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Small Million - Young Fools
/ “Why aren’t we bored anymore?”
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// Letters to YVYNYL //
Haunted Spurs - Manhattan
/ Pop-garage punk artist Justin Daniel Rutz took a moment from his pretty chill job as an art museum security guard to tell me about the fresh music he’s been working on with his dedicated free time between shifts.
Hey Mark,
Right now I’m typing this on my phone where I work. It’s not the most ideal but it’s where I have the most time. An art museum is a strange place to inhabit. Especially as a security guard. I’m surrounded by the greatest most celebrated artists that have ever walked the earth and also the everlasting slew of forgotten artists whose names no one will remember. And I’m not talking about the artists on the walls that I don’t particularly care for that day. They already did it, they already won.
I’m talking about the guards that work here. The people that wander the halls. They’re all artists, in their own write. Some may be actors, or musicians or painters, but all of us are the same. Artists are all the same type of people, whether they’re a 26 year old white kid, a refugee from the siege of Sarajevo, or a baby boomer that was a former Black Panther. We’re all exactly the same as the people that hang on the walls that surround us. But there has to be a difference right? Something that stands between those that hang on the walls and the slew that meanders the halls? Is it pure talent? You could hang any of their paintings next to a Picasso and 9/10 people that walk in wouldn’t notice anything different. Pure luck? No, I can’t believe that I have no role in deciding my future. And then something snapped.
I had been in a few “bands” around Portland, playing my own material or buried in the rhythm section of a multi-genre skipping band with more band members than audience members and it just wasn’t working anymore. I couldn’t juggle working 40 hrs with three bands hoping something will strike gold while never feeling like I was in control of where I was headed. So I decided to act like an artist, I threw a fit and crumpled up whatever work was in front of me and started over from scratch with a fevered pitch.
I had been really inspired by the mixtape movement that happened in hip-hop and the idea of the guerrilla musician using any way possible to get ahead. I can record everything myself now, I have a way to release everything myself now, I have a way to market myself now. That worked for me, I was rich in time not money, so I downloaded free recording software, bought the cheapest interface I could find, opened a bottle of wine and started. I basically just sat in my room every night and just recorded everything I had. It wasn’t that much but I had a group of skeleton songs. I wanted it to be garage rock, it’s near and dear to my heart and it’s the only choice aesthetically that I could really get away with on my budget.
I wrote most of the bass lines or lead guitar parts on the spot, so a lot of the time what your hearing is the first and only time I played it. I whittled away at it though and after about a month I had pretty much everything recorded. Except drums. I had planned on using a drum machine, which sounds crazy now but I wanted it to be all DIY. That didn’t work, like not at all. so I called my friend Donovan Allen that grew up in the same bleak seaside town as me and thankfully he was amazing, the drums and the vocals were the only thing I couldn’t really skimp on. Luckily at the time where I was living, my landlord had worked at some studios in Portland in the 90’s and made out like a bandit when they all had to close, so he made a studio out of the basement of his house and thankfully that was readily available, outside of the odd metal band that would go in and shake the entire house from time to time.
Somehow everything ended up coming together better than I could have imagined. I still don’t know what the difference is between the names on the walls and the faceless hordes that occupy the halls. But I’m still working at it. Maybe luck, maybe talent, maybe nurture, maybe nature. I don’t know. Whatever it is though I want to try and find out. I want to be there, whatever muddy bank I have to climb I will, if I have to fight tooth and nail I will, I’ll do whatever it takes to get there, even if it’s just so that someone will mispronounce my name in two hundred years time. It will still be my name.
Thanks,
Justin RutzSubmit your story to Letters to YVYNYL.
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// Letters to YVYNYL //
premiere: Sheers - Depth
/ The warm movements hold cold reverberations from the low hum permeating this track, a place that feels difficult to turn away from Lily Sheers’ work. And oh, that organ! Ultimately, I am transfixed to these works that use mixed media within outside elements of craft: dance, film, color. Join this incantation for the deeper we go into this autumn song.
Hey Mark,
Firstly, I admire what you do and the music you choose to feature on YVYNYL, and the letters from artists are brilliant. I’ve spent perhaps too many hours of life wondering why I write songs, why anyone should listen, and what good it does. As a classically trained choral singer and harpist, I’ve never been certain “pop” music is the place for me. Regardless, I’m putting my best efforts into this project, hoping that if I go about it genuinely, someone will connect with my work. Anyway, I love the Letters to YVYNYL because they make listening a more personal experience.
“Depth” was an intuitively-written song. I started with only a simple bass line and a vocal melody so that the space between the two could be an instrument in itself. Working with the musical representation of distance, the autobiographical lyrics are about the isolating effects of emotional independence. At the time I thought it easier to miss people than to maintain vulnerable relationships, despite a resultant battle between the emotional and logical self.
After fleshing out the song more, I recorded the track with Scott Schaus, and our mutual friend Hasan Mahmood came up with the video’s premise, which I think is a great reflection of the song’s sentiment. The one-shot video (truly one shot, no cheats!) features the improvised dancing of Juliette Nolan. While she represents the emotional aspect of “Depth,” I act as the inhuman, a-emotional counterpart ignoring her presence. We laid out the setting to echo feelings of isolation and duality, accented by Kayla Newell’s defiant paintings.
I remember the first time Hasan asked me about the meaning of the “Depth,” I blushed and gave the briefest answer possible. For someone who writes songs about fear of vulnerability, speaking about the meaning of lyrics is also utterly terrifying. The process of completing and putting out this music video has proven befitting, I suppose. Each step has challenged me to reveal more of my emotional self. Here I am now, writing you with more detail than I could not have comfortably imagined upon creating “Depth.” It still makes me a little nervous, but if it’s for the sake of giving a genuine account, so be it.
Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the video and this bit of backstory. Let me know if you have questions I left unanswered.
Cheers,
Lily Sheers
Submit your story to Letters to YVYNYL.
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Animal Eyes - Mushroom Hunter
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Tango Alpha Tango - Wolfpack
Mesmerizing. Listening to every piece this band has published on the web.
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Had such a great time making this video for ‘Wyoming’ on the coast of Oregon earlier this year. Directed by Jeff Rowles and shot on super 16mm by Edward P Davee.
Heather Woods Broderick - Wyoming
Colors. Moods. Sounds.
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Le Printemps - Can’t Have You
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premiere: Cemeteries - Sodus
Kyle Reigle tells me that this new work is “sort of a love-letter to slowburn 80s horror films especially ones set in small lakeside towns like The Fog. I recently moved to Portland, Oregon from Western New York and the change of scenery has been really inspirational and has changed my songwriting/recording approach.” I think he’s on to something here, if these images don’t already do it justice:
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Cool Trips - Up and Coming to You
Hyper-mellow jam here, one of the first tracks I found released in 2015. “something is going to go for you soon…” Looking for more from this anonymish electronic artist.
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Grace Mitchell - Runaway
“What if we just wanna dance…” is something I ask myself a lot, too.
“Why don’t we runaway?” asks rising star Grace Mitchell herself, the center question of her new track Runaway in which she describes the silliness of it all, and how she sometimes wishes to escape pretty much everything. There’s a sense of starting over with a clean slate more powerful than ever, rather than turn your back on things and cry in some corner - that exact feeling is translated into the track in which Grace takes matters into her own hands (and voice, re: sampling her own ooh’s).
