We love Frank/ie Consent love them SO MUCH. As in infantilize, track 9 from their Black Holes Embodied LP, our love exudes for them a communal river, what has only been given through and back by them in real time, real life and throughout this body of work.
Frank/ie Consent Black Holes Embodied is an LP filled with so much love, so much vulnerability, so much delicate nuisance, that we had to get involved and help where we could.
S3R News is excited to announce that Sermon 3 Recordings and Frank/ie Consent are teaming up to release their Black Holes Embodied LP!
That, alongside the limitless and exploratory artistry, alongside the forward thinking production approach and techniques, truly make BHE something so special and formative, a body of work that serves as a foundation for creative expressions across multiple genres.
We caught up with Frank/ie to gain their insight behind the what, why’s and where’s that birthed their latest album.
S3R: Black Holes Embodied is a beautiful soundscape of an album. What were some of your main production approaches used as you were emoting the LP?
Frank/ie Consent: Almost every song on Black Holes Embodied started as a voice memos spiral and I would spiral into what I call black holes and then try to document what was happening to me, take pieces of the documentation, and use it to make a song. How I recorded the songs changed throughout the process. When I started making the album I didn’t have a mic or audio interface and used voice memos to record everything but then my ex gave me some of their recording equipment because they owed me reparations. When I’m making songs I record them immediately because I have fruity loops demo where I can’t save anything, so I made some songs like Inconsistent just with voice memos, and other songs like Breaking Clay with equipment that allowed me to be more clear and articulate and feel like I was traveling somewhere with the sounds I was making and using. I really enjoyed using sounds from my past in this album. For example Infantilize is a song I made when I was seventeen with someone I loved, and then I completely changed the song to make it in-recognizable but in its black hole it still carries all of the images and love that I felt when I made the original song.
S3R: From what time period did you create BHE?
Frank/ie Consent: I started working on Black Holes Embodied in May 2018. I had been writing random songs out of emotional eruption since March 2018 but they weren’t attached to a concept until one night after I was walking home from work at around 1 in the morning I had a big spiral and I recorded myself talking into voice memos and crying while ranting about how if my body dispersed all that would be left was black holes that were made of particles that were made of black holes that were made of images created through sounds that captured memories. After this I became obsessed with black holes and hoarding my memories inside of my body and inside of sounds, so that’s what I did. I finished the album in February 2019 and then my friend RL mastered it for me, really creating a world for the black holes to live in.
S3R: What in your life brought about the excursion of the black holes through song?
Frank/ie Consent: I had to make this album when I did because after I finished my last album I was so lost and felt like my personhood was fragmented into multiple different lives. I needed to collect all of my black holes, my fragmented lives, and physicalize them with sound just so that I could feel grounded and like I was a person on the earth with the rest of y’all.
S3R: What/Who are some your influences? (all different expressions across any art discipline is welcome)
Frank/ie Consent: I have so many influences! While writing this album I was listening to a lot of Moses Sumney, serpentwithfeet, Mitski, Grace Jones, Lilliput and Animal Collective. I’m sure that these artists bled into my artistic process because I was absorbing so much of their sound! I’ve also been very influenced by post modern dance movement and structure, and clowning. Maybe most importantly, I’m influenced by the people I spend my time with and by my audiences. I have so much love in my heart for people in the QTPOC community and admire my chosen family for continuing to express themselves and be bold and brave even when others just want to stare at us and take pictures, dehumanizing us.
S3R: Ideally, what are some of things you’d like to see unfold in your musical/art journey/career this year?
Frank/ie Consent: I really want my performances and my album to have some sort of healing power within them. I want to curate energy in a room using sound and movement to create communal and personally healing. Also I have this dream of people singing along to my songs at my shows so if that happened this year that would be… so cool.
Listen and buy Frank/ie Consent Black Holes Embodied here:
Frank/ie Consent’s album release party and tour kicks off this Thursday, at Rubulaud 389 Melrose St. Brooklyn on 3/14 8pm $8-$10.
