Occurrence’s GEMINI HOLE Lives Between Hope and Hopelessness
Punk Head: You started out wanting to make something "art-damaged and weird" and somehow ended up back at pop. Why do you think melody keeps finding its way into your work?
Ken: Whenever we start recording a new album, we set ourselves a challenge or create some limitations. Otherwise, the process feels too daunting. I think I said let’s make something really weird and arty. Let’s pretend we just started a band in art school. But as the songs developed, our natural instincts towards melody started coming to the fore. You just have to trust that and ignore the other stuff. But you wouldn’t get there if you didn’t try something new.
Cat: Johnny and I both have a background in musical theater, and mashing that influence up against the complex instrumentals Ken creates gives our songs this divine friction. Like it could go really wrong but somehow it doesn’t. That or we just edit out the ones that do go wrong.
Johnny: I love when I connect emotionally with the music Ken makes, and that usually takes the form of melody.
Punk Head: The title GEMINI HOLE sounds like both a cosmic phenomenon and a psychological condition. Which interpretation is closer?
Cat: You’ve nailed it. And to me, it is either one, depending on the song.
Johnny: Yup. Both.
Punk Head: Doctor Who seems to have left fingerprints all over this record. What does science fiction give you as songwriters that realism doesn't?
Ken: Watching Classic Doctor Who was such a foundational part of my childhood. I am not sure if the stories of the show had much influence on the band as did the show’s music. The sound of Classic Doctor Who really left its fingerprints on all of my musical tastes and sensibilities. It did feel like the future when I was a kid hearing the music of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, even the cold 1980s synths from the final decade of the original run got me excited about the DX7 and CS80. I have been watching the new series since it restarted in 2005, but it now seems like it is RIP, which is a bummer.
Cat: Ken tends to give his songs these titles that definitely lend themselves to sci-fi storytelling. And I’ve always loved taking the demo titles literally and writing songs based on them. Being able to use lyrics as a means of writing fictional stories has been one of my favorite parts of Occurrence. There’s only so much you can write about yourself and your own experience before it gets stale or repetitive.
Punk Head: Across the record there seems to be a fascination with transformation. Objects become characters, fandom becomes inspiration, jokes become songs, and playful tracks eventually give way to existential concerns. Is transformation something you consciously seek in your work?
Ken: As a playwright, it’s inevitable that in my songwriting that the possibility of change would be a bedrock of our music. In a way, we start to feel like each song is a scene or even a short play.
Cat: I definitely think of each song having characters that exist within the world of the song. And when those characters are put in difficult or strange circumstances, transformation is the natural byproduct.
Johnny: I agree with what Cat and Ken are saying. I will just add that’s probably the ideal way of looking at how we create. In the moment, it’s more about the journey.
Punk Head: Looking back now, what does the title GEMINI HOLE mean to each of you? Has its meaning changed since the record was finished?
Ken: The album started with a different name. For the longest time, we were calling it You might be an art project (lol). I was pretty fond of this title, but as we got closer to finalizing the track listing and figuring out the order, that title started to feel like a disservice. It wasn’t the right title anymore of what we made. The duality between dark and light, that vacillation between hope and hopelessness, GEMINI HOLE felt like it better encapsulated the energy and spirit of the album.
Cat: Like Ken said, the title was a late addition, but it ultimately does a much better job of summing up this absurd and bleak moment we humans find ourselves in right now.
