Interview: Pupil Slicer
"I try to write stuff that's open-ended, but I'm using my own experiences as a trans person to explore the oppression and explore the feelings that go along with every stage of transition."
Photo: Magda Campagne
E&D: The fourth album is on the way: can you tell us more about it at this stage?
Kate: A bold question!
Luke: You’ve only just started writing and sharing your writing with us!
Kate: A couple of tracks that are almost demoed, so it’s getting there. It’s probably going to sound like a Pupil Slicer. Exactly like the fourth Pupil Slicer album, to be exact.
E&D: That makes sense!
Kate: If it sounded like the fifth that would be a bit too early! We do actually have an idea for the fifth, but it would still be too early.
Luke: Every song idea or riff that we’ve come up with so far has been good.
Kate: But that’s only the ones I’ve shown you. I’ve thrown away a lot. Obviously the ones I’ve shown you have been good.
E&D: Well, I can’t believe it would be a bad album!
Kate: We should do a bad album next, like Avenged Sevenfold.
E&D: Have they ever released a good album?
Luke: They’ve got a couple of good tunes.
E&D: You’ve collaborated with a number of artists including Tayne and BACKXWASH. Who would be the ultimate dream collaboration, and are there any on the upcoming album that we should be excited for?
Kate: Trent Reznor. But I meet people all the time. I chatted to Lane from OTAY:ONII yesterday and asked if she wanted to be on a track, so now I have to make one for her. Then I was chatting with nothing and they want to link up. We’re touring with Converge later in the year so we might ask [Jacob] Bannon if he wants to be on a track. Nate from Converge would be cool. I don’t just want to do it for the name recognition though.
Luke: Maybe I’ll record a part and we’ll say it’s Nate.
E&D: That might be slightly illegal.
Kate: If it’s a really good song that could work, it wouldn’t damage his reputation. Otherwise, Josh Homme would be cool.
Luke: Knocked Loose would be sick, or Conjurer at some point.
E&D: Was it the film Un Chien Andalou that inspired the band name, or did you take it from somewhere else?
Kate: Yeah, definitely, we’re big fans of Salvador Dali. No, it was just a funny, stupid name. But we like to pretend we did because it makes us sound more intellectual than we are. We did use that in one of our music videos, and on a shirt.
E&D: What drew you initially to mathcore and the other kinds of abrasive music you mix together into the Pupil Slicer sound?
Luke: Money, money, money.
Kate: All the money we’ve made! All the thousands of pounds that we’re haemorrhaging. In all seriousness, Converge and The Dillinger Escape Plan. Converge were the first hardcore band I listened to. The first metal bands I listened to were Dillinger, Converge, and Deafheaven, which is insane. And Between the Buried and Me. Deafheaven made me understand harsh vocals, and after that someone suggested I try Jane Doe after liking Sunbather. But it was sick. And now we’re going on tour with Converge, even though all we do is rip them off. At some point the jig is going to be up and that’ll be that. But it’s fake it till you make it and we’re never going to make it, so we’ll just keep going.
E&D: I think touring with Converge is a sign you’ve made it!
Something I’ve noticed, and this may just be me, is an assumption that queer folk listen almost exclusively to pop music. We all know that’s not true, but do you see Pupil Slicer as actively bucking that trend, or do you like to do both?
Kate: I didn’t know that was a thing! I know of girlypop like Charli XCX. But as far as I knew the stereotype is that transmen all make music like Sufjan Stevens and trans-girls make music like Merzbow.
E&D: We move in very different circles!
When you aren’t listening to more extreme music like Dillinger Escape Plan, what do you like to chill out to?
Kate: I don’t listen to music.
Luke: I love a bit of 70s prog.
E&D: Lots of prog-heads here.
Luke: Final Fantasy and movie soundtracks too. I also like a lot of fusion jazz like Mahavishnu Orchestra and stuff.
Josh: Movie soundtracks like Interstellar by Hans Zimmer.
E&D: Still haven’t seen Interstellar.
Kate: It’s very mid.
E&D: That’s what I’m led to believe!
Luke: Kate’s just a hater.
E&D: Trans inclusive radical hatred in action!
Kate: Yeah, that’s where it came from, hating on Interstellar.
E&D: Is that just Interstellar or Christopher Nolan in general?
Kate: No, I love Christopher Nolan, The Prestige is excellent. Memento also excellent.
E&D: In one interview you mentioned autism and between having autism and anxiety myself, I sometimes feel the need for music that makes me feel like my brain is being sandblasted – is that the same for you?
Kate: That’s what we do! I like music where there’s lots of depth and layers and every time you listen there’s more to discover.
Luke: I always put it down to not being a passive listener. I can’t have something on in the background.
Kate: You want a challenging listen.
Luke: I like to listen to something and analyse it, so being on the spectrum requires something to be abrasive to your ears so you can ask why it’s abrasive and why you’re enjoying it.
E&D: Do you feel that your success as a trans-led band has conferred on you a weight of responsibility to be Good Representation™?
Kate: Yes, it’s conferred the responsibility but I don’t know if I’m doing very well. I get people coming up to me saying that the music has helped them through tough times and so on, and I don’t really know how to respond. I think I’m visible but I don’t think I’m doing anything special.
Luke: That’s the ’tism. I think it’s important. Just seeing the amount of people who are part of that community turning up is great, where we do have this safe space and we have people who look up to us, especially young people who might think they can now be in a band because they see Kate being on stage.
Kate: Nah, I think I put people off!
E&D: I wouldn’t say so!
Do you feel like there is a catharsis unique to trans people in your music? Are you making music for trans people, or is it that trans people have simply gravitated to your music?
Kate: If I’m writing about my experiences there’s a lot of stuff where people will read into the lyrics and find what they want. I try to write stuff that’s open-ended, but I’m using my own experiences as a trans person to explore the oppression and explore the feelings that go along with every stage of transition. Mirrors was written before I came out, and was finished after I’d come out, so it encompasses a lot of that process. My relationship with my own identity has changed and how comfortable I feel in my own skin. This all comes across in the music so a lot of people can find that in the music, so I think that’s a reason a lot of the songs mean so much to people. But me being the one who wrote them, I feel they’re not that good, but people say that they cried listening to the music. So I’m stuck trying to reconcile people telling me they cried with that feeling. I guess it means I did a good job!
Have you ever felt tokenised as a trans-led/trans-inclusive band, like you’re just there to be part of a diversity quota?
Kate: Maybe that’s why we got the Converge tour!
Luke: No, I don’t think so.
Kate: I don’t think a lot of people know, actually, because we don’t make a big thing of it. I think it’s something people find out after they discover the band. We don’t try and book the band on that, because promoters aren’t really looking at that.
Luke: Blossom was my introduction to the band and I didn’t know.
You’ve played a number of festivals at this point, but if you were curating a festival line-up, who would you pick?
Kate: The line-up of ArcTanGent!
E&D: Most of the people I’ve asked have said something along those lines!
Kate: It would be ArcTanGent but with bigger bands. Meshuggah, Nine Inch Nails, Queens of the Stone Age, Converge, Dillinger, Oathbreaker, Chat Pile, I’d resurrect Chuck Schuldiner and put Death on there. Napalm Death, Dissection, Emma Ruth Rundle, Inter Arma, Imperial Triumphant, Krallice, Melvins, Boris, let’s get SOPHIE out the grave, Sawtooth Grin, Liturgy, AMENRA, SUNN O))), I will just go all day here.
