Born by chance (because of a Kanye West record that appeared to someone in a dream ...), PACOL. collective. has established itself as one of the most interesting and original musical act of the year, thanks to "Everyone on Planet Earth, This One's for You. Let's Rock!", a proudly self-produced album that brings the idea of a plunderphonics / sample-based music to full maturity, whose purpose is the recontextualization of sound materials from the most disparate genres and from everyday life. To learn more about the secrets of a music that is as adventurous as it is mysterious, we contacted Carlos Arrazola aka Tau-9 and Noah Chalfant aka bphax, the most active members of the collective. The result is a very long chat in which, at some point, we found ourselves talking about trap, "Stranger Things", pandemic, identity, "Twin Peaks", universality and even "Gravity's Rainbow" by Thomas Pynchon...
Let's start from the beginning of your adventure: why did you start with a “creative” remix of “The Life of Pablo” by Kanye West?
We started off with a remix of "The Life of Pablo" sort of on accident, as it was originally based on an anonymous post describing a dream someone had about an album that Kanye had theoretically released. The album in question was "The Death of Pablo", and the post even contained information on the content of the album like the tracklist and general mood. People on the board, including the now members of PACOL., thought the idea was interesting, so we decided to work on it to bring the idea to fruition.
What is your musical background?
Noah: I have no formal training in what I use now, e.g. piano, guitar, synths, so I guess you could call me self-taught. I went thru marching band in high school, mostly for the social aspect, and played trombone, but I've never used it on a PACOL. record (or at least not yet). My general taste in music started out as almost exclusively electronic (Boards of Canada, Autechre, all of Warp Records catalog) so I never really got into in-person bands, except for a short stint in a horrible indie rock band in high school. That's probably why PACOL. has felt so right to me, cos from the beginning I've been solo, apart from a few online collaborations before PACOL.
Carlos: My musical background is pretty broad, and has built a lot on itself for multiple years at this point. I started playing the guitar when I was 14 years old, and played in programs for performing rock music with other kids at the time. After a while though, I became fairly unsatisfied with just playing music, and I wanted to shift over to primarily creating music as it was what interested me much more than just playing other people’s songs. I also got classical guitar training for a bit a few years later, and am currently studying audio technology/engineering in college, so music has been a part of my life (and will likely continue to be), even outside of the context of creating music. The primary instruments I play are guitar, bass, and drums, and also extra miscellaneous instruments whenever I can get my hands on them.
How would you define your music?
We like to think of our music as a Plunderphonics/sample-based project first and foremost; we do take influence from other genres such as experimental electronic, hip-hop, ambient, and rock music to broaden our sound significantly, but the primary throughline for our music has always been in that sort of recontextualization. From the heavy remixing and reimagining of "The Life of Pablo" for our first project, to the disparate samples and recontextualized field recordings and snippets from our own personal lives of our newest album, we have always been concerned with this and it is the guiding factor behind our musical output.
How has plunderphonics (a form of musical composition based on the use of preexisting audio recordings) influenced - if it did - your worldview?
Noah: It's true our music started out as plunderphonics, and we definitely retain that as a strong element in our sound, but we don't really consider ourselves a band like the Avalanches or something. Much of this record is original compositions, and when we do use samples they're either twisted beyond recognition or a starting point to build a full song around. Still, though, the idea behind plunderphonics really interests us. I personally feel that it makes anything and everything become available to you as an artist. If I like the way a tree rustles in the wind, or a weird conversation I hear on the street, or even something traditional like a good ass funk song or something, it can all become part of the music. Plunderphonics, for me, is much more form than function. It's a state of mind that opens you way, way beyond a keyboard or a piano roll.
Carlos: I am extremely interested in plunderphonics and the various forms it can take, from radical reworkings of existing material to make brand new music to slight changes that can alter the conceptual framework that a piece of music exists under. I think the way we approach plunderphonics on our newest project however is different from a lot of other plunderphonics artists, in that samples are coveted more as timbral and textural sources than as operating within the context of the history of the music being sampled. I love sampling because it can reduce the entirety of a piece of music into just one sound; when these are juxtaposed and placed in tandem with other samples, then the music becomes deeper in a way that a single instrument cannot replicate. Now, it’s not to say that I don’t like just using normal instruments, as I love using them to further intensify and layer the sound of music that I’m working on, but the sheer textural richness of a sample is something that can’t really be replicated by anything else in my eyes.
A lot of plunderphonics music uses the context that the pieces exist in as a jumping off point for the music, whether that be as a statement on the original music or simply as an inspiration point. A lot of plunderphonics artists operate like this, where a lot of the music is a direct commentary or development of the original piece itself, the works of John Oswald or Negativland being good examples. This also extends to modern movements like vaporwave, where the cheesy eighties aesthetic of the music it samples is one of its primary facets, and is exploited and built upon within the genre's creative works. Many sections on our album use samples, or are even built entirely out of samples from top to bottom, but the origin and source of many of the samples are not considered or otherwise commented upon; aside from a general appreciation of the music that is sampled, we primarily used samples on this album as a sound source to build entirely new music out of, rather than creating music that directly connects to the source material. This also relates to the second point about samples being an instrument more than anything else on the album. Samples are used as pieces and layers of the music, and are manipulated often to the point of being unrecognizable from the source material. Many times, they are often also being used in a traditional sampler context, with fragments of musical pieces being transformed into synths playing melodic or harmonic lines that further add layers to the music, even though they often aren't instantly recognizable as samples in the common plunderphonics sense.
By a comment, I mean more that the music brings direct attention to the sample itself and its existence as a sample of something else; there's some plunderphonics music that doesn't do this (the work by The Avalanches comes to mind), but a lot of the genre does this by making samples either very obvious, or purposefully making playing with them in ways that make it clear that they are a sample/something that is being "ripped apart" or divorced from its original context and being put in a new one. In doing this and bringing direct attention to the fact that the musical piece is being made out of something that is being recontextualized, it indirectly serves as a commentary on the original sample, or as kind of a "next stage" in the musical history of the piece that is being used as a sample source. While this approach is something that we find incredibly interesting, and was also directly explored on "The Death of Pablo", it's not really something we did on our newest record. Despite this however, I believe it would be remiss to consider it as outside of the plunderphonics label, as large portions (perhaps even the majority) of the album either heavily use samples or are made almost entirely out of samples.
What kind of sample did you use on "Everyone on Planet Earth, This One's for You. Let's Rock! "?
For this album we used traditional samples and many self-recorded field recordings. When we sample music we obscure the audio to the point where it is unrecognizable, making the samples a sort of instrument. Some samples on our newest album however, are relatively untouched, and we're curious to see what listeners pick up on. The field recordings on the other hand serve both as vignettes, and as production elements for the album. For example, one section on this album was sampled almost entirely from a choir concert Noah attended a few years ago. There are also some sound bytes and snippets of us as people, not artists, scattered around in the album. We often include many personal elements in our music, to create a sort of window into another person’s life. Sometimes recordings taken directly from our lives speak more volume than hand-written lyrics ever could. Due to the long time it took to produce the album, there were numerous jam sessions, drafts, and experiments that didn’t end up making the cut. Some synth work and even a few segments of the album are actually revisited and reinterpreted pieces of music from previous endeavors, with some of the oldest pieces on our newest LP dating back all the way to 2018.
What is the main theme of "Everyone on Planet Earth, This One's for You. Let's Rock!"’s lyrics?
The deep rooted theme of documentation is present everywhere throughout the album, from the samples to the lyrics. The field recordings are snapshots in time that have now been preserved on the record forever, and the lyrics are often conflicting in tone or viewpoint as they were written over the course of 2 years. This is intentional, as part of the point of the record was to act as a document of a very specific portion of someone’s life: the transition into adulthood.
Many of the suites on the album have different overall themes. Part Six concerns interpersonal relationships from friendships to romances. Part Three explores how technology influences the way we perceive things. Part Five focuses on questions and problems regarding identity and how personal identity changes over time. Another big theme is the theme of totality or universality; in trying to capture as much detail as possible, the mundanity and small moments of life come through in ways that many people can relate to, even if they are very abstracted. Even if only a few people’s lives are truly explored in depth on the record, everyone has common experiences, and it is our hope that people find commonalities and resonance in our experience that reminds them of theirs.
The albums is divided into eight parts. Can it be considered a kind of concept album?"
Noah: Nah, the way we develop ideas is way too amorphous to ever call it a concept album. In both of our lives we were going through similar things, and we were both also getting obsessed with sonic ideas, and that informed the music. If there's any concept to this album, it's universality and the attempt to connect. We wanted to be more holistic than anything.
Carlos: I hate to call it a “concept album” just because I’ve always felt like designating things that way (at least on my end) is a bit silly ahaha, but I think there are definitely guiding principles to the album’s construction, in a way that I think might differ from Noah’s interpretation of the album. I’m not quite sure what the album “was supposed to be” when it was first being thought of sometime in 2018, but by the time of the album’s release, I had an extremely clear and defined vision and idea for what the album was and would contain. One thing that prevents me from wanting to call it a “concept album” outright is that there’s not really a defined narrative/plot/ throughline that connects the different suites together; they are more their own individual vignettes of moments and collections of thoughts that line up together from my own life for the most part. There is not a distinct conceptual link between the different suites aside from drawing from the same source material, but the album does generally follow a trend of getting brighter and more hopeful as it continues. However, the continuity within each suite is fairly developed, whether it be following a mini passage in my life or all the individual pieces occupying a similar emotional location.
One of the themes of the album is identity and how personal identity changes over time. How do you think music affects our identity? Compared to other musical techniques, does pluderphonics have a more intimate connection with the ultimate core of our identity?
Noah: I think music amplifies what I already feel, and gives guidance on where that feeling is coming from, and where it's going. It gives a grounding to feelings, and those feelings then can more easily develop into an identity. Plunderphonics, necessarily being wider in scope of what is music and what can represent one's feelings, really opens the door for more experimentation on that front. My identity certainly has been influenced and marked with what music I found, and when. Like most people I can't hear lots of music without becoming 18 again, and the fact that that sort of extreme identification is possible is why I fell in love with music.
Carlos: I think nearly all art is, at the end of the day, a reflection of the self. This can be obfuscated and (attempted to be) sidestepped in many different ways, but art will always tell you a lot about the artist. One of my partial goals with music creation is to cut out the middleman in a way, and be very personal and open in music so as to make listening to music more of a personal activity. This perspective may be at least partially related to the ongoing global situation; I haven’t seen a single person my age (aside from the painter who made the album cover) in nearly seven months, and so music has served as a way to connect with other people in discussions in the online sphere. What better way to foster the connection further, than to make the music itself a reflection of the personal identity; I hope the album feels personal to others in the way that it does to me, almost like getting to know someone. In regards to plunderphonics, although we didn’t really approach it in this particular way on this album, the genre as a whole has an extremely intense connection to identity, as it is partially a reflection of human culture on the whole. The artform is inherently tied to things people have done in the past, and is significantly less abstract in its contextual basis than “rock music” due to always being tied to something that is concrete. The sample source already exists and has its own story, thus plunderphonics is many times (even unintentionally) a commentary on the material being sampled. For our album, the sample source was oftentimes just the music that we personally loved, so we think some of the appreciation and passion for that material comes through in the music.
What about Ben Casey and Freeman Lattin?
Carlos: Ben Casey was responsible for a tiny bit of production work on the first and final track (important pieces of the production are sampled from pieces he made in the past for those sections), and Freeman Lattin was responsible for playing the various saxophone parts that show up on the album. Both also provided voice notes that were used on the final album, although none of the voice notes were recorded for the album; they were all recorded in different contexts and then placed within the context of the album. This extends to many of the voice notes on the album; only a few voice notes were actually written and recorded specifically for the album, with the majority being found sounds, voice notes from group chats, and other assorted locations for vocal samples to be found, all of which are related to us/were recorded by us in some ways. In addition to helping out with the album, they (along with Sam) were just good friends during the creation of the album and were always close.
Noah: Yeah, they're both integral to the album in different ways. The parts Ben contributed started out as a collaboration between just him and me, and as Carlos and I started to discover exactly what the album was, it was clear his music was perfect to open and close the album. Freeman's sax playing I actually find really important, because it brings a certain humanity and variety to the music. Due to our lack of access to live instrumentation (besides guitar and synth) or studio players, I find any *performace* we can get really important. But beyond that, I love all the PACOL. guys dearly as friends. Even if we never made music again, I'd be happy just shooting the shit with them, and, fingers crossed, getting to meet up one day in real life. Their influence on my life is as important to the creation of this album than any actual music.
Did you record your second album, "A 55 Minute Message From the Pablo Collective" with the current line-up?
The line-up for our album ‘A 55 Minute Message from The Pablo Collective’ was recorded with a very similar line-up to our newest one: Noah on primary production duties, Carlos co-producing and creating the lyrics/vocals for the album, Sam co-producing on one track, Freeman on saxophone, and Ben providing the album artwork.
I really like the album cover. What exactly does it represent?
Carlos: It was painted by a good friend of mine (former significant other), who also appears in the music video for the song “Untouched” and whose voice is heard elsewhere on Part Six. The artwork was painted sometime in mid 2018, a little bit after I had started working on the album. It was based on a dream my friend had, involving the character depicted in the painting perishing during a theatre performance. I am always one to trust the intuition of dreams (which has influenced many of the decisions on the album, inclusions of certain material such as the dream descriptions on several tracks, and even my own life to some degree), and the painting was also such a perfect fit for the mood and atmosphere of the album that I asked to use it for the album, and they accepted.
What is your relationship with hip-hop?
Noah: We're all massive fans, and obviously hiphop led us to meeting each other. I like the Memphis sound the most, Three Six Mafia, Mack DLE etc., that stuff is lowkey ethereal, but I love it all. And I love Kanye ofc, he's an inspiration in sound and attitude. We've kinda sidestepped hip-hop's sound, though, because none of us wanted to be a rapper in the traditional sense. Didn't want to be limited by the genre. I think we love the ethos and ideas behind hiphop more than anything; we're all bboys and punks at heart. We respect and engage in the tradition, but we don't really make hip-hop right now. Still, though, we've been interested for a long time with synthesizing the sounds of experimental electronic music, e.g. Autechre (we all LOVE Autechre), Stockhausen, Oneohtrix Point Never, with trap music, and we already kinda attempted that with our "Ckyou" EP last year. It's kinda a long running joke/project we have to make music for the 2030's before it's 2030, so never say never.
Carlos: Hip-Hop has been something that I’ve really appreciated for a long time ever since I started truly listening to music on a deeper level (as opposed to just hearing stuff on the radio/played in the car as a kid). It’s capacity for musical inventiveness and focus on lyrics has always captivated me, and I think it is one of the most sonically interesting genres around today. Aside from an emphasis on rhythm usually, there is no one defined “sound” to hip-hop; it is a sonic playground where many different ideas flourish in ways that draw from all sorts of genres in the past, as well as brand new ones. As far as our music, we’ve attempted to synthesize hip-hop into our sound, very obviously with the remix of Kanye on "The Death of Pablo", with a more electronic sound on "55 Minute Message" and "Ckyou", and also a few times on our newest release like on Part Three. However, our newest album is definitely our least hip-hop influenced work thus far, primarily due to the emphasis on a lot more ambient and soundscaping tendencies, although I do really want to integrate those sorts of tendencies into hip-hop music. I may attempt to experiment more with hip-hop deliveries/sounds going forward in a different musical context, but that’s to find out later.
Tell us about your solo projects.
Noah: My solo work is kinda weird, cos I've always felt closer to a producer than a full on "artist". I mean, I'm definitely both of those things, but my sonic and aesthetic sensibilities often take precedence over songwriting. The solo work I have currently I'm really proud of though. There's a really dense EP out there that no one ever listened to that showcased a liveset I was setting up, but the main thing is my "Stranger Things Volume Three" album, which is basically my personal attempt to ooutdo or make a new version of the score for the show Stranger Things, and since the second season was coming out (I think?) at the time, I decided to one up em and do the third before that season even existed. The title's a bit deceiving of course, but I specifically wanted people to see "Stranger Things" in the title and click on it. I've always felt like a hustler at heart, even though I obstenibly make more "high-brow" music (whatever that means, I personally don't like to make such distinctions). I just wanna get my sound out there, and if I need to use a big name to get people to listen to it, so be it. Obviously I'm no stranger to that, what with the "Death of Pablo" and all lmao. That all being said, while I'm still doing more traditional ambient work right now, I'm starting to work on music that's more dynamic as well. As with this PACOL. album, I'm including more elements and more of me as an individual, and move beyond being "just" hiphop or ambient. I guess my solo work is sometimes split between just wanting to make a good album that satisfies me emotionally and sonically, and trying to feel more like a soundtrack artist or a producer.
Carlos: My solo career as of right now is fairly limited; I had made small releases before ‘The Death of Pablo,’ but nothing of the same caliber or quality level of that album, so it was in a sense my first “real” project. Since then, I have released a couple small solo projects, but the majority of my time and energy went toward the PACOL. albums, as I felt those were the more interesting releases worth putting time into. However, after this newest album I plan to put a much more heavy emphasis on my solo music, and potentially delve into a new style/type of music that's still informed by what I’ve done with PACOL. to some degree but is much more detail/production oriented and a bit more accessible, albeit not in a way that sacrifices artistic integrity; I want more to integrate lots experimental ideas and sound design into a more pop music framework and make something really odd that is also fun and engaging. I’m still in the process of thinking about how this will go, but eventually I will make a proper announcement/come out with a release in hopefully the near future as to how this new alias will function.
Five albums you consider essential to understand the last decade and why...
Noah: Well, it depends what you mean by understanding. In a broad, historical and sonic sense, I think it'd have to be
Kanye West – “The Life of Pablo”, because it's highly dynamic and has a lot of messy production quirks & mimics the artist's emotional state in its structure
Oneohtrix Point Never – “Garden of Delete”, for that blend of anger and opaqueness
LCD Soundsystem – “This is Happening”, not only cos it's just amazing, but because it serves as context to see what's changed in the past ten years (no optimism or idea of legacy)
Lil Ugly Mane – “Mista Thug Isolation”, for bringing back the Memphis sound and blurring the line between parody and homage
Sun Kil Moon – “Benji”, for representing the return to sincerity in the face of aging and a wall of postmodern malaise
As an aside, I left out SO MANY great albums (I hate making lists cos of this, it's almost emotionally difficult), but these all represent how the artist is generally choosing to represent themselves, and how that changes the structure of their work. “The Life Of Pablo” is the best and biggest example of this shift.
Carlos: This is a fun question! Here are my picks just off the top of my head.
Autechre – “Oversteps”: for introducing a style of melodic, yet experimental electronic music whose influence is still being felt today through artists like Oneohtrix Point Never and the PC music/hyperpop scene (as well as other places too).
Chuck Person (Oneohtrix Point Never) – “Eccojams, Vol. 1”: for being the defining plunderphonics release of the 2010s and for introducing vaporwave to the world, which would go on to define most of the early part of the decade as “the” underground scene, and which also went on to influence many things outside of its wheelhouse through its aesthetic and sound.
Playboi Carti – “Die Lit”: for creating an album representation of the late 10’s hip hop zeitgeist, and absolutely perfecting this modern era of trap music and putting it all together in a consistent full length album, instead of being more singles oriented as the genre can be at times ("Barter 6" by Young Thug is also very close behind personally, but I think "Die Lit" is a tad more interesting).
Sun Kil Moon – “Common as Light and Love are Red Valleys of Blood”: for being an insanely open and personal release that breaks the rules for what folk music can be, and creating a new style of lyric creation that I assume will influence many in the future going forward (as it has me to some degree already).
Kanye West – “The Life of Pablo”: for being perhaps the most perfect encapsulation of the 2010s as a whole, both culturally and sonically, and being one of the few albums that brings EVERYONE back to when it originally came out, as it was such an iconic and landmark release at the time.
Carlos, "Die Lit" by Playboi Carti is one of those records that made me start listening to the trap. In your opinion, from a purely musical point of view, why this record is so important for that type of music? Many listeners have not appreciated that minimalistic approach, so to speak...
Carlos: “Die Lit” is such an interesting record for me, as it’s a hip-hop album thats all about the music. The lyrical content is incredibly de-emphasized (although there is still pathos presented within them), and the primary elements are the instrumentals and, most importantly, Carti’s voice. I reject the hypothesis put forward by many people who talk about the album that the album is “carried” by the production, and Playboi Carti’s presence is superfluous; if this album were instrumental, or supported by a rapper not as inventive and exciting as Carti is, I don’t think the album would be regarded as highly as it is now. It’s minimalistic in its approach, but it’s not sparse, as the lush instrumentals and Carti’s melodies take center stage and fill out the tracks, while getting rid of many elements that are deemed not as important (lyrical complexity being the number one). I just find it a fascinating record on the whole to analyze, but perhaps more importantly, it’s just endlessly replayable and a ton of fun.
What do you think, in general, of trap music? Many think it is one of the worst musical expressions of recent years! I disagree, because I think trap is one of the music that best reflects the Zeitgeist of these troubled years...
Noah: Trap is unique more culturally than sonically to me. Like the classic trap hihats and 808 are cool and all, but where it really shines is the potential for adaptation. there's an unparalleled amount of experimentation going on right now that i really admire. In the same genre you have peewee longway (also a huge influence on us), and playboi carti, and they're kinda on the opposite spectrums of their flows. i know it's a common thing to make fun of carti for being nearly incomprehensible but that's exactly what I love about him, it's so impressionist. Trap in general is super impressionist, it's like a Monet painting of a bottle of lean1, or maybe an Atlanta-themed Francis Bacon work. The trap culture is still alive and well and it's produced some genuinely experimental stuff. Like that one song on Die Lit which straight up doesn't have kick drums, that's just so weird, but it works! Trap really checks both boxes for me, cos it slaps but it's also pushing boundaries of texture and structure.
Carlos: I do really love trap music, and I agree with what you said that it captures the zeitgeist of the moment very well. It’s essentially the number one dominant sound in the mainstream music world at the moment, yet has a ton of variety and individual styles. There’s the classic Atlanta style of trap, pop rap infused with trap touches, off-shoots like drill, and even its influences in things like Memphis rap, and all of these have their own interesting qualities to them that make them unique. I like to consider trap a blanket genre within a blanket genre in this way, as “hip-hop” can be used to describe about a million different sounds within one general ethos, but trap music similarly fills that role (albeit more specifically). I also think its roots and culture are important to consider as well; the ubiquity of places like DatPiff and the concept of free promotional mixtapes will always fascinate me, as the precedence of the music and the concept of “getting yourself out there” superseded monetary compensation (at least for the beginning stages of a career), which I think is really cool and worth taking influence from. And of course, above all, the music just sounds really good, with the staples of loud bass, the iconic “trap drum sound” of 808 drum machines, and focus on flow creating a genre that’s just plain fun to listen to.
If this pandemic were an album, what would it be?
Noah: Might be a simplistic opinion, but definitely "Tomorrow's Harvest" by Boards of Canada (who are also my favorite band). Listening to that album now in the midst of the pandemic makes me wonder if BoC are actually time travellers. There's even a song on it called Sick Times! More seriously though, that album has such a strong split between hope and despair, and finding hope in that despair, that feels incredibly potent now. As they've said in an interview, BoC don't see what they detailed in the album as an apocalypse so much as an (and I'm paraphrasing) a "necessary stage" that lies ahead of us. That's how I choose to think of this year: a difficult, horrible thing that we must face, but also that we will hopefully learn and grow from. That's the hope in my heart and this album.
Carlos: I will actually completely have to agree with Noah on this one; "Tomorrow’s Harvest" was always an album I liked but never loved, until I listened to it on the first day of when the true lockdown/worry started over the pandemic, and it suddenly made sense to me what the record was shooting for. Listening to "Reach for the Dead" while walking around a no-longer bustling city with the worry of the (at the time) very undefined virus potentially wreaking havoc is so fitting it hurts, and it made the album click a lot more for me in my own personal enjoyment.
If "Everyone on Planet Earth, This One's for You. Let's Rock!" were a book (novel, essay, etc.), what would it be? What if it's a movie?
Carlos: This is a funny question because I think it actually matches the former medium as opposed to a film or something of that nature. I've often thought of it as akin to a scrapbook; a collection of memories and "moments" put together more thematically than abiding by any narrative structure. It'd probably be a pretty odd film, more a series of vignettes than anything close to a traditional narrative film.
Noah: Yeah, Carlos is definitely correct, the album is so personal to us but it's presented as a collection of significant moments that exemplify what we find important. I also think it's definitely a twisting and turning novel, a là "Gravity's Rainbow" or something. The way Pynchon uses myriad cultural and general knowledge references to build the novel's vibe is really similar to how we do music, I think. Show don't tell, and all that: I know in my personal life, I connect with people through their taste in media. I think people's tastes are really honest in a way that polite conversation has a hard time communicating. So yeah, the album is either a postmodern book wherein the themes are just ourselves as people, or one of the weirder episodes of the third season of "Twin Peaks", maybe.
Are you already thinking about the next PACOL. album?
Noah: Kind of. A lot of us are standing on the precipice of new stages in our lives. Personally, I'm staring down post-college life, which comes with a lot more responsibility that I haven't had in college. It's unfortunately difficult to make another 2 hour LP if I'm not just lounging in my dorm room! Along with that, because we see PACOL. as a platform for all 5 of us to produce in every medium of art, monikers and lineups will inevitably change. There will definitely be more material in the PACOL. name, and I personally have ideas as to what it will sound like, but we're all in a state of flux at the moment. I'm currently focused on finishing a second "Stranger Things" album, and starting demos for a new, unrelated album that will contain a wider range of material. There's a lot of changes happening, but also a lot to look forward to.
Carlos: My plans for PACOL. related material is incredibly vague at the moment; I seriously want to take a long break from working on music in a kind of group setting as this project was (2 years on an album of this size is very taxing), and so I likely will not be putting out any proper releases with PACOL. for the foreseeable future. I’m not shutting the door on possibilities entirely, as perhaps later down the line I will be more in the mood and want to make something again with the group, but as of right now it’s likely that PACOL. will continue to put out releases (perhaps with more involvement from the bandmates who have not been as active as of late), but I likely will not really be involved in them going forward and will be much more focused on my own solo work.
Notes:
1. "Lean", also known as purple drank and several other names, is a recreational drug beverage, prepared by combining prescription-grade cough syrup with a soft drink and hard candy. The concoction originated in Houston, Texas, and is popular in the hip hop culture or those who reside in the southern United States. (Wikipedia)
