Rei Low: What were some of your like, early listening and performance experiences that inspired you to become an artist and then either your own or others?

Fitnesss: Honestly, I didn't go to any performances. I started listening to music, I would say, actively when I was in middle school. Oh, my God, I could break so much lore with this fucking interview right now, the first band I ever got into was Weezer. It was just a song. It was El Scorcho, but Pinkerton ended up becoming one of my favorite albums of all time. Still is, and I feel like it's- it's not even really a deconstruction of, like pop emo. It just is so purely pop emo that it feels almost, it feels fresh in that way because it is just like, so honest like embarrassingly so Then I really got into super extreme forms of music. It was mainly just like noise and metal. And as I got older, it slowly started to converge more to center, you know, and like now I would say I listen to quite a bit of pop music. It was interesting because it was through the lens of extreme music, that's actually what helped me understand, like mainstream music. 

R: What are, what are some like touchstones for you in the pop sphere?

F: I guess one of my favorite artists is Perfume: the J Pop group, and they also kind of crystallize in a very different way. It almost feels like a construction or deconstruction, because it's just like genuinely The Thing. It's just like, so purely J Pop. But I don't know if you're like, are you familiar with the Perfume stuff? 

R: Not at all. You want to tell me? 

F: They are a J pop group, and it's like three singers. But it's also very particularly this one producer who produces all the songs and arranges all the stuff. And it's extremely clean. It's like some of the cleanest production ever. And it's also really weird and bizarre at some points, but he has this really kind of curated, sort of methodology to his way of producing where it's so singular. I appreciate just how weird it is, because he’s like this is how I do it, and it's not going to be any other way. He does this thing where he doesn't give any of the singers the lyrics until the day they record because he doesn't want them to attribute any sort of personal feelings or attachment to like the content because it's just a production. Yeah, so it's super fake and super deadpan. 

R: So it sounds like also, like there's a, there's an affinity that you have for the essence of something, 

F: I love seeing the sort of crystallization. This kind of ties into the whole post modern thing, yeah, that we're gonna get into in a bit. But I think we've reached a point where art is not good or bad anymore. You can't really critique shit anymore because it's all depending on context. You know what? I Gangnam Style maybe is not a great song, but depending on when you drop it in the set, it could be the best fucking thing ever. Yeah. I mean I think to sort of isolate a song or a record, or like a live set, you know, or like some sort of performance, is almost presumptuous, in a way to be like, Oh, this is like objectively good or objectively bad. I think it's like beyond that point now. The thing to strive for in art really is actually this sort of clarity like this, this honesty- where it's like how can I make this form of expression the most genuine to myself. How can I be clear, sort of like a mirror for how I feel and what I want to communicate? 

R: Speaking about that, so your style has developed over the years since Our Love based on, kind of what I gleaned off of listening to your discography the last couple days- really doing a whole deep dive. I realized driving back from school yesterday, there was kind of a caveat with it, but you've traveled from something more club influenced on the Our Love album, and then there's the Schindler House record, where it's it's super abstract and super maybe electro acoustic, or acousmatic, or whatever. Then you come but then you come back, which is what I realized recently, to the club in the most recent records, most two recent singles with Lag Switch and the rapper from it sounds like the UK.

F: It's again kind of that sort of, like clarity thing. It kind of, in a weird way, harkens all the way back to that, because it's like, when I collaborate with other artists, there is a part of myself, of course, that like, I try to sort of instill in like, whatever We're making. But I also want to highlight, you know, the skills or the style of the person I'm working with too. I came to the garage type track or the UK type track- that was a DAEMON thing. And it was just like, oh, I made this beat that I think would work super well with you on it. If we work together on this it only kind of works in that exact context. You know, it is representative of this moment in time.

R: On the F20/Faith music video, viewers really identified with your performance and were seriously, emotionally impacted in the comments section.

F: You're kind of talking about experiencing something with someone. Wecan even travel beyond the performance avenue. It was so intense- what I wanted to do, honestly I was super inspired by the- do you know this D'Angelo music video? Untitled, where he's just straight up butt ass naked? It's just one take, and the whole time he's just there basically lip syncing the whole song. And obviously, he's an amazing singer, and that helps, but I wanted to do my version of that basically. And I was like, Okay, I want it to be one take. I guess I'll be naked for this, but I want to do it in a sort of way that isn't exploitative. I want it to be artistic in some way, but I just wanted it to feel very vulnerable. Essentially I wanted the way that I felt watching that to be like, damn you know, like sonically, there's like so much going on, but like, visually, it's like, very all this sound is like representing this very, like intimate moment and personal moment. And so I wanted to do that. And I wanted to do it in a darker way. So that was a big point of inspiration. I just started messing around with lights and stuff like that. I wanted to have the lights be like a big element in the music video. And then I also wanted to do this moment where I spit blood out. Because I remember watching the Matrix when I was six. It was the first rated R movie I really remember watching. And I just remember this one scene where the guys in the chair, and he's like, getting shot at in The Matrix, but then in the real world, he's just spitting blood out. Remember that shit that fucking haunted me as a little kid? Okay, I want to do that. It was kind of just like the culmination of all of that.Then for the song, I felt like the song was just like the perfect vehicle for bringing all those ideas. 

R: So did anyone's reaction surprise you, or kind of subvert what you expected? Because I think you're talking a lot about the aesthetic influences, but like, not a lot about, like the kind of the emotional impact that it had on yourself and maybe other people. https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=y-VSRmZXGco 

F: Yeah, I knew I wanted it to hit um, and I think it really is that kind of deep emotional seed that connects all the ideas together really well. All of these ideas are fine, but I think in the wrong hands, or like, in the wrong context, could not make sense at all or just fall apart. Yeah, the song, I don't know, and it's really interesting, because it's not like this kind of song came naturally. It's not like I wrote it in a week. It was actually like an idea that I had kind of fleshed out, and then let lay for like, two years, and then I kind of wrestled with it to get it finished. But I feel like the product of all of that feels a lot different, just because the song feels very much kind of just like a single idea. I think in a way, like the music video is a representation of that same kind of process of- there's all these like disparate ideas. There's all these like different elements that are like being combined together into like this, like whole, yeah? And it gives you a sense of intimacy, right? And it gives you a sense of intimacy and a sense of finality to it. When you're in. Ableton you have, you can have an unlimited amount of tracks. You can have so many options to do literally anything you want. Yeah. So I think the video, which in turn became like, kind of the basis for the performance. Well with all these possibilities, I need to ground it or kind of reel it into something that feels very much like in the present moment. I guess, what people resonate with the most in terms of that, is just like the sense of finality, I mean, yeah, and the sense of like, you know, this sort of intimacy that I kind of longed for in this type of music because there are so many possibilities always. 

R: That makes a lot of sense. So I guess that's kind of like that sense of adrenaline, right?

F: Or if you're working on a timer kind of like the sense of failure, you can feel it like it can. It's so apparent that this is a possible outcome. It's like, everything stops working. But that's why it's so fun to toe the line, yeah, you know, that's cool, yeah. 

R: So, um, there seems to be a couple overarching themes in your music, like the dynamics in the horror film stuff and sound design. The horror film foley and in sound design, sure. And so are you going for a type of aesthetic that incorporates limit experiences?

F: That’s a Bataille thing, right? 

R: Yeah, the way I understand it is it's like, can it can be like a psychedelic experience, like a spiritual experience, or, like some sort of traumatic experience or religious experience. 

F: It's like an, um, it's so funny. Do you watch this YouTube channel? I think it's called something else now, but it used to be called something like Cuck Philosophy or some shit like that, yeah. I think I know you're talking about he has a, he has a video on like, Bataille and Hellraiser about limited experiences.

R: I don't think I've seen that. I'm just familiar with it through reading. 

F: Um, well, he, basically, he does these like video essays where he kind of extrapolates on some sort of philosophical idea or like concept, but in some sort of- kind of pop culture reference. But I think, you know, before I knew what it was, I felt like watching that video about limit experiences, I was just like, oh, that is the thing. That's what the thing is, yeah. And I feel like a lot of that's been my experience with a lot of this stuff- almost like i t feels like there's this huge fog of war in front of me, and I don't know exactly what's happening, but I just like, poke my arm in and just see what, try to feel around for what's on the other side, and then I'll find out through a YouTube video or something- like, oh, that's the thing. At least for me, limit experiences are like an event where you untether yourself from something. And it's kind of in this submitting to oh, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to come back, but that's okay, yeah that's what I'm here for, yeah, exactly, um. And I think, yeah, it's like, you know, the point of no return, literally. And I think it's like the same feeling as riding a roller coaster for the very first time or some shit. Or like, jumping off of a cliff into the ocean, where you're fully aware of the reality of the situation, but you decide to suspend your disbelief and just do it anyway. Yeah, and I think being able to do that in the club is so sick. It's so fucking the best. 

R: I think I've heard another definition for limited experiences, other than like kind of examples, but it's like, the space where like meaning or like human understanding, like breaks down, right? And you just have to stop thinking. 

F: You just stop thinking. To intellectualize it is like missing the point. Yeah, you know what? I mean, you have to feel it. I think that's kind of like the biggest takeaway from all of this. I don't want you to think about this. I just want you to be here right now. Don't think about like, you know where you are, or like what you've heard, or like what you like, or don't like, just be here right now. Yeah let's just share this moment together, you know? Which I think is like such an interesting thing to do in a club context and also in a sort of like musical context where you know, I always like to grapple with this you know, sound design by definition, is like a cosmetic thing, right? It's like something you do to make something more intricate, or to sound more complex, or something right? You know, it's like it's just by nature something that requires you to  intellectualize the process. So to, kind of like, use, to use that as, like a jumping off point, but then also to try to subvert, not necessarily, like the result, but like, just the way you approach it where it's like, okay, I need to feel my way to the end of the song. Feel my way to the sort of finished idea, whatever that may be, whether it's a song or a set, you know, instead of having to think about it, right?  

R: There's a lot of sound design music out there- sound design intensive music out there. But it's like, if there's no purpose behind the sound design, then what does it mean, right?