My name is Cutter, and I am an audiophile. Honestly, what else could have happened to a guy whose first word was gong, in reference to the clock chiming on the mantelpiece? I picked up guitar at age 14 because I saw a pretty awesome music video—while doing my math homework (no one knows if I ever actually finished that particular assignment)—“Evil” by the band Interpol. Something about the dark, cerebral lyrics slowly circling lost love, dove into my soul and rooted there proclaiming: “I must make music in tribute to Interpol, the Sherpa guide of my soul!” To that end, I taught myself how to play guitar (I took a guitar class in junior high, which was good for learning chord fingerings and the extreme basics, but not much else). Once I started actually liking what I wrote, I learned GarageBand and then Logic Pro to help keep my music around in case I wanted to re-appropriate it for other projects. Recently, I’ve gotten into post-rock, like Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Silver Mt. Zion, whose music drastically changed the structure of and my approach to making music. I have also decided to spearhead Lit(erature) Rock–beginning with my concept album/thesis project Labyrinths, based on a collection with the same title by Jorge Luis Borges. What I (and most other artists) want is to have people enjoy their work–and I believe this sentiment so much that people with contrary opinions will have to deal with fisticuffs. I create music because I love making sounds work together to form beautiful, interesting, complex structures that make people tap their feet, sway in awkward indie dance, and imagine. Just to see a brief smile light up someone’s face for a few milliseconds when playing music makes all the time and effort worth it, but to hear people talk about what they could see in their heads while I was playing is the kindling that keeps my creative passion aflame.

I set no criteria to fulfill when creating music, unless you count the phase of the moon, the amount of cereal I have imbibed in the 72 hours before trying to write a song, the level of loneliness I feel (scaled from one to Oliver Tate Laying on His Bed as it Washes Away into the Sea), if Timber the Tiger is nearby, how many times I’ve told my mum she’s the best (1,257,396 times and counting), the time between the present and the latest Interpol release, and what percent of my blood composition is dark chocolate. If these conditions could be seen as fulfilled, I promptly forget everything and buckle down in Logic or MainStage, noodling around for a bit until something I write intrigues the small flag-planter on my soul, then work from that until I have a verse and a chorus. The rest of the song follows suit, and before I know it, six large mug cocoas and ten hours of my life have been exchanged for a song I hide away and don’t let anyone else listen to for months.