Clarence Ewing: The Million Year Trip writesCHIRP Radio Q&A With Tension Pets (Performing at CHIRP Night at the Whistler on 9/29)

Chicago band Tension Pets will perform at CHIRP Night at the Whistler on Sunday September 29th. We recently caught up with the band ("...there’s no 'I' in 'Pets'") to ask a few questions.

So, What’s going on? Tell us about your current releases and/or upcoming shows (such as CHIRP Night at the Whistler!).

We are currently writing a slew of new songs that have us all super sparked up. Still high from the fumes on our debut release from this summer, CUBEY EP, but definitely excited to keep moving forward - we haven’t even celebrated our first show anniversary yet! We’ll definitely be playing a brand new one for the fortunate folks who come to CHIRP NIGHT AT THE WHISTLER ON SUNDAY 9/29.

How do you go about turning your thoughts, ideas, and feelings into sounds?

A healthy dose of “why not?!” goes into our collaborative song-writing. Some ideas might be too dumb to work but we’re honestly a bit surprised that more aren’t. We have a giant secret spreadsheet of absurd band names we were floating when we first got together, hundreds of rows long - sometimes we’ll take one of those names and make a song around it, ie; “3,000 Stooges”. Some are feelings-inspired…our song "Propylene Promises" stemmed from the exasperation of waiting to de-plane. We try to make each other laugh a lot.

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CHIRP Radio writesCHIRP Radio Q&A With Heet Deth (Performing at CHIRP Night at the Whistler on 9/29)

Chicago band Heet Deth will perform at CHIRP Night at the Whistler on Sunday September 29th. We recently caught up with Julia (drums and vox) and Laila (guitar and vox) from the band to ask a few questions.

So, What’s going on? Tell us about your current releases and/or upcoming shows (such as CHIRP Night at the Whistler!).

Julia: We released Heet Deth Hooray! back in 2021, and while I feel incredibly lucky & grateful that we’ve had the successes we’ve had with only the one release, we’re itching to release album 2.

We have some banger shows coming up this fall. We’re excited to play with Tension Pets at the free (yes, FREE) CHIRP show at the Whistler Sunday 9/29, the night before we’re playing Burlington with one of Chicago’s finest, Mr. Phylzzz, and Zookraught from the west coast. Then in October we’re opening for Fat Dog & Lip Critic at Empty Bottle, there’s a lot to be excited about.

Laila: Our next couple shows coming up are so rad, it’s our first time ever playing the whistler and our first ever chirp night and it’s an honor to be included, let alone with one of the coolest bands weve seen, tension pets. The next show we’re looking forward to is October 24th at empty bottle with Fat Dog and Lip Critic! Lip Critic melted our minds and we got to see them rip up Detroit, we are so psyched to join them in their mayhem! 

How do you go about turning your thoughts, ideas, and feelings into sounds?

Julia: Laila will send me voice notes with riffs or even just recorded mouth sounds for me to listen to, then when we get together we see if we can make some magic happen, which I think we usually do.

When I practice by myself I practice slow, excruciatingly so. Sometimes slowing down a pattern for an exercise gives me inspiration and I’ll start jamming/iterating on the practice patterns.

Laila: Sometimes it’s a phrase or a rhythm that I can’t help but get out of my body that needs to be released. A lot of the time if it’s my thoughts, they don’t go away until I let them out. I think that’s why music feels so freeing and honest to me. Other times when I improvise noise making, I find a moment of sound and try to isolate it, looking to see what potential it has to transform into something. It’s like riding a wave of noise and following where it wants to go, finding ways to let go of control and just experience what it is. 

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