An Interview with Austin Moxie James, October 2024
Who/what inspires your music?
Creating music is compulsory for me. If I don’t make music for a while, I feel empty and unfulfilled. I suppose the drive to "be of use" inspires me. Plenty of people inspire my individual songs, too, sometimes for better (in the case of my wonderful partner, or my friends and family) and sometimes for worse (I won’t name names).
How would you describe your sound?
I like to yo-yo between ambient compositions and more traditional folk music. Some records blend the two styles. I hope to explore other sounds soon, particularly doom metal and klezmer.
What does making music mean to you?
Making music is the only way I feel I can fully express who I am. While I love many other art forms and have tried my hand in them too, I’ve never felt as intimate with one of my paintings or one of my poems as I have with one of my songs.
What got you into it/keeps you continuing?
Somehow in seventh grade, I stumbled upon John Frusciante’s debut album and listened to it religiously. I didn’t know music could simultaneously sound ugly and beautiful. Listening to it felt illegal. The techniques he employed with his 4-track cassette recorder (such as loops, reversed solos, analog distortion, and screeching like a cat) were revelatory. Because of that album, I record all my work to cassette, as well.
What interests you about your genre (or rather blend of genres) specifically?
I like ambient because I find it incredibly open to interpretation. On the opposite end, folk tends to be much more specific with its emotional purpose. In my mind, the intense polarity between the two styles makes them work so well together.
How do you keep yourself motivated and inspired/how do you work through creative blocks?
Whenever I have a creative block I just take a long break. I’ll focus on another, smaller passion of mine, such as acrylic painting, riding my bike, reading, or focusing on physical health. I really like callisthenics and running, as well. They both have a primitive quality that I like. I find plenty of motivation in watching other artists perform live. In my freshman year of college, I saw Xiu Xiu play at Rubber Gloves, and it was actually the first concert I ever went to. Over the next week or so I wrote rough drafts for about half of the material on my self titled album.
I also like immersing myself in a good book. A lot of my songs are based on some of my favorite novels or poems. My favorite author is Clarice Lispector, and I always find myself returning to her work whenever I am in a creative rut.
What is your creative process like? Is it more organized & session based or more sporadic and fleeting?
It’s a mix of both. Whenever I record ambient music, I don’t really plan the songs out, I just come up with a general sketch and explore a million different directions to take the music in. A lot of the synth work is improvisational. For my more “traditional” work, I plan everything out weeks in advance and usually record demos of the songs first. A lot of times I will finish recording, mixing, and mastering a song in the same, long session.
Does your visual art/work impact or influence your music? How so? (Ex; I’m mostly a visual artist, but when I make music from time to time I often view the process with the same type/level of craftsmanship that goes into my visual work!)
Yes, and I am so happy that I began pursuing visual art as well. I am immensely grateful for the main director of our video, Charlie Dominguez, and all my other friends who are much more knowledgeable on films than me. Their passion for the visual arts has definitely rubbed off.
As for the degree to which it influences me, I had the general concept for our video in the back of my mind ever since I began writing the track. Around that time, I had read "The Minister’s Black Veil" by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and wondered what it would look like in the present day.
What are some of your rituals/inspirations when writing music? (do you listen/pull inspo from other artists?
Most of my melodies come to me when I least expect it, and usually at very inconvenient times. I’ll be at work or school and then a melody will pop into my head, so I’ll have to hum it softly for hours until I can get home and record it in my Voice Memos. I always liked Jason Molina's approach to songwriting, where he just writes for hours a day as a full-time job no matter the circumstances, keeps the nuggets of gold, and discards the rest.
Do you have a specific place you like to write at?
Not necessarily. I think the beauty of writing is how portable it is. As much as I enjoy painting, I cannot take my acrylics with me everywhere. I’ve never left home without a notebook or a journal with me.
In a time of hyper-digital media, how does bringing analog elements into your work (such as a tape player) influence your mindset surrounding it? How do you feel it changes the feeling/messages of your music?
I think cassette recorders make the recording process much more vulnerable. It’s harder to format everything perfectly to a grid, and I have to rely much more on my ears to keep time, hit the right notes, etc. Since there are no quick-fix solutions to possible mistakes one could make, it’s important to keep the actual performances in check and mess up as little as possible. I think this aspect has improved my musicianship greatly. While I love the capabilities that the modern DAW has, I think that we’ve largely forgotten music is an aural medium, not a visual one.
Additionally, analog recording has a treasure trove of audio techniques that are unique to the medium, such as analog distortion, backmasking, and tape delay. I also think that the visceral nature of turning knobs, pushing sliders, pressing buttons, and hearing the cassette softly whir validates my obsession with the medium. It also validates the many paychecks I've blown on equipment.
Which song of yours do you consider to be your favorite? Why?
My favorite is Epitaph for the Infant Wing. It’s the type of song I dreamed of making when I first started writing music. It also represents everything my work has been building towards thus far, blending acoustic instrumentation with ambient/drone, sound collage, and a plethora of vocal parts.
For the first time, I tried to write more narrative-based lyrics, and the general story of the song influenced other tracks on the record. It was also the first song that my girlfriend, Sara, ever sang on. I kind of view this song as a precursor to our music with Calf in Pasture and I’ll always have a soft spot for Epitaph because of that. Nothing in my life has made me happier than creating music with her.
What is your current big goal? What does the future hold/what are you working towards right now?
I’ve begun writing new material for Austin Moxie James and Calf in Pasture, and both projects will be going in wildly new directions that I’m very excited about. I’ve also thought of exploring filmmaking even more, but I’m not too sure how that will pan out. Other than that, I just want to keep making music that people enjoy and I hope my work finds the right audience, the kind of people who enjoy this kind of stuff.
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