Episode 10: “curse of crows” with VigilantBaker
This week, Aoife interviews VigilantBaker about “curse of crows” from DEICIDE. “Still, the whole stance of violence and sort of lack of forgiveness- they’re not really something I personally feel very much. For better or worse, we tend to forgive people,” VigilantBaker says, getting philosophical, “whereas, on the other hand, these crows, these forces of nature, they don’t really have these complex emotions; they don’t have these conflicts we might have within ourselves.”
VigilantBaker studies ecology by day and occasionally commits data crimes or makes music by night. Find more of his music at vigilantbaker.bandcamp.com. Or don’t. That’s fine too.
This episode of idol board was edited by BONES, hosted by Aoife, produced by Tangereen Velveteen, transcribed by SigilCrafter Aya, and written by Aoife and Tangereen Velveteen. Find all episodes and transcripts of idol board at fourth-strike.com/podcast and follow @idolboard on Twitter for updates. Get all episodes plus bonuses by supporting Fourth Strike on Patreon.
Listen to “curse of crows” by the garages on Blandcamp:
Episode Transcript
[musical intro plays]ANNOUNCER:
You’re listening to a Fourth Strike production.[The intro and first verse of ‘curse of crows’ plays and fades out]
AOIFE:
Hello and welcome to idol board! I’m Aoife and I use she/her pronouns. In this podcast, I will be interviewing members of the garages about their songs, the creation process, and possible inspirations. My guest for this episode is garages band member VigilantBaker. Thanks for coming on VigilantBaker! Can you tell us your pronouns, your coffee style, and what song you’ll be talking about with us today?VIGILANTBAKER:
Hi, I’m VigilantBaker, he/him, and my coffee style is I guess just plain black coffee… If I wanna feel spicy I put maybe some maple syrup… or hot cocoa powder in thereAOIFE:
Oooh, that is good, I like that. So first off, when and why did you join the garages? The band itself, not the team.VIGILANTBAKER:
I guess I just, since I started blaseball back in either season 2 or 3, like, I mostly was into blaseball for the numbers at first. I’m kind of a pretty statsy person in my normal job so I, for whatever reason, really enjoy just playing around with the numbers and trying to sort of predict how well the players are gonna do, um, and so I didn’t really engage with the game beyond that for a few seasons? And then I started hearing some of the songs come out and I thought oh okay these are- these are kind of clever, but I think it wasn’t until uh… probably ‘in the feedback’ when I realized, “Oh these are about blaseball but they’re also not about blaseball?” And sometimes you can have, like, these deeper meanings to these songs that are just about a bunch of numbers in a simulation. So that kinda got me to sort of, like, play around with writing my own songs that are somewhere on my computer that no one will ever hear. [laughs]Uh, for a few seasons and it wasn’t until, uh, I guess it was ‘TRIBUTE ACT’ when they were covers, that I decided to, uh, try making a more electronic cover of ‘LIMITER: RELEASED’? I put together something kind of interesting there, but, like, I don’t think I was prepared to sing that at that point, so [chuckles] um, but then I just kind of popped into discord and said, “Hey does anyone like this song?” Both zack and yana just said “Hey I would love to sing for this song!” and a few hours later they both sent me their vocals and I put it together and since then I’ve kind of just been enjoying, uh, making more garages music of my own.
AOIFE:
Outside of what you’ve produced for the band, what is your musical background?VIGILANTBAKER:
I had a copy of FL Studio when I was a kid, um, I didn’t really know what I was doing. Um, I kinda just played around with, like, mixing different little midi instruments together and I think I might have some covers of, like, Chrono Trigger music or something. It wasn’t until… maybe around high school or college I started actually getting into playing real instruments. I got a guitar, played that a bunch, and then got a little greedy and ended up getting a banjo, an accordion, and a whole bunch of harmonicas, and then just kind of really only made music for myself. So I didn’t really have any experience sharing the music I made until recently. So, yeah it’s been a weird experience.AOIFE:
Yeah, definitely. So for ‘curse of crows’, how did this song start?VIGILANTBAKER:
So yeah when I first got into blaseball… that was around the time that the lots of bird weather was introduced and I thought that was kind of a fascinatingly absurd name for a… a very neutral weather type? All it really did was kind of extend the games a little bit longer, but had these kinda ominous messages about birds in the background and that really hit me in the right way. Later, when I started, uh, getting more into the garages, people have made a few songs that mention birds, but no one has really made a song about birds. And so I was like how can I take these messages and kind of weave them into a song. It started that way, I don’t know if it really ended that way, I might have one or two quotes from the actual birds weather in the song, but there was talk about making an album called ‘DEICIDE’ about killing gods and noticed that, uh, when that first boss battle against the peanut happened, that the shelled ones pods had this modification on them called a curse of crows, meaning that essentially whenever there’s bird weather then players on that team, I think get attacked more, meaning that the peanut god is more- kind of weak to these birds.AOIFE:
So as you’ve said, ‘curse of crows’ appears on ‘DEICIDE’ which is an album about killing gods, but like I feel like it has a bit of a different stance from the other songs. In it you say that quote “I might somehow give in, show you mercy you don’t deserve” you also say that the birds “don’t want blood and they don’t seek justice”. What are your thoughts and beliefs that underpin this song and do you feel like they were at odds with the position of the album itself?VIGILANTBAKER:
Um, y-yeah. So sort of, when I was trying to think about how I can write a song about killing gods, which I mean in this sense is not actual killing of anything, it’s more about the concept of bringing down a- really the embodiment of whatever evil you want, fascism or capitalism or whatnot, but still the whole stance of violence and sort of lack of forgiveness- they’re not really something I personally feel very much, um, and it’s a stance that I completely understand other people feeling, but it’s hard for me to really make a song about that? Um, especially, like, I was listening to, I believe, ‘pathetic/spineless’ and that song- wonderful song- brings about a lot of emotions, but the sort of- the narrator of that song really views their opposition as this pathetic, spineless being that they don’t really show forgiveness for. The question of whether we should be forgiving these terrible people, these terrible things, is far more complicated than this, but it’s deep in human nature. We have this- for better or worse, we tend to forgive people, whereas on the other hand these crows, these forces of nature, they don’t really have these complex emotions; they don’t have these conflicts we might have within ourselves. They’re not going to suddenly stop pecking at a peanut if they don’t really feel bad about it.AOIFE:
That’s a really interesting point because I feel like when I listen to your song, it seems almost like nature and the animals are kind of almost, like, seen as divine in some aspects? It definitely, like, gives me the vibe of, like, it’s not about morality for them?VIGILANTBAKER:
Exactly, yeah. Exactly.AOIFE:
Onto, like, the mechanics of the piece, I found the effects you used in the vocals particularly interesting. What effects did you use to create that and why?VIGILANTBAKER:
Yeah, I mean, you can hear on my microphone now, this is the microphone I use to record things it’s… it’s not an amazing quality microphone, but it’s fine, um, [chuckles] and usually a lot of the music I might… listen to, tends to be a lot more lofi, um, just stuff that came out in, like, late 90s early 2000s, with people that don’t have very good microphones. They’ll just take a guitar and record it in their terrible microphones and for whatever reason, that sort of rawness, that lofi sound is just something I enjoy in music? To make that more lofi sound I’ll take off, the uh low end and the high end- [VigilantBaker’s audio distorts slightly, losing the high and low end of the sound]-so it sort of mimics this, uh, it sounds like it’s coming out of, like, a- an old telephone or something-
[VigilantBaker’s audio gains more distortion]
-you add in a little bit of distortion-
[VigilantBaker’s audio gains reverb]
-and you, uh, add in just a little bit of reverb, and then you kind of get that sound that what I’m going for there.
[One line of vocals from ‘curse of crows’ plays, before fading out]
VIGILANTBAKER:
[VigilantBaker’s audio returns to normal] The problem is, like, the levels you need to get to make it sound exactly that way are kind of precise. I don’t know if I could, uh, quite do that again. What I really wanted to do was, uh, record some kind of harmony with my own voice and I never actually got around to that. I’m… I’m not good at hearing harmonies, I’m not good at actually, uh, singing harmonies, um, but what I did do, is I had two different vocal takes that I wasn’t completely satisfied with the first one and so I just kind of put them together and I realized that this kind of makes this- this ominous sound that really fits with the whole, uh, feel of the song.AOIFE:
Yeah definitely. So for the song, what were your musical inspirations?VIGILANTBAKER:
Yeah, as I was talking about it’s probably more the, uh, lofi, sad, philosophical, indie dudes, um, [chuckles] that I listened to in college, things like ‘The Mountain Goats’, ‘Neutral Milk Hotel’, Elliott Smith, ‘Microphones’, ‘Bright Eyes’ and probably a little bit of Bob Dylan in there. There’s always a Bob Dylan in what I- [chuckles] in what I do.AOIFE:
I hadn’t thought of the Elliot Smith influence, but now especially with the ‘BLASEBALLIDAYS’ cover that you did, I definitely see that. Which is really interesting because I am a huge Elliott Smith fan.VIGILANTBAKER:
Speaking of Elliott Smith, I think that’s probably what influenced, like, the chords I was playing there? Normally I like to take, like, major chords and try to make them sound sad but… I think in this song I wanted to sort of experiment around with trying to actually use minor chords more, which I don’t do. The actual chord progression in the verse is probably very influenced by thatAOIFE:
So of the song what is your favorite part- like, what are you most proud of?VIGILANTBAKER:
Oh that’s a- that’s a tough one, ‘cause I’m just kind of proud that I made the song, uh, some of the lyrics I made I’m particularly proud of. Like, I like lyrics that have a little bit of wordplay in them so the one line that I really liked was-[One line from ‘curse of crows’ plays, the lyrics of which are “they have no reservations, and they’re ready to be served, and there are so many birds]
VIGILANTBAKER:
-Just… anything with wordplay is always really fun to me.AOIFE:
Oh, I just got that! [Both laugh together] Yeah that’s really good. What has the community reaction been like for you? Both for the song and also just being a part of the garages as a whole.VIGILANTBAKER:
For the song in particular, uh, when it was first released on YouTube or when it’s, like, playing on THE BAND PLAYS or whatever, um, I’ll notice a lot of people might just, uh, start making bird noises [chuckles] which is really fun, like, I have a tendency to take some of my songs too seriously, so when people engage with it in a much more fun way that I really appreciate that. Um, [chuckles] and yeah, just seeing people just make random bird noises and just engaging with it on that much lighter level is really fun to me, um, but just in general? As being part of the garages is- honestly I don’t know how I feel about that because, like i said earlier, like… m-most of the music I’ve ever made I’ve made for myself, it’s instead of, like, playing video games, which I still do plenty, um, I might just make music for myself instead maybe. Like, I mean my partner’s heard most of my music and maybe a few of my friends? But for the most part, it really doesn’t… get out to people, so when other people actually hear it, it’s just a weird feeling.AOIFE:
Yeah, definitely.VIGILANTBAKER:
It’s really fascinating that fans kind of hear different things themselves like I was just, uh, saw people that were trying to interpret, um, the song that I had on ‘we are the garages (vol 2)’ called, uh, ‘forbidden knowledge’ and they had a completely different interpretation than I did and I-I honestly love that they had a completely different interpretation because that just means people really experience this entire art in a completely different way.AOIFE:
Lastly, outside of your own work what do you think is the most underrated song by the garages?VIGILANTBAKER:
Yeah, this is a tough one for me, I had to really think about it, um, it- it’s really hard to, uh, judge that because I mean my personal rating of most of these songs is just incredible, so the best answer I really have here is… probably, uh, ‘crashing’ from ‘DEICIDE’ because that entire- the entire album is full of amazing songs but sort of ‘crashing’ being near the end and just like people might talk about some of the other songs more, when really like that’s the one that just- it’s maybe underrated compared to the rest of ‘DEICIDE’, um, but it’s still just the sort of the panning that goes on and, like, the rawness of the guitar and that- just… I think seb did a great job with that one.AOIFE:
Thank you so much for joining us on idol board, a podcast where we interview members of the garages, an anarcho-syndicalist blaseball band from the fictional location of Seattle. We make songs about being gay, the apocalypse, and fighting the gods, and you can find our music at blandcamp.com, with an L, Spotify, or on YouTube. We’ll see you next week! Now, here’s ‘curse of crows’ by VigilantBaker of the garages![‘curse of crows’ plays in its entirety.]
ANNOUNCER:
idol board is edited by Ada Quinn, BONES, Jennifer Cat, Nerdy Sims, and zack.ry. Hosted by Aoife, produced by Tangereen Velveteen, transcribed by SigilCrafter Aya and Merry, and written by Aoife and Tangereen Velveteen.[outro music plays]