There is a version of rock that exists beyond the stage.
It lives in clothes, bedrooms, photographs, objects,
hairstyles, records, shoes, posters, old shirts and the
strange little rituals that form around music.
This conversation is about that world.
About noise as an atmosphere. About rock as something you
can wear, collect, photograph and build a life around.
About the objects that become important because somebody
you love gave them to you.
And about three years of continuing to make a world around
the music instead of simply listening to it.
I think that is where it becomes most interesting. Rock can become a way of looking at everything around you. The clothes you choose. The photographs you keep. The things you put on your walls. The way you decorate a room. What you listen to while getting dressed. It becomes less like a genre and more like an atmosphere that follows you around.
Absolutely. I don't really separate them. The clothes surrounding a certain kind of music can tell you something before the first note even happens. There is something very powerful about dressing like the music you love belongs to your physical world. Rock fashion has always had this ability to turn ordinary clothes into a signal.
My grandmother gave me my hizumitas, and that makes them
mean much more to me than simply being something I wear.
They carry a personal history that music cannot create by
itself.
I love the idea that something can exist simultaneously
inside family history and inside my own visual language.
I can wear them while listening to something incredibly
loud and contemporary, but they still belong to a much
older part of my life.
Usually I don't decide that intellectually.
Something just starts appearing repeatedly.
A particular pair of shoes. A photograph. A piece of
clothing. A guitar. A weird little object sitting in a
room. Eventually those things begin talking to each other.
I like when an aesthetic feels accumulated rather than
purchased all at once.
That noise has to mean chaos.
Noise can be incredibly intimate.
Distortion can make something feel closer rather than
farther away. A wall of sound can become almost physical,
like architecture.
I like music that doesn't just sit in the background.
I want it to change the shape of the room.
Yes. I am interested in atmosphere more than perfection.
I like images that feel like evidence of something strange
that happened.
Photography lets me collect fragments of the same world
that music creates. Sometimes the photograph feels like
the visual equivalent of a distorted guitar.
It doesn't necessarily mean living some stereotypical
rock-and-roll life.
It can mean making your bedroom feel like an album cover.
Wearing something because it reminds you of a record.
Keeping physical objects because they have stories.
Taking photographs because the light looks like a song.
Listening to music while doing completely ordinary things.
It is basically allowing music to leak into everyday life.
I think I became less interested in proving what something
is and more interested in making it exist.
The music, images, clothes, objects and ideas don't have
to fit neatly into separate categories. They can just
become part of the same archive.
Recognition, maybe. Not necessarily recognition of me, but recognition of a feeling they already had somewhere inside themselves. The feeling that loud music, strange clothes, photographs, old objects and personal history can all belong together.
More noise.
More photographs. More objects. More music.
More strange combinations that probably shouldn't work
until they suddenly do.
I don't want the archive to feel finished.
I want it to keep getting weirder.
"Rock can become a way of looking at everything around you."
AXAYACATL // INTERVIEW 001
For listening to the noise.
For looking at the images.
For remembering the name.
For coming back.
This object is a small thank-you for being somewhere inside
the world that has been forming here.