Mark Rushton Interview

Mark Rushton is both a recording and visual artist. This simple set of labels is a fine way of providing an overview of the “what,” but it fails to express the mammoth scope of his body of work. Since he began experimenting within the medium around the turn of the century, Rushton has amassed a catalog of nearly 3,000 pieces of recorded audio, largely falling across genres such as ambient, beat-driven electronica, and soundscapes, as well as field recordings and sound effects. Utilizing a uniquely creative spin with the release process itself, he’s spread this catalog across more than 20 artist names. A small selection of those names include Aleodeology and My Love Underwater (ambient), Every Day is a Rainy Day and Weather Escape (environmental field recordings), and Tanpura Express (tanpura drone and tabla beat music).

The work itself isn’t the end of the story, however, as over the course of the past decade he’s transitioned from making little to nothing from his work to actually earning a living from it. Somewhere along the way, experimenting with audio evolved into having roughly a quarter of a million monthly listeners across his artist pages on Spotify. (Linder Valley, alone, accounts for roughly 140,000 of them.) That’s a somewhat startling number when taken out of context, but through spending time with Rushton’s newsletter, his focus on analytics and attention to the processes behind the distribution of his work paints a picture of understanding around how it came to be. In this discussion we dig a little bit into his past projects, but primarily focus on areas of note relevant to how he’s found success with the business elements behind his music, and has made the transition to being a professional recording artist, himself.

villin: I'm curious about how some of these questions relate to your visual art, as well, but as my focus with villin is on music, I'm aiming my thoughts to that side of things in the discussion. This question is one I'm curious about regardless of the medium of your work, and that's one of intention. You've created nearly 3,000 pieces of audio (whether that be songs, field recordings, etc.), which is an astonishing volume of output. How has your intention with creating and capturing sound changed since you first began with a loop-based program around the turn of the new millennium?

Mark Rushton: With the music and sound recordings, when I started in 2000, I was just playing around with new technology. Over time it evolved through a lot of experimenting with different music styles, techniques, using digital distributors, understanding how the streaming services work, being accepting of licensing, and taking good business advice. I earned basically no money from my recordings until around 2016, and even then it wasn't much. The growth of streaming and licensing changed all that.

Visual art is different. Original wall art has no distribution network, so that will limit an audience. For me, it's still a money loser. If I was making something like kiln-fired pieces, then there are wholesale networks to join. I've heard only around 2% of artists represented by galleries can earn a living from it, so that's a hard road. Print-on-demand, craft fairs, and websites can be a piece of the pie, but it's a lot of work and there's no guarantee of success. Social media is not a silver bullet for artists. There are exceptions, but they're exceptions. Being talented or lettered has nothing to do with it. A lot of artists don't want to listen to or heed these kinds of truth bombs. Here's the biggest one of them all: If you're in art school or pursuing an art degree, drop out immediately.

At the start of 2023, I started a publishing company with a friend. He had written a bunch of "short books" on various topics—15 to 30 minute reads—and didn't know how to publish them. I sub-edited a couple of them, learned how to publish Kindle eBooks, and then figured out paperback formatting. I use my artwork for the covers. In July 2023, we sold about 30 books and sales have been slowly increasing as we add titles. That's a good start. Most of the sales are paperbacks. Some are eBooks. We've had some KENP read royalties, which are from people reading through Kindle Premium subscriptions. We've sold books in the US, Germany, and France. Even though Kindle publishing has been around a long time, I'm new to it. Amazon is a kind of distribution, even though they're a benevolent monopoly, and at least they have good "natural discovery" if you categorize well and use metadata and keywords. These are all skills I learned as a recording artist.

Circling back to your question, I’ve been able to get my recordings out there in the world, but I’ve met a lot of artists (recording, visual, and writers) over the years who have produced a large body of work and it just sits on hard drives, in drawers, or in closets. For whatever reason. Or they become deceased and the work becomes lost because the heirs don't care or don't know what to do with it.

My intention changed around 2015, about the time that music digital distribution services were evolving. I read an interview with Brian Eno, originally published in The Believer magazine and reprinted in Salon in 2012, and it was a huge influence on me:

Q: If you could email your 20-year-old self about what was ahead, what would you tell him? Or would you tell him nothing and just let him get on with it?

A: I think I’d say, "Put out as much as you can. It doesn’t do anything sitting on a shelf." My feeling is that a work has little value until you "release" it, until you liberate it from yourself and your excuses for it -- "It’s not quite finished yet," "The mix will make all the difference," etc. Until you see it out there in the world along with everything else, you don’t really know what it is or what to think of it, so it’s of no use to you.

That advice gave me permission to release a lot of old recordings sitting on hard drives and to explore other genres with pseudonyms. It helped me grow as an artist. Although, I must emphasize that releasing a lot of recordings is not a silver bullet.

villin: There was a period of time where you were involved in performing, bringing soundscapes to a live setting. How did you first get involved in performing in front of an audience and what led you away from it?

Mark Rushton: It was an experiment. I discovered quickly that I’d rather work on my own.

villin: What is it that first drew you to making field recordings or to record nature sounds? What do you get out of that process?

Mark Rushton: In 2005 I bought a Zoom H2, my first digital audio recorder that saved on a SD card, which I still have. It enabled me to record for long periods of time and to capture the unknown, like recording overnight. I got better at editing.

villin: Earlier this year in a Junto Profile Q&A, you mentioned that "most of my music has arrived from iOS apps." What does your setup look like when making music or sounds, and how has that changed since you first began?

Mark Rushton: I do a lot of “pre-programming” in the apps, for lack of a better term. I set everything up, run it through my boxes, make sure the recorder is on, and then press a button. It looks easy, but there’s a lot of prep work. Then I have to edit and sometimes multi-track.

Besides the apps, my recordings use lap steel, kalimba, guitar, drum machines, synths, loops, and I have a bass clarinet with a Piezobarrel pickup that I got from a guy in Australia who makes them. My band Vibrating Wires is entirely about processed lap steel guitar. Vibrating Wires doesn’t do anything on Spotify, but it does pretty good on Pandora.

villin: What made you start considering releasing projects under various pseudonyms and how has the idea of compartmentalizing your projects influenced the way you think about creating music?

Mark Rushton: I blame the aforementioned Eno quote, but I also have a good friend who I bounce off ideas and he's very encouraging. At first, I was very nervous about going in the pseudonym direction. Over time, I discovered it gave me lots of freedom as an artist.

villin: While the medium has changed over the years, we've both been lifelong mixtape creators. Now working with playlists, you've turned that idea on its head slightly by utilizing playlists as a method by which to disseminate your own music. This outlet has me a bit curious about that intention question again as Spotify shows you have almost 1,400 public playlists. What sort of thoughts do you have when assessing the sheer volume of content you're putting your name to, and if providing guidance to other recording artists about how to gain traction in the digital landscape, would you recommend this sort of "flood the zone" approach when seeking exposure?

Mark Rushton: That’s not what I did, but I can see how it might be misinterpreted. 1400 playlists is a culmination of 12 years of being on Spotify. Some of those playlists are entirely other artists. I save everything. I’ve experimented with different playlist titles, graphics, descriptions, lengths of playlists, etc. I'll bet that the majority of my public playlists get no listens. I build things regularly that die on the vine, but sometimes one of them catches the wind.

Spotify is a great place to build playlists, but they neutered “natural discovery” about 2020. The big tech companies are mostly about “command and control.” They push the music you’re told to like. The streaming services are paid to push certain acts. Apple and Amazon Music don’t want you discovering anything at all. Tidal recently changed their policy regarding sharing playlists, but I don’t know if that will lead to better discovery.

I use a service called Soundiiz to transfer playlists from Spotify to everywhere I can get an account, either freemium or paid. I pay for a few streaming services so I know how they operate and to confirm that my distributors are doing their job. I once used a VPN so I could create some foreign accounts on KKBox and Yandex and push playlists there. I also store my playlists on Soundiiz in case a new service shows up. Most of these pushed playlists never get listens on the other services, but they may in the future. This goes back to the 10 Rules for Artists that I've used for years—"save everything, it might come in handy later"—it's mostly by Sister Corita Kent but there's one by John Cage.

villin: In 2006 I had my first podcasting experience, joining in as one of a rotating cast of music bloggers who contributed songs and commentary to a show. You've got me beat though, as you started the Hooray For Vouvray! podcast in December of 2004. What are your memories of that project and is podcasting a medium you've considered returning to?

Mark Rushton: That turned into the Ambient Rushton Podcast, which has been going almost 20 years and has about 189 episodes, or something like that. I’m thinking about letting the podcast go, though, as podcasts are mostly about talking and mine is about music. The podcast these days is to promote my music on stock music libraries.

villin: In a past lifetime I worked very briefly in music marketing, and by my personal account, I was fairly ineffective in that world. This was in 2013, which is the same year that I started subscribing to Spotify, and in the following years that platform has become one of your main drivers in terms of finding an audience for your work. Throughout your Substack posts, you've mentioned a few different angles you've tried utilizing to find traction on Spotify, including playlist submission, Discovery Mode campaigns, and sort of just lucking into landing a track on Spotify Radio. For new artists just starting out, where would you recommend they begin when attempting to navigate this arena?

Mark Rushton: Release only singles. Schedule them at least a month out.

Join Spotify for Artists and Amazon Music for Artists and pitch every single so you have a chance at being placed into things like Spotify-curated playlists. There are hugely popular Spotify-curated playlists, but there are thousands of niche ones with smaller audiences where your music can find listeners.

Try to figure out how to write an effective pitch of your single. In 500 characters, tell the Who, What, Where, When, Why - and How you’ll promote it. Tell a story, even if it’s not true. Don't use adjectives. Keywords and metadata about genres, playlists, and similar artists should be woven into your sentences. Initially, the submission is likely read by a bot, so try to guess what their rubric is so you can get passed along to a human. That will give you better odds. Don’t give up writing pitches if nothing gets accepted—I did this for a while and regret it. Save all your pitches—again, it might come in handy later. Find similar artists and put their music into your public playlists alongside yours. Not just popular artists, but anybody who fits.

Join a performance rights organization (PRO). I’ve been with ASCAP since 2002. BMI is fine, too. Just pick one and pay the application fee once you're in, make sure you have both the writer and publisher sides set up. I didn't know about setting up the publisher side until last year. Can you believe it? I've made so many mistakes.

Even if you only have one single out and it’s done nothing, sign up with an "administrator" to collect worldwide mechanical and publishing royalties. I use Songtrust. There are others. It cost me $100 and they take 15%. They got me royalties I never could have gotten on my own. They collect from The MLC in the US and something like 60 societies around the world. It's so easy to enter your songs into their system.

Sign up with SoundExchange. They will collect the radio side of Pandora, iHeartRadio, Sirius/XM, DMX cable radio, etc. They also collect foreign “neighbouring rights” royalties, which is a separate agreement, so if you get played on a German radio station you'll get paid. Learn how to use their Excel template for bulk uploading of data.

Put all your titles, UPCs, ISRCs, splits, artwork, files, etc, into a cloud based relational database like Airtable. I love Airtable. They have a generous free tier. Learn how to use it. Be as organized as you can.

Sign up with Music Reports and agree to every licensing opportunity. A few years ago, I agreed to something related to in-app usage on the Apple Watch, and out of the blue I started getting royalties because of it a couple years ago and it’s been steady ever since. I don't own an Apple Watch and had no idea they had in-app subscriptions where my music is used. This is music that does nothing on Spotify, not much on Pandora or anywhere else, but for some reason people around the world love it in some app on the Apple Watch.

Learn how to filter data in Excel, or use Pivot Tables in Excel. You should know this to help look through your royalty statements. It is always exciting to see a new country pop up in the reports. The last new ones I noticed are Eswatini and The Gambia. Do not get hung up on the "per stream" rate because it's different around the world for many reasons. Just be thankful somebody is listening to your music from The Gambia.

Sign up for Pandora AMP, attend the monthly Zoom calls when you can, and learn how to use AMP—especially how to schedule Featured Tracks, upload Artist Messages, and other things. AMP is run by a great bunch of people and you’ll get traction if you use it.

Put your music on Bandcamp, but don’t live on the Island of Bandcamp. What I mean is that you shouldn’t just be on Bandcamp. You should be everywhere. Always choose your settings on Bandcamp to allow people to pay more. If you get followers on Bandcamp you should run sales, offer your discography at a discount, and occasionally send out a special note. A lot of people on Bandcamp also use streaming services, so try to get them to follow you everywhere.

For your "business," when starting out just be a sole proprietor and use your Social Security number and personal bank account. You don’t need to be a Limited Liability Company until your CPA says so. I log income and expenses in a basic Excel template. Don't try to do your taxes yourself if you're expensing. I use a CPA now because I have a legit business, which is an LLC filing as S corp. I file quarterly tax payments to the IRS and State. I pay unemployment insurance to the State of Iowa, which was a nightmare to set up and seems bizarre because I'm the only employee. I use ADP to manage my payroll, which is how I pay myself. I guess I'm lucky to have made it this far, but it's always a lot of new things that I didn't previously know and the bureaucracy drives me crazy. Go as simple as you can on the business side for as long as you can. Most artists get terrible business advice from other artists. Be careful.

Read the latest edition of the Don Passman book on the music industry. He's funny.

Put your music on stock libraries like Pond5. That’s a great way to understand keywords, metadata, moods, etc. Maybe you have friends who are creatives in other areas. They will be inclined to use your work in their projects.

Same thing with exploring sync music licensing agencies. That’s a hard road, but you never know. Don’t have delusions that your music will be used in a film trailer or a Netflix show.

Nothing happens overnight. Nobody was born of whole cloth. It's OK to release juvenilia under pseudonyms. And never give up on your catalog!

villin: One topic I don't feel particularly settled on—whether it's as a creator, a music business person, or as a fan—is what an accurate price might be for a piece of recorded audio. How much should someone be paid when a song is heard versus when a song is purchased opens up a galaxy-sized can of worms, depending on who you're talking to, for example. Back in the '90s I remember paying $20+ for back catalog CDs, which didn't exactly leave me with a great feeling when leaving music stores. Now, when considering the collectability of vinyl, it's not unusual for new releases to be in the $40+ range. On the flip-side is the streaming question, where pre-tax earnings can be somewhere around a third of a cent per stream for artists.

Part of the problem, I think, comes with idea that there should be standardized pricing in the first place, when discussing recorded audio. A song created by an eight-piece band in a state of the art recording studio with a full staff working on production and mastering costs more than a field recording of nature sounds, but streaming sites are effort-neutral in terms of payouts, right? "Fairness" is at the heart of the debate around payouts, but even if they're standardized it's not like the model can speak to all the nuance that goes into the creation process. Do you have any thoughts around how today's market prices audio for creators and how do you think this might evolve in the coming decade as the streaming steps out of its infancy?

Mark Rushton: This is the best time ever for indie recording artists. Creating and distributing sound recordings worldwide is easy, quick, and nearly free. As an indie, you can collect a minimum of 85% of your royalties. That’s pretty good.

There’s really no gatekeepers today. No physical media has to be manufactured and warehoused. You can avoid contracts where The Man gives you 12.5% of net after recouping the advance, owns your master rights for 35 years, takes a cut of the publishing, and gives you nothing but headaches in perpetuity.

Streaming has worldwide acceptance but the growth curve is flattening. The industry has steady income thanks to subscriptions. Companies like Spotify are basically utilities. Apple Music, Amazon Music, and YouTube Music all have sugar daddies.

To be concerned about “per stream rates” is to misunderstand how the streaming services operate and how royalties are determined and paid based on tiers, countries, and exchange rates.

villin: "A Long Rain Sound for Pleasure Listening" under your Linder Valley name has roughly 3.2 million streams on Spotify. It's a really wild thing to think about the net you've cast with your work, utilizing these online tools. Linder Valley has, for example, more monthly listeners than John Cage. What sort of thoughts does that sort of reality bring up for you?

Mark Rushton: It’s out of my control. All I can say is that there’s a genre for everything.

villin: In our first email exchange you introduced me to Pandora's AMP service, and I'm curious what sort of success you've found outside of Spotify? Besides Pandora, there's obviously Apple Music, Amazon, YouTube, and TIDAL to name just a small selection of music discovery services, but is the bulk of your success still found through Spotify?

Mark Rushton: It’s equally Pandora and Spotify. Apple does good via licensing. Amazon and YouTube Music are a bit less, although I do good numbers on Amazon Prime in India.

All the royalties from services in Asia, Russia, the Middle East, and Africa are lower because the standard of living is different from the United States, but they're the kind of numbers I had in the US in 2016 and 2017, so I'm curious what will happen in the future.

villin: I watched one of the videos on your Facebook page where you explored a variety of different tools and mediums you use to distribute your work, and you talked at length about the statistics and analytics that underlie it all. When it comes right down to it, what are the main markers of success for you when thinking about your creative work?

Mark Rushton: For me, it's a lot of experimenting, being open to new things, and learning from mistakes.

villin: Even if only thinking about the volume question, there will be no match for the sheer output of sound that developing technologies will be able to create as time moves on. As generative AI begins to gain traction, how do you think that will impact creators such as yourself?

Mark Rushton: I use things like ChatGPT as a thesaurus, but it's bad at everything else. It can't write more than a couple sentences without repeating itself and sounding like a robot. It's a parlor trick.

I've seen the AI "art" and heard the AI "music." It's all terrible. And although "terrible" stuff sells, I don't think AI will get better. Tech has a proven track record of making things worse, inventing new versions of vaporware, or outright scams.

We have to remember that when the "AI" thing showed up in the news, tech stocks and crypto had crashed and the billionaires always need more money, so I get the feeling they came up with "AI" as a prop and paid off the propaganda machine to deliver their message.

Most "AI" seems like little more than remixed plagiarism. It's being used an excuse by companies to fire people, which seems questionable to me. Techies stopped being original a long time ago. Those guys are too busy micro-dosing psychedelics and believing their BS.

I'm not saying that we should all become Walter Benjamin about art, but I think it's a good idea to be skeptical about all the things the shiny, well-paid person is reading to us.

For more from Mark Rushton, listen to his music via Apple Music, Bandcamp, Spotify, or YouTube, and follow him online via Facebook and Instagram.

Dirt Nasty Beats Interview

While regularly releasing music on his own, Dirt Nasty Beats has also been mixing it up across a variety of different genres and styles over the past several months in the collaborative realm. Working with artists both in and outside of Des Moines, where he's based, a few notable credits from this phase of his work include tracks with DiggsDaBeat, Meep Mode, and Aubs., who helped bring together a five-song EP a few months ago. In this discussion, the producer explains that release, how the connection with Aubs. came together, his connection to the Blackshoe Inc. crew, and what his digital workflow looks like when creating tracks.

villin: I think what I most enjoy from your work is your take on various flavors of boom bap. What are your favorite type of beats to make and how'd you first get started making them?

Dirt Nasty Beats: Definitely the boom bap and especially the new age slow BPM/grime/boom bap is my comfort production. I actually started out making more heavy/808/horrorcore beats before horrorcore was a thing. I lived in a crib with some homies on the south side and they all made beats and I naturally just found a curiosity after sitting in on so many sessions, just watching them do their thing. I got me a laptop and everything took off after that.

villin: When thinking about production styles, was there anyone who you looked at as a template for how you wanted your own music to sound when you were first getting started? How would you say your style has changed over the past couple years?

Dirt Nasty Beats: At the beginning, not really. It was 2014 when I started making beats and I just wanted to have a style that would catch people’s attention, but still be pleasant to the ear. I've always listened to old school hip-hop; I got the Wu-Tang W on one arm and the MF Doom logo on the other. And after I got into making boom bap beats I wanted to be a mix between DJ Premier with the darker styling of Havoc, yet soul of the Alchemist with the uniqueness of RZA. After I learned sampling and the fundamentals, I accelerated quickly in the sub-genre and eventually used it as my main push coming out as a music producer.

villin: What does your workflow look like? What hardware and software do you find works best for you?

Dirt Nasty Beats: I switch between Logic Pro X and FL Studio. FL will forever hold a special place in my heart just because it was like a first love type deal when it came to producing hip-hop music. I typically like to start with chords, especially if I want a full sound for the finished product, [and] usually use the chords to fill up most of the mid-frequency of the beat, [then] add my little counter melody (if added towards the higher end of the frequency spectrum) and I let the bass dominate the low end. Good beats sound full, every time. I usually don’t add my bass/808 line until after I have the drums sequenced exactly how I hear them in my head and then I’ll come back with the bass line. I look at production like a puzzle: where do all the pieces fit? [On] a lot of my new age beats, my 808 and kick doesn’t line up together every hit; I’ll usually back off the 808 or the kick itself on some sections to give it a “space” and not have everything stacked on top of each other so it just sounds like a muddy mess in the mixing stage. And to top it off, I use a lot of texture or ambience for transition instead of switching up melody patterns or transposing the melody up or down to get listeners engaged.

villin: Is there any process or method you have when looking for samples or stems to use when creating your music?

Dirt Nasty Beats: I actually get a lot of my samples from Tracklib. They make digital crate digging such a dope and easy process. [It] helps you find the sample, has a looper in the app so I can quickly find loops, and when looking for loops I get a lot of stuff from old European indie horror movies just for the fact that they used a lot of super creepy instruments and the eerie space they leave in between instrument stabs/chords just give you a lot to flip with. I really want to get into ripping vinyl so bad but it’s expensive.

villin: I was first introduced to your work through the Dirt Lxrd alias. What was behind separating your music between that and the Dirt Nasty Beats name? 

Dirt Nasty Beats: I just like the look of it being two completely different entities. People on my personal socials and in town know it’s the same person, but the internet doesn’t. Not only to mention people in the industry take you on a more serious tip when you introduce yourself as a producer, compared to a rapper/artist. I can’t even count on my hands how many people I re-introduced myself to as a producer and their interaction was completely different than when I introduced myself as an artist. Plus the ego stroke of having your producer credits under your rap artist ego is nice every once in a while.

villin: About a year ago you collaborated with DRXCULV on a track called "Kick Back." You guys came through again a couple months ago, teaming up on the outro to the five-track Blackshoe Inc. collaboration. How'd you first get linked up with that crew and how has the influence of working with others like that influenced your music?

Dirt Nasty Beats: Man, yes. I met the boy like two years ago on Facebook; he posted some of his music and I seen a video someone shared of it and he had the grungy style with boom bap drums at the time and we just instantly clicked. He lived on the east coast at the time and we just sent a lot of work back and forth to each other. I had a show for Halloween in '21 and he flew out to perform at the show and shortly after he moved back. Him and DH Heartfather told me they wanted to get into throwing shows and DJing, and at the time I was a partner at the Iowa Hip Hop Showcase and designated DJ, so I talked to my partner about getting them on to help and, man, they really caught on so fast. They have always had amazing energy and I’m proud of what they are accomplishing.

villin: You also linked up with Aubs. in May for the From the Dirt. EP. What brought you two together and what made Aubs. a good fit for your style of beats?

Dirt Nasty Beats: Man, my guy Aubs. is a different breed. I met him at a show thrown by my guys at GFG Records, and it’s wild because I didn’t even plan on going, but I ended up with a free night so I went. I watched his set with King Supreme and was blown away by his lyrical talent and it helped he was on a grimey boom bap tip but with spoken word and I am all for that so heavy. It’s different and it’s needed! Just happened to be a coincidence he was homies with my guy McAllister from the McAllister Hours Podcast. He introduced us and we started talking I think I sent him a bunch of beats on IG one day and dude murdered all of them. He just started grabbing beats off me and about six months down the road From Da Dirt was born! We’ve done a lot of work since then, too, I’m so exited about!

villin: Prior to this conversation you'd mentioned an upcoming collaboration you're cooking up. What's that about and do you have any goals for yourself as you look ahead to the rest of the year?

Dirt Nasty Beats: I have some really good friends that do a lot of horrorcore—my original start, my initial start to the dynasty I wanted to create—and King Serp along with Crisis Child, I really believe we can make something super special for the horrorcore fans, plus making good music with good people is the end goal always! My goal for the rest of the year is to finish the end of [my] 2024 agenda and get the beginning of 2025's started. Villainous Records is the big focus of the next move.

For more, stream his music via Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube, or follow him online via Instagram.

Jazz Niehaus on "Heat Stroke" (Singled Out)

Singled Out is a feature focusing on the stories behind a song as told by the artists who made it. In this edition, director Jazz Niehaus provides commentary on the video for "Heat Stroke" by Annie Kemble. Having co-written the song with Annie, Jazz explained the inspiration which informed its lyrics and provided a foundation for the video's on-screen storyline. Before detailing the collaborative nature of the video's production, however, we started things off by looking in the rearview at the video for "Movie" from Annie's Dive Bar EP, and discussing how that experience benefited the development of "Heat Stroke."

villin: When first becoming introduced to Annie's music, I was simultaneously introduced to your work through the "Movie" video you made. What did you learn from making that video that you were able to utilize when developing "Heat Stroke"?

Jazz Niehaus: There were two main takeaways from “Movie” that I felt really transitioned us into making "Heat Stroke." First and foremost, you can make anything you want with your friends, regardless of resources. Our biggest asset in that project was the fact that we were having a lot of fun, and that undoubtedly translated to the finished product. If you can let go of the general fear of being embarrassed and the elitism that can surround creative spaces, the rest will come out in the wash. Making “Movie” made me feel like I was making a school project with a flip camera again. Secondly, people are willing to help if you’re willing to ask. We got access to that beautiful, historical church with a simple Facebook message to my home county’s historical society. I can’t imagine what else would have been made possible had I been just more willing to ask. I think bringing that same energy to "Heat Stroke" was vital to the project.

villin: It's interesting watching the two videos together because of the gentle subversiveness that plays a part in each. In "Movie," for example, Annie's character falls in love with a camera, which I read as something of a creative metaphor for egotism. And in "Heat Stroke," a group of beefy thirst traps credited as "The Male Gaze" fawn over her while she croons about something of a romance with one's self, getting playful with the guys while lyrically minimizing any role they could actually have in her life. What was the idea behind "The Male Gaze" in the video from your perspective?

Jazz Niehaus: "Heat Stroke," lyrically, was inspired by both a conversation with a friend, and by a quote by Margaret Atwood from her book The Robber Bride. I’m not sure where I heard it first, most likely TikTok, but it reads as follows…

“Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it's all a male fantasy: that you're strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren't catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you're unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.”

The conversation, or more so statement, I heard from a woman that I’ll allow to remain anonymous was something to the effect of “When I’m having sex, I’m not really thinking about the man. I’m thinking about myself. I’m thinking about how good I look.”

I think it’s interesting, the way two things can be true at one time. This concept that “The woman is her own voyeur” is both a societal burden and something sexy; Self Voyeurism as a cross to bear and Self Voyeurism as a pleasure. That dichotomy inspired me to write the lyrics that eventually became the bulk of "Heat Stroke." Without “The Male Gaze” that dichotomy wouldn’t exist. From the video perspective, I wanted the male gaze to feel—while sexy—both uncomfortable and unavoidable. I wanted there to be homage to both truths: that you can both love and hate what it feels like to be watched by men.

villin: From a production quality standpoint, "Heat Stroke" looks and feels much more polished than "Movie." From a visual aesthetic perspective, what was your hope for the video and was the presentation at all meant to relate to the song's sound or lyrics?

Jazz Niehaus: "Movie" was a bit of a vanity project, if you feel comfortable calling it that. The song was already released, and doing well. I didn’t have anything to do with "Movie" as a song, outside of directing & filming the music video. It didn’t necessarily need a goofy home video to pair with it, but we wanted to make something silly and organic. It was Annie’s concept and I was there to bring it to life with her. In contrast, Annie and I wrote and produced "Heat Stroke" hand in hand. Musically, we were incredibly inspired by pop and R&B music of the early 2000s, and I wanted to capture that essence in the video. I wanted it to land in a sweet spot of homage to what feels like a bygone era of music videos, while also being its own thing. I don’t have the mind’s eye, so art for me is really about the feeling it leaves you with even after the piece is over. I knew how I wanted "Heat Stroke" to feel in your gut, and I wanted the video to hit the exact same part: That part being a nostalgia for an iconic time in music and pop culture, and a connection to your inner white trash coquette.

villin: How much of a collaborative effort was this, in terms of working with Borg and Andrew Peterson? Was there a singular idea that you were all following or did everyone on deck chip in to help steer the direction of the video?

Jazz Niehaus: Since it was my first time directing something of this scale, I was a bit paranoid over being under prepared. In turn, I planned the music video shot by shot before ever connecting with Borg and Andrew. I wanted to make sure to go in with a clear vision, simply out of fear of not being taken seriously. I think I let insecurity steer me into a lot of critical thinking leading up to the shoot, and that was to my advantage. I found out on shoot day that my insecurity was needless and baseless—Borg and Andrew were so incredibly thoughtful, helpful, and never made me feel like I was in over my head. They helped troubleshoot anything that I overlooked, and brought more ideas to the table that really helped the video come to life. They creatively brought so much to the table the day of and really took the time to understand my vision. It would have been impossible without them.

villin: What was your comfort level putting together a production of this size, where there is both a larger cast than with "Movie," in addition to the aforementioned team that rounded out the crew? What did you learn from this shoot that you'd like to work on or experiment with further moving forward?

Jazz Niehaus: Although I was a bit insecure about putting together a production of this size, I kept reminding myself “morons do this all the time.” I always keep that in mind when I’m doing… really anything. I’m not even sure that morons direct music videos all the time, but telling myself that felt good. I also sat in the security of knowing that I certainly know how to plan stuff. At the time of production, I was managing a bar. That's, like, the ultimate planning oriented job. It’s also a job that often requires telling men, especially ones that are inebriated, what to do. I kind of came to the conclusion that if I can make that happen on a weekly basis, I can probably get a bunch of hot guys to listen to me for seven hours. Shoot day went incredibly smooth, aside from Annie falling down the stairs, and everybody was extremely kind and professional. I spent the day grateful for the whole cast and crew. My friend Mary spent the day on set as production assistant and did one million pain in the ass jobs. The boys helped move every heavy thing. We even managed to wrap the day early. I think moving forward, I want to maintain a cast and crew that can both have fun and get a job done. I also want to continue to push myself to make shots with lots of moving parts happen, like the one take party scene. Annie and I always joke that I’m the one who has to reel her in when it comes down to what's possible. I think it would be good to let her win a little in the future and try to conquer something big with $500 and a prayer.

For more from Jazz, follow her work via Instagram and TikTok, and stream "Heat Stroke" via Apple Music, Bandcamp, and Spotify.

Lex Leto Interview

Composed and arranged in connection with a Melinda Jean Myers-choreographed UI Dance Company piece, Right Here is the latest release among a prolific string of work from Iowa City's Lex Leto. Over the past few years you may have seen or heard Lex via their work with Penny Peach, the Christine Burke Ensemble, or most recently the refined jazz pop of have you been the night? with Jarrett Purdy. This sort of creative dexterity remains on display in the new seven song EP, which balances a largely instrumental body of music with sparse vocals of both an personal and abstract nature. In our conversation, we discussed Lex's lyrical approach on the release, our personal interpretations of some of the EP's songs, and the collaborative nature of their ongoing projects.

villin: A concept that seems to have played a significant role in your life over the past several years is that of moving away from an individualist to that of a collaborator. On Instagram you offered a note, adding that "As we began conceptualizing Right Here, we were thinking about + in conversation with each other about climate change and our relationship with our home and each other." How did the role of collaboration play into molding what you wanted to say with Right Here, and did it end up affecting how you now view the project?

Lex Leto: When I talk about this transition from individual to community, I’m primarily speaking about the people I have become close to since moving to Iowa. I used to have a lot of pride in my independence, insisting on doing everything myself. The love I have felt from friends here, artistic relationships and otherwise, has shown me the beauty, importance, and necessity of being held by your loved ones and holding them. I’m soft with community love and I’ve seen how it can heal myself and others.

Speaking specifically on the collaboration in this work, it was truly the key to the entire thing, because the music and dance were created so symbiotically—it’s the closest I’ve ever worked with someone who creates in a different medium. We were constantly creating work in complete tandem through improvisation in rehearsal, or in direct response to each other, with the work taking further shape with each new added sound, choreographed phrase, or new conceptual conversation about where we wanted to take it. It felt like there were all these beautiful and spontaneous synchronicities that kept happening between the music and the dance because of how in conversation those two elements are in the work. Mindy (director of the UI Dance Company) and I talked a lot about how, even though the dancers and I were performing in different mediums, we were not separate from each other in the work. Because of that symbiosis, Right Here pulled music out of me that I don’t think I would’ve otherwise created and I’m very proud of what we all created together.

villin: There are spurts of lyrical direction guiding a largely instrumental album. With "Fluffy Plastic Land," however, the cycle of "everything is good, everything is fine, everything is mine," speaks to me, in a way emphasizing the degradation of the natural world but also our personal internal experience. Elsewhere there's a line directly aimed at American psychopathy and I'm wondering what your interpretation of the EP's lyrics are when taken as a whole?

Lex Leto: One of my favorite styles of lyric writing is when a song has only a few lines of lyrics—it gives them so much more weight. That interest of mine worked very well for this project because long instrumental sections with no lyrics allows the dance to speak for itself without the words getting the the way. When writing the lyrics, I was primarily writing about my own experiences and interests in relation to the themes we were exploring in the work, and the overall cohesion sort of realized itself as the work developed. In “I AM THE MAN” we wanted to evoke the power and machismo of these men who run everything, showing the darkness of that while also acknowledging the duality that holding power in your body can feel good.

The “American Psycho” line is a direct reference to the film of the same name, because Christian Bale’s character really sort of epitomizes that character of a powerful man who can get away with anything just because he’s a clean cut, rich, white man. Right Here feels incredibly personal to me just because of the transformation I feel I have undergone since moving to Iowa—going from this stubborn, individualist embodiment of “I AM THE MAN” through a recognition of the social systems that have fostered that feeling in me, and finally into an ever-evolving place of deconstructing those individualist traits in favor of community love. To pull words from the dance company, because I think they said it so well on their website, “the work shows themes of power, greed, obliviousness, striving, grinding, and collapsing. It also shares an aim toward hope, connection, and collective action.” 

villin: Albeit in a very controlled manner, that song devolves slightly into a whirl of electronic noise. For me, this provokes a similar feeling as a segment from DREAMSCAPE which blends a frantic flute with incoherent howls. The through-line for me comes with recognizing the unavoidable anxiety of our time, whether that's found within a dream or awakened state. Am I making any sense with that or is this interpretation way off base?

Lex Leto: I love that interpretation! I think any interpretation anyone could have is equally as valid as my own. There are as many musical interpretations of the work as there are people and I think that’s one of the fun things about art. For me though, I think that through-line has come from sonic interest rather than some kind of realized feeling—I just really love the juxtaposition of hard and soft sounds and it’s something I enjoy creating a lot of. 

villin: A line that stood out to me early in DREAMSCAPE speaks to the "attempted understanding of the chaos of things." I hear echoes of that throughout Right Here. What role does writing and performing music play for you in terms of using it to try to make sense of the world around you?

Lex Leto: Thanks for sharing—it’s always so interesting hearing other people’s interpretations of your work because sometimes they pick up on a thread of yourself that you didn’t even realize was there!

With DREAMSCAPE being the title of the entire work, all the lyrics in “Dream Song,” the lyric you referenced included, were written during a time in which I was lucid dreaming a lot and having trouble getting out of bed because I would just lay there dreaming for hours. When I would wake up I would spend a lot of time writing and sort of researching myself to figure out why I could never get myself to just wake up from a dream. That lyric is literally me talking about simply trying to understand what was going on with me, because I was behaving in a way I didn’t understand. I don’t know if I would say that I write and perform to try to make sense of the world—I think, perhaps, a more accurate way of saying it is, I am often trying to make sense of things on my own, and I have a separate interest in writing and performing art, so whatever I’m exploring in myself at that time is sort of just what is most natural for me to create work about. It’s almost like it’s more coincidental? I just create with whatever is right in front of me/whatever I’m most interested in.

villin: Using a personal point of reference, stylistically the song "release" is akin with something like Björk's Medúlla, despite its differences in intent and execution. Did anything specifically inspire the song and what role does "release" play in the story you're telling with Right Here?

Lex Leto: I really like how that one came about, actually… Last summer I got a pretty bad vocal injury—not bad enough for surgery but bad enough that I was in vocal therapy for six months and still have some residual swelling on my vocal cords as I type this a year later. At the very beginning of making music for this project I had sent Mindy another work sample of mine, a song called “Don’t Come Find Me,” and she asked me to make something that had the same intensity of that song. At that time I knew I couldn’t perform anything vocally intense with my injury, so I made “release” from the vocal samples of the other song. I wasn’t trying to create any particular style of music, I was just using what I had and trying to follow the feeling of the sound. That song really is “sound as feeling” to me, and it was what we needed for that part of the work as a whole. That was always one of my favorite dances to watch because of how the dancers were able to turn that intense and gritty sound into movement.

villin: In closing with "I'll Be Here," there's a warmth and feeling of homeostasis that accompanies it. In keeping with the context surrounding climate change, I hear something of an unspoken comment through the song that says a better option is available if I/we choose to direct action toward it. What do you feel when listening to this song?

Lex Leto: This was the very first song the dancers started working with and the only one that wasn’t written specifically for Right Here. I wrote that song back in 2020 actually, so it has taken on a new shape in the context of this work. I can’t recall the feelings I had when writing it then, but it was only a few months after moving away from all my friends in Georgia, so those relationships that I was physically far away from were heavy on my mind. I like your descriptors of “warmth” and “homeostasis,” and I think sonically that is what I still feel in the song, even though the context has changed. Despite how bleak things are in this world, there is hope and strength in community. The way this work came together so symbiotically embodies that message already and it’s the one we wanted to leave people with as well. 

villin: There is another side to the release which comes with your decision to donate any proceeds from it to the Atlanta Solidarity Fund. I saw that you did your undergrad at the University of Georgia-Athens—are you from Georgia, and what inspired the focus on the Atlanta Solidarity Fund?

Lex Leto: I am from Georgia! Any of my friends around here will be able to tell you that I am a fully Midwest-pilled Iowa City lover, but I still miss Atlanta and Athens a lot, all the time. In Atlanta right now the Atlanta Police Foundation and the Mayor of Atlanta, Andre Dickens, are pushing for an almost 400 acre military-grade training facility for police known as Cop City. Not only have they disrupted local ecosystems by destroying 85 acres of forest while our planet is heating, they are disrupting and endangering the local community, with Atlanta having lost one peaceful forest defender to police gunfire and there are more in prison on domestic terrorism charges. My thoughts have been very much on Atlanta during this time, seeing the disgraceful behavior of our Atlanta representatives, endangering their own community (and many others, if this were to be built) in favor of profit and oppression.

The community response in Atlanta is overwhelmingly against Cop City, and the solidarity shown from the forest defenders in Atlanta and all over the world is continually reminding me the importance of community and the power we have as a collective. Cop City will never be built. I don’t even remember when I made the choice to donate the money to that cause; it doesn’t really feel like I even made that choice. This work was made with my community, about my community, for my community—whatever amount of money it makes doesn’t belong to me. If I can pass anything along to any readers: talk to your neighbors.

For more from Lex Leto, stream Right Here on Apple Music, Bandcamp, and Spotify, or follow Lex via Instagram.