Half A Decade of Speaking It Into Existence: An Interview with pulses.
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On It Wasn’t Supposed To Be Like This, the Virginia-based post-hardcore act pulses. tackle the idea that we must make the most of difficult circumstances, that those hardships make us who we are and ultimately can lead to great things. I’ve never shied away from speaking about how pivotal pulses. were to my introduction to DIY, leading me to a music community that I’ve been able to foster through them. Over the past five years, I’ve been lucky enough to grow close to this band and celebrate their impact along with other fans, but around this time back in 2020, as an unforeseen pandemic was altering our lives forever, all I knew was a single called “Louisiana Purchase” and the album it was released on.
To celebrate five years of Speak It Into Existence, I sat down with pulses. frontmen Matt Burridge and Caleb Taylor, drummer Kevin Taylor, and bassist David Crane to discuss the album's creation and what makes it so special to not only the band but also those who found them through it.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
SWIM: How are you guys doing?
MATT: Solid. We practiced. David tracked some stuff. It's been cool.
CALEB: It's been a day.
KEVIN: [Laughs]
SWIM: Yeah, I worked earlier today, so I’m pretty fried.
Thank you for being here! I had this kind of epiphany earlier this week where I wanted to start doing these interviews, and I was like, “Well, pulses. is kind of where I started getting into my DIY interests and Speak It Into Existence (specifically), so it makes sense to go back and revisit the album.”
Before we dove into the album discussion, I was curious what everyone had been listening to first.
KEVIN: It's funny. I feel like I'm not listening to anything. It's the weirdest time where I'll listen to stuff in really quick bursts, and then I won't listen to stuff for like three days. It's odd.
SWIM: Yeah, I always have a weird complex like, “I’m not listening to enough music right now and definitely not enough new music,” so it’s nice to hear that other people are the exact same way. Nobody’s listening to new music constantly; it’s just whenever it happens.
KEVIN: Yeah, Sleigh Bells had a record that came out that was good. Scowl’s record is pretty good. The new PinkPantheress song is really good.
SWIM: [Heaven knows] was so fucking good, I’m excited for more from her!
KEVIN: Listening to the [Callous] Daoboys singles, they're all pretty good. The new Skrillex album was pretty good.
MATT: That new Deafheaven is really good. I feel like every year and a half, when I'm having writer's block, I watch all the “making of John Bellion" videos that he does, ‘cause he used to film the entire process of making a song and then edit it down to like ten minutes or whatever, and those get me feeling creative. His music is either terrible to me or really good.
I discovered Model/Actriz today. I'm really late on that, but they're really good. It's like dance-punk, post-punk. The new singles sound like live band versions of deadmau5 songs. It's crazy.
CALEB: Yeah, I've been lacking on newer stuff. I get overwhelmed pretty quickly with things, and lately, my time listening to music has been while I'm working or doing something else. So sometimes I'd rather give my focus on new music, like give actual focus on it and check it out. Especially if I'm working, I don't want to listen to new music to analyze it. I want to listen to something that makes me feel good, because I feel terrible while working. [Laughs]
Recently, I've been revisiting and re-listening to things I may have missed or previously listened to to gain new context. I listen to the first Foals record a lot.
One I revisited that I haven't listened to in a while was Bad Rabbit's second album.
SWIM: They’re very good! They’re super underrated.
CALEB: Absolutely. I love their first album a lot, and that stays in rotation. American Love and their EP, too.
MATT: Relient K is one that I just saw pop up! One of my hottest pop-punk/emo takes is that Mmhmm is one of the best pop-punk records of all-time.
SWIM: “Be My Escape” has one of the best pre-choruses in punk rock music.
CALEB: Yeah. The other day, while I was working, I listened to four of their albums. I went in reverse order. I started with Forget and Not Slow Down. That one's a sleeper. I actually like that album a lot.
MATT: I was going to say, you’re a Relient K oldhead. [Laughs]
David: I'm going back through The Acacia Strain discography. Slow Decay is honestly one of their best albums, and it's a pretty recent release. Some of their back catalog is really good, too.
MATT: It's like beatdown, fucking super heavy.
David: Humanity's Last Breath is also really good. They just put out a new song.
MATT: You’re the metal representation in our listening. [Laughs]
SWIM: Yeah, gotta keep things balanced.
SWIM: So, somehow, Speak It Into Existence is turning five this week.
David: That five years was fast as hell.
[All laugh]
SWIM: Time is a really fucked up vaccuum, especially since Covid. I think everybody who listened to that album when it came out is having a lot of feelings about it, but how are you guys feeling about that album turning five?
MATT: It’s weird. I feel like I don't listen to it, but I need to. I'll probably listen to it on the day or around the day, because I usually do that with each of our releases as they gain a year. I like parts of it more than others. I remember when we put out Speak Less, I was like, “I don't have a favorite of the two,” and then now I'm like, “Oh, I like Speak Less way more.” But I still like them both. Then there are a lot of people like you, that we've met on Twitter, who found us through [Speak It Into Existence] and have become really close with us off of that. So I hold it in a special place ‘cause it did things for us, but I don't listen to it much anymore, and we don't play a lot of it ‘cause it was super technical for all of us.
SWIM: Yeah, a lot of it is very shreddy. [Laughs]
MATT: Yeah, and trying to multitask doing that is hard, so we play the hits and that’s it.
CALEB: It's funny, I don't remember a lot of it. I feel like I have pushed out so much of that time, because we were working on it, primarily, my senior year of college, and that was not a good year. [Laughs]
I still remember when we put it out; I had a lab assignment due the same day, and I was working on it up until like midnight. I was just like, “All right, fuck this. I'm just gonna take whatever grade, I don't feel like working on this anymore. Let me celebrate the album release.” I still passed that class, and that was the last thing I needed to graduate, so yay for me, but definitely a weird time. Obviously, I'm always gonna be incredibly proud of it. I like a lot of the songs for it. Like Matt was saying, I like where it got us. I feel like that was the thing that established us in a lot of ways. I feel like bouquet. established us in our local scene, and then it got out somewhat, but Speak It Into Existence is where things started to expand past the local scene, and we were really starting to do some things. Still proud of it.
MATT: Even with the pandemic and everything, I think that might have helped it, honestly, ‘cause it was like within a month and a half of it starting.
CALEB: Yeah, nobody had shit to do.
MATT: Yeah, and nobody was dropping other than like a couple bands, but a lot of people were postponing their stuff, and we were like, “We've waited too long,” because that record took so long to make.
CALEB: “It's not like we have any marketing backing behind it or anything, so we can release whenever we want to.” [Laughs]
SWIM: Yeah, I remember around that time, before listening to “Louisiana Purchase” and this album, so much of my listening was just commercial music/non-DIY. It took my oldest brother and my friend Jack being like, “Yo, check out this single,” and that really was the start of it. I remember thinking, “Oh, these guys did this all by themselves. How do you do that? What is this process?” I recall that being the thing that stuck out for me. Hearing a song like “Louisiana Purchase” and just how professional it sounded to me – how polished – and my mind breaking a little. The fact that people can do that without being on a major label.
MATT: That's cool, because I feel like you and Will [Full Blown Meltdown] are like the two people that I know that are the most on top of DIY music now. So it's cool that we were kind of the start of it.
SWIM: Was he one of those early adopters as well?
MATT: I knew [Will] before he was doing FBM, because Will was Sam's brother's friend from high school. So, I think we posted that we were in Frederick or something, and then he messaged them and said, “Yo, I'm literally in this hair salon with my wife and she's getting her hair cut, come by.” I met him and we literally just sat there and talked. We were writing Speak Less at the time, and I was just like, “Oh yeah, we're putting out some stuff soon that sounds like Orchid and Satia. Then we kind of bonded over that. Now, I always joke with Sam every time I interact with him, I'm just like, “It's so funny to me that I talk to him more than you do now, and you’ve known him since you were a child.” [Laughs]
SWIM: Will is definitely the DIY hype man. He’s the kind of guy you want talking about your stuff. [Laughs]
MATT: Yeah, he's all over it. But that's cool, ‘cause we recorded it right here. Literally, I was sitting in this exact spot with my laptop.
CALEB: This was a guest bedroom at the time, too. So, there was a bed here.
MATT: We would finish at like three or four in the morning, [Caleb] would go upstairs ‘cause he still lived here at the time, and I would sleep on that bed that was in here. [Laughs]
SWIM: What’s it like having that connective tissue still to all of your recordings? Being in such a different place as a band, five years removed from that album, and doing it in the same space?
MATT: I don't think about it much, because it looks different in here now, you know what I mean? It's Kevin and Caleb’s house. I don't know if they think about it more that way, but it's a different room to me now.
KEVIN: It's very odd. I don't really think about it much. Not that I live here right now, but we've been here for like, what, 20 years, Caleb?
CALEB: I think we moved here in 2002, yeah.
SWIM: It’s been your folks’ home for that long.
KEVIN: Exactly. I guess it's just another piece of me growing up here. It doesn't register to me as a difference for the band. It's just like, “I used to have a twin-size bed and now I have a queen-size bed,” you know? You don't think about those changes, so I feel like it kind of stays the same.
SWIM: This is The pulses. Studio and it keeps evolving.
KEVIN: We shot “Untitled” in here, from the bouquet. era. We shot parts of “Bold New Taste” in here. We'd done those live stream recordings, but for me, they're all like somehow in a different room each time, but also in the same space. Different pieces of the same puzzle. It's weird.
CALEB: I think it grows with us. Funny enough, I was tracking drums for new Followship music, so that was the first time I was recording them here, and it was so funny, ‘cause they were somewhat geeking out. Like, “Oh shit, this is where y'all recorded the ‘I Drink Juice’ video! This is right here! Oh, this is where y'all did this!” And I'm like, “Yeah.” [Laughs]
Again, I don't really think about it in that way, ‘cause this is just the basement I grew up in. I was telling [Followship] even, “This is my whole life, my whole childhood, everything was here in this basement,” you know? They walked in and were just like, “Oh, you got the Rock Band drums graveyard.” We had all the New Year's parties with kids on the block here. It's just grown with us, and now it's the studio.
MATT: It's every room down here, too. You even go into the bathroom and you're like, “Oh my God! This is the bathroom from ‘The Message Is Clear’ video!” [Laughs]
SWIM: It’s becoming a pulses. museum.
CALEB: Honestly.
SWIM: I always mix up the timeline, because when I think of pulses., it’s obviously the current lineup with Matt in it, but what was the timeline with Matt joining and Speak It Into Existence coming out?
MATT: I joined in 2018, so [pulses.] put out “The Appetizer” and “Jecht Shot” like three months after I joined. They had me go ahead and record a second guitar on “Jecht Shot.” Not for “The Appetizer,” but I'm on “Jecht Shot.” That's my first thing, but it's just guitar. Then we started working on the album and didn't put anything out, just played a lot of shows. I didn't do vocals on that record. The lineup had changed before the album came out. So I think that's why a lot of people get confused with it, ‘cause we put it out and it was like, “Okay, but this isn't me, but I'm gonna be doing it from now on.” Since then, it's just been the four of us doing everything.
CALEB: I remember we had a number of songs already written for the album when Matt joined.
MATT: It was “Sometimes Y,” “Exist Warp Breaks,” “Mount Midoriyama.” “Olivia Wild” you had started. “Don't Say Anything, Just RT,” I think you had started.
“Graduation Day” [too].
KEVIN: That one's old.
MATT: Yeah. I just added parts to all of those. Then we wrote “Plastiglomerate” and “Louisiana Purchase” first. Which is wild, ‘cause they ended up being the singles. The title track was gonna be for Speak Less, and then we were like, “This will be a good opener. We'll make it longer and fill it out.” Then we wrote “Good Vibes Only (Zuckerberg Watchin’)” because we needed a pop song. It was almost the whole thing they had the instrumentals at least started for, then we wrote a couple core ones together.
SWIM: You touched on it a little bit, but how do you think lockdown and Covid affected the album, how it was released, and people’s relationship to it?
MATT: I think people attached to it because they were just not doing anything, so that helped. I think that helped it spread a little bit, because, realistically, if it wasn't Covid, we would've played a bunch of local shows and it would've probably not had as strong of an initial connection with people.
KEVIN: Didn't [Dance Gavin Dance] have an album that came out later?
CALEB: Yeah. That was the whole thing. [Laughs]
MATT: Later that month, I think.
KEVIN: Yeah, ‘cause we were trying to beat it. We had to drop it before…
CALEB: Afterburner.
SWIM: Oh, god.
KEVIN: Yeah, because if we dropped it after, no one was gonna care. So we rushed it to get the album out before them, and I honestly think that helped a lot.
SWIM: Do you regret not having a song in Spanish on Speak It Into Existence?
[All Laugh]
KEVIN: Honestly, I'm glad we don't for a number of reasons.
CALEB: If we did, we would actually have a native speaker on it.
MATT: If we did it now, we would get a feature that speaks Spanish. Andres or somebody who speaks Spanish. [Laughs]
SWIM: Yeah, you have no shortage of connections who could do that.
MATT: Not trying to Google translate my way through a verse.
KEVIN: As we've always said, there's just such a tumultuous relationship with that fucking band and I do think the fact that we dropped it before [Afterburner] was helpful. I feel like people listened to [Speak It Into Existence] and had their moments with it. Then [Afterburner] came out and the fact that it was weaker for a lot of people, they were like, “Oh, well if you don't like that shit, listen to Speak It Into Existence!” Then people suggested us more, and it got around that way.
MATT: People still liked that genre, so there was a fan base for it. Whether we were part of it or not.
KEVIN: Yeah, there wasn't any animosity.
MATT: Yeah, it wasn't as big of a deal then, but I still remember when we started getting reviews, one of the big ones was like, “Oh, ‘Exist Warp Brakes’ is like ‘Don't Tell Dave’ ‘cause it's like a funk thing!” And we were just like… stupid! [Laughs]
KEVIN: Yeah. “Dumb, but we’re just gonna let it rock,” because at the time, it wasn’t as annoying yet.
CALEB: I still remember back then, we were already trying to move off from it and were feeling that internally as the record was coming out. Especially because of how much time passed between us finishing it and when it came out, it was like, “I'm a different person now.” I think that album had the most time between us recording it and it actually coming out. That was the first album that we tracked ourselves. We started tracking it at [Matt’s] place.
MATT: Yeah, at my old apartment in West Virginia.
CALEB: I think we started with tracking guitars for “Louisiana Purchase” and “Exist Warp Brakes.” It was during that snowstorm, so it was like January 2019. And then we didn't finish tracking it all the way through until August?
MATT: We were almost done, but we were like, “We have to put out something,” so we dropped “Louisiana Purchase” in December. We were done, but I know we were waiting on two features that took a while. [Laughs]
We finished around October, then, because it was before the tour.
CALEB: Well, the tour was in September.
MATT: Oh, I guess it was August. It’s been over five years now, I can't fucking remember.
KEVIN: I wasn’t going to comment on any time thing, because I don't fucking remember. [Laughs]
MATT: I thought I remembered touching up things, but maybe I'm just thinking ‘cause we were writing Speak Less at the same time, and we were still doing that.
CALEB: I was still editing things, and I'm pretty sure we did one of those things where we got the master back for the record and then we put it out like two weeks later, which is something you shouldn't do, but we did it like twice. Three times, probably. I'm pretty sure we did that for bouquet. Especially ‘cause at that point it didn't matter. We were just a local band. I think we did it for Speak Less, too. Anyway, to go back to the original point. [Laughs]
We were in a different headspace. We were already writing Speak Less, so by the time Speak It Into Existence came out, people were like, “Oh, y'all wanted to do this sound. It's like Swancore,” and I already started to move away from wanting to do that, by like 2018, 2019. But I'm not gonna get rid of songs, we still like those songs. I’m still happy with it. I don’t know, it's interesting. [Laughs]
SWIM: I think some people might be under the impression that when bands write albums it’s like, ‘Okay, we’re going to sit in a room, we’re going to bang out these eight to twelve songs, and it’s all written at the same time,’ and I think especially in DIY spaces and music creation in general, you guys are pulling from different places, seeing what works. So, you’re very different people for different songs, rather than like an entire album.
MATT: Yeah. I mean a band with a label and a budget, it's like, ‘Okay, we're gonna take two months and go write and record this record.’ We can't do that. We get together once a week and write songs. Luckily for future things, it's been going very fast recently, which has been really cool. But yeah, Speak It Into Existence and Speak Less took such a long time ‘cause we were just chipping away at it. Then recording takes even longer, ‘cause you can't just take two weeks or a month and sit in the studio.
CALEB: Even as an example: today, we were tracking a song for bass, and it's like, “Oh, we got X amount of songs we want to do,” and then this one song took like three or four hours to track. It's like, “Well, that's it for the day, we'll figure out another day we can get together next where people can take time off.” You're gonna spend eight hours a day, like a normal job, in the studio each day. It'll be like, “We'll come back to this tomorrow!” And it's like, “No, I'll see you in a week and a half. Maybe.” This is the first time we've seen David in like two months, ‘cause you know, life happens.
SWIM: You gotta prioritize music over those fires, David. Priorities.
[All laugh]
MATT: No, but it's been cool now. I think we're in a groove right now, which is nice. It takes a long time and a lot of work to make an album, and I think you’re bound to be – by the time it's coming out – a little bit over it. Especially in a DIY band, because it takes so long.
CALEB: But then also when it comes out, and then people actually respond to it well, then it gets re-contextualized. It’s a weird thing. I saw this very recently again, where somebody was mad at a band for being like, “I don't like this anymore!” You can still like it, but they're a person too, even if they created it!
I know going into the release, I was like, “I like this, but I'm changing as a person. This represents who I was a year ago, and I feel disconnected from it.” But then, when it came out, people started liking it, we started playing the songs live, and I was like, ‘Okay, now I have re-contextualized it all. I love this.’ Especially particular songs. I will always love playing “Louisiana Purchase.” I'll always love playing “Exist Warp Brakes.” So, all that hurt I had prior is gone now for that aspect of things.
SWIM: That makes a lot of sense. Any lasting thoughts on the album turning five? Anything you want to throw out there?
CALEB: I'm glad that we still exist five years later, you know? That's always something to be grateful for. Speak It Into Existence was named after that, in a way. We said we were gonna do a second record, so we're gonna hold ourselves to it and we're gonna make it happen.
It Wasn't Supposed To Be Like This is also, in a way, a statement of, “We're still existing, we're still creating music, and we're grateful to do that.” You can take the title in a positive or a negative way. We weren't supposed to start this band in 2015 and still be going 10 years later off of nothing, really. I'm grateful to still be at it and still be feeling even more inspired than ever before.
MATT: You got any plugs, Kevin? You're usually the plug man.
KEVIN: I don't really have a whole lot of plugs. In terms of Speak It Into Existence, it's still out on vinyl, still got CDs. I want to do another tape run, but money, you know. So, outside of that, we're working on new music. We're working on old new music and then we're working on new new music. So old, new music should come out sometime this year. New, new music should come out next year, most likely.
CALEB: And then new versions of old music, in a live way, will come even sooner–
KEVIN: In the form of a live album that we did celebrating 10 years of a band with friends and shit. In the form of possibly a DVD, if I can figure that out.
MATT: Oh, I didn't even know you were gonna do that!
KEVIN: So, there's your scoop. [Laughs]
SWIM: Nice! Well, I got the exclusive one, thank you!
KEVIN: Always. Every interview has to have an exclusive drop.
That's about it. Got a couple of shows. They're fests, they're far apart.
MATT: We're spending all this time on new music. So, festivals, that’s what we got.
SWIM: Well, as a fan and someone who found you guys through Speak It Into Existence, thank you for that album. Love that you guys are still here and doing it. I appreciate y’all coming on for this first interview!
KEVIN: Absolutely, thanks for having us.
CALEB: It's fun to talk shit over a mic.
[All laugh]
SWIM: Love you guys, thank you!
Ciara Rhiannon (she/her) is a pathological music lover writing out of a nebulous location somewhere in the Pacific Northwest within close proximity of her two cats. She consistently appears on most socials as @rhiannon_comma, and you can read more of her musical musings over at rhiannoncomma.substack.com.
