Hey kiddos!
Long time no talk. Sorry about that, I’ve been buried in school work in a way that was extremely poor for my mental health. I was invited to play a show in February, but logistics made it impossible and I had to bow out—which deeply upsetting. The video I had planned for “Abnormal” never came to fruition because finding a suitable location to go smash and break things on camera proved more difficult than anticipated. These failures, on top of my packed school schedule, really put me in a bad place. I was super off balance and miserable for about 9 weeks straight. However, I dropped a couple high level courses (that I was not supposed to be taking yet anyways) and, now, things have more or less evened out. Enough to where I actually have the mental breathing room (and time!) to enjoy being a little bit creative every now and again.
So.
All that said, I have a few things on the horizon.
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GUILLOTINE, Pt. 4 is coming out May 5th!
The theme of the fourth & final act of the GUILLOTINE story is UNITY. It is a divergence from our disappointing reality—a fantasy—and begins with me making good on my promise in Part III to do "whatever it takes" in a small but significant way. I hack through the security of one of the world’s elites & doxx them—irl I am legitimately awful at coding & at confrontation. But in the album’s narrative, the doxxing gains me a lot of admirers/followers who are more than willing to rally behind me if I say the right things & tell them what they want to hear. But in order to enact *real* change, I realize I need to resist this temptation, choose to set aside my ego & refuse to establish another top-down power structure. Fuck cults of celebrity and personality. No gods, no masters—those are how we arrived at this tenuous and volatile place.
GUILLOTINE'S story ends with all of us coming together, pulling the One Percent out of their homes, & executing them (which, for legal purposes, I do not condone). Whatever future awaits beyond standing together and rising up still needs to be written, but we can’t just keep repeating history, letting ourselves be owned, & expecting different results.
Tracklisting:
1) Doxx
2) Hero?
3) The Visionaries
4) Guillotine
As with previous releases, I will be releasing interviews (performed by L Faunt) exploring the meaning/inspiration for each of the songs.
I hope this EP, and GUILLOTINE as a whole, will inspire some of you. I hope you are inspired to share it and its sentiment/message to people around you with whom it might resonate. I hope that we, as a society, can change the toxic aspects of the ways in which we relate to one another. I hope that we find the strength to choose differently.
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L and I will be filming a music video for “The Visionaries” soon. The video will touch on how our lives are ruled by money and how struggling with that can be extremely primal. There will be blood. Hopefully, I will be able to get it all shot and edited together in time to release alongside the EP, but if not, it will come shortly after.
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In other news, I have, up until now, been using Redbubble as a central hub for merch. However, they will soon be instituting a policy that penalizes smaller vendors with more fees per transaction. This is something I cannot support and will be finding a new, less exploitative company to partner with for merch. Some of the current designs will be phased out with this transition as well. So. If you've had your eye on anything, the time to purchase is NOW.
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Lastly, I am looking for band members! Guitar, drums, synths, and bass are all needed. Playing/programming everything myself is all well and fine for studio recordings, but I can't do it all myself in a live setting and would rather have as few pre-recorded backing tracks as possible.
NOTE: although this is a serious gig, there is currently no money coming in to this venture. Please don’t hesitate to contact me about this if you play any of these instruments, are in the LA area, and are legitimately interested—or if you have any questions :)
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That’s all for now. Thank you for being here. Thank you for paying attention.
All my love,
Rust
Sunday the 17th, 7pm, I'm playing a short set at The North End of Hollywood, as part of Ex Corpse's Experimental Nite.
I've been rehearsing for the past couple months just in case an opportunity presented itself and here it is. So that's a cool thing. I will be debuting a new song as part of my set, called “Dancing.”
This is the cyberpunk soundtracky project I've been alluding to for some time. It's a concept album. I have an idea of what the story is. Maybe the story that forms in your imagination when you hear it will be similar, but maybe not. I'll talk a little bit about the project a bit more once it's released, and how it came about, but I'm gonna leave things somewhat open-ended as far as the album's narrative. I'm hoping to get the final polish on it later this week, then put it out in time to occupy some liminal space in people's minds.
