The Best Songs of 2024 with Ned Russin of Glitterer

For this final conversation of 2024 (and the foreseeable future), Ned Russin and I each pick our three favorite songs of the year and discuss them—with whatever else comes up in the process.

Glitterer at Lager House. Detroit, MI. July 19, 2023. Photo by Chris "Sherburt" Smith.

Programming Note: The last minute/last chance Anti-Matter merch drop presale is live now! Preorders will be open until December 23 and orders will begin shipping just after Christmas. If you ever wanted to show your support for this project and never had the chance—or even if you just want to pick up a little swag for the holidays—this is your final opportunity. As always, thank you all!

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Eighteen months ago, when I launched this iteration of Anti-Matter, I liked to talk about how the circumstances that led to the creation of the zine in 1993 seemed to “rhyme” with many of the circumstances that led to the creation of this newsletter 30 years later. Today, as I prepare to go on an indefinite hiatus, I am realizing that many of the circumstances that led to the original zine’s end also seem to rhyme with my circumstances today. In the introduction to the final issue back then, I wrote about my “compulsive desire” to work harder without regard to my health. In different words, I actually wrote about my struggle with “being perceived.” I also even deemed it a hiatus.

“I don’t want to say that this might be the last issue that you’ll ever read,” I insisted, “because honestly, I don’t think that will be.” It only took 28 years, but I stayed true to my word and I love that.

In the same way today, I do not see this as an end. Anti-Matter will somehow persist as it always has, just like it did after that issue in the summer of 1995. Working on this iteration of the zine has been rewarding in so many ways, and I couldn’t be prouder of all of the new work I put forth into the world. But for now, it feels appropriate to press pause with a look back on 2024. To do it, I’ve invited back Ned Russin—singer/bassist for Glitterer and Title Fight, and one of the most articulate, thoughtful, and dedicated hardcore kids I know. Between the two of us, we chose six songs to tell the story of this year. And perhaps unsurprisingly, the story of Anti-Matter—and its impending sunset—finds its place in our conversation as well.

Of course, with every sunset, there is a sunrise in the future. With nothing but love and gratitude, these are the final words. For now.

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Before we talk about music, I thought we could sort of take the temperature on how you feel this year went for you.

NED: I mean, it’s tough with recency bias, you know? I think things went to shit pretty quick [laughs]. Or maybe they were always going to go to shit. But yeah, I don’t know. In terms of band stuff, this is probably the best year Glitterer has ever had. It’s the most we’ve been able to tour. We put out a new record. It feels like things are going well for the band. Personally, I just feel like things are going pretty fine. Nothing too exciting in any direction, which is kind of appreciated.

How much do you think you separate how you’re feeling in your personal life from how you’re feeling in your band life? Are you able to disentangle those two things?

NED: Not entirely, no. There’s definitely a fair amount of separation now because this is the most I’ve ever been independent from playing music. But at the same time, my normal nine-to-five life is also wholly dependent on playing music—because I work at a record store. I work with my friends who I know through music. And I’m always like, “Just so you know, in six weeks I’m going to be gone for a little bit again.” There’s always just the knowledge that this is based around me playing music. So I’m doing these things that are separate from one another, but they’re still connected.

OK, then tell me this: What is your favorite non-music thing from the past year?

NED: I read this book by Mark Haber called Lesser Ruins that came out last month or the month before. It was the best non-musical thing I interacted with this year. It does have a little bit to do with music, but it’s not a music book by any means. I read it and I immediately told everyone I know that’s a reader to check it out, and I’ve gotten mostly positive responses from that as well. It makes me feel good to be so interested in something and then to recommend it and get other positive responses to it.

I suppose I can’t talk about the end of the year without talking about the end of this run of Anti-Matter, which is sad. But like I wrote about in last week’s essay, there’s also some relief there. Did you read the essay?

NED: I read it.

I’ve never actually chopped it up with you about this struggle with “being perceived.” I’ve definitely talked with a lot of band friends and other people who work in public about it, but it’s something I don’t think I’ve ever really articulated until today so I’m curious if that resonated with you at all.

NED: Well, it’s such a weird thing in hardcore because if it’s not the most important thing, it’s in the top three—this idea that there is no separation between band and audience, that there is no hierarchy within the system. That’s something I truly believe in and something that was attractive to me and to a lot of other people. But at the same time, there’s still this weird hierarchy that exists. I am not innocent of this at all! I still see people in bands where I’m like, “Wow, there’s that person in a band who I like, who changed my life, who I love and admire”—and I don’t know them, but I feel this connection to them. And yet, to be on the receiving end of that can be very strange. I don’t know. I’ve seen things on the internet where people are talking about their interactions with me, which makes me feel very uncomfortable, because it might be like, “Oh, Ned seemed a little tired at this time” or “Ned seemed a little annoying” [laughs]. I don’t know if people are perceiving a smaller interaction to be a whole representation of myself.

Brother Ben is amazing at interacting with people and being very familiar and easygoing. But I am the opposite because I like talking to people very seriously. So I’m difficult because I don’t really want to just have an insignificant interaction, you know? Understanding that people are thinking about you in a certain context is difficult for me to grapple with. It doesn’t make it impossible for me to talk to people by any means, but it adds a level of discomfort to things that I wish was not there.

OK, before we get to the music, one more thing: What do you think was your top feeling of 2024?

NED: Well, I just got back from a trip to Japan. The band did a tour in Japan and Southeast Asia, and then I vacationed in Japan afterwards. My girlfriend and I went to a temple in Kyoto. It was fall foliage season, so they opened up a lot of these temples at night for people to come and look at the foliage under the lights as a special occasion. They only do nighttime visits a couple of times a year.

We went to this one temple where they did small tours, but they didn’t say what these tours were, and if they did say, it was in Japanese, so we couldn’t understand anyway. So we paid 100 yen to go into this building. We didn’t know what it was. They just said, “Hold onto the railing.” You walk into the basement and it’s pitch black and we’re walking through his hallway. It was so astounding to me because I had no idea what I was doing; I only knew it was the darkest darkness I’d ever seen in my life. But then the person behind us took their phone out and turned their flashlight on and my girlfriend and I turned around and started to yell at this person semi-politely [laughs]. We were like, “Hey, you’re ruining this experience for us.” Two seconds later, we turned a corner and there was this stone with a dim light shining on it and something inscribed in it that I couldn’t read. And that was the end of the thing. Right after that, there were stairs back up to the outside.

We discussed this moment a lot, the moment being in that pitch black and then the moment of being angry at that person with the cell phone. That feeling of profound unknown and then the feeling of being taken out of it. I said afterwards, “I wonder if that was the test, if this was some sort of Buddhist test for enlightenment.”

Well, I’m glad that you are not too enlightened to talk about hardcore now.

NED: Maybe if we hadn’t gotten angry, if we’d just moved on, we would have went up the stairs as different people [laughs]. There’s no way to know.

Ned Russin’s No. 3 Song of 2024:
EVERYBODY TAKES ONE “The Call” (Demo)

OK. Let’s start with your number three, which is by Everybody Takes One from Minnesota. What did you love about it?

NED: This was a demo that was sent to me by a friend knowing that this was a shared interest, straight-edge hardcore, and specifically youth crew hardcore played by actual young people. I listened to it, and I was just like… This is what I like [laughs]. It felt so relatable. It felt like they were doing the thing that I think has been lost for the last decade or so…

How would you describe that thing?

NED: It’s not in opposition to your [end-of-year] picks, but it’s a nice counterpoint. I’m trying to pick the right words here to not sound like I’m being condescending or passing judgment on this, but basically, it’s not “professional.” It is wholly amateurish in a way that I find moving. To return to the idea of there being no separation between band and audience, that also means that people who are new to their instruments, who are new writing music, who are new to the scene in general can do the same thing that people have been doing for 10, 20, or 30 years. It seems like they’re actually young people playing music that is made originally by young people for young people. It’s not recorded perfectly and the execution is not perfect, but whatever. To me, that is so necessary to the things that I want. These people are trying to capture something that seems important to them. There’s urgency behind this thing. It doesn’t matter if the tempo wavers a little bit or if the guitars are a little out of tune or something. The feeling is there and that resonates with me.

This song was brand new to me, and what’s interesting to me is that I am of two minds with it. The first mind was basically exactly what you just said. My first listen through I remember feeling like it sort of reminds me of the Side by Side demo—not the 7-inch, but the demo, when Sammy [Siegler] was barely as big as his sticks [laughs]. And I love that. It’s visceral, it’s raw, it’s fun, it reminds me of youth, and that’s killer. But the more I listened I started to have questions that I don’t have the answers to. Like, I started to wonder how much of this was actually just following an aesthetic? Because one minute it sounds super raw, but then a guitar solo comes out, and I’m like, “Hey, wait a minute!”

NED: [Laughs] Right. I mean, the thing is, the tradition of hardcore is so interesting because it’s like, the “original” bands of hardcore always break up, and then a year later they’re doing something different. And then this new group of kids come up and they’re like, “No. This is what hardcore is. We are going to keep doing this thing that you all gave up on.” So immediately you have this split of thinking of hardcore having these aesthetic values and hardcore being this kind of ethical thing. But there’s a lot of overlap.

I’d make the argument that Youth of Today were the most important hardcore band of all time because they were the ones who codified the [early] hardcore aesthetic. They said, “This is what it’s supposed to be” and they brought it back around. I know there’s a lot of other bands that are just as significant, but Youth of Today were the ones who, in my opinion, kept that whole tradition alive.

And also, I should say that this thought of mine was more of a curiosity than a judgment. If the band was being intentional in their aesthetic, I respect that, honestly!

NED: I don’t know if you remember this, but we got dinner in what must have been 2015 or 2016 at this spot in Union Square that’s no longer there—I think it was called V Burger or something—but at that dinner you said something about originality not being that important, and that was really important for me to hear at that point in my life. I’ve thought a lot about it since. I feel like there is a school of thought where you need to be growing, evolving, and changing all the time, which I do agree with. But that doesn’t leave room for this kind of thing. This is a thing that’s been done for over 30 years now. So we can ask, Do we really need another straight-edge hardcore song that is following the same template that has been in place since the dawn of the genre? But then I hear this and I’m like, Yeah, we do. Because these kids need to play it and their friends need to hear it. That is really inspiring to me as a person who’s been doing this for as long as I’ve been doing it.

Anti-Matter’s No. 3 Song of 2024:
DRUG CHURCH “Demolition Man” (Pure Noise)

Interestingly enough, originality was a huge part of why I chose “Demolition Man” to be in my top three [laughs]. That originality thing is this: I have often said that almost everything under the sun has been sung. Our job is to find new ways of saying old things. That’s sort of the goal of a lyric to me: How can we find a new and interesting way of saying something we’ve heard before? But in the case of this song, honestly, I can’t think of another song that says what this song says. And that’s fucking wild to me. The lyrics to this song have spent more time in my brain than any other song this year.

I think my history and my past excursions show that I’ve often tried to find out if there’s a “purpose” in life—which I now realize is a very Cro-Mags thing to say [laughs]. But the lyrics to this song really speak to that. It starts with a guy who is watching a video of working dogs and marveling over how happy they seem to do what they’re tasked to do. And that’s very true! Every dog breed has a thing that they instinctively do, and if you keep them from doing it, they will be unhappy. So then he applies that to mankind, and the line that sticks out is: “Picture being built for one thing / And when that thing is done, you feel free.” That’s actually kind of profound to me. Because I’ve never had that one thing, in all honesty. The song is also a jam, but those lyrics are so provocative.

NED: Something about this song, like the way you talk about the lyrics, I find very exciting in a way because those things are on my mind, too. Pat Kindlon has a way of being provocative a lot of times, but this song is way more… I don’t want to say introspective, as if the other stuff isn’t introspective, but it’s much more internally focused, you know?

But these are introspective questions, for sure. Philosophical, even. 

NED: Definitely. Another thing I find interesting about Drug Church is that I feel like every time they put out a new record somebody around them will always say, “Oh, they finally got Pat to sing on this record, you won’t believe it” [laughs]—which I think is a funny thing to say. But there’s this simple use of melody in this song; it’s only three notes that he sings, but it’s really effective. I find it similar to the way that Minor Threat uses melody, which is like two or three notes, moving back and forth. But just that little movement can have a big effect on a song. I’m honestly a melody-over-lyric person. I hear a melody first and I latch onto it first. And often I will remember that way more than I remember a lyric. So it’s a good choice. It makes the song better, in my opinion, to have that little vocal movement.

Ned Russin’s No. 2 Song of 2024:
POSICIÓN UNIDA “Pensar Positivo” (Demo)

Your number two pick is provocative for me in a couple of ways. For one thing, the first thing I thought when I heard it was that Posición Unida must be a Latin American band, but apparently, they’re from D.C.?

NED: Yeah.

Which is actually awesome because I can’t think of very many bands from America—and definitely not straight-edge or posi-core bands—that sing in a non-English language. You could say that’s brave, on some level, because they’re going to be playing to a majority English-speaking audience. But at the same time, singing in Spanish communicates something to me. Like that straight-edge trope of “being proud of who I am”—singing in Spanish shows me that. They don’t need to tell me. What has been your experience with the song?

NED: I have a friend Hannah, from England, and we were talking about European hardcore bands a long time ago. I remember this very well. She said, “We love these bands, but why do they feel that they have to sing in English just so they could be understood by us when I feel like they should be singing in their native languages? Because that’s how you’re going to be the most expressive and the most authentic to your emotions.” That’s kind of how I feel about this demo.

These are, again, young kids from D.C., who have been playing in bands for a little bit now. I’ve met them over the last year or so, and they’re just really excited about hardcore. They’re excited about just being involved in the scene and doing all this stuff. I missed their first show because they played a show on the Fourth of July and I was working. But they sold some dubbed cassettes with no artwork, and they numbered them all. I think they only made like six of them or something. My girlfriend booked the show, so she got a copy—it’s labeled “Demo #3”—and when we listened to it, I was just like, I don’t know these kids that well but this is kind of the future of D.C. It’s young kids who get what I think needs to be gotten, who are doing it in a way that’s really admirable. But the musical part, too, I just think these songs are well done. I feel like this song is the best representation of the band and what I think their potential is: It has a good intro, a good mosh part, a singable chorus—even if the lyrics are not in English. All these things are the marks of an effective hardcore song.

I’ve also been trying to imagine how you and I hear the song differently, with me as a native Spanish speaker. She might as well be singing in English to me. So it’s like, am I experiencing a different band than you are?

NED: That’s a good point! I don’t know. I can’t answer that.

Because there is no answer [laughs]. But it’s obviously easy to think about Los Crudos here, because whenever I hear Los Crudos, I just hear a band—whether it’s in English or Spanish, I am fully internalizing the language part.

NED: Crudos is a great band, and it’s interesting to see how the politics have changed because, at that time, Crudos singing in Spanish was a very political action. Whereas in 2024, it’s not this big ideological decision. This is a person who is from Guatemala choosing to sing in Spanish because that is the most effective way she has to communicate. It’s not presented as this thing of representing an under-represented group of people. This is just a person in hardcore choosing to sing a song. And I find that to be a very hopeful trajectory. The goal has always been to make these things normal, so nobody has to feel like they are an outsider in this situation. Because the idea of everyone being welcome was not always true—in the world at large, but also within hardcore.

Anti-Matter’s No. 2 Song of 2024:
J. ROBBINS “Deception Island” (Dischord)

My number two song is also from D.C., so we’re doing great with segues here [laughs]. One of the things we’ve been talking about in your first two picks is this notion of young people making music for young people. But I’ve been thinking about my own work a lot this year, and specifically, I’ve been wondering: Can my best work be ahead? And when you’ve previously connected with people in a way that many have already crowned as your highest achievement, will anybody even recognize it as such?

Obviously, J. Robbins is a friend, but he’s also a huge influence. If he talked to you today, he’d say, “Oh, Norman is a peer”—but I am not a peer as far as I am concerned [laughs]. He is somebody I look up to as a musician, as a songwriter, as a producer. And I remember getting this record and this song specifically just punched me in the face because I thought, fuck. This is absolutely one of the best songs he has ever written. This is greater to me than a vast majority of Jawbox songs. It just is. And I think the difference is that this is the record where J. really tried to stop coding everything into metaphor and really just tried to capture how he was feeling. He said as much in our interview. So maybe like Drug Church, this was J.’s introspective record. But more than that, this song really also made me feel justified in my continued existence as a songwriter and a musician. This song made me feel like, yes, my best work can be ahead. Absolutely.

NED: Yeah, I mean, I feel similar to you in a lot of ways in that regard. The way in which we talk about older musicians is terrifying to me, because it’s like, nobody wants to be the person that is unaware that they’ve lost it, you know? As a person who is just obviously ceaselessly getting older, but also refusing to stop playing music, how do you know when that’s the thing? The conclusion that I’ve come to is that you just have to continue to engage and challenge yourself and just be involved in this thing and actually care. And I think J. is a great example of somebody who has never really stopped doing that. He’s always been working.

I really enjoyed listening to this song. Especially compared to Jawbox, who I kind of look at as this band that’s almost, like, haphazard, this song almost feels simple in a way: It has a really nice verse, a really nice chorus, a beautiful melody over the top. That’s all you need. And it’s like, wow. It’s kind of cool to sit there and see that this is a guy who is continuing to write music and he’s doing it in a different way than he’s done before—and he’s still doing it well. It shouldn’t be surprising!

It’s funny because I think J. might call Jawbox haphazard in a way [laughs]. He does feel, as I do, that when you’re young and you’re writing, you kind of have the temptation to overcomplicate things.

NED: Uhh, yeah! [laughs]

We try to make things tricky or quirky or “challenging,” but sometimes just holding back is a good thing. And I feel like this song is a really great example of that. There are no real tricks to it. These are just really great fucking melodies. These are really cool guitar parts. It just does the job. And had he done anything to complicate it, I’m not sure it would have been a better song.

NED: I mean, I feel like there is a level of antagonism in this song, but not in the way that Jawbox is antagonistic.

Right. Because a J. Robbins song is never going to be smooth. It’s just smooth relative to other J. Robbins songs [laughs].

NED: And maybe that’s why this song stands out. It’s not something that’s supposed to go down completely smooth.

Ned Russin’s No. 1 Song of 2024:
STRAW MAN ARMY “Spiral” (La Vida Es Un Mus Discos)

Now for your number-one song, which I have never heard despite the fact that this band is from New York City [laughs]. In my defense, though, they have also never played a show! So where did you stumble onto Straw Man Army?

NED: I got into them on their last record. My friend recommended them to me at the record store. It was just one of those things that you put on and instantly go, “I like it.” It’s this kind of weird English post-punky single-guitar-note kind of stuff with an obvious anarcho-punk influence. It’s simplistic, but it’s effective and very thought-provoking. I think at this point it might be my favorite record of theirs.

Like you said, they don’t play any shows, but they’re also not this studio-only band. They’re not treating the studio like this kind of big instrument. It’s not like the Beatles being like, “We’re only going to make records and not play so we can really expand on all these ideas and go the furthest we can possibly go.” These records aren’t showing this insane growth, they’re not [showing] these really intricate arrangements or whatever. I think a lot of it is about synthesizing this really political ideology and making the lyrics as effective as possible, and I think it really works.

It’s funny because in the same way that I thought Posición Unida was Latin American, I thought Straw Man Army was British. It wasn’t until they started singing about New York that I was like, “Yo! Are you talking about New York?!” [laughs]

NED: Yeah, it is pretty instantly British sounding. Like, there are a couple of songs where in the intros I can’t find the one. I can’t find the downbeat.

It would be super English if they played their one on the two, like in reggae.

NED: Yeah. I was Googling them recently, and I think Stereogum said that there was a lot of Fugazi influence in it. I was wondering if they were trying to say that there’s a dub influence in it. I don’t feel like there’s a lot of dub going on there. The rhythms will kind of coalesce into this unified movement when they need to, but there’s a moment when it feels like everything is kind of a mess to me. And I don't know if that’s just my brain desiring this sort of structure that I expect from Western music, but I think it’s really cool and kind of challenging. It’s challenging to listen to and challenging to play.

One of the first things I found when I Googled them was a Maximum Rock’n’Roll review for their last record that ends: “EDIT: I sent this to my brother and he said it sounded like Parquet Courts, but I don't know what that means” [laughs]. How would you respond to that?

NED: As a fan of Parquet Courts, I don’t know if that’s wholly accurate, but I feel like I understand what they’re saying. Parquet Courts has a lot of British stuff going on, but they’re also kind of Wire-y—and I mean that in terms of the adjective, and also referring to Wire, the band. This feels like it’s kind of in a different realm. The whole package, the presentation, the fact that they don’t play shows, it’s all very interesting to me.

Do you need to play shows to be “legitimate?”

NED: To me, personally, playing live is the epitome of music. But looking at this, I’m like, Maybe this is a new way to do it. To put the songs first and the ideas first and let that be the example of what the music is—to actually put the music first. It’s like, “You can engage with our art [in this way] and that is an experience that you can have.” And maybe that’s all you need, you know?

Anti-Matter’s No. 1 Song of 2024:
STATE POWER “Gates of Hell” (White Russian)

My number-one song is also political, but it does it very differently [laughs]. When I first approached you with this idea, I already knew that this was absolutely the hardcore song that I have listened to the most this year, bar none. I’ve played it for friends. I’ve played it for bandmates. There’s just something about this song that excites me, still, and I think there are a couple of reasons for that.

For one thing, I think State Power really crams in so many styles of hardcore into one song. It’s political. There’s a beatdown element to it. There’s a melodic chorus. There’s a bridge that kind of turns into a Leeway-style crossover song with guitar solos in it. And it’s all executed at a really high level. But the other part—and this might sound really crazy—but I fucking love hardcore songs with well-executed curse words. This chorus leads in with someone screaming, “Listen up, motherfucker, you’re on top of the list,” and I want to clear the pit every time I hear it [laughs]. That amps me up! Obviously, the political messaging is great—it’s a critique of the aristocratic, billionaire class—but it’s done in this kind of man-on-the-street way. Like, Straw Man Army… I don’t want to say that it’s academic, but I feel like those guys went to college.

NED: There’s a Straw Man Army meme where it says, “Straw Man Army Pit Be Like,” and it’s people playing chess [laughs].

Right! The vibe I get from them is that they read books. The vibe I get from State Power is that they fuck shit up [laughs]. I guess what I’m trying to say is that my favorite hardcore songs are visceral. They grab me in a place of feeling, not thinking. This song does that for me.

NED: Yeah. My thoughts when I first listened to it were like, I don’t know if this is the logical conclusion of Turnstile, but I think this is a logical conclusion of Turnstile. Because when the song kicked in and it was like a beatdown part, I was like, “OK. I’ve come to expect this hardcore in 2024.” That’s not surprising. But when it switched to that key change and an almost alt-rock chorus—that was unexpected to me. I think a precedent stands for people trying to write catchy choruses and being a heavy hardcore band. But I’ve never heard a band do a beatdown part into that. Like, Turnstile, they have these like extremely heavy ignorant parts. And they also have these beautiful melodic moments. But I can’t think of a song where they’re like, “OK, we got the ass-beater into the key change-melodic-memorable chorus thing” [laughs]. This is the new era. We’re really going to extremes in both directions.

One of the other things about this song that I think was also part of the allure was that, for the longest time, this was the only song they had. Since then, an EP has come out and I’ve heard more songs, and now I’m like, OK. State Power is a great band. But I love the idea that for a long time, this song felt like a secret to me. Most people reading this have probably still never heard this song. But I’m just so happy to have had a little bit of a secret moment with the band because I just feel like that experience is really rare in hardcore right now.

NED: A band who feels like they’re not “going for it”—I feel like they should almost be applauded more. It’s like, “Yeah. We have one song. We don’t have this professionally packaged EP with the IG Reel rollout and all this stuff to show you. This is a song.” I applaud that. I like people just playing music because they like to play music.

OK, I suppose we need to address the fact that these may be the last words in Anti-Matter for however long this hiatus lasts.

NED: That’s heavy. The last potential Anti-Matter words.

It is! Because right now when I think about the state of hardcore in 2024, it’s difficult for me to separate it from my experience with Anti-Matter this year. And I think that if I’ve learned anything from this experience it’s definitely that it’s just important to support the things you love while they’re there. Bands, fanzines, venues, whatever. And that’s not me throwing shade: I get it. We all have tons of subscriptions at this point. We’re all stretched. I am grateful for everyone who made it a point to support this project. But this experience also made me think more about how we spend our money as a community. Are we doing whatever we can to support the things we want to see in this world? This goes for me, too. How can I support and elevate the independent artists and writers and businesses that I love so that they can continue to exist? Because we are living in a culture right now where there really is an everything-should-be-free mentality, and there are going to be unintended consequences from that.

NED: Yeah, I mean, that’s the first thing that comes to mind when you start talking about this. It’s really challenging because, obviously, everybody loves that you can listen to all the music that you want in the entire world for however many dollars a month, and you can watch all these movies for the same price. But what does that do to the system that supports these things? I find myself to be highly critical of these things that try to make ease of access the number-one thing when the information that you’re trying to access is not being treated as the important thing.

So yeah, it feels boring and clichéd to say that we should support the bands on tour, support the record labels that you like, and do all this stuff. But when we live in a culture that’s trying to say these things aren’t worth money, it’s important to know that the thing that is important to these companies is you and your information. They want to be able to sell you things better. That’s why this is cheap. This is all to say that when we put art last, then art becomes harder to access.

If you want to make it so that there’s a place where the things that you care about exist, you can do that; you just have to put in the work. That’s what DIY actually means. It used to be a completely involved ecosystem of bands, labels, distributors, record stores, fanzines, college radio stations, all these things working together towards a common goal. And as that was slowly broken apart and compartmentalized, and then built back up in this fucked up way, we’ve lost that. And it’s really hard to think of a way to do that in the current era, because everything is so far apart. We have to distribute the information through Instagram, who is going to sell our data. We send it to Spotify, where they’re also going to sell your data and charge you for it. And it’s like, all that stuff is meaningless. We have to stop caring about that. We have to put the things that we value first. And to me, that’s the community, the music, the people, the whole system that this exists in. I don’t know how it can be done. But the conversation should be started about how we can circumnavigate these things that are in place that we don't need. That's my goal for next year, and the year after that. I want to continue to figure out how to go around what we are told is necessary and required—because I don’t think it is.

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