GLITTER LITTER

“Unless women are allowed to reach their full potential, America will not reach its full potential.”
These words, drifting through a fusion of futuristic electronic punk in a downtown Austin dive bar, were my introduction to the Austin based duo, Glitter Litter.

Glitter Litter are Monica and April, who write and self-produce their music and met working together at Guitar Centre. After introducing myself and declaring my love for what I had just witnessed, we caught up the following day on a melting summer’s afternoon at their favourite spot, Ladybird Lake. Their conversation danced from the latest effect pedals for Monica’s violin, her Hawaiian exchange where she is enrolled in 3 ensembles (Japanese, Korean and Orchestral) and April’s other project Vital Sines. Vital Sines is an art installation piece which explores cymatics, in this instance visualising sound through water.

April and I did this interview over email a few days later. She describes Monica as the ‘smartest 20 year-old I’ve known’ and reflects on living in a ‘world of problems that most of us didn’t create.’

Tell us a bit about Glitter Litter, you’ve been described as no-wave electronic music – does this best describe your sound?

Yeah, that was the best anyone could do trying to put Glitter Litter into a genre. The music is non-traditional and lacks structure and is border line performance art.

You’ve previously been a solo act however Monica recently joined on violin – how did you guys meet?

Monica is awesome and the smartest 20 year-old I’ve known. She started working at Guitar Center with me a couple months ago and it didn’t take us very long to be friends. We like a lot of the same music and have a lot of the same feelings about things happening right now in the US and locally in Austin. When I told her about the show at Beerland, she asked if she could help load gear in so she could get in as a “minor” and I just said “you should just play it with me!”

At the start of your set, you could hear ‘Unless women are allowed to reach their full potential, America will not reach its full potential…’ spoken over the music. Do you set out for your music to have a specific message?

It’s a quote from Obama’s “It’s On Us” campaign to end sexual assault on campuses. It obviously applies to a lot more than that too. I just feel compelled to talk about the oppressive nature of our culture towards women, blacks, homosexuals, non-Christians and the lower class as a whole. We live in a world of problems that most of us didn’t create.

Your live set up is really interesting, especially the way you were affecting sound through a motion sensor, I’ve never seen that before. Can you talk us through your live set up?

I love talking about nerd stuff like my controller. I use a Numark Orbit because it’s wireless and has those X and Y accelerometers. In Ableton I used Simpler with a couple samples, made an Instrument Rack, racked tons of fx and made 7 Macro Controls, and then made 4 Macro Controls to control those 7. Two of the knobs are mapped to the accelerometers. One is a bit crusher, and the other is a phase reverb effect. So I just use motion the way I would use a knob. Everything thing else is a clip or me taking advantage of the “Slice to Midi” function in Ableton when working with audio so I can take synth samples and play them live.

Your music comes across with a punk attitude. What are your influences?

The list could go for days, I’ve been listening to punk since I was like 10 years old. Melt Banana, Nervous Gender, The VSS, Le Tigre, Grimes, Quintron and Miss Pussycat, Screeching Weasel, Sonic Youth, and All Leather. Right now, I can’t stop listening to The Soft Moon.

I read you’re interested in developing wearable technology. Are you interested in incorporating this into your live shows?

I recently made a software plug-in and controller built into my jacket where it freezes the audio when I bend my elbow but it’s not reliable enough for live, yet! It takes like 58% of my CPU running it in Ableton, and I have a pretty fast laptop. The plan was to use it for live, hopefully that’ll eventually happen.

You also produce your own music. Can you talk us through the process?

It all starts with me twisting knobs and experimenting. Lots of just garbage noise until I get inspired. I used to try to do what all the pros say, “get good drums first”, but these days I just start with a synth I like and feelings I have.

What female musicians do you most admire?

Kim Gordon, Bjork, Grimes, Missy Elliot, Deap Vally, Gaga, and Brody Dale.

What does the future hold for Glitter Litter?

I want to write more songs for guitar and bass and make the performance less driven by a laptop. Having Monica playing violin with Glitter Litter makes performing way more fun for me and hopefully for anyone watching. In a few weeks, Monica is going to Hawaii for four months to study but we’ve already talked about writing music long distance and playing more shows when she’s back. - The Ladies Network