Caybee Calabash interviewed by WTC
Derby's finest noisemaker was briefly spotted at WTC offices. Here's a snapshot into her world of uncompromising music and art.
Firstly, would you be able to give a brief background about you and your work? How did you start out making music?
Hello! I typically produce as Apollo Bitrate or as 1/2 of 'Bagel Fanclub' with my friend River. I've been making music on and off for just under 10 years! I initially started off pirating FL Studio to make big beat and drum n bass songs for the fun of it, but I've massively grown my ambitions since then to more technical breakcore, IDM, glitch, power noise, chiptune, drill n bass, etc.
Excellent! I see you're very prolific in creating music as you've released many albums on a variety of labels, so I'd like to ask what your creative process is like? Do you tend to start with a sound and build from there or do you use a completely different method, like starting with a concept?
For albums I typically tend to make a lot of disjointed songs without thinking about placement and let instinct guide me regarding what sort of sound I'm feeling into at that current time! When I have more of an idea of what I'm doing with the album structure I then go back and edit the project files to allow for seamless track transitions and extra motifs and other small things to help the flow of the album. For songs I often work off of singular melodies or drum lines (often hummed hastily into my phone recorder) before building off of them from there.
I've noticed you frequently work with a multitude of collaborators on many of your albums - do you find it easier working on tracks by yourself or with other people?
It definitely depends, generally a lot of the time it really helps to just send something I don't like to someone to see if they can turn it into something worth anything, other times I start songs and think someone else would be great on the song. Usually I very much find collaborating makes music more fun.
Totally understandable, I think it's always worth sending stuff to other musicians in order to get a new perspective on it. Alongside your involvement with many netlabels, I see you've founded some label projects in the past such as Dronestrobe and See You Next Game. Would you be able to provide some information on them, and do you think your time running them has influenced your work?
Absolutely! I would generally say that my days of operating netlabels are over (I am much better on the aesthetic and musical front than I am the business front, though maybe I could return to putting things out exclusively digitally...) but I very much consider running them to be formative experiences for myself, they've helped me to feel like I'm a part of a community and learn more about making independent music. Dronestrobe was very much a digital dumping ground for my friends and I to publish music without warning immediately that grew to issuing things sent to us over email, whereas SYNG was more of a short lived way of putting things out physically. I had to unfortunately put a close to it due to a brief stint of homelessness and lack of funds not correlating with the demands for physicals.
Aside from your music, you've also dabbled in art to use as album covers for yourself and others. How do you view these? Is it just for fun, or is there something else at play, like trying to visualise your music?
Very much for fun! I'm always looking to find ways to enhance my visual aesthetic, but it always tends to come secondary to the music for me. My process generally does involve making the art as I listen to the album and letting things come out kinda in an expressionist style. I do always hope the visuals can match how the music sounds but it's worked some times better than others for sure.
Something that I feel has frequently popped up in your music is the juxtaposition between your noisy yet intricate production style and the backing of gleeful and bittersweet melodies. As a result I believe that there could be an almost cathartic quality to your songs - are there any specific emotions or is there an impact you're trying to seek from your listeners?
I definitely hope I can at least make people feel something new from listening to things I make, even if it's not necessarily positive! I just don't think there's anything worse than being unmemorable and mundane. I very much hope my music can come across as starry and bittersweet as possible.
Thank you so much for your informative answers! Are there any future plans, such as releases and/or gigs, or any last words you'd like to add?
Thank you so much for having me on! I have a more straight up breakcore influenced release coming up on Magma Sphere called '1980's LSD Hypnosis Seminar' which will clock in at 10 tracks and 60 minutes, and beyond that I'm looking into more dates to play in the UK, so overall I'm very excited for the future.