In this Music Mondays exclusive interview, staff writer Rei Low sat down with members of Crash Blossoms and Rural Internet to discuss their recent success with their art as well as breaking down the details of collectives including their significance in underground culture. 

1/25/23

Zombae: There will probably be more people dropping in as this goes on, since there’s people from different time zones.

Rei Low: So did all of Crash Blossoms work on Rural Internet as a project?

Zombae: So Rural Internet is me, Charlotte (https://twitter.com/CharlotteTheCow), and Vriska (https://twitter.com/weedvriska). We have a good amount of features on there.

Charlotte: We pretty much collabed with everyone in Crash Blossoms at some point, especially since we have the song Crash Blossoms.

Zombae: The Crash Blossoms members that are on the album are on the album but aren’t in Rural Internet believe are Saturn Ultra, AOL, ilysm, and Stomach Book.

https://open.spotify.com/album/0ZWQmoJB5S4eX3zIo5siwi?si=hlqOt2iCS5y3MuG0JCNgKw 

Rei Low: But speaking of all those features like [RXK] Neph[ew] and all of the Crash Blossoms, how do you separate each of your individual projects from Rural Internet? Like what kind of aesthetics are you going for?

Zombae: For me I’d say with the Zombae name, I don’t worry about making sick shit that’s timeless. Like if I just want to rap I’ll make it a solo thing: that’s why there’s like weekly singles and random EPs and shit like that. What I do with mine, like RXK sort of thing, I just cobble together whatever and see if people fuck with it they fuck with it. That’s my thoughts with Zombae, but Rural Internet is like a traditional band whereas we have like album cycles, concepts and shit. 

Rei Low: The concepts are crazy on this new record. 

Charlotte: I think my solo thing gives a place to experiment more with less poppy songs and ideas I want to try. If it is Rural you have to worry about that more. Try it out.

Rei Low: Is there like a back and forth between your solo stuff and Rural Internet? 

Charlotte: Um, we usually have an idea before a record of what we want to do. We’ll have a few songs that kinda represent that sound. We work on two albums at a time so when we’re working on the next one we’re working on the one after that. That’s usually how it goes. 

Rei Low: That’s so hard. How do you keep up the workload from all this worldbuilding stuff? Each project is about an hour, and y’all are doing solo stuff talking about a song a week. What’s your mindset, what's your creative process?

Zombae: I’d say we call every day. We don’t always make music during those calls, but we’re usually working on this, fiddling with that the whole time. 

Charlotte: I’d say I make music casually just because I enjoy it honestly. 

Zombae: We’re literally fiddling with three or four ideas per call or something. Some are good, some are bad, some are solo projects. We’re never not working on music.

Rei Low: You don’t even take a break after a release?

Zombae: Oh nah, we haven’t worked on Rural since Saint Anger. That’s probably the longest we’ve taken off since we started. Like after Escape Room, The fifteenth song Age of Sin was made right after Escape Room dropped. 

https://open.spotify.com/album/16EZU733tpHvPNcj6OOhUO?si=BttWadV0ROikuC3n7DaFyw 

Charlotte: A good part of Saint Anger was made in 2020. It was always meant to be the third album in the doll trilogy plan. 

Rei Low: What’s the idea behind doing a trilogy with the doll?

Zombae: If I'm being honest we come up with shots or ideas with the doll that are cool.

Charlotte: Like honestly we just come up with some crazy shit for the doll.

Rei Low: Like let’s crucify the doll?

Charlotte: Like the doll gets stabbed but isn’t dead enough. Let's burn the doll.

Rei Low: Do y’all know about Piss Jesus? Or Piss Christ? Whatever it’s called?

Zombae: Yea I know about Piss Christ.

Rei Low: It kind of looks like Piss Christ. It’s awesome.

Zombae: Yea I didn’t think about that but that’s fye.

Rei Low: It's transgressive too. Nice.

Zombae: Basically the whole idea was what’s the logical progression if everything gets angrier and shit. It was also meant to represent, like we make songs, and they’re supposed to represent the climate of the world. 

Rei Low: There’s so much topical stuff on the album, not in a bad way it’s just relevant.

Zombae: When it comes to Saint Anger specifically, this last year was one of the worst years for trans people in America. The cover is basically the representation of that anger. It’s just burning.

Rei Low: Yea it started in sports and got fucked up from there. 

Zombae: There’s literally bills in Oklahoma that are trying to detransistion everyone under 26. 

Rei Low: If you’re on your parents health insurance basically you can’t be trans. That’s so fucked. 

Zombae: It’s been a really angry year and we had to reflect on it.

Rei Low: I noticed that. There’s like a certain trolliness and lack of seriousness on the last two albums before Saint Anger. There’s not a lot of jokes on Saint Anger.

Zombae: I didn't want to take any of the topics on Saint Anger lightly. 

Rei Low: I definitely respect that. So getting into some of the concepts on Saint Anger, there’s tracks like Get Shot, which is almost entirely produced with gunshots. That’s so interesting from a compositional standpoint. What inspired the sound design like generally on the project and that song in particular. 

Zombae: Vriska did that beat, and Charlotte did the breakdown. I would say the inspiration comes from like JPEGMafia and Death Grips did that shit. Like taking very literal sounds, especially like gunshots-

Rei Low: Is taking industrial [rap] to its extreme. 

Zombae: Yea.

Charlotte: Yea we do a lot of sound collage stuff too. It’s great.

Zombae: Shit like the prodigy or like City Morgue.

Rei Low: Oh yea I was gonna ask you about the Danny Brown project, Atrocity Exhibition. 

Zombae: I’m not sure if his delivery from that project directly inspired me, but Danny Brown is all over my voice.

Rei Low: Not particularly your melodies, but like your

Zombae: Intonation yea. Baby voice thing is very Danny Brown. And on Atrocity Exhibition, how he was able to cut through all of that crazy production was something I really took notes from and for sure had to incorporate on that record. 

https://open.spotify.com/album/3e7vtKJ3m1zVh38VGq2g3H?si=YZtIEhZUSXKgVQhxl4Iy0w 

Rei Low: What are some recommendations from before the 2000s y’all have? We don’t talk as much back then. 

Charlotte: I listen to a lot of fuckin’ music. Jazz, Progressive Rock, Folk shit. Everyone says they listen to everything so I feel lame saying that.

Zombae: I fuck with like a lotta Wu-Tang like NWA. Shit that everyone likes from a hip hop standpoint. I feel like a bunch of people from my era don’t fuck with like Def Jux, like Aesop Rock, El-P, that era of shit.

Rei Low: Dude Cage? I was listening to Too Heavy For Cherubs like last month.

Zombae: I fuck with Def Jux like who are some other people?

Rei Low: What do you think about Kool Keith?

Zombae: All the tracks I’ve caught have been crazy. Like I couldn’t name like albums off the top, but 

Rei Low: What about Dr. Octagonecologyst? 

Zombae: Yea Dr. Octagon was crazy. I think dudes who were influential to me in the band perspective that don’t get a lot of shine is like Doseone. 

Rei Low: I think you’re about to put me on who is that?

Zombae: Oh Doseone, he’s from Clouddead.

Rei Low: Oh Ok!

Zombae: You can look up his projects online. He had so many crazy projects like Alias. It was like a whole ass band. It has a guitar section and drummer, but he was still rapping in this nasal tone and it was all frantic and shit. Big influence into what I am doing. 

https://open.spotify.com/artist/4fnsjU6L1NvRMdgEs0lY11?si=OP0tS7vWR6W8gzhGKU1dpg 

Zombae: Charlotte, you want to go?

Charlotte: It’s all based around live instruments you can just perform. There’s a lot of long ass shit:  I like alot Krautrock like Can and Faust and shit. I like folkier kinda stuff. I like progressive rock like King Crimson.

Zombae: What about Metallica?

Charlotte: Oh yea I grew up on metal.

Zombae: If you ever want to blow minds, show them the Metal Up Your Ass album cover. 

Charlotte: That’s a classic.

Rei Low: I’m gonna put it in the article. 

Charlotte: It’s a bit tongue and cheek. Metallica is a very important band. I think it’s good to call your idols dorks sometimes. 

Rei Low: So, Crash Blossoms we kinda already talked about that, and then I remember we talked about this vaguely, like on the Seraphim server, but you were telling me about like the origin story of uh, Crash Blossoms, do you wanna go into that at all anyone?

AOL: The short version is, years ago I met [saturnultra] when we were both vaporwave producers- uh they used to run a label-

Rei Low: Wait- which one?

AOL: They used to run commercial dreams omitted 

Rei Low: Oh! I used to be involved with the vaporwave scene

AOL: And then years later we reconnect. You know I’m in their discord server, and they start like producing, like making beats, and I had been like you know kinda messing around with making beats a little bit too. And then they meet James Gorsica, they become like a full blown rapper, and then cut to like a couple years later, it’s like, me and Leo, and like a couple of our friends, and then, I make this server- or not This server but a server that we all congregate in now but, Luca joined like randomly cause they had been following me like on twitter so that’s like I think the first time we met. Like we just kinda accumulated like sorta an army of like minded people, and out of that you know vriska was like “I wanna do a song for this form compilation, and I wanna get all of us on it” all of like the regular people in the server. And so, you know, it ends up being like vriska, me, luca, like char was on it- okay like there was like 10 of us on it. Anyway lso that song was Crash Blossoms

Zombae: I mean yeah so here’s the thing is that like, this started around like covid time so like, we really didn’t have like shit else to do like it was just like laying around the house, fuckin’ make a song.

AOL: But you know the calls for like, you know 12 hours a day-

Rei Low: Yeah, it was covid shit

AOL: everyday, cause you know, it was 2020 and I couldn’t go outside so I’d just be talking to my friends all day

Rei Low: Yeah that’s pretty much mine

AOL: And like we still kinda just do that like anyway so

Rei Low: That’s sick- so how did you get the Neph [RXK Nephew] feature?

Zombae: Oh that’s really funny, that was through apartment9 I think, yeah like basically apartment9 hooked that up. Yeah like I knew him through like the stupid beats so I sent him like the stupidest beat  that I could think of honestly- and that ended up working for him so like that was pretty tight.

Rei Low: What are some other dream collabs other than Lars and Nephew?

Zombae: Oh yeah um, we’ve been working with MKULTRA a lot, we’ve been working with Devi McCallion from Black Dresses, and uh, backwxsh was supposed to be on this one but we're still workin’ on shit.