Get To Know Get To Know… October and The Eyes

What was the first gig you ever went to? Who did you go with? Set the scene for us.
I fear this is going to be a hilariously embarrassing answer, but my first ever proper gig was seeing The Black Eyed Peas opening for The Police when I was 12. At the time I really only cared about seeing Fergie in the flesh and was completely enamoured by the theatrics of it all, and the sheer amount of people they managed to pack into the football stadium. I was wearing my first pair of skinny jeans with fake suede tassel boots and a sequin vest I just bought from Gap that I saved up for. I crimped my hair and wore a gold plaited headband over my forehead, 20 rainbow coloured jelly bangles up my wrist, riding a sugar high from the lemon, lime and bitters I’d been sipping. Life was good and carefree. I remember Fergie doing a lot of cartwheels while singing and thinking that was really impressive and cool.

I wish I had a more interesting experience to share that would illustrate more of a catalyst moment in my musical journey - like being one of the 10 people in the audience who saw The Sex Pistols and went on to form seminal bands - but unfortunately I was just an embarrassing tween from New Zealand who wanted to get a little hyped up to ‘Don’t Phunk With My Heart’.

You’ve described your sound as “collage rock” - can you tell us a little bit more about your influences (musical or not) and how you landed on this magpie-like approach?
My influences tend to be an ever-revolving conveyer belt of music recommended to me by friends and lovers, or obscure music I’ve discovered myself along the way. At the moment I’ve got a soft spot for softer acoustic based music that’s a little more reflective and melancholic such as Lloyd Miller, Deux Filles, Dave Bixby, Leonard Cohen and Woo. There are smatterings of acoustic nylon guitars in my new EP that I’ve run through electric guitar pedals to give it a cross-contaminated sound. I’m also having a bit of a Dean Blunt moment and have always loved his use of corny ‘90s midi strings, so there’s some melotron strings across a couple of tracks on the new EP too.

I always use organs throughout my work; I like how malleable they are. They can lend a sense of gothic serenity in the way of church-based organs - like Kali Malone, who I’ve come to love in the last few years, or Liszt and Mozart, which my mother played frequently when I was growing up. Then of course there’s the dirty and jagged organ sounds of ‘60s garage and psych - I was practically raised on The Doors so that rock’n’roll organ has always been constant in my work. I think primarily though, what makes my approach to music making “collage like” is the way in which I tend to use my own demos as samples and cut and paste them into the studio recordings of the songs, as well as found and electronic based samples that also originate at the demo stage. It’s a mishmash of sounds, samples, and new recordings at varying degrees of fidelity that create the musical collage.

Your new EP, ‘Certificate Of Participation’, sees you delve into themes like surveillance culture and impending apocalypse, but grounds them in our contemporary reality. What is it about these dystopian concepts that fascinate you? Do you get a sense of catharsis or acceptance from addressing them in your music?
‘Certificate of Participation’ was heavily inspired by the books I was reading at the time like J.G. Ballard’s The Drought, The Drowned World, Crash, and Highrise, and also William S. Burroughs’ Cities of The Red Night, Interzone, and Naked Lunch. I lifted a lot of the same semantics and themes from these authors - not necessarily as a conscious creative choice, but because for about six months while I read their novels, I felt that my general outlook on day-to-day life and my impending future was completely tainted by what I was reading. Ballard and Burroughs have a pretty good knack at making the human race look equally despicable and vile as they do moronic and laughable. All of which was probably compounded by the fact that all my friends and I seem to be able to talk about is how much we’re struggling to get by, and how little faith we have in those who are supposed to lead us. I’m quite an optimistic person, and it takes a lot to really get me down, so I wouldn’t say this EP is as doom and gloom as it may appear; in fact, I would say in a classic Gen Z/ Millennial cusp fashion, I’m making light of and laughing at what is a fairly shitty set of circumstances we as young people are up against.

Alongside being a musician, you also work in fashion. How do you think your different creative outlets influence or inform one another?
Working in fashion is more of a way to financially fuel what I want to do creatively with music. I have a complex relationship with the fashion industry - primarily because I’ve entered as a human meat sack, aka a model - but I genuinely have a great sense of appreciation for the artistry and craft that comes along with fashion design. That’s not to say I’m ungrateful for the opportunities that have come my way because of it, I’m just someone who’s pretty sceptical of placing worth and importance on something as fickle as exterior looks. There’s this sense of irony I feel because I can’t work harder to be taller or better looking; that’s merely a genetic lottery I have been fortunate to capitalise off. Yet working harder at becoming a better musician or a more skilled producer and arranger is something I actively strive for, and yet there’s very little financial remuneration for the things I actually work hard at. But hey, as my mother says, make hay while the sun shines and cash the cheques while you can, ‘cause ya not gonna be pretty and young forever.

October and The Eyes draws on elements of Bowie, Siouxie Soux, and other 20th century artistic pioneers, but if you could be in a band from the past two decades, which would you pick and why?
I’ve thought about this long and hard. It’s perhaps the most difficult question ever asked of me - mainly because I feel like I’ve barely been conscious for the last two decades - but being the bassist in Charlie Megira and The Bet She’an Valley Hillbillies band would probably be a lot of fun.

You have a very integrated approach to your art, from the music to the visuals to the styling. How do you translate this immersive vision on stage during your live performances?
To be honest, I wish I could do even more on the visual side of things live, that’s certainly something I’d like to dig deeper into. But for now what I do offer is my body wildly writhing and undulating in a chaotic and violent fashion to make up for it. At the moment I keep it pretty raw and stripped back because at the end of the day, there’s no amount of visuals that can distract from a shitty performance. The performance and sound are paramount, and any visual delights are a nice add on. You could also argue my band boys are a nice additional visual element? Nice on the eyes? No pun intended…

Finally, DIY are coming round for dinner - what are you making?
I absolutely hate cooking for myself and primarily subsist off of TV dinners, but I get a real kick out of cooking for others, especially if there’s an occasion. First up, it’s generous glasses of Beaujolais to get things off the ground. For starters, it’s my world-famous dish I invented called Mummy’s Creamy Bean, which is a real hit among my flatmates: leek, garlic, mushrooms, spinach, butter beans, cream, and lashings of truffle oil served on some crunchy overpriced sourdough. Perfection. I might also lay out a bit of charcuterie - picky bits, as Nan would say. At this point I’ve probably gotten too carried away and burnt the main course, resorting to distraction tactics and more generous pouring of Beaujolais. For dessert, we chain smoke several packs of cigarettes and wash it all down with some mezcal and lemon and a game of ‘Fuck, Marry, Kill’.

‘Certificate Of Participation’ is out on 19th July via KRO Records.

Tags: Features, Interviews, October and the Eyes