July 4, 2022 • 48 mins
Today's guest Simone A. Medina Polo, also known as pseudo-antigone, sits down with us to discuss Hyperpop, embodiment, philosophy, and most importantly Hegel. Join us as we dive into the interceptions that inspire and drive pseudo-antigone to explore philosophy as they dive into becoming a Hyperpop icon.
Guest: pseudo-antigone
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- IG: pseudo_antigone
- Music Streaming: pseudo-antigone
- pseudo-antigone.medium.com
Hosted by Andrés Moreno
- IG: @Andres._.FM
Theme by Just Moe
- IG: @iamjustmoe
- https://m.soundcloud.com/moewaves
Sound Technician : Selina Painchaud
Editing: Andrés Moreno
Cover by: Andrés Moreno
Special thanks to the Canada Council for the Arts, Fringe Theatre, ATB Arts Barns, Azimuth Theatre and our community.
Learn more about Azimuth Theatre
www.azimuththeatre.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
Oh Imma trust the whole damn process,for the record, till we breaking records!
Reminiscing about the past days now werise and fly, journeys to the sky, Azimuth
inside my grip, always know the way now!
Beauty fill my days now take it dayby day sound couldn't be prouder
prouder cause y'know we alive!
ANDRÉS (00:25):
Hi, everyone.
Welcome to In Process, as always I'm yourhost Andrés Moreno, and this is Azimuth
Theatre's podcast, highlighting artists,their artistry, and their process.
Today.
We get to speak to the one andonly pseudo-antigone a singer,
songwriter, philosopher, andan all around amazing person.
(00:46):
Hi!
SIMONE (00:47):
Hey, how's it going, Andrés?
ANDRÉS (00:48):
It's good!
Thank you so much forjoining me here today.
I'm very excited for us to divedeep and to be able to just chat
SIMONE (00:54):
Me as well!
You know, every opportunityto get to chat about process.
It's something that I really adore.
So thank you for inviting me.
ANDRÉS (01:00):
Ah, thank you.
Yeah, I guess I'll start with justasking you, if you can tell us a
little bit about your story, howyour life has kind of led you to this
point in your life where you're anartist and kind of how that mixed.
SIMONE (01:13):
Yeah, it's definitely a little bit of an all over the place kinda situation.
I wanna say that I, you know, myrelationship with art is pretty long term.
Like since I was really young.
I was known to do a lot of art,particularly actually visual art.
I used to do comic bookswhen I was a younger one.
And then around the time I was 10years old, I started doing music.
(01:33):
I picked up a guitar.
And so for the longest time,like I've been playing guitar
almost for about two decades.
So it's very different from whatI do now, because I'm mostly
doing electronic music these days.
But yeah, I started doing music around.
I wanna say 17 years ago, now.
And that's pretty wild now I come to thinkof it and yeah, you know, my background
(01:55):
is pretty all over the place too.
First of all, I'm a immigrant,so I come from Mexico city.
That was that's where I was born.
And I came here to Canada in 2008.
So that's been pretty significantin terms of like changes in
just everything about my life.
Just systematically changes everything.
And so a lot of my work inphilosophy, in psychoanalysis, in
(02:18):
art sometimes takes some reflectionon the consequences of that change.
So as, as I kind of alludedto, I have a background in
psychoanalysis and philosophyformally I have BA in philosophy.
That's my major.
And I also have a backgroundin arts management.
Aside from my work as pseudo-antigoneI'm also the festival producer
(02:38):
for the NextFest arts company.
And aside from that, I tend to be veryinvolved in a lot of different like arts
projects and communities and whatnot.
So, yeah.
That would kind of encompassa lot of what I do.
It's pretty all over the place rightnow with pseudo-antigone I mostly do
electronic music in the kinda genre Iwould call hyper pop, but hyper pop is
(02:59):
also a little bit of a misnomer, so wecan talk more about that down the line.
ANDRÉS (03:02):
Totally.
Now you were mentioning when you wereyounger, you did comic books, like you
used to write them and illustrate them?
SIMONE (03:08):
Yes.
I used to particularlyillustrate comic books.
I used to write them, theplot lines make no sense, the
characters are not characters,but I just wanted to do something.
And that's kind of what I ended up doing.
I wanna say what I wasdoing was fan fiction.
I just didn't realize I was doing fanfiction till like, 10-15 years later,
ANDRÉS (03:29):
Franchises have been built on fan fiction as we know.
So...
(Laughs)
SIMONE (03:33):
I love fan fiction actually, because my, my BA was in philosophy
in English, I got really intocritical theory and those discussions,
because that was the place whereI could talk about fan fiction.
ANDRÉS (03:44):
(Laughs) That's Rad!
Sorry.
I know we're talking about yourmusic, but I just like the idea that
you also like created comic books.
SIMONE (03:50):
Yeah, that's what I started doing, honestly, like there was a point
in my life where I thought I would justkeep going on the visual arts direction.
I was thinking about it actually fairlyrecently, and I still do some level of
visual arts, particularly in digitalcollaging, but my center I'm focused is
actually music and my work in philosophy.
ANDRÉS (04:08):
Cool.
Now coming back to your music, youwere mentioning that you've played
guitar for about two decades.
Now, do you find that with thehyper pop and electronic music that
you're producing nowadays, doesthat theory kind of sneak in there.
SIMONE (04:22):
Oh yeah, absolutely.
You know, I did know a little bit of musictheory because of how I learn guitar.
I would never say that I'm like a fullytechnical person because I can't, like,
I can't talk about like modes of scales.
That's something that goesa little over my head.
But I know enough theory that I know howto intuit, what I wanna do with music.
(04:43):
I wanna say, because I mostlystarted playing on midi keyboards,
which are laid out like pianos.
I know the layout.
I know what it means.
I know.
How do you understand, you know, chords.
Scales just a general layoutof what I'm trying to do there.
So as you know, I, I got reallycomfortable on guitar because I
was able to intuit the music there
ANDRÉS (05:00):
mm-hmm
- SIMONE (05:00):
and after a year of doing stuff on a midi keyboard, I've become more
comfortable being able to intuit that sortof like musical process in that setting.
ANDRÉS (05:10):
I'm always so in awe at people who can pick up music just
because my brain works the oppositeso when people are like, "oh, I
taught myself" I'm always in awe
SIMONE (05:18):
it's a lot.
And it's weirdly mathematical.
That's the thing.
And this is kind of where philosophycomes into play for me, I have a very
strong sense of abstract thinking,that I'm able to think abstractly,
even in music, because I can have anabstract concept and know how to put
it into like, practice or realize it.
And so I can have abstract ideas andbeing able to see how those abstract
(05:40):
ideas kinda translate between variousdifferent particular instances
where you can see them reflected.
It's really weird.
It's pretty odd.
I find with music, especially, itgets odd because music sometimes has
this weird overlap with mathematics.
And that's why I refer to abstractthinking because it's pretty
abstract in terms of like how we setrelationships with between different
tones, even the tonality that ispretty common in the Western world.
(06:03):
Like how that's established, how weset relationship between like the notes
that go going to compose like chordshow we can emphasize certain elements
of like music structuring whatnot.
Its wild.
It definitely gets into my head a lot.
you know, I could listen to youtalk forever like the fact that
you're talking math, when we'retalking about music, I just.
I live for it.
(06:24):
Yeah.
There's a weird overlap.
I'm here for it.
We've talked about how you havedone art in different forms and in
different mediums, your whole life,however what drew you to then go?
I'm going to express myself through music.
Okay.
So for me I think a lot of thethings I do in art sometimes
relate to what I do in philosophy.
(06:44):
I basically operate on the basicnotion that philosophy is something
that comes into touch with a lotof non-philosophical disciplines.
In the instance of the arts, I'm ableto try to articulate what would be
an abstract philosophical conceptin different sorts of like more
particular sensibilities of art.
So sometimes it's a question of like,how am I able to do both the work of like
(07:05):
the abstract, like I dunno how to putit, but like more logical laboring that
would go onto the philosophical treatieslet's say, and trying to articulate
those things also in the narrativeof a play poetry, music, all of these
things as different access points, let'ssay to talk about the concepts that
ultimately philosophy is concerned with.
So it's not just music, but musicin particular, I find that I have a
(07:28):
lot of strengths in terms of my, howwould I put it like competency at it?
So I, I feel like my leaningstowards the words, music have been
more because, you know, I feelvery comfortable with this medium.
I feel like I know what I'm doing more.
And especially as I'm startingto do the project that is now
pseudo-antigone, I feel like I havea lot of room for you know, dealing
(07:50):
with more complex topics over time.
ANDRÉS (07:53):
And talking about the name "pseudo-antigone".
What drew you to that name?
SIMONE (07:56):
I Mean, I do love the play by Sophocles, but that also ties in both
the philosophy and psycho analysis.
Because one of my favoritephilosophers, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel, and one of my favorite psychanalysts, Jacques Lacan both take
a particular interest on Antigoneas this kinda figure of rebellion?
Would be the most simpleway I could put it.
(08:18):
In the case of Hegel it tends to dealwith this narrative where, you know, we
can set up universal rules and whatnotabout how we set up a state, let's say.
But these things can undermine theparticular desires and particular
needs or relationships thatpeople build with each other.
In the case of the play of Antigone well.
The play entails that the statesmanCreon refuses to give burial to one
(08:41):
of Antigone's brothers, because two ofher brothers fought in a war together.
But in opposite sides one of thebrothers fought on the side of the
city and the other one did not.
The one that did not was denied burial.
So he was basically at theexcess of the political state.
And so when Antigone heard aboutthis news she was devastated and
(09:02):
dealt with a question of can I try tomourn this person who has been in a
sense excommunicated from the state?
So in a sense she basically tookon the role of trying to still give
a sort of like symbolic gestureto the brother that was basically
denied any role in the state.
She was trying to actively revel andcompletely shake the foundations of what
(09:25):
the state was built upon by basicallysaying that the state had no claim
of the time that symbolic descriptionof mourning from these folks the play
does culminate in that Creon findsout about Antigone trying to you know,
perform burial ritual for her brother.
And she gets a warning first, butshe keeps on doing it, of course and
(09:47):
she gets into the situation whereshe's set in a how would I put it
in, in a cave, basically closed off.
Where she's not able to, in a sense,like she's not killed, but she's
said in a, in a cave closed off.
Where she has no option, butto take her own life basically.
(10:07):
And that's very tabooin the Greek context.
So it was this situation where thestatesman who is supposed to be
upholding, you know, their rules, theirrights, all these kinds of things.
Basically led this person on,onto both a symbolic death and
a real death in some layer.
And so for Hegel it's very much thiskind of contention between you know, the
(10:27):
state and the expression of like, likeparticular desires, overriding the very
foundations of the roles that we make.
Similar with Lacan, it's slightlydifferent, but along the same lines.
ANDRÉS (10:38):
I took a Roman and Greek and Roman literature class back in college.
you remind me of the professorevery time they would start
talking about these stories, Iwould just, I'd be like," yeah?"
"And then what happened?"
SIMONE (10:49):
God.
And it gets so dramatic sometimes.
Yeah, with Antigone I just really likethe kind of expression of radicality.
I, I think that's what I,what I would put to it.
This sort of like, you know, thestate can burn if we can't mourn
the people that we stand by.
And that stands for me, particularly interms of like navigating my relationship
(11:09):
to my immigration and being an immigrant,my relationship to other people around
me that struggle with marginality.
With myself as a queer personand navigating You know queer
chosen families and whatnot.
I've thought about the notion of whatif I were to make what I put it a
sort of rendition of Antigone whereit would be centered around the notion
of queer chosen family that has noclaim to you mourning one of their
(11:33):
own who's passed away just becausethey don't have a blood relationship.
In one sense or another, it stillconfronts us with the fundamental dilemma
of Antigone just in a modernized setting.
And that that's the significance ofmodernizing Antigone's drama in some
sense, what is the kind of conflictwith the state, with the roles that we
make that he makes apparent along the.
ANDRÉS (11:53):
I love that- that this beautiful classic story is also tied into the,
the idea of chosen family and, and,and this, this world that we, as
queer people have to navigate right.
Of like state versus like, like ourown grief and our own like rebellion.
SIMONE (12:10):
Yeah.
Because I think Antigone also likeAntigone comes from a place of care
at, at the end of the day, like she'strying to express a sort of love that
is not state mandated or legalistic,so to speak you one can think of, for
example, like before the legalization,like quote unquote, homosexual, like
marriage, like we find these instanceswhere the state tries to legislate
how one can love and how one can care.
(12:30):
But it also means how this itsimultaneously means how the state
can sever us from the kind of care andlove that we can express to each other.
And as much as like.
Let's say Antigone can be politicizedas a radical, in some sense and properly
so because she's hitting at the veryroots of the foundation of society.
It, it's also simultaneously asking Inwhat those foundations are founded or what
(12:53):
grounds or justifies these foundations,especially when it, in a sense uproots
us or sever us from, or most foundationalrelationships in the case of her, like
her relationship to a close person to her.
ANDRÉS (13:05):
Yeah, it reminds me I don't know if you've heard or seen the play,
"The Normal Heart" by Larry Kramer.
There's a movie thatwas made by HBO as well.
But in that movie, there's this beautifullove story between two men and it's
in the middle of the aids pandemic.
And it talks about like, what happens,what happened to relationships when, if
you weren't married because it wasn'taccepted or even recognized, like you
(13:28):
had no right to say goodbye to thisperson who was your lover, you know?
SIMONE (13:32):
I think the language of recognition is perfect.
This actually comes back to Hegelin one of the portions of his major
text, "The Phenomenology of Spirit".
He's he has this dialectic, thiskind logic between two different
oppositions as they kind ofcompliment and inform each other.
He has this dialectic ofrecognition and desire.
I said that, for example, I desire.
(13:52):
In such a way that my desire is immediateto me, but I don't know how to make
that desire apparent to someone else.
We start finding ourselves, tryingto contend with our capacity
to articulate our own desire.
Let's say, using language andmake that recognizable to another.
But of course, language faults us.
If there's anything that poetry teachesus as the language is an improper tool.
And that's why we do metaphorsbecause we try to lever the wealth of
(14:16):
expression out of a failed language.
So we struggle with tryingto make metaphors around our
desire to gain recognition.
Amongst each other.
And at each failure, wetry to do that again.
I think this is very tangible in justlike friendships or intimate relationships
where we are constantly doing this kind ofdialectical recognition with one another.
(14:38):
Of course, when we're talking aboutit, in the case of Antigone we're
not just talking about, you know,this immediate relationships, but
also state recognition let's say
ANDRÉS (14:45):
Totally.
And now this beautiful, kind ofidea of this character who comes
from all the way in this like old,old, old story and bringing it
forward and now going, I'm going touse that name to create hyper pop.
SIMONE (14:59):
Yeah.
ANDRÉS (14:59):
Tell me a little bit about that.
SIMONE (15:00):
Well so the name is pseudo-antigone.
It's not Antigone, but pseudoit can mean a few things.
It can mean fake.
It can mean like for me it kindmeans like trying to embody
something like Antigone right.
Something that kind of aims at those,like you know, tearing down the roots
of like something that is fundamentallyuprooting, like an uprooting state of
inequality or, you know, alienation
ANDRÉS (15:23):
mm-hmm
SIMONE (15:23):
And so for me, pseudo-antigone was a form of embodiment that
therefore the pseudo of Antigone right?
Like we're dealing with anembodiment that is like Antigone.
But what it means for me too, is asort of experimenting in embodiment.
The project pseudo-antogne kinda came ata time where I was starting to explore
(15:45):
my transition because since 20 20, Istarted the process of doing my medical
transitioning because I don't think Imentioned this before, but I identify
as a trans woman and I have for a while, it's just because of circumstances of,
you know, state alienation and whatnot,like the resources haven't been there
for me to be able to access somethinglike HRT or any other procedures that
(16:08):
I would be interested in on pursuing.
And so 2020, right before thepandemic happened, I was not in a
good place and we can chat about that.
I'm open to it.
But I made that decision to goahead and go through my transition.
And so by the time that June hit, well, itwas apparent the pandemic was going to go
way longer than any of us, maybe expected.
ANDRÉS (16:28):
Yeah.
SIMONE (16:29):
And I just tried to embrace it as much as I could because I had gotten
a hold of my HRT and I realized like,well, at this point, I just gonna carry
myself to this very personal process.
Now, especially as I was going throughsome major changes in, you know,
who my friends were, where I foundmyself in society, because none of
the spaces where I found community orrelationships were the same anymore.
(16:52):
I took the time to very much focus onwhat he meant to embody myself again.
And part of that took place in music.
So pseudo-antigone startedas a form of containing with
this re-embodiment of myself.
What was the rest of the question Ijust got got up on the embodiment thing.
ANDRÉS (17:08):
No, it was a beautiful answer.
It was just kind of like howthat, that connects to hyper pop.
SIMONE (17:14):
Oh yeah.
ANDRÉS (17:14):
As a genre, you know?
SIMONE (17:15):
Okay.
We can talk about it a little bit.
And I think this tiesinto the trans part of it.
My contention with my own embodimentis I would almost describe it like
a cyborg learning to embody itself.
How do you learn, learn to embodyyourself when you're replacing parts
of your body or like, you know,breaking yourself apart so you can
pull yourself back together again?
(17:35):
I would say that's kind of whatI found myself in and what I
saw in the genre hyper pop.
It's kind of a misnomer because itencompasses so many different kinds
of music, so it's not even helpful.
And as much as like some people, includingmyself, like to say that it's kind of like
a queer community, it's not necessarilyso, but I find a lot of like trans and
queer community in that, or I should saylike trans and queer folks that I saw
(17:59):
doing, working music that I really admire.
So among them, I would probablyname I'll start with two of them.
SOPHIE who passed away earlierthis year in an accident.
And Arca.
Yeah, both SOPHIE and Arca aretrans Arca is a non-binary trans
person who is basically, I wannasay the last two records that- I'm
(18:19):
gonna use "it/its" pronouns forArca because that's what Arca uses.
But yeah Arca in its projects in thelast couple years have taken this tone
of navigating transition pretty openlyand entering into the sort of like
cyborg, posthuman almost inhuman approachto navigating this trans embodiment.
(18:40):
There's the music video for non-binary.
The introduction track to their lastit's last album where Arca basically
undergoes like sex re- assignment surgery.
And it, it is basically this likecomplex narrative of dealing with,
you know, this like mythologicalfigures of the divine feminine, and
the cyber notion of the woman that hasbecome more contemporary in some ways.
(19:05):
Arca jumps between the two figuresin doing this song about being
non-binary and it all ends intoan argument with some random, like
white cis- woman on the street.
Just like putting intoperspective of that all this like
extraneous almost alien process.
Sometimes you just deal with it in a verylike backhanded way just in everyday life.
ANDRÉS (19:27):
Yeah.
SIMONE (19:27):
With someone who is just willing to disregard the kind of multitudes
of magnitudes that one is dealing within doing this process of embodiment.
So Arca I find that, doesthat work pretty explicitly?
And also SOPHIE.
SOPHIE kind of kept heridentity undisclosed
ANDRÉS (19:44):
yeah.
SIMONE (19:44):
For a long time.
Until I wanna say the release of herlast, her very last album "Oil of Every
Pearl's Un-Insides" where she finallyrevealed who she was and that she was
a trans woman starting with the track.
"It's Okay To Cry."
where the way I interpreted, but Icould be mistaken is that SOPHIE was
entering into a dialogue with herselfpre-transition and kind of having
(20:08):
this kinda heart to heart conversationabout, you know, it's okay to let
yourself embody that and you leavethis very emotional sentimental track
to move onto stuff like "Ponyboy" or"Faceshopping" or "immaterial", where
you're just dealing with all thesequestions that are more like, you know,
electronic, metallic, cling-clangyexpressions of like embodying yourself.
(20:31):
Very similar to, in some ways likethe music video for "Faceshopping",
has many of these almost like Cyborgelements kind of come into play.
And we can talk a little bit about thisin the context of like what it means to
embody a voice in music especially from atrans perspective in a recent interview.
I did, I kind of, noted there's three waysI seen trans people navigate this in this
(20:52):
kind of genre one can be like SOPHIE, whowe only really heard SOPHIE's voice once.
In, "It's Ok To Cry."
every other instance of hearing SOPHIE'svoice, in her recordings, it tends to see
be other musicians like Cecile Believewho is a Canadian musician in contrast to
borrowing that voice from someone else.
(21:13):
There's people like Laura Les from the duo100 gecs who just tone shifts, her vocals
completely uses auto tune and a varietyof multiple effects to do her music.
And that's kind of what Itried to do myself actually.
ANDRÉS (21:28):
I was struck by something Sophie said in one interview that was
like as a musician, I don't know whyyou wouldn't want to take advantage of
all the instruments that are available,including the electronic ones.
SIMONE (21:38):
Yes.
ANDRÉS (21:38):
You know, like there's so much that can be done with clanging and
with the tones and the kind of, I don'tremember how she expressed it, but it
was kind of like as a musician, youshould be taking advantage of not just
the instruments that have been broughttraditionally forward into music, but
this new kind of like era where ourinstruments are all electronic and we can
(21:59):
literally create music without touchinga piano, without touching a guitar.
It can all be tones and MIDIand I thought that that was such
a cool way of thinking about it.
Especially as theater after the pandemichas tried to shift into, into zoom, into,
you know, electronic versions of itself.
SIMONE (22:17):
Yeah.
Like if we keep trying to do theaterin the same terms that we were
doing theater pre- pandemic, you'renot gonna get too far with that.
And this is really funny because this issomething that affected my production.
Like I had started doing pseudo-antigoneduring the pandemic for this reason.
I happened to have a MacBook air.
I happened to have garage, man.
I decided to get myself a MIDIkeyboard and I just spent close
(22:38):
time to it, like for a while.
And just kinda gettingacquainted with that.
Like it's the most full music I'vebeen able to do just because I
had all that to take advantage of.
I wanna say at some point I tried tomake my music so full that it was hard to
tell apart what was happening at times.
But as it's becoming more mature, youkind of learn what Sophie's saying.
Like if you learn to take full advantageof it, you can know how to make the
(22:59):
fullest music out of very little.
And I, I think that's an elementwhere like setting a limitation
for your work can help you makethat work enhanced in some ways.
I use the metaphor of poetryand its use of metaphor.
Poetry recognizes that languagehas a fundamental deficiency.
Because at a certain point, it hitsa wall on what it's able to express.
But that very limit is where weconcern the wealth of expression
(23:22):
that poetry does from metaphor.
The question is, how can we turnthis finitude of expression and
turn it into, our very own accessto the infinite and that's Hegelian
claim that I'm trying to make sense.
so there's an philosophical robustnessto this, but it also has a way in
which we navigate this as artists.
(23:43):
Poetry is an example of it.
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ANDRÉS (24:15):
So we've talked about your, your training and we've talked about
inspiration and other artists, whereelse do you draw inspiration for
when you're starting to make music?
SIMONE (24:24):
Yeah.
I kinda mention a little bitof about like, particularly
like trans artists and whatnot.
I mentioned there are people thatborrow voices like SOPHIE there's people
that affect their voices like LauraLes, and then there's people like ARCA
or the folks from uh, Canadian duoBlack Dresses who don't do anything
to their voices necessarily in orderto do the music that they make so
I found those three approaches tolike Trans embodiment in this music
(24:47):
I definitely draw my influencesfrom a lot of different genres.
Like the thing is I've beeninto music for so long that.
I dip my toes in a lot of things.
And so I wanna say that particularlythe last couple years, I've been really
interested in some elements of likehip hop, particularly industrial bass.
I really like the kind of likegrit, industrial bass sound.
(25:08):
And actually with some of thetracks that I've been working on,
it reflects like there's a trackthat I sent you called "Dead Name".
Yes.
That it's very much influenced by Shygirl.
Actually, when I played a show lastweek, I had someone call me out on it.
ANDRÉS (25:23):
Oh really?
SIMONE (25:23):
It was really good.
Because I'm glad that theinfluence came across.
ANDRÉS (25:26):
How does your setup work in performance?
SIMONE (25:28):
My setup is very minimal.
I use just my laptop,which is a MacBook air.
I just make sure that it's like veryclear in terms of sound sorry, in
terms of files and whatnot, just soit doesn't like run into any issues.
And I use an audio interface inmy case it basically gives me two
inputs and two outputs to work with.
And so through the audio interface,I have my, my microphone and then
(25:48):
the audio interface outputs ontotwo different channels for stereo.
And then with that, I.
Yeah, I run a backingtrack through logic pro-x.
And then on top of that,I monitor my own vocals.
And so my vocals come out ofthat depending on the song I have
multiple vocal tracks just thatI have to be switching around.
So it's, it's, it's pretty it mightnot be the most ideal way to do it
(26:10):
just because for example, like techwouldn't be able to separate like
monitoring my vocals and my backingtrack actually do that myself for myself.
So it might not be the best wayto do it, but it's how I figure
out how to do, do what I'm doing.
ANDRÉS (26:24):
As artists sometimes to be able to express ourselves, we
have to teach ourselves thingsthat we have no idea how to do.
SIMONE (26:30):
Absolutely.
And well, that's kind of ended up beingmy own audio engineer, like legitimately
in years of being in the like music scene.
Like no one wanted to teach eachother, like this kind of stuff.
a lot of people like to keeptheir cards to themselves.
during the pandemic.
I just learned, like, I'm notgonna invest on this space anymore.
I'm over it.
I don't want to go back to any of that.
It's it's awful.
(26:51):
It's not worthwhile.
You don't need to.
And there's cooler stuffhappening, so yeah.
ANDRÉS (26:58):
So talking about your upcoming projects and what you've
been working on, is there anythingspecifically, and it doesn't have to
be related to your music, but that,that it's exciting you right now.
SIMONE (27:07):
Yeah.
I'll kind talk about a little bitof the things that I've been up to.
Very recently I released aremix compilation to celebrate
the last album I released "Intothe Void of Infinite Sadness
" Yeah, that got repackaged us "Into the Void of Infinite Remix".
ANDRÉS (27:21):
Oh, nice.
SIMONE (27:22):
Yeah I had a few pals all over Canada and the US send remixes
of just different tracks in the album.
And so I decided to just like releasethat as its own kind of thing.
And so that was great because honestly,like "Into the Void of Infinite Sadness
" got me by surprise because I wasn'texpecting how much it would pick up.
ANDRÉS (27:43):
Yeah.
Your reception has been insane.
Hasn't it?
SIMONE (27:46):
It's been pretty ridiculous.
I, I never thought I would have likea feature, like, first of all, like
a front page feature in the Edmontonjournal, I wasn't expecting that.
When I first sent like all the mediakits, I was like, you know, I'll be
lucky if it gets played on radio, it waslike number seven in the national chart.
Like, so, so things like that happenand I'm just like, okay, great.
(28:08):
Well now I know I'm onto something.
Maybe let's keep pushing this direction.
And I know how to like,get this stuff around.
Let's just keep doing it.
So, you know, "Into the Void of InfiniteSadness " had like a considerable,
like positive reception, it definitelyis translating well to live audiences
when I'm doing like performance.
So yeah, so, so I celebrated all of thiswith, "Into the Void of Infinite Remix
(28:31):
" and that has just a lot of differentpals so yeah, various remix started it
and throughout, basically the last, Iwanna say like four or five months, I've
been producing for a lot of differentpeople again in the US and Canada.
So most recently I'm currently producinga couple of remixes, so one for the
local post punk band Fitness yeah,they're also coming up with their
(28:51):
own like remix completion of sorts.
So I got asked to do one and I'm at it.
It's pretty much done.
It's just a question ofdoing a few finicky things.
And then one of my pals who alsodid a remix for my, my remix
compilation Goddexx, so G-O-D-D-E-X-X.
Is doing her own remix completionand asked me, to do one.
(29:12):
Still have to finish that remix!
I'm at it.
It's just been such a slow whileto kind of pick up on that.
And then there's a musician in Vancouverwho I've been producing a song for for
an EP that, that they're working on.
So I'm very excited about that one becauseit's one of my favorite productions.
So it just sounds so haunting and weird.
(29:34):
It's very industrialand haunting sounding.
Did I say haunting already?
Because it definitely sounds haunting.
ANDRÉS (29:40):
So wait, is it, is it haunting?
SIMONE (29:42):
I think so.
So so I'm very excited about that one.
And so those are kind of the things in theconstellation of the work I've been doing.
But the big project that I'm workingon, this is still probably like rolling
into early 2023 it's the second LP.
Basically since July, I startedworking on a follow up to "Into
(30:06):
the Void of Infinite Sadness " whatI'm trying to do in my second LP is
basically having a self titled record.
It's gonna be a double recordshowcasing the two major trends
I've seen in my music production.
On the one side, I have verylike industrial bass stuff.
And on the other end, I havevery glimmery, like hyper pop,
like glammy pop, standing stuff.
(30:27):
I kinda decided that looking back at,"Into the Void of Infinite Sadness
", those two trends were already there,but moving on, I wanted to organize them
into their own compartmentalized sides.
So I could just like fleshthem out more definitely.
And so, yeah the second LP isgonna be a little ambitious.
It's gonna be a pretty long recordwith two different sides to it.
(30:51):
And I'm yeah.
I'm, I'm still just chipping at it.
I've been, I've been a little bitbusy with work and also other life
circumstances that I haven't beenable to work on it as much as I
wish I had but it's gonna happen.
It it's pretty much already laid out.
So it's on the way.
ANDRÉS (31:07):
Now we've known each other for a while, but this last year, we got
to work on "The Funeral" that wasstaged reading by a playwright here
in town called Marina Mair-Sanchez.
And you got to do sound design for that.
Oh yeah, that was wild because I hadBeth, one of the producers for found
festival just kind of start askingme questions like, "Hey, would you
(31:29):
be ever considering doing this?"
I was like," yeah Like I wouldlove to do sound design."
I always kind of wanted to do it.
I just never had the chance to.
and then I got introduced to Marina andthat just kind of led itself to that.
And well, we ended up in aplay together doing this.
It's, it's wild and I reallylike the overall result about it.
Like, what was your experience with that?
(31:49):
Because you got a differentend of it than I..
Yeah.
I always find that.
As an actor, you rehearse and you do yourthing, but once you get into technical
side of it and when to get into technicalrehearsals, there's this beauty that is
added with all the elements put together.
That really kind of brings everythingup to a level that, that you can't like.
(32:11):
Of course you can do itwithout sound design.
And of course you can do it withoutbeautiful lights, but there's
something about once all of thoseaspects mix together that really
tells the story beautifully.
Like every aspect isadding to the storytelling.
And I found like, especially with yoursound design, it really, it really lent
itself to let us as actors play withour emotions within it, because there
(32:32):
was this beautifully kind of haunting.
I don't know if it was a violin-
SIMONE (32:35):
carry on.
I'm I'm really curious.
I can tell you what instrumentation it was
ANDRÉS (32:39):
but there was something underneath it that - it almost felt like, again,
haunting, it felt like it was somethingthat was coming out from like, not, not
in the world, but it was just like almostin your head that you were hearing it.
I don't know.
It was so beautiful.
And I was playing this charactercalled Manolo and, and it just kind
of augmented his struggle of like,not wanting to let go of his lover.
SIMONE (33:01):
Yeah.
ANDRÉS (33:01):
That I thought was just so beautiful.
SIMONE (33:03):
Yeah.
It started at first like it's a mixtureof like, orchestral sound and a little
bit more electronic production becauseI wanted to incorporate a little bit
of that, but also like, I really wantedto make a orchestral piece I'd really
like composing that kind of stuff.
So at the beginning of the track, there'sthis kind of like ambient sound, that's
more of a synth rather than like stringbut yeah, there was oh, I some type of
(33:24):
flute, I, I, I think it was an oboe.
That played across across the whole thing.
So that kind of gave it a little bit ofits more mystical charm, I wanna say.
ANDRÉS (33:34):
Yeah, like it had an ethereal vibe to it.
SIMONE (33:36):
Like it's both wonderfully beautiful, but also kind of scary one of
my favorite elements of composing thatpiece was doing the instrumentation, just
kind of getting this emotional gravitas.
So he just kinda had a, thislow rising crescendo and.
So it was already doing the slowrising crescendo and at a certain
point where I decided like, okay,this is where it really is gonna hit.
(33:59):
I added another octave ofstrings on top of that.
To give it a sort of like, oh, nowit's just like grading on your face.
How emotionally powerful.
This is.
Because the strings arebasically screaming at you.
What's happening.
So I added yeah, I added thatemotional gravitas of another higher
octave of strings, just shriekingbut also like a counter string line.
(34:22):
So it felt like it had moreof a structure going on.
And so that was my, one of my favoriteparts in the composition of that
track, which culminated into this like,and I think you probably remembered
this, but this like very dauntingdrum, just a dum, dum, dum dum.
, and the point where it was justlike this synth from the beginning
and that drum, I loved that.
(34:43):
I felt like you could just sit in theemotional distress that was built up
with all this emotional gravitas of thestrings, just having that crescendo.
ANDRÉS (34:52):
Yeah.
SIMONE (34:52):
And then just completely going out well,
ANDRÉS (34:54):
And what I loved about it too, is that because the scene was
written in Spanish . As the audience,it kind of really helped them
understand the context so much better.
SIMONE (35:05):
I would be really curious about how there was a sort of emotional
communication in the music itself.
Mm-hmm I know that ideally, if Iwere to do this process again, I
would love to be involved in theprocess just with all of you at once.
Yeah.
Like even watching the scene andcomposing as I watch the scene,
like, and you know, that always comesdown to a projects, like question
(35:25):
of like time, resources and scope.
ANDRÉS (35:28):
Yeah.
SIMONE (35:29):
So like, you know, it's not always possible, but we can hope one day,
ANDRÉS (35:33):
Hey, the universe is listening.
So who knows it might happen?
And and you're right.
I mean, like in, in a perfect world withall the resources, like, I, I would love
to see what you would come up with beingin the rehearsals and like kind of like
hearing the conversations and composingas you say, like right on the spot.
SIMONE (35:51):
Yeah.
I would love to see like howyou folks articulate the drama.
So I know how to articulate thedrama alongside to what you're doing.
Yeah, like it it'd be fascinating.
I, it was a very interestingexperience doing this to begin with.
I just wanna do it more now.
Yeah.
And that's the thing I wanna just getbetter at being a producer so I'm able
to captivate just different sorts ofambiances experiences, feelings in music.
(36:14):
This was an instrumental, so itwas just a very particular instance
where I was able to captivate that.
And it was an interesting, instrumental,because I had samples of like, you
know, background characters, justkind of doing this sort of like mental
speeches, and that was really fun toplay with because there was a little
bit of like production that went tocreating this kind of haunting echo.
ANDRÉS (36:33):
Now, do you find that, like, that experience has kind of
bled into any of your music at all?
SIMONE (36:37):
It has it has it hasn't in some ways just because the music that
I'm making it's very focused on likeparticularly pseudo-antigone is very
focused on its two trends of likeindustrial based and primarily hyper pop.
But it was a really good opportunityjust because even if this is not directly
affecting my music, it helped me learn.
something about music that otherwiseI wouldn't have had the chance to do.
ANDRÉS (36:57):
Totally, Now with all the work you're doing is there anything that like.
After you've had a long day or along week, like you will always go
back to, just to bring some balanceand kind of joy into your life.
SIMONE (37:11):
Yeah.
Good question.
I'm a pretty all over the place person.
That's the thing like, especiallylately, I like, I either home for a
few days where I'm at my parents place.
so I'm always kind of on the move andI'm always like doing something for work,
maybe working on music, if I'm lucky.
Um, I would say the most groundingelement of my life is like,
well, shout out to my partner!
(37:32):
Yeah.
Good vibes there for sure.
And also shout, shout outto like reading philosophy.
Like, I don't know, I'm alwayscarrying a book with me and
that's just the thing that I do.
Right now I have this book thatjust got released recently by a
philosopher called Todd McGowanon "Emancipation After Hegel".
I'm a Hegel scholar, so I just lovecoming across new books on him.
(37:53):
I always carry like multiple books.
The last one I have with me is becauseI'm taking a course on an introduction
course on psych analysis for acertificate I'm doing on psych analysis.
And I, so I'm straight upreading Sigmund Freud's "The
Interpretation of Dreams" right now.
And it's really interesting because I dovery devotely read Sigmund Freud because
I do find his work very fascinating.
(38:14):
Even from a trans perspective, I dogenuinely think he has a lot to offer.
And so yeah, I'm currentlyreading his work on dreams.
ANDRÉS (38:21):
I always love when, when people hear me out
SIMONE (38:23):
oh, yes, yes, yes.
ANDRÉS (38:25):
But I always love when people enjoy to read.
You know?.
I always wished that wassomething that was like innate
to my life, but, I don't know.
Like, I guess when I, when I go to balanceor to like relax, the first thing that I
look at is like shutting off the brain.
SIMONE (38:39):
Yeah.
It's weird.
I feel like.
I learned to shut off my brain this way.
ANDRÉS (38:44):
Hmm.
SIMONE (38:44):
Because at that point I'm not doing anything, it's
just thinking happening.
ANDRÉS (38:47):
Right.
SIMONE (38:48):
It's not me doing anything.
It's just thinking happening and I'mjust like a vessel for it to happen.
It's kind of meditative.
Like I had people ask me, like,how did you meditate at all?
I would say, this isthe closest I get to it.
ANDRÉS (39:00):
Now, is there any advice that you'd give to your younger self or to
like younger artists who are starting tofind their voice in any kind of medium.
SIMONE (39:12):
Okay.
The first thing that I wouldrecommend to my older self, my
younger self is mm-hmm Hey, youshould transition as soon as you can.
Yeah.
That's that's the firstone that comes to mind.
I feel like I waited too long on thisone and, you know, I know that's a
sentiment that a lot of trans peoplesometimes feel, but yeah, like I came
to this conclusion that I'm trans, like,I wanna say like 20 15 or so, but it
(39:35):
was, it was partially circumstantialand like socio political nature that
like made it hard to achieve, but Ishould have been pushing for that more.
I realized.
ANDRÉS (39:45):
Yeah.
SIMONE (39:45):
So transition earlier.
Or if you're just questioning maybequestion that very actively, because
it'll take you interesting places.
But for artists, you know, I thinkwhat allowed me to do what I'm
doing right now is literally thefact that I just reconceived my
entire practice from the ground up.
And it really changed.
(40:05):
It changed my life and itchanged the kind of music I do.
And it changed many otherthings I do altogether.
So if you're like a musician Iwould recommend like get more into
various different kinds of music,get outside your box of comfort.
Part of what changed, what I do isalso the fact that I review music.
So I'm not just a musician, but I listento music and that was a bit important for
learning to ask questions about what do Iwanna deal with the music that I'm doing.
(40:29):
So you know, let yourselfbe fully transformed in the
substance of what you're doing.
You'll find yourself that a substance oryour music and yourself will come out of
the other end, completely transformed.
It's really tough, but yeah.
Like, you know, creating your ownsense of our artistic discipline
and commitment, and also justlike, you know imposter syndrome.
It's, it's something that does come up.
A lot.
(40:49):
But also getting past impostersyndrome to the point of like, okay,
I don't care about being an imposter.
Mostly like I'm trying to hit my ownstandards as high as I can set them, if
I can help it myself to, and just reallylike, get myself to do the best I can.
And that's really the only goal to hit.
Like I wanna do better.
I wanna do my best and try to learn how todo more than what I am right now, because
(41:14):
I don't wanna be stuck at being what I am.
I mean, that's literally partof trans embodiment for me.
I don't want to be stuck in a bodythat doesn't feel like myself.
Being myself, takes a lot of workof becoming it's it's not something
that you're given immediately.
The self is something that you can, someways have to give away and also make.
ANDRÉS (41:31):
Yeah.
And it's an ever evolving journey.
No matter what going deeper intoyourself is always gonna bring up
more things, more challenges, moregrowth that you have to embrace to be
able to kind of level up, you know?
SIMONE (41:45):
Yes.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Like there's certain points wherelike, you know, you can be doing little
progresses of like growth and whatnot.
But you can get to a point where youdo like a quantum leap and you're
just in a completely differentpoint where you can't even measure
yourself by the terms of before.
And those are the interesting momentsbecause it just completely shifts the
entire point of view, what you're doing.
(42:06):
And it's important to strive formoments where you just almost don't
recognize what was happening beforehand.
ANDRÉS (42:11):
Totally!
I love that.
Now here's a hard hitting question, right?
SIMONE (42:14):
Okay.
ANDRÉS (42:14):
Prepare yourself.
What's your favorite treat?
SIMONE (42:17):
Oh, okay.
This is easy actually.
ANDRÉS (42:20):
do you have it in your backpack?
SIMONE (42:21):
Oh yeah,
ANDRÉS (42:21):
Yeah you do!
SIMONE (42:22):
I was hanging out with my partner yesterday and I
picked this up from shoppers.
These are chocolateraisins, chocolate raisins.
ANDRÉS (42:29):
I love that.
You raised them up to the mic too.
SIMONE (42:31):
Well, the microphone has to hear them.
Like our audience can't see them, sothey have to experience it somehow.
Here's some chocolate raisin ASMR.
Ooh, (laughs) I love it.
ANDRÉS (42:45):
Anyways.
I love chocolate raisins.
Ever since I was young, my mom toldme that raisins would make me smart.
And then I was like, well,I gonna eat a lot of them.
and here I am talking philosophyand talking about chocolate raisins.
I mean, you know, your mom was not wrong.
SIMONE (43:01):
I'm glad that you asked this question.
I'm happy.
I had an answer likeliterally in my person.
ANDRÉS (43:05):
I am honestly, you're the first person to actually be like.
This is it
SIMONE (43:09):
I'm so happy.
I'm so happy to be that person
. ANDRÉS: And to, to, to kind of close it all off and then kind
of like that, looking in thefuture kind of beauty of it.
Do you have like a dream project thatlike, maybe you're not working on
right now, but like, you know, yousee yourself five, 10 years from now.
Um, After the second LP, I wanna take a bigger break in my
(43:32):
music just to like, learn more abouta audio engineering and get more
experimental in the work that I'm doing.
But my dream is to be to producemore stuff that has that sort of like
breath and complexity and sound design.
So I, gosh, if I could achieve it, Iwould love to collaborate with ARCA.
I would love to producefor people like Shygirl.
I would love to produce even for somepeople who I cannot have some like
(43:53):
friendships with yeah, I just wanna getto a point where I can do more of this.
And also, like, I dunno if Icould just like, teach philosophy
as a professor and do music.
That would be the dream for me.
ANDRÉS (44:04):
Like the coolest professor in town.
SIMONE (44:06):
That's the thing I was telling my partner this, when we went for
a walk yesterday, but I would teachonly three courses as a sessional
professor, a course on haggle a courseon Jack Lacan in psychoanalysis and
a course on the philosophy of love.
That's it.
And then I would just be doinglike music and like you know,
like artistic production and artsmanagement, that stuff mm-hmm
ANDRÉS (44:28):
I know this is completely sideways, but you mentioned
the philosophy of love.
SIMONE (44:32):
Yeah.
Can, can you give us alittle bit of a taste?
Oh boy, it it's complex because itdepends philosopher to philosopher,
but like you know and this, I wouldconsider to be the work that I'm doing,
towards like a thesis in philosophy.
If I decide to go fora PhD, which I want to.
It derives a lot from Hegeland psychoanalysis dealing with
the question of how um, okay.
I would summarize it in,in some simple terms.
(44:54):
What I learned from many of thesephilosophers about love is that love
is this kind of radical emancipatoryexperience where we learn to, in a sense
let go of ourselves can avoid ourselvesof ourselves, make a spade, an emptiness
where we're able to receive each other,not just receive each other, but it's
almost this promissory space where we'reable to promise each other the future.
(45:16):
I think this question of love,particularly answers to a struggle that
is very contemporary, that the verynotion of the future is closing up.
We're not able to envision anyfuture, capitalism is basically
making it, making it, so the featureis already saturated by capital.
Yeah.
So we can see any future pastcapitalism for the better or the worse.
Not only that, but it'sactually in a materialist sense.
(45:38):
The future is basically culminating inenvironmental destruction and whatnot.
The future feels likeit's a category in crisis.
What I see in the philosophy oflove is this potential avenue for a
rehabilitation of the future and whatit means to rehabilitate the future.
Not being caught up in a perpetualself-referential perpetuation of the
(46:02):
self, but almost this like yieldingaway this way of going through this
kinda letting go ourselves to makea space in each other, to see the
future, to promise each other future.
So if I were to say there's a keythesis that I'm concerned with,
the philosophy of love, its thatrehabilitation of the future and
(46:22):
the capacity to see something last.
ANDRÉS (46:26):
Wow.
And on that note, I just wanna say, thankyou so much, friend, like seriously from
the bottom of my heart, this has beensuch a beautiful gift to talk to you
to get to actually spend an hour andsit here and just get to know you more.
Just thank you from seriouslyfrom the bottom of my heart.
This has been a, a beautiful gift andI hope you've also had fun doing it.
SIMONE (46:48):
Oh, I enjoyed myself plenty.
Thank you for having me here Andrés.
AD: (46:53):
Hey Pal!
Enjoying the conversation?
Traversing the Azimuth is a brandnew branch of Azimuth Theatre
aimed at connecting artists with awider community, deepening mutual
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If you would like to continue hearingthese amazing stories, you can help out
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(47:16):
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AzimuthTheatre.com/traversing..
Woo.
Oh Imma trust the whole damn process,for the record, till we breaking records!
Reminiscing about the past days now werise and fly, journeys to the sky, Azimuth
inside my grip, always know the way now!
Beauty fill my days now take it dayby day sound couldn't be prouder
prouder cause y'know we alive!
ANDRÉS (00:25):
Hi, everyone.
Welcome to In Process, as always I'm yourhost Andrés Moreno, and this is Azimuth
Theatre's podcast, highlighting artists,their artistry, and their process.
Today.
We get to speak to the one andonly pseudo-antigone a singer,
songwriter, philosopher, andan all around amazing person.
(00:46):
Hi!
SIMONE (00:47):
Hey, how's it going, Andrés?
ANDRÉS (00:48):
It's good!
Thank you so much forjoining me here today.
I'm very excited for us to divedeep and to be able to just chat
SIMONE (00:54):
Me as well!
You know, every opportunityto get to chat about process.
It's something that I really adore.
So thank you for inviting me.
ANDRÉS (01:00):
Ah, thank you.
Yeah, I guess I'll start with justasking you, if you can tell us a
little bit about your story, howyour life has kind of led you to this
point in your life where you're anartist and kind of how that mixed.
SIMONE (01:13):
Yeah, it's definitely a little bit of an all over the place kinda situation.
I wanna say that I, you know, myrelationship with art is pretty long term.
Like since I was really young.
I was known to do a lot of art,particularly actually visual art.
I used to do comic bookswhen I was a younger one.
And then around the time I was 10years old, I started doing music.
(01:33):
I picked up a guitar.
And so for the longest time,like I've been playing guitar
almost for about two decades.
So it's very different from whatI do now, because I'm mostly
doing electronic music these days.
But yeah, I started doing music around.
I wanna say 17 years ago, now.
And that's pretty wild now I come to thinkof it and yeah, you know, my background
(01:55):
is pretty all over the place too.
First of all, I'm a immigrant,so I come from Mexico city.
That was that's where I was born.
And I came here to Canada in 2008.
So that's been pretty significantin terms of like changes in
just everything about my life.
Just systematically changes everything.
And so a lot of my work inphilosophy, in psychoanalysis, in
(02:18):
art sometimes takes some reflectionon the consequences of that change.
So as, as I kind of alludedto, I have a background in
psychoanalysis and philosophyformally I have BA in philosophy.
That's my major.
And I also have a backgroundin arts management.
Aside from my work as pseudo-antigoneI'm also the festival producer
(02:38):
for the NextFest arts company.
And aside from that, I tend to be veryinvolved in a lot of different like arts
projects and communities and whatnot.
So, yeah.
That would kind of encompassa lot of what I do.
It's pretty all over the place rightnow with pseudo-antigone I mostly do
electronic music in the kinda genre Iwould call hyper pop, but hyper pop is
(02:59):
also a little bit of a misnomer, so wecan talk more about that down the line.
ANDRÉS (03:02):
Totally.
Now you were mentioning when you wereyounger, you did comic books, like you
used to write them and illustrate them?
SIMONE (03:08):
Yes.
I used to particularlyillustrate comic books.
I used to write them, theplot lines make no sense, the
characters are not characters,but I just wanted to do something.
And that's kind of what I ended up doing.
I wanna say what I wasdoing was fan fiction.
I just didn't realize I was doing fanfiction till like, 10-15 years later,
ANDRÉS (03:29):
Franchises have been built on fan fiction as we know.
So...
(Laughs)
SIMONE (03:33):
I love fan fiction actually, because my, my BA was in philosophy
in English, I got really intocritical theory and those discussions,
because that was the place whereI could talk about fan fiction.
ANDRÉS (03:44):
(Laughs) That's Rad!
Sorry.
I know we're talking about yourmusic, but I just like the idea that
you also like created comic books.
SIMONE (03:50):
Yeah, that's what I started doing, honestly, like there was a point
in my life where I thought I would justkeep going on the visual arts direction.
I was thinking about it actually fairlyrecently, and I still do some level of
visual arts, particularly in digitalcollaging, but my center I'm focused is
actually music and my work in philosophy.
ANDRÉS (04:08):
Cool.
Now coming back to your music, youwere mentioning that you've played
guitar for about two decades.
Now, do you find that with thehyper pop and electronic music that
you're producing nowadays, doesthat theory kind of sneak in there.
SIMONE (04:22):
Oh yeah, absolutely.
You know, I did know a little bit of musictheory because of how I learn guitar.
I would never say that I'm like a fullytechnical person because I can't, like,
I can't talk about like modes of scales.
That's something that goesa little over my head.
But I know enough theory that I know howto intuit, what I wanna do with music.
(04:43):
I wanna say, because I mostlystarted playing on midi keyboards,
which are laid out like pianos.
I know the layout.
I know what it means.
I know.
How do you understand, you know, chords.
Scales just a general layoutof what I'm trying to do there.
So as you know, I, I got reallycomfortable on guitar because I
was able to intuit the music there
ANDRÉS (05:00):
mm-hmm
- SIMONE (05:00):
and after a year of doing stuff on a midi keyboard, I've become more
comfortable being able to intuit that sortof like musical process in that setting.
ANDRÉS (05:10):
I'm always so in awe at people who can pick up music just
because my brain works the oppositeso when people are like, "oh, I
taught myself" I'm always in awe
SIMONE (05:18):
it's a lot.
And it's weirdly mathematical.
That's the thing.
And this is kind of where philosophycomes into play for me, I have a very
strong sense of abstract thinking,that I'm able to think abstractly,
even in music, because I can have anabstract concept and know how to put
it into like, practice or realize it.
And so I can have abstract ideas andbeing able to see how those abstract
(05:40):
ideas kinda translate between variousdifferent particular instances
where you can see them reflected.
It's really weird.
It's pretty odd.
I find with music, especially, itgets odd because music sometimes has
this weird overlap with mathematics.
And that's why I refer to abstractthinking because it's pretty
abstract in terms of like how we setrelationships with between different
tones, even the tonality that ispretty common in the Western world.
(06:03):
Like how that's established, how weset relationship between like the notes
that go going to compose like chordshow we can emphasize certain elements
of like music structuring whatnot.
Its wild.
It definitely gets into my head a lot.
you know, I could listen to youtalk forever like the fact that
you're talking math, when we'retalking about music, I just.
I live for it.
(06:24):
Yeah.
There's a weird overlap.
I'm here for it.
We've talked about how you havedone art in different forms and in
different mediums, your whole life,however what drew you to then go?
I'm going to express myself through music.
Okay.
So for me I think a lot of thethings I do in art sometimes
relate to what I do in philosophy.
(06:44):
I basically operate on the basicnotion that philosophy is something
that comes into touch with a lotof non-philosophical disciplines.
In the instance of the arts, I'm ableto try to articulate what would be
an abstract philosophical conceptin different sorts of like more
particular sensibilities of art.
So sometimes it's a question of like,how am I able to do both the work of like
(07:05):
the abstract, like I dunno how to putit, but like more logical laboring that
would go onto the philosophical treatieslet's say, and trying to articulate
those things also in the narrativeof a play poetry, music, all of these
things as different access points, let'ssay to talk about the concepts that
ultimately philosophy is concerned with.
So it's not just music, but musicin particular, I find that I have a
(07:28):
lot of strengths in terms of my, howwould I put it like competency at it?
So I, I feel like my leaningstowards the words, music have been
more because, you know, I feelvery comfortable with this medium.
I feel like I know what I'm doing more.
And especially as I'm startingto do the project that is now
pseudo-antigone, I feel like I havea lot of room for you know, dealing
(07:50):
with more complex topics over time.
ANDRÉS (07:53):
And talking about the name "pseudo-antigone".
What drew you to that name?
SIMONE (07:56):
I Mean, I do love the play by Sophocles, but that also ties in both
the philosophy and psycho analysis.
Because one of my favoritephilosophers, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel, and one of my favorite psychanalysts, Jacques Lacan both take
a particular interest on Antigoneas this kinda figure of rebellion?
Would be the most simpleway I could put it.
(08:18):
In the case of Hegel it tends to dealwith this narrative where, you know, we
can set up universal rules and whatnotabout how we set up a state, let's say.
But these things can undermine theparticular desires and particular
needs or relationships thatpeople build with each other.
In the case of the play of Antigone well.
The play entails that the statesmanCreon refuses to give burial to one
(08:41):
of Antigone's brothers, because two ofher brothers fought in a war together.
But in opposite sides one of thebrothers fought on the side of the
city and the other one did not.
The one that did not was denied burial.
So he was basically at theexcess of the political state.
And so when Antigone heard aboutthis news she was devastated and
(09:02):
dealt with a question of can I try tomourn this person who has been in a
sense excommunicated from the state?
So in a sense she basically tookon the role of trying to still give
a sort of like symbolic gestureto the brother that was basically
denied any role in the state.
She was trying to actively revel andcompletely shake the foundations of what
(09:25):
the state was built upon by basicallysaying that the state had no claim
of the time that symbolic descriptionof mourning from these folks the play
does culminate in that Creon findsout about Antigone trying to you know,
perform burial ritual for her brother.
And she gets a warning first, butshe keeps on doing it, of course and
(09:47):
she gets into the situation whereshe's set in a how would I put it
in, in a cave, basically closed off.
Where she's not able to, in a sense,like she's not killed, but she's
said in a, in a cave closed off.
Where she has no option, butto take her own life basically.
(10:07):
And that's very tabooin the Greek context.
So it was this situation where thestatesman who is supposed to be
upholding, you know, their rules, theirrights, all these kinds of things.
Basically led this person on,onto both a symbolic death and
a real death in some layer.
And so for Hegel it's very much thiskind of contention between you know, the
(10:27):
state and the expression of like, likeparticular desires, overriding the very
foundations of the roles that we make.
Similar with Lacan, it's slightlydifferent, but along the same lines.
ANDRÉS (10:38):
I took a Roman and Greek and Roman literature class back in college.
you remind me of the professorevery time they would start
talking about these stories, Iwould just, I'd be like," yeah?"
"And then what happened?"
SIMONE (10:49):
God.
And it gets so dramatic sometimes.
Yeah, with Antigone I just really likethe kind of expression of radicality.
I, I think that's what I,what I would put to it.
This sort of like, you know, thestate can burn if we can't mourn
the people that we stand by.
And that stands for me, particularly interms of like navigating my relationship
(11:09):
to my immigration and being an immigrant,my relationship to other people around
me that struggle with marginality.
With myself as a queer personand navigating You know queer
chosen families and whatnot.
I've thought about the notion of whatif I were to make what I put it a
sort of rendition of Antigone whereit would be centered around the notion
of queer chosen family that has noclaim to you mourning one of their
(11:33):
own who's passed away just becausethey don't have a blood relationship.
In one sense or another, it stillconfronts us with the fundamental dilemma
of Antigone just in a modernized setting.
And that that's the significance ofmodernizing Antigone's drama in some
sense, what is the kind of conflictwith the state, with the roles that we
make that he makes apparent along the.
ANDRÉS (11:53):
I love that- that this beautiful classic story is also tied into the,
the idea of chosen family and, and,and this, this world that we, as
queer people have to navigate right.
Of like state versus like, like ourown grief and our own like rebellion.
SIMONE (12:10):
Yeah.
Because I think Antigone also likeAntigone comes from a place of care
at, at the end of the day, like she'strying to express a sort of love that
is not state mandated or legalistic,so to speak you one can think of, for
example, like before the legalization,like quote unquote, homosexual, like
marriage, like we find these instanceswhere the state tries to legislate
how one can love and how one can care.
(12:30):
But it also means how this itsimultaneously means how the state
can sever us from the kind of care andlove that we can express to each other.
And as much as like.
Let's say Antigone can be politicizedas a radical, in some sense and properly
so because she's hitting at the veryroots of the foundation of society.
It, it's also simultaneously asking Inwhat those foundations are founded or what
(12:53):
grounds or justifies these foundations,especially when it, in a sense uproots
us or sever us from, or most foundationalrelationships in the case of her, like
her relationship to a close person to her.
ANDRÉS (13:05):
Yeah, it reminds me I don't know if you've heard or seen the play,
"The Normal Heart" by Larry Kramer.
There's a movie thatwas made by HBO as well.
But in that movie, there's this beautifullove story between two men and it's
in the middle of the aids pandemic.
And it talks about like, what happens,what happened to relationships when, if
you weren't married because it wasn'taccepted or even recognized, like you
(13:28):
had no right to say goodbye to thisperson who was your lover, you know?
SIMONE (13:32):
I think the language of recognition is perfect.
This actually comes back to Hegelin one of the portions of his major
text, "The Phenomenology of Spirit".
He's he has this dialectic, thiskind logic between two different
oppositions as they kind ofcompliment and inform each other.
He has this dialectic ofrecognition and desire.
I said that, for example, I desire.
(13:52):
In such a way that my desire is immediateto me, but I don't know how to make
that desire apparent to someone else.
We start finding ourselves, tryingto contend with our capacity
to articulate our own desire.
Let's say, using language andmake that recognizable to another.
But of course, language faults us.
If there's anything that poetry teachesus as the language is an improper tool.
And that's why we do metaphorsbecause we try to lever the wealth of
(14:16):
expression out of a failed language.
So we struggle with tryingto make metaphors around our
desire to gain recognition.
Amongst each other.
And at each failure, wetry to do that again.
I think this is very tangible in justlike friendships or intimate relationships
where we are constantly doing this kind ofdialectical recognition with one another.
(14:38):
Of course, when we're talking aboutit, in the case of Antigone we're
not just talking about, you know,this immediate relationships, but
also state recognition let's say
ANDRÉS (14:45):
Totally.
And now this beautiful, kind ofidea of this character who comes
from all the way in this like old,old, old story and bringing it
forward and now going, I'm going touse that name to create hyper pop.
SIMONE (14:59):
Yeah.
ANDRÉS (14:59):
Tell me a little bit about that.
SIMONE (15:00):
Well so the name is pseudo-antigone.
It's not Antigone, but pseudoit can mean a few things.
It can mean fake.
It can mean like for me it kindmeans like trying to embody
something like Antigone right.
Something that kind of aims at those,like you know, tearing down the roots
of like something that is fundamentallyuprooting, like an uprooting state of
inequality or, you know, alienation
ANDRÉS (15:23):
mm-hmm
SIMONE (15:23):
And so for me, pseudo-antigone was a form of embodiment that
therefore the pseudo of Antigone right?
Like we're dealing with anembodiment that is like Antigone.
But what it means for me too, is asort of experimenting in embodiment.
The project pseudo-antogne kinda came ata time where I was starting to explore
(15:45):
my transition because since 20 20, Istarted the process of doing my medical
transitioning because I don't think Imentioned this before, but I identify
as a trans woman and I have for a while, it's just because of circumstances of,
you know, state alienation and whatnot,like the resources haven't been there
for me to be able to access somethinglike HRT or any other procedures that
(16:08):
I would be interested in on pursuing.
And so 2020, right before thepandemic happened, I was not in a
good place and we can chat about that.
I'm open to it.
But I made that decision to goahead and go through my transition.
And so by the time that June hit, well, itwas apparent the pandemic was going to go
way longer than any of us, maybe expected.
ANDRÉS (16:28):
Yeah.
SIMONE (16:29):
And I just tried to embrace it as much as I could because I had gotten
a hold of my HRT and I realized like,well, at this point, I just gonna carry
myself to this very personal process.
Now, especially as I was going throughsome major changes in, you know,
who my friends were, where I foundmyself in society, because none of
the spaces where I found community orrelationships were the same anymore.
(16:52):
I took the time to very much focus onwhat he meant to embody myself again.
And part of that took place in music.
So pseudo-antigone startedas a form of containing with
this re-embodiment of myself.
What was the rest of the question Ijust got got up on the embodiment thing.
ANDRÉS (17:08):
No, it was a beautiful answer.
It was just kind of like howthat, that connects to hyper pop.
SIMONE (17:14):
Oh yeah.
ANDRÉS (17:14):
As a genre, you know?
SIMONE (17:15):
Okay.
We can talk about it a little bit.
And I think this tiesinto the trans part of it.
My contention with my own embodimentis I would almost describe it like
a cyborg learning to embody itself.
How do you learn, learn to embodyyourself when you're replacing parts
of your body or like, you know,breaking yourself apart so you can
pull yourself back together again?
(17:35):
I would say that's kind of whatI found myself in and what I
saw in the genre hyper pop.
It's kind of a misnomer because itencompasses so many different kinds
of music, so it's not even helpful.
And as much as like some people, includingmyself, like to say that it's kind of like
a queer community, it's not necessarilyso, but I find a lot of like trans and
queer community in that, or I should saylike trans and queer folks that I saw
(17:59):
doing, working music that I really admire.
So among them, I would probablyname I'll start with two of them.
SOPHIE who passed away earlierthis year in an accident.
And Arca.
Yeah, both SOPHIE and Arca aretrans Arca is a non-binary trans
person who is basically, I wannasay the last two records that- I'm
(18:19):
gonna use "it/its" pronouns forArca because that's what Arca uses.
But yeah Arca in its projects in thelast couple years have taken this tone
of navigating transition pretty openlyand entering into the sort of like
cyborg, posthuman almost inhuman approachto navigating this trans embodiment.
(18:40):
There's the music video for non-binary.
The introduction track to their lastit's last album where Arca basically
undergoes like sex re- assignment surgery.
And it, it is basically this likecomplex narrative of dealing with,
you know, this like mythologicalfigures of the divine feminine, and
the cyber notion of the woman that hasbecome more contemporary in some ways.
(19:05):
Arca jumps between the two figuresin doing this song about being
non-binary and it all ends intoan argument with some random, like
white cis- woman on the street.
Just like putting intoperspective of that all this like
extraneous almost alien process.
Sometimes you just deal with it in a verylike backhanded way just in everyday life.
ANDRÉS (19:27):
Yeah.
SIMONE (19:27):
With someone who is just willing to disregard the kind of multitudes
of magnitudes that one is dealing within doing this process of embodiment.
So Arca I find that, doesthat work pretty explicitly?
And also SOPHIE.
SOPHIE kind of kept heridentity undisclosed
ANDRÉS (19:44):
yeah.
SIMONE (19:44):
For a long time.
Until I wanna say the release of herlast, her very last album "Oil of Every
Pearl's Un-Insides" where she finallyrevealed who she was and that she was
a trans woman starting with the track.
"It's Okay To Cry."
where the way I interpreted, but Icould be mistaken is that SOPHIE was
entering into a dialogue with herselfpre-transition and kind of having
(20:08):
this kinda heart to heart conversationabout, you know, it's okay to let
yourself embody that and you leavethis very emotional sentimental track
to move onto stuff like "Ponyboy" or"Faceshopping" or "immaterial", where
you're just dealing with all thesequestions that are more like, you know,
electronic, metallic, cling-clangyexpressions of like embodying yourself.
(20:31):
Very similar to, in some ways likethe music video for "Faceshopping",
has many of these almost like Cyborgelements kind of come into play.
And we can talk a little bit about thisin the context of like what it means to
embody a voice in music especially from atrans perspective in a recent interview.
I did, I kind of, noted there's three waysI seen trans people navigate this in this
(20:52):
kind of genre one can be like SOPHIE, whowe only really heard SOPHIE's voice once.
In, "It's Ok To Cry."
every other instance of hearing SOPHIE'svoice, in her recordings, it tends to see
be other musicians like Cecile Believewho is a Canadian musician in contrast to
borrowing that voice from someone else.
(21:13):
There's people like Laura Les from the duo100 gecs who just tone shifts, her vocals
completely uses auto tune and a varietyof multiple effects to do her music.
And that's kind of what Itried to do myself actually.
ANDRÉS (21:28):
I was struck by something Sophie said in one interview that was
like as a musician, I don't know whyyou wouldn't want to take advantage of
all the instruments that are available,including the electronic ones.
SIMONE (21:38):
Yes.
ANDRÉS (21:38):
You know, like there's so much that can be done with clanging and
with the tones and the kind of, I don'tremember how she expressed it, but it
was kind of like as a musician, youshould be taking advantage of not just
the instruments that have been broughttraditionally forward into music, but
this new kind of like era where ourinstruments are all electronic and we can
(21:59):
literally create music without touchinga piano, without touching a guitar.
It can all be tones and MIDIand I thought that that was such
a cool way of thinking about it.
Especially as theater after the pandemichas tried to shift into, into zoom, into,
you know, electronic versions of itself.
SIMONE (22:17):
Yeah.
Like if we keep trying to do theaterin the same terms that we were
doing theater pre- pandemic, you'renot gonna get too far with that.
And this is really funny because this issomething that affected my production.
Like I had started doing pseudo-antigoneduring the pandemic for this reason.
I happened to have a MacBook air.
I happened to have garage, man.
I decided to get myself a MIDIkeyboard and I just spent close
(22:38):
time to it, like for a while.
And just kinda gettingacquainted with that.
Like it's the most full music I'vebeen able to do just because I
had all that to take advantage of.
I wanna say at some point I tried tomake my music so full that it was hard to
tell apart what was happening at times.
But as it's becoming more mature, youkind of learn what Sophie's saying.
Like if you learn to take full advantageof it, you can know how to make the
(22:59):
fullest music out of very little.
And I, I think that's an elementwhere like setting a limitation
for your work can help you makethat work enhanced in some ways.
I use the metaphor of poetryand its use of metaphor.
Poetry recognizes that languagehas a fundamental deficiency.
Because at a certain point, it hitsa wall on what it's able to express.
But that very limit is where weconcern the wealth of expression
(23:22):
that poetry does from metaphor.
The question is, how can we turnthis finitude of expression and
turn it into, our very own accessto the infinite and that's Hegelian
claim that I'm trying to make sense.
so there's an philosophical robustnessto this, but it also has a way in
which we navigate this as artists.
(23:43):
Poetry is an example of it.
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ANDRÉS (24:15):
So we've talked about your, your training and we've talked about
inspiration and other artists, whereelse do you draw inspiration for
when you're starting to make music?
SIMONE (24:24):
Yeah.
I kinda mention a little bitof about like, particularly
like trans artists and whatnot.
I mentioned there are people thatborrow voices like SOPHIE there's people
that affect their voices like LauraLes, and then there's people like ARCA
or the folks from uh, Canadian duoBlack Dresses who don't do anything
to their voices necessarily in orderto do the music that they make so
I found those three approaches tolike Trans embodiment in this music
(24:47):
I definitely draw my influencesfrom a lot of different genres.
Like the thing is I've beeninto music for so long that.
I dip my toes in a lot of things.
And so I wanna say that particularlythe last couple years, I've been really
interested in some elements of likehip hop, particularly industrial bass.
I really like the kind of likegrit, industrial bass sound.
(25:08):
And actually with some of thetracks that I've been working on,
it reflects like there's a trackthat I sent you called "Dead Name".
Yes.
That it's very much influenced by Shygirl.
Actually, when I played a show lastweek, I had someone call me out on it.
ANDRÉS (25:23):
Oh really?
SIMONE (25:23):
It was really good.
Because I'm glad that theinfluence came across.
ANDRÉS (25:26):
How does your setup work in performance?
SIMONE (25:28):
My setup is very minimal.
I use just my laptop,which is a MacBook air.
I just make sure that it's like veryclear in terms of sound sorry, in
terms of files and whatnot, just soit doesn't like run into any issues.
And I use an audio interface inmy case it basically gives me two
inputs and two outputs to work with.
And so through the audio interface,I have my, my microphone and then
(25:48):
the audio interface outputs ontotwo different channels for stereo.
And then with that, I.
Yeah, I run a backingtrack through logic pro-x.
And then on top of that,I monitor my own vocals.
And so my vocals come out ofthat depending on the song I have
multiple vocal tracks just thatI have to be switching around.
So it's, it's, it's pretty it mightnot be the most ideal way to do it
(26:10):
just because for example, like techwouldn't be able to separate like
monitoring my vocals and my backingtrack actually do that myself for myself.
So it might not be the best wayto do it, but it's how I figure
out how to do, do what I'm doing.
ANDRÉS (26:24):
As artists sometimes to be able to express ourselves, we
have to teach ourselves thingsthat we have no idea how to do.
SIMONE (26:30):
Absolutely.
And well, that's kind of ended up beingmy own audio engineer, like legitimately
in years of being in the like music scene.
Like no one wanted to teach eachother, like this kind of stuff.
a lot of people like to keeptheir cards to themselves.
during the pandemic.
I just learned, like, I'm notgonna invest on this space anymore.
I'm over it.
I don't want to go back to any of that.
It's it's awful.
(26:51):
It's not worthwhile.
You don't need to.
And there's cooler stuffhappening, so yeah.
ANDRÉS (26:58):
So talking about your upcoming projects and what you've
been working on, is there anythingspecifically, and it doesn't have to
be related to your music, but that,that it's exciting you right now.
SIMONE (27:07):
Yeah.
I'll kind talk about a little bitof the things that I've been up to.
Very recently I released aremix compilation to celebrate
the last album I released "Intothe Void of Infinite Sadness
" Yeah, that got repackaged us "Into the Void of Infinite Remix".
ANDRÉS (27:21):
Oh, nice.
SIMONE (27:22):
Yeah I had a few pals all over Canada and the US send remixes
of just different tracks in the album.
And so I decided to just like releasethat as its own kind of thing.
And so that was great because honestly,like "Into the Void of Infinite Sadness
" got me by surprise because I wasn'texpecting how much it would pick up.
ANDRÉS (27:43):
Yeah.
Your reception has been insane.
Hasn't it?
SIMONE (27:46):
It's been pretty ridiculous.
I, I never thought I would have likea feature, like, first of all, like
a front page feature in the Edmontonjournal, I wasn't expecting that.
When I first sent like all the mediakits, I was like, you know, I'll be
lucky if it gets played on radio, it waslike number seven in the national chart.
Like, so, so things like that happenand I'm just like, okay, great.
(28:08):
Well now I know I'm onto something.
Maybe let's keep pushing this direction.
And I know how to like,get this stuff around.
Let's just keep doing it.
So, you know, "Into the Void of InfiniteSadness " had like a considerable,
like positive reception, it definitelyis translating well to live audiences
when I'm doing like performance.
So yeah, so, so I celebrated all of thiswith, "Into the Void of Infinite Remix
(28:31):
" and that has just a lot of differentpals so yeah, various remix started it
and throughout, basically the last, Iwanna say like four or five months, I've
been producing for a lot of differentpeople again in the US and Canada.
So most recently I'm currently producinga couple of remixes, so one for the
local post punk band Fitness yeah,they're also coming up with their
(28:51):
own like remix completion of sorts.
So I got asked to do one and I'm at it.
It's pretty much done.
It's just a question ofdoing a few finicky things.
And then one of my pals who alsodid a remix for my, my remix
compilation Goddexx, so G-O-D-D-E-X-X.
Is doing her own remix completionand asked me, to do one.
(29:12):
Still have to finish that remix!
I'm at it.
It's just been such a slow whileto kind of pick up on that.
And then there's a musician in Vancouverwho I've been producing a song for for
an EP that, that they're working on.
So I'm very excited about that one becauseit's one of my favorite productions.
So it just sounds so haunting and weird.
(29:34):
It's very industrialand haunting sounding.
Did I say haunting already?
Because it definitely sounds haunting.
ANDRÉS (29:40):
So wait, is it, is it haunting?
SIMONE (29:42):
I think so.
So so I'm very excited about that one.
And so those are kind of the things in theconstellation of the work I've been doing.
But the big project that I'm workingon, this is still probably like rolling
into early 2023 it's the second LP.
Basically since July, I startedworking on a follow up to "Into
(30:06):
the Void of Infinite Sadness " whatI'm trying to do in my second LP is
basically having a self titled record.
It's gonna be a double recordshowcasing the two major trends
I've seen in my music production.
On the one side, I have verylike industrial bass stuff.
And on the other end, I havevery glimmery, like hyper pop,
like glammy pop, standing stuff.
(30:27):
I kinda decided that looking back at,"Into the Void of Infinite Sadness
", those two trends were already there,but moving on, I wanted to organize them
into their own compartmentalized sides.
So I could just like fleshthem out more definitely.
And so, yeah the second LP isgonna be a little ambitious.
It's gonna be a pretty long recordwith two different sides to it.
(30:51):
And I'm yeah.
I'm, I'm still just chipping at it.
I've been, I've been a little bitbusy with work and also other life
circumstances that I haven't beenable to work on it as much as I
wish I had but it's gonna happen.
It it's pretty much already laid out.
So it's on the way.
ANDRÉS (31:07):
Now we've known each other for a while, but this last year, we got
to work on "The Funeral" that wasstaged reading by a playwright here
in town called Marina Mair-Sanchez.
And you got to do sound design for that.
Oh yeah, that was wild because I hadBeth, one of the producers for found
festival just kind of start askingme questions like, "Hey, would you
(31:29):
be ever considering doing this?"
I was like," yeah Like I wouldlove to do sound design."
I always kind of wanted to do it.
I just never had the chance to.
and then I got introduced to Marina andthat just kind of led itself to that.
And well, we ended up in aplay together doing this.
It's, it's wild and I reallylike the overall result about it.
Like, what was your experience with that?
(31:49):
Because you got a differentend of it than I..
Yeah.
I always find that.
As an actor, you rehearse and you do yourthing, but once you get into technical
side of it and when to get into technicalrehearsals, there's this beauty that is
added with all the elements put together.
That really kind of brings everythingup to a level that, that you can't like.
(32:11):
Of course you can do itwithout sound design.
And of course you can do it withoutbeautiful lights, but there's
something about once all of thoseaspects mix together that really
tells the story beautifully.
Like every aspect isadding to the storytelling.
And I found like, especially with yoursound design, it really, it really lent
itself to let us as actors play withour emotions within it, because there
(32:32):
was this beautifully kind of haunting.
I don't know if it was a violin-
SIMONE (32:35):
carry on.
I'm I'm really curious.
I can tell you what instrumentation it was
ANDRÉS (32:39):
but there was something underneath it that - it almost felt like, again,
haunting, it felt like it was somethingthat was coming out from like, not, not
in the world, but it was just like almostin your head that you were hearing it.
I don't know.
It was so beautiful.
And I was playing this charactercalled Manolo and, and it just kind
of augmented his struggle of like,not wanting to let go of his lover.
SIMONE (33:01):
Yeah.
ANDRÉS (33:01):
That I thought was just so beautiful.
SIMONE (33:03):
Yeah.
It started at first like it's a mixtureof like, orchestral sound and a little
bit more electronic production becauseI wanted to incorporate a little bit
of that, but also like, I really wantedto make a orchestral piece I'd really
like composing that kind of stuff.
So at the beginning of the track, there'sthis kind of like ambient sound, that's
more of a synth rather than like stringbut yeah, there was oh, I some type of
(33:24):
flute, I, I, I think it was an oboe.
That played across across the whole thing.
So that kind of gave it a little bit ofits more mystical charm, I wanna say.
ANDRÉS (33:34):
Yeah, like it had an ethereal vibe to it.
SIMONE (33:36):
Like it's both wonderfully beautiful, but also kind of scary one of
my favorite elements of composing thatpiece was doing the instrumentation, just
kind of getting this emotional gravitas.
So he just kinda had a, thislow rising crescendo and.
So it was already doing the slowrising crescendo and at a certain
point where I decided like, okay,this is where it really is gonna hit.
(33:59):
I added another octave ofstrings on top of that.
To give it a sort of like, oh, nowit's just like grading on your face.
How emotionally powerful.
This is.
Because the strings arebasically screaming at you.
What's happening.
So I added yeah, I added thatemotional gravitas of another higher
octave of strings, just shriekingbut also like a counter string line.
(34:22):
So it felt like it had moreof a structure going on.
And so that was my, one of my favoriteparts in the composition of that
track, which culminated into this like,and I think you probably remembered
this, but this like very dauntingdrum, just a dum, dum, dum dum.
, and the point where it was justlike this synth from the beginning
and that drum, I loved that.
(34:43):
I felt like you could just sit in theemotional distress that was built up
with all this emotional gravitas of thestrings, just having that crescendo.
ANDRÉS (34:52):
Yeah.
SIMONE (34:52):
And then just completely going out well,
ANDRÉS (34:54):
And what I loved about it too, is that because the scene was
written in Spanish . As the audience,it kind of really helped them
understand the context so much better.
SIMONE (35:05):
I would be really curious about how there was a sort of emotional
communication in the music itself.
Mm-hmm I know that ideally, if Iwere to do this process again, I
would love to be involved in theprocess just with all of you at once.
Yeah.
Like even watching the scene andcomposing as I watch the scene,
like, and you know, that always comesdown to a projects, like question
(35:25):
of like time, resources and scope.
ANDRÉS (35:28):
Yeah.
SIMONE (35:29):
So like, you know, it's not always possible, but we can hope one day,
ANDRÉS (35:33):
Hey, the universe is listening.
So who knows it might happen?
And and you're right.
I mean, like in, in a perfect world withall the resources, like, I, I would love
to see what you would come up with beingin the rehearsals and like kind of like
hearing the conversations and composingas you say, like right on the spot.
SIMONE (35:51):
Yeah.
I would love to see like howyou folks articulate the drama.
So I know how to articulate thedrama alongside to what you're doing.
Yeah, like it it'd be fascinating.
I, it was a very interestingexperience doing this to begin with.
I just wanna do it more now.
Yeah.
And that's the thing I wanna just getbetter at being a producer so I'm able
to captivate just different sorts ofambiances experiences, feelings in music.
(36:14):
This was an instrumental, so itwas just a very particular instance
where I was able to captivate that.
And it was an interesting, instrumental,because I had samples of like, you
know, background characters, justkind of doing this sort of like mental
speeches, and that was really fun toplay with because there was a little
bit of like production that went tocreating this kind of haunting echo.
ANDRÉS (36:33):
Now, do you find that, like, that experience has kind of
bled into any of your music at all?
SIMONE (36:37):
It has it has it hasn't in some ways just because the music that
I'm making it's very focused on likeparticularly pseudo-antigone is very
focused on its two trends of likeindustrial based and primarily hyper pop.
But it was a really good opportunityjust because even if this is not directly
affecting my music, it helped me learn.
something about music that otherwiseI wouldn't have had the chance to do.
ANDRÉS (36:57):
Totally, Now with all the work you're doing is there anything that like.
After you've had a long day or along week, like you will always go
back to, just to bring some balanceand kind of joy into your life.
SIMONE (37:11):
Yeah.
Good question.
I'm a pretty all over the place person.
That's the thing like, especiallylately, I like, I either home for a
few days where I'm at my parents place.
so I'm always kind of on the move andI'm always like doing something for work,
maybe working on music, if I'm lucky.
Um, I would say the most groundingelement of my life is like,
well, shout out to my partner!
(37:32):
Yeah.
Good vibes there for sure.
And also shout, shout outto like reading philosophy.
Like, I don't know, I'm alwayscarrying a book with me and
that's just the thing that I do.
Right now I have this book thatjust got released recently by a
philosopher called Todd McGowanon "Emancipation After Hegel".
I'm a Hegel scholar, so I just lovecoming across new books on him.
(37:53):
I always carry like multiple books.
The last one I have with me is becauseI'm taking a course on an introduction
course on psych analysis for acertificate I'm doing on psych analysis.
And I, so I'm straight upreading Sigmund Freud's "The
Interpretation of Dreams" right now.
And it's really interesting because I dovery devotely read Sigmund Freud because
I do find his work very fascinating.
(38:14):
Even from a trans perspective, I dogenuinely think he has a lot to offer.
And so yeah, I'm currentlyreading his work on dreams.
ANDRÉS (38:21):
I always love when, when people hear me out
SIMONE (38:23):
oh, yes, yes, yes.
ANDRÉS (38:25):
But I always love when people enjoy to read.
You know?.
I always wished that wassomething that was like innate
to my life, but, I don't know.
Like, I guess when I, when I go to balanceor to like relax, the first thing that I
look at is like shutting off the brain.
SIMONE (38:39):
Yeah.
It's weird.
I feel like.
I learned to shut off my brain this way.
ANDRÉS (38:44):
Hmm.
SIMONE (38:44):
Because at that point I'm not doing anything, it's
just thinking happening.
ANDRÉS (38:47):
Right.
SIMONE (38:48):
It's not me doing anything.
It's just thinking happening and I'mjust like a vessel for it to happen.
It's kind of meditative.
Like I had people ask me, like,how did you meditate at all?
I would say, this isthe closest I get to it.
ANDRÉS (39:00):
Now, is there any advice that you'd give to your younger self or to
like younger artists who are starting tofind their voice in any kind of medium.
SIMONE (39:12):
Okay.
The first thing that I wouldrecommend to my older self, my
younger self is mm-hmm Hey, youshould transition as soon as you can.
Yeah.
That's that's the firstone that comes to mind.
I feel like I waited too long on thisone and, you know, I know that's a
sentiment that a lot of trans peoplesometimes feel, but yeah, like I came
to this conclusion that I'm trans, like,I wanna say like 20 15 or so, but it
(39:35):
was, it was partially circumstantialand like socio political nature that
like made it hard to achieve, but Ishould have been pushing for that more.
I realized.
ANDRÉS (39:45):
Yeah.
SIMONE (39:45):
So transition earlier.
Or if you're just questioning maybequestion that very actively, because
it'll take you interesting places.
But for artists, you know, I thinkwhat allowed me to do what I'm
doing right now is literally thefact that I just reconceived my
entire practice from the ground up.
And it really changed.
(40:05):
It changed my life and itchanged the kind of music I do.
And it changed many otherthings I do altogether.
So if you're like a musician Iwould recommend like get more into
various different kinds of music,get outside your box of comfort.
Part of what changed, what I do isalso the fact that I review music.
So I'm not just a musician, but I listento music and that was a bit important for
learning to ask questions about what do Iwanna deal with the music that I'm doing.
(40:29):
So you know, let yourselfbe fully transformed in the
substance of what you're doing.
You'll find yourself that a substance oryour music and yourself will come out of
the other end, completely transformed.
It's really tough, but yeah.
Like, you know, creating your ownsense of our artistic discipline
and commitment, and also justlike, you know imposter syndrome.
It's, it's something that does come up.
A lot.
(40:49):
But also getting past impostersyndrome to the point of like, okay,
I don't care about being an imposter.
Mostly like I'm trying to hit my ownstandards as high as I can set them, if
I can help it myself to, and just reallylike, get myself to do the best I can.
And that's really the only goal to hit.
Like I wanna do better.
I wanna do my best and try to learn how todo more than what I am right now, because
(41:14):
I don't wanna be stuck at being what I am.
I mean, that's literally partof trans embodiment for me.
I don't want to be stuck in a bodythat doesn't feel like myself.
Being myself, takes a lot of workof becoming it's it's not something
that you're given immediately.
The self is something that you can, someways have to give away and also make.
ANDRÉS (41:31):
Yeah.
And it's an ever evolving journey.
No matter what going deeper intoyourself is always gonna bring up
more things, more challenges, moregrowth that you have to embrace to be
able to kind of level up, you know?
SIMONE (41:45):
Yes.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Like there's certain points wherelike, you know, you can be doing little
progresses of like growth and whatnot.
But you can get to a point where youdo like a quantum leap and you're
just in a completely differentpoint where you can't even measure
yourself by the terms of before.
And those are the interesting momentsbecause it just completely shifts the
entire point of view, what you're doing.
(42:06):
And it's important to strive formoments where you just almost don't
recognize what was happening beforehand.
ANDRÉS (42:11):
Totally!
I love that.
Now here's a hard hitting question, right?
SIMONE (42:14):
Okay.
ANDRÉS (42:14):
Prepare yourself.
What's your favorite treat?
SIMONE (42:17):
Oh, okay.
This is easy actually.
ANDRÉS (42:20):
do you have it in your backpack?
SIMONE (42:21):
Oh yeah,
ANDRÉS (42:21):
Yeah you do!
SIMONE (42:22):
I was hanging out with my partner yesterday and I
picked this up from shoppers.
These are chocolateraisins, chocolate raisins.
ANDRÉS (42:29):
I love that.
You raised them up to the mic too.
SIMONE (42:31):
Well, the microphone has to hear them.
Like our audience can't see them, sothey have to experience it somehow.
Here's some chocolate raisin ASMR.
Ooh, (laughs) I love it.
ANDRÉS (42:45):
Anyways.
I love chocolate raisins.
Ever since I was young, my mom toldme that raisins would make me smart.
And then I was like, well,I gonna eat a lot of them.
and here I am talking philosophyand talking about chocolate raisins.
I mean, you know, your mom was not wrong.
SIMONE (43:01):
I'm glad that you asked this question.
I'm happy.
I had an answer likeliterally in my person.
ANDRÉS (43:05):
I am honestly, you're the first person to actually be like.
This is it
SIMONE (43:09):
I'm so happy.
I'm so happy to be that person
. ANDRÉS: And to, to, to kind of close it all off and then kind
of like that, looking in thefuture kind of beauty of it.
Do you have like a dream project thatlike, maybe you're not working on
right now, but like, you know, yousee yourself five, 10 years from now.
Um, After the second LP, I wanna take a bigger break in my
(43:32):
music just to like, learn more abouta audio engineering and get more
experimental in the work that I'm doing.
But my dream is to be to producemore stuff that has that sort of like
breath and complexity and sound design.
So I, gosh, if I could achieve it, Iwould love to collaborate with ARCA.
I would love to producefor people like Shygirl.
I would love to produce even for somepeople who I cannot have some like
(43:53):
friendships with yeah, I just wanna getto a point where I can do more of this.
And also, like, I dunno if Icould just like, teach philosophy
as a professor and do music.
That would be the dream for me.
ANDRÉS (44:04):
Like the coolest professor in town.
SIMONE (44:06):
That's the thing I was telling my partner this, when we went for
a walk yesterday, but I would teachonly three courses as a sessional
professor, a course on haggle a courseon Jack Lacan in psychoanalysis and
a course on the philosophy of love.
That's it.
And then I would just be doinglike music and like you know,
like artistic production and artsmanagement, that stuff mm-hmm
ANDRÉS (44:28):
I know this is completely sideways, but you mentioned
the philosophy of love.
SIMONE (44:32):
Yeah.
Can, can you give us alittle bit of a taste?
Oh boy, it it's complex because itdepends philosopher to philosopher,
but like you know and this, I wouldconsider to be the work that I'm doing,
towards like a thesis in philosophy.
If I decide to go fora PhD, which I want to.
It derives a lot from Hegeland psychoanalysis dealing with
the question of how um, okay.
I would summarize it in,in some simple terms.
(44:54):
What I learned from many of thesephilosophers about love is that love
is this kind of radical emancipatoryexperience where we learn to, in a sense
let go of ourselves can avoid ourselvesof ourselves, make a spade, an emptiness
where we're able to receive each other,not just receive each other, but it's
almost this promissory space where we'reable to promise each other the future.
(45:16):
I think this question of love,particularly answers to a struggle that
is very contemporary, that the verynotion of the future is closing up.
We're not able to envision anyfuture, capitalism is basically
making it, making it, so the featureis already saturated by capital.
Yeah.
So we can see any future pastcapitalism for the better or the worse.
Not only that, but it'sactually in a materialist sense.
(45:38):
The future is basically culminating inenvironmental destruction and whatnot.
The future feels likeit's a category in crisis.
What I see in the philosophy oflove is this potential avenue for a
rehabilitation of the future and whatit means to rehabilitate the future.
Not being caught up in a perpetualself-referential perpetuation of the
(46:02):
self, but almost this like yieldingaway this way of going through this
kinda letting go ourselves to makea space in each other, to see the
future, to promise each other future.
So if I were to say there's a keythesis that I'm concerned with,
the philosophy of love, its thatrehabilitation of the future and
(46:22):
the capacity to see something last.
ANDRÉS (46:26):
Wow.
And on that note, I just wanna say, thankyou so much, friend, like seriously from
the bottom of my heart, this has beensuch a beautiful gift to talk to you
to get to actually spend an hour andsit here and just get to know you more.
Just thank you from seriouslyfrom the bottom of my heart.
This has been a, a beautiful gift andI hope you've also had fun doing it.
SIMONE (46:48):
Oh, I enjoyed myself plenty.
Thank you for having me here Andrés.
AD: (46:53):
Hey Pal!
Enjoying the conversation?
Traversing the Azimuth is a brandnew branch of Azimuth Theatre
aimed at connecting artists with awider community, deepening mutual
understanding, and getting to shareeach artist's process and journey.
If you would like to continue hearingthese amazing stories, you can help out
by going to AzimuthTheatre.com/sponsorshipand sponsor Traversing the Azimuth.
(47:16):
Your sponsorship will go straightinto paying more artists to
come and share what it means forthem to be "proudly in process".
We would also like to take thismoment to thank Canada Council
for the Arts, for their supportin the pilot of this project.
For more information onTraversing, the Azimuth go to
AzimuthTheatre.com/traversing..
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