Epic Magazine

Wild Nothing is the solo project of Virginia-bred Jack Tatum, who has expertly combined shoegaze and glo-fi into a particularly trendy and well-critiqued trip into a nostalgic haze via melodic dream-pop. Tatum sings sad songs over shimmering synths and since recording the debut “Gemini” in 2009, has added three extra members to the band in the form of Michael Skattum (drums), Jeff Haley (bass) and Nathan Goodman (guitar & synths).

Jennifer Morris: Tell me about your debut album “Gemini”. Jack Tatum: I wrote it and recorded it myself. It’s very 80s indie, dream-pop dance, so it’s just my own spin on that.

How does it sound with extra players?

JT: On the album it’s more about layers and textures and a lot of synth whereas live it’s a more basic, honest rock set-up interpreted with guitarists and bass… so it’s a little different. I know I definitely want to use live drums on the next album because it’s all drum machines on this one.

How’s life on the road?

(everyone grins sheepishly)

Michael Skattum: After our show in Sheffield we went to this crazy, loud rave.

JT: Our tour manager got us into this club like it was no big deal.

MS: But it was really loud.

Jeff Haley: We play shows every day, Glasgow tomorrow then Manchester, then off to Europe then back to London and then we fly home.

What’s your favourite dinosaur? 

JH: Velociraptor.

MS: I like the pterodactyl.

JT: I like brontosaurus!

Nathan Goodman: Rhinocerous.

Rest of band: That’s not a dinosaur!

NG: (confused) T-Rex. Duh!

(hysterics)

Note: Clay Violand now plays bass in the ever-changing line-up.

“Fuck this!” screamed Carl Cat as he flung a half-eaten container of cat chow across the room.  He launched himself off the couch and on to the windowsill, where he peered meekly outside.  The street was populated, something rare when the winter chill bit as hard as it did mid-February.  The sun beat down weakly on the passersby, struggling to penetrate the filthy frozen air surrounding them.  Carl Cat’s television had disappeared, and in its place was an unsightly old dictionary.  Carl Cat opened the book, and took a long look into the mirror leaning dangerously against the dirty white wall of his apartment.  Staring deep into his own sunken, baggy eyes, he explained loudly, to his landlord’s dismay, his own life, to himself.

            “The American family will now crowd around the dictionary… every Friday night!  Progress is existence! Learn a word every day, is my new motto! Adumbrate- to illustrate a thought, and vaguely! You don’t think I’m being vague, do you? How clear could I possibly be? You wouldn’t understand the hardwiring of my mind if you rented out my brain and lived there for a semester abroad!  I must produce, to achieve! And I must define these concepts for myself before I give in to a lesser form of subsistence! How can I keep grasp of such a prodigious task?  And this- you would call it teen angst?  Consider I am a cat, before claiming such nonsense!”  With that, Carl Cat hissed and tossed a tennis ball at the mirror.  Intending to destroy the blasphemous glass slab, his surprise was heavy when the ball returned and made contact with the face of the only person he was preaching to.  Later, however, he would discover that this was not true, and that he was responsible for his landlord’s fatal stroke.

            Lying concussed on the ground, he gazed into the stucco ceiling, proclaiming, “I AM THE NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND OF COLLEGE LIFE! I AM THE DOSTOEVSKY OF PREMATURE ALCOHOLISM!”  His ankles rolled at the end of his sprawled out legs.  His Air Jordans were absent from his feet, and in their stead were old, worn Burberry loafers.  Every move his body made emphasized the bald patches in his fur, and the constant rate at which his fur fell out.  His body’s condition matched that of his living space.

            “Don’t you fucking judge me, carpet!” cried the sickly cat as he tore into the tangled, browning shag. “The system is rigged, and you know it!  I am the savior of this godforsaken town, and you know it!  I am cultured and handsome, and you know it! I know it!”

            He got himself back on his feet, stumbling in an attempt to find his balance.  The colors in the room began to fluctuate, and the ghosts he had seen in his dreams the nights before danced around the room.  He tried greeting them with simple paw gestures, but their disinterest in him could not have been more apparent.  This was made evident by their haunting coo: “We have no interest in you, cat!”

            “Why, because I was raised in the suburbs? Because I drive a Saab? A privileged upbringing can never hinder ingenuity! My weirdness is a gift from god.  My motherfucking atheism is a gift from god! How can you have so little respect for all that I stand for?  Open your eyes, and take a look at what drew me to the city! My artistic passion is starving, yet my worldly ambition is practically nonexistent! Can I not be what you once strived to be?” 

There was no response from the ghosts.  Carl Cat looked down at the empty orange pill container clenched in his paw.

“What now, ghosts? Will you forever shun me? Will I be forever uninvited to your social gatherings? Will I forever be cursed to forge my own paths? Will I meet new ghosts? Please, ghosts, answer me! Let me hear your word!”

“Sorry, cat, no room in this ghost club!” replied the ghosts in unison.

“FUCK YOU, GHOSTS!” screamed Carl Cat.  He opened his apartment door and let the ghosts filter out of the room.  After closing the door, he walked toward his couch, arms stretched forward.  Not seeing the tennis ball that had caused him similar pain earlier, he tripped and fell forward.  His outstretched arms hit the ground as hard as his chin did, knocking a trivial amount of sense into his growingly fuzzy mind.  He looked forward to see his answering machine, partially broken, on the ground.  He had 30 new voicemail messages, all from his closest friend, Chad Magnum.  He clawed at the phone in an attempt to call Chad back, hitting buttons and snapping wires.  After accidentally hitting multiple combinations of buttons, he heard Chad’s voice playing on the speaker.  As he listened, intently, his mouth started foaming, and his paw began to disappear before him.  He listened closer, trying to focus his thoughts on the drifting sounds of his friend’s voice.  He made out a bit of the message: Chad asked where Carl Cat was, how he was, why he hadn’t been in contact with him for so long.

Carl responded to the message while drifting in and out of consciousness.  “Oh, Chad, we could’ve been great! We could’ve ruled this shithole town! Oh, the mistakes I’ve made! If only you could see how much I regret ignoring politics! I am 100% positive that my vote would’ve changed the outcome of the 2008 election!”

Carl Cat began sobbing uncontrollably, and his eyes turned a deep shade of red.  His body started convulsing, and the room began to spin violently.

He muttered, “I miss you Chad; I really do.  This must all be a metaphor for something, but I’m definitely too high to know for sure what it is.”

We got over 50 entries to the contest, a really amazing turnout, and I read each and every one of them and it was a hard decision to make. A very hard decision. But this one, “Driving” by David Benge, really stood out. He wins $50 and bragging rights to all his writerly pals. I’ll post the two runner ups in the next couple of day. Thanks for entering! And without further ado…
_________

I stir to the sound of a girl humming… tuneless yet cheerful. I keep my eyes shut tight trying to remember where on earth I could be. I’m lying on my side and the humming sound is coming from behind my head. I hear banging, unidentified objects knocking against each other, the swish swash of water splashing up and down against the sides of a bucket. 

Opening one eye a fraction of a fraction I make out stained peach wall paper with faded purple leaves and faint green stripes. The humming has stopped, I shut my eyes again.

I feel hungover though I know I didn’t drink last night. I haven’t drunk for days now.

And yet I have that feeeeeeling. The tired red eyes, the aching bones banging about in this increasingly stretching bag of skin.

A sharp knock on the door reveals my location with a sleepy Mexican drawl announcing “housekeeping”. I lay still for a second, stretch my tired body, before rising and stumbling towards the door. No thanks, I croak at the grinning maid, place the do not disturb sign on my door, attempt a smile, shut the door and collapse back into bed.

This time I’m woken by my alarm. There’s no escaping it. Groaning inwardly, I switch it off, stumble towards the shower and let the hot water engulf me, washing away the sleep and sweat. Shaving carelessly I nick my throat and see the droplets of blood wash away on the shower floor joining the water and becoming one rapidly fading pinkish stream as it circles down the drain to who knows where through who knows what to some far away ocean.

In the breakfast lounge – I’m always catching the very tail end of breakfast - some ex marine is trying to impress himself upon two pretty young things who look like sisters. I’m only half listening, but pick up reference to rare promotion, and if I’d only… I wonder what extraordinary lives other people lead, and how different to mine they are. Every person in every car that drives down every road leading people to numerous houses, hotels, motels, apartments… What are they doing? Who are they? Where do they go? I flirt with the idea of introducing myself and asking these questions to this peculiar group of 3, but instead quell my intrigue pour a luke warm cup of bitter brown liquid into a small white polystyrene cup and stare at it wondering why it is I’ve conditioned myself to believe this will make me feel alert. More awake. Better about myself. The reality is instead a slight sensation of nausea and paranoia, seeping through my body. Mmmmm. I smack my lips, and go through the motion of enjoying the drink. The fruit is all gone, but there’s a handful of slices of processed white sugary bread that looks unappealing at best. Nonetheless I place it in the toaster and when it pops up burned black on both sides, I consider smearing grape jelly on the charcoal, change my mind, have another sip of my now cold coffee and throw everything in the trash. It’s time to hit the road, Florida is calling and the drive from New York took 6 hours longer than it should have due to an intense snow storm.

On more than one occasion we considered pulling over last night. It was a blinding, white, icy cold blanket. It started off beautifully, big fat fluffy snow flakes falling lazily from the thick dark grey clouds… Each individual snow flake careening into the window, clumsily disintegrating against the windshield. The wipers would remove them, their blades sweeping aside the lost lives of the snowflakes, and unceremoniously discarding them to the road side where they grew into miniature mountains and compacted into dirty white mounds of rock hard ice. Tires would lock and slide from one lane to the other, the steering wheel rendered useless and the passengers merely along for the ride, whichever direction the vehicle chose to take. We laughed out loud with fearless bold laughter only our knuckles whiter than the snow itself giving away our true feelings.

As we crept along the road in the increasing darkness, with the sleet and snow getting thicker and heavier, the mood went from boisterous to silent. Continuing could be treacherous, but pulling over would have the heavy snow build up around the van, burying it and making it impossible to continue even when the snow did eventually pass.

So we continued. Slowly but steadily. Crazy drivers hurtling past us to the left and the right the white snow having blanketed the entire road so it was indistinguishable as to where the lanes began and ended, where it turned, where the ditches on either side of the road began and where the road stopped. The only indication to where the ditches on the side of the road began were the abandoned littered cars along the road side. Some crashed into trees, the bonnet buckled and folded in two… some with tow trucks trying to extract them from the powdery desert of snow, still others on their side or completely flipped resting on their roofs the wheels staring up at the thick black sky.

We got to talking. Regaling each other with tales of our childhood. Disaffected youth. Displaced. Not disadvantaged, just bored. Frustrated by our respective environments. I realised how lucky we were. 3 meals a day. Free education. Free healthcare. It’s incredible what you take for granted. I think perhaps the need to find oneself and react against your environment is a privilege awarded only to those who grow up not wanting. Reckless abandonment. Setting fire to letterboxes, smoking tea and drinking cheap red wine til you forget. Running across the roofs and bonnets of cars parked bumper to bumper in a line stretching round the corner of someone elses street. Stealing cars, crashing cars, listless, bored, desperate to find an outlet to channel frustration. Unable to communicate with anyone other than those experiencing the same frustrations. The suburbs. Television society. TV dinners, family time around a box. Don’t talk over the television. Only in the adverts. Creativity, individuality stifled. Conform. Don’t dress like that, don’t listen to that, don’t smoke that. So of course we want to listen to that, we do dress like that, and we smoke anything and everything we can get our hands on every opportunity we get.

We discuss what it would be like to grow up as the jock. The popular kid. The prom queen. 2.4 children, picket fence. Aspiring to that as a way of living. Who are those people. What drives them? Are they happy? Does complacency breed content? Are they in fact complacent? Perhaps they are just content? We decide we are not content, but neither are we complacent. I decide I never want to be content. I never want to be complacent. Then change my mind and mull over the meaning of content. The meaning of complacency. In my pocket, there’s a girl poaching pears, packing her belongings and questioning her every move. She smiles.

Pulling over to a diner it’s 3am. Some highway waffle house dive. The interior is tobacco stained yellow and the dimly lit neon sign announcing the name of our chosen dining establishment reads “fle ho s” the filthy muddy frozen sludge beneath our feet blending into the fresh white snow as we traipse into the room. We get looks ranging from disgusted to disinterested with our long hair, tattoos, and skinny tight “faggot” jeans. Our fellow diners sport checked shirts, baseball caps, sleeveless puffy jackets, jeans and boots. Most are wearing beards and all rapidly return to pushing their food around their plate, whether sitting in solitude, or with a pal, not a word uttered in the whole joint just the dull buzz of an electric light over the grill.

The waitress sizes us up and asks for our order. We eat grilled cheese, egg and cheese, grits, pancakes, beef burgers, we order stale coffee and coke, unlimited refills. A young girl wanders over to the jukebox and puts on “my girl” (not the jesus and mary chain version) and instantly everything is perfect. The coffee tastes fresher, the plate of hash browns feel crisp, hot, hearty. The diner feels warmer, the fresh snow outside looks soft, and fluffy, as if you could sink into a bed of blankets of soft fluffy powdery white snow. The cowboy truckers smile and gentle whispers of conversation begin to interweave throughout the room. We polish off our meals, tip the waitress and hop back into our van. 4 more hours to go and the snow seems to be easing.

There’s something about driving. It’s relaxing. Soothing even. Yet mentally demanding when it’s hours upon hours upon hours. The same 5 people every day. The same morning routine, the same people wanting coffee at the same time, The same people wanting restroom breaks. We drive and drive and drive. Through snow, through sunshine, through hills, along coastline, down free ways, through back roads, through cities, around cities.

Easy on the curves, picking up on the straights… We drive we drive we drive.

Mexican-born Alan Palomo missed an acid date with ex-girlfriend and recorded “Should Have Taken Acid With You” as a musical apology. The ex-girlfriend, now a Neon Indian visual artist, thought Palomo was onto something with this glo-fi, synthy sound so she made up the name, a dreamy LP was recorded and released and well-received and then he went on tour with a band and talked to people like me.

I got to the venue a little late to find Alan and his entourage lounging around on laptops. No-one really looked interested and I was a little put out by their stand-offishness – awesome, another high/hungover/bored musician who really doesn’t want to do this. But then he snapped his MacBook shut and suddenly became really warm and nice and not only interested but interesting. 

Jennifer Morris: What’s it like to take your music out of your bedroom and on to the road?

Alan Palomo: I’ve never really been to so many obscure nooks of a country that I’ve never explored before. I’m always paranoid that I’m going to mispronounce the name or say the wrong one.

The shows have lots of… electronic gibberish. There’s a lot of delay-heavy improvisation and airy vocals and just kind of a floor-stompin’, rowdy good time. It’s been really great.

So the album translates well into the live arena?

It definitely requires some re-contextualization. I’ve come to find that the songs really don’t sound like anything they did on the record but to me that’s kind of a great thing! I think it just really spawned from wanting to find ways to keep making it exciting for us. We keep adding new toys on stage. It’s like, “I’m getting tired of my synth, time to add another one!” We’re just trying to elaborate on what you’ve heard on the record.

The album, Psychic Chasms, is a bit lo-fi and got you lumped in the “chillwave” genre…

(Laughs) I don’t know what a chillwave is, but apparently I’m riding it! It’s just a name coined by some snarky blogger…

You don’t like it?

It’s interesting. It used to be kind of bothersome because people were defining something for me or telling me what I sounded like, or assuming that anyone that sounded like this doesn’t have the knowledge base or influences from longer than six months ago. And that’s very much not the case.

Do you think it will affect your sound for the next record?

Now that I kinda know what I want the next record to sound like, now that I’ve actually written some material for it, I think that whatever got the last one construed as chillwave is totally not what the recordings are turning out like. Now I don’t necessarily feel nearly as intimidated by the title of “chillwave” or trying to explain to people.

So you don’t consider yourself as part of the chillwave trend?

I guess if it helps facilitate the music for you… or if it puts you in a place where you can discover a couple of other bands. I mean, like Toro Y Moi and Washed Out are really great! I didn’t meet them until after this experience of being coupled together. It’s strange. If it helps you find music, then more power to ya!

Spend enough time tapped into the newest new music, the important older music, the freshest look, the slickest blogs and you begin to think, I am sharp.  I know amazing things that most people have no clue about, at all.  You sneer anytime Papyrus font appears anywhere and quietly laugh when someone mentions this “new” band they just heard called The xx.  You develop a sense of confidence knowing that there exists a tiny group of actually cool people who know what’s truly up, and that you are one of them.

Then one December day, you attend a conference at Caltech in Pasadena, CA.  A friend of yours asks you to take some photos for this conference, and you agree, begrudgingly, because you have to maintain this air of like borderline snobbishness that comes with justifying your in the know-ness.  Plus, you’re ready for this thing, mentally.  You don’t own a TV anymore and you are intimately familiar with the term Singularity and could define it, if asked.

You arrive at this conference, Humanity+, start taking a few shots with your totally authentic, manual focus 85mm portrait lens.  The talks begin.  Gradually, the entire central illusion around which you’ve built this affect of cool is like gone, because you just heard a talk from Dr. Suzanne Gildert, a condensed matter physics PhD, on how the most prolific entity in the universe is not a human, but a photon, because check out how they can live, self-sustainably, for tens of billions of years.

That is only the beginning.

There ‘s a talk from Robert Tercek who reports that every two days, human beings create as much information as they did from the dawn of recorded history until 2003.  That 35 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.  That the singularity is not a clearly defined moment, rather a series of events that occur as technology begins to usher change at exponential rates.

You laugh along with the crowd as Alex Peake, a computer science ninja, quips “Even though our kids are going to be weird, and part machine, we still have to be there for them.”  You attempt to wrap your head around a talk by Dr. Geordie Rose who reports that using a quantum-computing concept called “compressive sensing” you can sample one byte in a million of a one gigabyte movie file and, after some heavy computation, reconstruct the original movie with almost perfect fidelity.

After two days at the conference, you accept that there are things that you just don’t know.  That there are intensely talented post doc research fiends who have spent decades aspiring toward transhumanism, as in like disability, suffering, disease, aging, and involuntary death are unnecessary, undesirable, and avoidable.  That mind uploading (as in, the sum total of your life experiences uploaded onto a hard drive = you live FOREVER) is one of many possible diverse singularity outcomes.  That when the first machine with artificial intelligence greater than humans does emerge, its just as likely to turn itself off, as it is to try and take over the world.

You’re not sure how seriously you should take all this stuff, but if an artificial intelligence ever does rise up and attack, you definitely want the transhumanists on your side.

Written by Zachary Urbina

by Jennifer Morris

If you’re reading this, you’re on the internet so I won’t waste much time introducing Best Coast, Bethany Cosentino’s 60s-girl-group inspired, lo-fi, surf-rock stoner-pop trio, backed by guitarist Bobb Bruno and ex-Vivian Girl Ali Koehler on drums. I caught up with Bethany and we had an unsurprisingly awesome chat about Surfer Blood, Seinfeld and Snacks The Cat. 

Jennifer Morris: What are you up to right now?

Bethany Cosentino: It’s Bobb’s birthday today so we’re gonna do some shots and have a party, I think. (Laughs)

This is your first time in the UK. How is it?

It’s cold! Really cold. (Laughs) It’s cool to be, like, so far away from home and have so many people come to see you because I never imagined that anybody here had heard of Best Coast and then you get here and people come to your shows so that’s really exciting and cool. (Laughs)

Quick as you can, sum up your album for us.

A lot of songs about weed and… there is one song that talks about my cat.

What happens to Snacks The Cat when you go on tour?

My boyfriend (Wavves frontman Nathan Williams - Ed) is watching him right now but when both of us are gone, my dad watches him. Or like, a neighbour… (Laughs)

Are Surfer Blood stalking you?

We keep randomly running into them! They came to our show and then I guess Bobb was out at a bar last night and ran into them.  We also played with our friend’s band from America last night, Cold Cave. It’s really cool when you are away from home and you get to play with friend’s bands and stuff.

You often tweet about Seinfeld. Outside of Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer, name your top five characters from the show.

Shit. Um… fuck, that’s a hard question! (Laughs) Umm… let’s see. Well, there is one character that you never actually meet or see but it’s Kramer’s friend and I can’t even think of his name…

Bob Sacamano?

Yeah! Bob Sacamano! I love Bob Sacamano even though you never see him. Let’s see… I like Puddy a lot, Puddy’s pretty funny. George’s parents are my favourites so, that takes up two. One of my favourite episodes is when Jerry has to look after that man’s dog from the airplane, so I’m gonna say Farfel is one of my other favourites because he’s an annoying dog, so… (Laughs)

— Words and photo: Jennifer Morris