Credit: Alina Patel
Inspired by the life that happens to him and around him, indie electronica artist Animalweapon has been making music on his laptop for the past decade. His songs vary based on what he is feeling or thinking, depicting ambient or bright soundscapes that better speak to all that he is trying to communicate. It is no wonder that Animalweapon’s fans are able to connect with such telling music, be it his 2019 sophomore album Tyrannosaurus or his striking 2020 single “Summer’s Over.” After dropping his latest single “Deserve” from his upcoming album Set of Constraints due April 15, Animalweapon caught up with us to speak more about his career so far, from his roots to current projects to overall goals for the year.
Melodic Mag: Hey, Animalweapon! Happy 2022! How is the new year treating you so far?
Animalweapon: Not too bad, but I’m not about to jinx it, either. Betty White and Bob Saget just died; let’s not rock the boat here.
You released your first single back in 2010, so you have been in the game for quite a while now. Could you tell us more about how you got started and what it was like putting your music out there for the first time?
I started out playing acoustic coffee house kinda gigs, and then moved on to trying to get more of a rock band started. That didn’t go great, because at the time I was in my early 20s, so I was either working or in school most of the time, and so were all the guys I was trying to get a band together with. There were maybe two semi-consistent dudes I wrote some cool stuff with, but at a certain point it was exasperating. At the same time, I was really starting to get into electronic music, so I started playing around with stuff and next thing you know, there’s “Mexican Standoff.” It was mostly only my friends that heard it, but the reception was really cool, and it gave me enough confidence to keep moving toward an album.
I read that when it comes to music, you are more about making “songs” rather than “tracks,” which I think really touches on the way music is created and shared in today’s culture. What would you say is the key difference in making a song versus making a track?
Identifying that is something that’s hard to explain. It’s kind of that famous thing about pornography – “you know it when you see it.” For me, I always approach everything from a songwriter’s point of view, even when it might be an instrumental or when I focus a lot on the production of it. Songs, to me, feel more personal or intimate or introspective and tracks feel less so. That’s not to say “tracks” are any less good or valuable. I will say that you tend to go to concerts to hear “songs” more than you would “tracks,” and you go to clubs and parties to hear “tracks” more than you would “songs,” although there’s plenty of overlap there. I don’t know if any of that makes sense, and hopefully I don’t sound like a snobby asshole trying to explain it.
Your latest single “Deserve” focuses on self-sabotage and overcoming destructive thoughts – topics that are not the easiest to articulate, but are important to address. How did the song come together?
Really quickly, actually. I had started back in therapy and it was just really eye-opening. I kind of always knew that I always got in my own way, and a handful of my friends have told me privately things along the lines of, “I don’t know why you feel like you don’t deserve happiness,” and I kind of brushed it off. Therapy really drove that home and helped me acknowledge and start to address it. It’s obviously something I’m still going to be working on for a long time, but at that point, it already felt really easy to turn that feeling into a song very quickly. I had been playing around with some sounds, and before I knew it, I had all the lyrics (some of them I bounced off one of my best friends, Quentin, who’s in the video). Start to finish, and including the video shoot, we’re talking under a month. It felt good to work that fast. And my therapist was proud of it when she heard it.
I’m noticing a tyrannosaurus theme, starting with the Tyrannosaurus album you released in 2019 and continuing to the artwork you used for your single “Let’s Just Get Through This” from last year. What is its significance?
“Let’s Just Get Through this” was actually originally something I did early on for Tyrannosaurus, but just didn’t really fit on the album tonally. But I always liked it, so I released it as a standalone to kind of close the book on the Tyrannosaurus “era,” if you will. The artwork for LJGTT was a runner-up for the front cover and is actually on the inside of the CD packaging and on the disc. As for the theme of it all, I knew at the outset of Tyrannosaurus that I wanted that record to be really fierce in a couple of places and it just went from there. Also, it sounded cool.
I am all for the variety you have going on with your music, as no two songs sound alike. When you start working on a song, do you begin with a feeling you want to capture, thoughts you want to get out there, the music…?
So first of all, I’m glad you like the variety because I constantly struggle with whether that’s a good thing or whether my brain is all over the place and I haven’t settled on “my sound,” you know? At any rate, there’s never really a set formula. Sometimes I have an idea or a few lyrics that pop into my head and I’ll mold a song around that, or sometimes I’ll have a specific sound in mind and I’ll start working from there. But there are also a lot of times I’m just kind of messing around with sounds without any real goal and I’ll land on something I like and start working from there. Finished lyrics always come last – even if I start with a few stray lines, I can’t really write too much until I have music to write to. Occasionally that also means sitting on an instrumental for a really long time until the right words come along.
Fans may be surprised to know that you make music for the Undisclosed podcast, and that you also wrote the theme song for iHeartMedia’s The Hidden Djinn. How did you get involved in those projects?
It was literally an overnight thing. I had been very into Serial without knowing how much of Adnan Syed’s story it left out, because in retrospect, it seems like it was left on an intentionally ambiguous “did he do it or not” note. Then I started listening to Undisclosed and realized how much more there was to it, which was both fascinating and infuriating. I started following Rabia Chaudry on Twitter and saw how responsive and accessible she was, so I just went for it and tweeted at her offering free music if she wanted it. She got back to me the next day and got me in touch with Undisclosed’s producer, Rebecca Lavoie, and they were using my music by the next episode or so. And then from there, I just kept up a good working relationship with Rabia, who is just an amazing, fierce, impressive person, and she asked me to do music for The Hidden Djinn. That one was a really fun project because it was outside the box and also didn’t have such a serious subject matter. When she first asked me to do it, I was just really happy for Rabia to get to do a light-hearted, spooky podcast.
Credit: Alina Patel
Credit: Alina PatelFor someone just now discovering you, what are three songs you would recommend to them?
This one’s REALLY hard and something I actually had to think about very recently. I’m not going to count anything from the new album just yet, so I’m going to go with “Night Maneuvers,” “Turn the Lights Down,” and maybe “No One Could Have Known” off my split EP with Neo Obsidian. I’d say that gives off a pretty accurate idea of what I sound like.
What are some things you are looking forward to this year, both musically and non-musically?
I’m of course the most excited about my new album, which comes out April 15. I’m also looking forward to getting back to playing shows and doing all these new songs live, hopefully in other cities, COVID-permitting. I’ve also got a few other projects I’m working on that I’m not ready to talk about but am SUPER excited for.
Outside of music, I’m planning to travel a little and see some friends I haven’t seen in a hot minute. I also have a little niece who will be a year old in February, so I’m hoping to spend as much time with her as possible. Oh, and every Marvel and Star Wars thing that comes out.
Thank you so much for your time. Do you have any final thoughts or comments?
Thanks for talking to me!
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