text-interview with dea decay! -- magenta
HEADLESS BLOOD IDOL 05.05.2021



DEA DECAY- of THE ELECTRONIC WASTE talks shop about music, gear, synth fondness, we hear a little about being one of florida's few out transgender teachers, and why there is a local band section of her show! I caught up with DEA DECAY for a mini-interview, and asked about the upcoming WORLD GOTH DAY event, we cover music, gear, making your first video set, and found out the answer to i feel like, a wonderful amount!


DEA DECAY has opened not one but TWO HBI community shows! you may have caught some of her music or watched her show-- heck, you might even be a student, reading about how rad your teacher is in the future, a myriad of things could be directing you here, but the one thing you need to know is: I HAVE SOME ANSWERS TO SOME QUESTIONS

i'm notsleeping: dea decay is Dea:

<the interview follows>

notsleeping: Hiii! this is magenta skull [she/they], and i am here today talking thru the internet to the wonderful DEA DECAY! we are conversing thru time and text to bring you this interview. we aren't live so im obviously keeping what i write here short so that we just get a couple questions from me and the rest direct from DEA DECAY!

notsleeping: first off, what are your pronouns?

Dea: Thank you for asking. My pronouns are She/Her andThey/Them. Sometimes other stuff. Those are pretty consistent though.

notsleeping: Hi Dea! great set! how's it going? do you wanna say a quick hi to everybody before we get started?

Dea: Hi everybody! I'm not sure if this is literally meant to be me saying hello, or code for me to provide an introduction? I'm Lydia and I perform under Dea Decay. Some of my friends call me Dea though. Some of my friends have trouble distinguishing screen names and performance names from my name though but both are fine as Dea came about as counter programming to people trying to call me Lyd/Lid instead of Lydia.

notsleeping: what have you been up to lately?

Dea: Finishing up the school year. I teach, which I realize you know but others might not. Apart from that making music. I was working on an album but might be doing 2 albums now. Also I have a lot of half finished projects I hope to get to soon. I painted my cassette rack black and I'm meaning to paint designs over it, I even made a stencil so I can spray it on but I need to tweak it a bit. I've got a set coming up for World Goth Day as part of an international DJ set on May 22nd. I've got the Headless Blood Idol Comp I am still trying to figure out a song to put on. I've got a synth bassline I'm contributing to a friends band's track. My own band is starting to make stuff again though our singer is currently ill. I'm sound proofing my studio. I'm also replaying cyberpunk. I'm sure I'm forgetting something. [reader note : compilation closes May 31 :) -magenta]

notsleeping: how long have you been making music?

Dea: About 2 years. I got my first synth 2 years and 5 months ago. I learned what a synth was shortly before that.

notsleeping: are you making the style of music now that you started making?

Dea: Yes? I think. I've been pretty consistantly all over the place. My first tracks were soundtracks for movies that I imagined. I still do that in a way. [awesome. -magenta]

notsleeping: so tell me about your show!

Dea: I host Electronic Waste which as of writing this has just moved to Friday Nights on Twitch at Dea_Decay [link here]. I was getting a lot of encouragement to DJ, and I'm friends with a lot of DJs. Obscura Undead, and in particular Maus of Tampa or Maus Chan (There are two Maus-ice...sss) on that channel who was really encouraging as well as my friend Heather Hz who I went to high school with (not part of Obscura Undead, she DJ's drum and bass). I feel the title and my recent spree of tracks gives the impression the show would be very electronic music heavy, and yeah many nights it is, but honestly genre wise I feel like its got some variety to it. Its why my flyers always have made up genres as I really don't know far in advance what I'm going to play other than something from my digital collection which is... oddly... a lot of things that really inspired me early on. The stuff I had on CD or maybe never owned a copy of that I love.

Dea: More concisely my show is a 2 hour weekly set of music I like which is constrained largely by what I own vs just anything I like. There's a lot of industrial bass and dark synth lately. That is often the first whole hour, or at least very electronic music. From there I do a roughly half hour set of local music. Then I often finish it off with just literally whatever I feel like, often using it as a time to experiment and do mashups of songs on the fly.

notsleeping: so i notice that on your show you put a lot of serious time into showcasing local bands, can you tell me about what made you start doing that?

Dea: Zamrock. I got into Zamrock not that long ago and while reading the history of Zamrock I learned that a big reason for its rise as a genre (that is Zambia Rock music) was due to laws in Zambia that required radio stationed to play a certain percentage of local music. This mandate wound up opening the doors to a lot of local bands and really helped foster the genre. I'm not saying I back that politically but it got me thinking about how the whole scene grew and flurished, at least according to the sources I read and watched, because of this decision. I love my local scene and before Covid I went to a LOT of shows. I'd see people hang around outside while the local acts opened, or show up late to a show because it was just "some local band" and many of those local bands are incredible! And some of those local musicians are now my friends (though I don't personally know many of the ones I play on my show). I've even had students who were really talented that want a venue and an audience to play for and... well I might only have a dozen people on a good night but I'm going to play them.

notsleeping: is there anyone that you are really fangirling out on hard right now?

Dea: Other than literally everyone at Headless Blood Idol including my wonderful girlfriend Metusynth? Its honestly hard to say like on one hand there are dozens and dozens of bands and solo musicians I really love and am really excited to hopefully see live after Covid. Nico of Community Towel, GILT, The Nervous Girls they're all local performers I would really want to see live or just ahng out with. I'm like a perpetual fangirl of Sam of Look Mum No Computer. The guy is so talented, inventive, and absolute genious and a real inspiration. Its hard to think of an act that I'm fan girling over so much as just like really excited to get to see live. I also oddly get super into people I know who've expressed interest in playing. I have a local friend who recently got her first synth and I only got to hang out with her and play synths once but I want to do it more. I've some students who have expressed interest in learning various interests and I kind of want to bring everything I have and let them practice after school. I don't know. Getting to do those things excite me more right now than being like "OH Hey Its X" and like mindlessly drooling over. Wait no I'm a liar. Black Dresses / Ada Rook & Devi McCallion. If either of them (or their band Black Dresses) drop so much as a single track I will drop everything and check it out.

notsleeping: what are some of the influences you have that people might not think

Dea: This is tough because I'm not sure what influences people think I have? I would say probably Motown, R&B, and Doo-Wop are probably influences people wouldn't think of though. Like if I'm on my own, I'm more likely to sing Under the Boardwalk, or the Still of the Night or even some Soul music. I also think its like the least likely to show in my music. I also really enjoy Jazz but I think in a way that kind of makes sense with some of my music. I love Zappa, Beefheart, and Moondog, I'm not sure how obvious that would be or not. Green Jelly was arguably the most influential band on me in that it got me into music and for similar reasons GWAR. Beck is probably one of the most obvious influences though, at least... compared to the other things I've listed. I'm really not sure where to stop with this question but yeah I'd listen to most anything which is why to me it is really hard to say what might not be obvious, but if people were to listen to me DJ or listen to my music... I don't think a lot of that would be obvious.

notsleeping: so you have a stream coming up for world goth day you mentioned, whats the scoop on that? how can readers tune in?

Dea: I'm literally having to look this up. I'm not very organized. I know its the 22nd of this month. It is in part a response to the fact that Wave-Gotik-Treffen was canceled/postponed again... let me see...

[link here] https://www.death-rock.de/en/events/22-23-05-2021-world-goth-day-livestream/?fbclid=IwAR2Y3OITTaJkVcK8SyVfYWFc38VAg6AeLWjtyu3Jv905b-tKMU7D8Lsrhqc

Dea: has the DJ lineup and times and stuff. It says to tune in to go here:

[link here] https://www.twitch.tv/wgd_around_the_world?fbclid=IwAR0_d-CAGvaP_b2u3atSQGg_FnYYPdEKOYyMxbxF4LedZ08ikXjANeRl098

Dea: I honestly thought it was going to be on my own channel but maybe that is re-hosting it? I honestly view that as like... future me's problem to sort out how to get that done. I don't do great at keeping organized, or having a schedule, or calendar, which is why I'm responding to your questions literally the day I got them because otherwise I literally won't remember to do them. I have trouble reading all the things about all the things... Its not just your discord like it feels overwhelmingly like a lot of information and I don't process that well so I have a lot of half finished things and a vague knowledge of what is to come but like... I can keep people updated as I become future me who will have to figure out what to do on World Goth Day.

notsleeping: how long have you been doing visual stuff?

Dea: I started doing visual stuff 1 to 2 weeks before the first Headless Blood Idol Community show and you should ask Metusynth about how fucking nervous I was about that. Like I was getting some pretty bad anxiety and was going to just do it all in OBS and try to do it one take because editing things is... intimidating. I want to insert that meme of Sailor Moon saying like I have to warn you I don't know how computers work. Despite nearly everything I do being on one. Also this is another question I struggle to answer. Does visual stuff include the flyers I made? Or like... as a trans girl I had a meme page for awhile back in the day so that was visuals. I've also been like... exisiting in the visible spectrum of light for most/all my life. Sorry I wish I could provide better answers for things.

notsleeping: what does DEA DECAY do for a day job? do you wanna talk about that at all?

Dea: Well I already mentioned I teach like twice. Teachers have a way of mentioning they teach a lot. I try to avoid it because I feel like it is a job that carries a lot of... feelings... among other humans that aren't always so positive. I teach high school though here in Florida. I was told I was the second openly trans teacher in the state but I doubt that. Still there are not many of us so.. Certainly the second in my part of the state. Anyway. I teach mostly World History. I do often get forced to teach other things but that's my passion. I can't limit myself to just US History like some teachers... its... so... there's just... so much more. To the world. And time. I like teaching government but unlike World History that can upset parents, and that leads to phone calls. So yeah, The World, that's where its at. I don't want to get into much more than that. Being a transgender teacher in Florida is still really... difficult and I don't aim to make it worse for myself. I just want to do my job well and be there for my students.

notsleeping: hardware or software?

Dea: I'll be honest. They're both really frustrating. So I mentioned before my like... computers can be such a pain. But when I use hardware getting a good clean recording onto my computer is a pain. I literally just wrote a track currently called Soviet Radio in which I couldn't get a clean recording of this bassline I really loved on my Korg Monologue. So what did I do? I wound up making the whole thing "Aesthetically lofi" just to make use of what wouldn't record into my DAW without interference. Now I could have done it on all software like I often do with my tracks but that doesn't clear up the having problems with computers part. Sometimes DAWs crash, sometimes VSTs stop working properly in the DAW. I mean there are all sorts of software problems that could and do happen. Sometimes my computer just acts up which limits my even using my DAW...

Dea: My hardware is pretty fun but like apart from not recording correctly sometimes I also have a very, very limited amount of space. It can be really difficult to set everything up, and like then there's the issue of it making noise and bothering the people I live with, and sure I could play into my headphones on hardware but now I'm like connected via a wire to the mixer and I dunno just all over the place.

Dea: I have things I love about them both too, obviously, or I wouldn't be making music but like.. tech frustrates me a lot. I grew up playing piano and I always wish I could play guitar because its easily portable and a lot of songs I love focus around them... Just so much easier to carry a guitar, an accoustic one, not even need an amp. I tried. I couldn't. I went back to keyboards and synths and stuff and like... omfg I've fallen in love with synths and all the sonic possibilities like seriously I'll just make noise and have a ton of fun but fuck the tech and the wires and bulkyness of it all...

Dea: Probably why my favorite piece of gear always winds up being my Tocante Pashti. Like I've not been able to write a single song on it but omg built in speaker, solar pannel, battery, hand held, and just beautiful looking. Followed by my Kalimba though that fucks up my nails.

Dea: So I guess... hardware... from a practicality standpoint. Very simple, single function, self contained, small hardware. But also maybe I just need laptop and I'll change my mind. I'm not sure if a OP-1 is hardware or software but sometimes I feel like that might be something I'd really take to IF I could transfer the stuff to a computer easily.

notsleeping: so gearhead question, i know you love your synths, do you wanna shout out any of your favorite gear?

Dea: Oh... I should really have looked ahead at this question. So the aforementioned Tocante and Kalimba due to their simplicity. My Deepmind 12 is still my baby for all its sonic possibilities. My Dreadbox Erebus for abstract stuff. My Electribe 2 is my baby. Like I've probably written more beats on that than anything and love how intuitive it is. Though I've run out of save spots and wish there was a quicker way to delete the sample songs it came loaded with, or to expand its memory. Also fuck SD cards. But Yeah, I love my Electribe 2. My Monologue by Korg was my first and I've actually gone back to it recently because I found new uses for it.

Dea: If anyone could like... help me set things up so that like... I could record my gear easily I'd super appreciate it. If anyone could teach me how to Digitakt properly that might make my favorites list. Right now if anything I'm considering selling it. It feels like its full of potential but just so hard to learn.

notsleeping: so finally, where can people go to find and support the music of DEA DECAY?

Dea: At

Dea Decay on bandcamp
https://deadecay.bandcamp.com/releases

Dea Siculus (Decay) on SoundCloud
https://soundcloud.com/dee-siculus and

Dea Siculus on YouTube. [link here]

You can also watch/listen to me spin on Twitch at Dea_Decay https://www.twitch.tv/dea_decay
--


Great interview! lots of good details, thank you!

[i personally am a fan, you might like it too! -magenta]

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Dea Decay interviewed by Magenta Skull
for HEADLESS BLOOD IDOL ~ 5/5/2021