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What inspired you to first start making music? And how did you come to be in your current incarnation? Or if you prefer, a brief bio about you.

I found myself early on, being pulled towards music that felt like strange signals from a place I couldn’t access unless I was making it as well. Or dancing to it, just being involved in general. Thanks to the rest of the band and what we’ve been able to create, we’ve placed ourselves in this strange/wonderful world of music that I have always dreamed of.

Provide us with some info about your latest release…

We just released the first single (and video) off of our first LP ever written and recorded as a full band. It’s taken 6 years from demos to masters (the time-line is messy). The full record is coming out on Funeral Party Records in April. If you like true stories about love and dreams and violence you may enjoy our record.

Which ones would you consider your main influences both music-wise & non-music-wise?

I prefer not to list musical influences in conversations surrounding the music that we make, it often times colors how people hear what we play when I’d much rather have our sounds fall purely on new ears. That being said, I would like to talk about the influence of hardcore on our ethos, work ethic, and the sound itself. Even though our music is a far-cry from the ancient howl or brutal stomp of bands like Warzone and Division of Mind, the mindset permeates our outfit. Living the music, writing from a place of truth/passion, while working to maintain a sense of humility and undying work-ethic all come from exposure to and involvement in hardcore music as certain members of the band were young.

Non-musical influences are many. A big part of where the record came from was listening to how other people close to us tell stories, how memories play out in their heads and how the past is carried with us into the present. We tried to write our songs with all of the hyper-real color and theatricality of memory itself.

In what way does your sound differ from the rest genre-related artists/bands and why should we listen to your music? In other words, how would you describe your sound?

The difference between us and our associated sphere of genre-tags is the fixation on emulation over creation. We aren’t here to worship artists that’ve come before us, and we aren’t here to tell anybody else’s stories. The music comes from our experience and not one aspect of our output is fabrication or pose. There’s no high-horse involved in these ideas that drive us, it’ll just never be a hobby to us. Hopefully our work exists as timelessly as we’d like it to.

Please name your 3 desert islands albums, movies & books…

Albums 

Joanna Brouk (Sounds of the Sea)

Goldie (Timeless)

Spacemen 3 (Forged Prescriptions)

Movies

Patriotism (Mishima)

Apocalypse Now (Coppola)

Good Time (Safdie Brothers)

Books

Tropic of Cancer (Miller)

1Q84 (Murakami)

Valis (Dick)

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Do you prefer studio or performing live and why?

There are pleasures and pains to both. Performing live is definitely the most enjoyable of the two, especially when there’s powerful catharsis and connection. I do love being in a studio for days laboring over the architecture of the songs, as well. All of it is a blessing and a privilege in its own way.

Is there any funny-unique story you would like to share with us, always in relation to your music ‘career’?

The first thing that comes to mind was traveling to and playing SXSW in 2018. It was the first time we’d done a trip as long as two weeks together and we were all broke and hungry, barely being able to afford to venture out/find transportation even. The entire trip was chaos, which culminated in seeing Iron Age play on a bridge in Austin at 1 in the morning and then returning home to find that one of the people living there at the time got a hold of four tabs of LSD and took them all at once. Over the course of the rest of the night, I was tasked with keeping him at bay and keeping the rest of our group safe as they slept. He would oscillate between threatening our lives, talking about the impending crawl of the apocalypse, crying about the people the government told him to kill, etc. It took hours to be able to talk him down, I’m still not certain how I was able to do that or who this man really was. The next morning we had to drive back to Richmond and I was very tired.

Which track of your own would you point out as the most unique and why?

I would hope that each song we release is as unique as the last. We try very hard not to repeat ourselves, or anybody else.

Would you like to share with our readers your future plans?

We are working on setting a date for releasing another single from the record, and gearing up for the full record release and touring through most of the rest of the year. We’re traveling to Europe in April for the first time for Roadburn Festival and are setting up a small tour around our dates there. We’d like to release an additional record before the end of the year, we’ll see how things pan out.

Free question!!! (Ask yourself a question) you wish to answer and haven’t been given the opportunity…

We’d like to talk about how the role we would like our music to have in the lives of the people involved.

From the members of the band to the individual who is generously lending us their ears and time, our songs are driven by intent to empower and free whoever touches them. You have the ability to accomplish the wildest depths of your ideas and passions. Please, never let anybody else tell you what to do or how to be. The power structures we are born into chain us to a limited idea of what a human being is. Break the chain, be yourself.

Love and Light.

Isabel/True Body

Photo credits: Travis Waddell (1st one), Jose Martinez (2nd one)

Curated by: Christos Doukakis

Recommended listening:

 

 

Connect with True Body:

Instagram: @truebodyintl

Bandcamp: www.bandcamp.com/truebody

Facebook: www.facebook.com/truebodyintl/