What did you learn from your time as a touring member of Kero Kero Bonito? How did that experience shape your newest record?
Jennifer Walton: That time weaves its way throughout the record in both obvious and subtle ways. To be immersed in America in all its extremity for the first time, was beyond overwhelming. You slowly fall into this rhythm with everyone that starts to feel like modern day piracy. Your bonds and comradeship with everyone become so tight that you float around in your own bubble almost with your own language. It is a true high point of my life, but it’s also a uniquely odd experience to know that while it’s happening to you. I think It taught me how to give myself over to an experience and to remain flexible under immense pressure. It also taught me how to shotgun a beer in a surprisingly short amount of time.
“Born Again Backwards” has a great passage where the drums almost feel like classic breakbeat rave music. Where did that influence come from?
Making “Born Again Backwards” was a process of seeing how many layers I could add while making the music still feel (somewhat) legible. I wanted to have this palpable sense of overwhelm where everything is on the precipice of discernibility. The breakbeats form one of four or so drum tracks that all pummel against each other. Looking back on it, it feels very obvious that I was listening to tonnes of Hakushi Hasegawa and Kamome Sano but I’ll happily wear that on my sleeve (they’re two of my all time faves).
Do you like to rave? What kind of music have you been dancing to lately?
I’ve never been particularly drawn to “raving.” My entrances to dance music were all through more band or experimental leaning music, so I interacted with club spaces like they were gigs; arriving at doors and staying till 3 a.m. to see one act while sober, on my own and having my snack bars confiscated. It was Nine Inch Nails, Crystal Castles, and later PAN releases and Holly Herndon that really grabbed me. I guess maybe that’s why deconstructed club really spoke to me, as I was already looking in from the outside.
A lot of your lyrical content is quite detailed, and pulled from your own life. Do you ever take liberties with the sources that provide you with inspiration? How true-to-life do you feel like you have to be?
I’m not so sure. “Shelly” uses a tiny fragment of my own life (hitting a deer with a car as a child) that devolves into a woman's self-immolation. I think I’m always looking for threads to pull on and trying to work in service of the song and not what I’m trying to impose on it. Trying to find that level of universal vagueness that I think some of my favorite songwriters pull on. It was a really difficult line, constantly trying to blur things enough from my own life that I hoped people could see themselves in.
