Step into the intricate universe of Naarm/Melbourne-based musican, V, an artist whose life story is as interesting and multifaceted as their sound. 

V’s journey into music was sparked when a Slits’ concert shattered their perceptions, unveiling the boundless potential of women in music. The transformative power of music and its ability to break down barriers becomes evident as V tells us their story. They vividly describe the turning points, the chance encounters, and the intense passion that fuelled their creative evolution. V taught themselves to record through experimentation with bass and GarageBand, to craft their own unique sound. 

V’s musical trajectory was further shaped by collaborations and experiences abroad. Their involvement in various bands, from grindcore to dark wave and experimental projects, exposed them to diverse influences and refined their approach to music. Our conversation delves into their experiences living in Germany for a decade, the challenges they faced, and the lessons learned along the way. V spent time living in Berlin’s Tacheles artist squat.

The interview also explores V’s struggle for legitimacy in an industry that can often be shallow and unyielding. From their insights on the music scene, being dropped from their label, a story of kindness of a well-known fellow musician when V couldn’t afford to eat, and the unending pursuit of self-improvement, V’s authenticity shines through. 

Their third album, Faithless, emerges as a focal point of the discussion. The creative process, the painstaking efforts to capture the right tones and emotions, making the album four times and deleting it, and the significance of collaboration with a choir all come to light. The album’s meaning and themes run deep, loss, yearning, psychic devastation and the failures of mental healthcare in contemporary Australia. 

V’s candidness about their emotional struggles, personal losses, and the complexities of finding a sense of belonging adds a raw and intimate layer to the chat. Their passion for their art resonates powerfully throughout. We also touch on latest album, Best Life, a visual album, and a collaborative work between eight directors in Australia and the EU. 

Ultimately, this conversation provides a window into the heart and mind of an artist who is unafraid to tackle the challenges of living, confronts personal demons, and channels those experiences into their art.

We chatted earlier this year in-person, while V was in Meanjin/Brisbane to headline the VALE VIVI: A punk eulogy to Vivienne Westwood tribute event at The Tivoli theatre. Their dear friend had passed away a few days earlier, and the chat was very emotional. Tears were shed.

I’m so happy to be talking with you finally. We love what you do, V. You’re incredibly underrated. How did you find music? Has it always been a big part of your life?

V: No, actually, it hasn’t been a part of my life forever. I was introduced to this intense love for music through my sister when I was maybe 16 or 17. Of course I liked music before then. Like, I love the Spice Girls and the Backstreet Boys, but I don’t think my music tastes really extended beyond that then. But I remember my turning point.

My life changed when she was 16. My sister bought me a ticket to The Slits at The Zoo and I’d never heard of them before. It was the best. That show was a turning point because, I just never considered the possibility of women in rock on stage. I remember Ari Up was like, “Girls get up on the stage.” And I got up on the stage. I got my first taste of being on the stage in a rock and roll sense at that show. It maybe took a year or two after that, I’d just play around quietly by myself with one of those organs that every single Brisbane sharehouse used to have. 

When I really started making music was when I got an Apple laptop, when I was 21. It came with Garage Band and I just started pumping music out. I started writing music like crazy. 

In my mind, I didn’t really know I was making music in my own way. I released ten albums. I burned them on CDs. I had a little separate CD burner, and I literally had ten V albums. 

I read about that. Someone that used to be in a band with, I think, David Hantelius? 

V: Yeah. 

And they mentioned that when they first met you, they sat down with you to hear your music and they thought, oh, I’m just going to hear a demo. And then it was ten albums! 

V: Keeping in mind that they were all demos, they were not developed with the structure or anything. I feel like I must have been in a year long manic phase when I first started making that music. Sometimes I get so into it that I’d go for two days. I wouldn’t go to sleep, and I’d just keep doing it. I haven’t done stuff like that in over ten years. I guess I’ve mellowed out in my age. But, yeah, that’s how it kind of started for me, slowly, and also privately. The writing part has always been very private. I never performed till a bit later. 

Why was that? Were you scared to put yourself out there? 

V: At the time, I was much more invested in being a visual artist. So that was the practise that I showed to the world. Drawing and painting, scenes and comics and stuff.

The turning point to where I kind of started to resemble what I do now, was back in the MySpace days. I was living in Germany at the time and this guy, Obi Blanche, a Finnish producer, contacted me on MySpace. He asked if I wanted to form some Kills-type band together with him. And I spent about a year in his flat,  sitting behind his shoulder, watching him on Ableton, putting these demos to life. That’s where I learned about, not technique, but when you have discipline. He had a lot of discipline for music, and I continue that discipline today. 

I’m very disciplined now about my approach to music, and I think it’s very informed by Obi. Later on. we had this band called VO – so V and Obi. That was the first official music I ever recorded. 

Shortly after that, I joined this grindcore band, Batalj. That’s where I really cut my teeth live. I wouldn’t be making the music I am today if it wasn’t for Batalj. It was with two Swedish guys. David was the one who we mentioned before who came over and listened to demo. It was David and Per and me in that band. Per was good at tour booking. He would book these intense tours. Two week, three week-long tours. 

The first tour I ever did was with Monsieur Marcaille, who’s amazing French classically trained cello player. He has two kick drums on either side and then he has the cello in the middle and it’s coming through to two amps. It’s very grotesque in a way because he plays just with the underwear and he’s snorting on the ground and spitting and it’s very loud and almost kind of metal-like. 

I never thought about how that might have influenced me because I also had a little fling with him on that tour. There was a huge age gap, but it was fine. I was 23. 

More recently you’ve play with band Dark Water?

V: I didn’t really write anything for Dark Water. I was not quite a session drummer. I also had an important role as a cheerleader in that band. 

More recently, I’ve been playing bass for Enola. But I’m doing one last show with them because I just think I can’t be in a band where I’m a session musician. I have to have a creative input. What’s the point of me having almost 20 years of experience and just be a session musician? I want to put my creativity into it. I’m not shitting on that band at all. I absolutely loved playing the music. I learnt so much. They taught me about dynamics. How important they are and how much you can get someone’s heart racing by applying the dynamics properly. You have quiet a part, then you have a loud part and then you go quiet again, get loud again, it gets people on edge. It made me a much better musician.

[V holds up their bass guitar and hugs it to their chest] 

This is my new bass, Violetta, I upgraded. I’ve been using, Sheila, which is my other bass, that I bought in the Valley when I was 18 with my tax return. Just on a a freaking whim. I went into this music store and they had this deal for a little Orange amp and a bass guitar. I bought it and that was he beginning. 

Did you want to play bass or did you get it because you wanted to play something and thought it was cheap enough for you to buy? 

V: It was just cheap. In school, I studied classical acoustic guitar, the one where you get the little footstool. But honestly, I didn’t do that in high school because I liked music. I did it because I didn’t like gym. I got the music lessons put on the same time as PE so I wouldn’t have to do PE. I learned technique from that. But I wasn’t passionate about it. I didn’t think about making music when I was a teenager. That came later. 

When you started doing your solo thing, V, you were living in Germany?

V: Yeah, the very first show I ever did was for someone’s art show which was held in a derelict abandoned building. I had this battery operated stereo with a CD that I burnt for the backing track. I had a tambourine, no microphone. I was singing along.

I’ve gone through huge transition to get to where I am today. It took a lot of different bands. I’ve gone to the next level with V because of that.

You were talking about dynamics before, I can especially feel that with your new album, Faithless. I’m usually a big lyrics person, they’re a big part of the equation for me, but then with your album, there’s not really that many lyrics. Maybe the last song. You convey so much with just sound. 

V: That’s really what I wanted to achieve with that album. It was by far the hardest work I’ve ever created. 

Didn’t you make the album four times and then deleted it each time?

V: I did, yeah. 

What was missing in the versions you deleted?

V: I got commissioned to do the album, so it had to have the Bells on it. Many of the songs I’d written would have sounded better on synthesiser and my normal thing. And I felt like I was doing a disservice to the Bells by… it’s almost like I just tried to sub them in. I wanted to justify using the bells. For people reading this, they’re the Federation Bells. I did it four times because it had to be good.

It was written during lockdown, a very isolating period. I was in the shed. I smoked more weed than I’ve ever smoked in my entire life. It was a nice period, because obviously, with the lockdown and getting money from the government, I was able to, for the first time in my life, almost just only focus on the music for two years. 

I felt so conflicted because I didn’t like how the Bells sounded. And it took me forever to arrive at a point where I could feel justified, to actually release it and feel like it was still my voice and feel like I wasn’t compromising. 

Initially did you have an idea of what you thought the Bells might sound like and was the reality different?

V: It was a harsh reality because the Bells are ugly sounding. They hurt. They hurt my ears. The higher ones, anyway. The album pretty much uses almost none of the upper Bells. It’s like, basically mostly the lower five Bells. You think of a bell in a clock tower, it’s like that. They’re upside down on sticks. It’s a very unique instrument. They’re more of an artwork. 

I’m not technically trained, I’m self taught, totally. There’s all this technical information about how the tones work and I just have to do it all by ear.

Dark Water also got commissioned, but on the Grand Organ.

I got dropped by DERO Arcade. I don’t mind talking about that. That was crushing. I can’t even begin to say how crushing it was, because I made ten music videos, I spent all this money, savings. But, yeah, it will come out, it’s going to be fine. That was very difficult. 

So that’s another album that you’ve made? 

V: Yeah, it’s all finished, it’s ready to go. I’m probably going to probably going to release it in three months, because I want to do a European tour at the end of this year. That’s why I’m doing scrappy jobs, so I can get a ticket and go overseas again. 

My amazing sister ives in Norway and haven’t seen her in five years, she’s got five cats I’ve never met. She has a van and has agreed to drive me on tour. I’m going to release ten singles, because why not? I can do whatever I want if it’s my own self-release. The first show of the tour will probably be in Berlin, as cliche as that is [laughs].

That makes sense though, you lived in Berlin for ten years.

V:It still feels cliche, it’s the cliche of the Australian that goes to Berlin. Whenever it comes up in conversation, I don’t say the “B” word, I just say Germany, because I’m embarrassed. It’s fun. I’ve been here [Australia] for seven years now, so it was 17 years ago that I moved there. It was just before turning 22, when I moved. 

Why’d you move there?

V:  The art scene. Initially I had moved to London because my mum is from there and I wanted to reconnect with her side of the family, but I hated it. I felt alienated, didn’t make any friends. I didn’t feel good there. 

On a whim, I moved to Berlin, I had this vague friend that had a studio in a massive artist squat, Tacheles, that I ended up living in. I was meant to be there for five days, but on the first day well, no, the first day was horrible, on the second day I was like, oh, I’m not going back to England, I’m going to stay here. I felt free in a way that I’d never felt. Maybe it was because of the language gap, like not understanding advertising and not understanding any conversations on the street. 

That’s really interesting. 

V: That’s where I immediately started making those ten albums. When I moved there, I bounced from art studio to art studio. I essentially spent ten years bouncing from place to place. It was very unstable, but it was nice. I wouldn’t want to do that again, though

Is there anywhere that you feel at home? 

V: That’s hard because my family is all split all over the world. I guess I do feel somewhat at home in Naarm because my brother is there. He’s married. He has my beautiful niece. She’s so cute. Izzy. She’s the only child in the family, and at this stage, I’m probably not going to have children. It’s nice to have this child, that feels nice and somewhat homelike. 

I also grew up in Singapore and South Korea, and so I’ve never really felt connected to Australia. It didn’t really feel like I was leaving home when I went over to London. I was born here in Brisbane, but left when I was six and then came back to Brisbane when I was about 15 or so. So the formative years was spent over in Singapore and South Korea; changed school, changed houses. 

Do you remember much from your time there? 

V: Oh, yes, very much so. My mind wanders back there sometimes because I went to school with all these expat kids who were from all over the world. That’s what I really liked about Germany, because it is quite multi-cultural, they call it multikulti. There’s ja lot of different nationalities living there. There’s a lot of different people. That’s something I feel really lacking here. It’s so homogeneous. I miss the heavy accents, and broken English and broken German and broken French and whatever language. When you meet someone, you try to find whatever common language you have, and then you speak broken whatever together or use, like, Google Translate to try and communicate. 

I’m searching for home. I don’t think it bothers me that much, though. Maybe I’m more like a wandering Ronin [laughs]. But, I would like to find something that feels like home one day. I mean, this kind of feels like home in a way. I’ve had housing instability for literally 17 years. That’s not the worst thing either, because it feeds into my need for stimulation. I’m always searching for new, fresh stimulation.

What’s the significance of album Faithless to you? It’s your third album. 

V: It represents legitimacy. There’s nothing more legitimate than the city of Melbourne commissioning you to make a record. It feels like a new phase for me. I want to reach the heights. I don’t want to have to work this shit insurance job that I hate. I hate working these crappy jobs. It sucks my life out. And it means I can’t put as much thought and effort into my music. 

Best Life is your other album you’ve made, right? 

V: Yeah. It’s about best life. When we were in lockdown, it’s hard not to self-reflect. That’s what that album is all about—self-betterment, self-improvement. Also, isolation. 

I’m always wanting to be better, a better version of myself. There’s a whole bunch of stuff that I really don’t like about myself that I’m working on. I can be so passive aggressive, and other things, that I’m trying to work on and I think bit too much about. Self-betterment is what I use music for. With Best Life, with So Pure, I was really looking inwards and looking at myself and asking questions. Faithless, I’m more looking outwards. I didn’t want to write songs about love and of course, I inevitably end up seeing death, which I’m a little bit tired of it, to be honest. 

The last song ‘Faithless’ was one of those songs that came fully formed. It came out totally, there was no arrangement later. I didn’t have to revise the lyrics. I feel like that is a bit of an aberration from the rest of the album, which I feel is like more of an exercise in, I tried to go really deep with the oral sonics of it all. The album represents legitimacy for me, which is something I desperately crave.

‘Memories / Dreams’ definitely exists, because Cosey Fanni Tutti exists. This is heavily influenced by Cosey Fanni.

In what ways? 

V: I read Art Sex Music. It’s so good. And it will make you look at Genesis P-Orridge in a totally different light. I listened to her discography and also her collaborations that she did with Chris Carter as well. 

I also listen to a lot of group A., they’re from Tokyo but based in Berlin. I played with them before, they’re huge now. They’re amazing. Very influenced, because for me, they were at the forefront of this genre. The way they talk about their music is really cool as well. It’s very conceptual. It’s like, this album is all about wood and wood sounds, and then this one is about metal and metal sounds. It’s clever, it’s intellectual.

I get obsessed with things and I listen to the same thing over and over and over and over again.  definitely got obsessed with Cosey’s live recordings on SoundCloud. 

Have you heard Lydian Dunbar’s new album Blue Sleep? I’m obsessed. That’s one of the ones that I’ve also listened to obsessively on repeat. It’s one of my favourite albums of last year.

We love Lydian! There’s so many great artists in Australia, but the best stuff doesn’t always get known by a wider audience.

V: Yeah. Because of the industry, you see these super talented people get ground down all the time. It’s never the best stuff out there getting attention, but sometimes it is, look at Amyl and the Sniffers! I’m so stoked they blew up. They definitely work hard. 

Quick story about them, a few years ago, I had a bit of a mental meltdown about music and I made this social media post that I’m going to quit. I didn’t even have money to eat. This sucks. I hate it. And then Amy from Amyl and the Sniffers wrote me. I’d seen her at shows and stuff. She said, “I’ve just done really well with this Gucci campaign. Please let me send you groceries. I’d never really even talked to her before. After that, there’s no one who’s more of a fan of Amy than me. Not even because of just that, but because of her lyrics, her performances, and everything. She’s super lovely.

Totally! The industry can be such a terrible place. Music media in this country is all pretty bogus too. Artists have to pay to get featured (we never charge, we only cover artists we love). People reach out to Gimmie and ask us how much it costs to be featured ‘cause they’re used to paying other well-known bigger publications to get coverage. Their numbers are fake and engagement is poor. They’re not doing as well as they pretend that they are. 

V: What’s happening? Where are we going? What’s the endpoint of this complete homogenisation of culture? 

In Melbourne, you’ll see these bands that have hundreds and thousands of monthly listens on Spotify, but then you go see them and there’s only a few people there.

Fucking house of cards, it’s got to come down at one point. How much can we take? I like doing my own thing, staying in my own lane that I’ve made, supporting the things that I love, and that’s it. 

I’ve had the opportunity to play with Civic recently and they’re fucking doing so well. Those guys, they’re going to America, twice this year. They’re going to Europe. They got sponsored by Fender. They could choose anything they wanted. That’s a fucking dream. 

We saw them on Friday night. We love those guys. Lewis is a total legend, a really nice, talented dude. 

V: I wish I could have made that show. I really like them all as people, they’re exceptional. Normally I have no time for all-male bands, no time whatsoever. They’re just so fucking nice. I feel like they deserve it. I know them all individually from their other projects, and I just know they’ve worked so fucking hard to get that. They did twelve shows in four days at South by Southwest. Insane.

In regards to your creativity, what are the things that are important to you? 

V:Creativity is part of my entity. I’m always being creative. Integrity and authenticity. Authenticity is the most important thing to me, no compromise. I like the space to do things in my own time and not be forced to be in a schedule. What’s the point if it’s not real, then it becomes shallow entertainment. I’m more interested in creating this simulacrum of my soul. It should be my unique voice.

My creativity is my life force. That’s my purpose in life. Maybe that will change later, but I don’t really have much else in my life besides my music. I have my friends, and I have nice musical equipment, but I feel like it probably would be healthier for me to get some interests outside of the creative sphere, also because my ego is so linked to it. If something goes wrong with my creativity side, or if I perceive that it’s being rejected or something, then it’s like the end of the world. 

Yeah, I’ve felt like that too. I used to put on a lot of punk shows and I’d spend time and effort making cool flyers, like, mini artworks, hand them out at places, and then I’d see them just discarded on the floor, it’d be so sad. 

V:Yeah, I used to put on a lot of shows too. But I haven’t since COVID times. In Germany, I used to put on shows all the time to the point where people I’d never heard of would write me and ask me to put up shows. I’d listen to the music first and generally not reply to the ones that I didn’t like. I was living on and off in communes that had guest rooms so you could get crust bands up from the Czech Republic, with six members and shove them in the guest rooms. 

I remember once, a band called the Piss Crystals, me and a friend put on a show for them and I put them in this guest room, closed the door, went to bed; Later I went down to collect them, there was a big note on the door that said: Scabies. I don’t think anyone got it. Or maybe I just blanked that out my memory [laughs]. But a lot of stories like that in Germany, those were some really loose times back then. Very different from life here. 

Were there any specific emotions or things that you were processing while you were making Faithless? 

V: With ‘Faithless’, the song itself, I mean, that song is a eulogy for Bridget [Flack]. The songs all have their own meanings but that one is the one that really has a solid. meta meaning. When I got Hunny Machete involved and she brought in the Faithless Choir, it took on this entirely new meaning—the power of community and community care. 

When the choir got involved, it was like they were drowning out my cries of, are you faithless? You almost can’t hear me say that because the choir is so loud behind me. They make it uplifting. It’s a very depressing song without it. She wrote the arrangement, just reminds me the power of collaboration, makes me want to collaborate more.

That song, when I wrote it, it was about being faithless and being hopeless and being so completely faithless in the system for people like Bridget, people like me and that we can’t live and thrive in the system. Bridget was badly failed by the Australian mental healthcare system.

‘Cockroach’ is about the apartment I was living in. I wrote the first half in this sharehouse in Brunswick. And the second half, this is Lockdown rent got really cheap in CBD, so I got my own apartment for the first time ever; one year. It was infested with cockroaches. I like the big ones, that’s no problem. Give me a big one any day. The standard bush cockroaches. But it’s the German cockroaches, the tiny ones, they just make me want to vomit. They’re disgusting. I had to throw them away cassettes because they got in there, They got in all my picture frames. It was intense. 

What about the song ‘Toll Keeper? 

V: It’s kind of like you’re on the river on that boat thing and you’re going to the Afterworld. I feel like that’s the soundtrack to that, in a way that brings you into that. 

That was one of my favourites. I went through so many emotions listening to it. Each time I listened, I got something else from it. 

V: So awesome to hear. That makes me so happy. I was not sure how it be received because it’s so different. It’s still my same aesthetics and sensibilities but a different approach to meaning. Initially, when I wrote the album, probably the first one that I deleted, I was like, oh, make an album about land rights. Because written on the Bells, there’s a river there, and there’s so much history for the traditional custodians of the land in that area. I started to try and write it. I was like, this is too much to tackle. I also felt like it wasn’t my place to try and write, like I was just trying to be Midnight Oil or something. It wasn’t right. It’s a hard thing to write about, land rights. 

I felt quite insecure while writing, because, you know, if I wasn’t going to write directly, direct lyrics about my emotions or anything, I was like, Is it still illegitimate and is there still meaning in it? That’s part of why I wrote and deleted it four times. I felt so fucking insecure about it, and I just wanted to make sure that it rung the right notes, metaphorically speaking. 

I was reading about the drum machine that you used. You got it in France, right? 

V: I did, for €2. It was sitting in the grass, I half knew what it was when I walked past because it has all the classic buttons, like waltz, samba, all those drum patterns. I was very much trying not to hide my excitement when I was asking the woman selling it, in broken French, how much does it cost? It’s an amazing machine. I mean, it still works perfectly. And it’s over maybe 50 or 60 years old. It’s definitely the jewel in my collection, because I have collected a few really nice pieces throughout the years. I would never sell it, but it’s worth, maybe a grand and a half. And yeah, the history and the sound you would get from it. I was slyly asking her what it was? (I knew what it was). She told me it’s for accompanying the accordion. I was like, oh, okay, maybe I’ll take it. I actually want to get it retroactively fitted with Midi because it doesn’t have Midi, so that was kind of a nightmare, like fixing it or not fixing it. 

I’m not going to lie, it was a nightmare to actually technically make this album. Technically it was such a challenge because it wasn’t on the grid and I really should have thought about that. But I’m happy with how it came out. I could have saved myself 300 hours or something, because I did a lot of hand placing, midi notes and things like that. I’ll never do it again. It was a labour of love. 

Have you had a chance to play the album live yet? 

V: No. 

You were going to do it at Fed Square?

V: We got rained out. It was huge no no, because I’m bringing a lot of electric stuff like a laptop. I’m not bringing the drum machine because it would literally be impossible to get it to sync up with what I’m playing. Even a single drop of sideways rain is not allowed to come near my stuff. It’s going to be rescheduled. It’s impossible to take the show on the road. I’m just going to leave it as that one live performance, just have it as this rare one off thing and then the records. That’s going to be the legacy of it. I’m sure I would like to do, like, a ten year reunion with the choir,  because the choir is, full of such awesome people and we really bonded. 

So you’ll start focusing on Best Life now?

V: Yeah. I just got to get the plan together. I haven’t tried so hard to get another record label. Once I got dropped from DERO Arcade, I wrote all the labels, nobody really replied to me. I got one rejection, which was cool, even to just see that they’d seen my letter. That was so hard. 

Obviously, I’m doing well. I have this album out, but nothing’s good enough for me. Nothing’s ever going to be good enough. 

What does your best life look like? 

V: Right now? Don’t ask me, because I’ll start crying. I don’t know.

 

Would you be making music full time? 

V: No, I wouldn’t be doing music at all. 

What would you want to be doing? Would it be visual art? 

V: No. [Cries]. I’d probably like to have a family, I think, but I don’t think I’m going to do that. People often say that their songs are like their kids and that making an album is like giving birth. I definitely view my instruments as, I wouldn’t say my child, but, something that replaces that, in some ways. [Craddles their bass guitar]. This feels very comforting for me to be holding Violetta like this. I always give them names. 

Outside of capitalism, yes, I would be doing music, I would be doing art. But it’s just so crushing to be creative. 

Part of the reason I caught up in my head is I spend way too much time alone. I need to get out there and hang with the young people and go see those bands. Start looking at placing my focus on, am I happy with what I’ve done? Am I happy with what I’m doing? Stop striving for success and just try and keep focusing on making what I like and what I’m happy with. 

You’re an amazing, talented, fascinating person V. You should be proud of what you’ve done, it’s so unique, no-one could have done it but you. What is success anyway? I know music doesn’t pay your bills right now but your art really speaks to people, it moves them. We get it. We get you.

V: I am happy with it. I’m going through an emotional time also because another trans friend unfortunately chose to end their life four days ago, the day before this album came out and I was like, oh, god, like, yeah, fucking faithless right there. All that kind of stuff beats you down. When people are actually dying and not just being upset because their record won’t come out, it’s hard to reconcile, but it’ll get there. I’ve got my therapy session tomorrow morning, by the way, so don’t worry about me. I’ve just had a rough, rough few days. 

I’m so sorry that you’re having such a rough time right now, our condolences for your friend passing. In situations like this words never suffice. Are you ok?

V: Yeah. I’m sorry for my friend. It’s so sad. 

Totally. I was talking to Jackie from band, Optic Nerve, recently. I was talking to them and their new album they’ve just put out is called, Angel Numbers.  Thematically, it’s about signs among other things, but it’s also about violence against trans people. It’s such an important record that we feel deserves so much more attention. Jackie was telling me about how they got jumped, multiple times in a few weeks and ended up in the hospital twice. 

V: That’s awful. It doesn’t surprise me. 

The album is about these things and it’s about community. It’s one of the best hardcore punk records of the year, and it really is for community. It’s incredible. Jackie is an incredible person doing great things.

V: That sounds like an extremely important record and I can’t listen to it. Optic Nerve’s guitar sound is something special.

Anything else you’d like to tell us? 

V: We’ve covered A to Z, everything. I have a lot to think about, which I really appreciate. Your questions made me tear up, asking, where is home? And, what would your best life be? I’m always about self-improvement, so I’m going to think about those questions. They really struck chords in me.

Find V at: 

vlovescats.bandcamp.com/music

instagram.com/vlovescats

facebook.com/Vlovescats/

soundcloud.com/vlovescats