Tag: Exploding in Sound

A Conversation with Cusp | Ugly Trash Fest

December 4th, 2025

Written by Pat Pilch | Featured Photo by Kim Christoffell

Chicago by Rochester project Cusp might be the newbies in town, but they’ve begun to call the Windy City home. After COVID and life changes split the group back in 2022, the band quickly picked up gigging in the Chicago scene, adding two new members along the way. Their latest record What I Want Doesn’t Want Me Back is a sharp, guitar-driven collection of songs that shed light on life’s ostensibly dullest mundanities.

Leading up to Ugly Trash Fest benefitting OCAD at The Empty Bottle on Sunday December 7, both Ugly Hug and Post-Trash are running feature interviews with all four acts. Post-Trash’s Pat Pilch chats with Ugly Trash headliners Cusp about settling into Chicago, becoming a leader in the scene, and why you should never quit piano.

You were in Rochester, New York before coming to Chicago. Some old Cusp members split to Philly as Full Body 2, and then the rest of y’all came here, is that right?

Yeah, I was like probably four or five years from this point. 2022 is when we moved.

What sparked that decision?

Man, COVID played a big part in it. The Rochester scene was so vibrant, it still is. It’s definitely built back, but at the time COVID was at its peak, the independent venues and the DIY scene was sort of obliterated, plus COVID had upended a place in our lives, work-wise. Our bassist had run a small business that went under because of COVID.

We were young and we were pretty optimistic that we would get to be in a band again, but “where?” was the question. Gaelen had gone to school in Chicago, so he was familiar with the city, and it was a great decision. We’d been thinking about Philly too. I think every DIY band thinks of Philly at least once. I’ve been, and I had visited Chicago too.

Cool. What were you guys doing when you visited, like where’d you hang out?

We were in Logan, which is where we are now. I love the feeling of being in a quiet place in a loud place. I like that I can be in my apartment and it’s nighttime and it’s quiet. I also like having the knowledge that I’m surrounded by millions of people. I guess it depends where you go, but I think that’s tougher in New York to feel a sense of privacy or isolation. I guess it depends where you go.

Your lyrics are very self-aware. When did you start understanding the fact that you were becoming more of a leader within music? Has it affected how you’ve approached creativity?

I really don’t feel like a leader all too often and it’s only apparent when other people express that. It may feel that way to an observer now that I start thinking about it. We’ve grown in scale and in general interest since we started, which I think is what any band would hope for. If I look back on it, I can see that progression, but if I’m in the moment, I still always feel like a follower, even if I’m becoming sort of a leader to somebody else who’s in the beginning of their career.

But that has still impacted my songwriting because it’s still just a theme that is top of mind and it’s something I’m still writing about for this third record that we’re working on now. I think it’s more of a personality thing than it is a music thing, unless I have a revelation in my 30s that lets me be a true leader.

How did the band become a quintet and how have you established your roots here?

I started working for Reverb the first week we moved. When that job started that’s how I met Tommy and Tessa, they’re co-workers.

At Reverb we do this thing at work during company meetings where they play a person who works at the company’s band at the beginning of the meeting. Obviously, you can imagine there’s a lot of musicians that work at Reverb. Tommy heard one of our songs and hit me up in Slack and was like, “oh my god, that was crazy.” And I was like, “okay, you’re the drummer now.”

Tessa is also someone who I became friends with through work and I was a fan of her own original music. She’s a really talented pianist. Piano is actually my main instrument and I’ve been writing more and more keys and piano into the music. I was like, “okay, we need someone to fill that space,” and she was the choice.

Sweet. Did you play piano growing up?

Yeah, that was my first thing. My parents got me into piano super young. I was intensely into it for a lot of my childhood and my teenage years. Then I kind of rebelled against it in my teen years, and I should have just stuck with it. It’s very helpful for writing, and to be proficient on an instrument is a very good feeling. I don’t really feel that with guitar or even piano anymore. If anyone’s reading this, stick with your instrument or tell your cousin who’s like 10 to keep playing.

What are your favorite parts about Chicago? What are your favorite parts about the music scene? Just the city in general?

I’ve still so much to explore. You talked about self awareness, which I do think I have. And I think part of that is I’m a Chicago transplant. There’s so much that I have yet to see and explore.

But from what I have seen so far there’s a really great harmony of the amenities of transportation, access to great food and music and different types of people and their lives like that you don’t get in a mid to small sized city.

There’s a combination of that and pockets of quiet places and green spaces. The parks, the beach. For Matt and for me too, biking accessibility is really nice. It has elements of both a big city and a smaller city that check the boxes that appeal to me.

As far as the music scene goes, there was so much I was excited about before I even moved here. I listened to that first Moontype record. I was like, “Oh my god, I’m so excited to go to Chicago.” Melkbelly. There were so many bands that were already exciting to me before moving here. And the option to go out on any given night is awesome. You have so many venues or shows or things to do. And if you don’t want to, you don’t have to either.

What do you see in the Chicago scene that sets it apart from other places as far, the music scene and the DIY scene go and just like, kind of community?

From my experience, I find Chicago exciting in how accessible it feels. We came in and were the new kids. Our first show was at Cole’s and we played Golden Dagger, RIP. There’s such accessibility to an audience and to a room. I feel like I take it for granted now. In Rochester, there’s only so many spots to play shows, and a lot of them are gone now.

We felt so spoiled coming here. We already had an EP out, but we kind of walked in and were able to just do it. That feels rare. You can’t do that everywhere. And the people are nice too.

You can listen to What I Want Doesn’t Want Me Back out now as well as get it on vinyl via Exploding in Sound.

Grab your ticket to Ugly Trash Fest this Sunday at the Empty Bottle
Prewn’s System Offers Sonic Excavation of Shame | Interview

November 6th, 2025

Prewn’s newest project, System, sees Izzy Hagerup pull back the curtain on her starkly vulnerable journey with depression. Unflinchingly she invites us to peek into her world, allow the cello-laden tracks to seep in, and to immerse ourselves in the sound of her chant-worthy refrains (my personal favorite is, “I wanna feel it all/ I wanna/ I wanna/I wanna” on “Cavity,” where she almost pleads with the listener to let her break free of the confines of her mind.)

Previous single releases accumulated in the 2023 album Through the Window, which received praise from the likes of Pitchfork and forged her a community of support. Hagerup’s roots in Western, MA undoubtedly laid the groundwork for her raw sound, a landscape of omnipresent hills that can sometimes feel like a threat, and weather with a penchant for the bleak. It is unsurprising that she recorded System on her own amidst the valleys, a space that begs to be infused with light. “I took my medicine but now I’m drinking just because I’m bored,” she quips on “My Side,” perhaps a nod to the monotony of rural life and the way that it begs to be sliced through.

What is the most striking on System is an unexpected sense of hope woven through the melancholy. “Don’t Be Scared” serves as a battle cry for the downtrodden, with the line, “Don’t be scared of the sound/Of your broken, beating, dripping heart,” serving as a thesis for the album. There is a sense of resiliency infused in the album, a call to action for one to transmute their pain into something beautiful. Despite the darkness, Hagerup looks forward, forging a path with self-made tools.

I caught up with Hagerup over email to discuss all things shame, self-recording, and notable influences.

“Easy” starts the album off with almost incantation-like repetitive lines. It feels equal parts holy and melodically sinister. What made you choose this track as the introduction to the project? How does it set the tone for what’s to come?

Izzy: I think “Easy” came about from a fairly casual and self-centered place that gradually unfolds into some type of self-awareness as the song goes. From a feeling in my shoe to the spinning world, I think it reflects where the album is to go; the banal to the existential, love to desperation and codependency to rage and destruction and then back to the gaping hole that accompanies existence. It’s also an “easy” start, it never quite lifts off the ground but rather lays a sonic foundation that grows and shrinks and grows again as you progress through the album. I like to see it as a not-too-flashy, warm welcome into the world of this album.

A lot of this album has to deal with shame and explores the role shame plays in my life and those around me, it’s a huge fuel behind the fixed ways of our culture and society and minds. On a more personal level it’s about getting lost and forgetting my wisdom, being young, making mistakes, being in my mid-twenties. A lot of this album feels like a journal of growing up. “Easy” addresses the issues that lie below the issues that come up in the rest of the songs. Of not choosing to go deeper, to think more critically, to be more thoughtful and curious, of giving into the comforts and distractions are being forced down our throats.

The strings throughout are a really stunning and cinematic touch, particularly on “System.” What prompted their inclusion?

Izzy: I just love to play the cello and improvise on top of any song I can, to weasel it into any place it could possibly fit. At the beginning it’s just self-indulgent ear candy but after the fact I think it can add entirely new dimensions to the music. I usually just riff around and make sure to record and something gets birthed in that process. Sometimes I try to make it work and it simply isn’t fitting but I feel that my whole musical process is prompted by intuition and it’s only after the fact that I can begin to make sense of all the choices. But if a string section can exist, I cannot resist.

You’re from Western, MA, which has a very supportive and often overlooked artistic community. How did your time there influence your work?

Izzy: Western Mass has a really special artistic community that I am so grateful to have stumbled upon. I went to college in the area with little idea of what a DIY scene really was. I didn’t have much experience playing with other people, going to dirty basement shows, I was thrilled when I found it. I joined my first band there called Blood Mobile, the project of my friend, Tuna, one crazy guitar shredder and musician. Playing shows and learning what it meant to be in a band from the Blood Mobile lens was pivotal for me. I had been playing guitar for a few years at that point, wrote one little song but really did not see music as something I would take seriously in my life. Now I was living in this world where music was just a way of life. The “systems” were set up by a bunch of friends just organizing shows every weekend for the pure love of music. It was this beautiful community that was so solid because of that binding force. Western Mass just has an energy that is seeping with creativity in all the cracks on the pavement and in all the little rivers.

On and off during the making of System I would ride my bike 30 minutes on the bike path to my studio and back and that was some of the most freeing, inspiring times I remember from the past few years. There’s something about how windy and green and fragrant the zone is that it makes perfect sense there’s a thriving creative scene.

Most of this album was written and recorded entirely by you. How did working in isolation impact the creative process?

Izzy: Working in isolation has felt entirely necessary for me to access my full creativity when writing music. I am growing through that and look forward to sharing the creative process. But as extroverted and open as I like to think I am, I am also quite introverted and sheepish when it comes to expressing my deepest self and inner workings creatively. When I’m working with other people, a level of self-consciousness is inevitable and I think self-consciousness is the antithesis to creativity and freedom. In order to get into that “flow-state” where time completely escapes you and you’ve gotten lucky enough to board the train that doesn’t stop until you have to forcefully fling yourself off of it cause it’s already 5 am and you’d like to experience a touch of reality the next day… I have to do that alone.

To be so vulnerable and real with myself, to explore the shameful or lonely feelings that I need to process and to the depth that this album goes, could only happen in isolation. But there are so many styles and worlds and different emotions that I know would come out of sharing the process. I will always need to explore the places that music takes me when I’m alone, but I’m excited to balance it more with collaboration.

You master the line between vulnerability and strength in how raw and honest these lyrics are. Tracks like “My Side” have a Fiona Apple-esque punch. Who are your biggest songwriting influences?

Izzy: Overall, my music listening is very scattered so it’s hard for me to dial in the answer to this question but to name a few, Shin Joong Hyun, Peter Evers, Aldous Harding, Elizabeth Cotten and many more have undoubtedly played a role in the creation of System and the evolution of mwah.

My first major songwriting influence was definitely Elliot Smith. I know I’m not alone in that. It was during my troubled era my freshman year of high school that he really spoke to the aches and pains of this existence. His chord structures and finger-picking styles have definitely left a lasting mark on my creative process.

I was listening to Harry Nilsson and John Prine a lot before and during the making of System. They have been a big inspiration on the lyrical side of writing for me. I really love their quirky, heartfelt storytelling and their ability to bring humor and light into their music.

But ultimately, it’s the riffs in my relationships or the aspects of myself that I struggle with or the overwhelm of existence or the complete banality and absurdity and beauty and horror of this world we live in that truly influences a song of course. It’s just a lot to process, goddamn.

You can listen to System out everywhere now, as well as on vinyl via Exploding in Sound Records.

Written by Joy Freeman | Featured Photo Courtesy of Exploding in Sound Records
Prewn x ugly hug | Guest List vol. 71

August 20th, 2025

Every Wednesday, the ugly hug shares a playlist personally curated by an artist/band that we have been enjoying. This week we have a collection of songs put together by LA-based artist Izzy Hagerup of the project Prewn.

Following the release of 2023’s debut LP Through The Window, Hagerup has just announced her follow up album titled System, out October 3rd via Exploding in Sound. The music that comes from Prewn is as deliberately harsh as it is instinctively beautiful. Through The Window bound together lush textures and open spaces by building trusting relationships with dissident sound structures and absorbent lyricism. Prewn’s pulse continues to pump with the release of “System”, the first single off the upcoming album and accompanied by a music video directed by Sophie Feuer.

“System” opens like a cold sweat, where thick, briny strings dribble down like beads; dribble farther down your face than you would often allow before wiping away. It’s a moment that feels stuck in time, one that deliberates between peace of mind and a piece of mind that can’t quite fall into place. As the strings begin to take shape, offering a counterbalance to Hagerup’s melodic fortitude, you want to say that it sweeps you up into a dream-like state, but this is real life, and she knows that. The song soon breaks off as Hagerup belts, “just give your life away”, a chorus of searing words that give voice to the internal conflicts between mental struggles and the buttoned-up expectations that are often placed on us. It’s a stunning track that builds upon frustration with such intent as Hagerup’s singular voice becomes the benchmark for retainment and release, slowly bringing us back to that same moment of stillness from which we began.

About the playlist, Hagerup shared;

“Some songs that I’ve come back to again and again over the years”

Listen to the playlist here;

Listen to System here!

System is set to be released October 3rd via Exploding In Sound. You can pre-order the album now as well as on vinyl.

Written by Shea | Photo Courtesy of Prewn