Blog: What inspired you to create "Tryptocaine" as a new musical entity? Why not make this a "Machine Qui Reve" album? Also, there is noticeably less singing on the "Tryptocaine" ep. Is this more of an instrumental type project, or is there more the the direction you're taking with Tryptocaine?
Mo: MQR was an electro house project that had various forms, starting out almost like an electro band then becoming an electro house project. Throughout the project, I kept experimenting with harder synth sounds but was never really happy with the results. After years of noodling and experimenting, I was able to develop some bass sounds that I thought were pretty heavy, so I started writing more head-banging electronic music. This is what I've always strived to dovetail: hardcore and electronic music.There was this Converge and Agoraphobic Nosebleed split LP that originally inspired this idea when I was in high school. Agoraphobic Nosebleed had these insane drum machine beats that sounded like no human could ever replicate. This is what I've always wanted to bite off, and when I felt I was in the ball park of achieving that, I had to give the project a new name because of how radically different it was to MQR. The Tiger Child EP is basically what a hardcore band might sound like if they only played synths, in my opinion. In regards to me singing: I was just tired of hearing my voice; even though, I do sing on Tryping.
Blog: What inspired the mini-poem/song title structure/order of the ep?
Mo: Song titles are always a big deal to me. If a song title is conventional or heavily used before, it's a sign of how cumbersome the actual song is going to be because if an artist doesn't care about the title of their piece then how much can they care about the piece itself? It'd be like naming your son "Boy" and telling everyone that he's a special child. So for this EP, I wanted to do something I haven't seen done too many time before, something that could entwine all the songs with a theme. The childlike terror sounds of the album remind me of what an incubus or chimera would be like, so the poem portrays such a thing hypnotizing its host.
Blog: All songs stem from some source of origin, including sparks of randomness. Do you have any stories associated with any of these tracks?
Mo: I've been working on the sounds in the album for a really really long time but didn't actually start constructing songs till the beginning of 2011. There are so many layers to each song that associating one song to one thing would be kind of hard. If there was an emotive or physical experience attached to the inception of a song, it has drowned in the flood of sounds over the months.
Blog: Where do you see Tryptocaine fitting into the context of the music scene(s) - or lack thereof - today? Upon what genres/traditions is Tryptocaine building? What music inspires this project? Also, how is Tryptocaine different than its predecessors?
Mo: Ah there's the rub...my friends know how hard I struggle to make music while trying to support myself, and they always tell me that I should write a really catchy song to get myself out there. The problem is I don't know how. I know my music is dense and noisy and indulgent, but there's a space for it in the EDM spectrum. Why not? There should be a space for country metal in the metal scene. Why not? It's not the 50's anymore where there was no technological or social allowance for experimentation. I make music, more specifically: electronic music; more specifically: dubstep music; more specifically: dubcore; more specifically: heavy synth-bass-based electronic music with unconventional BPM and musical timing incorporation. Post-structurally speaking: these are all signifiers that are meaningless: I just make music that I'd listen to (but I hear each one of my songs so much that I can't bear to listen to them leisurely).
Mo: MQR was an electro house project that had various forms, starting out almost like an electro band then becoming an electro house project. Throughout the project, I kept experimenting with harder synth sounds but was never really happy with the results. After years of noodling and experimenting, I was able to develop some bass sounds that I thought were pretty heavy, so I started writing more head-banging electronic music. This is what I've always strived to dovetail: hardcore and electronic music.There was this Converge and Agoraphobic Nosebleed split LP that originally inspired this idea when I was in high school. Agoraphobic Nosebleed had these insane drum machine beats that sounded like no human could ever replicate. This is what I've always wanted to bite off, and when I felt I was in the ball park of achieving that, I had to give the project a new name because of how radically different it was to MQR. The Tiger Child EP is basically what a hardcore band might sound like if they only played synths, in my opinion. In regards to me singing: I was just tired of hearing my voice; even though, I do sing on Tryping.
Blog: What inspired the mini-poem/song title structure/order of the ep?
Mo: Song titles are always a big deal to me. If a song title is conventional or heavily used before, it's a sign of how cumbersome the actual song is going to be because if an artist doesn't care about the title of their piece then how much can they care about the piece itself? It'd be like naming your son "Boy" and telling everyone that he's a special child. So for this EP, I wanted to do something I haven't seen done too many time before, something that could entwine all the songs with a theme. The childlike terror sounds of the album remind me of what an incubus or chimera would be like, so the poem portrays such a thing hypnotizing its host.
Blog: All songs stem from some source of origin, including sparks of randomness. Do you have any stories associated with any of these tracks?
Mo: I've been working on the sounds in the album for a really really long time but didn't actually start constructing songs till the beginning of 2011. There are so many layers to each song that associating one song to one thing would be kind of hard. If there was an emotive or physical experience attached to the inception of a song, it has drowned in the flood of sounds over the months.
Blog: Where do you see Tryptocaine fitting into the context of the music scene(s) - or lack thereof - today? Upon what genres/traditions is Tryptocaine building? What music inspires this project? Also, how is Tryptocaine different than its predecessors?
Mo: Ah there's the rub...my friends know how hard I struggle to make music while trying to support myself, and they always tell me that I should write a really catchy song to get myself out there. The problem is I don't know how. I know my music is dense and noisy and indulgent, but there's a space for it in the EDM spectrum. Why not? There should be a space for country metal in the metal scene. Why not? It's not the 50's anymore where there was no technological or social allowance for experimentation. I make music, more specifically: electronic music; more specifically: dubstep music; more specifically: dubcore; more specifically: heavy synth-bass-based electronic music with unconventional BPM and musical timing incorporation. Post-structurally speaking: these are all signifiers that are meaningless: I just make music that I'd listen to (but I hear each one of my songs so much that I can't bear to listen to them leisurely).
