motel void

MOTEL VOID: To be honest, I couldn’t find much about you online – and Useless Things is only your third single so far. Could you briefly introduce yourself? How and where did your project come to life?:)

STILTS & AVOCETS: Of course! I’m not too surprised since this is a pretty new project and I have a slight aversion to sharing myself online :). My name is Abbey and I make songs in my bedroom. I first started making music as a means of relieving cravings I’d had for connection with something that let me see beyond a life that I couldn’t really find meaning in.

I’ve been fumbling around with different instruments (mainly a guitar) in whatever spare time I have ever since. Stilts & Avocets came into the picture recently as I have been quite hesitant to open up my little music safe haven to the world, but I figure if I’m going to spend as much time as I do in Logic I may as well let my creations go further than my own ears. That and the fact that my tracks have only recently started becoming less of a mess since I started figuring out what the fuck compression is and how to get rid of that incessant buzzing noise that appeared when I plugged in my guitar to start recording. Still wondering why the window AC unit in my current place adds a slightly sub-dogwhistle frequency to all of my guitar recordings if I don’t turn it off, but I’m getting off track.

The songs I’ve been making so far are all attempts at capturing that dream-like feeling you get when you’re in a forest alone and you forget what there is to think about. I think from the moment I first felt that feeling I wanted to somehow become part of it and Stilts & Avocets is my way of doing that. So, one day earlier this year I decided to pull the trigger and upload my first track after finding my project name while flipping through a bird book. Oh, and the bedroom I speak of where all of this buzzing and attempted dream capturing takes place is in Washington, DC. Great place overall, if you can get over fascism down the street…

MOTEL VOID: Useless Things is your latest release and already your third single this year – how did the track come together? Will it be part of your debut album?

STILTS & AVOCETS: This track came together in the way that all my songs do, the process starting off with a few sets of hours long spastic and hazy recording sessions to build out the instrumental and capture the dreaminess followed by a week or two of humming and hawing over whether it actually sounded good or if I’d just listened to it too many times.

Then comes the vocals, which is always where I actually realize what the song is about. I never go into a project expecting to write about anything in particular (too much structure… no fun!!!), but once I start trying out different lyrics and melodies I start getting that it’s all connected psychedelic feeling and I realize I was already parsing through some emotion or topic with the backing I’ve created.

With Useless Things, my ‘oh, this is what the song’s about’ moment came pretty early on since it’s actually something I struggled with while making the instrumental. I have an obsessive and at times uncontrollable mind and once it latches onto something it consumes me. For the most part, these obsessions are useless. A lot of wondering whether I did something wrong or whether this one thing I did at that one time means I’m bad or immoral. This was something I thought everyone struggled with, but it turns out other people look at you a little weird if you say that you can’t stop thinking about whether you are secretly evil because you haven’t been composting. However, this was a welcome realization as I’ve been able to learn that there’s a separation between my thoughts and my being.

The song is fitting for where I stand with this issue now. There are days I can trust in what I’m losing and let my thoughts be just that, but other days I can’t help but sit down and try to figure it all out. As for whether it will be part of a debut album, I am currently unsure as that would require some long term planning which I generally try to avoid as much as possible. All I know is that there’s always more for me to explore and share in whatever form feels right in the moment.

MOTEL VOID: Have you been involved in any other musical projects before Stilts & Avocets?

STILTS & AVOCETS: Stilts & Avocets is my first and only project so far. I am a bit of a perfectionist in certain ways and prefer to work on things alone, so the four or five years it’s been since I first picked up a guitar with a serious intent to learn have just been me building out the skills I needed to make music on my own. Learning to create music has been more of a necessity for me in my personal life rather than something I’ve developed to share with others, so this whole process of releasing music for random ears to hear is very scary and exciting!

MOTEL VOID: What were the biggest inspirations behind your new material?

STILTS & AVOCETS: I mentioned previously that my main goal in making music is to create a capsule of that middle of the woods no thoughts feeling, and typically songs blending atmospheric components from different genres do that for me. I love the natural magic that folk and old country songs have and I find that can be nicely intertwined with a more modern dream poppy sound.

I really admire artists like Grouper, Radiohead, and Ethel Cain because they don’t necessarily limit their music to a specific genre, but are able to maintain a specific feeling throughout their discography. It’s hard for me to put words to the true inspiration behind my tracks since I typically let them kind of create themselves by exploring different sounds and molding and making meaning as I go, but it’s easy for me to identify once a mix hits on that feeling I get when I listen to music that I love.

Lyrically, I pull inspiration mostly from questions I have about myself or the world in general. I sometimes struggle with extracting the thoughts floating around in my head and explaining them in a way that makes sense, so it can be very fulfilling to let a melody guide my brain to say something out loud that brings me closer to an understanding.

MOTEL VOID: Are you planning to play any live shows to support the new songs?

STILTS & AVOCETS: I don’t have anything planned as of now since actually releasing my music has been my first step in kind of transitioning toward making my art a bit more of a communal rather than solitary endeavor, but I am definitely excited to explore music through performance in the future! I do have some new songs in the works right now, so I’m looking forward to sharing those soon :).

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