schlugliminal

World domination is generally considered to be a villainous endgame

In the fourth grade, I was sent to the principal’s office for using free time to create a construction paper collage that was critical of then-president George Bush. Nobody could explain to me why that was a punishable offense. I was sent to the office countless times throughout elementary school for refusing to stand and recite the pledge of allegiance with the rest of the class. I wasn’t some revered brave hero, I was ostracized and punished for it, over and over. Nobody put me up to it...

Coagula: ruff recording

Here's the first playthrough of a song we starting working on last month. We have been working on this one more than anything else since then and it's changed a bit, but these archival scratch tracks of the first rough shot always have something.. foundational about them, even though they're incomplete. We performed this once, at the show in Anchorage. We'll be doing it again next weekend~

lyrics:

Dragged along

By some distant song

I can’t tell what we’re be...

2 more shows

I mocked up this little social media poster for our show on the 30th last week. Sara and I have decided to take some time off from gigging this summer, but we have two more live performances before we take a much needed break. The first one is an all-ages show at Badmother, and the second is part of a musical intermission for the Fairbanks Ladies of Wrestling show in May. One for the babies and one for the babes.

My skills as a musician are slowly progressing and I have some fun new sou...

Just: a ruff practice recording

I woke up from my studio nap yesterday ready to go home and play stardew valley, but the grungemother called upon me to carry on. Here's a ruff recording of a new song, working title: "Just"

ruff lyric/structure:

D F G

A-G-F

:||

VERSE 1:

Where did they go

All the friends that should know better

Passing by alone

You know, I think this could go better

Did you think the rising seas the coral ...

After-show debrief for feb 23

Link to the instagram reel of camcorder footage from the show: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3wX0EgL1an/

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Psychic Spychick played a show in Anchorage a couple of weekends ago. February 23rd. We were invited by Adam from Turbo Hell, who we had up for the Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Twin Peaks Halloween party last October. It was one of those events that went so smoothly and...

a lil jigsaw puzzle of recurring nightmares before work ;)

I want to preface this one by saying it’s kind of a downer. I’m having a bit of a haunted time. A lot of incredible things have happened in the past few years. The past few days. I had some sweet time with a 3-month-old this week, drafted a couple of new designs, played a sick show in Anchorage and caught up with some good friends. I am almost done editing photos from the show. I started my first no-pattern-no-masters crochet project. It’s just the nighttime, when there’s nothing left...

made it to the city ++ a few shirt pics

I've been having a nice day in Anchorage, staying at a friend's house, eating fruit, casually editing some of the photos I took last night before packing up the shirts. I made some tea. Did my makeup. Wrote a little. Taking advantage of this sweet transition time to relax before rolling into the show. Later tonight we are meeting up with some friends for pizza, then setting up at the venue.

I decided to take that first shirt as my own (it's currently on my body). I like a sim...

last preparations before our first gig in the "*city*"

Tomorrow morning, Psychic Spychick heads down to Anchorage to play a show with Turbo Hell and Saint Mood. It's been nice getting to focus on just the music and making new designs without having to worry about all of the event logistics. I'm glad to know we are capable of doing it all, and also grateful to not have to sometimes, and still be part of it~

The screen printing marathon this weekend was a great success. It feels good to be gathered around an activity. We did 3 colo...

New psychic spychick design//putting in the time

I've been feeling very reflective this month. About how far I've come, how much I've learned, how at peace I am processing through my griefs at this point in my life. It's not *all* peace, but the peace struggles its way to the surface easier and easier. I've been getting really serious about making music and art. Practicing a discipline I started to want for myself and lay the foundation of 3+ years ago when I started this blog. I have seen the ways that building creative habits has led to e...

long meandering blog post about nothing in particular

I finally finished Buffy the Vampire Slayer last Monday. I watched the final episode at 6am, alone in a warehouse. It felt somehow like the correct environment for that sort of thing. I thought about how many people must have been watching it simultaneously back when it first aired on syndicated television. The buzz at school about how crazy it all was. The collective closure to a series spanning 7 seasons. In 2024, these experiences are private.

The past couple of months I have been wo...

Black Lodge @ The Bronze Psychic Spychick Violet Cover

Gosh, so much has happened over the past month. Not least of which was a huge party at The Marlin--a Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Twin Peaks crossover costume Halloween party--on the 28th of last month, and it was the most bodies I've seen at that venue in a decade. We were at capacity for most of the night, and it turned out to be the last big party at The Marlin before yet another closing of their doors. I have a handful of pictures to share, but for now I want to show you this video of Sara an...

teaser posters for halloween 2023

Picking these up from the printer on Friday. We are about to haunt the town with oblique teaser posters for the Halloween party. Sara's log lady poster will be available as a print at the show~~

episode iii, revenge of the rainbow

I honestly am surprised that I haven't shared this recording with you all yet-! I'm sorry it took so long. No drums here, but this is the Rainbow Connection cover that Sara and I worked out over several sessions, rewriting the chords, recounting the measures, remaking a classic. I shared a cover a few months ago that was truer to the original 3/4 Kermit the Frog boop bops. This one is in 4/4. It's dr...

lilac *practice recording - Sept. 2023

Alright, my friends, here is the latest rough recording of Lilac. We are still figuring out the loop life proper (setting, maintaining, listening, following, triggering, etc.), but we're getting closer every time we try. Artists who loop live are no joke. It takes serious practice. When people do it flawlessly in front of me, the hours of trying just stack up before my very eyes.

lyrics:

what a wild time to be alive

people fighting over who to bri...

first studio jam // 08.29.2023

Visited by images of Gumby and Pokey trapped in a heavily redacted Louis L'Amour novel.

visions of the present nexus

It's been kind of a wild month.

In some ways, I've experienced the worst mental health of my adult life. I have never wanted to die, get off the ride & go home, so wholly as I have in the past month. Not since I was a (developmentally appropriate) impulsive and hormonally imbalanced preteen. Facing that precipice of knowing, through which we all must pass, that is understandably overwhelming for anyone to pass through. I say this not to bring you distress, but to humanize the experi...

a check-in for Aug

There are many things moving around in my life and my mind right now. Planning for a big Halloween art party, in the planning phase for a couple of big painting projects, wrote a new song and had a chance to workshop it on-stage a couple of times at the fair last week, finally got myself a car and gotta get myself to the dmv about it, moving into a studio space next month, garden is swelling with fruit. I'm pretty scattered in many directions--all very exciting, and in the dizzying place of a...

website live

Sara and I have been working on building the bones of an online gallery and shop for our art for the past 5 weeks, and it's officially live today. Also fresh today are 11x17 posters of the tapestry art from My Yucky Valentine. Take a peek on the Spy Shop. Everyone on the schlugernaut tier will be getting all 5 in the mail soon--just waiting on tubes~

For anyone who pledges way extra on the $1 tier (there are a few of you), update your info and get your mailing address in ther...

grief & messy musings on the gong 07.02.2023

Hell, y'all. This is a particularly griefy time of year. It's a long, strange, dilated window of time between when my mom died and when I made the call. It's the guilt of being a full-time support of somebody so lost and alone and poison with fear, and not being there when they needed you most, in a time of transition and passage, while peacefully believing they were respecting your boundaries, uncharacteristically. Believing you'd finally communicated successfully and made the progress you'd...

hats and patches from may 6

I made a few blacklight-embroidered hats and patches for the show earlier this month. It's been fun making band merch exclusively by hand and selling it out of a blacklit briefcase by the stage. It's all just doodlin'. I only finished 2 hats and 1 patch, and I don't feel pressure to make any more than I do-actually-make in this context, and I think that's worth celebrating. Here are a few pictures of the work.

update 05-27-2023

Oy, I finally got the audio pulled from the Marlin show. I got a good take of J Brig's set, but the batteries in my field recorder died during the first song of our set. I know I have about 50 solid minutes of recording time now before I need to swap the batteries. Lots of fun new project ideas are floating around in the psychic spychick sphere. As wild and great as it was to blast into so much art and music and performance over the past 7 months, it's nice to have a bit of a creative play pe...

a new pedal, a break, a song by julien baker

It's been a long couple of weeks. Car broke down again, just in time for biking season, again. I worked 11 days consecutively at the farm with a gig in the middle so I guess I've been a little dissociated in order to take care of all of the things. While the work isn't particularly physically strenuous, it involves tracking and maintaining many systems simultaneously, isolated, in a warehouse full of hoses and fans, and is structured like a corporation despite being a small farm maintained by...

Psychic Spychick @ The Marlin 05.06.2023

A picture my friend Dom took of the Marlin gig this weekend. Psychic Spychick's 2nd bar gig ever. It went well. I made hats. Always a pleasure to share the stage with J Brig. I took some audio direct from the board, and am now determined to deep clean my studio in search of my SD card reader so I can truly know how we did, hehe. Constantly catching up with myself. Brighter days to come, my friends.

I got myself a new reverb pedal this week, too. It's supposed to come in tomorrow. This ...

spring renewal

I was smoking a cigarette on my porch this morning watching the snowflakes fall and melt in the sun on my sleeves. It’s really spring. My projects are mostly domestic these days. I am growing plants and baking bread and moving my furniture around to make room for, something else. In all of the transition, I came across the first painting I did when I launched this blog, the one of the corvid holding a shiny trash bauble in their mouth, and thought of how it was supposed to be reflecting bac...

03-20-2023

It is the vernal equinox today. The beginning of Spring. These transitional moments mean more to me living in the far-north than they did when I lived on an island where sunlight was an inconsistent and season-less gift. Existing on Earth in a place that forces you into obvious cycles of light-and-dark, cold-and-warm, wet-and-dry, is a ride in itself.

I have been in a bit of an incubation-and-organization phase over the past month since My Yucky Valentine concluded. I’ve ha...

myv bts pt 1 : the music video

Oooh, the party is this weekend and I want to share a little bit of the process with ya while it's still fresh. The first project we did after deciding to throw a party was a video for the Kickstarter.

We decided to make it a music video with text overlays because talking in front of a camera sounded dreadful and unnecessary, and making a music video sounded exciting and fun. The time between concept and creation wasn't more than 2 weeks. I took about 5 hours one morning and learned and...

myv 2023 // bts first glance

The other day I was painting a tapestry in my living room and had one of those time-dilation experiences where I didn't know how I found myself in that particular moment. I've been working full-speed on this yucky valentine party for the past 6 weeks and I have so many bts pictures of what's been going on, but precious few of these spare moments to process them. The projects are ambitious, and totally on schedule.

After giving ourselves some time to decompress from the Hallow...

my yucky kicky launched

Link to the thing: http://kck.st/3vbx9xC

Holy shit we have been hard at work creating the framework for a most excellent party we are throwing in February. It's called My Yucky Valentine: A Blasphemy of Desire.

We're doing everything above board--catered bar, legit venue, big art. It's gonna cost real money this time, so we launched a kickstarter about it. We also made a music video.

All ye patrons will have entra...

come closer to me // MYV prep

Hello my friends. Every day is a nose-grinder getting closer to the 12/21 kickstarter launch date for the valentine party 2023. Art has been made. Projects have been scheduled. Budgets have been calculated. Today I learned this song for the video and recorded it while prepping Yule cards for the mail.

For all ye patrons of mailing list tier, Schlug No. 2: Halloween-party-edition will be arriving with reprints of Yule Rules in GOLD. Imminently (with the imminence of snails). The literal-...

Small projects dec 2022

I just finished out a week working for the ballet on The Nutcracker. It's always a lot of work and a lot of love. I've been doing little crafts here and there this month. Thinking about my yule card. I made some buttons and beads out of polymer clay, and made my first earrings. Recycled some socks the elastic blew out in.

I made my first sock monkey when I was 7 or 8 years old, I remember looking up instructions on netscape and waiting for the reference images to load line-by-line. My ...