Interview w/ Alex Kent
By Nick Caceres
Published 01/19/2025
In the second half of 2023, the entire underground music scene in SoCal would get smacked in the face by the sudden arrival of an album that has incited eager praise for its overtly dense themes of shame, christianity and sexual uproar. The sound textures offered long, winding passages of Swans-derived Post-Rock, Neoclassical Darkwave and Noise Rock, scratching each itch with sharp edges of drone and feedback. Then there’s the vocals, which are some of the most intense displays of emotional performance art in recent memory with swathes of spoken word, opera by the subject of this interview, Alexander Gregory Kent, Alex Kent for short (which is how he’ll be referred to in this interview).
Ever since Sprain was cut short after the milestone record that was “the Lamb As Effigy” Alex Kent would gather the scraps and quickly regroup with Sylvie Simmons to form Shearling, crafting and now mixing an album that will serve as the satisfied successor. This has become one of the most anticipated underground releases this year and will likely deliver on all fronts, with Kent promising in this interview that it will be somehow more intense than everything he’s made before, yes…even including “The Lamb as Effigy.”
The following interview took place on January 12, where we discussed Shearling, Big Brown Cow, Kent’s intense style of live performance and I even managed to have my first true Nardwuar moment with Hybrid Sheep Organizer, even though I’m not trying to copy the guy.
Picture of Alex Kent with a horse
Photo Courtesy of Instagram
Nick: Hey Alex, how've you been? I know that Los Angeles has fallen into a lot of disparity this past week.
Alex: I'm good, I'm safe. Most people I know are safe but I do know a few of my friends have lost their homes. Right now we're just doing everything we can to help one another out and donating to GoFundMes and being there for each other. My house is within a mile of the Eaton Canyon Fire and so far it's still standing, so that's all we can hope for.
Nick: I saw on a map what it looked like and I didn't know it could be that bad.
Alex: Yeah, I know. The first night my dad texted me and asked me how I was with the fires and I kind of almost ignored him because I’m kind of used to fires that, you know, get put out pretty quick or aren't even a fourth as extreme as this one is. But I just think that the circumstances with the wind and the dryness of this particular year, this season has created a really bad-perfect storm for fires.
Nick: To switch it to the main topic (imagine if it's just an hour of Alex talking about the fires) I've been hearing that you're working on a new project under your newly formed band, shearling. How's that coming along and how far along are you?
Alex: Oh it's really good. We have a record coming. It's being mixed right now so it's in the latter stages of production and it'll be out this year, as soon as possible. It's going great and I'm happy with it.
Nick: You feel like 2025 is going to be a big year for you?
Alex: I don't know. I try and not get my hopes up about anything, but any year we get to put music out is especially a good year.
Nick: Do you have a name for the shearling album yet or do you not want to share that?
Alex: Yeah I have a name for it, but I can't tell you.
Nick: Okay. I want to also ask about Big Brown Cow, any updates on when we'd see a full-length release from that alias in particular?
Alex: It's hard to say. Sometimes with Sprain and Shearling, there's no real proper 100% archetype or sound for those projects. So a lot of the time when I end up making songs that I think will be used for Big Brown Cow or whatever, we'll end up working on them as a band and they will work better because people, my friends and people I play with, will contribute their ideas and stuff. So for that reason, I try and keep the Big Brown Cow recordings as stripped down as humanly possible. I just don't know when it will come out but I have like a few songs done and I work pretty actively on them. It's just splitting my time between multiple projects, you know? So most of my energy goes towards shearling stuff.
Nick: Yeah, that seems to be the priority at the moment but I know that something else that has been taking up your time is you also serving as a producer for Elizabeth A. Carver's new album, “The Cart Before The Horse.” Where do you know Carver from and what are your thoughts in regards to helping someone else's work come to fruition?
Alex: Oh, I know her from just Los Angeles music stuff, ended up being at the same shows or whatnot for the same like, you know, three or four years. So just running into one another. As far as helping other people make their music, it feels really good to do. It's a lot less pressure on me but I'm not the best engineer and I don't have the best equipment but I have a pretty decent ear for what to make. I don't know how to say eloquently but with her music it's kind of in a vein of something that I feel like I would do or I can relate to. So for that style of music, it's really fun to collaborate with someone. I don't want to say “produce” ‘cause it was mostly her ideas and whatnot but encouraging or just being around for the process when it actually gets made is super rewarding. I don't like it as much as making my own music and it's a lot of work, but I can see myself doing more of that in the future.
Nick: This was in your home studio, right?
Alex: Yeah, I mean, that's generous, my home for sure, maybe a few preamps and a few microphones. That's about it.
Nick: As underground music is.
Alex: (Laughs)
Elizabeth A. Carver - "The Cart Before The Horse" (2025) album cover
Image courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: Tell me a little bit about the “After a While Crocodile” debut show for Shearling at the 20 Years of Breakdancing Ronald Reagan show at the Coaxial Arts Foundation back in August. From just listening to the recording without actually being there, I’m curious to know what the attitude towards that debut performance was like in-person?
Alex: Well, we trimmed a lot of stuff down for that show because we kind of think of Shearling as the spiritual successor or continuation of Sprain. With that band, we had a lot of lengthier performances and lengthier songs. Shearling kind of does the same thing, but for that particular performance, we had only played with our bass player for a couple months and we only had maybe like six or seven rehearsals total so it kind of made sense to trim down some of the stuff which, you know, isn't ideal for the first performance or whatever but I thought that it would be more fun to play than it would be to hold back until it's “perfect” and super ready to go. It's been super important to me to get shearling up to the same level of intensity that Sprain was when we ended but I feel like you can't just do that with only a couple months worth of rehearsals. Like Sprain had been building up to that for the whole time we were playing together. In addition to that we were last on a bill that was like 15 artists and it was all Noise. By the end of that, it was courteous to shorten our stuff, I guess a little bit.
Nick: I think it was probably a nice change of pace for people who were listening to noise for the past several hours there.
Alex: I don't know. Many Noise people don't like rock. They don't like guitars for the most part. But all of those people are really cool, super nice. We're tight with most of them and it was a really fun show. Then we didn't play for the rest of the year, but we have some more stuff coming up. We ended up focusing on recording.
Nick: You've mentioned on the TBD Presents interview that you guys really want to do a tour but it's just hard to fund a tour and organize one at your size, right?
Alex: Yeah, well, we have some stuff coming up hopefully overseas. I don't want to make any promises yet, so that's all I'll say. We're working on it though. That's always been something we wanted to do, but every time Sprain almost got it, something would happen and it would all fall apart. We're lucky if we can do one or two tours a year because I never like to use the lack of money as an excuse, but it's just very difficult to pull off nowadays with the kind of rent we all pay and I think we could do it if we weren't as actively trying to release music as much as we want to. I kind of see Shearling putting a record out every one or two years. That's the goal and if you want to do that, it's really expensive to do that stuff too. You kind of have to choose when you're at our level.
Nick: Okay, going back to that performance, since I got this vibe from it, is this Shearling album going to feature those long passages of feedback that I saw in there? It seemed like it pulled from a lot of No Wave and Noise Rock from the 90s.
Alex: Yeah, I feel like that performance is a poor representation of the way the record sounds. There are moments where the band's all playing at once and there's like big shots of feedback and the dissonant chords and some of the kind of stuff that Sprain had done too but it's really a totally different animal, you know, the recorded version. We've been playing with Elizabeth, who I recorded her record, and she's been on sampler, keyboards and third guitar. So that's a way we've been able to get closer to the live version of the record we're working on. It's a way to make it sound a lot closer, a lot better. It still sounds pretty different but I'm excited for the upcoming shows because I think that'll be a much better portrayal of the stuff we've been doing.
"20 Years of Breakdancing Ronald Reagan" show poster
Image courtesy of Restlessnites
Shearling - "After While Crocodile..." (2024) bootleg recording cover
Image courtesy of Rate Your Music
Nick: So jumping over to Big Brown Cow, that Coaxal Arts Foundation performance threw a wrench at what I understood about that alias. In the Dead Mothers Collective and Open Book performances, it seemed like this was going to be an unplugged acoustic solo project, however I got whiplashed by Drone with this recent performance. So with that context in mind, what is your intention with Big Brown Cow exactly?
Alex: It's pretty much whatever I want to do, the recordings are orchestrated and composed. The idea behind that show was I texted like 10 of my friends and was like, “Do you want to do a free improv thing?” And so we started doing that and then at some point I was a little not super pleased with where it was going so I kind of tried to interject and push it in a direction that I would want. It was, you know, mixed results, but I thought some parts of it were really good. As far as the answer to your question goes, yeah, for the most part when I do Big Brown Cow, I play the songs, but it can be anything. I've done Acapella sets, I tried to do a Noise set at one time. I call it the “research and development” project. There's not a whole lot of pressure with the Big Brown Cow stuff because no one really goes to those shows. So sometimes, as Sprain grew and Shearling is, there was a lot of pressure to make sure that there was a certain level of quality. Whereas with Big Brown Cow, I can fall on my face like a fool and it's not the end of the world.
Big Brown Cow - "August 9th at Coaxial" (2024) bootleg recording cover
Image courtesy of Rate Your Music
[Dead Mothers Collective]. (2024, June 30). [Dead Mothers Collective] Big Brown Cow - March 22, 2024 [Video].
[TinnitusPaparazzi]. (2024, January 8). Big Brown Cow - The Open Book 1/6/2024 [Video].
Nick: Luckily, a project of yours that is already released are the two recent albums under your full name, Alexander Gregory Kent. Why did you decide to release those two records under your name over a more mysterious moniker like Big Brown Cow?
Alex: Well, mostly because I think that people got the wrong idea about this record. So that was my follow-up to what I had previously done in spring. The one I put out, “Teaches Dust To Reason,” was stuff that was sitting around on my hard drive that I made for my own enjoyment. Sometimes I just make stuff and it doesn't really go anywhere. So I thought that it should come out at the very least and if stuff is thematically or closely knit together enough for it to come out on the same release, then why not put it out there? It really was not much more intentional or cerebral than that, not to like discount my own work or whatever, what it was, was just some stuff I put out. Previously I was really really strict about only putting out the best of the best stuff that I was working on, but I don't know, I mean, it's either going to go out and people can listen to it or it's just going to sit on my hard drive and no one will hear it So why not put it out there?
Nick: A Lot of people were putting it on their best albums list of 2024.
Alex: I'm really glad people liked it. The Shearling album is definitely the statement follow-up, but I appreciate that people liked that stuff. I mean, I'm not half-assing it. There’s intention behind it and I worked on it really hard, but it's not as labored over as…you know…the main projects I guess.
Nick: What’s the context behind naming those albums, those two ones that you released? I find it intriguing.
Alex: You'll see…
Nick: What was your approach when constructing and composing them? Where were they initially recorded?
Alex: I recorded them at home. I had one house before the house I have now and it was kind of a noisy house. No one really cared how loud we were so I just ended up recording all that stuff. The first one, “Teaches Dust To Reason," I recorded in the garage. On the second album, “Alexander, I am not a Saltlick,” most of that stuff was recorded all over because there's so many different little sonic worlds, so it ended up being like mostly at home on my computer, but wherever home was, was a bunch of different places.
Nick: Are there going to be any future installments of that? Or are you just keeping it at the two?
Alex: Oh under my own name? Yeah, for sure. I've even thought about putting up stuff like practice demos and not like charging people for it. Jim O'Rourke has this “trash Bandcamp” or something where he just gets up in the morning, drinks like two cups of coffee and then just fools around with a modular synth and then puts it on, you know? Yeah I'm into a lot of improvised music, so I don't really see a problem with that. I think there's a lot of room to do stuff that's less cerebrally minded and less labored over. Just instantaneous to the point. I definitely plan on releasing more projects under my own name.
Nick: Yeah, I think another guy like that is Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xiu.
Alex: Yeah, of course. He's got his Bandcamp with stuff like dog barking noises
Nick: And him doing drunk commentary on his own music.
Alex: (Laughs) Yeah, he figured out a really good way to sustain himself financially. Yeah like a lot of that stuff you end up having to pay for which is cool. I don't really have that kind of following but I do think it has been helpful because people do support me through the Bandcamp. I didn't release this stuff with any monetary value in mind, but people do support it and most of that money just gets funneled into the next project.
Nick: I'm curious, would you ever consider playing them live with your other stuff?
Alex: No one's ever asked me. Yeah, I would.
Nick: Are you hoping to have a physical release of these albums sometime soon? Has The Flenser ever reached out to you regarding that?
Alex: No, they never reached out about anything. Might not be a good fit. They have so much stuff going on all the time. I would like to put it out on physical releases, but at the moment, all my money and energy really is going towards the Shearling stuff which has proved to be very expensive and time consuming and we'll certainly have physical releases of that.
Alexander Greogry Kent - "Teaches Dust To Reason" (2024) album cover
Image courtesy of Bandcamp
Alexander Greogry Kent - "Alexander, I Am Not A Saltlick" (2024) album cover
Image courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: I’d like to spend this last half revisiting Sprain, but first I remember you mentioning on TBD that you have a background in music education. Where did you attend and what skills did you pull from that period when starting the previous band, Hybrid Sheep Organizer?
Alex: How the fuck do you know about that?!
Nick: Some people on r/SprainBand were talking about it.
Alex: Oh my God. I have no privacy in my life anymore! Last time I checked, I really thought that I had taken the stuff down, but my old bandmate from that band messaged me and was kind of joking about it, but that kind of made me anxious. That music is so bad. I didn't want it up. All that stuff I made before I attended college. I only applied for one school. I did an undergraduate at CalArts and I guess it helped me connect with a lot of like minded people and I got to study with pretty good professors. I was already playing in bands and like figuring that stuff out, you know, beforehand. That's really funny. No one said that name (Hybrid Sheep Organizer) to me in like eight years.
Nick: Yeah, well, who was part of Hybrid Sheep Organizer? Was it people that you knew from school at the time?
Alex: No because I grew up in Boise. So that was really a Boise, Idaho-based project. My friends Matt Makkai, Jenae Nilo, Micah Stevens, I don't want to be crass or rude here, but maybe not people that would be recognized within music forums or whatever. Just anyone around me who was willing to play. That band had like nine members throughout the course. I don't want to sound like I'm ungrateful. There's a certain part of me that's flattered that people care enough to dig stuff like that up, but I really thought it was buried so I was kind of shocked to find out that people had dug that stuff up. It definitely makes me consider the complete and total intentionality behind whatever I do next. I was like 15.
Nick: Yeah that’s almost a decade ago.
Alex: Yeah, I mean, I was a kid, so I don't know. I actually heard it for the first time because someone, you know, someone had brought it up and I was like, “Oh my God, that stuff's out there now.” So I listened to it again, very embarrassing.
Nick: What made you want to transition over to sprain? What was the theme and backstory behind that initial self titled EP you released?
Alex: I don't know. I figured I just wanted to start over. I'm not sure why, but I wanted to start over because I felt like as I got older and I got more experienced, I felt kind of embarrassed about the Hybrid Sheep Organizer music and I thought that I would be clever and bury it and that no one would ever listen to that and think of that as my origin story. But now…Sorry my girlfriend's in the corner laughing at me while we talk…It's interesting that you bring this up because some of the earliest Sprain songs like “Snowing” are actually my friends Vianne and Jenae played drums. Those are the drums you hear on the recording of the song “Snowing” and also she played on "Deliver Us,” and I think pretty much anything with drums, she played on that. Those are like my Hybrid Sheep Organizer people and my friend Janae played bass on most of the songs and then we retracted it with April when she joined the band later. Like I had already written most of those songs and recorded them and then kind of got together with April and we worked together on finishing up the vocals and April contributed their bass parts to that. But the songs I had were technically finished and had the concept for about a year. There was a band before Sprain that was basically a failed Sprain called Horsies. That was kind of the bridging gap between Hybrid and Sprain. Anyway, the reason I didn't use the name Hybrid Sheep Organizer was because I wanted to distance myself from all that terrible music and I failed.
Nick: Not gonna lie, Horsies sounds like a furry band.
Alex: Yeah, a little bit. My little pony band. That'd be fun. I'm down.
Nick: (laughs) I assume that first EP was recorded in Boise, right?
Alex: Well, some of it was. “Snowing” was recorded entirely in Boise. I can't really remember, but at least two or three of the drum tracks were recorded in Boise. And beyond those, the rest I recorded in my apartment in Santa Clarita, California, before I moved to LA, because that's where CalArts is.
Nick: Since this genre had the heaviest influence on this EP, what is your past relationship with Slowcore?
Alex: Oh, I got really into some of the bands when I was a little bit younger. I really liked Codeine and Low. At the time, I liked Duster, but I kind of stopped liking them as much. Bluetile Lounge, Acetone, all sorts of stuff I found really good and inspiring. I totally emulated that sound for the first Sprain thing. It's a very derivative recording.
Nick: Did you ever get into Carissa's Wierd?
Alex: No, I never got into them as much, but I know people really like them. Interestingly, kind of after we released that, I'm not saying we influenced this or whatever, but Slowcore really blew up and I can't even deal with that anymore ‘cause it's almost trendy, you know, the same way like Shoegaze or Psych Rock.
Nick: I know around that time, Duster started to really get big after you guys released that. I know you played with them too, around that time.
Alex: Yeah, just a one-off show.
Sprain - "Sprain" (2018) EP cover
Image courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: When it comes to the second release, “As Lost Through Collision,” how did you end up working with Tim Green when it came to the mixing and mastering of that record? And why were the vocals mixed that way?
Alex: Jonathan, the guy who runs The Flenser, had, I think, recorded with Tim before. Tim had a great band called Nation of Ulysses. That's really good. I think he grew up around people like Unwound and other really good bands from the Northwest, Lowercase and whatnot, when he lived in San Francisco. That seemed like a good fit because we worked with a guy, Josiah, who was really good to track with, but there was maybe a little bit of a misunderstanding about mixing there. So working with Josiah was really good and he's a really good engineer, but we ended up working with Tim to get a harsher, more aggressive mix for the aggressive stuff on the album. The reason the vocals are mixed that low is because I decided to do that. It was a bad decision. It felt right at the moment, but I regret it now. You know, like every project I do, I'm learning and I never really had experience recording in a studio before. That was our first studio album. Everything else I recorded at home with a lot of time. So I was really stumbling through a lot of that stuff, I made a lot of mistakes.
Nick: What’s the backstory behind this album and what separates its themes from the debut EP?
Alex: Well it's a lot colder. It was closer to what I wanted to do which I think in concept was good but in execution, it was a little lacking a lot of that stuff. We had kind of laid around for a while, even as the first EP was coming out. So it was just wanting to branch out and not just do this style of music. I think one of my regrets about that was that we kind of immediately got pigeonholed as some kind of Slowcore revival thing. I've never really been super about people just deciding that “this is the type of music I'm gonna make and I want it to fit into this specific genre.” Like that's fine for other people and I respect them, you know, other people's decisions to do whatever they want with their music, I kind of wanted to do something a little bit more colorful or different. So “Collision” was mixing in a lot of different influences and I don't think it came off as well as I wanted it to. It was the first attempt at doing something like “Lamb.”
Nick: I know you mentioned Unwound previously. I do have a question regarding that at this point, mostly predating the sophomore album, “Lamb As Effigy,” I've seen a lot of media outlets troll comparisons between Sprain and Unwound. Would you ever consider working with that band, whether that's recording something or playing live?
Alex: Are you out of your fucking mind? Of course I would man! Nah sorry, I'm just teasing you, but yeah Unwound is the best band, we love them. Me and Sylvie are huge fans. I would love to play with them or record with them in any regard. I think they'd have to approach us. I'm sure they have plenty of people trying to get at them. But yeah, definitely one of my biggest influences and I think during that “Collision” era, Unwound was maybe the biggest inspiration, maybe too big of an inspiration. It wasn't really until “Lamb" where we diluted all of the inspirations across the field into something a little bit more unique, but I understand why people draw the comparison.
Sprain - "As Lost Through Collision" (2020) album cover
Image courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: We have finally reached the big one, “The Lamb is Effigy. A quick backstory with this album, I wrote an article for the student paper, Niner Times, and it was about the best albums of 2023. I did place that album at number one, right next to “Scaring The Hoes,” ironically. Beats me how I was able to get away with that since I'm pretty sure a lot of my colleagues were like, “what the fuck is this?” They didn’t know what that was. So I guess with that context in mind, what are your thoughts on the reception and overall impact of that record?
Alex: Well, I don't know. I mean…It's kind of a slippery slope for artists to pay too close attention to the reception but it’s difficult to ignore. It seems like, to me, it's either people really like it, they really love it and it touched them which I really appreciate, of course or they think it's just like, terrible, you know, there doesn't really seem to be a whole lot of in-between. So I guess that's good because it's not not affecting people. You know, we made it and then put it out and the band broke up, so it was kind of something I look back on super fondly outside of the actual music which we had a great time making, make no mistake about it, and playing the songs. It's been pretty difficult, having it out there to be honest, but I really appreciate and I'm super grateful for the people who like it and have been so kind and supported us
Nick: So in a way, it's both a burden and a blessing.
Alex: Well, I'm trying not to make it sound too hyperbolic, but yeah I would say there are the ups and downs of having released the record. I would say people's perception of me particularly is way off.
Nick: I know that a lot of people don’t realize that the name, “The Lamb as Effigy,” is a shortened version of the actual name which is “The Lamb as Effigy or Three Hundred and Fifty XOXOXOS for a Spark Union With My Darling Divine.” How did you come up with that name and is it derived from how certain Post-Rock artists named their work?
Alex: No, nothing to do with Post-Rock. More like a literature influence there. I thought it encapsulated like the primary themes of the record. Anyone who wasn't going to like it was going to read that and put it back on the shelf and never listen to it so it's like a good barrier. I don't know. At the time I thought it was quite good. I think it's a good title, but I was just trying to sum up the record. You know, like themes of love, destruction, hate, god and the unknown.
Nick: It also sounds like a lyric you would say in the album.
Alex: (laughs) Well yeah, I'm into a lot of the postmodern writers. I really like J. G. Ballard and Thomas Pynchon and I really like William Gaddis and William S. Burroughs. So a lot of my lyrics are coming from that place. It's more of like an absurdist, dadaist beat poet influenced stuff.
Nick: Did you further develop your vocal range and performance for this album or were those skills always there and were held back on those previous two releases for whatever reason?
Alex: I really decided that there was a reaction towards “Collision” that was very negative on the vocals, the way they're mixed and how one-note they were. I thought that there was some validity to those criticisms. So I really pushed myself to do as much as I could with my voice and I always wanted to, but it was something I just didn't have the confidence to do until I did it. Some of the performances were almost like exposure therapy, especially the acapella performances, which I did quite a few of when Sprain was playing still.
Nick: How did you prepare yourself for recording these tracks, especially stuff like, “God Or Whatever You Call It” and how much of it was improvised, if at all, even in the recording?
Alex: Well there is improvisation and I think all of the tracks are at least light improv where it's like “for these 30 seconds, we don't do things the same way every single time, but we still do something of a similar nature for these 30 seconds.” That's in pretty much every song I would say, preparation wise. We were very well rehearsed and pretty much ready to go as we possibly could have been at that point. I mostly had recorded at home and I would put it on a hard drive and bring it up to the studio and we would record in-between where we had recorded at home and worry about the mix later. That enables the songs to be obsessed over and really worked on without having to be in the studio for a month which is not something we could afford. We could really only afford five days at a time if we were lucky, you know?
Nick: Yeah, how did your neighbors feel about those recording sessions in your house?
Alex: You know, I've actually never gotten a complaint about anything. My neighbor, Jeff, Is super supportive. I was just hanging out with him the other day and he said he used to work in a Mental Institute where people would come off of hard drugs and their withdrawal, like vocalizations reminded him of my vocals.
Nick: Did you take that as a compliment?
Alex: (Laughs) I mean, yeah sure, I guess. He said he didn't know anything else like it. He's pretty well versed in music too, but yeah no I never really had a problem with anyone.
Nick: We'll see what happens. One day you’ll get kicked out of the neighborhood!
Alex: Yeah, I always wonder that, but I just kind of do it anyway. If anyone asks me, I'll politely turn it down. Usually with my neighbors, I have a good relationship and I'll be like, “Hey, I'm going to do some vocals so if it's really annoying, just let me know and I'll stop.”
Nick: I just imagine a guy sitting on his couch and then like a house across the street echoes, “I can't sing if you're looking at me!!!”
Alex: Most of the rehearsal for that kind of stuff, I thought, took place when we would play live. Like I wasn't in my house without music singing that.
Nick: That's what I thought it was.
Alex: Yeah, for the most part, I'm not like doing a ton of rehearsing with that kind of insane style unless I'm recording it at home.
Sprain - "The Lamb As Effigy" (2023) album cover
Image courtesy of Bandcamp
Nick: Going from that, I do know that there was a music video for the track “Privilege of Being.” I thought the parallele dialogue was very interesting and I think it very much reflects the unstable energy that this album oozes. But I’d like to hear what you think the correlation is.
Alex: There's actually so much in that video that correlates with the album. I kind of chose not really to point it out to people ‘cause I don't feel like I need to spoon feed people, but there's actually a few things that we put in there that are related to the record that I don't think I've ever, as far as I know, pointed out and I can't discuss them here because then it would be ruined. It's an analog to the themes on the record, but it's abstracted. The dialogue doesn't necessarily make sense as a normal conversation, but neither does the stuff I was inspired by.
Nick: Who directed the video? Was it you or like the whole band?
Alex: No, primarily just me. I did work with my friend, James, who shot it. He did a really good job. I couldn't have done any of that stuff without him because I've never made a video before ever in my life, never made any type of film media. He hired a couple people to help us kind of, but I was the creative director, I guess, and they were my surrogate instruments that I used to achieve our goals.
Nick: Considering this was filmed in the same studio or set that the album cover was made in, what was the process like coming up with the concept and executing the photoshoot for the album cover in particular?
Alex: I got inspired by these photos of this guy. He's a pretty popular photographer called Eadweard Muybridge. He would do these really early motion shots where you would see a horse running across five or six different stills. I kind of wanted to do something like that. Then in some kind of magazine I found an image of two guys that were walking around this New Zealand artist's installation. I thought that was the piece at the time, but it's actually not. I think the piece was the room the guys were in and there was just a photograph, like a press photo taken. I thought there was something very mysterious about that image, so I wanted to do something like that. We just got our friend Máté to do it. Máté is like the spiritual avatar of the band in a way, a big supporter and he plays on most of my records. Then a man of similar stature, David, I hired to be the other guy. I tried to interpret the themes of the record with the poses as best as I could. I don't think it comes across super obviously, but how could it?
Nick: I was going to ask, by any chance, was Glenn Branca an inspiration for the album cover? When I first saw that album cover on, I think, Rate Your Music, my first thought was “The Ascension” album cover where the guy is falling on the other guy's arms.
Alex: Yeah, it's cool. I see why people say that it's similar, but no, I didn't think about it at all when I was making it. It just ended up being like that. People have said “Reservoir Dogs” too, just guys in suits. That's a really cool cover. I understand why people draw the connection. I'm not denying it, but I didn't really think about it at the time.
[The Flenser]. (2023, July 12). Sprain - Privilege of Being (Official Video) [Video].
Nick: Returning to vocals, I know that people are very mixed with your performances. It’s very intense, to a point where one particular instance people legitimately thought that you were having a full-blown meltdown during that notorious final Sprain show at Moroccan Lounge back in ‘23. Additionally I’ve heard that you’ve used this performance style as a way to deal with certain audience members being rude or annoying. So in short, when did you decide to do that at live shows and what is your personal reasoning for it?
Alex: I guess the reason is just it's another instrument, an article of expression that we started to use around that time. It really wasn't some big plan or preconceived idea about shocking people or whatever, just started to happen. I knew I wanted to push it, I just didn't know how to, so I thought that, you know, people can do intense vocals. A lot of the time it will happen under harsh aggressive instrumentation, but I always thought that it would just be really intense if I did it with acoustic guitars and then I did some intense songs like that. Then I think “what if there was no music at all and it was just, you're just in the room with your emotions, you know?” So I think that that might've been kind of where it was coming from, but really it was just all trial and error until I stumbled upon it. I think it's a little ridiculous that people aren't able to see that those performances are in fact performances. There was never any loss of emotional control there.
It was always a performance. I guess it was intense for people, but I was always in control. I knew what I was doing 100 percent of the time. I’ve done like 40 performances like that. That one happens to be where I got filmed and that video kind of blew up, but I had been doing that on tour and at a bunch of different shows. It would be very coincidental if I just happened to be having some kind of mental breakdown every time we played that song. I thought of it like theater or acting. I was never playing a character, so to say, because the things I was saying were improvised and they were influenced by my own struggles and my own mental neuroses and faculties, but of course it's hyperbolized. It's not me actually having a legitimate mental breakdown. I was actually completely in control and had a great time doing it every time. I find it a little discouraging. I'm not sure why music of all art forms doesn't get the pass in this regard. If you saw someone do that in a film you wouldn't be like, “oh my god, the actor is really crazy! He's actually an insane person!” Music and live performances are very personal and there's no barrier of being pre-filmed. I'm not sure exactly why, but I think people are a little bit too sensitive about some music stuff, frankly. I would like to not cater to that sensitivity. I wouldn't say we are doing anything that, you know, Iggy Pop wasn't doing in the 60s, so to say, just taking it further without ever resorting to gimmicks. Like I'm not going to cut myself. I could do it, but Throbbing Gristle already happened. There's places you could go to, but I feel like it would be cartoonish at that point. So I tried to keep it mostly just vocal and musical there. I thought otherwise it would just be kind of lame because there's a fine line.
Nick: Is that aspect of performance something you want to bring into these new projects or do you feel like it's run its course?
Alex: I've always thought about this because as I mentioned before, I'm pretty conscientious of making sure that it doesn't get old or lose its edge. There are ways that I have integrated it into different stuff, like in the Shearling record. I think the Shearling record’s vocals are actually wilder than the Sprain performance. I feel like there are going to be a lot of different ways, same or greater intensity that I'm going to, but I don't think that I will do any acapella stuff just ‘cause we already did it. It's the same reason why we don't play any Sprain songs with Shearling. It's over.
[lambbuttons]. (2023, September 6). Sprain - Privilege of Being (Official Video) [Video].
Nick: Staying on Moroccan Lounge for a little longer, there was an unnamed and unreleased track that made an appearance during that final performance that I think was really well received by the fans, myself included. Are you hoping to still release that track as a single, or are you wanting to move away from anything Sprain related?
Alex: We're gonna release it…Someday. It's recorded. It's quite different from that performance. I think that performance is a little bit overrated and it has a little bit of a spotlight on it Just because it happens to be the last song on the last show we ever played. It was very much in its prepubescent stages there and I feel like it's really blossomed now, becoming much more of a true piece. We worked on it enough to get it to a playable point with Sprain, but Shearling just took that and made it quite a bit longer. It's about twice as long. No it's like like almost three hours
[lambbuttons]. (2024, June 9). Sprain - New Song (Remastered) [Video].
Nick: That'd be an interesting additional release. This can be your flood! Looking back, do you feel that sacrificing Sprain led to freeing up more space for all of these other projects? Do you see it that way or not really?
Alex: Not really because pretty much the day Sprain ended, me and Sylvie got together and started working on the new one, the new band. Everything we, the whole culture around it and the routine of playing shows and album cycles all went away and that was hard. But working towards something very intensely like Shearling almost immediately, like within the day, replaced that. I did find it freeing because I just had no more constraints. So I guess in a way, it was a prolific period, but I wouldn't say I was made any less busy by it.
Nick: Do you have any ideas for projects that you'd like to get to later down the line that you wouldn't mind sharing here, or are you planning on sticking with these already existing projects and aliases for the remainder of this year on to the next?
Alex: I've reached my capacity with projects, releasing stuff under the names if that's what you mean. It's just going to be these ones. There's no real hardline definition of what a Shearling song is so I think pretty much we can do anything with the name. I just don't care enough to release stuff under different aliases other than the ones that I have, but shearling is working on a couple different records simultaneously. So that's kind of like a huge, big project that we're doing. Working on the Big Brown Cow stuff on the side, I'm sure I'll spend a few days going wild on the computer and decide to put that out under my own name.
Nick: I'm hyped for the upcoming Shearling album. Any final remarks to leave us on?
Alex: Be kind to one another…Be cool…I don't know.
Nick: Thank you for your time
Alex: Yeah no problem. Thanks.