Q: How did your interest in music start?
-melody has always triggered a strong impression/response in me; at least as far back as i am able to remember. i think people have something in them that is wired to respond to music with more primal sincerity than any phonetic language (and it’s so universal)!
i used to play with my dad's guitar, coaxing some (truly) horrible sounds out of the poor thing, we also had an upright piano that was a hand me down from my aunt, i really loved that, it was sort of wonky and out of tune, and maybe that's why i like warbly and slightly off-kilter sounds? (Is this Freudian?) i can't remember whose idea it was, but i started taking piano lessons at maybe four or five? i always wanted to make my own music, but i loved learning to play baroque, classical, romantic also. Mozart and Bach really have such grace and purity!
i also had an obsession with the physical media; (I am probably dating myself here), but i grew up in the early nineties; and at this time (at least in my house) cd's were a luxury for the idle rich, so most of my first albums were cassettes or vinyl. i remember the tape deck "eating" the cassettes and trying to salvage them with a pencil. i loved(still love) the feel of record sleeves, the big artwork, liner notes, etc. i also listened to a lot of radio (mostly the oldies station, Christian, classical, or smooth jazz), i think elements of Amy Grant’s sound are indelibly scarred into my brainhole
Q: What have you learned about yourself creating Music?
-i have learned that i have quite a ways to go! i have seen my limitations, and incompetency in so many and varied ways! i have also learned to work within these limitations, to strive to do better, and to settle for imperfection. i can't count the number of times i screwed something up or accidentally stumbled into something and it ended up sounding REALLY COOL (to me anyways), i believe that God is merciful to his creatures in mysterious ways.
Q: How would you describe living from your perspective?
-hohoho; i am absolutely horrified half the time by my own existence. i had a sort of breakdown maybe ten years ago where i was afraid that all my body's autonomous/subconscious functions (i.e breathing, blinking, sleeping, etc.) would stop if I didn’t think about them, i did not trust my brain, and had these sort of out of body sensations all the time. This was all triggered by a rather severe bout of ocd (which is a little different than the movies portray) i've gotten better at handling it; thankfully, but i still think about death and loss a lot, and sometimes disturbing thoughts get stuck in my head. however, i try to be present in the moment (not so much in my head), because the now is inimitable and improbable; gratitude is something that i am trying to learn and practise.
there is so much beauty in the world, even as fucked up as it may be. even sadness can be beautiful in its way?
Q: What is NG about? How did you discover the NG website? What made you decide to join the community? Do you feel differently about the site now compared to when you first joined?
-SOFTCORE FETISH PORN! just kidding, but it was kinda sleazy back in the early 2000's, (at least to thirteen year old me). in seriousness, though, i remember it was this and albinoblacksheep and ebaumsworld. newgrounds always seemed like the place where the cool kids hung out. i can't (and probably don't want to) count how many times i watched the demented cartoon movie, arfenhouse, weebl and bob, saladfingers, Harry Partidge's everything. i almost got expelled from high schoo, because i would bypass the content blocker on the library's computer and play “castle cat”, and the school's IT guy (who also happened to be my best friend's dad) found it in my browser history, hahaha. i digress; newgrounds is essentially about unmitigated creativity, and freedom to create! it is such a wonderfully untainted platform for burgeoning artists of any kind or skill level! the community is very supportive and nurturing, i have learned so much from other musicians, and their feedback and advice have been indispensable!
*THANK YOU TOM FULP, THANK YOU FOR ACCEPTING MY CREEPY FRIEND REQUEST IN 2014, AND FOR PUTTING MY WEIRD SONGS ON THE FRONT PAGE :)
Q: What do you enjoy about Southern Gothic stories, like those by Flannery O'Connor and Truman Capote's earlier fiction?
-i grew up in north Texas (still live there), i went to college for a few years in Arkansas, a lot of my family lives in rural Missouri. the southern states absolutely have this weird almost self-flagellating quality to them, there is a lot of poverty, a lot of urban decay, a lot of failed states. i know "small town polite", and the strange dichotomy of a culture that preaches love and peace, but perpetuates death and oppression in practice.
Flannery O'Connor perfectly captures this in her writing, all the weirdness and the landscapes (there is a lot of beauty amidst the ruin). her stories are also absolutely hilarious often times, "A Late Encounter With the Enemy" is one of the funniest things i have read (outside of Charlie Kaufman’s "Antkind").
"Wiseblood" i think really cuts to the jib of faith and spirituality, with a character navigating this world, who cannot seem to accept/tolerate the notion of grace or forgiveness. i forget which of her short stories ends with this statement, (i'm paraphrasing) "God shelters us from the true nature of our own depravity", but there is something so illuminating to me about that?
Truman Capote is a brilliant and beautiful writer, his stories are also very strange. i really like "Breakfast at Tiffany's", although maybe that is the least "southern gothic" of his writing, it does have a lot of similar sensibilities though. the tone of the book is much more tragic and wistful than the movie.
Q: How did you become interested in science fiction, and why are you drawn to anything weird or introspective?
-haha, i should probably specify that my interest in science fiction is really, really specific, and is probably informed by my interest in the “weird or introspective”. i have always been fascinated by the life of the mind, the nature of being, philosophy (to a certain armchair extent). I like some science fiction (movies) purely based on aesthetic, “Bladerunner” is great more for its set design than its plot, (Kojima’s “Snatcher” is awesome too, it’s basically Bladerunner the game). I like some of StarTrek TNG. i like the way it feels like it was written by a couple of friends just playing around with concepts and asking “what if?”. It reminds me of conversations my friends and I used to have late at night, haha. in the literary realm, I really am fond of Kurt Vonnegut. He has this one novel, “The Sirens of Titan”, where it turns out that pretty much the entire history of human innovation (and civilization itself) has been molded by aliens in order to to make a replacement part to repair one of their (the aliens) stranded comrade’s spaceship, (he tells it much better), but it’s so creative and cool, Vonnegut has a lot of really cool concepts in his books that leaves me feeling electric!
Q: Where does your obsession with the anime "Gunbuster" come from?
-maybe fifteen years ago i stumbled upon it, i saw Hideaki Anno’s name on it and was totally unaware that he had done anything other than Evangelion. Now, i really love Evangelion; i love the fact that it’s basically about an awkward and chronically depressed boy whose weird and repressed dad is trying to actively bring about the apocalypse, (this is my whole childhood right there). But whereas Eva was kind of a slow burn for me; Gunbuster hit me with so much concentrated force… it’s really short if you haven’t seen it (like 8 episodes?) but it basically starts of satirizing the mecha genre, and ends up getting into some pretty bizarre metaphysics (because Anno), culminating in an ending that still makes me cry sometimes. but it also has such a purely 80’s feel to it too! everything from the music to the graphical style is like a pastiche of the 80’s (vibes) in it’s best possible form. and it really does hit you in the gut with the ending, while a ripoff of “Cavaleria Rusticana” plays in the background, so very good.
Q: Why do you enjoy bird watching, especially finding owls in the autumn?
-there’s something so liberating about my birdfriends! i wish i could just pack up and leave sometimes, and i guess they represent a certain freedom in their comings and goings. i like the different species through their seasonal migrations, it gives me peace to see ducks and wigeons in the autumn and winter, hummingbirds in the summer, the ever elusive owl. owls are so rare to see, you really have to be patient and persistent to come across one (and I do mean come across, because they are nearly impossible to actively find or predict).
Q: Why do you think you struggle to sit in one place for longer than a few minutes? Why do you feel you’ve had difficulty with meditation, and how would you describe that one time you tried yoga?
-my brain is racing most of the time, i try breathing exercises, i try to still my thoughts, i try to sit still, i do all three of these at once and it’s like a silent scream inside. so i take two out of three, i can kind of quite my mind if i am constantly moving, going on long walks, like some idiotic shark (except with my mouth closed).
i tried yoga once, and realized the utilitarian purpose of a yoga mat after spending several minutes breathing in my gross and ancient carpet. i actually do intend to try yoga in ernest when i get around to it (and get something to cover up the shitty carpet, or get new carpet, maybe linoleum?)
Q: What is "krautrock"?
-im so glad you asked! It’s German “rock” from the late sixties to late seventies. most of it is not really “rock”, per se, generally it is much more free form and jazzy, or minimalist. a lot of it has a deep spirit of collaboration and improvisation (similar to jazz). Kraftwerk are probably the most internationally known krautrock groups.
Q: What do you enjoy about 80's electronic/ambient music, and what are some of your favorite artists? How do David Sylvian and other adjacent musicians fit into your tastes? And what do you enjoy about Gilbert and Sullivan?
-some of the music, like Tangerine Dream, i like because it fits into my sort of modern futurism notions. my dad also listened to a lot of Vangellis and Yanni, and other new age artists, and i guess a lot of new age stuff is actually ambient, sometimes the line blurs (new age is an ill-defined *possibly nonexistent* genre anyways), so some of it’s nostalgia. Brian Eno has some beautiful albums, particularly “Music For Airports” and “Apollo”, which just flow so barely perceptibly and open up into the vastness of sound and decay which i find so peaceful, and with music this slow, your mind kind of starts filling in spaces and you start to pick up on the most subtle shift in timbre.
David Sylvain is surely a genius, there is really no sound comparable that i have found to his music, particularly his output in the 80’s. During this decade, he collaborated a lot with Ryuichi Sakamoto and Holger Czukay (he was in “Can”!) one of my favorite songs of David Sylvian is “Wave”, like Eno, it just kind of opens up into the vastness and washes over you like a— WAVE, it’s beautiful, sad, ethereal, qualities i try to emulate in my own work, sometimes, hopefully (*goes back to ripping off the Cocteau Twins’ drum machine, lets crank that reverb up shall we?) Gilbert and Sullivan, i absolutely love their melodies. Victorian bawdiness, the patter songs, and if you’ve ever seen the film, “Topsy-Turvy”, Gilbert’s such a grump, it’s all great! i would recommend “The Yeomen of The Guard”, it’s probably one of their more “musical” operas
Q: What does it mean to be double-jointed in most of your digits, and how do you feel that has affected your life?
-haha, my fingers bend backwards, can dislocate my thumbs, great for carrying multiple cans or jars, weirding out your coworkers, playing octaves on the keyboard.
Q: How did you come to enjoy doing an impression of Maurice LaMarche doing Orson Welles? You also enjoy doing impressions of David Bowie and Paul Williams as Swan in "Phantom of the Paradise." Are they primarily done in your car? What type of car do you have?
Maurice LaMarche does this orson Welles thing on an old(ish) show called “The Critic”, which is absolutely hilarious to me! it’s one of those things i have yet to tire of quoting to amuse myself, same thing for Paul Williams (it’s pretty much the same voice I do for both, haha). Bowie, my singing voice (especially if i’m worn out and throaty, kind of does sound like a slightly higher pitched Berlin era Bowie)
Q: What’s the story behind the first political candidate you ever voted for? Why was it Kinky Friedman?
-ooohhh, i had just turned eighteen, i was super in to Hunter S Thompson, and Kinky Friedman is/was pretty much a regional (albeit less psychotic) variant of that. also, something to piss off my ultra conservative civics teacher ;)
Q: How did the old moniker "wilidacious" come about, and how was it connected to the character from the home movies you made with your closest friend when you were twelve?
-it was my first year at college when i started posting music on newgrounds. i was kind of lonely, and in the veil of nostalgia (and need for anonymity) i guess i just settled on something esoterically important for my moniker. The origins of the name (as per the home movies) are unknown, it was just childhood gibberish i guess? “Wilidacious” was supposed to be an aging hippie, and my knowledge of hippies was basically Cheech and Chong, so i guess that’s kind of what i was drawing from.
Q: How did you learn that your maternal grandmother was an extra on "The Love Boat" once? What do you think about the show?
-i don’t know when i first heard about this, but she used to go on these cruises with her best friend all the time, and one of the cruises they went on ended up being the shooting location for the love boat. pure serendipity as far as i am aware! absolutely terrible show, hahaha! but i think it’s fresh on my mind, because i’ve been watching reruns of the Mary Tyler Moore Show, on which Gavin Macleod (captain of the loveboat) is a co-star (in a much better role), so i’ve been watching Mary Tyler Moore with my mother, and she’s been looking up the guest stars film credits to see if she knows them from anything else, and ALL OF THEM have at one point appeared on “The Love Boat”, which makes me think that we have a sort of “Bacon number” situation going on, although i would argue the the degrees of separation everyone has from “The Love Boat” is a lot less than your average on Kevin Bacon.
Q: What was it like composing for VALERIAN HIGH? How did you get the opportunity, and how would you describe the process?
-oh! It was easy! they pm’d me asking if they could use a couple of my pre-existing tracks, i said “sounds great!” and went to bed! hahaha
Q: You have a very distinct synth style. How did that come to be?
-that’s very flattering! thank you! i definitely wear my influences on my sleeves. basically it’s my feeble attempts to assemble everything i like into as concentrated a dose as possible. i am obsessed with melody, i love certain chord progressions, but i am too dumb to tell you exactly what or why they are. sometimes i have like thirty or more tracks going on at once, and it wants to crash my computer. i also work usually on an older version of Reason, and i’ve spent so many years poking around the samples and patches that It’s pretty easy these days to get the sound (or as close as possible) that i am searching for. i mean, i just add and subtract, i love complex arrangements, and have a tendency to try to have too much going on at once, probably goes back to my messy brain, so i put everything down and then sort of start erasing the mess i’ve made of things, and it starts to reveal the song. sometimes the stuff i end up with is still a mess, but that’s okay. i’ll try it again someday.
Q: Your advice for creating music
-try to get something down every day! Even if it’s just a single note repeated ad infinitum, or a rhythmic pattern. play the piano in the dark! (play the piano while you’re half asleep). play the piano while you’re asleep. make the music you want to hear! it’s like Kiki’s Delivery Service, “sometimes you feel shitty and uncreative, and you just have to make yourself do something and the season of blah will pass”. remember that you are your harshest critic.
Q: Your favorite food and beverages
-pumpkin pie, quinoa and COFFEE
Q: Your advice for happiness
-try not to let the elevator break you down, don’t fret the details, let go of things, forgive others, love is the greatest capacity we have as human beings.
