‘New EP’ is where a band or artist answers some questions about their latest release. Up next is Tristan Cordelia, who has just released her 2nd E.P.

When/where was the new EP recorded?
I recorded most of the guitar and bass tracks over the course of a week in January 2022 in my bedroom “studio” (on a Macbook using Ableton and a 2i2). The vocals were recorded sporadically throughout the next year, and the drums were recorded in early 2023 at Jevon’s house.

Who produced/engineered the EP? How did the tracks come together in the studio, or at home?
I handled most of the recording and comping myself, then sent the raw tracks to Viii who did some further edits and finally mixed and mastered it.

Did the shorter format of an EP give you the option to experiment in any way with your sound or with different forms of song-writing?
Not exactly. I wrote three of the songs on this record twenty years ago. ‘Communion’ and ‘His Hands’ have stuck with me longer than anything I’ve ever written, and I didn’t include them on my first EP because I knew I had to get that record under my belt before I could do them justice. ‘Dude Got Problems’ was written in the early 2010s around the same time as the songs on Time Will Ruin Everything, and covers similar material i.e. my struggle with alcoholism and trying to be a decent person while unsure who I was. ‘Paper Crown’ is a much newer song than anything else I’ve recorded, and has been by far the most difficult song both to write and record. It’s the only song I’ve written about my gender transition, and in its initial form had far too many words and the dynamics slip between heavy and soft in a way that did my head in trying to sing onto record. ‘Dresses!’ is a silly throw away song from a riff that I wrote around the same time as ‘Communion’ and ‘His Hands’; I did experiment with that one by using it as the backdrop to some glitchy breaks. The EP format was really just a way for me to tie these songs together.

Was there any specific gear you used to capture that?
All of the guitar parts on this record were recorded using a Gibson The Paul (stupidest name for a guitar, I know) which is a variation on the Les Paul, but made from solid walnut. For the heavy tracks I ran that through a J Rockett Archer overdrive pedal (a really creamy Klone) into an Orange Terror Stamp, and the combination of those three piece of gear are the key to the sound of the record. ‘His Hands’ is just the guitar into an audio interface. And although I had used a condenser mic on my first record, I learned that Chino just uses an SM58 on some of Deftones’ records, which is perfect for home recording because you don’t get neighbourhood noise in the background, and it’s less likely to experience damage if you scream your lungs out into it.

Is there a particular track or theme that the EP was formed around?
I mentioned that my previous record, Time Will Ruin Everything, was themed around my struggle to stop being a useless alcoholic in my late twenties. This one is more diverse in theme, since half the songs were written when I was 18 and the newest was written at 33. But ultimately it was an attempt to make a queer grunge record, something that ties together the rock music which was big when I was coming of age – especially Soundgarden, who taught me everything I know about rhythm, and to a lesser extent Deftones, the only other band to significantly influence the way I riff – with contemporary queer culture (hence the breakcore). ‘His Hands’ reflects the way I thought about my queerness as a masculine-presenting bisexual when I was 18, whereas ‘Paper Crown’ reflects my struggle to come out as trans throughout my twenties and early thirties. ‘Dude Got Problems’ was written when I was in the process of failing to be a man, admitting defeat even though I hadn’t conceded at that point. And ‘Communion’ is a response to the religious culture I grew up around in the Moutere hills, which was not queer friendly and whose judgemental attitude drove me into an edgelord form of atheism that I’m still stuck in to this day – I’m trying to shed some of that edginess while still retaining a healthy scepticism towards religion.

Where do you see the EPs place in growing an audience online? Do you see it as a progression towards an album or a separate entity?
I’m not sure I’ll ever record a full “album” because I’ve learned that I can’t really cope with any project whose projected plan is supposed to take more than a year. This record took me two years because I’ve had other responsibilities (particularly in activism) and because I struggled for months to find the right mixing engineer (it was worth the wait though, Viii is amazing!). But essentially, if I plan a project out and estimate it will take one year, even if I hit every delay possible (which I pretty much did with this one), it’s never going to drag on for more than another year. Whereas the one time I took on a project that was supposed to take three years, it dragged on for six and even then I had to abandon it unfinished. That’s not something I ever want to experience again – I think it would destroy me – and so I’m reluctant to plan a record of more than half a dozen tracks. But you know what? You can call this an album if you want to. I think there’s as much sonic variation in this to qualify. It’s just that it only has five tracks and clocks in around twenty minutes. Maybe if my workflow improves someday I’ll be able to do an 8-song album that clocks in around the 40 minute mark of a classic vinyl LP.

Which digital platforms is it available on?
Pretty much everything – Spotify, Soundcloud, Apple, YouTube – but I recommend downloading it from Bandcamp, where you can set your own price (you can even choose to pay nothing if you want). If the music industry is going to survive as something that musicians can actually make a living from, the Bandcamp format is the only one that will be sustainable for us.

Are you doing any gigs or promotion for its release?
I don’t currently have any gigs lined up to perform this material, although I’ve been singing in a Slipknot covers band for the last few months, so perhaps you’ll hear us at your local dive bar some time in the near future. I’ve performed the songs on this record so many times at this point that actually releasing them in recorded form has been a way to let them go and move onto other things. But I will do a music video for the title track sometime soon.