motel void

MOTEL VOID: Could you introduce your project in a few sentences? I haven’t found much information about you on the internet to be honest…

ALAMODALITY: HI! I’m alamodality. I’m a 20 year old home recorder from the barrens of Norfolk County, Ontario, currently studying Botany in Guelph. I have been home recording in some form since I was a child, this is simply the first time it has sounded feasible. There isn’t much of a pretense for this project other than what music I currently am trying to make, and the name is partially to distance myself from prior juvenalia that’s on the same Bandcamp page. I would describe what I make as something like weird pop-emo. The name ‘alamodality’ stems from being a contrarian, really.

MOTEL VOID: You’ve just released a debut album ‘County’. Could you tell us more about the recording and writing process of this record?

ALAMODALITY: This album was a weird one — I’m not prolific, and said previous projects were very much “what I have done goes on it”. This project — I wanted to not have to start over, make another debut album, so it was intentional, but I find it hard having no abandon in the air – there are some demos that made it to the record. Also, I had been gifted a TASCAM DP-008EX, an actual 8-track like all the greats have had, and not being restricted by a DAW really shaped this record. On the tracks I didn’t record with my bandmate Connor, you can hear a lot of different permutations of 2-mic drum recording, with mixed results. As for writing, I found Guided By Voices at the beginning of what would become County, and that really reminded me of the supreme importance of good vocal melody, and just not needing to repeat a verse or chorus if you didn’t have to.

MOTEL VOID: So ‘ALAMODALITY’ is not your first music project…

ALAMODALITY: I wish! No – in my early teens I was really into vaporwave, cassettes and ambient music, and if you do some poking around I released some stuff under the name Dream Demo, somewhere, and then since 17 I wanted to be a rock band. And since 19 I am in the band MESSLURE with my great friend Connor who I’m honoured to work with every time we practice, and we have stuff to release aswell.

MOTEL VOID: Your biggest music inspirations right now?

ALAMODALITY: I dunno – every week it changes. The best thing I discovered recently was the band Deep Turtle, but I want my next full-length to sound like a blend of Liquid Mike, Slapp Happy’s Desperate Straights, Guitar Fight From Fooly Cooly and GASP. My biggest influences overall are most of the canon of hypnagogic pop, lo-fi rock, 90s screamo/emo, 70s avant/prog stuff, STABSCOTCH and The Brave Little Abacus. Or anything like well-written pop music.

MOTEL VOID: Your plans for 2024?

ALAMODALITY: Not fail my cell biology class, and then MESSLURE is sort of gearing up to play some shows in the Guelph surrounding area (we’ll play some alamodality songs), and then record an LP or something alone while working a summer job in a provincial park. And go out to see more live music as well – it’s fun, and I haven’t done enough of that, being a bedroom recorder and all.