Moods 44: Molly Smith
Welcome to Season Five of Moods. We're starting with Molly Smith, a visual artist and head at Ghostly International/Spectral Sound. Smith's hand-stippled drawings (mollypearsonsmith.com/) are immensely detailed explorations of dream states, and her work here with Moods explores the idea of extrasensory pop—a cosmic journey to a few other dimensions.
Moods is community curated and community supported. By helping us out, you're helping pay for artist commissions, curator fees, merchandise, and materials for parties. Give us a buck, four, or twenty a month here: danielsharp.cargo.site/Moods
1. Laika - Starry Night
2. Bowery Electric - Fear of Flying
3. Love Spirals Downwards - Sound of Waves
4. Leila - Underwaters (One for Keni)
5. bis - Sound of Sleet
6. Barbara Morgenstern - Ein Versuch
7. tonikom - The Outside
8. ACO - 真正ロマンティシスト
9. Smoke City - Underwater Love
10. Insides - Darling Effect
11. Windy & Carl - The Sun
12. Beth Gibson & Rustin Man - Sand River
13. Leslie Winer - Dream 1
14. Broadcast - Ominous Cloud
We've then paired Smith's mix with her own Sharpie-on-CD design. Less of a relic—and more of a talisman—of the years spending nights drawing on burned CDs, Smith wanted to treat this Moods mix just like she'd treat sharing a cherished collection of songs to a close friend.
To keep in touch with Smith, head here: www.instagram.com/dogpasta/
Where did you grow up? Was it a single place or many places? How did this influence the songs you listened to?
I grew up in Ho-Ho-Kus, NJ, a sleepy distant suburb of New York. This mix is as much of an homage to mix CDs as it is to my childhood bedroom, host of my frequent all-nighters spent laying on the floor drawing, chatting with online friends from art message boards, thumbing through new age books, MTV's The Real World on mute, all the while with my headphones hugging my ears. My only external companion was the whistle of the train heading to and from the city that sounded every half hour, until iit would retire at around 2am and I'd continue on alone. I was in love with the dreamy psychedelic sounds of trip hop and shoegaze of the time period -- it was my ultimate escape from a lot of pain and solitude, and these tracks still offer me relief in a lot of those same feelings the pandemic has stirred up. I'm calling it Extrasensory Space Pop.
Who “introduced” you to these songs? Was it a person, a radio station, a CD, or something else?
Growing up in the early file sharing age, I'd spend hours trying to recreate My Bloody Valentine's Loveless cover in sharpie on a reflective CD face, crafting mixes for penpals in different countries, making the dull CDs that lined my binders as intriguing as possible. I tried to get back in that same mindset to make this mix for Moods too - a mix for a friend, lovingly crafted by hand, to transport them somewhere you're familiar with, slipped in to their bag in the back of the library.
Where and when did you first hear techno? What drew you to it? Who did it sound like it was for?
I have no idea - I'm sure it was the result of a late night genre-hopping wormhole and being predisposed to loving anything with a synthesizer in it. And as a kid who exclusively wore black, I felt as at home in the aesthetic as I did the sound itself. Techno in particular struck me as music for night owls: people whose energy peaked when the rest of the world was quiet, people who existed in the fringe and somehow represented a vision of the future.
You’ve got the microphone. What do you want to say to the techno community?
Don't forget that music is at the root of our souls, comforting us when the world is an unforgiving place, giving us connection even when we feel completely alone. Let's all stay safe and try to weather the storm together in this weird time period <3 I love you.
Smith redirected her Moods commission to the BNCC's Restoration & Staff Fund: www.gofundme.com/f/bossa-nova-civ…ation-staff-fund