Frank's Corner #4: In Conversation With Cult Friends.
Lyrical baggage, NTS, and the Grouper effect.
It’s easy as an artist to chase “perfection” like a heat-seeking missile. It’s just as easy to be driven mad by this prospect and, in doing so, hate the work as hyper-fixation bleeds into a state of self-procured resentment.
For Cult Friends, there’s an allure to jagged edges, brash brushstrokes, and over-emphasized vowels—a sweet spot where the songs have room to breathe without being polished half to death. Armed with contact mics and the discipline to write whether or not the lyrics or chords carry any weight, there is an internal understanding that with time, the meaning will catch up as the hard work wraps up.
I had the pleasure to sit down with Cult Friends in NYC to talk about the new music, nomadic volunteerism, weed spirits, and goals for new sounds in the future. This was an awesome chat; I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
25Frank: How's New York been? What have you been up to?
Cult Friends: Absolutely nothing. Just walking around, eating here and there—though not enough, you know? Everything's too expensive. So mostly I’ve just been joyriding the subway, wandering.
Where are you staying right now?
I'm staying with a friend in the Upper East Side. I’ve been here since mid-month. Took a quick trip to Philly too—just for a night. I kept hearing everyone’s in Philly right now. It’s shoegaze central. Full Body 2, Tagabow, Knifeplay, Nothing. There must be something in the air there. I did a little speedrun of the city.
What places have you explored in New York?
I walked around Calvert Vaux Cove, which was pretty exciting. There’s something eerie about Coney Island. Somehow ended up hopping a fence into a parking lot with a bunch of abandoned cars, got scared, and ran around. Went to a few shows in Bushwick, wandered around Flushing, and Williamsburg. A lot of people-watching. I don't know if New York's for me though—it’s overstimulating and I feel constantly perceived, you know?
Tell me more about where you're from. Does it inform your work at all?
It's a bit confusing. I'm primarily from the Tokyo area, but not the city. When I say Tokyo, I mean the region—like how people say they’re from New York but mean the Hudson Valley. My dad’s Spanish—he was a friar who moved to Japan with his order when he was 27. My mom’s Japanese but teaches Spanish. I grew up speaking Spanish at home and went to an international school, so English is just as native.
The town in Spain where my family’s from is called Santo Domingo de la Calzada—it’s in La Rioja, right below the Basque region. The Camino Santiago runs through it, so it's kind of steeped in that pilgrimage energy.
Do people actually do the whole Camino?
Yeah, of course. That's the whole point, isn’t it? The pilgrimage. I would love to do the whole thing at some point.
Where were you before coming here?
I was living in Madrid for a bit, and before that, Benidorm—this weird, trashy, touristy beach town. Imagine Jersey Shore and Miami Beach had a baby, but British. Also very geriatric. It’s just full of retired folk and drunk Brits. That's where I was this past July. I kind of went crazy, but I guess I learned a lot about myself.
It was pretty isolating. The whole town feels impersonal, like it’s curated entirely for hedonistic tourism. I had nothing but myself for a little over a year—and that’s the space the first EP came from.
For those who don’t know, for a while, you were building out your Bandcamp with a track written, produced, and released every single day. Are you still doing this for yourself?
Not at the moment. I need my own space to do that, and I’ve been hopping around a little too much. I’ll probably start again around mid-September when I’m more settled.
I saw you mention how important it is for you to just get stuff out and somewhat complete...around 80% completion. Is finishing a song to this degree as gratifying as finishing it completely for a proper release?
It’s never going to feel fully complete, you know. The point isn’t perfection—it’s knowing when to stop. The more I mess with something, the more I pull it away from the moment and the space it came from. I get bogged down in mixes, especially with my vocals, trying to hide every inconsistency, which ends up stripping the life from it, making it hyper-sterile. This happened with cum machine. I originally submitted the EP with the 30th mix or whatever version I landed on. Then I re-listened to the demo and compared it to the final, and had a panic attack because I realized I’d polished the warmth out of the guitars and vocals. I ended up resubmitting the EP to my distributor with the original demo for that track.
You mentioned that part of your writing is inspired by the spirit that is in the mountains and in your weed. If you could talk to that spirit, what would it say? What would it look like? Would you be friends?
I don’t think it talks. It’s more of a presence—like smoke, or something on fire far away. Like the Japanese yōkai Rōjinbi, or Enenra. It probably just watches me pacing around, laughing and talking to myself. Maybe even finds me annoying, doing my little field recordings, listening to the wind at max volume. We wouldn’t talk—we’d just be aware of each other’s presence. Sharing the same air.'
But it’s less about the spirit and more about how the vastness of the mountains makes me feel that I pull inspiration from.
Are a lot of the songs you're writing based on events or narratives, or, like your stage name, are they completely random?
Eventually they are, even if I don’t realize it at the time. I have a very bottom-up approach to songwriting. Usually, a word or sound leads me somewhere, and I just follow the thread. But that still stems from something in the subconscious—it’s choosing certain words for a reason. It associates them with certain feelings, moments, and events.
When you get writer's block and write words with no baggage, can you find meaning after the song is written?
Yes, absolutely. Sometimes it’s months later when you realize, “Oh, this was about that person,” or “this was bothering me more than I thought.” The meaning catches up to the song.
You choose words that feel arbitrary in the moment, and once you put them together, you realize you can’t help but write about your own experiences.
I read that Vaticide, by definition, is the killing of a prophet - do you find that you're more the killer of the prophet in that situation?
It’s more about rejecting the idea that life has some grand, transcendent meaning. A kind of disillusionment—with both the external world and internal narratives about connection.
The protagonist isn’t giving up, exactly. They’re confronting the reality of their experience: the inability to fully connect, to transcend suffering, to reach for something higher. It’s about rejecting the imposed structures that never felt true to begin with.
They start with longing—for intimacy, for meaning—and end in resignation. Not hopelessness, but a brutal kind of clarity. The “killing” is a refusal of the comfort that prophecy could’ve offered.
Is this an extension of songs that would have gone on a previous EP like “Cum Machine”?
No, it's a completely different project. Cum Machine EP is composed primarily of songs from the July project. skin peel was the only one not from July—I wrote that in early August because I was on a roll. Those songs feel like a time capsule of my summer 2024.
Vaticide came out of the fall and winter, when I was living in a village in Poland and working at a hostel. I spent a lot of time hiking in the Tatras—massive mountains. It reminded me of how minuscule my existence is. Definitely shaped the mood of the EP.
What do you record with?
I use a Universal Audio Volt 276—it has some great mic preamps. My main mic is an AKG C214, but I also have this vintage Philips mic from the '70s that I had someone solder so it could have an output jack. I occasionally run it through my pedalboard.
I do a lot of stuff with contact mics. I think all of FrottagE 2 is just the contact mic on my throat. The vocals on Close Enough to God’s Hands were also recorded that way. I love them—they capture the raw mechanics of the body making sound. Textures you’d usually suppress or edit out. You can’t get that from many other mediums.
I have a PRS Mira, and only a few pedals: the Iron Horse V3, a Vox Double Deca Delay, and Angel (Vyva Melinkolya) recently gave me a reverb pedal—"Ocean's 11" by Electro-Harmonix. I don’t hate the shimmer on it, which is crazy. I was playing around with it just this morning.
At one point you mentioned your love for Grouper. What's your favorite album? I know that's kind of an impossible question.
Don’t ask me that! For years, I had my full Liz discography sleep mix layered with the built-in white noise on my phone to fall asleep. I saw Grouper in 2022 and fell asleep at her show because I conditioned my brain to pass out to her music. Very embarrassing.
She'd probably see that as doing her job well.
You know what? You’re right.
"The Man Who Died in His Boat" is my favorite album, possibly of all time. Very intimate vocals. So fucking good.
I love intimate vocals—I want to hear the air of every sibilant. Which reminds me of Puma Blue’s most recent record, which I have been obsessed with. The way he phrases each word, and the double tracking of the vocals, everything is perfectly placed and occupying the space it needs to.
Who are some other people you're listening to right now?
I’ve primarily been listening to the five albums I have downloaded on my phone. I’m trying to be more intentional with my listening and all that.
One of them is Narrowing Type by Good Night and Good Morning—I'm re-falling in love with that record. The expression of both the vocals and the guitar part, every element feels so minimal yet so weighty. A soul-wrenching record.
I don't know if you’re familiar with flamenco, but another is Pasaje Del Agua by Lole y Manuel. I must be missing Spain, because it’s been hitting harder. The “quejío”, the vocal timbre, the asymmetrical phrasing, the ornamentation—it’s so expressive and so tense.
Martha Wainwright as well—she says the freakiest shit and doesn't even breathe between lines, just flows from one to the next. I love that. I love ramble-y songwriting when it’s done right. Like Mark Kozelek.
Also a lot of drone: Alonefold, Thme, Celer, Wouter Veldhuis, Jacob Kirkegaard. Country Tropics by Old Saw. Willie Nelson demos. WaqWaq Kingdom. Kali Malone. Midwife and Matt Jencik’s new record, obviously. Air Hunger, obviously. My friend, The Holy Mother, just put out a record today, Big Dumb Sad Machine.
Honestly, whatever I put on my NTS mix a few months ago—pretty much everything on there is still in rotation. Each one of those tracks and artists has a hold on me.
Was that a one-off NTS feature?
Yeah. Madeline asked me to do a guest mix for her show, and I got very excited and made it the same day. She’s the coolest—and so professional.
A lot of William Tyler—Americana, ambient guitar work. Liam Grant—he's so underrated. Kind of Fahey-esque but rougher, grainier. Like 60-grit sandpaper and sun-bleached wood. So alive.
And when I feel slutty: Isabella Lovestory, Shygirl, La Zowi. Juicy BAE is my favorite.
I’ve also been revisiting what was my favorite band in eighth grade: Hiatus Kaiyote. They were the first band I saw live. Listening now that I make music, I am so much more aware of the production details, how they use the stereo field. Like “oh, they automated that to do this,” or the way one track bleeds into the next. It’s so masterful.
I started playing guitar, mostly playing jazz, so when I first started learning, I listened to a lot of R&B and Soul.
And I love Perfume—and 2000s J-pop in general. Since Japanese is mostly moraic and favors open syllables, the melodies you end up creating are just so dynamic—I think it's so fun how the prosody of a language influences melody.
Also, so much Hayden Pedigo. I love him so much. I adore him as a person, too. Have you seen his photo shoots? He’s just a little freak—but you’d never guess from his music, which comes across as very serious. He's crazy but in a way that feels very deliberate and curated, and I love that. I need to meet him.
His new record is unbelievable.
So, so, so good.
What do you think would be next for you musically?
More vocally forward things, more words. I care a lot about language—maybe that’s why I’ve been so minimal and gnomic lyrically. I didn’t want to waste sonic space or use the wrong words. I like being precise.
I also want to use texture not just to create a space, but to compose with it. Right now, I've just been using it to form a room—like I've learned how to do the drywall, now I need to furnish the place. Eventually, I need to design the whole house. Or temple.
Maybe also slightly more minimal, more deliberate. I have a habit of layering things just to cover mistakes, and it ends up muddy. I want to make everything more discernible—each element more distinguishable.
I want to do more fingerstyle guitar work. I don’t lean into it as much as I should, even though I think that’s the one thing I’m good at musically. I’ve just been playing two chords as slowly as I possibly can, or focusing on the expression of each note, dragging it a particular way, which I guess takes some kind of technical skill as well.
I'm not really one to plan projects. I didn’t plan Vaticide—I just looked at what I’d written these past few months and thought, “Okay, how can this fit together?” Or like, “wait, maybe that demo I put on SoundCloud five months ago isn’t terrible.”
Instead of staying sonically consistent, I want to start experimenting more with structure—maybe borrow from deconstructed R&B or do something folkier. I definitely have some songs in my monthly projects that are leaning more into folk and lyricism. I think every project is really just an attempt to unlearn the muscle memory of the last. I guess I’ll just see what comes next.
Listen to Cult Friends on Spotify and Bandcamp. Follow their Instagram and Tumblr.