Schizophrenic Playhouse Album

This is an album of rupture with no center or unity. The subject who made this album has been many different people during the years in which these songs were produced. Hardcore techno, lyrical indie rock, hyperpunk, and harsh melodic noise are all bunched together in a monstrous assemblage. The only genre that might seem to fit is "experimental," since even though not all of the songs are "experimental" in themselves, the grouping of all of these songs together makes the album as a whole experimental.

The name of the album, "Schizophrenic Playhouse," plays upon the popular conception of the schizophrenic as containing a multitude of subjects inside themselves, as well as contradictory desires and fits of delusion.I was diagnosed with schizophrenia two and a half years ago, and my experience has greatly differed from the popular conception. Truly, there is no single schizophrenia for the masses, let alone a schizophrenia for a single person since each day presents new intensities, rhythms, and mutations. Still, I can't help but have a bit of fun playing the "schizophrenic artist with thoughts you couldn't even imagine" character. "Schizophrenic Playhouse": sounds edgy right?

Of course, it is not all play: some of these songs were recorded during a time when I was not even sure the people I was recording with actually existed. Other songs were produced in a haze of anti-psychotics when it felt like only the harshest and most chaotic noises could break through the pharmaceutical wall and make me feel something.

Since then, I have become much more "stable," the only true prerequisite for that seeming to be "the ability to be a productive member of capitalist society" (i.e. I am now able to hold down a job). But I am also more stable in another, far more important, sense. After years of grasping for some foothold in the slippery realm of psychosis and delusion, the terror of my personal experiences with schizophrenia has gradually become a boring nuisance. I am now ready to explore other subjects through my music.

In that sense, this album is a goodbye letter to the part of myself that was defined by schizophrenia. I now look forward to discovering new ways of being in the world, as well as new ways of making music. Still, the ecstasy and horror of rupture, as well as the sincere joy of experimentation, that pervade this album will be a part of me and my art for a long time yet. I hope it makes you feel something.

With love,

SOCCERMOM WITH AN AK