Conor Grebel, Bedtimes

Artist Conor Grebel unpacks the relationship between his personal experiences and creative work

In this episode, Liam speaks with Conor Grebel about how lived experiences inform and are conveyed through creative work.

Our conversation traces Conor’s journey toward creative work and the “ingredients” that help him craft soothing art for himself and others.

Note: The first half of this episode deals with topics of panic attack disorder, anxiety, and psychological abuse.

---

Liam Spradlin: Conor, welcome to Design Notes.

Conor Grebel: Oh, thank you.

Liam: To start out with, I wanna know about the motivation and the journey that has brought you to your current work and how that has influenced the sort of things that you’re making.

Conor: Yeah. It’s a bit of a story. That’s okay. Yeah.

Liam: Yeah. Tell it.

Conor: Um, I wasn’t always gonna be an artist. That wasn’t always gonna happen.

I was born and raised in Southern California, and then my parents moved me when I was ten years old to Wisconsin, which is not inherently a bad thing, but I think the place we went heavily affected my journey a little bit. We moved to Wisconsin in a place that individuality and creativity was not respected at all. At first, I wanted to be an entomologist actually, and a lot of that still kind of exists in me. I’m really, really interested in insects, so, I wanted to be an entomologist, and then, when I got into understanding that I was terrible at studying, that died.

I always loved drawing, always wanted to be an artist, but going to a high school where being a creative, unique person, was grounds to like, beat you up, and then, my high school didn’t have an arts program at all. My arts program was just like drawing instead of taking notes.

So after that, all hopes of wanting to be an artist, all confidence in that was completely gone. So I graduated high school with like, a D average. Didn’t have plans to go to college. Absolutely did not think I could be an artist. And I traveled a bit. I traveled a bit and went to Japan and I was decent at speaking Japanese. I would categorize this part of my life as like, the times in which I didn’t know what the hell I was doing and I didn’t have any confidence. Kind of like, whatever roles that society put out there, like, “You need to go to college,” “You need to do this,” “You need to work in business or something.” Because I had no definition of myself, I just assumed that stuff.

So like, I went to Japan. I thought “Oh I can speak Japanese. That means I can go to college now.” And that meant I was doing something right with my life. So, I decided to get into school, with the help of my high school teachers, and they had confidence in me that I did not. So they wrote some recommendation letters for me and they got me into UW Milwaukee through a second chance program, which means that for my first year of school, I had to take special classes. It was pretty cool, because everyone that was in that class really appreciated being in college, so I made some really good friends there. Everyone there was not supposed to go to college, but they’ve been given a chance to do it. They had to take these special courses to like acclimate themselves to getting good grades and being a good student again or something. But, it was a really cool class actually. It was really awesome.

I, at all points in my life, don’t relate to anyone of my generation. When I was in high school, I hated high schoolers. When I was college, I fucking hated college kids.

Liam: (laughs)

Conor: I never went to parties. And I definitely don’t like people my age right now.

Anyways, this is all leading towards me hitting rock bottom and then giving up on listening to what anyone else tells me to do. And then deciding to be an artist. That’s leading towards that. But this is like me, ignorantly walking towards that bottom.

So, studied Japanese language. I think I was pretty good at it. I was able to pass into a higher level. Transferred to UW Madison, which is a really good college, and like the second in the nation for learning Japanese, and I went as hard as I could in the wrong direction. This is me going as hard as I can in the wrong direction with not any concept of what I’m gonna do with my life later. Like, ah, I’m studying Japanese ’cause I can do it. It’s the only thing I know how to do well. So, I graduated with a Japanese language degree in six, (laughs) yeah, it took six years because I was paying for college and working and a terrible fucking student. I’m a bad, bad student. I’m really bad at school.

So I graduated, and this is key in explaining why I make the art I make now and what informs the decisions I make and why I even want to be an artist.
The key is that in college, of course I was very depressed, and I didn’t know it at that time, but one of the most driving forces in my life has been there since the beginning, and it started to first rear its head in college, which is panic attack disorder. And, in college for the first time, it showed itself in a way that I didn’t understand at that point yet.

For some reason, every time I would ride the buss to school in the morning, if I could not sit on a seat, I couldn’t breathe. And, I was standing on the bus. It was ever morning. It didn’t make any sense. I w-, I didn’t know how to diagnose it, ’cause it wasn’t like, oh, there’s something wrong with me because I, at random times, would feel nauseous and lightheaded, I’d be like “Oh. Something’s wrong, like physically.” It was like a mild panic attack before I knew what a panic attack was. And it would happen every morning. It didn’t make any sense.

As soon as someone got off a seat and I was able to sit down, it like, washed away from me. As soon as I got off the bus, I could breathe again. I went to a doctor at the time that said, “It sounds like you’re having panic attacks.” And I’m like, “Because I’m riding the bus? I love riding the bus. Like, it’s fun.” And I just kind of let it go.

Of course, this is at a time in college where things were very stressful. I was not meant to be in school, I think. And, every step I took in that direction, was like I was running out of a fuse. It was fuel in my body that was depleting that’s not replenishable. And I was just going in the wrong direction. And every step dug me deeper and deeper towards this black oil that was deep in my body that is panic attack disorder.

So it started to rear its head. I was in a terrible living situation. I wasn’t sleeping. And, uh, for the next year or so of college, I was in a relationship that was really good, for the most part it was gone. But, um, I decided to get a job in Japan. And I remember before I had left for that job, I was fishing, and I loved fishing, and, um, I remember thinking, “I don’t want to leave America. (laughs) I love it here. I don’t want to leave. Why am I doing this?” But I kinda like just ignored that and I went to Japan.

It was a terrible decision. And for the longest time in my life, what happens in Japan, was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. I resented it, and I was angry. But of course, now, with perspective, it was a gift. But, I go to Japan to work for a toy company. And I worked in the creative toy department as a toy developer, which I thought was gonna be creative and fun. I always wanted to have a creative position, and this is when I started to have daily panic attacks. I started smoking heavily again, I was drinking heavily again, my ribs were showing. The worst, worst thing though, was that I was brought there through this American HR employee in Japan, and I went through for three months, the most severe abuse in my life. Like mental abuse. This person made a point of making my life hell there in a way that would be illegal in the United States.

Because in a lot of these companies, superiority, you know, and seniority is something that you can’t question. You just kind of have to do whatever they say. So this person could insult me on a daily basis. He could accuse me of things. He would intentionally create situations in which I had to apologize for stuff I didn’t do just to embarrass me in front of my co-workers. He would make up stories and make me apologize for them. He would tell me I’m worthless and I don’t deserve anything that I’ve gotten to this point. On a daily basis. He’d walk into a room, and he’d ignored everything I said, walk up to the person next to me and then laugh at nothing they said, and then walk away. He’d called me into private meetings and accuse me of stealing company secrets and he’d say, “I know you’ve told some company secrets and I know that you have them on an SD card.”

I was like, “I don’t.”

He’s like, “Well you could have deleted them.”

“I, wait, I didn’t do that.”

He’s like, “How do I know? That’s illegal. I have the power right now to send you home.”

He’d do stuff like, take this book on like their corporate sustainable programs. It was a giant, thick, heavy technical Japanese guideline book, and as I was leaving, he was like, “Translate this.”

I’m like, “Oh. Okay. I’ll start translating it.” You know, come back to work the next day, of course it’s like six o’clock, he gives it to me and I didn’t expect to work on it all that night.

He’s like, “Did you finish translating the book?”

I was like, “No.”

“Did you go home last night?”

“Yeah.”

“Why’d you go home last night if you didn’t translate that book?”

It was like, “Fuck man.” Just like everything. It was killing me.

It was like, from the overt to the subtle, he was abusing me, and he hated me. And halfway through, I broke. Everything he said to me was like, the first half I was like, “This is wrong, something’s wrong with this.” And the second half, after he threatened me so many times, I just gave up, and my fight or flight broke. And all I had was nothing.

Eventually, he fired me. Went back home to America, and then for the next two years, the aftermath of that experience set in, and I wasn’t sleeping. I was having daily severe panic attacks, and I had lost a lot of weight, became extremely agoraphobic, which is not necessarily the fear of leaving a house, although it ends up being that because it just means like the fear of encountering something that will trigger a panic attack. And at that point, it was everything, you know. A stressful time in my life. It was just riding the bus. But now it was like, my leg tingling, standing in line, the temperature being a little bit off, being slightly out of breath, not knowing who touched my water glass before I touched it.

And like, all these crazy phobias became part of life. It was very tough. And my body broke down. My chemistry changed. My thyroid got destroyed from all the stress. And ever since I came back from Japan, I haven’t had a drop of alcohol, don’t even take ibuprofen anymore. My body just changed after that point. And this is where it’s leading into it.

Panic attack disorder became everything in my life. It was all I was battling with for two years and I still am now. This was like 12 years ago and I just got out of therapy last year, because I have relapses and stuff. But, my life became so hyper focused on things that… I would say that I became so sensitive that things that made me slightly uncomfortable before made me feel like I was gonna die now. And things that were slightly relaxing before, were like a drop of water on tongue in hell kind of thing, you know? It was like they saved my life, whereas I enjoyed sparkling water before, now sparkling water helped me get out of a panic attack. It just basically saved my life. I didn’t really enjoy crowds before, now crowds made me feel like I was gonna die.

So I would say that this tool in my mind became hyper sharpened, and it was a gift. It was painful. The world became this landmine of things that I would step on and then it would just send me into hours of panic attack, but it also became this beautiful catalog of things I knew that would make my life feel so much better.

So, things like the sound of a creek, or the sound of like hollow pieces of wood knocking against each other, or the ways in which petals rotate around flower, or one point shadows on like a natural, organic surface. Those things, I may have not noticed it too much before, but I loved them so much they became like a driving force in my life.

And so, at rock bottom I decided, this is what I get for going so far in the wrong direction. This is what I get for not having confidence and not wanting to do what I want to do with my life. This is my punishment. And my reward is that I don’t give a shit about that anymore. And now a core tenant in my life is, I don’t care what you want me to do. I’m gonna do what I need to do to be happy, what I’ve always wanted to do.

And I didn’t give up and I started learning an- the tools of animation and design, and I emerged, literally, from a basement two years later and I decided to jump into the field. And now I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to make those sounds that I love, because they’re not just sounds I enjoy, they’re sounds that save my life. They’re not just visuals I enjoy, they’re visuals that save my life.

And I think about them all the time because not only have they literally gotten me out of grips of death, and it makes me very emotional to think about how fucked up that is, but that is like, that’s just what my life has turned into, but I’ve been given a gift as a result of that. And I, I love that about my life. I love my life. I actually do really love my life, and it’s been given to me through all this suffering, I guess. But, these things, these visuals that I make and these sounds that I make, they are directly related to things that I feel have saved my life, because I’ve had panic attacks that were so severe and so long that I didn’t think that I wanted to live anymore. That’s happened many times, but I design with a lot of passion from that experience I guess.

Liam: Yeah.

Conor: That was a long story. Sorry.

Liam: No, never apologize-

Conor: Yeah.

Liam: …for that.

Conor: That’s why I design what I design. That’s why I make the music that I make.

Liam: Yeah.

Conor: That’s where that stuff comes from.

Liam: I don’t think I have ever gotten as complete an answer to that question. (laughs)

Conor: ’Cause I think about it all the time.

Liam: Yeah.

Conor: (laughs) I have to. It’s not like a passing decision just like, “Oh, it ended up like that.”

Liam: You’re creating these things out of a place of experiencing the things again that have helped save your life, but you’re also giving those things to other people.

Conor: Yeah, and that’s the best reward I’ve ever gotten on music that I’ve made. Like the It’s a Trick song, my first album, which I made while seeing the most successful therapist, and I don’t mean his personal success, I mean like the most success on my life was a therapist called Dr. Bob, and he changed a lot and he made me love myself again, and he redirected me towards how to think about my art properly.

And I was working on this album and I was struggling, you know? I was trying to make it. You know, I still get lost even though I have this big revelations, I still get, I still get lost, like you know, I was trying to make music. I was trying to make it sound a certain way. I was trying to like, “How am I gonna make it big on Sound Cloud?” You know? At that time, I was thinking, you know, “How am I gonna make it sound like these other artists who are really successful?”

And he’s like, “What are you doing? Stop that shit. What do you want to hear? Why are you trying to make a song?” It’s not a destination, it’s a journey. You know? He got really Ellen Watts on me. He’s like, “Why are you trying to make a song? Why don’t you just like go play something you like and don’t care if it turns out to be something that’s a product or not. Just like, go home, play some tones that sound good, and don’t have a goal with it. Just enjoy it.”
And I started to think about that more. And everything he said, he would say it and I’d be like, “Yeah, you’re fucking wrong,” you know? And then I would go back and then during the week, before [inaudible 00:15:33], “Yeah, he’s fucking right,” you know. (laughs)

Liam: (laughs)

Conor: He’s always fucking right. He’s an awesome guy. But, I took that to heart, and then that became how I made this album. That’s where all the sounds of my music came from, from that conversation, where it’s like, “Yes, I love hearing these things. I love when it wants to be this way. It doesn’t need to have the structure or fit into some category that I’m trying to fit to. Stop. You’re still trying to fit a role that society has define.”

So, I changed that. I made that album. That album was made in a time where I was in a very low point in my panic attack disorder. And he was helping me through it, and the music was helping me through it, and I still get Sound Cloud messages like, not as much anymore because it’s just like, you know, four years ago, five years ago, but I still get them like once every few months where someone says, “I was battling with depression, this song helped me so much. I was battling with anxiety, this song helped me so much,” and that is all I care about.

I don’t ever sell my music. People ask to use it for whatever. I don’t ever tell them they have to pay for shit. That is worth it 100%. And, yes, to answer your question, in a long form again-

Liam: Yeah.

Conor: …yes, people do get that out of it and that means the world to me.

Liam: Do you think that there’s something about your mindset and the process of creating this music that somehow translates into the product itself and… I guess what I’m interested in is how that connection gets formed that, uh, the people would have those experiences with it.

Conor: Oh. Yeah, might be more thoughtless when I design. I don’t wanna give myself too much credit. I think it just happens naturally is what I’m trying to say.

Liam: Yeah.

Conor: You know, maybe I design thoughtlessly, maybe selfishly, but those things come through somehow.

Liam: Yeah.

Conor: With that song in particular, I used to record him, and I sampled some of the things he would say.

Conor: It’s a trick. You just flip it and then you’d understand, you just enjoy. And that’s what he said in the song and maybe those, maybe those direct messages helped, but I try to infuse that stuff intentionally with a lot of my music, but what people get out of it, it must just happen naturally. I don’t want to give myself credit as some like master manipulator of emotions. I think that, that is just all I am, so what I create must be filled with that.

Liam: Yeah. I’m interested in this idea of somehow, unintentionally, there was some intangible thing that is conveyed through our work.

Conor: Yeah. I guess if that’s all the ingredients you have-

Liam: Yeah.

Conor: …that’s all the product’s gonna have. (laughs)

Liam: Yeah, I guess so.

Conor: You know you’re… That’s what you’re cooking with, and they’re like, “Oh, you put a lot of, you put a lot of salt in this, huh?”

It’s like, “That’s all I got. I’m sorry.”

Liam: Yeah. (laughs) Do you think that there’s similar processes at play in the work that you do with animation, for instance?

Conor: Yeah, definitely. I did focus a lot on music in explaining this, but I meant this a lot with visual too, because it’s always paired for me. My dream project in all ends, for anything, is always to make music and then a visual component with it.

Liam: How do you view the relationship between audio and visual? Like, you say that you want to create one work that has the music and also a visual component. Do you think that those two are necessarily tied together, or do you perceive them together, or how are they related to one another?

Conor: Wow. Yeah. Interesting. I don’t know if I’ve really thought that deeply about it. I just… Hopefully this answers it. All I know is that I design some visuals, it has sound to it. I design some sound, it has visuals that I’m thinking of. They just, maybe always happen in tandem.

Liam: Yeah. Something that I’ve learned in type design is the idea of a design space-

Conor: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Liam: …and that, when you design one style of a type-face, the other styles are like theoretically in the universe-

Conor: Yeah.

Liam: …somewhere, but you just haven’t captured them.

Conor: It’s like when you’re designing something, it’s pairing is always in your mind. Your Alpha Omega is not the thing you put on the page, but it’s what you page in tandem with what you’ve visualized the context around it. Is that kind of what you’re saying?

Liam: Right. Yeah.

Conor: Yeah, that always happens. If I’m designing music, it’s got a space that I’m listening to it. And that’s actually, I’ve got an upcoming album, and that is the whole theory of the album is like, all of these songs are a place in nature, and a time in nature. All of these are like in the forest as the wind is blowing as a storm’s coming. That’s what this song is.

So, everything I make, it’s context is not limited to the product itself, but there’s a visual component or an audio component that’s always paired with it. Whatever I design visually sounds a certain way in my mind.

Liam: And it sounds like this pairing is not necessarily something that you have to think about during the creation-

Conor: I guess not.

Liam: …but that it’s just kind of there.

Conor: Yeah, through experience or imagination, it’s always there. Maybe it’s never been separate to me, but you can only work on one at a time sometimes, yeah.

Liam: To go along with that, do you know that thing that you’re creating is about the forest when the storm’s coming and like the breeze is blowing, or, or is that something that emerges as you create it?

Conor: It’s very easy, you know, the human mind is full of fallacy, and it’s very easy to post-rationalize-

Liam: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Conor: …and then remember it as though it always happened that way-

Liam: Right.

Conor: …which I’m sure that does happen sometimes, um, but I want to say 50%, yes, but 100% before I start these sounds were experienced in some way.

Maybe it is just 100%. There’s a narrative that fully forms at the end, and the narrative isn’t always fully there in the beginning, but when in regards to sound, yes, especially because all my percussion has a memory attached to it because I’ve recorded it all-

Liam: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Conor: …on a hike, or here and there. And I usually layer an ungodly amount of percussion. I love that lushness, just like in nature being in a forest. That lushness is overwhelming and relaxing. And I try to create that in music. Every sound has a memory to it. So, every knock of wood, every coin rubbing against itself, everything is a memory. So I listen to a song and I remember I was here, this is what it looks like, this is what the breeze was like when I recorded that. So, I guess a lot of it is, inevitably, tied to a physical experience with a physical place.

Liam: I also want to talk about how you apply these ideas of creating music and visuals in the same design space as one another to collaborative projects. We were speaking before the interview about the WoodSwimmer video-

Conor: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Liam: …and how that was a collaboration where you created the music and someone else created the visual through like this long process. I want to talk a little bit about that.

Conor: Okay.

Liam: So I guess first of all like, how was that created?

Conor: This was a collaboration, and not a lot of videos on my site are sort of that collaboration, but he’s a genius stop motion animator. His films take 10 years to make, and I joke with him because for me, I can make, I can kick out a bunch of animations in a year, you know. Not all of them as deep as what he makes, but he’s got like three films left in his life. (laughs) I was always joke that you gotta pick them right, you know?

Liam: (laughs)

Conor: You gotta really think about them because you got like just a few left, uh, because he takes so damn long. But, WoodSwimmer, he came to me and he’s like, “I got this footage. I’ve just been recording footage.” And if you’ve seen WoodSwimmer, it’s just layers of wood, almost like a MRI scan, layers of organic body, and you see how the layers and veins of wood warp through like a Z-distance through the wood.

He set up this stop motion little robotic camera rig where he had a piece of wood facing the camera, lit right, and, um, he had a camera capture frame, shaved off just a super thin layer, capture another frame, a robotic mill shaved off another thin layer, capture another frame, and it would just run. I think he just kept the frame clean every time. I think it took like 5 to 10 minutes per frame, something like that, and it took half a year to a year to record everything, and he came to me with all this footage and he’s like, “I got all this stuff. I don’t know what to do with it.”

And I was like, “This is so fucking cool, dude. This is a lot that I care about. It’s so awesome. I’d love to make music for this. I’d love to edit it.” And so, uh, we worked together concepting what the piece would feel like and look like. And he shot some more, and I added things together and then tried to make music that felt hectic and like sawing and like eating through wood, and, uh, I really like the song how it came out.

It was a really good collaboration, and it exploded like everywhere on the internet. Even like GQ wrote about. It was very cool. That was fun. That was a fun collaboration. I would say I’m not like the best at collaborating. I don’t think I really am. The things I care about only exist in my mind and I don’t really care about sharing that, and it’s difficult to try to make someone else do that.

Liam: Yeah.

Conor: I’m a terrible employee for that same reason. It’s really hard for me to care about something else someone else thought of, unless it like somehow is important to me. So, I don’t know if I’m that great at collaborating. I’ll always try to be, but that was a good collaboration. He’s just, he’s a master, man. He’s really good.

Liam: What was it like to approach that with the goal of creating music for it? How did you-

Conor: That is-

Liam: …translate that concept?

Conor: That is tough for me ’cause I’m only a few times have been commissioned I guess, now I wasn’t getting paid for this, but I guess it’s the same idea. It’s like, I want music for this thing that was born outside of my mind. And so, that always scares me. I feel like I can never really perform well, and I feel like I’ll fuck it up.

So, it was challenging. I just tried to think of like what it sounded like to move through wood and if that felt calming or scary and it just, it was kind of scary. It was like you’re ripping apart going through this like new world, destroying this wood. I tried to capture the sound of sawing and confusion and I had the song change up a lot. And I had a lot of really heavy sawtooth, no pun intended because that’s the wave form of the synth, you know-

Liam: Right.

Conor: …sawtooth synth and it’s got this really like buzzy like vvv-vvv, you know, sound to it. A lot of, it had a lot of air to it as well. And I tried to capture that feel of it, um, and I felt like it came through okay.

Liam: I also want to talk a little bit about some of your more purely visual work.

Conor: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Liam: Like the Cal Academy of Sciences Vortex-

Conor: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Liam: …that you created. What was I guess both the motivation and also what was the process like as you were creating it?

Conor: So, Cal Academy of Sciences is an awesome project. I love the academy over there, and this came across so serendipitously because I love science education. I love thinking skeptically about the world. Not cynically, which people always criticize me for. (laughs)

Liam: (laughs)

Conor: It’s not cynicism, it’s skepticism. It’s just about questioning information you have and respecting science and respecting education and respecting people with history and knowledge in certain things, and science education matters a lot to me, and I wanted to like change everything, just to work for the Academy of Sciences on this project, but that’s not financially pliable for them, or me even, but I saw a planetarium show and I thought, this is so cool. This is amazing. I’m gonna come up with a pitch for the Academy of Sciences that I want to come up with a purely like scientific inspired artistic experience. A way with connecting people to top level scientific concept, you know, and mathematics and biology. Just like the repetition of life on different scales. Just opening up people to basic scientific and mathematical concepts because a lot of my calming thoughts come from nature.

So, I wanted to make that happen really bad. I was coming up with this pitch. I talked to a friend of mine and he’s like, “Oh, I know the director of NightLife and the planetarium shows. He’s been coming up with the same idea.”

I was like, “Are you fucking kidding me?”

So like we met, and we literally had the exact same idea. It was like, “Oh this is perfect. Let’s make it happen.”

So, I felt like in rare form, I got a bunch of friends together and tried to make something happen and was like, all right, get some friends together, be the organizer, produce, and design, and try to make everything mesh together well. And I was temporarily a mature designer at that point, and got everybody together to collaborate towards a common goal.

And it was very rewarding, and what you see that Vortex 2.0 show is a teaser, it’s a proof of concept that will hopefully turn into a much larger show. I’ve submitted a budget to the Academy of Sciences and it’s gonna be a slow journey, but I want this to be a reoccurring thing where we take information and concepts inspired by their research, inspired by science, things to trigger peoples’ curiosity. Don’t make it educational. Don’t make it like, “Did you know blah blah blah?” You know, and like explain something. Just take a core concept and then turn that into art in a way that maybe they don’t even like walk away from that knowing like, “Oh, now I know more about blank,” just kind of inspired and curious about like these forms and why this is happening. Somehow inspire curiosity towards science through a purely art music space.

Liam: Yeah. There’s something interesting in there about like creating something with the intent of not directly communicating maybe the scientific concepts-

Conor: Yeah.

Liam: …that you’re trying to convey, but just inspiring a sort of open ended encounter with the work.

Conor: Yeah.

Liam: I guess I’m interested in how you think about that, the possibility of creating something and then putting it into the world where people can encounter and experience it and perceive it in different ways.

Conor: ’Cause it’s really out of your hands.

Liam: Yeah.

Conor: You know? However people think of it. Happens a lot with all major works of art, you know.

Liam: How do you think about that in relationship to your work? I mean, I guess ultimately it’s something that you must accept, but-

Conor: It is, but I do have high hopes that what I intend with it is how it’s perceived.

Liam: Right.

Conor: I always have high hopes, especially the more that you pregame a concept. I’ve got a project I’m working on right that I’m basically writing a small book on like the mythos of this world I’m building and how it relates to our existence.

Liam: Yeah.

Conor: Death and life and the normal shit that I do. And I’m really hoping that it comes across like that, but same with Academy of Sciences, I’m not nailing into the forefront of the imagery, so maybe it will never come across but if I ever get the opportunity to explain it, hopefully I don’t always need to, but hopefully that adds a depth to it and a curiosity that drives people towards questioning things that I’ve been, that have inspired me towards certain pieces, you know.

Liam: Yeah. Maybe somehow these intangible, imperceptible ingredients that you’re working with are recognized.

Conor: Hopefully. That’s the, yeah, definitely, like I said, that’s like, I really do want that, you know.

Liam: Yeah.

Conor: I know it’s out of my hands, but I wouldn’t be doing it unless I had a mission, unless I had a mission statement for every piece and a way of thinking that I wanted people to share. It is about connecting.

Liam: All right, well, thank you again for joining me, Conor.

Conor: Yeah.

Liam: This was great.

Conor: Yeah. For sure.

Katie Garcia and Dustin Payseur, Bayonet Records

Bayonet Records founders Katie Garcia and Dustin Payseur on collaborating with musicians

In this episode, Liam speaks with Katie Garcia and Dustin Payseur, who together run independent music label Bayonet Records.

Garcia and Payseur (who also leads the band Beach Fossils) break down the complex relationship between a record label and the creative work it supports, the qualities of sonic design, and the magic of releasing an album on your own terms.

---

Liam Spradlin: Katie, Dustin, welcome to Design Notes.

Dustin Payseur: Yeah, thanks for having us.

Katie Garcia: Thanks for having us.

Liam: So, I want to start off the same way I always do by learning about each of your journeys. Um, I want to know basically, how you got to where you are creatively now, and how the path that you took there influences your work.

Dustin: It depends on how much back story we’re looking for (laughs).

Liam: All of it.

Dustin: I- I grew up in like, a very musical family. My mom’s Cuban, my family’s Cuban on my mom’s side and so, like, her father, my grandpa, he’s a percussionist, like, Latin percussionist and, um, he still performs. And my parents are both musicians. And, like, my dad has a recording studio, so I kind of grew up around all that, so music was just always in my life. And, um, yeah, I just started really young, you know, just self recording and working on stuff. And whenever I would record a little tape on my 4-track, I would put, like, a fake record label name on the back of it, you know? And I… that was, like, always my dream to record my own music and be able to release it myself. And it’s just something that I’ve always thought about as, like, the only option, you know?

Dustin: They had career day in school and everyone came to school in, like, suits and stuff like that, and I just showed up wearing, like, a Marilyn Manson t-shirt.

Katie: (laughs).

Dustin: And people were like, “Why are you dressed like that?” And I was like, “Because I’m going to be a musician” (laughs).

Katie: (laughs).

Liam: (laughs).

Katie: That’s amazing. Tell everyone what your record label name was.

Dustin: Oh.

Katie: You had a few.

Dustin: There were a few. I mean, it’s dumb. I was, like, you know, a little kid, so it was, like, 420 Records.

Katie: (laughs).

Liam: Nice.

Dustin: And, like, Morbid Records with a backwards R and stuff like that.

Katie: (laughs) Yes, I love Morbid Records.

Dustin: Yeah.

Katie: That’s one of my favorite ones.

Katie: So, for me, I was just a huge music fan growing up. Every time I would get a new CD, I would open it up and just, like, read the liner notes, cover to cover, who did what, what are the lyrics. I was just constantly consuming music. And then when I got older, I actually studied film in school, so I moved to New York with the intention of, like, working in film. I worked for a set designer for a while. And then when that fizzled out, I just took a step back and was like, “What is it that I’ve always been passionate about?” And I was always going to music shows. I was like, “I should just work in music. It’s a field that I know for a fact that I love.”

So, I emailed a ton of record labels asking if they had any internships open. I even called Matador and they just laughed and hung up the phone, which I think is pretty funny.

Dustin: (laughs).

Katie: And pretty on-brand. And yeah, and then I emailed Captured Tracks, and they were like, “Yeah, actually, we could use some help,” so I started interning there. Um, I was interning there for, like, six months and then the girl that was the label manager at the time, Autumn, left to go move back to Detroit. And then I became the label manager, which was exciting and also scary. And um, that’s also where Dustin and I met.

And then yeah… And from then on, Dustin had always talked about wanting to start his own label. And so, it was around the time that we got married that we talked about it more seriously and we basically told everyone to just give us money as wedding gifts, and we used all of that money to start Bayonet. And that’s where we are today (laughs).

Liam: Nice. To start off with kind of a broad question, what would you say is the creative role of a record label?

Katie: Hoo, the creative role of record label? There are a lot of different things. You know, I think the creative role of record label is just helping an artist put their music out into the world so that they don’t have to think about that. You know, like, an artist should focus on the creative aspect of their art and working on songs, and maybe what they want the photography to look like. But, label can help facilitate some of those things if they have a general vision, a label can be like, “Oh, well, this photographer would be great if you want this kind of photo.” Or drawing from what the artist feels passionate about.

I always really like to get to know the artists that I work with pretty closely so that I can come up with creative ideas that are suited for them, and that I know that when I present it to them, the chances of them being into the idea are pretty high. I don’t want to waste my time, and I definitely don’t want waste their time, bringing them a shitty idea.

Dustin: Yeah, I think record labels play a really different role than they used to as well, you know? Things are changing a lot because of streaming. You know, physical’s not the main focus of most labels these days. It’s a big focus for us because we’re a smaller indie label, but in general, people focus more on different sides of things that labels didn’t used to really think about as much. With artists, there’s, like, a really big ego, and a lot of them have, like, a clear vision where it’s like, “This is my record no matter what. This is the artwork. This is the video.”

I mean, I still feel like I don’t know what I want a lot of times. I kind of hate music videos and don’t want to do them, and Katie’s like, “You have to music videos.”

Katie: (laughs).

Liam: (laughs).

Katie: Yeah, I basically have to, like, Inception artists.

Dustin: Yeah.

Katie: To be like, “Oh, cool.” And then they’re like, “What if did this thing?” And it’s this awesome idea, but it’s secretly something that I have planted in their heads all along.

Liam: (laughs).

Dustin: (laughs).

Katie: I feel like I do that a lot with you, actually.

Dustin: Yeah.

Katie: Because you’re the hardest artist to A&R for me, personally.

Dustin: What?

Katie: Yeah.

Dustin: Really?

Katie: Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure.

Dustin: Wow.

Katie: I feel like other artists, I’m like, they’ll send me their demos and I’ll be like, “Great, okay. Here… Like, here are my notes. These are the songs that I think should be singles. This is this.” You’ll be like, “No, I’m not changing those lyrics.”

Dustin: I think I’m not good with constructive criticism (laughs).

Liam: (laughs).

Katie: (laughs) Yeah.

Liam: It seems like there must be a lot of that interaction with people’s art and creative work, and then viewing that through a strategic lens.

Katie: For sure.

Liam: I want to know about how you approach that.

Katie: Yeah, it’s really fun, but also really challenging because we can get really creative with certain ideas. Like, recently, this was something I worked on… I also do A&R at Secretly Group, which is Secretly Canadian, Jagjauwar, and Dead Oceans. And, um, I was working on this project called Better Oblivion Community Center, which is Phoebe Bridgers and Conor Oberst, and for that, they wanted to do a surprise drop release, which we had never really done before. And we started brainstorming things, and then we came up with this idea to have, like, a hotline that people could call as if they were calling some kind of Better Oblivion Community Center, and it really took off. And it made people aware of Better Oblivion Community Center, but they didn’t know what it was yet, the album hadn’t come out. So, it was just this, like, mysterious little nugget of information.

And I feel like doing stuff like that is always really fun and exciting, and just trying to find different ways to reach audiences without it being too creepy (laughs). You know, and also, keeping in line with the vision that artist has, making sure that it’s something they’re excited about, too.

Liam: Also, just to define a term, what is A&R?

Katie: A&R is Artists and Repertoire. So, it’s finding new artists to bring to the table to a label. So, scouting new artists, new talent, and yeah… And then developing it, and maintaining a really great relationship with that artist, developing it creatively. You’re kind of the liaison between the artist themselves and the record label, so it’s a really fun job. And I get to go to a lot of shows and hang out with a lot of musicians.

Dustin: Wha- I think you’re also in the unique place where you’re close friends with the artists that you work, you know? And I think-

Katie: Yeah.

Dustin: That’s also unique to your personality, but, like, these are people that… I’ve become friends with the artists that she A&Rs, you know, because they’re just that close. Like, they come over to the house or we’re hanging out at festivals or something.

And, like, there’s just this relationship that sort of transcends the work environment and it becomes, like, a very personal connection. Because I think if you’re working with someone that close on something that is that personal to them, it’s inevitable to get that close with them, you know?

Katie: Aw.

Dustin: (laughs).

Katie: Thanks, Dustin (laughs).

Dustin: Yeah.

Liam: As you’re going through this process, I’m working about, like, the organizing principal or the quality that you’re looking for in artists that are signed to Bayonet.

Katie: We’re always looking for new and unique songwriters, people who have a unique voice, and people who are writing about really interesting things. Yeah, and who want to grow creatively and just, like, keep expanding. And I feel like that’s always really exciting.

And I think sonically, we’re just constantly trying to diversify the kinds of sounds that we’re putting out. We don’t just want to be putting out like “indie rock.” And I think so far we’ve done a pretty good job of that. You know, we talk about this a lot Secretly, as well as Bayonet, which is that we want the type of music that we release to reflect the kind of music that we listen to in our every day lives. I think before, you know… especially at Secretly, to see how much the roster there has diversified, like, sonically is amazing in the last couple of years.

And so, I think that that’s something that we consciously think about.

Dustin: Yeah, I think a big part of it is just a gut feeling, you know? You just… you listen to something and you can tell if it’s real, you know? I has a substance, there’s a real person behind it, you know? And something that has a lot of personality and is unique and is willing to take risks, and you hear it, and you’re just like… You can just kind of tell when people have something special to them, and there’s no way to really quantify that in, like, a concrete way, or explain it in a way that someone could learn. It’s just… it’s… a lot of it is just based on feeling.

Liam: I think that gets into my next question, as well, which is more about the qualities of music.

Because I’m a designer who works primarily in a vision medium…

Katie: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Liam: So, the idea of working on something that’s mostly a sonic or auditory medium-

Katie: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Liam: … Is not only interesting, but also foreign to me, and I’m interested-

Katie: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Liam: … in how you conceptualize that and, like, what are the pieces that you identify?

Katie: One of the things… I feel like this is applicable to this question, is Jeff Buckley has this amazing quote where he says that music is trying to shape sound to fit a feeling. And I feel like that’s, like, really apt. And I think that that is something that I connect with in a really big way because I feel like music is so emotional, and this work on our side is so emotional and, at sometimes, it can be emotionally draining.

Dustin: Music, it’s kind of like… My objective with it, when I’m creating something, is to… it’s almost like, um, if you were able to send, like, a psychic message to someone in a way. It’s like, I have this feeling and this emotion that’s so overwhelming and so powerful, and there’s no way to express it to someone else outside of this form, you know? It’s like trying to condense all these feelings into a way that you can share with someone else and give them a piece of your mind and be like, “This is where… This is exactly how I feel and what I’m experiencing and I want you to feel this exact same way.” And I feel like when you hear a song that gives you the chills, that person has done that right. They’ve been able to send you this little personal feeling that no one else can understand and like inject that into you.

Liam: So, Katie, going back to something that you said earlier about the kinds of artists that are with Bayonet.

Katie: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Liam: I read in an interview with Forbes, uh, you said that Bayonet tries to get artists that sound different from one another or use different sonic palettes.

Katie: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Liam: And I’m really interested in that phrase and what it means, and also why it’s important.

Katie: You know, a sonic palette just means it’s like when an artist has their palette and they’re picking all the colors, and which colors make sense for this painting. It’s similar to an artist having access to all of these sounds and which sounds make sense, and Dustin was saying before, like, can creative something new and fresh, and something that can resonate with people.

We just want each artist to be as diverse and as singular from the next. Um…

Dustin: Yeah. I mean, music is all about textures. I think that’s something that people don’t think about enough, is that everybody is kind of working with these different textures, almost like how painters have a different way that they work with the pain, you know? Sometimes it’s really clumpy, sometimes it’s really smooth, sometimes it’s very watery and drippy. Artists can work with different instruments, if you’re using a synthesizer, or if it’s, like, a vintage synthesizer or a soft synth, something very contemporary. Or the way that your drums sound, I mean, there’s a million different things you can use for drums. I mean, now you can do anything. You can drop some keys on a table and sample that and use that.

So, the sonic palette is almost, like, infinite these days. And there’s so many ways for people to combine these different sounds in ways that people haven’t, you know, with electronic versus organic. And then, also, subject matter, which is pretty infinite as well, you know, you can go anywhere with it. And someone who’s able to blend all that in a creative way and a technical way at the same time, that’s when, you know, you’ve stumbled upon something that’s very special and unique.

Liam: I also want to talk about, uh, Beach Fossils’ 2017 album, Summer Salt, because it was released on Bayonet Records and I’m interested… Knowing now, like, a lot of the logistics that go into a label and, like, the creative involvement and things like that. Dustin, I’m interested what impact the association with your own label had on the album’s creation?

Dustin: I think it was the first felt full creative freedom working on something. I have a love-hate relationship with deadlines, and I think it’s more on the hate side, where I work very poorly knowing that I have to have something done at a certain time. And so, part of this, for me, was being, like, “Okay, I have the freedom. I don’t have someone yelling at me about when this thing needs to be done,” you know? And I work in my own studio as well, so I can go in there every day and feel this freedom that I’m not restricted by anything, you know? It’s this life path that I chose for myself that I’m very fortunate to be able to experience because I know it’s rare, and I know a lot of people don’t have that amount of freedom.

But I have issues with, like, authority, (laughs) you know, I kind of always have. And even if it’s helpful authority, like a label just being like, “You need have this thing done,” I feel claustrophobic and suffocated knowing that I have to have something done at a certain time. So, when I go in and I don’t have a deadline, sometimes I can work even faster because I don’t have that hanging over my head. And it gave me the freedom to feel like I could do anything with that record.

And, like we were talking about before, the sonic palette, this record opened up in a huge way that I never been able to do before. I had enough time to think about how do I find a way to get all these different instruments on a record? How do I find… I- I made a list of instruments, and it was like, harpsichord, flute, pedal steel, saxophone, string quartet, all these things that I wanted to have on the record, and I had enough time to figure out how do I find all these people that play these things and actually get this on the record. And, if I had a crazy deadline, I probably wouldn’t have had all those instruments on the record.

Also, I write so much. We must’ve written, like, 70 songs or something for the record and then just thrown them all away or recycled them. But if I was rushed, I would’ve put out a record that was probably a bunch of those songs that I threw away, and I’d be really unhappy with it.

Liam: It strikes me as you’re talking about deadlines and timelines for creating this stuff, that a song or an album is not created all in one sitting, so I think there’s something interesting that between using music to shape sound and convey an emotion, but over a timeline.

Dustin: Yeah.

Liam: Like, there must be some refinement process over that timeline to get it right, and I’m curious, how do you know when it’s right?

Dustin: It’s so hard to say, you know? I feel like… I sit with a song for a really long time. I’ll work on it and I’ll keep adding stuff to it. And I think when you know it’s right… This is something that, I guess, works for me, personally, is like, I add so much to the song and then I start stripping things away and pulling stuff off. And when I feel like it’s reached the point that I’ve taken enough things away from it, and it’s minimal enough, and it’s working, and it’s not cluttered, that’s kind of when it feels right for me.

But I have a problem where I write all the music first and then the lyrics last. I think that’s because when I first started recording music on a computer, I was making rap music (laughs). I was, like, making beats. So, you know, you make all the music first and then you do the vocals on top of it, and so, for me, that was just, like, a natural way to make music, and I still think about it that way. I get this instrumental and then I put vocals on at the end. But it’s like the song is so cluttered at point, I’m like, “Where am I going to fit vocals?” So I have to start stripping things away and getting it really empty and turning things into, like, little one shots instead of loops and… I don’t know. So, you just know. Like, I- I- I listen back until there’s not one second of the song that I don’t like and then I realize it’s right.

Liam: You said that doing the instrumentation in the song itself first and then adding vocals is a problem.

Dustin: Yeah.

Liam: But what would it look like if you did the lyrics and vocals first?

Dustin: I’ve actually been doing that recently for the songs that we’re working on for the new record because it’s kind of the traditional songwriter, that’s the way it’s done, you know? It’s like… a person sits down with an acoustic guitar or a piano and they come up with the melody and they start to figure what fits on top of it. And usually, yeah, people have the vocals and the main thing already going together, and then they just bring instruments and layer everything on top after the fact. Whereas, I’m doing the total opposite, I’m just layering it all up and I’m like, “There’s no room for vocals. I have to start taking stuff off” (laughs).

Liam: (laughs). I also do want to try to dig in a little bit to the visual aspects of the label, as well. You said that for Bayonet, physical media is pretty important.

Katie: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Liam: And I think there’s a lot to go into that, whether you’re making vinyl or cassettes or- or anything like that. So, first I want to understand what all the pieces of that are.

Katie: Oh yeah, it’s a lot. So, we work with this awesome designer, Andrew Lawandus, who’s based in Atlanta. He helps us lay out everything we need, the record cover, the inner sleeve. Sometimes it’s a gatefold, so you need to figure out what’s going to go in the gatefold. Sometimes there’s a poster that’ll go inside. You have figure out what the marketing sticker is going to look like. The CD booklet, what’s going to go on the CD booklet. What is the CD itself going to look like? The labels that go on the center of the vinyl. The J-card for the cassette tape.

Katie: Like, there are so many things and, you know, you’re- you’re drawing from the same set of images or designs, but you kind of have to change it according to the layout, because all the layouts for each item are different. So, you kind of have to distill, like, what it is you really, really want on certain things.

Like, for example, cassettes, like, there isn’t much room to have a lot of, like, artwork or words. Whereas like a CD, you have a booklet, you can add as many pages as you want, then it becomes like, “Oh crap, what images are we going to have (laughs) inside the CD booklet? And, like, do we want to have the lyrics or do we not want to have the lyrics? Do we want to just have production notes?” And then the vinyl is kind of like this… the in between of those two.

It’s always a challenge.

Dustin: Yeah.

Katie: Um, but it’s a fun one.

Dustin: That part’s kind of fun. You can hide little Easter Eggs in there, you know?

Katie: Oh yeah, totally. For most of our records, this awesome guy Josh Bonati masters them. And when we did our first record on vinyl, he was like, “You know, I can always put a secret hidden message in the etching of the lacquer of the vinyl so that when you press it, it’ll be on, like, every single copy.” So we were like, “Whoa, that is sick.” So then, we started asking our artists to do that and started asking them like, “What do you want the etching to say?” And so, if you look closely in the light of a lot of our records, in the inner loop of the vinyl you’ll see, like…

Dustin: There’s a little etching. There’s a little-

Katie: Little etching, yeah.

Dustin: Quote on all of them (laughs).

Liam: That’s awesome. Going back to something that Dustin said earlier about music videos and, like, preferring to focus on the music rather than the video, I’m curious how you translate the aesthetic of the music into something cohesive that can cover all of this physical media.

Dustin: It’s difficult. I mean, I can’t speak for other artists, but for me, I try to make my artwork as minimal as possible because it just goes back to me liking the music to speak for itself. Because I take so long working on stuff, this last record, it took me, like, four years… Four years? Five years? Something like that.

Katie: Yeah.

Dustin: It was long time. But it was like… I spent so long thinking about the music. I was like, “I don’t like to put an idea in people’s mind about what this is. I like them to make up their own minds.” So, like, it’s just white album cover with the name on it, and that’s it. It’s just… I- I want people to have their own visuals, you know, when they listen to the music. They can lay in their bed and whatever, and just imagine their own little story or music videos because people always interpret their own things.

And it’s funny how people will interpret your music or your lyrics when you go and meet with someone who is a music video director, or even just talking to someone who listens to your music, because the lyrics mean a very different thing to a listener than it does to you as the writer. Because I’ve had people be like, “This line is like the most important thing ever,” and, like, tell me what it means to them and I’m like, “That is not what that means at all, but I’m really glad that you took that from it.” And I think that part is really important, like, not correcting people if they get a different idea because I feel like there’s no such thing as, like, a wrong interpretation, it’s just your interpretation.

But, anyway, going back to visuals, it’s funny to see how people will kind of interpret themselves, you know, if you give somebody free rein for a music video. They’re like, “Oh, what if we did this.” It’s like this crazy storyline. And, in way, that kind of bugs me because I don’t like the idea of different story going on top of the story that I’m already telling.

Katie: Yeah, I mean, I think every artist is different. You know, some artists will want the music video to be a very literal translation of what the song means. And other artists, kind of like Dustin, will want it to just be them, like, signing the song or whatever, and let people kind of interpret the meaning of the song for themselves (laughs).

Dustin: Yeah. Well, some artists are really visual and they do have like a whole idea. Like Jerry Paper, when we were working with him, he just had all these crazy ideas because he, like, does collaborations with, like, Adult Swim and stuff. And he’s like, “Yeah, like, it should be, like, this big human cockroach, like, smoking a cigarette.” And he’s got, like, this whole idea, you know? He’s somebody who like… he would turn in a full record and be like, “Here it is, here’s the artwork.” And it’s like, we hadn’t talked in months and all of a sudden he’s just like…

Liam: (laughs).

Dustin: … got it, you know? He’s, like, got his whole, like, aesthetic. He’s created a whole universe.

And that’s really fun, too, because you don’t want to step on that, you know? It’s like… I think there are certain record labels that are just so big that they will sign somebody and then try to change them and be like, “Okay, cool, like, this is who you were and how do we make it more marketable now?” And it’s like, “Oh, you can’t do this big, weird human cockroach thing that you wanted to do.”

Katie: (laughs).

Liam: (laughs).

Dustin: But for us it’s like, “Hey, the more the merrier. Like, this is why we signed you,” you know?

Liam: Yeah. Speaking of creating an album and all this art and everything as it’s whole universe…

Dustin: (laughs).

Liam: I’m interested in how you think about an album as one work and what it means, how you decide, like, on what goes on an album versus what doesn’t out of those 70 songs or whatever.

Dustin: I guess just trying to create, like, its own universe that kind of works, but also it shouldn’t contradict itself enough. You don’t want to have an album where every single song sounds exactly the same because then it just gets boring. Unless you’re the Ramones, that’s- that’s the only time it’s legal.

Katie: (laughs).

Dustin: But, for me, I do think about records. I can’t think about singles. I just don’t see it that way. You know, I feel like an album is like a film and there are all these different acts. And, actually, that’s something that I do when I’m thinking about what songs should go on an album and how to sequence the songs in a certain order.

I always thought of it in four parts because, traditionally, a physical records has two sides and so you want to have two movements. And so, I like to have where it’s upbeat stuff in the beginning, then it slows down a little bit for the A-side, slows down a little bit, then picks back up. And then the B-side does, like, a similar thing where it’s a little upbeat, slows down, and picks back up. So it’s, like, there’s these four separate chunks and it flows like a movie.

And that’s- that’s the only thing I will say that bums me out about streaming, is that I sequence these songs where sometimes they blend into each other, and if you listen to the song just by itself, it might cut off weird or like not quite sound right, you know? Like, I make some songs that are just made to fit in between other songs, and if you’re listening to it on shuffle, it’s like, “What the hell was that? What did I just listen to?”

Katie: (laughs).

Liam: (laughs).

Dustin: “What was this weird… that’s not a song.” But I think an album is still really important. And I- I know a lot of people still think about albums, it’s not a dead thing by any means. But, for me, I can’t help but to just be conscious of it. I- I can’t think about singles. I don’t know, I’m not a pop star, so that’s just not how I see it (laughs).

Liam: Speaking of streaming and kind of making the decision whether to listen to, like, the complete album or if you just hear a song pop up on shuffle, I’m interested in moving into the future, like, what impact or influence you think evolving technologies are going to have on both music creation and also being a label.

Katie: Oh…

Dustin: Hard to say.

Katie: Um, I think AI is going to have a big impact.

Dustin: I’m all for AI.

Katie: Yeah, Dustin’s very pro…

Dustin: I’m super pro-AI (laughs).

Katie: …AI. He’s ready for the singularity (laughs).

Liam: (laughs).

Dustin: Yeah, I’m ready to merge.

Katie: (laughs). Yeah, so I think AI is going to play a big role.

Dustin: Sometimes I try to think about, like, what is the next thing that comes after the internet. And you’re like, “Well, you couldn’t imagine it because you weren’t able to imagine the internet a 100 years ago, so how are you able to think of what can be next?” I guess quantum computers and AI would be the biggest things, but I don’t know.

That paired with, like, the creation of art and songwriting and stuff. Like, yeah, I like the idea of, like, getting music made just for you, that’s cool. It’s like, “Hey, uh, I want to have an artist that is Metallica and 2 Chainz.”

Katie: (laughs).

Dustin: “And they made five albums and the fourth one was acoustic, and it was love songs.” And it’s like, “All right, generating, just for you (laughs).”

Katie: (laughs).

Liam: (laughs).

Dustin: Like, I’m ready for that.

Katie: Oh my god (laughs).

Dustin: (laughs).

Liam: That sounds amazing.

Cool. Well, thank you again for joining me.

Dustin: Yeah.

Katie: Thanks for having us.

Dustin: Thanks for having us.