. And...
My only concern, though, is just that I feel like if there's a Seapunk 2,
it's very easy to get excited about the entire range of pastel colors.
But Seapunk, it's not all of them. You can't get too much into the pinks.

(01:26:18):
If you go into baby pink specifically, that's where you lose it.
And I think that Gen Z needs to avoid that.
I can hear. You know, Mainframe, the clothing company that I started during
Seapunk, it was pretty successful.
And it created like the seapunk
clothing that people weren't able to buy in the store consequently other

(01:26:38):
larger corporations started contacting me about buying designs like urban outfitters
right urban outfitters wanted to buy like all of my kevin heckart designs to
do like bedding and curtains and then we said no we said no to everybody and
then it was almost like months Months later,
I went into these stores and everything was C-punk and they had mimics of the

(01:27:02):
Kevin Hackhart designs.
Like very, very clear mimics.
And then I learned when I went back to L.A., one of my co-workers from Amoeba
Music, his girlfriend was working for one of those trend magazines.
And he was like, yeah, she just got back from a convention and you were in like
the pamphlet and they were talking about your aesthetic.
There was pages about your aesthetic. there was runway shows

(01:27:25):
where people were posting pictures of the
like the inspo sheets that are
taped up back where the models get dressed that had the inspo
there's pictures of me on it there was a runway model
dressed exactly like me but like high and like i was like i wish that this is
how i was dressing because i was wearing like thrifted clothes and like you

(01:27:46):
know whatever but but yeah like i mean at this point now you really can you
can just go to the store and buy whatever But that doesn't mean that you have to,
you know, like there's always going to be that separation from the people who
want to create like Lil Edie from Grey Gardens.
Like, obviously, that's a situational thing.
But if you know who Lil Edie is, she would style her own beautiful,

(01:28:10):
glamorous outfits from whatever she could find and wrap it around her and call it a day.
So you know it's very situational but if you go to la like we would play in
la and all of these very wealthy kids had like really sexy seat pump clothes
and i was like damn i wish because i'm wearing a jean jacket are you serious.

(01:28:32):
But that stuff is expensive i mean it's just a class thing
ultimately like yeah you can participate but
you're gonna represent from where you are yeah like
yeah like i feel like the most i mean it
wasn't that c-punk but the most c-punk like thing american
apparel came out with was this like holographic circle skirt and it was like

(01:28:52):
crazy expensive it was like 120 for a skirt or something it sure was i looked
at the price tags of these things that i wished i had and i was like Like I
helped create this inspiration to do this design and I can't even afford it.
Like I wish. I had a discount.
Yeah, I had a discount latex skirt. Similar, exact same design,

(01:29:14):
but latex, powder blue latex.
I bought it on eBay because they had like stains on it or something.
And I was like, I can afford it. Like I'm getting this. And that's why that
American apparel design probably came out if it was Seapunk inspired.
It's the exact same skirt, but a different material and color.
But yeah yeah yeah i will
say that over the last few weeks preparing for this episode i have for the first

(01:29:38):
time since high school been like if this got big again i could see myself going
sea punk again which i have a job i'm a librarian where there are plenty of
librarians with blue hair.
It's actually already a thing so it would be fine if i did
it i don't know if i will but yeah i
don't know it would be i that was like the happiest i think

(01:30:01):
no i was overall happy in high school i've overall
had you know things get hard sometimes but like i'm overall a happy person but
just like the joy i had like discovering the c-punk aesthetic and adopting it
yeah i do feel like it is like joy in a bottle for me you want people to find
that again yeah yeah it is a lot of fun yeah beautiful

(01:30:21):
aesthetic and everything about it was fun,
yeah like the way it looked the sound everything spoke to people so I think it's.
Like i have goosebumps thinking about it
inspiring someone in high school like years later and the
fact that people want to talk about it still is
amazing because i think that there's a lot of value in

(01:30:43):
there yeah i mean yeah i mean every single aesthetic since c-punk is attributed
to the formula that it produced i mean you know health goss normcore to a degree
lockhead which which is this aesthetic that a podcast we love, Nymphid Alumni coined.

(01:31:03):
Yeah, there's even this like aesthetics wiki now. And then there's even this
like tool online called the like internet subculture generator.
I might be messing up a bit, but I'll put that in the show notes.
But yeah, just like every single movement since, it's like, you know,
people, there are so few like new genres in the world.

(01:31:26):
The internet's been helpful and like helping people make new sounds but like
it has sort of impeded movements but this has been like the way people are still
trying to create like cohesive aesthetics and new musical genres is like through this formula and.
Yeah it's had a big impact so yeah I hope that if it does find a resurgence

(01:31:48):
it can you find a way to also get back to that place of like inner peace and
And like inner stillness.
Yeah. And really like giving people that platform so that they can like feel good.
Because it's all about just feeling good. Yeah. Yeah.
But yeah. Do you have any final comments on Seapunk other than that?

(01:32:11):
Otherwise, we can sort of wrap up.
Sure. We can start wrapping up. That's fine. I mean, I can talk about all this stuff.
I'm like, as you're talking to me, I'm like thinking about all these other things.
It's like we're at the top of the hour. So.
Yeah listeners listen to the rest of tropical you know
you heard bad creation beginning a lot of other great songs are
on that album so go check that out follow shan on

(01:32:33):
instagram we'll you know link your instagram profile because
you seem to be like every time you find not probably
every time but when you see like these new c-punk things
coming out here and there it seems like you're sharing them so if you are interested
in seeing like c-punk pop up here and there like shan is a a good source and
yeah thank you so much for joining us today and thank you for helping us figure

(01:32:56):
out how to do our remote interview yeah it took a while to set up but thank you again,
thank you guys thank you for having me on thank you okay have a good one bye.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 22: Seapunk 2 w/ Zombelle

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Ep. 22: Seapunk 2 w/ Zombelle

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