You’re entirely self taught.  How did you gradually work towards your sense of sonic expressionism that makes up the Slic project?  How much does aesthetic lend itself to fully understanding the ethos and entirety of an artist’s identity?  

I am self taught but I’m also learning from my friends and collaborators all the time. I think finding people who get you is just as important as chasing down a sound. There are a lot of components in my work that are about sound design or where I have to understand some synth technically, but I always have to have a moment where I can throw my brain away and just work with what it feels like. Aesthetic to me just means the art is a part of life, people listen to songs on their commute to work or at their birthday party. Why would you play my song and not something else? It’s because you’re trying to be in the same atmosphere as I was when I made it.

You’re often found performing in DIY spaces and outside of gigs, you also teach both vocal coaching/production lessons as well as educating people about housing rights.  What does it mean to be a member of a community and how important is it to use your skill sets to uplift the places you participate in?

I only very recently started to think of my music project and gigs and work as organizing. For years I had this idea that the stuff that was political was happening separately, but like you said, I do tenant organzing which happens in my home and other people’s homes and, in New York City, where you live and how much you pay in rent affects every other aspect of your life. I recently realized that what I care about in terms of a having music “community” is the same as what I care about in other parts of my life. You look at the people around you who you can literally call on the phone or knock on their door and try to figure out what resources are already there for you to work with, and you try to keep those resources with your people instead of giving them to someone who is going to charge you rent. Many venues in New York City are just landlords at the end of the day, and there are a handful that operate differently and that I think are worth really supporting, like Honey’s in Brooklyn. Community to me means we can make jobs for each other that don’t suck, we can fight each other’s landlords so we don’t have to pay rent, we can teach each other what we know and keep resources circulating and actually experience some form of abundance in this capitalist hellscape <3 

slic x octogon
MIX

How did your link up / collab w/ fellow-NYCers OCTOGON happen?

I put a bill together with Griff Spex, Frost Children and myself at some point in 2021 (? everything is a blur) at Piano’s. This show stands out to me because (I’ll just speak about other people and not myself for a second) they are captivating performers. Lulu from Frost Children climbed up on the speaker that was hanging from the ceiling and Griff had the crowd actually hypnotized and chanting. OCTOGON was in the crowd and ended up then adding Griff Spex to their own album release show, which was a house party in Harlem. Then, when I saw Octogon perform, they did this incredible choreo where they were pretending to kill each other and climbing all over each other in heels and also singing these BEAUTIFUL songs. I came up to them after and told them that what they do is iconic and perfect and that I wanted to make music with them! And they were like, “when we saw you, we thought the same thing.” It was meant to be. I basically just sent them a track that I didn’t think would be as interesting if I wrote it all from one perspective as it could be with a couple different voices, and Half Moon was born.

Your music really plays up the dynamism of both open-ended nighttime / glitchy daydreams grounded with minimalistic production with an edge.  Does living in a large city influence the kind of environment your songs take shape in?  

I think yes……………… Because the city is so overwhelming sometimes and so hard, texturally. It’s all glass or crumbling bricks. And then you have a million possible interactions so in terms of narrative it does feel like anything can and does happen. 

Tell us more about the recording process/inspiration behind this new track!  

Recording was kind of a shitshow I’m not going to lie. We recorded at my house in Brooklyn with two little fucking dogs running around, at Regana’s house uptown, at Pirate studios…. As a producer, I just went for it and tried to push us to not second-guess what we were doing because from the very first demo, the verses that I got sent from OCTOGON were very strong. Everyone we play it for says that the song is like a journey. I think there is a lot of chaos in the track itself that leaks in from how it was made, but because there were four of us making decisions for the arrangement and how the song is going to play, we actually were very precise about what needs to go where. OCTOGON’s producer James is a sound design genius, Reyna is great at arranging and understanding composition, and Regana knows exactly what to do to make a song hit harder. OCTOGON really like a very big build and a drop, which I don’t always think about in my songs. I could have made the song 7 minutes long and really ambient. But ultimately we went for balance!

Any under the radar musical peers we need to know?  

I’m obsessed with this producer Chelsea from Portland. https://cehsae.bandcamp.com/ They made all the text on their Bandcamp unreadable and we are like, Instagram DM level friends but I know very little about them. I’m jealous because I’m so all about putting my face and whole life on social media. Griff Spex. Violet whose song is in the mix. I really love the artist OOMAN. They write some of the best lyrics in my opinion, check out their song Berlin!

What’s special about the mix you’ve made?

It’s like a sea creature is blasting music at you in a cave. Which, to me, matches Half Moon.

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