[Transcript edited for clarity]

Absent Sounds: Hello, you're listening to Absent Sounds here on CJAM 99.1 FM Reaching Higher Ground in Windsor and Detroit. My name is Weadee Mombo and each week on Absent Sounds we picked two albums to dive into, giving you interesting tidbits along the way, from top to bottom. Today we are so lucky to be joined by a band who's gonna be taking us through one of the albums that they just released, last year. And that is Tomato Flower. Hello guys. Welcome to the show. I guess to start off, if you wanna just say, “hey my name is,” and what you do in the band so people can get familiar with your voices.

Jamison Murphy: Jamison Murphy Murphy. I play guitar and sing.

Austyn Wohler: I'm Austyn Wohler. I play guitar and sing and play keys.

Michael Alfieri:I'm Mike Alfieri. I play the drums.

Absent Sounds: Nice. And I'm Weadee and I do nothing in the band except interview them. So today before we even get into the album, I always like to get familiar with bands or people that haven't heard you guys before or haven't listened to your work, which I mean, you obviously get familiar with them after today, but in the meantime, is there, I guess could you just give us a bit of a background on the band, how you guys got started, how you met, how everything became Tomato Flower?

Michael Alfieri:Yeah. We met in Baltimore.

Austyn Wohler: Jamison and I had started; we were in a previous band in Atlanta called Paradise Montage. And as that band was ending, we were writing for the next band, which would become Tomato Flower. We played a show or two, just me and him. But then I met Mike at an experimental music festival. And I was like, we're looking for a drummer. And he is like, I'm a drummer. And then we all started playing together. For a while. We were a three piece. It took us a long time to find a basis.

Absent Sounds: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It's interesting 'cause when my sister and I were doing some digging, we found that the name Tomato flower also came from something you wrote. Can you tell us a little bit about that too? Or even what it means now, if the meaning has changed for you over the years.

Austyn Wohler: Yeah, it's from a novel I wrote that is coming out actually this August called Hothouse Bloom. In the novel it had been this moment where she moves to a farm and is very much a city person and is astounded by everything. And it's a moment where she encounters something she's never seen before and it’s symbolic of like new information. New ways of living. But I actually ended up taking that scene out of the novel because once Tomato Flower kind of, I don't know, became more of a thing, I was like, I don't want people to think it's just like a band reference. So yeah, over the years it's just becomes like, sound,

Jamison Murphy: I think there's always been a certain joy in the delicacy and pastoral quality of the name with being in a band that can be very ugly and experimental when we choose to be. So that, that's part of it too, is that I think it's there's a play between the pastoral and the synthetic that we've always wanted from the name.

Absent Sounds: I really like that description of it too. And I think the really nice thing about the name is the way it is pastorally, how it sits so nicely or so daintily in your mind. A lot of different quotes or lyrics from you guys do end up- even I can't exactly determine what it is, or, what you're talking about sometimes. But I think it just stays with you for a long time in an interesting way. So I guess what I'm wondering is if there are other lyrics or other quotes or just different passages that kind of stay with you over time, over this year so far.

Austyn Wohler: I don't remember exactly who the poet is, but I have this book of Chinese poetry translated by Kenneth Rero. And there's this poem with this line like “why do I spend my days bridled like a horse with a cruel bit in his mouth? This is the only life a man could find happiness,” and I think this past year was tough for me, and that quote would reappear in my head pretty often.

Absent Sounds: That's so lovely. That's lovely. Just that picture. Wow. How did you find the book

Austyn Wohler: My friend gave it to me last summer. It's called Love in the Turning Year.

Michael Alfieri:Right now I have Pierre Schaeffer on the mind 'cause I was like going over that stuff. He's a music concrete composer and so I was looking at a little bit of his history, and he talks about sound and like the ‘is’ itselfness of the sound phenomenon, is something that I was like looking into today and discussing. So that's like a takeaway right now. And just I think also seeing people's reactions to the music is very cool. We just got off a tour and some of those conversations I was having with other people that came out to the shows, they were awesome. And those are really great things. Talking about some drum stuff and some other things, nothing specific, but the is-itselfness. That blew my mind.

Absent Sounds: I'm gonna have to think about that for a while to unravel that, but I do like that a lot. And Jameson, did you have any?

Jamison Murphy: I have to think about this one.

Absent Sounds: No problem. While you're thinking about that we'll shift gears just a little, and talk about the object you hold on the cover.

Jamison Murphy: We had a lot of different versions holding different things. I definitely wanted the backward facing angel.

Austyn Wohler: The angel of history.

Jamison Murphy: Yeah. The angel's gotta face backwards,

Austyn Wohler: it's a enjamin thing, the angel of history. Facing back moves forward. But anyway

Absent Sounds: Is there a theme that you feel like keeps popping up in your work? 'Cause the word no, would show up. Is there something that you keep finding will just appear without necessarily harnessing it or trying to bring it to the forefront.

Austyn Wohler: Yeah. Life comes up a lot. Just speaking to mine though, Jamieson, I'd be curious to hear yours too.

Jamison Murphy: Yeah it's gotten a lot more emotional during the time that we've had the band. I think it started somewhat clinical and heady and has become more, much more from the heart. There are specific like thematics and words that come out, but a lot of that too is almost less conceptual than musical. If a word reappears in particular melodic settings or, contexts brought about by the music, that's often just a sonic choice. And the content of it follows afterward a lot of the time. But there definitely are, ‘no’ is one example. Plenty of words and thematics that just sonically reappear in our songwritting.

Michael Alfieri:And I think the way that we're playing, is changing. Its exactly what you were talking about before, like things that are coming up, and I think that is all actually evolving in this emotional way, but it's still all the same as the stuff that was happening on the EPs. I think there's arrangement things and things that come to be- like our voices as we're collaborating, there's all different parts of it moving together, but everybody's like still putting their thing on it. I think we're still the same. But that has just evolved

Absent Sounds: That makes sense for sure. I think what my sister and I were talking about previously is that it's not necessarily that it's different, but it almost feels as if it's just like this dissonance is just growing or it's almost feels stronger than in the EPs. There's this thread that is almost becoming thicker that you can feel throughout it.

Michael Alfieri:Yeah. And I think we're thinking about that sonically too. We're definitely deciding to do certain things sonically. And if there's low-fi moments, like there's low-fi moments and I think that's awesome. Like we wouldn't try to hide behind that. But we are thinking about like, how are we gonna present this music? Lo-fi is part of that. Maybe a really clear, beautiful sound at certain points, we wanna do that too.

Jamison Murphy: Some of the shift between records too was just happenstance of how they were made. We made the EPS just in our houses and then mixed them with somebody. But No was interesting. It's the first time, (at least I don't know if for the others in the band) we have ever made a record on a deadline, but we had just toured intensively for the first time. We did a tour of Canada and the US with Animal Collective, and then we came back and we had a couple of months to finish the record and go into the studio to make it. So I think some of it's coming to it as like a hardened live band and recording it semi live. Like just the process brought out some of that shift though some of it was consciously too.

Absent Sounds: The best way to hear that [shift] is just to listen to the record and actually dive into it. So we shall begin our little play through. And as we talk about it too, we'll be playing through the record. But first up, we got ‘Saint,’ and this is the first track for Austyn. We're gonna pick it up here with your vocal performance, because it almost sounds as my sister put it- “like it's breaking its own spine to stay standing.” Was the vulnerability hard to reach or really hard to leave after recording?

Austyn Wohler: Hard to leave. I'd say that's definitely a natural state for me.

Absent Sounds: When you're in that state. Are you type of person that wants to sit in it or do you seek out other things to help you alleviate that state that you're in? Yes.

Austyn Wohler: Oh, I sit in that stuff. I marinate. I'm very much someone who's interested in tragedy and commiseration as a form and like narrative. I think that translates to music too- at least the music I make. I wouldn't actually even say that the music I listen to is particularly…. I make it sound like I'm over here listening to Elliot Smith all the time. Not really true, but I think that I think for me it's like I'm not a very technical player. So I think that maybe just an expressiveness both in playing and in singing is where I can contribute to the form

Absent Sounds: That's a lot of sense. And for both Michael and Jamison Murphy, to start the record off what's your head space when you enter into No With that song, what kind of place does it leave you in?

Michael Alfieri:That song hypes me up to play. I remember it was the first one. I think we started writing. I remember “Radical” and “Saint” were really early songs.

Absent Sounds: That a good answer, hype song. I love radical so much. I guess the top three songs are my favourites then. It's really the push and the pull in “Destroyer” that I really love. So I guess similar to what we were asking Austyn, but for you Jamison Murphy is the vocal- does it come from a praise of personal catharsis or is it more of a performance for you? Do you feel like you're letting anything out or is it “ I'm just gonna do this voice right now?”

Jamison Murphy: It's cathartic. It's both a formal choice and an emotional expression. Interestingly, the very first version of that song did not have screaming vocals. But it was right at the top of my range. And playing it loud with four micing, it just started to be screamed and then the scream has like slowly crept into more and more of the song. So it's about half screamed now. But that was a part of my voice I had never really accessed prior to that song. It's on more Tomato Flower songs like for the next record too. That's, it's become something I'm more comfortable with. But it's something I was always very interested in. I've always listened to music that sounds like that, but, I've always sung pretty sweetly in the past, and it's that was probably the first time on record that I'd really access a scream. I can remember one time I screamed on a song when I was like, 14. bands are, but that doesn’t count

Absent Sounds: La dispute? Touche Amore?

Jamison Murphy: The Pixies. The Pixies are the first that come to mind like that. I remember hearing de Basser when I was like 10 years old. And it was like frightening and exciting. And so I probably, Black Francis is the main scream, reference point. Interestingly, we've had this conversation in an interview before about screaming reference points.

Absent Sounds: Funny, but this is definitely a jumping off like a tangent, but I'm supposed to remember to ask this. You are wearing a lot of the shirt. It's it says that you survived the storm of ‘03. I think that was it. Why? What is the storm of ‘03? What is the shirt?

Jamison Murphy: Oh my God. I found that in a thrift store in Baltimore and the front is good, but the back is even better. It's like a palm tree and it says Jacksonville, Florida. I wish I had worn it inside out 'cause I prefer the back to the front. I did survive 2003. I was six, seven years old and I made it

Absent Sounds: I think it would also be funny if you were born in 2003 and it was like you survived being born, that was the storm. Your birth. But I still like that. Okay. We'll jump back for “Destroyer,” this is a question to all three of you. Do you think the walls we build to protect ourselves ever really keep the pain out or do they just keep us in?

Austyn Wohler: Oh God. That's the thing, like you let the walls down you and you let in the pleasure and the pain. You got the walls down you to keep it out. You don't really have it either.

Jamison Murphy: I'm a big wall builder in my personal life, but that is in order to have as few walls as possible in my artistic life.

Absent Sounds: Interesting way to look at it. I've never thought of it like that.

Austyn Wohler: I'm the opposite. I've struggled with having no boundaries and like no walls in the past, and I don't think I've had to learn this year how to like really build walls, at least me. It always,

Absent Sounds: As a person that really struggles with boundaries or struggles to build up walls, or at least I assume that, I feel like I struggled to do that, but it's only when I have, already let people in or I struggle to accept their boundaries. 'cause it almost feels as if I'm being rejected. Like a, it's like a, oh no, this is a, an abandonment right now. Yeah.

Austyn Wohler: Yeah. That's that anxious attachment.

Absent Sounds: What about you, Mike?

Michael Alfieri:Yeah, I dunno. I think now I feel like I'm in a spot where like I have a good balance, but there's, there was times where like I had no boundaries and then there's also like a lot of times where I'm like, how do I get this boundary down? Trying to figure that out

Absent Sounds: Yeah. I think there is no real answer to it. Sometimes it is just better to let things in, but sometimes you gotta just keep them up. So there are times where it works best to just keep it up. But yeah the things that work for you as a kid will sometimes work against you as an adult. So learning the best of both. And we'll jump down to “Radical.” I don't have any questions for this except I just love it and I want to hear more about it. So feel free to tell me anything about it.

Austyn Wohler: Yeah, that song took us a long time to finish. Like Mike was saying, we had an early draft of it for a long time, but the bridge took us forever. The lyrics are cool. It's a mix of the title or it's a mix of the speech that Anna gives in Anna Karenina I guess I'm thinking of the bridge specifically and like a bit of Prairie Fire by the Weathermen. So it's like Jamison Murphy and I’s interest in left history coming out in that song. Yeah. It's one that has developed live and then it's really fun to play live for sure.

Jamison Murphy: Yeah I feel like it's a song about political disappointment and disillusionment. Like I've always been very obsessed with the sixties and seventies in that moment. Just the reckoning with defeat. I don't even know necessarily. So like the verses are feel like grasping, defeat, but then I think on the bridge there's this sort of like apotheosis, like becoming the revolutionary subject or something. Just musically, I also really love that song. It's a very taut. It feels like a highwire to me.

Absent Sounds: Is it your favorite to play?

Jamison Murphy: It's one of my favorite songs musically in the band. One of my favorites just 'cause I love to rip that riff. Like I think everyone else in the band rolls their eyes at me, but I'm just like, I'm up there. I feel like I feel great.

Austyn Wohler: My favorite songs to play are the two new ones. I'd say. Mike, how do you feel about Radical?

Michael Alfieri:I love playing that one. I remember doing the bass drum like a bunch of times in the studio. Like that song wasn't right until we changed the bass drum pattern.

Absent Sounds: What was it about the bridge that took long?

Austyn Wohler: We kept on trying stuff and I kept on feeling like it was too macho. 'Cause it's such a macho riff, although, funny enough. Sabrina Carpenter has a similar riff from one of her songs, but I was like, it needs like an air element in there and like we kept doing stuff that I just wasn't happy with, and then I forget how we stumbled upon what it ended up being. But I was you're saying that I was the one who was con constantly just like shooting stuff down, honestly.

Jamison Murphy: It organically evolved as I remember it. The basic chords E to some form of A is what we had been playing the whole time, but formally, and also in relation to the lyrics, it was not set until relatively late.

Michael Alfieri:And did it start as a loop? Weren't you playing that riff at over a loop?

Jamison Murphy: On the [guitar sounds] that the was a loop, but the bridge was it just organically happened from us all playing it, if I remember correctly.

Austyn Wohler: Yeah. I'm trying to remember what, where, I don't know.

Jamison Murphy: It happened at 224 East 25th Street, Baltimore, Maryland. I remember that.

Austyn Wohler: Yeah. Oh man, see that's under consideration right now. Love is an illusion. It's also all there is and it's tough.

Austyn Wohler: It is so important to confront fear, I think it doesn't matter. I think that if you live your life just running towards what scares you, it's a life well lived

Absent Sounds: I guess the first question we have is what drew you to Nerval’s work. Some backstory for those who are confused- it Gerard de Nerval and he's a writer, a French writer. And that's where the images for “Sally and Me” came from or were taken from. So it what drew you to him?

Austyn Wohler: I was getting really heavy into the symbolists. I think I had an anthology of symbolist poetry. And I liked one of his poems and then picked up this book, Aurelia, that one of the, the. C-section imagery of that song comes from. But then also it was an old demo that Jamison Murphy and I had called Sally and Me. That was like very different song. It's a sort of like the demo version.

Jamison Murphy: It was a very cute song, like very gentle and cute, and then it got transposed into this, very experimental thing.

Absent Sounds: That's interesting. I guess the cute part of it, I don't know if this is necessarily cute, but Google says that “Sally and Me,” or that apparently Google says that for, sorry for Sally and me, that he famously walked a lobster on a leash and had a very dream-like sense of reality. Is that true? Do you know if that's true? Did he actually just walk his lobster on a leash? Yeah.

Austyn Wohler: I don't know if that's true.

Absent Sounds: I know, I feel like I'm asking an expert.

Jamison Murphy: hat's pretty cool though.

Austyn Wohler: Yeah. My favorite little bit of stuff like that is that Hu Dobro tried to bring Nightingales to Chile.

Absent Sounds: Oh. What was he just so enamored with them? He thought I'm just gonna bring them over.?

Austyn Wohler: Yeah it was just the romantic impulse to.

Absent Sounds: That's amazing We'll go down to Harley Quinn. Do you guys have any people in your life that are almost like a real life Harley Quinn? Really a person that's really wild. Unhinged.

Jamison Murphy: 100%. The thing that I always say is, or that I have said, I. With that song is that it's about when you have a friend who messes up repeatedly, but you still have a lot of love for them. And you're simultaneously like cringing and feeling this very deep kinship and connection. And trust me, I got some harlequins in my life.

Absent Sounds: What's the most unhinged thing that they've done or the things that they've like really messed up on that

Jamison Murphy: I absolutely cannot mention such things

Absent Sounds: You cannot [laughing]

Austyn Wohler: Yeah. It's a tough life.

Jamison Murphy: But I think that song ultimately comes from a place of love at the end of the day.

Absent Sounds: Yeah. I think so too. I feel like it's such a wonderful little mix of, like love from out of love from the comedy and the despair of it too. Do you find that humor works as a survival mechanism in your songwriting at all?

Jamison Murphy: Interestingly I've always been pretty averse to humor in songwriting. Interestingly on, No, there is a little bit of humor in some of the songs. I would say both “Harlequin” and “Magdalene” have this sort of humorous, like carnivalesque thing about them, but it's actually somewhere I personally usually don't go. And I think that's true of all of us. Humor doesn't- And it's not even to say that

Austyn Wohler: Humor is conservative.

Jamison Murphy: It's not even to say that it's like an aesthetic parameter that I'm opposed to because I, I do, there are funny songs that I love, but it's not really a component of my songwriting though, interestingly on, no, it is there a little bit,

Michael Alfieri:I think there is some sarcasm and irony probably and absurdity in some of stuff

Austyn Wohler: Yeah. I would say the closest I get is just sense of irony, but it's often a really like upsetting irony. I'm also very averse to humor. I don't know.

Absent Sounds: Yeah. Do you find I guess if you were thinking about the types of humor that you do enjoy when you are partaking in said experience? Is there like a specific type of humor?

Jamison Murphy: In songwriting there's always humor just in the occasion of the song containing something in it that doesn't go in a song. So like in “Harlequin,” nobody wants to see that as a phrase. It's not really a sung phrase, but to put that over an extremely mellifluous melodic line, to me that's funny. There is a sort of there is a performed humor just in the composition of the song. So I would say this with songwriting, I like jokes when jokes are built into the form. I don't like jokes when the singer is like, “Hey. I gotcha.” But I like jokes when the humor is embedded.

Austyn Wohler: It's a benign intervention. I like when Steely Dan sings any major dude. That's funny. I don't know.

Absent Sounds: Okay. I gotcha. Yeah I can see that.

Austyn Wohler: What else is funny? Devon, the dude, funny rapper. I like that. But it's also built in the form deeply in those songs- that's to Jamison Murphy's point

Absent Sounds: Or the band Cheekface, is it Cheekface? I don't know. But they go, listen to your heart. No, listen to your, I don't know, it's like a song. And then they just keep saying no, there's another voice. And I always found that kind of funny too. So I guess it's ones that are just like literally embedded into the song.

Jamison Murphy: That sounds like a great example. I don't know the song, but yeah. Where it's built in and there's something funny just in the fact that you're listening to a song and whatever's happening is incongruous.

Absent Sounds: We are gonna keep jumping down, gonna go down to eight, which is “Lost Lunar Love,” which we talked a little bit about before. Such a tender love song. There's a part sometimes I think that there's like this part of myself that is discovered through loving others in a way. And I almost feel, sometimes I feel guilty about loving people because it's oh, I'm just using them as a way to learn more about myself. Do you find that when you love others in any kind of capacity that you become a stranger to yourself? Or are you discovering more about yourself?

Austyn Wohler: I think it's important to bring us back to boundaries, to draw the line. I think that you can lose yourself in other people, for sure. But it's also we need connection. And you have to have your own sense of self in order to love others healthily, I think. Like you have to like, have your own garden that you can tend to and that can weather the storms of life in a sort of existential solitude in order to form a healthy connection with another person that is not using them as your lifeboat. And that's something that I've had to learn for sure.

Absent Sounds: I really do like that idea of tending to the garden of yourself. And then I think it is a kind of a healthy way to view it, because especially when it's almost like letting somebody into a house. That's when you're like, but nobody's home because there isn't really anybody there.

Michael Alfieri:I would say I’m pretty good fulfilling myself in any way. Anything I would need from somebody else, I don't know if I'm seeking things out from other people to fulfill myself.

Absent Sounds: Yeah I think that's definitely the idea of wants vs need and the idea of not needing this thing, but wanting it is a pretty powerful place to approach something from.

Jamison Murphy: There's a lot of wanting on the next record.

Absent Sounds: Ooh.

Jamison Murphy: Full of desire.

Absent Sounds: longing.

Jamison Murphy: Oh yeah.

Austyn Wohler: God

Absent Sounds: I'd be really excited for it though. Do you think it'll come out next year? This year?

Jamison Murphy: We'll see we still need to make it,

Absent Sounds: but it's there.

Jamison Murphy: The songs are there, but it's not tracked.

Absent Sounds: This is on the same train of thought as wants and needs and longing, but in “Temple of the Mind” it almost feels like closing your eyes and looking and opening them inwards. Was this track meant to be so short or did it carve out its own space?

Austyn Wohler: I think that it's just came out that way. I think a lot of our songs come out short. What do you think Jamison Murphy?

Jamison Murphy: I think that song specifically, there was a very much a like classic pop formalism thing going on, so that was very much intentionally short, I would say. And it's also very conventionally structured. Verse course versus course middle eight, yeah. In a way that many of our songs are not. And so I think it was, yeah, the idea, it was like supposed to be like the, A side of an AM radio seven inch, so I think that's a formal constraint thing that made that one short. But sometimes our songs are short just because, I don't know. I think a minute and 30 seconds can be sufficient for a piece of music,

Absent Sounds: Or a minute and 54 seconds too. Another question for you. What's a spoon shade?

Michael Alfieri:It's a type of plant.

Absent Sounds: Oh. I should have just searched that up. That's so simple.I was like, is this some kind of metaphor for something else, or is it just like a spoon? Jade? It sounds really cool though.

Michael Alfieri:A Gollum? Yeah, like a Gollum jade. They look really cool.

Absent Sounds: Where did that come from? Is it just like a plant that you guys were obsessed with at the time?

Michael Alfieri:I saw it at like a botanical place, a garden,

Absent Sounds:. And it just caught, and it just ended up on the record. I love things that,

Michael Alfieri:That I was in at that point. It all connected to what was happening in my life and what was happening and like the record and stuff too. So that kind of stuck as a title.

Absent Sounds: Yeah. I love that. As we, I guess come to the end of the record too, a lot of different parts of your lives definitely find themselves in the music. And has being in Tomato Flower changed the way that you see yourself outside of music? I know when I'm creating something, there's a Weadee that lives within this thing that I'm working on. But, and then sometimes it influences the way that I view myself outside of it. So has that been true of you for Tomato Flower?

Austyn Wohler: I think for me, for sure. Maybe less so than Mike and Jamison Murphy didn't really, I think Jamison Murphy and Mike maybe knew they were musicians from my younger age and with more sort of dedication. I think that there was always part of me that was like, oh, is this something I'm gonna be doing? Am I just gonna be playing a bands in college? Am I just gonna be playing in bands in my twenties and like not really sure about its place and my identity or something. But then I think over the last year I've, for various reasons, maybe taken a step at what my relationship to music actually is. And like this band and music in general has become like a pretty undeniably large part of my life. And it's gonna be probably there forever, which is cool. It wasn't really intentional, but that's where we're at.

Jamison Murphy: For me, on that same, tomato Flowers is the first time I've ever had a fully successful, like band with traction that people know about, and that has completely changed my life and the way that I view music. I would be making music even if this band had never gotten off the ground, or any band that I had been in had never gotten off the ground. So the practice wouldn't change, but the self-conception of doing music publicly and being able to pull up and have an audience in cities, I don't know completely changed my life, completely changed myself perception, and it's extremely important to me.

Michael Alfieri:I would be playing in bands. I just like playing in bands, but playing in Tomato Flower makes me very happy. So I love doing that. I think it's an important part of our identities anyway, if it is publicly perceived, maybe there's an identity, but I would just be playing in bands. It's just cool to make sounds and to do it with cool people and to be able to connect with cool people who are ever interested in the sounds that we make together as a group,

Absent Sounds: For sure. And I kind of wanna pull out something that Austin mentioned briefly about how, you're just wondering if you were gonna do it just in college or as playing music, but it ended up being, evolving to something else too. And I guess to end off, the last question I'll ask is, what do you hope still rings true for the album, even after a long after.

Jamison Murphy: The spirit of modernism in rock music. It's something that I feel like all of us in various ways have encountered and seen other people do that sort of changed our lives. But just the sense that the rock band is a living form that can push in a lot of different directions, like I would hope that No would be a testament to that. And I would also hope that, five years, 10 years time, No would be one in a series of records that we have made that carries the torch of the modernist spirit in guitar music.

Absent Sounds: That's very well said. Is that true for everyone else as well?

Michael Alfieri:I sign off on that too. That's cool.

Absent Sounds: And there you have it. There's the end of the interview. Those are all my questions. Thank you guys so much for doing this and for bearing with me. Lovely performance as always. I hope the whole show went well, and all the shows were amazing.

Jamison Murphy: Canada was awesome. We had a lot of fun the first time we were in Canada and we had a lot of fun this time too. It was great. Thank you so much.