“Everyone fights this battle.” Morality, religion, and existentialism with Thanks God
Your music, is it personal or autobiographical in any way or is it pure storytelling?
It's extremely personal, which is why I have trouble wanting to collaborate with other artists. The term I call it in my head is "radical vulnerability". I always wanted to have something that was just undeniably myself. A lot of the way I look at music, it's something that's gonna live on forever, so I always think that it's my duty to have whatever art I make be remnant of my existence. I'll sacrifice the pop mass appeal element to have a more intense effect with whoever does resonate with it. Like what I was saying to you about the story-line, it's not factual to how my life has gone down, but with that being said it is completely in line with the way I've viewed the world throughout my life and how I've gotten to where I'm at.
Themes, like scamming, the military-industrial complex, all that is symbolic. But the actual things I'm talking about in my music, I never make a song about something that I'm not immediately dealing with at the moment. That's also why the energy of the tracks shifts so frequently. I'll be having a good day and I'll make a track that's happy and uplifting. But then if I'm having a bad day I'll make a track that's depressing and then I'll still find a way to put all of them under the same umbrella...With Perfekt Person, it was all about spiritual enlightenment, but then I had tracks that were depressing and angsty. I don't want to be dishonest. I don't want it to be like “this is all my peaceful tracks, and this is all my happy tracks”. I want everything to be as true to my life experience as possible when I'm making it.
So the story, did it come to you before you started making music or after?
I'd say during. The first album that started the storyline came out in 2022 so I was pretty well into making music at that point. I had a lot of repeating themes within my music...I started recognizing the themes I had and realized it would be cool to make a story with it.
So your three albums, they follow this one character.
Yeah, I'm always hesitant to call it myself, it's almost like a voodoo doll; an extension of myself. I call it my avatar. Also with the storyline, I didn't have it all set out at once.
The character is like an avatar of myself, but with the last album I stopped doing the 3D art and made it fully be myself. It was like a spiritual...
Transformation?
Yeah, yeah, to where it becomes an actualization of the character to the perfect person. Cause it was meant to be like an extension of myself but I guess it was one that I didn't want to claim, because like with the first part it's the financial aspect where the character is coming up from a criminal to a CEO so, there's the whole paper chase part. And then ULTRAV!OLENCE, which is watching brutality and also engaging in brutality. I definitely didn't want to identify with that one. But then with the last one I was like “this is the completion of the transformation” so I guess I'll just make it myself. I had my friend Darius Shaoul do all these AI images.
When I first listened to Perfekt Person, what really caught my attention was the first track, “Intelluhhgent Design”, which references different dimensions like the 3D and the 5D. I recognize that concept from writers like Neville Goddard and Joseph Murphy. Were you influenced by them?
It started with an Instagram comment. It was a bunch of people playing on the beach and it was a bird's eye view and it was sunset so all the shadows were massive but all the people were dots. Someone commented "it's like we're watching 3D people project themself into 2D and then we're watching that through a screen". That was about the people's shadows being captured instead of themselves.
With internet personalities, a lot of what's happening is three-dimensional people turning themselves into two-dimensional projections of themselves and then we're watching that projection of themselves through a screen. So I was thinking about the spiritual reduction that people are going through. With language, when you're reading comments on videos there's all these different canned responses that people say. I’ll even think them before I read them in a comment section. Say if something unexpected happens to someone there's the whole thing like “he wasn’t ready!" I'll think that in my head and then I'll read someone saying that in the comments.
A lot of what makes someone themselves is the words they put out to describe their interpretation of what they're experiencing, so I realized the way the 2D collapse is happening is reducing people to become the same as each other.
With the intro track, one of the lines was "you are witnessing the breakdown of third dimensional reality”.
Yeah, I found that video after I saw that Instagram comment.
Oh, is that sampled from a video or is that you talking?
No, it's sampled from a video. It's on some self help video but a guy was giving a lecture to a group of people.
He sounds like he’s talking about metaphysical dimensions. The idea is in the 4D, 5D, which is supposed to be your mind, you create the reality which is the 3D.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I feel like especially in this day and age with the internet and everything, people's perception of reality is becoming even more 2D-ified. So I think that really just fit with that whole thought-line, because everything in life isn't so black and white. But the way a lot of modern social politics work, you're either a good person or a bad person, or either right or you're wrong. But the people that are pushing that line of thought the hardest are not good people. Usually they’re trying to redirect attention from themselves onto other people to be like oh, no, all my opinions are so morally correct that I'm not worth morally analyzing.
Are there any experiences in your life, or people, that made this topic of ethics and morality so important to you?
I grew up subjected to a lot of abuse. The way I rationalized it was blaming myself for it. Then I would also be blamed for a lot of it because my parents couldn't comprehend that I was being truthful about what I was going through because it was so intense they thought "oh, you have to be playing a part in this for this to be this bad."
So I guess experiencing a lot of abuse throughout my childhood and then blaming myself for it and then viewing myself as less was the biggest reason for my fascination now with morality.
So this "perfect person" that your avatar is becoming in the third album, is that what you actually believe is to be a perfect person or is it what you think American culture is trying to tell us what a perfect person is?
I'd say that it is what the perfect person is. The perfect person embraces the shadow self…like how the cover art is the line of the figure and then their shadow is also included. The perfect person is not a perfect person.
Someone who's willing to accept that they're imperfect.
Yeah, that's why with the spelling there's a "k" instead of a "c". It's the avatar of myself finally embracing the systematic failures of the world I was born into.
With PaY 2 W!N, there's the whole POW MIA flag element. We're a prisoner to the society that we're born into. We can't escape it, we could just make the best of it. I was inherently going to be born into an imperfect society and the only thing I could do is embrace it…to try to be the change I want to see rather than to feel like a prisoner.
So the first album, PaY 2 W!N, that's the character finding out how to survive in this imperfect society. Then, ULTRAV!OLENCE, that's them joining the military and being punished for not conforming. Is that where it starts to break from you personally?
Yeah, the first part it's the character chasing the American Dream with getting money and success. Also in a spiritual maturity sense to being the wrong, lost, afraid criminal character to becoming the upstanding member of society. And then being punished essentially for doing it in a way that's not the status quo; the way you're supposed to do it. It's definitely inspired by my own life experience. I used to be a complete doomer/nihilist. I was on "fuck everything" mode and then it got to a point where I realized I was saying I didn't give a fuck so much because I gave a fuck. My whole life I always felt like I wasn't anything special, that I was just like some random dude that was dumb, insecure, but then I went through an era of really just loving myself in a very forced way. Like hyper-loving myself and just wanting to push myself as far as I could. I guess when I started getting into making music and art was when I actually realized that I was worth giving a fuck about.
When you started forcing yourself to like yourself, was that when you got into those esoteric metaphysical writings like Carl Jung and topics like that?
That was still a bit before, but that was when I started actually producing music instead of making noise. I made straight noise music for a few years, I wanted to intentionally make stuff that I knew would piss people off. You either get it, and if you got it you were cool, if you didn’t, you sucked. But then it got to a point where I was like what if I try making things that sound good in a more conventional sense. I guess you could see it with my approach to the music I was making too. With my earliest work, I was just trying to make the most unsettling stuff I could possibly make.
Throughout this arc,and your music, there's a lot of themes of breaking down reality and not really knowing what's real and what's not. Is the distortion intentional to add to not really knowing what the truth is or is that just from your old style?
I'd say it's something I've held onto intentionally because there's something transcendental about the power of sound and light...sound and light are the two most powerful forces of conveying emotion because they operate on frequencies and these frequencies flow through your body. I think there's something that makes you feel very present when you're hearing that intensity of sound that really puts you back into your own skin and there's just such an inherent power to having something scratch into you rather than just flow into you. I'll make something that sounds really soft but then I'll still add the noise in my voice because it's something that, even just past the conceptual part, past having it just be I want to have a level of intensity to it that breaches what you're used to hearing, I think that just pushes it past being a song and more of a sonic experience.
In some of your cover art, like your latest single and the photos in that Code Magazine interview there's references to the military and Christianity. Do you have a history with the military, like military family?
No, I think it came from playing video games from a really young age. I always thought there was going to be a point in my life that I was going to join the military. Maybe it has something to do with a past life experience, but I always really felt myself in a lot of the video game plot-line arcs. And then my aunt growing up, she always told me "you're my little soldier". So from a young age I always had a deep resonance with the military. If I believed in our country's values more than I do, or if I wasn't disillusioned with the military-industrial complex as early as I was, I totally would have become a soldier. I've always been into guns my whole life, but then also the idea of martyrdom and doing something in this really intense, grand way to fight for what's right.
When you reference the military in your music, like ULTRAV!OLENCE, is that sincere or a little bit ironic in like what the "perfect person" to Americans is?
With the whole POW MIA element, I was developing that in PaY 2 W!N but I didn't even have plans of that becoming a plot line. I did it one step at a time. I always saw POW MIA flags growing up and it says "you are not forgotten". I had no idea what the flag meant, I didn't learn that part in school. What I did know is that I always felt that I was forgotten. The use of the flag was definitely ironic in fulfilling the American ideal of what a ‘perfect person’ actually is.
It's very Long Island.
Yeah. I never knew what that flag meant but just having the whole "you are not forgotten" aspect really resonated with me in a way that had nothing to do with the military. Once I found out it was a military reference, it solidified my personal resonance with the military. The whole military aspect is in reference to becoming disillusioned to the injustices in the world that you live in and fighting for yourself and for your family and all the people around you to transcend the oppression that we're all inherently subjected to. I don't have family in the military or anything, I don't have any specific ties. Since I was a kid, with my aunt always calling me a soldier, I always had an internal application of the morality of a soldier instilled within me. The inherent struggle of just existing in whatever society that you're born into. And the universality of it too, the fact that everyone fights this battle. Like everyone that exists has their own battle that they're fighting no matter what situation. If they're born into the economic elite or if they're born homeless there's still a battle that everyone is fighting.
It’s a world where it seems like always everything's set out for you, people telling you what you're going to be from the beginning...this character seems break free by figuring out who they are for themselves.
Yeah. Another thing I could add is the fact that a lot of soldiers don't even know what they're fighting for, they just know the fact that they do fight is going to make them a valiant, honorable person. With Perfekt Person, the character fought whatever war that they were intentionally without knowing what they were fighting for.
But the fact that they fought is the fact that matters. Not even necessarily that they won or they lost or anything, but just the fact they took the responsibility of putting their life on the line to fight the thing head on.
You’ve referenced Christianity a few times in your work, like the concept of “Intelligent Design” and the cross in that [Code Magazine] photoshoot. Are you influenced by religion, or is that just there for the aesthetic?
“Thanks God” in general doesn't subscribe to the politics of Christianity. I was born into a pseudo-religious family. They didn't really care that much. Like my dad always told me that he believes in God but not any specific one. My mother too. So I was an atheist when I was in high school or whatever, I just didn't believe in anything, I strongly thought that there wasn't a God. I think me taking that on, because my parents were always like "you gotta believe in God, you gotta believe in God," and then just me being like "no, I don't"...it sort of made me think that I was like, not fucked, but like it kind of reinforced my whole dissatisfaction to the world I was living in. That there was conflict in my ability to believe in a God, and the fact that like I thought that if there was a God then my life wouldn't have been fucked, you know. So I guess it's like a pseudo-embrasure of Christianity just because of what I was born into. But it's moreso a symbol to spiritual awakening I guess rather than being an implicit, "now I believe Jesus".
But also, with ULTRAV!OLENCE...I was really into Buddhism at that time. The idea that life is suffering and the idea that no one should feel bad for anyone. With meditation just thinking about nothing and just existing as you are and letting the violence you're seeing, or even experiencing, letting all the horrible shit from the life that you have just pass through your head without judgement and to just exist as the best version of yourself and to not identify with it. I think that was like the biggest thing that allowed me to make ULTRAV!OLENCE, because I felt so terrible making it. It was so dark. And I was like, why am I intentionally making something so dark? I was already getting very spiritual. I'd say right before I made ULTRAV!OLENCE, I was like “I feel so healed and everything but I'm like making something so disturbing right now, intentionally.” But I really just want to lay out the fact that there's evil that exists in the world and that I was born into a world that is a balance of good and evil. Like a yin yang, the fact that good cannot exist without evil and the fact that I myself can engage with evil and be good. Everyone engages with evil and chooses whether they're good or if they're evil in their true self, to not identify with their experience. Especially how the character's so spiritually asleep at the beginning of it, to not identify with what the life that you had made you do. Maybe not do, but the way it made you be instead of accepting and then like going to the army and killing people in the army and then not identifying with being a murderer, but identifying with the fact that you joined the army because you thought it was going to make you better.
Are you still spiritual?
Yeah I'm really spiritual now. Before all the shit happened that I've gone through recently...I think I'm a different person now ever since it happened.
My dad died. I think that if I wasn't in the place mentally that I am right now, I'd probably be dead. I've had a very intense life and the embrasure I've had towards my own spirituality has been the main thing that has been keeping my head on my shoulders and getting me through it. That being said, I haven't been as proactive in understanding my own spirituality lately as I was these past few years. But I think I've sort of enlightened myself enough to the point where it's time to apply the principles I've developed rather than to keep going down the deep end and learning about specific, different types of religions. Especially with the quantum physics element of it, what kind of freaks me out is I kind of came to all of that on my own. Ever since I was a little kid I'd have really weirdly advanced existential views that were already established schools of thought that I didn't know were established and I thought was just me thinking about things. An example is I always believed we never actually died, that when we die...we process time linearly because it's the only way as living being that we could process time without losing our mind but I never believed in like death as a sort of end all but I thought that when we die we would wake up in a different time in our life without memory of that experience. Ever since I got too deep into learning about this stuff I find it a lot harder to connect with the general population because most people aren't deep into stuff like this. I thought, and I still do think that if I get too deep into being proactive into researching these kinds of things, that I would further and further isolate myself from the common person that doesn't think about this sort of thing. Part of me is still in the first stage of the plot-line that I have where like I'm still trying to push myself into becoming the CEO. So, blending in with the common person is also extremely important to being able to socially navigate all kinds of situations. You could still deal with the unenlightened person when you're at the monk stage, but once a monk becomes a monk, they're only around other monks, and that was a big fear of mine. To get myself to the monk status to where the only time I'm truly speaking the same language as someone is when it's intentional.
When you say you're spiritual, is it mostly Buddhism?
I'm really into paganism & hermetic wisdom. Are you familiar with the Kybalion and stuff?
I have read into some of these topics that you talk about, but I think they're completely different authors. Tell me about them.
That's the thing, a lot of the esoteric wisdom that I'm sort of into, is not when people are reciting directly the Hermetic principles or something. I'm very spiritual, but I've had a sort of combination of Buddhism, hermetic wisdom, and Christianity and stuff. I really am anti-categorizing, anti-labeling, mostly because I think it's restrictive. Like, if I say I'm this, I'm co-signing everything that exists about this, and then I'm sort of not identifying with the other things that have gotten me to where I'm at. I think Buddhism has honestly been the most helpful for me, the most impactful train of thought that has gotten me to the stage where I'm at.
The album cover for Perfekt Person depicts a Titanic pose. Is that symbolic or do you just like the pose?
I'd say both. I haven't seen the Titanic actually, but I resonated a lot with the feeling of looking into the vast expanse, the vast nothingness and completely embracing it, especially given how the movie goes where it ends up having a very tragic ending. The moment of complete euphoria from understanding, from not picking up on the apprehension even if you do have it, from being in a completely imperfect situation such as the Titanic and just having those five meditative seconds.
I suppose spiritual journeys can feel like that sometimes. You're in a crazy world and then you find something that feels like the ultimate truth and you feel really good.
Yeah, especially given the fact that my life's just been so rocky lately. It feels even more accurate. I'd had like a year I'd say of just acceptance and just general life euphoria. I have very intense anxiety and I would wake up in the morning a lot and I would have a really negative thought be the first thing I thought when I woke up in that morning.
Perfekt Person (2024) cover art by @levonwalllace
In the beginning of February, right before shit hit the fan, I would just wake up and look at the sun and just be like "man, I'm so happy to be here right now". And I still feel that way but life happens as it happens, and now I need to let myself be miserable for a bit so I could let the feeling pass through me rather than to bottle it up and have it be a part of me for the rest of my life
I moved to LA for a year, from 2021-2022 which is really when I got deeply into the spiritual stuff. This girl I was seeing passed away the day before her flight to come spend the summer with me. The way I processed that…I basically just locked myself in my room and cried for two weeks straight. And that was the best way, that was the most healthy way I realized for me to process that. Cause I tried going to work the day after it happened and I accidentally just started crying at work. So I was just like I really just need to allow myself to be miserable, to get that out of me, and to come back to where I need to be.
The name "thanks god", is that sarcastic? Or is that genuine? Or is it both?
It definitely started out sarcastic, cause that was when I was as deep as I could be in my nihilism at the time. A lot of the people I was around at the time had really sort of like evil names and evil vibes that they were dealing with so I thought it would be funny if I also made really unsettling stuff but then having a really positive name attached. But I honestly think that making my name that was massive into me actually finding God and to me becoming actually spiritually enlightened. From when I made it to this day right now it's been a complete solid transition. Every single day, I become less and less sarcastic about it. Slowly, but surely, to the point where now it's 100% unironic and unsarcastic.
Do you think your future music is going to continue with the storyline?
I pretty much have enough to put another album out right now...like I said I really don't like labeling things and stuff so I don't want to label the stuff that I'm doing any type of way. I think that if it does then that's how it's meant to be but I think that whatever I put out next isn't going to explicitly follow the plotline but I think there's also a chance that I still am. I try to think about things as little as possible, even when I'm making a song. I almost worship the spontaneity of whatever happens.
That's very Buddhist, just being really focused on the moment.
Yeah, yeah, yeah...cause with the whole plotline, it's not like I made PaY 2 W!N knowing I was gonna make ULTRAV!OLENCE or even knew I was gonna make Perfekt Person. I just wanted to have the album about a criminal that becomes a CEO and gets arrested or whatever; but the way it unfolded, I was able to make connections with what I was doing to where I wanted to go...cause then I knew I wanted to make ULTRAV!OLENCE after I made PaY 2 W!N, and then there's like the clear connection to Perfekt Person from there.
I wanted to make albums about capitalism & violence. I grew up with financial instability, playing violent video games and stuff, also why I thought I was going to join the army. Just so actively practicing that survival of the fittest gene we all have. Whatever happens next I try to think about it as little as myself and...
Just let it happen.
Yeah, yeah, basically. Cause I also have everything sort of time based, like how the albums aren't like "oh, I'll do all of this kind of song", how everything's.. uh everything's kind of categorized as to putting out what I made the past year when I was making it. I kind of moreso just have to sit down, kind of hear everything all at once, kind of understand the trajectory of where it's going. But, I think whatever I put out next is not going to be attached to the plot-line at all. Just to put out music for music's sake...I'm thinking whatever I put out after that will be down the same path.
Do you know when that's gonna be?
Right now I'm working with both opposite ends of the spectrum. The soft tracks I have are the softest tracks I ever made, then my hard tracks I have are the hardest tracks I ever made. I'm thinking I might do two EPs and have the hard tracks on one and the soft tracks on the other...or I might just combine them all and have it be an album. I'm probably gonna have two EPs come out and have them sort of emotionally categorized.
Like yin and yang.
Exactly, yeah. Cause I'm so deep with the plot-line at this point I think if I'm gonna put a full album out that's not on the plot-line it would be more detracting from the power of the plot-line.
Do you have any shows coming up?
Trash Bridge. The last time I played at Trash Bridge, a whole brawl broke out during my set.
I was like mid-performance, and someone got whacked over the head with a glass bottle and I was performing and I looked up and I just saw a whole group of people, fists popping out like Looney Tunes...they all fell three feet away from me as I was performing. I just assessed the situation and I realized I wasn't in danger and I just kept performing. I've caused a lot of brawls during my sets. One of the last times I played at Rash there was almost a brawl because the DJ after me didn't like my music at all and was trying to shut me off and my friend was putting me back up and they were fighting over the mixer. The event organizers almost fought him. I've also had people pull speakers out on me twice during my performance, and even turn the generator I was running off of mid-performance.
One was on Instagram live, my former roommate who is in a full five-piece band would practice for hours, came and pulled my speaker out and I destroyed her drumset on Instagram live and it was so polarizing. Like people thought "oh that was sick" or they just thought I was crazy like "why'd you do that?"
I had someone come close the laptop on me in the middle of my set, uh, I got kicked out of Bossa Nova Civic Club during a DJ set. I was DJing noise and the guy just shut the sound off on me. I've had so many intense moments like that during my sets.
Is that the kind of career you imagined with your music, just kind of like upsetting people? Or crazy shit happening?
It was at first, yeah.
The brawl almost breaking out at Rash on Feb 6th was mad recent, and that was shocking because it hadn't happened in years. That being said I was so unphased by it. I had friends that were about to fist fight for me, but I was just like it's cool. It's kind of expected because I just know whatever I'm doing is not really being done right now; the way that I handle the sound. I did a performance art intro too, which apparently the DJ hated too. I was doing yoga, and then I had this self-help video just layering over itself to where it became completely illegible, and then I had sims speaking in Simlish to amplify the gibberish effect I was going for. That being said I do want to resonate with as many people as I can while still knowing not everyone's gonna resonate with it.
What's the experience that you hope for people to have when they come to your shows or listen to your music and all that crazy shit is happening?
I definitely don't want it to get to the point of actual fights and actual negativity but I just want people to have a viscerally intense experience to where there's sort of an embracing of the vulnerable nature of whatever lyrics I have, to where it's not on some like "aw fuck you, fuck everything, fuck life!" vibe, but rather an aggressively intimate experience.
I definitely want mosh pits and stuff, but I don't want mosh pits where everyone's angry. Like I want people to thrash themselves in a sort of euphoric way.
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