ARGO NUFF - Interview

ETHEREAL.PRESS

Tell us about Argo Nuff.

ARGO NUFF

Argo Nuff is the musical project i've been working on since 2018 where me and some of my friends try to soundtrack the late night doomscrolls and internet rabbitholes we often fall into.

‍ETHEREAL.PRESS

Talk to us a bit about your 2021 release, 'Annebolyn'

ARGO NUFF

Annebolyn seems to have been our most resonant release re: our whole ethos/goals. Its a 2 part suite that I worked on throughout the summer of 2021. It used to be one song I had built chronologically, that the more and more I worked on, the more it forged itself into something more conceptually massive. And as it was growing bigger, my goals shifted into making something that is emotionally resonant to the people of my generation, but working more in the subconscious.

You have to paint it with a much subtler brush to have it resonate like that, and I feel like it was a engaging challenge going into the record. I wanted it to feel like a melody you heard in a song you listened to on that early to mid 2000s internet I grew up with, where finding new songs on lobit torrent clients like limewire and thepiratebay turned everything into a ghostly and glitched-out simulacrum of music. And I had thought about it more and more, about how that simulacrum also presents itself in a much grander way with our online personas vs. Who we actually are.

I feel like all of the data we put into the internet forms itself into a weird doppelgänger of ourselves that everybody on the internet has no reason not to believe isn't you, and yet, its still so far away from who you actually are. I wanted it to show itself between the two tracks. I guess

I had subconsciously done it with annebolyn, and working on our latest project "Pnging", I had that idea more at the forefront. It's very personally engaging to look back at the music in such a conceptual way and see what themes find themselves in the forefront, even if most people don't really take the same exact themes away directly from the music (although I have read some reviews that are scarily accurate to the vision I had, so it must have resonated in some way).

ETHEREAL.PRESS

What inspired the cover art for this project?

ARGO NUFF

That cover art is the first impression of the album you have, so although I feel like I captured that ghostly haze in the music itself with it, I really needed to bring it home with the cover art. So I took an old internet era ghost sighting photo and digitally upscaled it using ai, but as ai often does with digital upscaling, it kind of blends all of the pixels together into an almost brushstroke-like blur.

I cropped the bright red click bait circle in the center to mimic the shape of vinyl and connect this digital aspect of it to the days of physical media and called it a day (and I am still hoping for annebolyn to get a physical release at some point, vinyl especially).

ETHEREAL.PRESS

'Annebolyn' incorporates several stylistic elements from various genres.

How would you describe the sound of the project?

ARGO NUFF

I wanted it to feel like how the internet feels to navigate, so the variety of sounds is very reflective of that. I knew, though, that I did want it to be mainly ambient focused, and made use of all of the mellower genres that find itself in that ambient realm (like h-pop, slowcore, post-rock and shoegaze) to give it more of a dynamic variance to it. It's also just mainly the music I find myself connecting with most often and you create what you know, so the direct influence is also definitely there.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

How did the name Argo Nuff originate?

ARGO NUFF

I had always loved the story of jason and the argonauts and originally wanted the band name to be "Argonaut", but seeing that there are already a couple other bands with the same name, I wanted it to be more unique, so argo nuff is what I ended up with. Plus I feel like it rolls off the tongue better.

Pretty uneventful lol but I feel like band names with a big story behind it tend to be pretty cornball anyway.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

What stylistic elements have been inspiring you recently?

ARGO NUFF

I think I really "Cracked the code" of what I want to grasp at conceptually with annebolyn, and it's clearly resonating for people, so diving deeper into the idea of the whole hauntology of the early internet is something I've been focusing on in my music a lot more. Most of my influences aren't even necessarily music.

I'm more inspired by artifacts from the internet and the detached irony of modern day meme culture and finding something deeper there to grab at, along with cultural commentators' analysis of such, like mark fisher and line henriksen and their views on the state of culture in the digital age. Their writing and points of view have found themselves dug into my brain in such a way that it infects everything in my life, most of which being the music I make.

ETHEREAL.PRESS

What's next for Argo Nuff?

ARGO NUFF

Our first mixtape 'pnging' is coming out november 25th 2022, and I personally think it's our best work yet. It's a group of loops that are built upon moments in songs that have found themselves stuck in my head over the years. I feel like I've elevated a lot of the sounds found in annebolyn, and I'm really proud to have everybody hear it.

Also argonuff.com!

We finally have our own website that is constantly being updated and worked on to build the ethos of argo nuff more and more. I'm really excited for the future and the direction my music is headed. I feel with my music that I've really found my groove, my mojo, my niche. My swag. And I'm sincerely proud of that.

‍

ARTIST LINKS: BANDCAMP - WEBSITE