01.How long have you been making music?
i think i first opened a DAW when i was 16, almost 17. so a little over 6 years. i had been in school band before that and taken some piano lessons but that's not really the same.
02.When you started making music, what was going thru your mind and did you think you would be at where you are now?
i went through an electro-industrial phase around that age which eventually lead me to find bands like TASDRR and 100 Dead Rabbits on youtube. i spent a lot of time just stalking the cyber/nintendocore and noise scene on MySpace after that, and though i really liked a lot of it, i was fucking amazed at how truly god awful and sloppy a lot of this shit was. i remember thinking at some point even "even i could do better than this" and so i started producing and screaming. the breaking point for me to really try this seriously was when i realized that Peter Bunke was just some kid around my age in his room when he made Trout Yogurt.
i'm not sure where i really expected to go with it tbh. when i started out i was a lot less ambitious and mostly just wanted to weird people out and make them think with my music. i wouldn't have guessed that i'd end up running a label like Kitty On Fire is now.
03.How does it feel to be one of the co-owners of Kitty On Fire Records? How did you feel when you first started running it?
its kinda stressful. i'm very disorganized which pisses people off and frustrates me. also i feel like most of the shit talking about KOF eventually filters back to me somehow or another and i take it too personally. also, i am always behind on something. for most of the time i've been working with KOF i've been either very short on time or very short on money.. which is part of why i think bringing Henrietta (of Senpai Suicide Club) and subsequently Spencer (who works in a publishing compamy) to the team was a good idea. they've made huge strides for us.
when i first started it was because Jason (who is also Mother Network) brought me onboard after the previous owner gave over the label to him. it was pretty sudden. i felt surprised lol. but also cool and stoked on being a part of something like this. i'm really proud of what it is today.
04.How do you feel about your early work? Do you think you have gotten better since then?
a lot of my old songs make me crack up now. i was so fucking horrible. i definitely feel like i've improved a lot skillswise. sometimes i feel like my songs aren't as raw or expressive as when i started writing though, and i'm not sure there's really a way to get that back. i struggle with this especially when i write noisier stuff.
05.If you could do a split with any artist/band, which/who would it be with?
I would ressurrect They All Had Tentacles and together we would make the most savage fucking shrill gabber-laden synthgrind split the world has ever paid witness to
06.What is the hardest thing to deal with in the scene that you are in? Do you get any hate due to you being transgender?
there are two main things that really fucking irritate me about this scene.
1. there is a CRAZY lack of quality control and a gross culture of just ignoring obvious improvements that artists could make. i feel like, if you respect your peers, you will tell them when something they've made isn't their best work, and you will point out some of their failings to them. art is subjective, but it's also a mode of expression- if you want your pieces to communicate anything successfully you need to listen to feedback. and a lot of people in some parts of the cyber scene seem genuinely afraid to give or recieve criticism. also i fucking loathe seeing album covers made in mspaint unless they are REALLY clever or fitting somehow.
2. there are a lot of shitlords just trying way too hard to be edgy. tied into this is that really annoying internet-libertarian attitude that a lot of internet bros tend to have. shit's annoying. especially since i represent some of these people via KOF. they want to be able to say whatever they want but not be held accountable for it- like you're somehow shutting down their right to free speech by telling them that the ideas they're conveying are really problematic and shitty.
on a related note, the excess of gore/rape/pseudofascist bullshit in cyber/noise stuff is really annoying. a bunch of times these torture, scat, etc themed noise or gore/porn artists have hit us up to release and its just like ew. i loved shock value like that when i was like 14 but now i think it is just childish. plus its a pretty good indicator of someone just being a shitty ass human if they enjoy the aesthetic of suffering that much.
i've never felt hatred from the scene for my gender. i've seen some people make lots of amazingly ignorant comments, but being a fucking moron doesn't necessarily make you hateful.
people in the scene are actually more accepting of that than average i think. i can think of 3 or so other trans girls in the scene that i've known personally, as well as some nonbinary people (and that's just active musicians who are/were putting out stuff). plus there are just a lot of queer cybers in general. i've never felt alone in that regard.
07. How do you feel that other trans/bi/gay artist in the scene are treated?
it's kinda hard to say. especially since i think people just block me from seeing the more ignorant stuff they share sometimes. i've had people be like "why are you even friends with this person, they post so much transphobic garbage" and i hadn't even seen it. this basic thing has happened a couple times, both with pretty good friends and topics related to gender politics. i think outwardly most of of the scene is pretty liberal and queer positive though. and also just queer.
08.What format of music would you love to be released on? (exp:tape, cd, vinyl, lathe record, 8 track, etc.)
i really wanna do more tapes. and mini-cds. those are cute. Jason told me a long time ago that he thought a flash drive would be a cool format for a cellophane jackal to put out a discography release on. i think a custom 3d-printed flash drive would be cool as hell.
i also learned relatively recently, that you can get cds which have one track engraved into the plastic on the shiny side that you can play on a record player. i honestly have more interest in that than doing a real record just because it's so unecessary and impractical.
09.What has been the hardest thing to deal with since becoming an artist/label owner?
getting over my own fear of embarassment and failure, probably. i can talk confidently to a room full of people irl now and show them my art and talk about what i do. i used to get nervous before even posting tracks on soundcloud, and i could only practice vocals alone in an empty house. i feel like, since getting over that fear a little more, i can work on a lot more genuine pieces too. irony and abstraction are good tools but i think they are a little too easy to hide behind as an artist.
10.Have you ever wanted to quit making music and or running a label?
not seriously. i feel kind of proud for never really having one of those "waah, i'm quitting the internet" princess fits that many artists seem to go through at some point or another. it's really silly but even when i feel like suicidally sad it still REALLY bothers me to think of the unreleased shit on my computer that hasn't had a chance to be heard by anyone yet. i think i will always make music.
i have wanted to quit running Kitty sometimes because i botched projects and just felt really inept. there were also times when i just didn't have the money to help much at all and i wondered why i was even trying.
11. If you were not making music or running the label, what do you think you be doing now?
fucking killing myself lol. that sounds horrible. i think if i stopped working with KOF i would just make my own, more socially woke cyber label instead.
Awesome answers Ruby! Have anything to say to the readers?
kill god kill cops kill self.
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