OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE Vol. XVI

VOLUME XVI

OBSESSIVECOMPULSIVE

VOLUME SIXTEEN - QUARTER FOUR

FOR PASSIONATE CREATORS WHO WORK TO FLESH & BONE IN ORDER TO CREATE SOMETHING THAT SHOWS THEIR HEART.

hello + goodbye

In the winter of 2014 I started drawing out ideas of the prototype of what this publication would become. I was in my third year of University taking classes focused on design and photography, and one of the focuses was Magazine layouts and grid standards. At the time, I was a staff photographer for a small Zine that had found me on good ol’ Tumblr. Because I had been in these classes I had also offered my services to the owner of the Zine to ensure that everything was in order for layouts (a bunch of jargon that I pretended to know more about than I did, and to this date still feel I know little about). Due to a few issues within it I had decided it was time to make my own publication. Rather than it being focused on just live music, I really wanted to combine the arts. I had a vision of artists and musicians alike seeing one another in their same Volume and being able to appreciate the copious amounts of work that goes into either process. It was meant to be a publication made by artists for other artists.

Eventually, I would launch Flesh & Bone Magazine along with friend and classmate, Morgan Fraser. At the time I had been more focused on the live music aspect, photographing shows and ensuring that we had content that went beyond self-indulgence for the magazine. Morgan had a passion for design and would focus on layouts for the publication. Life got busy and our once a month publication moved to Bi-Monthly. There truly just was not enough to cover in the city of Calgary due to its extreme isolation from the music world and in some aspects the arts world. Morgan would move on from the publication and I took over for layouts on top of my tasks of e-mails, interviews, album reviews, show reviews, and cold calls. I was completely overwhelmed. Due to this, I moved to a quarterly strategy. Even after University, I had to keep up with these Volumes on top of my freelance career as a photographer and an additional full-time job. Around this time is when James Liam Ward started taking over Album Reviews. We had toured together in the past (myself the photographer and he as a musician in various projects) and while I could not be certain of how the conversation came about, he took over all of the album reviews and has been to this day. For that, I couldn’t be more thankful.

Flesh & Bone became OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE. I had started gaining an understanding of my own OCD and how it had been affecting my day-to-day life on top of my work as a photographer. While I understand the controversial nature of naming the publication O-C after my diagnoses it was a way for me to take ownership for it and I stuck with it. After all, this publication was no longer backed by anyone but myself and James. Few staff photographers stuck around, but it’s hard to convince photographers who have had life to take care of to want to maintain themselves as volunteers to a small publication. I fault no one for that, in fact it’s that same sentiment that ultimately has lead to this long winded statement that is just now starting to get to its main point.

This has always been a passion project over the last 10 years and will remain as such but with a few changes. I’ve realized that what has made O-C particularly unique is that it has stuck around on the Issuu platform and remained print-on-demand far longer than the publications that had existed before it. With how much time and effort it takes to maintaining that, putting everything I can into making these volumes while also maintaining my other jobs, and attempting to find a balance for life within that I’ve come to realize that I need to cut ties with some aspects of this project:

This will be the last physical, quarterly, copy of OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE Magazine.

I will still be running the website and sharing news of artists, as well as interviews with various people and James will still be maintaining album reviews and a playlist. On a personal note, I am thrilled to have spoken with Connor Murphy on his solo project Smidley to be the final cover feature. It was unintentional, but he is truly one of my favourite artists and it felt like a perfect semi-colon my own project. There is nothing that brings me more joy than to read the processes of various artists and musicians, and to have those conversations when it’s possible. I hope to be able to keep doing that for at least a little while longer.

I want to thank every person who has ever submitted, taken photographs for, reviewed for, or had any piece of the journey of this publication. For any personal projects between myself and James, I personally can be found under the moniker “brandynnleigh” on essentially everything for all of my photography and video related ventures. James is a part of the musical project LOOK ALIVE. thank you for the last 10 years

Sincerely, Brandynn

Sav Bagshaw ParadoxVisuals

Tell us a little bit about your journey with photography, and when you first started to grow an interest in it? What were some of the first things that interested you as subject matter?

I first picked up a camera when I was 12 years old, and I focused my subject matter mainly on my surroundings. I grew up in a very small rural community in Alberta, it was filled with run down machinery, abandoned houses, and my parents were antique collectors - so I had alot to work with. I really feel like that laid the creative foundations that I bring into my work today.

Did you receive any sort of post-secondary for photography or any other field that lent a hand to the craft? What did you find were some of the benefits if you had?

I took a one-year post-secondary course that focused on every aspect of photography. I did find it to be very helpful, in a lot of ways, but I also found it was difficult for someone who wanted to focus on a more “niche” genre of photography. I think that it motivated me to push myself harder to get to where I wanted. Ultimately, it was the lessons I learned outside of the class room from peers and the artists I admire that have been much more valuable.

I have always loved music. I consider it a necessity in life and I know alot of other people do to. The narrative surrounding musicians and their craft is often one of struggle. Which is so wild to me considering how music is so universally loved. I was drawn into it as a fan but I’ve stayed here because I want to do whatever small part I can to help keep the industry going and thriving, even on the local scale that I am a part of. Art as a whole is important and and uplifting fellow artists is integral to all of our success.

What is it specifically about working with musicians and photographing live music that you are attracted to?

I just really love people. I think humans are so fascinating and portraiture is something I am really drawn to. As cringy or cliche as this may sound, everyone is beautiful and I love to be able to use my camera to make my clients/friends/ strangers see that beauty withinin themselves one way or another.

Outside of this work, is there any other subject matter that you are drawn to documenting?

What are your favourite themes to use and document?

I love to focus on the theme of paradoxes (hence the name). I just adore the contrast between light, ethereal and soft against dark, harsh and maybe uncomfortable concepts, themes or colours. It is something I explore alot in many ways from conceptual shoots to my editing style and even the locations I shoot in. It stems from my own internal struggles with mental health but also the humour I find in it. That is a big reason why I am in the extreme music/ metal scene, it is filled with some of the warmest people i’ve met, who enjoy some of the most brutal, angry and unhinged sounds i’ve heard.

What do you like to do to keep yourself inspired / Is there any type of objects or scenery that you find you often get inspired by?

I just love to wander aimleslly! I am so lucky to live in the city that I do. I feel constantly inspired by the different areas of Vancouver: The rundown alleys, the heritage buildings, [and] the nature! If I feel uninspired I try to find a new place I’ve never been and inspect every nook and krany I can find. I feel like there is something neat to be seen no matter where you look, even if it seems unconventional at first. God, I sound like such a douche [laughs]

What is something that you have learned that you feel would have been valuable to have known when you first started your craft?

Don’t treat other photographers as competition. I feel like a lot of people are too nervous or prideful to talk to their photographic peers, or the people they look up to, because there can be alot of secrecy to the craft in this industry and the nicheness of this genre makes it extremely competitive. But making friends with other photographers has been the most beneficial thing for me personally and professionally.

OH! And get on the video train early! Video and photos go hand in hand nowadays, make yourself a jack of all trades.

I have been very lucky in my career and I don’t take anything for granted. In the last year specifically, I have been able to accomplish alot of long-time goals. I got to go on my first tour run ever in the United Kingdom, and I successfully integrated myself into the Vancouver music scene, which is something I NEVER even thought was possible given where I am from.

In terms of projects, I have been really fortunate to have found my artistic soul mates in my dear friends Leda Paige and Kris Dachwitz. They have taught me so much about how to prep and plan a shoot and how to bring concepts to life. We have done some really fun DIY concepts that I love so much. Including one that surrounded Eating Disorder Awareness Week that also played off an iconic image from our adolescence! [Note: See Page 12 to reference these images]

I am really excited to be able to go out on tour more with my friends who play in some incredible bands, to continue to shoot at venues around Vancouver, and to hoane in on my video production skills.

I hope by next year I will have been able to go on a larger scale tour maybe and secure some contracts with venues and promoters that could potentially see me making this my full time career. I dream big.

What have been some of you personal favourite moments on your artistic journey as well as projects that you have worked on to date?

Is there anything specific coming up in the new year that you are excited to work on? What do you hope to achieve by this time next year?

ROYAL WOOD

Your eighth studio record, What Tomorrow Brings, has been released, congratulations! Let’s dive right in and talk a little bit about the details of this record. From my understanding, it took you about 24 months to come to the final product. With this work process, were you relatively loose with your time line or was the 24 months intentional?

I definitely didn’t have a set goal in mind in terms of timeline; simply that I would continue to work on the album until I felt it was finished, as opposed to abandoned. Sadly, something I have felt in the past due to time constraints due to label obligations.

Tell us a little bit about the team you worked with to build everything. What was it about Linda Perry that made you want to work with them among others?

This album, more than any other in my career, was a labour of love that crossed oceans, states, provinces, and digital remote locations to find its way to completion. I truly went down every road that I felt a calling to go down. Those travels led me to Linda Perry in LA, to Jamie Scott in the UK, to Marcus Paquin in Montreal, and to many more avenues than I can name. I am so very proud and grateful for this album. There was no clear path, but I certainly got to the destination in the end.

Were there any specific things on this release that you had done differently in terms of how you approached production versus previous releases?

The biggest change on this record versus previous releases was working with multiple producers over many months and timelines. The other biggest differential I can think of was having the time to allow myself to go back to the well again and again. Always to songs I thought “might” be done, in order to finetune them until I knew they were done. Or at least as close to completion, and therefore perfection, as anything I could ever make otherwise.

What were some of the themes that you explored throughout What Tomorrow Brings?

Love. Loss. Life. Family.

When it comes to the visuals for everything, how did you want to wrap up the record? What sort of feels were important for you to evoke with the visuals for the record and who did you work with to bring that vision together?

I knew that I wanted the artwork to deliver the punch and weight of the themes I covered. I wanted it to have meaning. Love. Loss. Life. Family are large topics. In the end I did the photoshoot at sunset on the old family farm I grew up on, which I now own and am raising my own family on. It’s the farm my father passed away on. It’s the place I fell in love with music as a child. It’s the heaven and hell that forged my identity. So shooting the artwork for this album on the farm only made sense.

Keeping on track with visuals, your music video for “One More Night” is stunning. Do you like to have a hand in your music videos, or was the narrative treatment brought to you? What stood out to you to bring this song to life with a music video?

Though the footage was shot elsewhere by another team, I am very proud to say that I edited every single video for this album myself. A total of 5 videos. Ultimately I knew what I wanted the videos to say, so it was only a matter of finding the right footage.

What made you want to create a mini-documentary surrounding this particular release?

The idea to create a mini-documentary came from the regret I harbour over not capturing more visual memories on previous albums. I am very grateful for my journey as an artist. In fact, I feel very blessed and at times even lucky. So this time I wanted to capture some of the fortunate moments I experienced on tape.

Now that What Tomorrow Brings is released, what else do you have planned in relation to the new music?

Now that we are at least for now on the other side of the pandemic, I feel like I am an elastic band that finally let go. All to say, I am full steam ahead at this point. I am currently working on another folk-pop album, an instrumental album, a B-sides collection and a Christmas album. Call me crazy, but I am artistically hungry and ready to work.

Are there any final words or anything else that you would like to address or express to our readers?

Just that I am so very proud of WHAT TOMORROW BRINGS. And that I want the world to hear it. So please listen, and if you fall in love with it half as much as I did creating it, please share it!

SMIDLEY

Roughly five years since the last full-length release of Conor Murphy’s solo project, Smidley, he has come back with a new record, Here Comes the Devil It’s a ten track piece which leans on the same themes of Dante Alighieri’s “Inferno” throughout. The first single, “Another Devil” featuring Shinra Knives is where he had made the announcement of the full length. Since then, Here Comes the Devil has been released and is available on all streaming platforms with several music videos to accompany it. We were lucky enough to be able to talk with him about the details of Here Comes The Devil, how it came to be, a little bit more on the themes, and the other artistry that wrapped it up into the force that it is.

Outside of Smidley, Conor’s main musical project, Foxing had been taking up some time with a full-length record of their own, Drawn Down the Moon, and over the last year has had a few tours accompany it. In the times were Foxing was ramping down, there would be small pockets of moments where Conor thought about what he would want to do with his personal work stating he had been, “Flirting with writing an EP for LP fro Smidley ... I never really found something that I was super excited about and I didn’t want to write a record to make a record.” It was when Foxing had just finished mixing and recording

Drawn Down the Moon that Conor started feeling overwhelmed with the feeling of wanting to write more music. The record had not even come out yet, but he still was ready to continue with the momentum.

“I could right another album right now. I have a lot of ideas, I want to do stuff,” Conor started out and then went on to express, “I started doing that and my thought was write another Foxing album before this one comes out. I went to Eric [Hudson] and was like, ‘Hey, I got these ideas, I got two songs that could be the first and last songs of an album, what if we write another album right now?’ And he was like, ‘Fuck you, no way, what are you talking about?’ I realized, yeah, okay, this last one was intense. It wasn’t even out yet. We hadn’t shot any videos for it, whatever. I was excited about it so I just ran with it.”

The two songs that he had ready and written would then be used for Here Comes The Devil, maintaining his intention of book ending the album. The first track being “Farewell” at the top of the record and then the self titled track at the end. Though Eric was unenthused about working on another Foxing record right away, he still was there with Conor for the whole production process and mixed the record. At this point, the pair had been working together on music for roughly 17 years. Conor notes, “He put up with me saying a lot of, ‘I want it to sound bad.’ Which annoyed him the most because I would say I want it to sound worse and he’s like, ‘I have to put my name on this.’” Ultimately, though, the record came out how Conor had wanted it to sound.

After the release of Smidley’s Self Titled album, Conor had wanted to build something where he was playing all of the instruments himself. Before he had written all of the parts and had other musicians go in to record them. Tyler Long of Hop Along had played all of the bass, Joe Reinhart had done guitar, and Eric had played the drums. With Here Comes The Devil, there were pieces of others involved, such as Eric playing a guitar solo on “Table Rock Anti-Christ.” Of course, Ian of Shinra Knives also had worked on and featured on the first single, “Another Devil.” Adam Schatz, who typically performs in Japanese Breakfast plays Saxophone on “Breaking My Own Heart.” With this particular musician, Conor explains, “They were on tour and I was talking to him and thought it’d be really cool if he could play over this song. He recorded it in the staircase of one of the venues that they were playing at. He set up a mic and there was this beautiful natural ambiance. He did four solos and sent me them. They were perfect.”

With the features of this record being a little more understated, Conor comments that he wishes that he had brought more people into the process. He goes onto state that, “I think for the next Smidley record that’s something I want to do is just work with a bunch of other people in a way where I can have the autonomy that I crave but still be able to work with people.” He loves the idea of having other artists who come in with features rather than full pieces of songs that he had worked on. He knows that the ask of trying to get a musician to perform exactly what his intention is for a song is not always the easiest task when they may want to offer more ideas and insight.

“The most difficult part is when you work with someone who is really good and puts their own flavor on something and you recognize that it’s better than what you wrote but you still want it to be the shitty thing that you wrote. That’s what was happening on this record that I was really proud of. It’s this crummy guitar parts I put together but there’s major and minor chords throughout the whole thing. I play my first ever solo on one of these songs and it’s the shittiest sounding thing you’ve ever heard but I like it because it’s my first one. It’s endearing,” He chuckled.

At the time, Conor had just read Dante Alighieri’s “Inferno,” and connected to the concept of the journey of death and the adventure through hell. Here Comes the Devil reflects this concept with a bit of an animated, RPG style. Initially, the thought was for it all to be animated in this Loonie Tune-esque style, where the whole album would be accessible this way but with a budget of essentially $0 that just wasn’t something that realistically could be achieved to that full capacity.

What was possible, was creating the main aesthetic of the record, starting with the album cover. He hired illustrator Mitch Renfrew to create the album artwork, sending him a few specific ideas in mind along with the knowledge of where it all had come from. There’s a specific image on the Instagram account of Loonie Tunes backgrounds of a ladder that descended into a loop, and it was one that particularly resonated with Conor. It’s easy to see how these resources of inspiration build the foundation of the final results. “His first draft is essentially what the album cover is. He completely knocked it out of the park,” Conor states in references to Mitch’s work. When referencing the character that inhabits the cover of the art work he also explains how in the book, “He doesn’t really encounter the Devil in Inferno. The idea being that you are the Devil, here You come.”

This same treatment of having a cartoonish appeal is what opens up the first single’s music video, “Another Devil.” The title card is referenced from Betty Boop before transforming into a whole other world of chaos that draws the line somewhere between the world we know to exist and a dizzy state thanks to the 360° camera that was used. There’s a specific style within the music video that leans on the distortion from the camera but it’s all to serve a specific purpose.

“The thing we really wanted to focus on was creating this really nauseating video. I think, to me, the goal for shooting any kind of video is to have a lasting feeling attached to the song no matter what the song is you want to give it a real physical feeling any time you listen to it. For this one it’s this orientation of nausea. Some videos you want the feeling to be sadness where every time you hear the song you feel sad. I wanted to get across a real feeling,” Conor explains.

There’s this beautifully upsetting feeling listening to the song while watching the music video. Taking into account the reflection of Conor’s feelings on the lasting treatment of music videos in general, it’s also important to acknowledge that there happen to be two different versions of “Another Devil.” There’s the one that’s on the record and the other is exclusive to the music video. Structurally, the song was done completely by Conor but with Ian of Shinra Knives coming in they layered in glitches and samples throughout. Then there’s Ian performing the incantation from the Omen over the end. When explaining the two tracks Conor explains that, “By the time we got finished mixing it I removed the glitchy stuff that he did because it’s

the only time it happens in the album, it feels way too different from the rest. It was distractingly unique in the album, which is pretty counter intuitive making something cool and interesting. But it stands out too much and I don’t want it to be that way. We had put so much work into it and Ian specifically put so much work into it that I thought, why don’t we use this for the music video.”

It’s this little detail that lends to the music video and how it had been put together. There’s moments of the glitchy radio samples within that work with when the camera goes wild and works at its most nauseating. The camera had belonged to Ian and then Conor took on editing it. There was a bit of a learning curve to get through to know everything that could come out of this tool. “It took a while but that’s my favourite thing in the world is sitting down and editing something for 40 hours straight. That’s my happy place really, so it was fun to do,” Conor comments and continuing on to share, “You get these files that are 360° of framing and then you have to create these keyframes to make it track people or making it fly around like a drone shot or something. What we really did by the end, once we realized how you had to key everything was to go crazy with the camera and shake it around a lot, scream into it, dance with it, because when you do that it looks so disorienting.”

Right before the album was released, Smidley released one more single with a music video attached to it, “Table Rock Anti-Christ.” This video is somewhat of a monotone surreal dream still placed in the real world. It doesn’t have the same disorientating strategy that the prior video had, for one because Conor admitted he knows the camera can be a bit of a one-trick pony as much as he enjoys editing it. That being said, it creates a juxtaposition of what we can call a performance video and a more delicate song. There’s a deep appreciation that can be felt from Conor and how he treats the visuals that package each track and the album as a whole. It’s understood how it all compliments one another and builds a whole atmosphere to a release.

Here Comes the Devil was released on November 11th and is now available on all streaming services with physical copies still available on Smidley’s website as well. Both in his solo work as Smidley as well as in his project of Foxing, Conor Murphy has shown intention in his work and a relentless passion for the music that he takes on. Even through passive self-deprecation of what he creates, there’s still this wonderful attitude towards his craft and the act of creating in itself.

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WE ALL HAVE THIS OBSESSIVE COMPULSION TO CREATE