Ali Cyrus Saeed: There’s not much about you online yet. So you’re from Lethbridge in Alberta but based in Vancouver?
Kim Elliot: I went to college in Vancouver for music production, but I had to move back because it got too expensive. (Ali: Did you grow up in Lethbridge? What’s it like over there?) I was born in Indianapolis, actually. I moved to Lethbridge when I was 12. It’s a growing city; there are like 100,000 people now. It’s really fucking windy up here.
Ali: Where’d you go to college?
Kim; I went to the Nimbus School of Recording which has since gone bankrupt. I think I was the last graduating class, which is pretty funny. But it was a good time.
Ali: How did you get into music? Is your family musical?
Kim: Yeah, my mom and her dad were both drummers. My grandpa got me a drum set when I was seven, and it took off from there. I started off with The White Stripes, that sort of stuff. Once I was 13, I got deeper into music, and recording became a big thing for me.
Ali: What sorts of things were you listening to growing up?
Kim: Up until I was 18, around 4 years ago, I almost exclusively listened to dad rock. Led Zeppelin, Foo Fighters, Rush, that sort of thing. It was relatively recently that I got into post-punk, electronic, and other stuff, broadening my horizons.
Ali: Today, your music is at the junction of a lot of styles. Noise rock, post-punk, post-hardcore, alt rock, industrial, dance, and electronic. Who are you biggest influences today?
Kim: Definitely the Windmill scene bands. I’m sure that’s obvious by the sound of my music. Nine Inch Nails was foundational too. That got me into Gary Numan, then that got me into Neu! and CAN. Big spider web of stuff. Also Daft Punk.
Ali: Let’s talk about Snow Is a Metaphor of Death. Who made the album art, but you just told me it was your friend, you said?
Kim: My friend Adam. He actually made it for another friend of his, then that friend just stopped messaging him, disappeared off the face of the earth.
Ali: Live drums are quite difficult to record outside a studio. How did you go about that?
Kim: I recorded them in my sister’s room in the basement here. I just got a five-piece microphone kit from Long & McQuade, which is like Guitar Center for us up here in Canada. It was like $200. (Ali: …in your sister’s room?) Kim: It’s got good acoustics. It’s just a very long room, so I can mic it up on one end and put room mics on the other end. When I mix those room mics in, that’s the secret sauce. Makes it sound so good.
Ali: How do you record the guitars today? Do you mic up amps, or is it DI?
Kim: I have a Fender Hot Rod under my desk with a mic on it at all times. That’s it. (Ali: What mic do you use? Like an SM57 or something?) I use a Behringer B609. It’s like $40.
Ali: “Entity/Selector” has some fascinating sonics in it. About 30 seconds in, something that sounds like a dirty guitar signal or amp feedback enters the picture. How did you generate that sound, and how did you control it?
Kim: I’ve got this EarthQuaker Afterneath reverb pedal. I turned the reflect knob all the way up and turned on my fuzz pedal. Then I turn the drag knob, which changes the pitch. When it gets really glitchy, I turn on the EarthQuaker Data Corrupter. Weird pedal, I can’t even begin to explain what it does.
Ali: “Entity/Selector” also has this repeated refrain of “Radioshack ain’t coming back this year.” It’s been stuck in my head. What did you mean by that?
Kim: I build guitar pedals in my free time. I always think, wouldn’t it be nice if Radioshack was still around, so I could just go get the parts instead of having to order them and wait for two weeks? There’s a deeper meaning, however. I was only in Vancouver for a year and a half, yet a lot of my favorite local shops started closing down rapidly, replaced by big chains.
Ali: “Seance” is unique on the album. It sounds like a Hail to the Thief era Radiohead track, rather than something a noise rock band would put out. How did that track come about?
Kim: Seance was the last track I wrote. I didn’t finish it until a week before the album came out. I think I needed a break from the craziness of the rest of the tracks. I’ve been more into the dance-y, groovy stuff lately, even with newer stuff I’m writing, so. (Ali: Is that the direction you intend on going?) Yeah, maybe, we’ll see. People really seem to like that one.
Ali: The last track is a thirteen-minute-long emotional climax to the album. How did it come about?
Kim: I was listening to Edith Pilaf all day one day, like “La Vie en Rose” and shit. Then I sat down with the guitar, and this chord progression [below] just came out of me. It was originally going to be a four minute thing, but it just built into this monumental thing.
Ali: Who were the most influential guitarists to forming your style?
Kim: Definitely Brian May from Queen. Something about the way he plays is just crazy to me. Later on, especially with the pedal stuff, the two guys from IDLES. And My Bloody Valentine.
Ali: A common lyrical motif on the album is the body, and decay, from pain, disease, or cancer. This is reflected in the title of the album. Can you speak to this theme and its centrality to the album?
Kim: We’ve all dealt with loss. We’ve seen family members in pain, and we’ve all felt that way ourselves. I feel great now, but when I wrote the album, I was in a period of feeling like everything was falling apart a little bit. I was trying to figure out ways to express that without being like, wah, my life sucks, wah.
Ali: Your 2023 album, Agonizer, has the song “Bitcoin Dealer”, and the idea of selling bitcoin to middle schoolers recurs on this new album. So I wanted to ask you, did you get scammed? Or are you scamming people? What’s with all the bitcoin stuff?
Kim: Yeah, I scam people on the side. That’s how I keep this operation going. (laugh)
I don’t know, I just had a weird dream one day early last year, where I saw this dude in a trench coat selling bitcoin to little kids. They’re getting scammed, and their parents are losing their minds, where’d my money go??
Ali: Is this all surreal to you? The unexpected success of the new album?
Kim: Yeah… I mean, everything’s changed and nothing’s changed, in a way. Earlier today, I’m still doing my day job delivering Amazon packages. It’s funny because when I joined the video call, you’re like, I don’t want to waste too much of your time, and it’s like, what do I do with my time? My time is not that valuable. I’m just some dude. But still, recently has been very, very surreal.