By GRACE DETWILER
When Cait Cole moved to Los Angeles, they had little more than their car. But thanks to an upbringing that prized making use of the old to create something new, even the limitations of being a completely independent artist couldn’t stop them from reinventing themself as bodyimage: a project drawing threads from post-punk, electronic, and industrial music. Following the release of their debut album Active Lovers in 2019, and singles collection THIS IS NOT AN ALBUM** in 2022, bodyimage returns this month with a second full-length album entitled THE ROT.
A period of regrowth and transformation following a bout of depression inspired bodyimage to examine how natural processes of decay can create the soil for new life to take root. Applying this concept to themself, both physically and spiritually – and to the surrounding world, both naturally and technologically – bodyimage emerges with a body of work as cohesive as it is divergent, that speaks directly to our present moment. In celebration of the release of THE ROT, bodyimage was kind enough to sit down with RUE MORGUE to share a bit about their influences and the creative process behind their new concept album.
Cait Cole [photographed by Dylan Reyes & styled by Balee Greer]
“There is a piece of me that has always felt a little off compared to my surroundings,” said body (as their listeners refer to them). “For example, when I was growing up, I always felt like there was a focus on the bright and the good things of life. I grew up in the South, where you have to be good all the time. But weirdly, because I also grew up in a swampy area, I was able to see how the rotten things, the decay, are some of the most beautiful and important parts [of life.] But when you say that about something within you – ‘I’m breaking down a little bit’ – it’s all of a sudden uncomfortable for everyone. But [decay] becomes the soil where something new and exciting can grow. I wanted to focus on [the rot] itself, versus saying ‘you have to get through the bad stuff to get to the good.’ Why does the bad stuff have to be something to be avoided? I wanted the songs and the themes to reflect that natural cycle of the seed, the soil, the sun. You’re all of it and those cycles happen within you constantly, and I wanted to take a moment to give reverence to that.”
While the music of bodyimage has always been dark, THE ROT is both “dark and danceable,” a notable shift from the stylings of Active Lovers. Of their creative process, body emphasizes that, “I create music based on whatever I’ve been inspired by in the moment. I don’t analyze it too deeply. I don’t enter the studio like, ‘time to create an industrial song.’ I’ve been reopening a love of drum machines and synthesis, and that naturally comes out a little dancier. I went through a crazy depressive spell, then THE ROT came to be as I was exiting that, and I wanted to feel good. Even if the context was evil and dark and rotten, I still wanted to feel good.”
bodyimage has been writing and producing music since they were a teenager, when the machine they used “could only record audio, so there was a lot of my clapping and adding in sounds from my room. From there I started putting things on soundcloud and people liked it. I realized that while I’m also a vocalist and a writer, production from the ground up is where my true passion lies. I also write and produce for a couple of other artists like DeathbyRomy, I’ll have worked on a couple of songs on her album as well.”
bodyimage
body also commented on the experience of performing this work in a male-dominated field. “Being a non-male producer, I put all this pressure on myself. I had very few people to look up to – obviously, there are a few legends. That meant to me that in order to be worth it I had to be a legend; I had to do it all myself. It stopped me from releasing music for a very long time because I put this unachievable pressure on myself. Then, I realized that there are so many facets to finishing a song. There are people whose favorite parts are my least favorite parts – and we can collaborate on that, what a beautiful experience that is.” When it comes to their own project, body produces “on everything bodyimage whether or not there’re collaborators on it. I think, for me, that’s what makes the sound have a personal voice to it. It starts with me and we move from there.”
Many of the visuals accompanying THE ROT were filmed by bodyimage as well. “I do a lot of dumpster diving,” said body, “I’m a huge fan of reclaiming stuff. That led me to going into a dumpster outside my apartment complex and finding this device. It was some kind of film scanner. I didn’t know what it was but it had this 35mm lens on it, so I was like ‘sick, we’ll see.’ So I took it, and it ended up being, from the best I was able to tell online, what it was used the most for was taking stills and being able to put them on vhs. Like if you wanted a montage at a funeral or like a retirement party, you’d use this thing. You can tweak the colors and you can tweak the exposure, and I started putting whatever I could onto it. I used almost exclusively that footage for the “ITS A MIRACLE!!!!!!!” music video.”
body used the same camera to create the album art for THE ROT, which came into being after they “found this dead bee outside of my house – I have these feral cats that live in my backyard – they don’t care if I live or die but I love them with all my heart – and they leave weird shit outside. I think one of them left a bee, so there was this dead bee on my back porch. So I took the dead bee and these flowers, these gorgeous wildflowers, and I put them down and I was like, ‘Oh there’s the album art.’ You don’t expect it to come out like that but it just did, and I knew when I took that screengrab. I even put it at the end of music video for “ITS A MIRACLE!!!!!!!,” where it could be an easter egg. That image, I don’t know, it just moved me in a crazy way.”
Album art for THE ROT
The artwork encapsulates the collision between nature and technology that defines our current era. “I think that it’s a very strange place to be, when you’re someone who feels very connected to the natural processes of life,” body describes. “But we’re entering this world, and we have been in this world, where the natural processes aren’t disrupted by the digital era, but they are growing side-by-side. With the internet, everyone has the ability to see the connectivity between us all, and recognize that everyone is going through it all the time. You’re seeing it all at once and it’s very overwhelming – and it’s new. We have the body, the mind, and now this secret third thing that’s an inescapable thread [connecting] all of us.”
Comparisons between the technological and the spiritual are a common thread throughout the tracks of THE ROT, most evident on lead single “Angels in the TV.” “When I wrote “Angels,” it definitely felt urgent,” body explained. “It was 11 pm, and I saw something beyond horrific on my phone – violence beyond understanding – and it felt like my brain couldn’t even comprehend that that was possible, let alone something that is happening right now. It felt like the whiplash of psychosis, where there is absolutely nothing you can do. ‘Why am I seeing this? Why isn’t anything changing? And how are we not talking about it constantly? It’s a frantic call to address issues that we’re having as a society, issues that we’re having internally as people. Instead of saying, let’s put a pin in it, I want to talk about it right now.”
However, the connectivity created by the internet can also lead to unique opportunities to connect with collaborators. Before releasing THE ROT’s final single “you don’t fucking know me,” bodyimage “got a DM from State of Poison media, who did the visuals, a Canadian creative collective. I took a call with Jesse [DeMartin] who was my main point of contact there, and I explained to him the thought [behind it all and going back and forth. He brought up the idea of pareidolia – seeing faces that aren’t there – and how that can be more terrifying than some big scary monster. He brought up the idea of doing this clay where you can kind of see her but it’s not right. He and his partner nailed it. I saw it and I was like ‘oh shit, this has to be a single,’ because I didn’t want those visuals to disappear. It’s like they both went inside of my soul and did what I couldn’t do. And that’s back to why collaboration is important. I told them how cold the track felt to me, and he was like, ‘Oh it’s about to snow in Canada!’ It snowed the next day and they filmed it all and got it back to me in like two days out of pure passion.” (Additional behind-the-scenes images can be found below.)
Still from the “you dont fucking know me” music video, by State of Poison media
A complex relationship with technology persists not only in bodyimage’s music, but in their life as well. On being an independent artist in the streaming era, body admitted that “you don’t get paid enough for your art, but you kinda know that going into it. And I have these incredible, incredible fans that I love so much, who are constantly interacting with me in the Discord [shout out to Frankie!], constantly trying to support, buying things from bandcamp. Any time I’m thinking, ‘Aw I wish the streams paid more,’ I realized that if I lived in a world where we didn’t use streaming services, where it was all physical, I wouldn’t have been able to do any of this…I would have had to sign to a label and who knows what that would have looked like. My issues with authority probably wouldn’t have agreed with it very much. I am grateful for the reach of the internet.”
bodyimage would like to thank their long-time collaborator Jordan Reyes, Andrei Eremin for mastering THE ROT, Dylan Reyes and Balee Greer for their visual collaboration, and their community of fans on Discord for their support.
THE ROT is available to stream as of January 24. Soon, bodyimage will make handmade physical copies of the record available, including CDs and one-of-a-kind cassettes featuring a bonus track or voice memo.
Behind-the-scenes photos from State of Poison media’s video for “you don’t fucking know me”:
