EMMIE - 2025

EMMIE 2025

With Friko

Featuring Xiu Xiu ELUCID Real Estate Swirlies Airiel tommy oeffling Loveblaster The Spine Stealers Logan Lamers Insula Iscariot

Table of Contents

4

A Letter From The Editor

6

For The Record

12

tommy oeffling

14

Logan Lamers

15

Music To Fall Asleep To

16

The Spine Stealers

18

Ambient Works

20

Swirlies

22

Loveblaster

24

The Lost Art Of Lo-fi

26

Real Estate

Friko

28

Airiel

34

Slashing My Thoughts On Music

36

Xiu Xiu

38

ELUCID

40

EMMIEcore

42

Insula Iscariot

44

Music To Wake Up To

45

When I Grow Up, My Dream Is To Be A Musician

46

Dream Sequence

48

Concert Gallery

52

ART BY ELLIOT NOVAK

4

5 / EMMIE

Automatic, The Lumineers I’ll admit it, I’ve never been a fan of The Lumineers. Their folk-pop sound has always seemed hollow and a little bit inauthentic to me. Still, I tried to give Automatic a fair shot. Though the band has taken a few years to hone their sound for a new record, in 2025, The Lumineers sound as uninspired as ever.

WORDS BY EMMIE STAFF ART BY ELLIOT NOVAK & TRISTAN ENGELMANN

BRAT, Charli xcx Charli xcx lived in the shadow of her “Boom Clap” and “I Love It” fame for over a decade. Other than Instagram memes and the occasional “Vroom Vroom” request, the general public seemed to have turned a blind eye to the Essex-born singer. In her own words, Charli xcx was “famous, but not quite” – but no longer. With her sixth studio album, BRAT, Charli instituted a global shortage of white tank tops and revived the longpronounced dead 2010’s indie sleaze.

BRAT is split into two classes. Those tracks where we find Charli behind the booth exude a cockiness that could only come from the Lebron James of electropop. You either want to be her or you want to be with her! She’s the moment and you’re all mad!

Yet, there’s also an unraveling of that haughty front, exposing Charli’s own insecurities and fears. What if she’s undeserving of her fame? What if she’s not famous enough? Is it too late to have a baby? Charli gives listeners a quick look into her psyche, but differently than most artists. She’s not trying to convince the audience that she’s just like us, like we so often see in this age of fascination with personability. If you do relate, that’s great, but it’s not Charli’s goal.

Sonically, BRAT spans many genres. Though colloquially known as an electronic pop record, it also dips into hyperpop, house and even finds a way to slide a piano break in. It’s inventive in a way that still pays homage to Charli’s past. Part of the magic of BRAT is that every person you come across has a different favorite track. Charli was able to create a body of work that is beautifully comprehensive while still capturing a number of

different styles.

One of my personal favorites, “Talk talk,” is an anthem for anyone who visualizes a white picket fence with a crush before even speaking to them. It’s a cheesy pop song to its core. But I also couldn’t imagine a world without “B2b,” a bumpy electro track about resisting the urge to run back to an ex. It would also be a great disservice to not recommend “Sympathy is a knife.” I only advise you to ignore whom it may or may not be referencing.

In the aftershocks of “Brat Summer,” the album has become a commercial darling – I like to call it the bastardization of BRAT. UberEats advertisements and presidential campaigns employed the bright green and Arial font, but failed to reference anything substantial that the album has to offer. The music industry seems to have placed BRAT into their overflowing toy chest, labeling it as just another dance-pop record. But I implore those who have been allured by the urge to hate anything popular to give BRAT a chance. I know that whenever I relisten, I find myself falling in love with miss xcx, again and again.

6

- BAILEY KRAUSE

Before I get to my gripes with Automatic, this album had some pleasant surprises. For one, the fully instrumental track “Sunflowers” is genuinely beautiful. I love the piano and the way the strings build for the sudden ending.

Additionally, the closer, “So Long,” is one of the better tracks on the album, with a decent melody showcasing a falsetto that I haven’t heard from singer Wesley Schultz.

It’s a shame that these are only a small percentage of the album.

Most of my problems with this album stem from the fact that there’s just not that much going on. Minimalism is great in music when used correctly, but The Lumineers aren’t interesting enough to make it work. There are no moments in the instrumentals where I want to go back just to hear a certain part, and they’re all pretty samey. The nerds would describe the genre of this album to be stomp-and-holler, but I think that is giving it too much credit. Automatic feels more like light-wash denimcore to me.

I am familiar with most of the band’s hits like “Ho Hey” and “Stubborn Love,” which have dominated the radio for years, but I haven’t sat down to listen to a full length record by The Lumineers before this one. After listening to Automatic, I went back to check out their debut self-titled album to see how their sound has progressed.

Although I still can’t consider myself a fan of it, The Lumineers is lightyears more interesting than their most recent album. There is a lot more variation in the instrumentals, and I can actually see the appeal in these songs, even if I think there is some sort of faux-grandiosity to them. I feel like their sound started out as a bunch of fresh ingredients that got put in a pot in 2012, and have been simmering for over a decade until all that is left is a bland, reduced goop.

Automatic takes away most of what made The Lumineers’ sound interesting, and the product is a low-effort 35 minute snoozer. I have definitely heard worse, and nothing here grinds my gears as much as “Ophelia,” but the band doesn’t give me anything to like. I’m sure fans were expecting more than what they got with Automatic, given it’s only the fifth album the band has released in the last thirteen years. However, I would recommend this album to anyone who wears overalls and stomps grapes in the backyard.

- NOLAN MAJEROWSKI

Cowards, Squid Intentionally dark, Squid leans into themes about the evil all around us and finds their sonic happy medium. Fittingly parallel to the cover art, a scorpion’s stinger, Cowards regards evil in a normalized everyday type of context – slightly more frightening in concept than in the actual music while still having occasionally hair-raising moments. Squid blends a base of post-punk with expansive orchestral elements and electronic textures in a dense yet sprawling nine-track length. Despite this complexity, the album feels somewhat reserved when compared to their previous eccentric work, especially vocally, yet it feels memorable nonetheless.

Squid’s previous projects have always felt cohesive, but Cowards stays more consistent in tone and theme than anything before.

Leaning into a truly sinister world and zooming out of a UKspecific context, the titular track manages to sound apathetic through both the instrumental and lyrics. Beautiful slow-picked guitar and brass horn achieve somber sonic tones as singer Ollie Judge later sings, “Polythene bags will never go away / Us dogs and rats will never escape.” Themes of environmental degradation are only one small part of the great evil examined across the project.

“Blood on the Boulders” pictures a Manson murder-esque scene with a slower Slint-like first half that culminates into a long build and crescendo before ultimately slipping back into the menacing original passage. This juxtaposes with the next tracks, “Fieldworks I” and “Fieldworks II,” which sound deceptively lighter, but truly are not. In “Fieldworks II” Judge sings, “If you remind me, I’m evil too.”

The opener, “Crispy Skin,” starts with shimmering synths but progressively becomes uneasy as the subject matter dives into a society turned to cannibalism. “Building 650” touches on moral ambiguity and a dilemma where a cowardly friend won’t confront the other for their sins. This track follows the most direct song structure of the project as it’s accompanied by a nauseating combination of plucked and strummed guitar riffs and additional strings that soar mid-way through the song.

After listening to the project, there can be a few ways to interpret this body of work. One is that there is a narrative throughline story about a character who gets corrupted and falls into treacherous ways. “Fieldworks I” and “Fieldworks II” act as key turning points in the story where the narrator and previous evil-doer switch roles as the narrator gets corrupted with the power he once judged, but never acted on. The narrator falls deep into the depths and gets detached from humanity itself.

Another way of listening takes each song as its own narrative, held together through sonics while the lyrics combine to show a parallel to the many evils humans enact today. Either way, Squid comments on the innumerable wrongs man commits, from small and large. Regardless of the size of an unholy act, it’s evil nonetheless.

- EASTON PARKS

The Tortured Poets Department, Taylor Swift As a Swiftie, it is an act of torture (no pun intended) to criticize her work. But if something deserves criticism, it is The Tortured Poets Department. An anthology of pettiness with no real sonic variety to bring it to life, the album is decidedly one-note and unoriginal.

I can, however, join in on the “I Can Do it With a Broken Heart” hype. My Swiftie-ness does mean I am obligated to pay attention to Taylor’s love life with the energy of a rogue detective leading a red string across a corkboard. The highlight of the song is the universality of lyrics like “I cry a lot, but I am so productive.” The backing track is giving 1989 nostalgia and Fearless (Taylor’s Version) From the Vault in a way that immediately proves the album’s lack of originality, but I think it has some efficacy on “I Can Do it With a Broken Heart,” matching the energy of Taylor speaking directly to her fans.

Perhaps the wildest plot twist of the release was how much of the album is speculated to be about Matty Healy. At least I can safely say that getting overly attached to a toxic man is one of the most relatable things Taylor could write about. While everyone expected the post-Joe Alwyn heartbreak hits, the amount of Healy hate was welcome but wild. Unfortunately, my enjoyment of hating on a terrible ex was tainted by the monotonous instrumentals and can-we-move-on-yet type lyrics.

A half-baked romance reflected in half-baked tracks was all that this amounted to.

Thematically, film-like insights into Taylor’s journeys are always welcome. But, the constant re-living of the Scooter Braun-Kim Kardashian-Kanye West drama is getting old, especially as “thanK you aIMee” is a disappointment of a track. Swiftie sleuths speculate that the track may actually be about Scooter Braun apologist Karlie Kloss. Regardless, can we get a new plotline yet? Or at least a clear storyline in track organization?

Jumping from one subject to another gives me chaos whiplash, and Taylor can (and has) done better.

The true redeeming track is “Florida!!!” Carried by Florence + the Machine, the song is more vocally complex than the others on the album. Florence + the Machine’s verse sounds beautiful, with a regret-tinged thread woven through her words. The track also carries metaphorical weight, reflecting on the choices you make and how you run away from them.

Ultimately, the only thing TTPD is good for is unhinged Taylor Swift references. Crying over a man you aren’t even dating that your friends are telling you to ditch while trying to be emotionally healthy and go to the gym? Just casually text them that you’re “down bad crying in the gym,” and you’re set. Want to give someone a heart attack? Say, “I’m having his baby / no I’m not, but you should see your faces.”

Is it too much to ask for another folklore or evermore? If she can perform through the Eras Tour with a broken heart, maybe she can make a solid album with a healed one and football star romance.

- EMMERY CLEMENTS

7 / EMMIE

TheAlbum G Code, PeelingFlesh Title, Artist

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sound of modern slam with hip-hop beats presents itself memories of a past love. McRae paints vivid scenes of a relationship that still haunts in this release without feeling out of place or gimmicky. her, confessing, “DearProin God a / Take hiseu kiss rightpretium out of my brain nec / Take the pleasure Proin a lorem eu odio pretium auctor nec non lorem odio auctor non PeelingFlesh shows with The G Code that slam is a versatile out of my pain / Take lorem. the wayVivamus he’d usedporta to say,augue ‘I love ayou.’”

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Another vulnerable moment on the album unfolds with “Purple lace bra,” a stunning The Gconvallis, Code seems to enim solidify the direction of PeelingFlesh’s ante laoreet velit, sed fermentum and personal track about convallis, ante enim laoreet velit, sed McRae’s complicated relationship withfermentum the media. The new sound celebrated extensively since metus that semhas ac been tellus.

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With this new Pellentesque ac dui aliquam, ornare ipsum non, of the song. McRae’s vocals Pellentesque ac dui aliquam, ornare ipsum non, masterfully contrast raw desperation in the verses with release, PeelingFlesh cements themselves as a force to a polished, airy chorus, showcasing faucibus mi. faucibus mi. a striking balance between emotional intensity be reckoned with when defining what it means to make and musical artistry. Lyrically, McRae lets out her frustrations about being overly extreme metal. sexualized and feeling unheard. In a punchy bridge, you can hear her annoyance as she yells, “I’m losin’ my mind, I’m losin’ my head / You only listen when I’m - IAN HOFFMAN undressed.”

The third single off of this album, “Sports car,” was a bold sonic departure for McRae, as the chorus is delivered entirely in a whisper. The song’s lyrics are undeniably sultry, and its accompanying music video matches that intensity. That music video is unique in that it focuses on high fashion, with McRae stunning in 12 different looks throughout the video, aligning herself with some of the biggest pop stars known for their iconic fashion moments in music videos.

While much of the album is filled with upbeat energy inspired by McRae’s alter ego Tatiana, it also features some slower moments. “Means I care” and “Nostalgia” share roots with some of her older, more melancholic work. “Nostalgia” is the most stripped down of the entire album, featuring her vocals over a simple guitar. In this song, McRae shares brief anecdotes about her family, while the chorus reflects on the album’s overarching theme, as she mentions she’s “so close,” yet still uncertain of what exactly she’s chasing.

This album is truly what every young woman needs right now, with a balance between fun, danceable pop anthems and introspective, slower tracks. If you and your friends aren’t playing this album on full blast before a night out, you should probably find some new friends who will.

- ELLIE POLEN

8

Trapped in the Parking Garage, Citric Dummies

Memoir of a Sparklemuffin, Suki Waterhouse Suki Waterhouse’s dreamy, nostalgia-inducing voice is back again – and as hypnotic as ever. With the release of her sophomore album Memoir of a Sparklemuffin on Sept. 13, 2024, Waterhouse announces to the world that she is unapologetically herself, flaws and all, take it or leave it. The eye-catching title of the album is named after a brightly colorful and cannibalistic spider from Australia.

Waterhouse’s love of the spider’s self-destructive nature inspired her and acted as a mirror of the unabashedness she presents on this project.

Crammed into a loud and rowdy crowd, the stink of sweat and beer surrounding you as their heat keeps you warm against the frigid air leaking in, you are at the precipice of a movement in America. Shrill guitar rips, drums blast, and screams fill your ears. The crowd erupts, jumping and yelling and kicking violently. It’s the winter of 1982 in a small Minneapolis venue tucked between Hennepin and Nicollet, and you’re witnessing the rise of the newest genre in the Midwest – hardcore punk.

Forged in the Minneapolis punk scene, the Citric Dummies feel like a screaming, kicking love letter to the days of early hardcore, with an irreverent and high energy sound that brings you back to the bands that started it all. In their last full length LP, Zen and the Arcade of Beating Your Ass – a title paying homage to Saint Paul’s Hüsker Dü as well as 9 Shocks Terror from Cleveland – the band set their tone with both introspective and idiotic tracks like “I’m Gonna Punch Larry Bird” and “Tubing Down a River of Anxiety.”

Now, they continue their punk rock escapades into their EP Trapped in the Parking Garage.

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Memoir of a Sparklemuffin demonstrates Suki Waterhouse’s ability to metus sem acwhile tellus.

Nulla pulvinar arcu, no evolve her sound, also staying true to ipsum the indie-pop scene she Pellentesque ac dui aliquam, ornare non, is that it felt has established herself in. My only qualm withipsum this album faucibussonically mi. occasionally repetitive. However, this project really resonated with me. Waterhouses’ self-awareness and embracement of imperfection atop pop-inspired sounds makes it a solid sophomore album that provides an outlet of relatability to many.

- KAELANA FAESSLER

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9 / EMMIE

Feats of Engineering, fantasy of a broken heart Burnout Days, Flipturn You know you’re good friends with someone when you can’t remember how you met. That’s how I feel about Flipturn.

Seeing them live last year was like uniting with a “You’ve Got Mail”-esque digital love. My obsession locked me into a waiting room for the release of their third album, Burnout Days. While not incredibly thematically diverse and occasionally too choppy in flow for my liking, the sonic differences and variety within each track allowed them to both stand alone and work together as a unified release.

The cover art is an apt representation of the falling-through-space feeling of the album, and an excellent summation of the (totally not drug-induced) trip through time and mind taken by the band in Burnout Days. “Juno” opens the journey; sudden breaks juxtaposed with a timewarp-like synth send me through a black hole that makes me feel like I’m “tripping through the timeline.” Honestly, I think “Juno” could be integrated into Loki just fine. While I really like “Juno,” I wish there was a better transition into the opening chords of “Rodeo Clown”. The disappointment only grows, as the ethereal synth effects don’t do much to discern this track from the rest of Filpturn’s discography. The only highlight is the eroded vocals in the chorus that carry the song to its outro. Yet another song about drugs and love, “Rodeo Clown” leads into “Inner Wave.” While there is a tone switch between the tracks, we get stuck with the same theme. Flipturn saves me from total boredom, though, with the emphasized rhythmic power of the album and the crystal-like fade that ends the track.

Structurally, there is a level of satisfaction derived from the visual-association-switch of “Sunlight” and “Moon Rocks” back to back. It’s perhaps ironic that the latter track has more references to light than the former, but the airy vocals followed by perfect staccato guitar strums and minimalist drums bring me to the moon’s surface, where gravity fails. The lyrical simplicity of “breathe it out” feels like the comedown from a panic attack, but the sudden end leaves room for interpretation.

The emotional contemplation and “existential war” that comes through on “Right?” is painfully relatable. Little chime-like motifs reminiscent of the band’s previous albums through the verses and choruses fail to the panic-filled vocals of lead singer Dillon Basse turning into almost screaming, while “you second-guess everything the second you’re capable.” Sweet relief from the beautiful-yet-pained lyrics comes through “Window,” as a story of meeting someone who calls them out on their avoidance unfolds. A layered hum serves as a bridge to acceptance of telling this person “bout the things I’ve done / old love, new drugs, everything I’m ashamed of.” At the same time, “Swim Between Trees” uses romance as physical escape to distract oneself from chaos. Instrumentally simplistic, an arpeggio serves as the primary base until the instrumental break where an 80s-like synth and brass turns into a river of sound that continues into the vocally-compressed, crackly “Tides.”

They realize their mistakes on “If It Is,” with an acoustic guitar that brings me back to “August” from their first album, Citrona. The intensity of the bass and kick drum that comes in prior to the chorus triggers the feeling of regret of falling into the same habits. Vocal chops in the outro blend with the percussion in the outro as if they are losing their ability to form a sentence in the context of their overthinking chaos. Relatability of heartbreak is one of Flipturn’s strong suits, and it is on full display on “If It Is.” But, hey, it’s all okay when we can excuse our bad decisions when it’s all a part of the youthful “Burnout Days” (*insert Ladybird “it’s the TITULAR ROLE” here*). A groovy track that sums up Flipturn’s sound in a singular song, they poke fun at “laughing after too many death jokes” and “making it up as we go in front of everyone.”

While there may be no certainty while we live out our burnout days, one thing can be confirmed: Burnout Days is a relatable heartbroken trip through memory and future mistakes that makes us feel less alone. Sonic variety of synths, percussion, and attention-grabbing production compensates for the redundancy of theme.

Perhaps it is an apt commentary on life as we burn ourselves out day after day just to reignite the next morning.

- EMMERY CLEMENTS

10

Some say time heals all wounds, but in the context of a broken heart, pain may linger. Constant reminders can fill one’s mind with memories of past love, and while these events may have been real once before, within the present they are merely fantasies. This concept serves as the core inspiration for fantasy of a broken heart’s debut album, Feats of Engineering, and solidified their own dream-like sound. fantasy of broken heart is an indie pop and neopsychedelia duo out of Brooklyn, NY. The two members, Bailey Wollowitz and Al Nardo, have been making music together for years on multiple projects and collaborations including Sloppy Jane and Water From Your Eyes. While their past music spans a wide variety of styles, they bring together a truly special sound in Feats of Engineering.

Upon my first listen, I was immediately intrigued by the depth and diversity within the instrumentation. Each track was distinctly unique yet so similar at the same time. I was in awe and was propelled by this incomprehension. I found myself revisiting the album often, consequently picking up a new favorite track with each new listen. Through continued exposure, the ambiguity began to fade. Every song used the same instruments: guitar, bass, drums, strings and keys (bringing the variety you would find on an old Casio).

However, the arrangements and tonal switches transformed lone instruments into an orchestra – a symphony of sounds built from their limited instrumental origins. To tie it all together, fantasy of a broken heart utilized fluttering sound effects as a binder; each note meticulously placed and layered to give the illusion of complexity. The instrumentation served as my center focus for a while, but the more I dove in, further depth was revealed.

While the instrumentation manufactures a distinct feeling on its own, the songwriting grants the listener tangible building blocks to an imaginary world. Throughout the album, fantasy of broken heart highlights snippets of past romantic events through the eyes of different characters.

They use these stories to express the fantasy of desire for lost nostalgia-inducing sensations. For example, the song “Doughland” talks about returning to the comfort of a past relationship for “inner peace” in the midst of stress. The song “Mega” spells out the thrill of catching someone’s eye from across the bar. The album continues with new anecdotes, each unique in their own respect, until the final song, “Catharsis.” In this track, fantasy of a broken heart offers an emotional and hopeful conclusion. By reintroducing a familiar melody, the band ties it all together with the message of letting go. They allow you to escape these fantasies of the past to relive new ones in the present catharsis of the heart.

Despite the hard themes throughout the album, the presentation hides intense emotions behind a curtain of humility. We often believe memories of lost love are best forgotten. However, fantasy of a broken heart argues otherwise. Dwelling on the past isn’t a negative as fantasies are beautiful in their own ways. With acknowledgement of the present these memories can offer clarity. fantasy of a broken heart portrays this with mature musical excellence a true surprise of a debut album.

- LUCA CECERE

The Last Will and Testament, Opeth Before listening to The Last Will and Testament, I was only familiar with the Steven Wilson–produced trio of Opeth albums from 2001-2003. Even though I really enjoyed these albums, I still considered myself more indifferent towards the band since I hadn’t heard anything else from them. I chalked my positive reception to these records up to me being a fan of Wilson’s work than being a fan of Opeth.

Twenty years later, the band has released an album that I believe can stand alongside their best work, and has qualified me as a fan.

The concept of The Last Will and Testament perfectly captures the drama that follows a wealthy father’s relationship with his children, and I would recommend the album to anyone who enjoys HBO’s Succession. The story revolves around the reading of the will of a dead father, and how his fortune will be split up among his three kids.

Each track, save for the closer, is titled with a section symbol (§), signifying the section of the will that is being read. The last song, “A Story Never Told” serves as the epilogue to the narrative, taking place after the will has been read and the results have unfolded. With twists and turns along the way, I found myself engrossed in the story as if I was watching Knives Out, which is rare for me to find in an album. Due to frontman Mikael Åkerfeldt’s growls being hard to make out, I had to read the lyrics along the way. Sometimes this bothers me, but I didn’t mind this time, as it only immersed me further in the narrative.

Concept aside, I have always admired Opeth’s ability to blend heavy, death metal-esque sections with clean vocals, soft acoustic sections and orchestration. I like to imagine their music as a classic progressive rock band that decided to give their compositions to a contemporary metal band for fun, and the result is incredible. There are fantastic orchestral arrangements, like those found in “§5” and the tail end of the opener, that give the album the grand feeling that the cover displays.

The whole project has a suspenseful and eerie feel thanks in large part to Joakim Svalberg’s keyboard parts. Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull provides spoken vocals and the flute solo in “§4,” which, followed by a screaming guitar solo from Fredrik Åkesson, makes for one of the album’s high points. The arrangement of each track allows every member of the band to have their moments to shine, which I loved.

While I have praised the overall narrative and cohesive story this album brings, this constant immersion makes listening to individual tracks weird for me. I view this album like a musical – each track advances the story and it feels almost wrong to listen to them individually. Although I appreciate a lot of the musicality, there aren’t any tracks that I would gravitate towards playing outside of the context of the full album.

While The Last Will and Testament is not an album that I will revisit as often as Opeth’s other works like Blackwater Park and Deliverance, it is undoubtedly an impressive piece of art. While progressive rock music is not what it once was in the 1970s, Opeth keeps the spirit of this era alive with a healthy dollop of metal on the top. Equal parts engaging story and spectacular musicality, The Last Will and Testament is a new standard for musical storytelling.

- NOLAN MAJEROWSKI

Spring Grove, The Ophelias Cincinnati-based four-piece The Ophelias continue to hone their indie rock/chamber pop sound with their fourth album Spring Grove. The first track “Open Sky” is aptly titled, opening up the album on a headstrong yet melancholic note. Vocalist Spencer Peppet’s lyrics are gentle, yet coarse as they tell a tale of reflection.

Produced by Julien Baker, Spring Grove dives right into emotional contemplation. Though overall more downtempo than preceding albums, Spring Grove pulls no punches when drawing in the listener.

The single “Cumulonimbus” is reminiscent of tracks on their 2018 album Almost, the pace picking up as the verses progress. Similarly to “General Electric” off of Almost, the guitar and drums work together to create a dancy instrumental basis that the strings and vocals rest on.

“Vulture Tree” and “Salome” are where the album finds its emotional peak. Peppet croons along to the orchestra, “they tell me to get rid of you, I have to burn an effigy. But it didn’t work on the vultures, so why would it work for me?” Overall, Peppet’s lyricism is rife with emotions as her forlorn vocals pair with melancholy strings to create a hollowing and mournful theme.

Not only do the instrumentals on “Salome” bring the album to a heavier, faster paced emotional point, the lyrics paint a grisly image as well. “I want your head on a stake, I want your head on a platter.”

The music video for “Salome” echoes a video game– the POV showing the viewer going on adventures with the band members holding items including a dagger, a chalice and a bedazzled basketball. The video also includes a large paper mache model of John the Baptist’s head, calling back to the line of serving a head on a platter as John the Baptist was notably decapitated by King Herod in the Bible. Although one of the shorter tracks on Spring Grove, “Salome” is probably one of the most jarring on the record.

Taking a turn into folkier territory, “Parade” showcases an eerier incorporation of strings. With the violins warbling as each verse progresses, “can you return to me what I can willingly give you? Am I a vessel for fear to fall into?” This question pierces through the track, causing the listener to reflect as piano and violins wash over them.

Following the theme of reflection, “Cicada” follows “Parade” wonderfully. With the repetitive strings almost drowning out Peppet’s voice in desperation, “Cicada” showcases turmoil and anguish with the song progressing into ambient noises as it fades away.

Returning to a calmer sensation, closing track “Shapes” is full of gentle vocals and harmonies against a softened drum beat. “Past the smoke, down the hill. See it all, the shapes of you still.” The track rounds out Spring Grove with a sound that feels like a full circle moment of sorts with the lyrics echoing the melancholic reflection of “Open Sky.” With its emotional waves, The Ophelia’s’ fourth album Spring Grove has very quickly become my favorite release from the quartet.

- ELLIOT NOVAK

11 / EMMIE

After we finished lunch, the two of us sat down to talk in Tom’s living room, which Tom had been allowed to clutter with instruments for the absence of his roommates during Marquette’s winter break. As I was setting up my recording equipment, Tom pulled up an old French film on the TV, something he said he often does when working out of the living room.

WORDS & PHOTOS BY OLIVER GERHARZ ART BY ELLIOT NOVAK Tom’s music is blowing up, but he doesn’t know why.

It’s not like he advertises his music. Hell, he wants to be a teacher.

His best guess as to his recent success is that it might be a matter of algorithms. Sometimes people tell him that his music is nostalgic, but he doesn’t see it that way. “People who are older say that it’s nostalgic, and I think it might be nostalgic for them because it’s me just writing about being 20,” Tom said, “but to me it’s not nostalgic, cause I’m 20.”

The nostalgia baked into Tom’s music, with its echoing guitar and far-off vocals, is only a part of what makes each song work so well.

The rest comes from the way Tom imprints his personality and youth onto each track. Tom said that “liquor license,” a song off his new album, is the most “college” song he’s ever written. “That song is just about me and my friends. There’s references to conversations we’ve had, there’s references to bars that we go to. One of the first things is just about the balcony we have here, because over the summer we’d always hang out there,” Tom said.

If Tom’s music is genuine, then talking to Tom is certified. After I parked behind his apartment building, Tom let me up into the apartment he and his closest friends share. When he was a student at Marquette, Tom’s dad lived in the same apartment as Tom does now – Tom’s landlord is even the son of his father’s landlord. The kitchen sags a bit, and the oil comes forward in the pan in the same way it did back then. When I got to the kitchen, Tom was in the middle of cooking what he describes as a “riff on shrimp sambuca” for the both of us. Cooking is a huge part of Tom’s life. “I always try to set aside time to cook – if I don’t cook at least once a day I feel weird,” Tom said.

12

Tom’s first “album,” which he released at age 7, sits on a CD somewhere in his basement. His first real album was something he made in middle school, but Tom said that when he first made the album he “wouldn’t put it out anywhere because [he] was terrified.”

That terror kept Tom in a musician’s limbo until he was a junior in high school. “I was just like ‘I need to put this out,’ but I was still too scared to sing – so my first thing I ever put out on streaming was just piano.”

Tom is a busy guy. As a student at Marquette, Tom is juggling multiple majors, minors and jobs. Despite all he has going on, Tom said that “the music just finds a way to happen somehow.” “I’m always thinking about lyrics, or different chords, or different songs that I want to rip off,” Tom said.

I was a little shocked at the way Tom was calling his own music a ripoff, so I asked him why he uses that term in that way. He described it like this: “you take a short thing from another song that you like and then just try to expand it into your own thing.” Tom said his favorite artists to rip off (and favorite artists in general) are Mk.gee, MJ Lenderman and Pavement.

That kind of music taste comes from Tom being “blessed with public school teacher, NPR, indie-rock listening parents.” Tom said that he knows his parents “sounds really pretentious,” but said “the best thing is – they’re not.” They got Tom a drum kit when he was only four years old, which is patient parenting considering that 4-yearolds are generally pretty shit at the drums.

Though Tom’s parents aren’t pretentious, there are plenty of other musicians who are. Tom said he doesn’t like pretentious people, but also that being corny is unavoidable. As an indie rocker, Tom’s music is powered by how aware he is of his own corn levels. That awareness will be as important as ever on Tom’s next project, an indie rock opera.

Tom introduced this project to me with his doubts. “There is no reason to have a three part song,” Tom said, “what am I doing right now?” Yet the sneak peek that Tom gave me of ryan on the corner part 2 was magical. I don’t want to spoil too much of what makes this upcoming release so fun, but I thought that it really embodied the nostalgia of Tom’s other music, feeling like a montage of the things that make Tom’s music great.

“Borderline the music I’m working on right now, it’s an indie rock opera. I’m trying to make an unpretentious rock opera,” Tom said, “which is impossible.”

Despite his ambitious music goals, Tom actually aspires to follow his parent’s footsteps as a teacher. Tom is dedicated to that goal – his studies all work towards it – but the idea of “going all in” on music has its appeals. “I might tour this summer, but this has always been a hobby for me,” Tom said, “I think if I was more all-in on it I’d be a lot more insufferable to be around. My heart is not fully in music at this point in my life.” But if touring goes well, Tom says he “might have to reconsider,” even though he doesn’t want to drop out of college.

“If you go all in on anything, inherently you have to focus less on other parts of your life,” Tom said, “and there’s a lot of parts of my life where I think I’m at a point where I need to focus more on them than music.”

When I asked Tom what he was most proud of, Tom said that when he was with his friends in Indiana he improvised a really good pasta.

I was expecting something musical, but the legendary “Pasta a la Tom” really was worth it when Elijah and I made it in the EMMIE kitchen. But in terms of pride in his music, Tom said that his favorite work was the stuff he does in collaboration with other people, or with the bands he’s in.

Towards the end of our discussion, Tom and I started to talk about the French film on the TV. Tom said that, like the movie that had been playing, his favorite stories were less formulated. In a way, that idea extends to the music Tom makes. “Maybe I just don’t like ambition,” Tom said, “but I also really just like honesty too.”

That honesty manifests in another core value of Tom’s, “be yourself,” which chiefly means no gimmicks. Tom said he dislikes when musicians aura farm or crack corny jokes between songs. “If a gimmick isn’t done correctly, you can hide yourself behind the gimmick,” Tom said, “it’s cool if you just get out there and play.”

“I like music that’s honest, just people that like doing it being honest about who they are in the music that they want to make.”

Yet despite his distaste for the corn, Tom has a gimmick of his own – his branding. Tom releases music under the name tommy oeffling, but hasn’t gone by tommy since high school – he switched over not long after he started releasing music. Early on he wanted to make the switch over to Tom, but didn’t since he’d lose his streaming statistics.

Now he figures it’s too late to change it.

Tom in the kitchen

The other gimmick of Tom’s brand is the all–lowercase everything. In high school Tom typed everything in either all caps or all lowercase.

He said it was “because [he] was pretentious at the time and trying to be artsy and it just stuck.” Though he continues to write all of his notes for class in a uniform letter case, he said he thinks he won’t publish his next album with this part of his brand.

Tom’s impending rebrand reminds me of what he said about “coming out as a musician” in high school. The tension between the comfort of his present situation and the side of himself that he doesn’t put out there as much is coming to the surface again. Either way, with his dedication to being himself, I’m expecting the best from Tom.

13 / EMMIE

WORDS & PHOTOS BY AIDEEN GABBAI ART BY ELLIOT NOVAK

Logan Lamers wants people to tune into the world. At a bakery in Beaver Dam, he told me about the process of making his track “Window,” where he fixed a microphone outside of his window and started playing along with the noise outside, calibrating his music with the rhythm of the street. He then pointed out the humming of the fridge that we’re sitting next to and the clinking of coffee mugs as parts of the everyday musicality that he tries to tap into. “That silence, that space connects you with where you are and what you’re hearing and [it’s] like tuning your brain to lock into those sounds,” he explained.

Lamers is a musician from Oshkosh, WI, who makes sparse and impactful ambient tracks. “I’ve always found that I gravitated toward well placed, sometimes simple, sometimes spaced out music,” he tells me as he explains his origins in ambient music.

He got his start playing cello, and his love for music blossomed when he discovered emo and rock music as a teenager. He currently plays for the Oshkosh-based rock band The Present Age, whose sound is starkly different from his solo work.

When I asked him how he went from that to ambient, he replied, “You know, it’s funny, I’m not on Twitter anymore, but there is a tweet that I remember from a few years ago. Somebody made a joke that there’s this social pipeline of indie rock people making like Aphex Twin, Eurorack synth music.”

For many people, music is about escapism, about transporting the listener somewhere outside of their world entirely. The lyrics pull you in, with layers of guitars and drum beats accompanying the story of a lost love or a hard day. But Lamers wants to make the listener pay attention to the quotidian and overlooked sounds of the world around them. “I don’t wanna use the term meditate, but like [for them] to have a moment of slowing down, and just taking time.”

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The title of his album, Simple Linear Iterative Clustering, comes from a computer program which distills photos into megapixels and highlights the most important parts of the frame. “All of these songs are one simple idea, one simple moment,” he said. He’s inspired by the work of Hiroshi Yoshimura, specifically his 1982 album Music for Nine Postcards, where ambient turns into “environment music.” He admitted that he doesn’t think of his album as a true album, because he made each of the tracks as singles, without a larger collective direction in mind, but that process exemplifies the title. Each song on the cover has its own collection of pixels, and when assembled together, they create a new image, just like his music. It assembles these parts of the world he inhabits, and crafts new ideas through the landscapes of the music, pulling out the most striking and musical elements and fusing them with the sounds of a MIDI controller.

His most recent releases were three singles, each inspired by and with proceeds going to help humanitarian crises in South Sudan, Congo and Palestine. As he ruminates on how he’s formed his ideas about activism through art, he sums it up by saying, “I think artists are responsible for reflecting, critiquing, and stretching what they perceive, systems they see, moments they see, people they know, and damn, it’s tough.” His activism is simply a continuation of his work, his process of noticing and tuning in, and making his listeners aware of things that might slip through their minds as the background noise of the world.

Logan Lamers manages to capture his listeners and bring them back to the earth that they live in. In a world where many of us wear our headphones everywhere, play music in the car and on speakers in the house, his music unwinds the perception that music and our environment are divided entities, and meshes them together with his tracks, a grounding force in a world where music is made of our daydreams.

15 / EMMIE

The Spine Stealers don’t make the type of music you think of when you think “Madison DIY,” but they are Wisconsin to the core. Self-proclaimed “spooky folk” artists, Kate Ruland and Emma O’Shea make up the duo. The two Sun Prairie natives met in middle school, carpooling for their club volleyball team. Though they didn’t become close friends until after graduating high school, “We found each other on Twitter, as one did in 2015.” Soon after, Kate moved to Chicago, and Emma to Eau Claire to attend UWEC. Music was never on the radar, until the COVID-19 Pandemic hit in 2020, bringing them back to Sun Prairie.

The two began messing around with old acoustic guitars around campfires, “It was a period of reflection – gave us an opportunity to slow down, and we were back in our hometown which brought up a lot of memories and emotions. The only logical outlet for us became making music,” Kate said. Both recalled sitting around and playing barely-finished songs for their families. Their name, The Spine Stealers, came from a drunken night with Emma’s dad. He suggested they pick a heavy metal name to juxtapose their sad folk and threw a few out until Spine Stealers stuck.

I met the duo at their studio, a small yellow building just south of the Isthmus. Kate was kind enough to sit and listen to me ramble about my hometown and various majors, while Emma grabbed a scone from the neighboring Lakeside St. Coffee House. The studio walls were covered in collages and notes from friends, string lights hung above door frames. Stacks of National Geographic magazines and a few empty Miller High Life cans decorated the cozy room as the rare January sun shone through a large picture window. It felt as if I had walked right into one of their songs.

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WORDS & PHOTOS BY BAILEY KRAUSE ART BY CAMILLE FORSTER & ELLIOT NOVAK

The Spine Stealers released their first full album, If the Sky Falls, Beyond the Sidewalks, back in October of 2024, “We wasted a lot of time and money in the studio just figuring out how to do simple things, like using a metronome,” Kate said. But the two have found their footing, especially when it comes to lyricism. Inspired by the Midwest, The Spine Stealers do well not to stray away from the harsher aspects of life in Wisconsin.

Emma said, “There is sadness in life and there are those blatant feelings you can’t avoid. I think it’s amplified, there’s a lot of the circle of life and death around here with the seasons. I’m an incredibly sentimental person to a detriment, so the midwest is the perfect place for me because I’m able to tap into that melancholy.”

Both confessed that when they first left their hometown, they were not planning on coming back. But it seems they’ve found great comfort in being somewhere so familiar. “Not in a nihilistic way, but you are meaningless around here, which just means you’re free to be a stranger and do whatever you want - it’s a slower life. You worry about the small things, there’s not some grandiose idea of what you need,” said Emma. There’s a sense that without the Midwest, there would not be The Spine Stealers. When I asked Kate about the imperfection of life in Wisconsin she replied, “It honestly is perfect.”

As an avid folk enjoyer, I’ve found that many house shows around UW-Madison’s campus are severely lacking in that department. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good head-banging-mosh-tastic basement show, but it can get exhausting. I spoke to Emma and Kate about this, and they agreed, though Emma made sure to voice her appreciation for the scene. “The Madison music community is so supportive. It’s made up of actual musicians and not those who are controlling musicians, which is really special.”

I asked them about their experiences with being slower, indie-folk artists within the Madison scene. Emma responded that, “There aren’t that many women-fronted bands and musicians in Madison in general. It was imposter syndrome of both that and ‘Why am I not bringing the party?’ … It felt like I wasn’t making music that people could have fun with. Though as time has gone on, I think we’ve found the right rooms to play in.”

Kate followed up by saying, “It felt a little weird at first, but people have their own tastes. It’s good to show up and experience something different from the bubble you might’ve built for yourself.” Both expanded on their personal appreciation for musical variety, and the widening of it, “It’s a nice relief to have variety on a bill where the audience can experience a wide range of emotions. It gets tiring listening to sad folk music for three and a half hours just like it gets tiring jumping around nonstop,” Kate said.

This musical experiment has been incredibly beneficial for both women. Emma told me, “Kate’s my best friend, we live together, we get to experience all of this together.

It’s brought us even closer – I have a really hard time picturing myself doing this on my own.” Kate’s favorite part has been “the personal and spiritual growth that’s happened because of relinquishing myself to becoming an artist in this way…So much self discovery has happened because of this thing, it makes me wonder how much less of myself I would understand without it.”

She continued, “This is a very vulnerable and uncomfortable thing – from a writing standpoint, from a physical standpoint of performing in front of people. It’s natural for some, it has not been for me. Just learning to not get in your own way - it’s kind of a mindfuck. It’s a heavy dose of self acceptance.”

“As time has gone on, I think we’ve found the right rooms to play in.”

17 / EMMIE

AN EXPLORATION OF THE GENRE OF AMBIENT

WORDS BY ELLIOT NOVAK ART BY CAMILLE FORSTER & ELLIOT NOVAK

What makes something music? This is such an interesting question that, despite its lack of any concrete answer, will still be argued about until the end of time. Ambient music exists within this vein, one of the endless disagreements of the music world. From the hypnotizing gentleness of Brian Eno and Ryuichi Sakamoto to the bleak microsounds of Jana Winderen, ambient artists push the boundaries of what we consider to be music.

While there isn’t any one piece that’s hailed as the first ambient work, John Cage’s “4’33” is one of the most commonly referenced works in the genre’s origin. “4’33” is a three movement piece, made up of four minutes and 33 seconds of silence with the goal of capturing the subtle noises of the space in which it’s performed in. Over time, “4’33” has become somewhat controversial in the music world—many point to its lack of actual notation as an argument that the piece isn’t music.

Ambient music is often viewed as a genre in which the listeners don’t need to be attentive to enjoy the content of which they are consuming. Often found on sleep or focus playlists, ambient music commonly provides a calming experience.

Brian Eno is one of the most prolific ambient musicians, with his solo compositions and collaborations shaping the current world of the genre. Eno’s solo album Ambient 1: Music For Airports earned Pitchfork’s “Best Ambient Album of All Time” in 2016. While I don’t agree with Pitchfork on everything, Music For Airports is undoubtedly one of the most important albums in the ambient genre, with soothing instrumentals fading in and out as the album progresses. The gentle piano repeating throughout the tracks with the recurring melody grounds the listener in a tranquil state. Each track simultaneously stands on their own, with swelling chorale harmonizations standing out on “2/1” and “1/2.”

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Though perhaps most known for his solo works, Eno’s discography extends into many collaborations as well.

Eno’s partnership with King Crimson’s Robert Fripp taps into a more drone-centered side of ambient.

Their 1973 release (No Pussyfooting) explores an implementation of Frippertronics, a result of Robert Fripp’s experimentation with a tape delay system.

Eno & Fripp utilize synthesizers and electric guitar, distorting both while maintaining Fripp’s iconic playing style. The album consists of only two tracks, with both being broken up into smaller movements when listened to via streaming. Beyond Fripp, Eno’s works with other musicians ranging from David Byrne of Talking Heads to David Bowie and beyond have cemented his presence as possibly the most influential musician within the genre.

Another vital name in the integration of ambient music as a genre in the mainstream is Ryuichi Sakamoto.

His contributions to the electronic synthpop world with Yellow Magic Orchestra were groundbreaking, leading to the development of modern genres like new wave and chiptune. Sakamoto’s solo work also heavily played into the formation of contemporary ambient music, with his film score for Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence becoming a cult classic.

Sakamoto’s blending of genre elements shine throughout his discography, paving the way for musicians even outside of the ambient/electronic realm.

The album 1996 encapsulates many of Sakamoto’s career highlights by shining a light on his prolific impact on the world of ambient and chamber pop music. Outside of a more traditional sense of releasing music, Sakamoto’s ringtones for the Nokia 8800 phone are a personal favorite of mine.

While many of the most popular ambient albums are more minimalist in their approach, that doesn’t mean that music has to be minimalist to be ambient. The idea of blending two seemingly unrelated genres is something that ambient music lends itself to.

One of the interesting subsects of ambient centers on metal and its subgenres. Drone metal blends two seemingly polar opposite musical classifications together to create an off-putting yet cohesive blend of anguish and contentment. Bands like Puce Mary and Sunn O))) convey themes of desolation with deafening silences broken up by eerie noises.

Perhaps even more notable than ambient’s relationship with metal and harsh noise is the intersection between ambient and IDM (intelligent dance music). IDM, known also as braindance, is a subgenre of electronic music. With both genres, it makes sense that this experimental genre would lend itself to the traditional structures of ambient music, being more attuned to the unconventional approaches of experimentation. Aphex Twin albums Selected Ambient Works 85-92 and Selected Ambient Works Volume II exemplify the overlap of the genres. Selected Ambient Works 85-92 highlights a more upbeat experimental side of the genre blend while Selected Ambient Works Volume II further explores ambient looping techniques similar to those used by Fripp & Eno. Tracks like “Xtal” incorporate both traditional dance music influences and experimental ambient sounds, while the blending of techno and ambient is apparent on tracks like “Green Calx.”

Perhaps the most experimental interpretation of ambient music is not found in the collaborations with genres like metal or IDM, but in the deconstruction of what music can be. Artists like Jana Winderen and Steven Roden even further push the boundary of what is considered music. Subgenres like lowercase, field recordings and even animal recordings fall under the ambient umbrella. Roden’s Forms of Paper takes recordings of paper being handled and distorts the sound files beyond recognition. The result of this is a record that is simultaneously off-putting and comforting as the repetition progresses.

The development of nature recordings is something that Jana Winderen has used to showcase the mundane elements of the outside world. Her album The Noisiest Guys on the Planet highlights the soundscapes found in the waters on the coast of Norway. The collection of noises include many underwater animals, with the primary focus being shrimp. I’ve grown incredibly fond of The Noisiest Guys on the Planet, with the album routinely showing up in my most listened to lists ever since I was first introduced to it. Winderen’s other works document many other natural environments, ranging from underwater plankton to a spruce tree.

The ambient genre brings into question many long held beliefs of what qualifies as music, pushing the envelope with the works produced under the title of ambient. What is music? I don’t think anyone will ever truly know.

19 / EMMIE

WORDS BY IAN JOHNSON PHOTOS BY ELLIOT NOVAK ART BY CAMILLE FORSTER Shoegaze is a ubiquitous term coined in the late 1980s to loosely describe the rise of deafening neo-psychedelic bands in the UK, a direct observation of the increasing number of downward-facing musicians staring at their new pedalboards. Of course, a musical genre that names itself after its lack of stage presence is not a recipe for success Eventually, the genre solidified with the release of genre-defining albums Loveless by My Bloody Valentine (MBV) and Souvlaki by Slowdive. But even back then, bands hated the label of shoegaze. Especially the American bands who were inspired by Dinosaur Jr and Galaxie 500 just as much as MBV or Ride but got thrown into the “American Shoegaze” tag.

I had the opportunity to speak to Damon Tutunjian, singer and guitarist of Swirlies, a legendary Boston lofi indie rock band from the 1990s that consistently shows up on critics’ “Best of Shoegaze” lists as America’s answer to MBV. They also have inspired many of today’s current indiegaze artists like Wednesday, Ovlov and TAGABOW. Swirlies formed in the summer of 1990 out of the dissolution of Raspberry Bang, a Go-Go’s cover band which featured Damon, Seana Carmody and a “punk guy.”

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After kicking out the aforementioned “punk guy,” Damon enlisted the help of Andy Bernick, an old high school friend who had just begun teaching himself bass and MIT student Ben Drucker on drums.

Damon recalled, “In Swirlies, [Andy Bernick] developed his own style. He learned to play bass in the band so his bass playing knows what to do against my guitar which I think is kind of cool”. Driven by the friendship and chemistry between Damon Tutunjian and Andy Bernick, they have been the only consistent members of the band since its formation, with the amount of ex-Swirlies collaborators rivaling collectives like Elephant 6.

Boston has always been a thriving city of music on account of its proximity to New York and the incredible amount of live venues. In the late 1960s, the Bosstown Sound ruled the airwaves with underground bands like Ultimate Spinach and Orpheus competing with the San Francisco scene to create the most mind-altering song. By the early 1970s, The Modern Lovers’ biting garage rock had replaced the Bosstown sound and paved the way for chart-topping power pop bands to come in the latter half of the 1970s like The Cars and Boston (the band).

Then, in the 1980s, the college rock revolution brought bands like Dinosaur Jr, Mission of Burma, Galaxie 500 and Pixies.

A big reason for Boston’s incredible music scene is the abnormal number of colleges – each having their own college radio stations. “On a clear night, you’d get these weirdo radio stations. Some of the earliest stuff [I’d listen to] I’d just sit there with my tape recorder and just tape the radio. I’d literally tape everything and keep rewinding.

If it was a song I liked, I’d keep it, proceed, just taping and rewinding, you know... ERS, MBR, HRB and all the Boston radio stations.

I realized I was in the middle of college radio gold.”

By the 1990s, the stage was set for the next wave of amazing Boston bands: Swirlies, The Magnetic Fields, Drop Nineteens, The Breeders, Helium and Lilys, just to name a few. In fact, Damon and Greg Ackell from Drop Nineteens even spent a summer working together in the same ice cream shop on Mass Ave. The band’s name “Swirlies” came from drummer Ben Drucker early on with the rest of the band unaware of the toilet prank connotations. Other names considered included classics like “Hot Anal Nosepick.”

From there, the band recorded early demos in the MIT dorms and caught the attention of small Boston-area indie labels like Slumberland and Pop Narcotic who released these demos to spread like wildfire in the burgeoning underground rock scene.

The success of these early records led to the release of their first official EP What to Do About Them on Taang! Records, a major Boston label with MTV and college radio airplay. Unfortunately, this contract would be massively unfair to Swirlies, and Taang! would cause many issues for them in the future.

Nevertheless, the stage was set for Swirlies to release their most celebrated albums: Blonder Tongue Audio Baton in 1993 and They Spent Their Wild Youthful Days in The Glittering World of Salons in 1996.

These sister albums represent Swirlies at the height of their power: harsh and angular at one moment and dreamy and droning the next. These albums are an intensely creative fusion of the soft harmonies and lofi experimentation of twee acts on K Records and the fuzzed-out guitars found on the blistering hardcore of Dischord and SST Records.

Curiously, Swirlies have never disbanded since their inception in the summer of 1990, continually releasing albums (despite their egregious contract with Taang!), changing sounds, and documenting everything on their enigmatic website Richmond County Archives (rcarchives.com). There you can find everything from esoteric analog audio service manuals to hand-drawn schematics of the synthesizer settings used on specific songs.

One highlight of their later discography, the electronic pop of Cats of the Wild, Vol. 2, shows The Swirlies’ continued experimental spirit and sense of humor. “That was our goofy, poppy New York record. It was a little bit of a reaction to what was going on at that time. It was The Strokes and The White Stripes and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs and that was what was hip right then in the early 2000s. We were all living in New York and thought, ‘Well, we’re gonna do this. ’” Reviewers and humans alike have an inherent love for categorizing, meaning terms like shoegaze continue to plague new bands who adopt more experimental pedal driven sounds. “I think of the new shoegaze, or at least one faction of it, as being the new goth. Style conscious, it’s got a sound. It’s got a thing”. Beat writer William S Burroughs once described language as an alien virus from outer space, with incredible power for social manipulation and changing human understanding. The term shoegaze is a quintessential example of this flawed blueprint spreading from person to person, infecting their vernaculars and continuing the cycle.

Over time, the term went from describing the music to defining the music, limiting the boundaries artists could push. “Back when we started doing this in the early 90s, it wasn’t a genre, we were just doing our own thing. Now, it’s so identity-based, it disturbs me a little bit. I don’t want to categorize these bands. Don’t even call it shoegaze.

Do your thing. It should evolve and I’m glad it’s evolving. I don’t think they need the shoegaze thing.” ‘Nuff said.

21 / EMMIE

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With the Madison music scene chock-full of energetic emo, indie rock and hardcore punk, sometimes one needs a bit of a breather; a reminder to slow down and simply exist. Slowcore trio Loveblaster offers respite, a pause in the upbeat frenzy that is in no short supply in Madison. The trio, comprised of Marley VanRaalte (vocals, guitar), Abby Self (vocals, drums) and Ilyich Meza (bass), is no stranger to the local scene, having formed back in 2020. The most recent iteration of Loveblaster was finalized in early 2024, with Meza replacing former bassist Neal Jochmann of Combat Naps and Graham Hunt’s band due to scheduling overlaps.

In a dimly lit, maximally decorated living room, I sat down with Loveblaster to discuss the home they’ve found in the Madison music scene and the way they’ve made a name for themselves as one of the few slowcore bands in the area.

Being surrounded by bands of wildly different genres can seem isolating, but that’s never been an issue for Loveblaster. Self touched on the frequency of mixed-genre bills, “It’s interesting how easily it seems we fit into mixed genre shows, maybe I’m delusional but it feels like all genres could branch off from the music we make.

We’re like the pared back version of a lot of the bands we play with.” With many local shows highlighting the wide range of genres found in the scene, people often come across bands they wouldn’t be introduced to otherwise.

Their writing process has also grown, becoming much more collaborative with the integration of Meza on bass. “Now we’re all writing all of own parts, it’s feeling a lot less like I’m writing a song and everyone’s learning it and a lot more like ‘I have an idea, let’s develop it together,’” VanRaalte says, touching on the shift they’ve all experienced over time. While not a complete deviation from their first album, their upcoming releases present a more realized image of the project. When joking about a possible genre shift, VanRaalte alluded that they were moving away from the category of slowcore and instead moving more towards whatever the antithesis of hardcore is, perhaps, softcore?

“The ethos of Loveblaster is ‘how do we as maximalists make a minimalist sound?’ and most things we do get filtered through that.

With the first record we really achieved that, making it feel as little as possible.” The trio is taking the stripped back foundation they created with The Way Things Work and aims to add a pop of color into their discography, possibly even introducing new reverb and chorus pedals, VanRaalte and Meza divulged, alluding to the introduction of new gear to their sound.

Even though they’re moving away from their original minimalist approach, Loveblaster remains true to their roots, creating a calming reminder to take it slow.

“If you sound a little bit different than the norm, I feel like people are always nice about it. At every show we’ve played it feels like we’re the weird band, but it seems like that’s always been a good thing, people have always been like ‘woah, that’s cool, it’s different.’ And we’re not even playing any music that’s very groundbreaking.” VanRaalte adds on. “I feel very accepted by the Madison community so I feel like I’m weirdly on the ground floor of [the constant evolution of the local scene] it feels like everyone is growing together, at the same time.“ Loveblaster’s new music is shifting, as is the case with many slowcore bands over time. “[Loveblaster] was basically born of the limitations of what the drums could be. We started with just a snare and a cymbal, and there was only so much we could do with them.”

Self explains the musical growth they’ve had, having learned how to play the drums through this project. “It began to really fall into place with what Marley was writing.”

Speaking on the influence found in many notable slowcore and folk bands, VanRaalte added “I like to say we were essentially a Low cover band when we started. We took a lot of inspiration from Gillian Welch & David Rawlings too, like ‘wouldn’t it be cool if we were like them?’ And that just kind of grew into what we made for [The Way Things Work]. Everything since then has been a piece-bypiece growth into where we’re at now, where I feel like for the first time, we feel like a full band.”

“How do we as maximalists make a minimalist sound?”

23 / EMMIE

The Lost Art of Lo-fi The Lost Art of Lo-fi WORDS BY AIDEEN GABBAI ART BY EASTON PARKS

When you think of lo-fi music, the first name that comes to mind is the Beach Boys, right? R. Stevie Moore? The Mountain Goats? MF DOOM? Probably not.

More likely, you think of an anime girl hunched over her desk, placidly writing as upbeat synth plays in the background. Today, Lo-Fi Girl, formerly ChilledCow, a French YouTube channel, has 14.5 million subscribers, and they’ve completely changed the meaning of lo-fi, a genre that’s been around in one form or another since the 1950s.

In actuality, lo-fi is short for low fidelity, a type of music defined not only through the genre of music, but rather the method of recording it: in a home studio on low budget equipment. The name was allegedly coined in 1986 by William Berger, a radio DJ from New Jersey, who would do weekly radio hours featuring DIY recordings from small bands.

Because the devices that most people used to make lo-fi music were low-tech, the tracks are riddled with recording errors, like distortions or fluctuations in tape speed. The crinkly, fuzzy quality is a nightmare for audio engineers, but it’s the imperfections that add a layer of complexity and intrigue that define the music. Listening to a good lo-fi track often makes you feel like you’ve been caught between dreams and real life, transported to a distant and private moment that has long since passed but still imbued the emotion of the moment. The Mountain Goats’ discography up

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until 2020 was recorded on John Darnielle’s Panasonic RX-FT500 boombox, a medium that added a nostalgic drone that I’ve come to associate exclusively with the band.

The Beach Boys are generally recognized for kicking the genre off in the mainstream with Smiley Smile in 1967, recorded at Brian Wilson’s house.

They decided to record in the home studio after fights with their record label who dropped a single of theirs earlier than they agreed to try and pressure an album release. The album is now a cult classic because of its chaotic and personable character; its release made the music world realize that good music didn’t need perfect recording conditions. Starting in the late ‘70s, R. Stevie Moore pushed the genre forward, creating excellent rock records in his apartment all the way up until the 2010s, building on the foundation that the Beach Boys had laid.

The ingenuity and autonomy driving early lo-fi is what makes it distinct. The attitude of its trailblazers helped create a type of music that defied all expectations. There’s no concern on the part of the artists about what might be palatable to a general public.

Instead, they focus on finding their artistic vision and finding out how they can achieve it.

Because of the freedom of creative movement that lo-fi granted, the DIY scene began to form in the ‘80s and ‘90s, populated with punk bands challenging the aesthetic norms and conventions of music. Bands made their own CDs and circulated them within their community, braving the new frontier of music in their basements and at house shows.

Lo-fi also made a huge impact in the world of hip-hop, and its accessibility created icons of the genre in the 1990s and 2000s, most notably the Japanese producer Nujabes, whose innovation and enthusiasm for obscure hip-hop established his legacy and forged a new path for the genre.

The advent of lo-fi meant that black artists, who had previously been excluded and limited by most of the white music industry, could finally make their music on their own terms. A defining lo-fi hip-hop album that sprang from the early 2000s was Madvillany, a collaboration album between MF DOOM and Madlib, and most of the instrumentals were recorded on Madlib’s Boss SP-303 in Brazil.

But in the 2010s, things started to shift. With Lo-Fi Girl’s channel exploding in popularity, the term lo-fi began to be associated with calm instrumental hip-hop tracks that played on a loop, used as white noise for harried college students and corporate employees. All of a sudden, a label that was meant to span wide genres and embrace the modern accessibility of music had tightened to a much smaller box.

That didn’t mean artists stopped making tracks at home. In fact, with the growing affordability and quality of professional recording devices, most artists can lay down a track without leaving the house, leading to the birth of lo-fi’s successor term, “bedroom pop.” Massive artists like Billie Eilish and Lil Nas X got their start by going viral on SoundCloud from their DIY songs. Ethel Cain produced Preacher’s Daughter on her own with only one other contributor on two songs, a mesmerizing and haunting testament to the kind of art that can spring up from people when they have the resources to make it at home.

On some levels, maybe this is a good thing.

Everyone can now have professional-level recordings without the messy imperfections and fluctuations of low-quality recording devices, and there’s no longer a clear divide between the high-profile industry artists and the local unsigned ones. The chillwave crowd can take the word lo-fi, whatever. However, there’s also a disappearing window of tolerance for lower-quality audio, and with that, a lower tolerance for messy or imperfect music from artists just starting out. If you really want that lo-fi sound, you can always seek out recording equipment in your parents’ attic or on eBay. With every advancement we make as people, we have to leave something behind. Maybe the era of lo-fi is simply over. Maybe all we can do is appreciate what it did for growing and diversifying the music scene we have today and watch as GarageBand, anime girls and $50 mics from Amazon fill its place. That’s a depressing idea of how music moves forward. I’d rather think of lo-fi like it’s a bug trapped in amber. It’s not really alive anymore, but it’s preserved and right in front of us. The second you press play, you’re with the artists, peering through the dreamy orange glow to see them laughing in the middle of a verse and hitting a wrong note, with passion and creativity in the music traveling through the mess of time from the track back to you.

But is bedroom pop truly lo-fi? It’s the inheritor of lo-fi’s legacy, for sure, but it doesn’t have the same sonic rawness and personal quality to it.

25 / EMMIE

WORDS BY EASTON PARKS PHOTOS BY BAILEY KRAUSE ART BY IAN HOFFMAN

Indie, a genre marker originally used to distinguish independence, has changed into a label for bands outside of the mainstream, though now even mainstream artists don the indie tag. Beyond my fascination with the degradation of the term, indie is synonymous with a very special band hailing from New Jersey: Real Estate.

Real Estate are pseudo-cousins to the Brooklyn indie hipster bands of their time. Although many fans claim nostalgia as a driving force in their love for this band, Real Estate would prefer to not fully lean into that. Their laid-back suburban vibes have kept their fan base sporting beanies and drinking IPAs – but not going full hipster. Known for their dreamy, lush reverb-soaked guitars and soft melodic vocals it’s impossible not to sway and twirl your cute little mustache while enjoying some classic early ‘10s indie.

Longevity has been a scarce quality in music, but Real Estate has combatted those negative forces for over 15 years. “I think the main thing is that we’ve been playing music since well before the band existed, like I’ve known Alex since eighth grade and the same thing with Julian, we grew up together,” says Martin Courtney, frontman and guitarist of the group.

Although they currently live scattered across the country, working together in the band keeps their friendship alive. “It’s still fun, so we keep doing it, and much to our surprise, people still keep coming to the shows. It would be a hard thing to walk away from, at least in its entirety, knowing that there’s still a viable world of people who are interested in our music,” says bassist and vocalist Alex Bleeker.

Now more than ever, the band’s pop sensibilities have come out on their latest album, Daniel, through jangling melodic tunes and acoustic guitar. Real Estate leans into a classic pop structure and “three-anda-half minute songs” while carrying strong melodic senses which allow the album to feel like a warm and welcome daydream.

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“This was the first time where we made a decision to make a certain type of record. Whereas in the past it was like, here’s a group of songs, we have enough to make a record, let’s go record them,” Courtney said.

Around the early 2010s many groups like Real Estate were rising up out of the Northeast. The presence of Beach Fossils, Wild Nothing and Woods led to a kind of cross-pollination, resulting in a healthy local scene.

While still very much rooted in New Jersey, even citing fellow New Jerseyans The Feelies as inspiration, Real Estate cites Brooklyn as a common stomping ground for themselves and indie bands alike during that period. “There was a lot of, for lack of a better term, DIY underground music happening in North Brooklyn, that because of the internet and the way it was being used at the time, pre-Spotify algorithm but still heavy internet usage discovery of music, made it a very special and unique time to be in a band,” says Bleeker. Courtney added, “the bands that are still around from that era you feel a kinship with for sure.”

Daniel marks a new chapter in Real Estate’s catalog, with less emphasis on structural complexity and more attention to their natural catchiness. A lovely variety of instruments including pedal steel guitar grace the project as the lyrical themes touch on overcoming uncertain times and maturity. Despite its 2024 release, the songs on Daniel were written in 2022. “During that time of writing music, it was like, ‘I want to write songs for the world that I hope is coming and not what I’m living in right now,’ something that feels more welcoming and bright,” Courtney said. “Daniel was like a breath of fresh air for us; let’s lean into our pop side, and it felt like a welcome reprieve.

Everyone needs a minute to just enjoy a nice record,” Bleeker said.

When asked about beauty in their music Bleeker said, “I do think there’s a thing as subjective beauty and certain cultural touchstones or tastes formed together to inform people’s ideas of beauty. ” According to Bleeker, Real Estate likes to make music that sounds pretty from their own perspective rather than getting bogged down in traditional beauty standards.

While beauty may not be objective, it’s hard not to hear sprinkles of charm in the group’s music. During my outing to the High Noon Saloon on February 5th, I found myself next to one of the only children at the show. This young boy eventually got tired of standing on his feet, so an employee gave up his seat. This beautiful scene from the tour was an elegant reflection of the fanbase, contributing to an endearing atmosphere and a wonderful night.

itarist Julian Fun Fact: Gu resident t n e r r u c a is Lynch me cit y, o h ’s IE M M E of is also an d n a n o is d a M adison. alum of UW-M

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WORDS BY EASTON PARKS PHOTOS BY ELLIOT NOVAK ART BY LUCA CECERE & ELLIOT NOVAK

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There’s a sense of vulnerability when you open your home to others, especially strangers. Gathered with many friends in their sunlit living room playing video games and chatting, we were offered hashbrowns and water by the kind members of the band Friko. Their comforting hospitality was warming on a particularly windy day in the windy city. They left and prepared a room for us that felt just as lively with white walls and a bright magenta seat-covered loveseat.

Before I dive into our conversation, I must introduce our hosts, Bailey Minzenberger (drums, vocals) and Niko Kapetan (vocals, guitar) of Friko. Originally from the suburbs of Chicago, Friko originated in 2019 as a threepiece with Luke Stamos (bass), who has since departed the band as of summer 2023.

As a modern staple in the exhilarating Chicago indie bubble, along with groups like Horsegirl, Lifeguard and Post Office Winter, Friko has been steadily growing, having toured the US and Europe as well as Japan and China. Their debut album, Where we’ve been, Where we go from here, has been out for over a year, garnering acclaim. Across the project, Niko’s vocals ring with this aforementioned vulnerability as if he’s talking to a close friend about concerns he has for them. Bailey’s drumming is tastefully melodic as each hit either bolsters the melody or creates an interesting counter melody. The drums are more than a backbeat; neither overwhelming nor oversimplified, they are an integral part of the album. Interspersed with big piano and string ballads but counterbalanced with rocking indie slappers, they blend inspirations from 19th-century composers and more contemporary art rock. While managing to be authentic, Friko walks a tightrope of artsy, sometimespunky indie rock, and it’s thoroughly impressive.

While connections are inherently important to the success of a group, an underrated and often overlooked element is fun. Even when challenged, passion should be at the center of your art as expressing your emotions can be a gratifying outlet. “There’s definitely going to be difficulties in playing music, just because it’s such an innately emotional thing. But I think that, no matter what, it should always be fun. You can still have difficulties and go through the entire up and down of the process, but all in all, you should be having a good time and you should be excited about it,” Bailey said. Niko later added, “I don’t know how all these bands tour that hate each other.” He explains that you need to have fun in life, and if your band is your life, you better enjoy extended time with your bandmates.

Even though they tour globally, Friko stays connected to their roots by playing DIY shows back home in Chicago. Whether it’s a fundraiser or an opportunity to play new music for friends, it’s like a breath of fresh air to play DIY shows after some of the more grueling aspects of touring. Friko had played a show at the DIY space Not Not with friends Sharp Pins the night before we met with them.“It felt really fulfilling to play a DIY show after it’s been a minute; it’s so much more intimate and that’s how we started, just playing DIY shows. It’s really nice to come back to that and share space with people,” Bailey said.

“We’ll always think of ourselves as a Chicago band, I’ve always said I’m gonna die in Hyde Park.” While much of the previous album

“We’ll always think of ourselves as a Chicago band, I’ve always said I’m gonna die in Hyde Park,” Niko said.

Chicago has been a breeding ground for indie since the ‘80s, with bands like Smashing Pumpkins and Wilco being rooted there. The perfect mix between a big city and an affordable city, Chicago itself plays a large part in its own indie music scene. Niko explains that the Chicago scene was “the only thing that we had at the beginning. We would just play Chicago like four times a month for like a year before we even played anywhere else.” Community is vital when fostering a healthy scene, with Chicago bands honing their craft and meeting other creatives at events like Free Mondays at The Empty Bottle in Chicago, which lets local bands play to a decent room. Friko preaches a scene predicated on kindness: “Be nice to other people in the scene,” Niko said. Bailey added, “But it’s funny that’s like something that you have to say, you know, people should just be nice.”

“In the scene, I feel like you gotta make those friends around you, that’s how we met, and you have to make those connections. Once you find that group of people, if it’s a band you can make something special with, then you need to work really hard at it and just all be committed on the same page,” Niko said.

was played at Not Not the previous evening, it was also a testing ground to play much of Friko’s new stuff. Writing closer to a singular moment in time than the sprawling timeframe of their debut, they find themselves leaning into collaboration as they plan to record this summer.

Having toured for much of 2024, their live playing has evolved into more confident and natural musicianship when recording.“I think because we did so much playing last year, I’m definitely physically feeling it, like things are coming a little bit easier. It’s easier to translate an idea that’s in my head into my hands, which is really cool. I think that kind of comfort, within itself, lends to a different kind of exploration too; you just try everything and it feels like it’s kind of flowing,” Bailey said.

“We just try to write songs that we enjoy. I feel like we have a gauge for a song, like if it feels good when we play it as a band. We’re having fun if it feels honest and it feels like we’re the ones to write and play this song,” Niko said.

“The second record is going to be that band band record, which I’m really excited about. Like a band in a room, everything live,” Niko said. Bailey added, “I think there’s a level of that that just happens naturally when you spend that much time together. There’s definitely a cohesiveness within us just as a unit, as friends and everything that’s come from basically being roommates for half of last year. You really don’t get any alone time when you’re on tour, it brings a particular kind of closeness with people. I think it translates into writing just like a little bit of a hive mind.”

31 / EMMIE

“I think there’s a level of that that just happens naturally when you spend that much time together. There’s definitely a cohesiveness within us just as a unit, as friends and everything that’s come from basically being roommates for half of last year.”

Differing from the lengthy recording process of their debut, Friko can afford to record their next project in a more consistent studio environment. “We kind of are purposely doing it the exact opposite way [than our debut] because we’ve never been able to do that. Now starting a record with a label, it’s an actual possibility, and I’m so done with hundreds of hours of mixing,” Niko said.

Friko’s music is incredibly relatable, especially to zoomers, as it works toward themes of catharsis, connection and nostalgia. That feeling of losing years of high school or college to COVID-19 and the confusion and loneliness that spread across the early 2020s is captured in a way that feels simultaneously emotionally raw and musically polished.

Speaking on this relatability Niko said that he feels “like when it’s people your age it’s kind of just cause you’re all growing up with the same shit and you kind of feel the same things.”

“It’s always about just trying to connect with your generation, cause that’s the music I grew up with. If it feels true to us, hopefully it feels true to others,” Niko said.

As of this magazine’s publication date, Friko is in the midst of a tour with support from Peel Dream Magazine, youbet and Starcleaner Reunion, with a notable homecoming show in Chicago supporting Black Country, New Road on May 15th. Our Wisconsin readers should also take note of their upcoming show at Summerfest on July 3rd as well.

“I’m so excited for the bands we’re playing with; youbet, Peel Dream and Starcleaner, they’re all amazing. And just the feeling of not only being excited to play the night of the show, but being so stoked to just watch music is very energizing. I’m stoked, it’s going to be really great,” Bailey said. “I’m going to say this now so we can hold ourselves accountable for it: when we went on tour with Water From Your Eyes last year they asked us to go bowling a few times. We got dinner and that was really fun. It can be hard on tour to find time to do something recreational, but it’s so worth it. I wanna do that, I want to ask them to hang out outside the venue.”

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Friko’s hospitality and music embody this dichotomy of dreams and nightmares–with dreamlike ambitions and love rooted in community and creative expression. Despite this, life in a band isn’t idyllic as touring cycles get physically draining and the pressures of relying on your passion as a living can weigh heavy. They seem to carry the spirit and down-to-earthness that a band needs to have to survive today. They aren’t just a band we admire; they encapsulate the community we serve and hold dear many of the qualities we search for in our scene.

Friko stands as a new beacon in the lineage of genuine Midwest artistry, so don’t be afraid to be caught on the wrong side of the shoe again.

Sitting and talking with them, their authenticity was bar none.

They were grateful and intentional. As we interviewed them, there was constant chatter and laughter from their group of friends in the living room, who were also kind to us even as we took their friends away for an hour. During our photoshoot, it was as if the sun came out from behind the clouds and the cold went away. I’m not one to believe in fate, but I’m not sure we could have found a more deserving cover for this issue.

Sometimes a cliche is the most beautiful outcome.

“Where we’ve been, where we go from here / Take your weight and throw your arms around me” 33 / EMMIE

WORDS, PHOTOS & ART

BY ELLIOT NOVAK

When giving suggestions of music that evokes the sensation of dreaming, shoegaze is often a topic of conversation. The world of shoegaze and dream pop is full of bands that paint pensive and otherworldly images with their music, perhaps none so mesmerizingly as Airiel.

The Chicago-based duo is comprised of Jeremy Wrenn (guitar, vocals) and Andrew Marrah (guitar, synthesizers).

Wrenn is one of the founding members of Airiel, forming it alongside Shawn Delaney in 1997. Delaney departed in 1999, with various musicians filling out the lineup in both recorded and live settings. Marrah joined Airiel in 2010, bringing Airiel to the current primary lineup. Sitting down with the two, we talked about the permanence of art and the ever-changing relationships between artists and consumers.

“I think [art] is very permanent, that’s why it’s so hard to put out music these days.” Marrah said, jumping into an existentialist view of the pressure of releasing art into the world. “You have to be very careful about what you release because it should reflect you and it is forever.” He emphasized the self-image that is projected when an artist puts out music that may not be genuine. “The type of music that we make has definitely hit a time period where it’s almost as generic in some ways as country or ska might be,” Wrenn added, discussing the perennial effects of music and the repetitive waves that every genre cycles through.

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“Social media made touring a much more worthwhile thing,” said Wrenn, talking about the intersection of the internet and the music industry. He made mention of the documentary Why Am I Doing This? (A Film About Touring), which highlights many of the struggles that accompany musicians trying to make a living. In the film, producer Steve Albini brings up how the growing popularity of MySpace marked a turning point for musicians and how they collaborated to book shows.

“You also get to see how the bands you’re friends with are doing and that’s a huge benefit for sure,” Wrenn added.

Connecting through social media has opened new doors for musicians, allowing them to reach audiences they may have never thought to include in their touring circuits.

The word of mouth element of the music industry has changed, especially with the ever-expanding presence of music publications. “Talk about permanence, publications are weird. I have a general distrust of anyone that reviews music because why should I care what this person thinks?

Especially when they’re being paid to write about a band,” said Wrenn. He emphasized how the issue of payola to garner attention for artists has never really dissipated from the world. “It’s all about who has the most money to pay for the best reviews a lot of the time now, so we don’t count on [publications] for that social presence,” Marrah added.

Streaming has also altered the impact of releasing music for artists. “When you’ve got an environment where we’re all reliant on streaming platforms and artists get paid 0.003 cents per stream, the only people that really make money are the people on the executive committees for that company,” Wrenn said. “But without us, without musicians, they wouldn’t have anything to stream.” The importance of unionization within markets to better protect the working class is a sentiment that many artists share, with many criticisms of large streaming services and profit margins coming to light.

Andrew Marrah In an age full of trials and tribulations for musicians, the duo still manage to find gratification in their work. “Creating the music and then hitting the road to see the reaction to that music is probably my favorite thing because you’re investing so much time and money into the production and then you play it for the first time to a crowd, seeing that reaction is incredible. Having that emotional response and connecting with the fans is everything to me,” said Marrah. The reception from their fans is instrumental in the atmosphere the duo has cultivated. Wrenn added in reference to their recent experience of playing the Levitation festival in Austin, Texas in November 2024.

“We had this huge crowd and they were all singing our songs back to us.

That just gave me goosebumps.”

The songwriting process for Airiel has varied. Wrenn spoke about the way they’re approaching the production process for the new album as following a similar path to their 2012 EP Kid Games, working on recording each song as it’s written.

The duo has gone back and forth, their experimentation going forward can be found in their new instrumental arrangements, with both members exploring musical realms they haven’t yet. Alternative guitar tunings and incorporating more synthesizers in differing capacities expand upon their past releases.

“We can try new territory and whatever altering one’s approach to realm of sound we want With writing, there can often be a fear consistent enough for to go into, it’s always offansnotthatbeing prefer their previous music.

Airiel’s connection as a duo going to sound like us.” However, is reflected in their work, proving this

The feeling of stagnation when a genre feels like it reaches a plateau is another element of permanence Airiel touched on. The duo brought up the importance of keeping their music interesting as they reflected on the 20th anniversary edition of Winks and Kisses released by Feeltrip Records in 2023, a box set of four EPs released in 2003 and 2004 on Clair Records.

Wrenn shared that the original plan for Winks and Kisses was always to compile the EPs. “To have four EPs, then release it as a boxset, that was always the plan. We ended up getting a little cute with it, having the art reflect the season and that time in the year. They weren’t released in the seasons they reflected but that was the intent of the four.” The artwork in both the original compilation and the 20th anniversary relay the cohesion between the four EPs, with the songs blending into one another seamlessly.

is no concern for them.“I think it will always sound like me and Jeremy as long as it’s me and Jeremy,” Marrah said. “I feel like we can try new territory and whatever realm of sound we want to go into, it’s always going to sound like us.” The bond the two share creates a beautiful world of hypnagogic listening and their upcoming music is sure to continue and further develop that sound.

Jeremy Wrenn

Airiel discussed their method for their upcoming album: deconstructing their sound while maintaining the dreamlike musicality from past releases. “Let’s not do the thing that’s obvious. That’s kind of the focal point of this new record.

It’s like deconstructing everything and starting over. It’s sparking new ideas and moving us out of our comfort zone.” Marrah said.

35 / EMMIE

WORDS BY NOLAN MAJEROWSKI ART BY LUCA CECERE & IAN HOFFMAN

Music has the unique power to control human emotions in a way that not many other things can. Is this a biological response, or something that we have been conditioned to feel based on our experiences with mixed media? Is it the body’s reaction, or the soul’s? I am fascinated with the way that soundtracks can be the perfect complement to movies, sometimes even without the film. Soundtracks can perfectly represent the feelings of being stuck in a dream and a nightmare, and I want to know why I feel this way when I listen to them. Would I still feel this way if I didn’t know the context of the movies that go along with them? As music and video become more intertwined in our culture through outlets like movies, social media, and even the Spotify app, we may be drifting away from a time when music alone is able to evoke powerful emotions in us.

I dream very vividly and very often, so sometimes I like to write them down.

My most recent dream as of the time I am writing this went something like this: I am sitting in a restaurant with my friends. One of them mentions Frank Ocean. I go “oh my goddddd, I loooove ‘Pyramids’,” and the restaurant subsequently starts playing Frank Ocean. The server brings some sort of lentil soup to our table and says that it is called “papas frijas.”

I wake up. My dreams often make no sense, but I think there is a traditional “dream feeling.”

When I think of dreaming I always imagine floating weightlessly through the sky, and jumping from cloud to cloud while an angel plays a harp.

Herbie Hancock’s soundtrack to ‘Round Midnight encapsulates this feeling.

His fingers glide across the piano keys, producing notes that seemingly float through the air. The opening track contains a trumpet with a unique, almost voice-like tone, reminding me of the blissful, distorted, strangeness that dreams bring us. The album’s calmness provides a gentle escape to a world of no responsibilities; a world where I am leaping effortlessly among clouds. The slow-tempo saxophone crooning adds a sense of ease, taking me to a place where I can close my eyes and lay my head on a pillow forever. But this bliss must end at some point – the other side of the pillow contains something much more sinister.

I am so glad Freddy vs. Jason has the soundtrack that it does. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to write about it, and that would be a damn shame. This soundtrack is a clear time capsule of the edgy 2000s that was riding on nu-metal and butt rock. I admittedly enjoy both genres, but I completely understand the hate that they get, because honestly, a lot of the music is hilariously awful. However, it does have its place in society: the audio of a slasher movie about nightmares. Featuring the likes of metal titans Slipknot, Lamb of God and Sepultura, there is no shortage of down-tuning on this soundtrack. It is an hour-long barrage of chugging riffs, screams, growls and thunderous double bass drum hits. Every song pumps me full of enough adrenaline to make me feel like I am running away from a hulking brute with a machete. While listening to this, I couldn’t help but question whether the sounds contained in these songs are unsettling and nightmarish on their own, or if I just perceive them that way thanks to the movie and the effect it’s had on perceptions of the genre.

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I sat down with music theory professor Michael Weinstein-Reiman to pick his brain about why I may associate ‘Round Midnight with dreams and the Freddy vs. Jason soundtrack with nightmares. Professor Weinstein-Reiman, who has a background in musical history and philosophy, told me that my questions have been asked by humans for centuries. He shared that our responses to music can be explained partially by culture and psychology, but not entirely one or the other.

Weinstein-Reiman took me through the debates over melody and acoustics in 1750s France, where arguments arose from trying to figure out what musical element was responsible for evoking human emotions.

He also mentioned René Descartes, who sought to answer the question of whether the body and mind are separate, and if our bodies or souls make us feel emotion through music. This topic has clearly been whittled down for long enough that we have reached an objective truth, right?

The real answer is considerably more simple than any of my previous theories. There was a point in our interview where I learned about German composer Johann Mattheson and how he assigned specific emotions to key signatures. Mattheson would argue that E minor is sad and expressive of grief, while F major is used to, “express the most beautiful sentiments.” It was at this point that I thought Mattheson had the answers to my questions all along. His chart lays it all out for me nice and neat. Wait, “Rock Your Body” by Justin Timberlake is in E minor? “Beverly Hills” by Weezer is in F major? Something is not adding up here. How could Mattheson’s guide be wrong? Well, it is only wrong if you want it to be.

Music is subjective. I know that is the lame answer, but it is the one to a question that does not really have an objective truth. I went into my interview with Professor Weinstein-Reiman with the idea that major scales are happy, and minor scales are sad. By educating myself on the debates throughout history concerning our perception of music, though, I have a better sense of why I like the music that I do. It is because I feel the way I want to feel when I listen to it. My favorite takeaway from our conversation was when he told me that if someone was to sing good old “Happy Birthday” with a group of people, someone would have to give the starting pitch. If that person is off on their first note, “you can still sing Happy Birthday… It has the same contour, it has the same intervals, it still has the same joyful sound, but it’s in a completely different key.”

This statement seems so simple, but it honestly blew my mind.

We often put music in a box, as I did in this article. The emotions we feel when listening to music are part of an experience that everyone interprets in different ways. While the lyrics and tone of “One” by Metallica are obviously somber and depressing, I will always associate this song with playing Guitar Hero III with my siblings when I was younger, so there’s a part of me that likes the song for making me nostalgic. Professor Weinstein-Reiman said it best: “If I’m a composer and my job is to move the emotions, let’s say, [I’m] probably potentially going to make use of a certain amount of stuff that’s in my toolbox that I know to be associated with this. But can I truly guarantee that everyone listening to my music is going to have the same idea? Absolutely not.”

To me, the ‘Round Midnight soundtrack is dreamy, while the Freddy vs. Jason soundtrack is nightmarish. Music used in film often relies on certain clichés because they are proven to work, but movie soundtracks are not the gamut of music, and most of it is more up to interpretation.

Music, ultimately, is a uniquely personal experience, shaped equally by memory and imagination as it is by melody and acoustics.

37 / EMMIE

WORDS BY IAN HOFFMAN PHOTOS & ART BY ELLIOT NOVAK

It’s rare for bands that tread in avant-garde or experimental waters to see the success of Xiu Xiu. Twenty-three years have passed since Jamie Stewart (they/them) led a tour de force with the project’s debut Knife Play, and the unconventional musicianship that defined their first record remains. Xiu Xiu has shown that experimentation can reflect a sense of honesty in both their music and their soundscapes, with their most recent record, 13” Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips, being no exception.

Formed in 2002 after Stewart’s former band Ten in the Swear Jar broke up, the group has seen many members playing a wide variety of instruments come and go.

Stewart has consistently provided Xiu Xiu with its vocals, touching on tragedy and poetry in a compelling yet fragile way.

Over their 14 album lifespan, the group has been known for transgressive imagery like the classic cover of A Promise featuring a naked sex worker holding a baby doll, or the music video of “Dear God, I Hate Myself” which shows Angela Seo vomiting on Stewart for the entire three minutes. Their disregard for social norms in favor of raw emotional display is perhaps why after so many years the band is as popular as ever.

“We’ve gone back and forth between song oriented records and experimental records. That’s not something we’ve done consciously, but it’s very definitely something that has happened over the last 10 years,” says Stewart, the only constant member of the band over its lifetime.

Xiu Xiu has become a staple in the experimental music scene with albums such as Girl with Basket of Fruit and Ignore Grief showing a harsher and noisier side that combats the mold of the standard western or folk influenced composition. The band generally maintained its industrial influences throughout their lengthy discography. However, the band has recently approached a bit of a catchy rock groove. Stewart remarks, “I never in a million years thought Xiu Xiu would make a fucking guitar album ever. We got about halfway through, and we’re like shit, we’re making a fucking rock guitar record.”

Their new album, 13” Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips exhibits a more accessible side of the band’s discography, though Stewart noted jokingly that “every other record we put out, people say it’s our most accessible.” The album includes Seo, a longtime member of Xiu Xiu, on vocals along with countless unique instruments, as well as David Kendrick, a more recent addition to the band, who provided percussion and drums for both the album and its subsequent tour.

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Angela Seo, who joined Xiu Xiu in late 2009, has had an irrefutable impact on the band. Seo has highlight vocal performances including on the plunderphonics-like electronic track “Pumpkin Attack on Mommy and Daddy”. Stewart shared a story about a time when they tried to avoid an OCD compulsion while playing live with Seo encouragingly saying, “Don’t worry, it’s gonna be totally okay.” Stewart then said that it was one of the worst shows of the tour. Stewart has consistently said that Seo is their best friend and emphasized that their friendship is pivotal in difficult situations.

David Kendrick, the drummer for the group, has only appeared on two albums. Formerly of the classic new wave band Devo, Kendrick was also once in a band titled Live Nude Psychics that included Stewart as a teenager, before the forming of Xiu Xiu. After a re-introduction to Stewart, Kendrick now joins Xiu Xiu bringing with him a bit of a psychedelic rock influence that can be heard on the new record.

Xiu Xiu’s latest record comes as a shock to many fans who have grown used to harrowing, abrasive tracks. This new rhythmiccentric album has seen overwhelming success, perhaps due to its more accessible nature. Regardless, the abilities of the band are on full display. Within the album art is the band’s logo fashioned out of the album’s title; this same logo appeared first on Nina and more famously on Angel Guts: Red Classroom.

The band doesn’t seem to want to be anything different than what they have been, and that might be the key for them. With a stroke of album art and a sonic agreement, Xiu Xiu’s raison d’etre remains to provide an emotional experience with their music. As Stewart put it, “[making music] is an expression of connecting with people and trying to give something for somebody to listen to.”

“How can we put across the intent and the emotionality of the song in a way that hopefully is as interesting as the record, even if it’s totally different?” This challenge has confronted Xiu Xiu at every show they have performed as they manage to include gongs, autoharps, harmonium and countless other unique ways to make sounds in their records.

It is impossible not to mention the clear parallels between the band’s instrumental ventures and that of classic industrial bands like Einstürzende Neubauten or even Nine Inch Nails. Xiu Xiu finds themselves in line with a history of other avant-garde artists that find the reverberating sounds of sheet metal too fascinating to disregard.

“Even if I’m on vacation, I am really looking forward to getting back to the studio,” adds Stewart. Both Stewart and Seo have recently come to live in Berlin, Germany and continue to write music for the group in their new home city. Xiu Xiu’s next album is in the early stages and Stewart notes that “[they] feel fairly certain we’re not going to make an experimental record.” As the band solidifies a muse for their future endeavors, it’s clear that even with a long career, Xiu Xiu is not done exploring the changing world of sound.

39 / EMMIE

WORDS & PHOTOS BY EASTON PARKS ART BY IAN HOFFMAN

“I just wanna do what feels good for me,” says ELUCID. New York rapper and producer ELUCID has grown accustomed to avant-garde, experimental hip hop labels.

“It’s not like traditional pop music or structures, but I don’t really think about it while I’m making it,” ELUCID says.

REVELATOR, ELUCID’s third solo album, was released last October to these types of genre tags and they’re pretty on point. REVELATOR is packed with phased crisp drums, hypnotic refrains and harsh, noisy soundscapes that are unlike any hip hop album this decade. REVELATOR places a new importance on live instrumentation throughout the project. John Nellen is an especially important collaborator, among others, for many of the tracks that give the album its chaotic flavor.

A careful balance between instrumentation and samples leads to an advanced sonic palette that can bring together fans of both post-punk and hip hop.

“REVELATOR, for whatever reason, is attracting a lot of musicians, specifically jazz, but jazz that floats with ambient and even noise. It pulls in these sorts of people in New York that are attracted to the sound,” says ELUCID. ELUCID is also one-half of the abstract hip hop duo Armand Hammer alongside billy woods. Together they released We Buy Diabetic Test Strips in 2023, which fell into many a music fan’s favorite albums of the year.

Knowing woods for about 12 years, their chemistry is bar none. ELUCID says, “Me and woods have a special connection when it comes to this music shit, we’re able to not step on each other’s toes and instead learn from each other.”

BLK LBL, a 2024 vinyl-only album release by Armand Hammer piqued my interest regarding a response to streaming with physical media, a shrinking demand.

Referring to his song with woods, “Instant Transfer,” that appears on both BLK LBL and REVELATOR ELUCID explains, “Scarcity is never the go-to for us. I want these things to be heard as widely as possible, so we’ll take that one and put it on REVELATOR.” 40

“There’s a power in that and it’s heavy.”

The use of alternative music release formats remains a beneficial avenue with INTERFERENCE PATTERN. This Bandcamp exclusive was released in late December 2024 by ELUCID, and it exists as a sound collage-like mixtape. “Music has been so cheapened; I feel like what I do and what the people I surround myself with do, we do at such a level that it sort of demands whatever we say that it demands,” says ELUCID. “When you’re able to do high-level anything, you’re talking clothes, you’re talking food, you’re talking music, you’re talking drugs; if it’s high-level, people should be paying a premium for it,” ELUCID adds. “You can trust and ensure that I’m spending this amount of money because I know I’m gonna get an experience that I want out of it.”

Despite previous collaborations with great producers like The Alchemist, Kenny Segal and Messiah Musik, ELUCID still regularly self-produces his music. “I still record in Garageband, I make beats in Audacity, like very low tech. I might have a sampler to do things and trigger shit but it’s pretty low-tech.”

Themes of power spill out across ELUCID’s music, whether in commentary on those that abuse it or in balancing power and artistry. Power doesn’t come without consequences, so what you do to mediate your use of power is extremely important to ELUCID. “I’m thinking about power in my interpersonal dynamics, my relationships with my lover, with my friends, with my children, in my place as an artist with this voice and people listen to me. There’s a power in that and it’s heavy,” ELUCID adds. “I’m trying to use my voice responsibly in a way that doesn’t hurt other people. I wanna pull me up. I think with power it’s very easy to knock people down.”

ELUCID continues to reflect on power, “It’s been normalized in a way, you see it anywhere from politicians to artists, to anyone else in between. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, this shit is like a head trip, it’s an ego trip. People feed you all sorts of things to boost you up and I don’t want to believe the hype. I want to remember who I am with whatever I got going on.”

41 / EMMIE

WORDS & ART BY IAN HOFFMAN

It can be hard to take genres seriously when it’s just a word with “core” slapped on the end of it. Dariacore, also often referred to as hyperflip, is a growing hyperpop subgenre that really likes to joke with that idea. With its roots in the side project of leading hyperpop artist Jane Remover, the album Dariacore, a play on the adult animated TV show Daria, was the definitive start of the genre.

Inspired by an absurd mashup of pop music, breakbeats and Jersey club music, many producers have started self-releasing music on SoundCloud that plays with the silly and danceable nature of the style.

Producers have taken characters from their favorite media series and added ‘core’ to form their own microgenre that encompasses their personal production style. The genre has mostly proliferated through SoundCloud due to the platform’s low restrictions on copyrighted material, a problem that many producers face due to the heavy sampling in their music.

Dariacore uses prominent vocal samples (known as flips) paired with aggressive basslines and fast electronic beats. Despite its youth, the genre already has traditions and trends within it. For example, many producers cover “homeswitcher” by Jane Remover or use various elements from the song, such as its prominent snare, in their productions. The genre also often uses the classic bed squeaking sound effect from Trillville’s “Some Cut”; this sound effect is extremely popular in Jersey club music, a foundational influence of dariacore.

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After the release of Dariacore in 2021, many producers like xaev, steej, carbine and more created their own album series using characters like Berdly from Deltarune or Darwin from The Amazing World of Gumball. The amusing nature of the style has led artists to be extremely open with experimenting sonically, especially with samples.

Hailing from Seattle, Washington, nyxies is a 20 year old producer that started her own dariacore album series at the beginning of 2024. “I started watching Red vs. Blue in middle school and have been a diehard fan since then, and it seemed like no one in the scene had taken grifcore as a title yet,” said nyxies. She now releases a song in the grifcore series every Tuesday morning and has 3 ‘seasons’ of tracks released.

“Ironically, I don’t think Grif is even my favorite character. That’s probably Donut.”

“Dariacore being a mashup genre isn’t just about the samples, to me it’s also about how every person’s style and production technique is a mashup of all their favorite music and references. No two artists in the scene sound the same,” nyxies said.

Her style is not an exception to this, mixing drum loops and heavy synths with satisfying samples like “Airplanes” by BoB on “the metaverse killed my dog” or “Kiss Me More” by Doja Cat on “ohh, so n0w im #upset ??!!” The unique use of samples in dariacore allows artists to express themselves by flipping a wide array of vocal clips from music they enjoy.

Many producers, including nyxies, often flip from hyperpop artists like underscores, 2hollis, glaive and ericdoa. nyxies said that she sometimes “builds songs around ideas from samples first, for example, s3e8 from a couple weeks ago was based on me thinking Paramore and Daft Punk would sound cool together.”

“It’s an awesome scene, it’s very accepting of new people and everyone is just super friendly and helpful with sharing tips and sounds,” said nyxies.

“Ironically, I don’t think Grif is even my favorite character. That’s probably Donut.”

Another producer in the dariacore scene is marshall4.

With a much bigger following, marshall4 is somewhat of a legend in the genre, in fact nyxies noted that she was flattered to be mentioned in the same sentence as marshall4. Jenny, the 23 year old behind marshall4, has released numerous albums in various series like goombacore and peridotcore. The music of marshall4 is not afraid to venture out with samples or musical style. “I think the possibilities of sample-based dance music are infinite if you know what you’re doing,” said Jenny.

Her music reflects the cultural world that we operate in, it pulls from these elements and reminds us of them while making it more palpable. For example a classic marshall4 flip is the 8-minute long Jersey club epic titled “BUILD A BITCH DARIAFEST MIX (feat. Jennifer May)” using clips from countless hyperpop artists as well as the titular Bella Poarch song. She added that with dariacore, “you can see what [an artist] grew up with and how it influenced their music.”

Despite marshall4’s relatively large following, Jenny has never performed her dariacore music live.

Similarly, nyxies noted that “few artists around the scene do actually play real live sets (xaev comes to mind), but I don’t know that I ever could.” nyxies shared that she has performed pre-recorded sets before and polished the transitions between songs and visual accompaniment for those shows, but never DJ’d live. Dariacore lives and breathes online and there is no city or space that fosters the genre like for other styles. marshall4 expressed interest in DJing with her dariacore tracks and added that she will “probably start playing more venues so be on the lookout!! :)” Dariacore is a young genre that throws immense production skill at an infinite sea of creative possibilities. As producers like marshall4 and nyxies explore their personal styles and solidify the genre in the process, the wave of sound that Jane Remover has started is not stopping. Whether it stays as a SoundCloud phenomenon or finds itself on DJ decks in the underground, dariacore will always be driven by a love for music, dancing, and random cartoon characters.

43 / EMMIE

Insula Iscariot’s music is a tribute to the power of darkness and uncertainty. Within the Madison scene, filled mostly with more traditional rock acts, Insula Iscariot’s music stands out, with vocals that oscillate between murmurs and screams and a sound that is evolving to dark and complex places. They project an air of mystery and intrigue online, hiding their face in photos and using art to create visuals for their new singles, hyping up releases with cryptic messages and backwards letters.

Iscariot makes music in a genre they call “anemic industrial,” the name taken from a tweet their friend made. They said, “Someone made fun of him for being ‘jock industrial,’ and he was like yeah ‘we’re jock industrial, we mess around here, take your ass back to anemic industrial’ and I thought that actually sounded sick as hell.”

They played around with making tracks and “sound experiments” in high school, but they never thought about music as something they could actually do. The first time Iscariot started thinking seriously about music as a path was when they went to Portland, Oregon, to make merch for King Yosef. They mentioned their music a couple times to the artist, and eventually, he asked them to make a track for something he was putting together for his record label. They played their first gig while they were in Portland, but eventually were drawn back to Madison.

When I meet them, I’m struck by how shy and mild-mannered they are. When I ask them what making their music does for them as an artist, they said, “[The music] was a way of proving myself, because I’ve always been very introverted and quiet and worried about stuff and it’s to prove to myself I can do things and go out in the world.”

They also said that their music allows them to create a channel “where feelings become a real thing where I can put them into something instead of something to just mull over.”

Music, and art in general, has always been a way for artists to share what is usually a hidden part of themselves, and allows other people to access that feeling too. “I hope [listeners] can make those connections so other people can feel the same way and it’s not so abstract,” they said.

They go on to talk about how strange it felt when they first began to perform for people and how that shaped their approach to their music. “It was really weird, because I never thought about what other people would think about it, but now when I’m writing a song, I’m thinking about how it will sound in performance, what people are going to think about it.”

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“I got Iscariot originally from a Smashing Pumpkins album, Pisces Iscariot, I just thought it sounded cool then I learned it was that person from the Bible,” they said. Insula, on the other hand, is the name of a section of the brain. “It has a lot to do with your consciousness and your personality,” they explain, “but it’s also super unresearched compared to other parts of the brain.” They found the name on an internet deep dive, and liked the phonics of Insula with Iscariot, and thus, their name was born.

The scientific brain term and Biblical name create a fusion that highlights the autonomy Iscariot wants to have with their project, claiming both religion and the subconscious for themself. “The way it comes together for me is, taking that religious aspect and making it really internal and your own, making a religion, believing in yourself, projecting yourself to something that you can strive for.”

Their recent single, “Spilling,” continues with and melds those religious and motivational ideas. Iscariot tells me that the inspiration behind the song is the ancient Roman celebration Agonalia, an obscure pagan tradition. The Romans would celebrate it at the beginning of the military campaigning and agricultural seasons with an animal sacrifice to the gods.

“It was a new year’s ritual, trying to get rid of the old and bringing the new to the world and all that, and I wanted do that for myself after a year where I wasn’t extremely active,” they explain.

The song has this amazing opening where the tension is constantly building, and suddenly, everything cuts out for a second, like letting the line go slack, before plunging right back in.

When you listen to their music, you’re pulled into a dark world where anger and fear bubble up under the surface, and all of these emotions you hide in the dark of the night start to emerge. The way Iscariot masterfully layers and builds their tracks creates an intense atmosphere that envelops the listener. Neither the vocals nor the instrumentals have the spotlight, instead creating a junction where they come together, blurred enough by each other to create a nightmare. Insula Iscariot’s music delves into the feelings that others are hesitant to touch. They embrace the uncertainty and fear of the void, living in it.

WORDS & PHOTOS BY AIDEEN GABBAI ART BY LUCA CECERE

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ART BY ELIJAH PINES

A Collection of Artists’ Dreams

I do remember [a dream] where I was waking up, and I was kinda like breathing heavy, and the thing that I remember was; it’s not enough time. There’s not enough time.

- ELUCID

I take Lime scooters a lot and one time I got a gun pulled on me on a Lime scooter – it was my fault though… kind of. Whenever I drive Lime scooters at night I get kind of scared.

- tommy oeffling

Undergrad was a really good time in my life, and every few years I have a dream that I go back. It’s not the same version of ‘I’m back in school and I don’t have my homework,’ but it’s more like I’m back in that place but I’m me now. It’s really different, I see one friend who’s still there and I’m like, “You can stay here?” Maybe because it was just a formative, somewhat sheltered, idyllic time in my life… It’s just like this yearning to go back to a time that was important for me.

- Alex Bleeker of Real Estate

I have a lot of dreams where we've started a set and I break every string on every guitar on the first song and we stop playing. One of the nights, we stopped playing and I went outside and was just super upset. My dad came up, and he was like, “What happened?!” I love my parents, that dream happens a lot.

- Niko Kapetan of Friko I had a period of time a few years ago or for like a week straight, I was having semi-lucid dreams that I could fly and that I could shoot water out of my hands. That was really cool, so I was just having such a blast, just like flying through the air and blasting walls down. It was awesome. I was excited to go to bed.

- Bailey Minzenberger of Friko

I had this weird dream of being a member of a village that was living in mountains, and we would all worship a drain... You would hear a voice coming from it, and I was a child, and I was trying to lure out something with candy, and I got pulled in.

And then the voice said, “You don't want to meet me,” and then, “The only people who have met me were celebrities.” And then I got images of these pale people with bird wings with no mouth, all black around their chin. A weird unsettling [dream], but it's linear, there's a story to it. Luckily that one only happened once.

- Logan Lamers

I don’t remember a lot of details in my dreams, but I’m usually flying in them. There are multiple nights where I fly around the world like it’s a CS:GO surf map.

- marshall4

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I dream of planes crashing all the time and it scares the shit out of me. And Jeremy and I both live close to the airport and you can hear planes flying over us. All. Day. Long. And you hear them while you sleep.

- Andrew Marrah of Airiel

The thing that I’ve realized recently is that I’ve been having the same dream since I was a kid. I’m usually back in middle school, holding a schedule in my hand, and it’s the first day of class. I can’t read it, I don’t know where I’m supposed to go and I’m having a panic attack.

- Martin Courtney of Real Estate

I woke up hungover in my sister’s bed, having horrible bouts of sleep paralysis. I went into this dream where I was driving back to Madison, but then Chicago was in the distance. I was having amnesia. I couldn’t remember where I was going, I was like, “I feel crazy right now” and freaking out. You [Emma] were in the car, and this other girl we went to high school with. I was like, “Emma, you need to drive for me. I have no idea where I am; I’m scared.” So she started driving, and I turned to her and asked, “Is this a dream?” She just turned to me very slowly and her eyes turned ice blue…and Emma has brown eyes so it was very frightening. Then I screamed at the top of my lungs and my soul shot out of the car and I woke up.

- Kate Ruland of The Spine Stealers

My more specific [nightmare] is that I’m in a plane where, for whatever reason, however impractical, we’re flying through a city. The plane always has to bank hard and there are 8,000 obstacles that we could hit, and you’re just thinking, “Why on Earth are we this low? Why is this happening?” and I’m just kind of helpless.

- Jeremy Wrenn of Airiel

I had a dream about our drummer David, he needed to make some money to retire: two Cholo gangsters from Los Angeles tried to get him to blow up somebody's house with gasoline. So he lit this very, very long fuse that he taped to all these big containers of gasoline around this person's house. And you know what David looks like? Just imagine David doing this, you know with his Paisley shirt on and his long white hair. Anyways he's taping five gallon jugs of gasoline around this house and he took this long fuse, and then he opened a package of purple Hubba Bubba and chewed it all, really chewy gum. Then he stuck it to the house and the fuse, so it wouldn't fall down when he ran back to the getaway car with the gangsters. The gangsters said, “Did you use gum to attach that on there? Your DNA is all over that.” They threw him out of the car and drove away.

- Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xiu

I have a recurring nightmare that I can’t talk about because I'm scared that it’ll make it real, you know? But there is something I want to tell you about myself, that is related to the music magazine, which is that I believe myself to be the only person that wakes up every morning with the same song in my head. I have woken up every morning for like the last 25 years with the same song in my head and that song is Bette Midler’s “Wind Beneath My Wings.” I haven’t listened to this song on purpose or consciously in at least 25 years, but every morning I wake up with that song in my head and I’ll look at my wife Sarah and she’ll say, “Don’t say it, don’t say it.” and I’ll say, “You're everything I wish I could be.” So I must have a dream every night about “Wind Beneath My Wings” by Bette Midler. I don’t even like the song that much, it’s a lovely song, it just gets old to wake up to every day.

- John Green, Author

I’ve had a lot of weird dreams, but my thing right now is auditory hallucinations, which I have like every single night. Two nights ago we were at my friend's house and I was trying to sleep, but it sounded like a Civil War movie was on in the living room - cannons, screaming, yelling, gunshots. That’s been happening more and more, where I get into a weird liminal space. Just last night, I heard Kate come home three different times. I’ve heard men laughing in the next room. I don’t know, maybe those sleep deprivation experiments fucked me up and now they’re gonna mess with my brain long term.

- Emma O’Shea of The Spine Stealers

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WORDS BY EMMIE STAFF ART BY ELIJAH PINES

Odd Sleeping Tales

When I first moved into Witte, something about the long hallway I would go down to reach my room each day really stuck in my head, and I dreamed about it. In that dream I was in a labyrinth of dorm hallways and university housing furniture, constantly telling new people my name and major as I tried to find my own dorm room.

But when I woke up, I thought I was back in my house in Chicago.

I swung my legs off the side of my bed as if it were my bed back home, and hit them really hard on the cold concrete wall.

- Oliver Gerharz

In second grade, I had a nightmare that frightened me to my core. It was so scary to me that I couldn’t go back to sleep that night, thought about it for the next few days, and still remember it. Picture this: I am surrounded by three of the four walls of the downstairs bathroom in my parents’ house. I turn to my friend who is with me and say, “Look, that’s Zombie Corner”. I gaze out the wall-less 4th side and notice that the room we are standing inside is located in the middle of a forest. All of a sudden, a horde of zombies starts walking toward us, turning left before they reach us and continuing down a path. We stand there, watching them for a while until a certain zombie catches my eye. I could tell this was the main antagonist of my dream since he was wearing a purple suit jacket, a top hat, and glasses that made him look like John Lennon. I turn to my friend to say, “Dude, that’s Classy Zombie”. Classy Zombie was different from the other zombies in more ways than his looks. Instead of turning the corner, he walked straight toward us. Scared out of my mind and not wanting to become a snack, when Classy Zombie came close to us, I decided to kick him. Apparently this was a smart idea, since my kick blasted him across the path and into the chain link fence on the other side. I yelled, “RUN!” and my friend and I took off down the path.

After a few seconds of sprinting, I was ahead of my friend so I decided to look back.

What I saw will stay with me forever. Classy Zombie was dangling my friend over his mouth and eating him.

- Nolan Majerowski

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One time in middle school I went to sleep like normal, but when I woke up in the morning my mom had a strange incident to inform me of. I had gone to sleep with my dog in my bed next to me, as I used to wake up and take her outside first thing in the morning when I lived at home. In my deep slumber, I apparently stood up and began completing a task. I grabbed my dog (Sadie, my precious little white dog), walked to my bedroom door, opened it, and then walked to my parents’ room. Reminder, I was fully unconscious. I proceeded to carry her into my parents’ bedroom and put her at the foot of their bed. When my mom questioned me why I had brought her to their room, I responded by saying, “She can hear the sound of the corn,” and then went back to my room. When my mom came to my room to check on me, my light was off and I was back in my deep sleep. That is the closest to a paranormal experience I’ve had.

- Ava Vik

My previous boyfriend used to kick and move around a lot while sleeping. Mind you, he’s not violent or anything, so although it was always jarring to feel a knee jabbing me as I slept, I would quickly realize he wasn’t conscious. Among the kicks, flails, and spontaneous tight embraces throughout a nap, I felt him pull the blanket away from me and curl himself into a cocoon. I was tired and groggy, so in my annoyed state, I yanked it back from him. After pulling the blanket back and forth, semi-conscious, he got up and reached for something near the end of the bed. When he returned, he placed the trash can between us and laid back down. I could see his eyebrow furrow, clearly upset, even though he was asleep again. Clearly, he was creating a barrier between us (what a jerk), but why on Earth would he pick up the trashcan and place it gently on the bed, as if it wouldn’t get knocked over while we slept? I asked, “Dude, what are you doing?”

As brief as it was, my memory of our conversation was blurry, but I recall how flabbergasted I was after he confidently told me, “I didn’t ask you to think,” before passing out.

Mind you, he isn’t a misogynist or anything. This was so incredibly uncharacteristic that I knew when I would tell him in the morning, he would be just as shocked as I was. When we woke, I asked if he remembered what he had done last night. Zero recollection.

- Mia Kiefer

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I’m a pretty logical person when it comes to dreams. I know that the feeling of falling while being asleep is just your brain transitioning from sleep phases, and not many aspects of dreaming catch me off guard. One thing that will always confound me, though, is the concept of shared dreams. I’ve only ever had this happen to me once and it’s still a weird recollection. My younger sister and I were out to dinner with our family for Chinese food, but we weren’t at just any restaurant, we were at P.F. Chang’s (this is important to the story, trust). Dinner concludes and there’s suddenly a time skip – we’re both sitting atop the giant horses that reside outside the entrance. This is a pretty standard dream, however, I came to learn that my sister had had almost the exact same dream. I don’t know if shared dreams are even scientifically possible, but if it is, my sister and I are locked in.

- Elliot Novak

One of the worst choices I ever made was reading the Fablehaven series before I was able to really separate book worlds from the real world. Around the same time, my family took a fun vacation to Colorado which included a drive around Independence Pass – a lovely high mountain path for someone with an extreme fear of heights. This combination of events and activities led to a (now-recurring) dream/nightmare. It starts with driving down a normal road until we come to a bridge. As we continue, it gets smaller and smaller until the car manages to cross on only one tire. When we finally reach the other side, the road expands and we enter this gold-encrusted city of creepy magical creatures with a lavender and periwinkle haze over the pedestals of monsters.

Really chill stuff. The weirdest part? I always wake up as soon as we get to an ominous gate. I have no idea what happens next but, as stress dreams go, a literary-inspired chaos nightmare isn’t the worst option I can come up with.

- Emmery Clements

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In high school, I unfortunately made the choice to be in marching band. One time, I’d gotten back from a football game at midnight, and had to show up at school at 5:30 the next morning for a contest. We practiced, then drove two hours to the competition. Delusionally, I made it through our performance – the last one before it started dumping down rain and lashing lightning. With the school building being a ten minute walk across a parking lot (thank you Texas) and all the students carrying metal instruments, we were instead told to bunker down underneath the concrete bleachers and hope that the lightning let up at some point.

On four hours of sleep, the concrete felt like a very firm mattress, and the thunder cracks were white noise. I plugged in my sleep playlist, whose first track since 2020 has been Frank Ocean’s cover of “Moon River,” and apparently drifted off for a good hour before we were all corralled inside during a lull in the storm.

- Aideen Gabbai

Osama Bin Laden is my sleep paralysis demon. At least he was when I was five. I remember laying in bed and seeing him staring me down from the corner of my baby pink bedroom. One night I had a dream that he was my mom.

Another night he greeted me at the front door of my kindergarten classroom.

The kicker is that the man was rarely doing anything wrong. Obviously this is not accurate for the real world, but in my dreams, Osama was simply a recurring background character. I guess this is representative of my Gen-Z, post9/11-baby nature. It probably shows that I was far too tuned into the news my parents were watching. I am, after all, a journalist (& historian) at heart.

- Bailey Krause

I was once on a flight out of the country and had the worst sickness of my life. For four hours, I was on a plane, but really I was on a battlefield. I had my headphones on trying to distract myself from the fact that my fever was hot enough to cook a chicken. Suddenly, “drive ME crazy!” by Lil Yachty came on, and everything changed. I felt immediately better, as if all my suffering had been for this very moment. His buttery voice had guided me to rest at last. But just as I was to drift off into the dream world, the song changed. “Psycho Killer” blasted through the speakers, ripping me back into this cold, painful world. It’s been months, and Talking Heads still hurts my soul. Tragedy comes in many forms.

- Elijah Pines

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CONCERT GALLERY PHOTOS BY EMMIE STAFF ART BY ELLIOT NOVAK

SICKDAY BY BAILEY KRAUSE

TINY VOICES BY ELLIOT NOVAK

AERGO BY LUCY ROSENTHAL

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TORO Y MOI BY NOLAN MAJEROWSKI

MODEL/ACTRIZ BY EASTON PARKS

ALVVAYS BY EASTON PARKS 53 / EMMIE

GRAHAM HUNT BY BAILEY KRAUSE

AMEN DUNES BY EASTON PARKS

FEMTANYL BY ELIJAH PINES

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MACHINE GIRL BY ELIJAH PINES

MANNEQUIN PUSSY BY EASTON PARKS

XIU XIU BY ELLIOT NOVAK 55 / EMMIE

MICHAEL CERA PALIN BY ELLIOT NOVAK

BNNY BY BAILEY KRAUSE

ODIE LEIGH BY AIDEEN GABBAI KILL ALTERS BY ELIJAH PINES

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TORO Y MOI BY NOLAN MAJEROWSKI

ODIE LEIGH BY AIDEEN GABBAI

BNNY BY BAILEY KRAUSE

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Through the publishing of our three studentrun journals and magazines, the Literary Arts Committee of the Wisconsin Union Directorate provides a creative outlet for UW-Madison students interested in creating poetry and prose, reporting on music or delving into food. We celebrate creativity on campus by providing hands-on experience in publishing, editing, writing and design.

read more at emmiemusic.com

SPECIAL THANKS TO: Literary Arts Committee Director: Brianna Rau Literary Arts Committee Advisor(s): Tony Wise, Robin Schmoldt Associate Director of Marketing: Beatrice Lazarski Associate Director of Programming: Allie Armstrong Associate Director of Access & Outreach: Emma Altschul Editor-in-Chief of The Dish: Natasha Davis Editor-in-Chief of Illumination: Alice Van Haaften All the artists featured in the issue Illumination Journal, The Dish Magazine and WUD Music

ART BY ELLIOT NOVAK