motel void

MOTEL VOID: I couldn’t find much information about you on the internet. Where are you from? And how would you describe current music scene there? Do you feel that you’re part of it?

DILUTE_CALICO98: It’s pretty much taken me a decade to put out any of my own stuff so I don’t have much of a digital footprint yet, but I’m workin on it. I’m in/from Fresno CA, the music scene here is pretty lively, especially this year. I’d say I’m pretty involved with what goes on, one of my other music projects is a sort of experimental power violence thing so I’ve gotten to see a fair array of the different sounds/ circles that pop up around here, it’s cool.

MOTEL VOID: ‘terminator’ is your debut single. Where did you play before ‘dilute_calico98’? Or is this your first music project?

DILUTE_CALICO98: I’ve mostly been in projects when a friend needs a drummer or something, me and my friend John who kinda got me into playing music seriously have had a lot of projects over the years, most recently we released a self titled album for our band called miles the boxer, and we’re working a new thing called “softener” also as I mentioned I was in a heavier duo project called motherbull, I produced an album for us that we released on bandcamp but I’m not sure what the future holds for that project at the moment.

MOTEL VOID: Your biggest music inspirations right now?

DILUTE_CALICO98: nourished by time has been on repeat for me a lot this year, their music just popped up on Spotify one day and I couldn’t stop listening to it. I’m also really big on Oneohtrix Point Never, the way he structures stuff is mind boggling. An all time favorite for me is the band Women as well, their sound has always hit a nerve for me.

MOTEL VOID: Could you tell us more about the recording and writing process of your first album ‘horror’?

DILUTE_CALICO98: Horror was recorded in GarageBand on an old ipad about a year ago (except for grimm, that was recorded on GarageBand on a MacBook Air) I definitely had better equipment for the job but for some reason I just ended up liking the work flow that came with such minimal tools. I used my trusty dusty silvertone acoustic guitar from like the 60s for all the chords and stuff and had this idea to try and manipulate the audio from that to make different textures, something about starting with something so natural and ending up with some convoluted digital amalgamation of the original idea helped guide the direction of the songs for me. I used only the mic on the iPad which was probably the most difficult part of the whole process, the vocals were definitely rougher than what I was looking for but after a year passed I listened back to the songs and as much as I wanted to clean them up I felt like it had been too long to do the ideas justice so I just left it and tried my best to clean it up with the mix. Writing the album just consisted of messing around with chords on my acoustic and trying to come up with catchy melodies and lyrics that simultaneously represent the horror concept that the song is named after, and hit home for me in a real way. Curse is a good example of this as the lyrics are basically about the amityville horror and in parallel maybe about a family member who has been consumed by their vices and their descent into becoming a hazard to the loved ones around them. But yeah anyways I really like catchy stuff!!

CURSE ON SPOTIFY

MOTEL VOID: Your plans for 2024?

DILUTE_CALICO98: I’m sitting on a folder with about 60 songs in it right now so I’m gonna sift through it all and try to put an album out as soon as it comes together, or maybe I’ll just start poppin out singles, now that I’ve finally released something I kinda just wanna start throwing everything out there, we’ll see!!