![]() We're not driving and we're not a driving culture, so we're not like driving around listening to the radio. I always feel like it's sort of a challenge as a band from New York because the rest of the country isn't really like it. I think that the nature of New York is so unique compared to the rest of the country, that you can't help but let it effect you. You're just kind of taking it all in every day on the subway, walking through the park, walking down the streets, you can feel that history, you can feel the tension and you can see how beautiful it is. You're just so exposed and it's just normal to be around so many different cultures and points of view. Well, New York is just so amazingly diverse and it's unique in the United States and in the world for sure. What would have been difficult about your music without the influence of New York? Walter, New York city is a cultural epicenter of the world and also for your own life. And to create that all together is really just, I love doing it. We embraced that for a while, but when we did Quicksand, we really wanted to kind of branch out and take the risks that I think you have to take to feel the reward of just creating something new that people haven't heard or that's within you that you need to get outside of you. That is just really the part of music that I enjoy the most is just being able to manifest something outside of you that is a sort of itch in your imagination and to have other people that feel the same way. I think when we started the band, we were all in this kind of hardcore punk thing and there's a bit of a formula to that and an expectation. How is growth best applied to the sound of a long established band, such as Quicksand? Walter, throughout your life, you've continually learned and grown at the craft of making music. We're just really psyched to have this new song and to be moving forward, finding new ways to explore our interest in music. ![]() It's kind of like the fruits of that labor. We've always had that chemistry, but now we're focusing a little bit more and playing off more recent work is fun. And if we're backing it, then that's going to be our way. Trying to get back to it and have that make sense with such a long gap was the challenge, but rather than really trying to hit some certain target, we just went with the philosophy that let's make something that we really like. I think it kinda got us back into our groove from not having made a record in so long. What effect has reconnecting in the studio for those releases had on the process of creating new music now? The last Quicksand album and EP followed a lengthy hiatus from recording together. We kind of simplified things in a lot of ways and I feel like we're into more simple arrangements and trying make that direct connection and also kind of playing to the heaviness of the band, which is fun. But having done that, this record was a little bit more focused and we kind of had more of an idea of what was the next step. We had made a new record after many, many years, and that took some doing to kind of find our flow as people and as musicians and all that. What does the release of that song signify about the possibility and progress of more new music? I don't know that it's gonna solve the world's problems, but it's at least a good medium to hopefully remind each other that it's important for us to be connected to each other. It's just the reality of our world and I think music has a certain magical power to bring people together. But then again, the person sitting next to you is just as disconnected, even within their family sitting at the dinner table looking at their phones. Things are working out for us, but the actions that we affect here can hit other people in all these kind of awful ways that we're just so disconnected from. Here in the United States, we're a rich country. It kind of started with the idea of people on the other side of the world and what is their reality. So I don't know if the song is like a diagnosis for that, but those are the kinds of things I was thinking about. I think music just has that kind of ability to branch over those feelings. I think people are feeling obviously with COVID like physically isolated, but I think people in general, even before COVID, are just feeling isolated despite the fact that there's so many forms of connection, I think there's an opposite force that kind of freaks people out. What makes music particularly suited to bridge that disconnect of humanity? I want to talk to you about the new song "Inversion." It's the first new material from Quicksand in three years and it's about the dichotomy of being isolated, despite constant connection through technology.
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