Interview: Savannah, GA Based Artist cunabear Discusses His New Album "Spirit Animal Club-House"
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“I hope “Spirit Animal Club-House” speaks to you in a way that is personal to you and you alone. Don’t try to qualify or quantify all of your experiences during your time on this planet. Absorb it, give it time and space in your life and let it show you what it wants to. ”
Congratulations on the completion and release of your album "Spirit Animal Club-House"; it's a very dope project. Tell us about this self-produced album from a creative standpoint and what inspired you to develop it.
Thank you! “SACH” comes from spending most of 2019’s first half watching my father’s health decline to a dangerous place due to years of cigarette smoking, and spending the second half in a very opposite world- in the rap-career side of things, I was making bigger moves forward than ever before; playing shows with rappers I look up to in New York, touring to new places at the end of the year and the beginning of 2020.
The polarizing experiences, and the lessons they taught me really formed the core of the album’s subject matter.
It’s an album about being present and coming to terms with who and where you are in life right here in this moment, because it’s fleeting and your mortality is not guaranteed so you must seize each opportunity to live.
Were there songs that you recorded that did not make the album's final track list? If so, why not?
There was a verse to the title track that I ended up scrapping because I couldn’t ever find something that felt like it fit. That beat is just so happy. It’s such a moment of sunshine and I love it so much that covering it with my voice felt like a disservice to the production.
There were more instrumental-only beats that would have been scattered in as well, and they’re all available on the “SACH” Instrumental release, found via BearTooth Collective’s Bandcamp.
How would you say that this album compares thematically and sonically to your last release "sidequest 14+15"?
My “sidequest” series is more or less an opportunity to share beats and loops and sketches of musical ideas that I’ve accumulated on my desktop over a month or two. They’re hardly ever structured and very loose thematically, I don’t even really think about them as proper beat-tapes. More like the monthly experiments, harvested from the brain and presented to the class.
When someone listens to the album for the first time, what do you want them to take away from the experience?
I hope “Spirit Animal Club-House” speaks to you in a way that is personal to you and you alone. Don’t try to qualify or quantify all of your experiences during your time on this planet. Absorb it, give it time and space in your life and let it show you what it wants to.
Hell, half the time I don’t even know what my albums are going to teach me or show me until they’re years old. Take your time with the music you listen to and listen to it consciously.
With the album now released, what are some of your goals musically for the remainder of 2020?
I’m always working on multiple projects at once.
I’m hoping to put together a music video for “SACH”, but i don’t know which song yet.
My side project, “MELTYHERMIT”, will be releasing its 4th LP in 2020.
I have a few mixtape/collab situations in the works as well, and another solo-album, but all of those dates are tentative. Maybe 2020, maybe 2021.
I’ve been learning patience and taking my time has been fruitful so the pace will set itself for now.
Stream and Share “Spirit Animal Club-House” on Spotify
Stream and Share “Spirit Animal Club-House (Instrumentals +) on Bandcamp
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