Last summer Carolyn ZS (Zaldivar Snow), or as you may know her on synthagram, @tangent_universes reached out and asked if she could interview me for her delightful digital zine Wow and Flutter, on IG at @wowandflutterzine, where she interviews musicians who love, collect, record onto and manipulate cassette tapes. Along with being an accomplished musician, she's an OG of the synth community as a contributing writer at Tape Op, as well as small label Mystery Circles, and performs live at DIY shows all over the Eastern Seaboard. She also helps organize Sound Scene Audio Arts Festival in Washington DC, which showcases immersive sonic experiences and public art.

Carolyn was one of the first synth gals I found on IG who also lives a life of the great outdoors. We both live near natural delights like bogs, marshes, rivers and bayous, and can often be found hiking around with our field recorders in hand. I'm always humbled with appreciation when someone who has already lived a few lives in the scene offers to extend their platform to the new kid. She made me feel really special getting press for my very first EP, which is not usually the norm. So here's to wishing Carolyn a Happy Thankyoutine's Day for making the debut of my first hand pressed cassette feel grandiose and important, it certainly was to me and it was a real treat to bring the synth club into the fold with this interview.

This was also the first time I was interviewed as House of Egregious, which felt really cool to be seen and cemented as a musician in interviews instead of only a puppeteer. That's not talking smack about puppets lol really, and yes they will eventually find their way back into my work - esp after seeing Oneohtrix Point Never puppet the mini puppet he had built of himself with Control Voltage, which is definitely something I've been doodling schematics for ever since I picked up KOMA Elektronik's CV motors, light sensors, etc in the summer of 2022 and took my synth building class in fall of 2023.

For now, I'm working on my second EP which I hope to have ready by August to take on tour with me when I hit a few locations in MI and Chicago - dates coming soon. In the meantime, please enjoy this lovely conversation Carolyn and I had about tape.

Interview: The Itch that Follows the Scratch

Hey friends! Happy new year! It all happened so fast, I didn't even have any time to promo it here. What a wild ride! I played my first live synth show on NYE, hosted by Earth Modular Society. It was so badass, I broadcasted from my basement and played a stream train where musicians from all over the world showcased their talents and impressive rigs for almost 20 hours straight. It was a marathon of bleeps n bloops and I feel honored to have been a part of it.

​I also survived my audio interface going down minutes before my set started, causing me to reroute my entire set up through my mixing board instead. From the beginning this has always been my biggest fear (losing my audio signal either from an instrument or all together during a live performance) and now I can say I lived through it without losing my shit too bad - which is a real triumph. I know how to get through technical difficulties during a puppet show just fine, but it's a different pandora's box when we're talking complete dead air.

In the summer of 2020, I was one of the many who were grappling with mortality, which started to rattle the cage on - if this is it, I wanna go down swingin - I want to do things I said I would do when I "had the time," which as we all know never comes.

Turns out, on the top of that list was learning how to play an instrument. I taught myself how to play a little piano by ear when I was around 8 years old, but got stumped when I got to the part of the workbook that introduced the black keys. I am 35 now, and happy to report I am still at odds with the black keys (no, not those The Black Keys - they are great). I started out by buying an analog synthesizer, that lead me to a vocoder/mini drum machine, which required a keyboard controller to utilize the full range it's capabilities. While I was shopping around for one, I came across Elektron and their catalog of incredible beauties, so I picked up a few of their gems. I'll probably write a blog post soon with a gear run down and talk about my experience onboarding myself to the electronic music making process, from exploring the instruments themselves to teching out the integration workflow between all the moving pieces.

I want to demystify the music making process and make it more approachable to BIPOC women and non-binary people, I want there to be more queers behind the decks, I want more ADA-accessible venues to allow disabled music makers the chance to shine, I want peer-to-peer support across gender lines, that requires yt men to share their resources and knowledge with marginalized people who are excited and ready to learn.

I have 0 aptitude in music making, outside creating etherial soundscape and film scoring, however 90% my friends throughout my life have been in bands, all of partners with 2 exceptions have been in bands - yet I'm always the one taking photos. For all the band practices I've had to sit in on, for all the gear I've hauled during load outs - no one has ever offered to teach me a chord or how to keep a beat on the drums. Logistically, I find that ridiculous.

It wasn't until Gloria Stienem inspired me to make music as an act of feminist rebellion that I really started to put in the hours practicing. I'm learning everything from scratch and it's THRILLING. I love how instantaneous the process is, no prototyping involved! Right now I'm in a bubble of pure experimentation and I forgot how good it feels to fall in love with a new art form, to submerge myself in a new fascination. I'm so excited to see where this goes, I've vowed not to ruin this time of enraptured exploration by suffocating it with expectations. This is only for fun and will remain fun as long as I don't try to push it to grow faster than it's own natural pace.