In short, it is a story of three girls who stand together at the end of the world. I wanted to find a way to express all of my grief, anger, and hope, and found that it made the most sense to understand that as a communal experience more than a lonesome one.
Q: Where did you get the idea to do this album?
A: One of my mentors suggested to me that when I get stuck in life, one way I could find my way out was to imagine the timeline that I wanted to live in. In this case, I failed quite miserably and imagined a realistic worst-case scenario for the future. (It’s really not that hard for me to notice things getting worse.) Anyways, after that it was easy to start writing music.
Q: What is the Noise?
A: I always thought that it was some kind of “Kessler Syndrome disaster”; some of the early descriptions for the album mention this. This might have looked like a virus infecting planetside satellites and causing them to collide and / or de-orbit; planetside networks failing to maintain connection through the fuzz and chaos of automated data: hence, the Noise.
The Noise is an engineered calamity. It was always possible for humans to have stopped it, but those responsible for creating it allowed it to continue (see: Shock Doctrine).
Q: So is there AI in this future?
A: Humans never got far enough to develop artificial intelligence. The automated parts of the Noise are a confusing, howling mass designed to consume all information and bandwidth to complete an impossible query. As with a virus, it is not sentient.
Q: What are your opinions on cults?
A: The United States functions practically as a series of death cults which aim to extract wealth and power for a tiny minority of individuals. This, of course, is in stark contrast to the historically fascinating Greco-Roman mysteries, and other spiritually resonant, esoteric spaces where freaks and weirdos like myself had opportunities to bond. The word “cult” could mean a lot of things, but these days it is frequently a pejorative term.
I imagine the Nu Girls probably reclaimed the term for themselves after a negative tabloid cover of them or something.
I withhold describing my own spiritual beliefs here, but I support the creation of any group, organization or space that provides prosocial bonding, mutual aid and spiritual healing in the face of disaster.
Q: Is the Nu Girl a trans allegory?
A: The Nu Girl is an icon of deviancy against the socially expedient, monolithic forms of womanhood that have been propped up in the Noise’s wake. The Nu Girl acts as a direct counter to the fascist worship of the ubermensch as the epitome of human evolution. It is a deity-liaison for the characters involved in the story: these people are necessarily reinventing themselves to transcend previous social boundaries in order to survive.
None of the characters really choose to describe, or attempt to define the Nu Girl. It cannot be described, only felt, heard, and tasted directly; I leave it up to the listener’s imagination.
There probably are many transsexuals like myself involved in the Cult. It’s not an exclusive party though.