Mayako XO’s full-length album XO has recently come to vinyl from the label Post Present Medium, and her collaboration with another LA-based band, Behavior, has also recently been released as a digital LP, Free World. While XO was recorded before the impact of the pandemic, Free World was created through the pandemic period, adapting to the needs of the situation. Sara Gernsbacher, who is also a mixed media artist, began operating under the musical moniker Mayako XO with a previous EP, but found herself taking a somewhat different approach with her LP, spotlighting her guitar playing and vocals more directly, and pushing the sound and the lyrics of these songs further into a Punk and Alternative tradition. Her collaborations with Behavior also suggest plenty of new developments and directions, always keeping things experimental. One of Gernsbacher’s wider concerns includes the relationship between human beings, the planet, and the natural world, and she hopes some of that “seeps through” in her musical work. I spoke with her about the creation of XO, her collaboration with Behavior, and her continuing trajectory of pushing into new creative territory.
Hannah Means-Shannon: I understand that you did an EP previously, under the name Mayako XO. What led up to creating that?
Mayako XO: I had just recorded in the Delaware Water Gap, without any plan about how it was going to be released into the world. I just wanted to do it and I had a friend and musician out there who had a friend with a studio called Mixolydian. We recorded out there over two days. My friend Sophie [Weil], who’s also a musician with the Post Present Medium label, as Syko Friend, has a tape label and asked if I’d like to put these songs out with her, and I did that. She’s been doing a great podcast lately interviewing all different kinds of people.
HMS: Did you meet the musicians at Behavior through the PPM label?
MXO: I knew them because we just knew each other from being around LA. We were booked on some of the same shows a bit and we were becoming friends. We talked about doing music together. For the XO record, I also didn’t have a label in mind. I just recorded. Then Bedros [Yeretzian], one of the members of Behavior, showed it to Dean [Allen Spunt], who runs PPM. He then asked me if I wanted to put it out. So it’s really through Behavior that I met Dean and started a relationship with the label.
HMS: Going back to the first EP recording, had you done prewriting or demos on that first? Were there thoughts about how you were going to do it, or was it entirely created in that space at that time?
MXO: It was all created in that space at that time. I might have had some ideas, but nothing concrete at all. It was my first time being in a real studio, so it was a pretty special time for me.
HMS: Do you think of recording as being something that relates to a specific time, as in capturing something live, or do you do some editing and refining of recordings until you feel they express what you want to express?
MXO: I think of them more of a time capsule or capturing a temporal moment, but that’s not to say that I don’t edit things until I think it feels and sounds right. I’m definitely more interested in having a moment in time. I’m also not that technically proficient and don’t have a Producer’s mind or mentality, so I’m not that precious with it all. I usually don’t have some kind of predetermined sound that I’m interested in creating. Instead I let things kind of evolve naturally and see how they play out.
HMS: When you recorded the EP, was that experience positive enough to make you think, “I’d like to do this again at some point?”
MXO: Oh, definitely. I knew this was just going to be the first of many more.
HMS: When it comes to XO, do you see differences in sound or approach compared to the music on the EP? Were there things that were evolving for you musically between the two?
MXO: I think so. The idea of layering more guitar sounds on top of each other was a new thing for me. There are more guitar sounds and textures, but also being quite straightforward with the music, in a way, feels different. On the EP, there are drums sometimes, so it feels a little bit more fleshed out in a traditional sense, but the new record is guitar and my singing, and really that’s it. It feels a little bit more direct and incisive.
HMS: I can certainly hear that. The EP feels in some ways more traditional, or placed in a specific musical tradition, whereas XO feels more like it’s stemming from more recent Punk or Alternative traditions. Though that may be because the guitar role is so important, I also think it’s true vocally.
MXO: Definitely. The record felt a little scarier for me because it felt like my voice was very much in the foreground, and the guitar, too. It felt a little more bare and vulnerable sometimes, but within a certain attitude.
HMS: When recording the album, were you building on songs that you had been working on already, or was it all created in the studio, like before.
MXO: That was almost all prewritten. On one of the songs, the lyrics weren’t really fleshed out, so I did them as I was going in the studio, but it was pretty much all predetermined.
HMS: Are you someone who will perform songs live for an audience before they are recorded?
MXO: Oh, yes. Otherwise, I might have performed only twice in my life or something. A lot of times I might barely have a song written, or still be figuring it out, and play it someplace. I workshop things out the way that standups do. It’s kind of scary but it forces me to figure things out. Also, if I’m asked to play a show it kind of forces me to produce more songs whereas I might otherwise not focus on that. Because I’m an artist, too, I go back and forth between the two mediums.
HMS: I have seen online that you’ve played in gallery spaces but also among other bands, presumably in clubs. How long are your sets usually?
MXO: I haven’t bothered to really time them, even though I always tell myself to record sets and I never do. I guess about twenty minutes, maybe twenty-five. It might depend on the venue or event. My friend Dylan Mira is an artist and she asked me to do a live score of one of her film pieces. For that, I played for over an hour, but that was improvised and live, so it wasn’t my specific Mayako XO practice or performance. But in that way I’ve done more experimental and experiential things, though that was the exception.
HMS: For your own work, do you bring audio visual stuff in for your performances at all?
MXO: It’s just the music.
HMS: Since we’re talking about Dylan Mira, I’ll ask about your video for “Let Her”, which she worked on, I believe. Is that the first video that you’ve made?
MXO: Yes, that’s my first video.
HMS: Is it filmed in night vision? How did you get the negative tone on that?
MXO: It’s a night vision camera that Dylan uses. It has some issues that she uses to her advantage. It’s a really fun camera. I’ve seen her other work using it, so I asked her she’d like to do the video, and she graciously said, “Yes”. She edited the whole thing, too.
HMS: Did she give any input on directing the action of the video, or was it more freeform?
MXO: She definitely directed.
HMS: I know that this album was originally recorded before the pandemic, but the vinyl has only come out recently. But in the video, there are masks and gloves, which definitely resonates with the pandemic experience.
MXO: It was filmed during the pandemic, kind of at the height of it, so we were trying to be careful and filmed outside.
HMS: How long did your writing process last before you decided that you were ready to go into the studio again?
MXO: It was a couple of months. At this point, it feels so long ago, because it’s been almost two years but also because of the pandemic, it feels much longer ago. My timeline feels slightly skewed.
HMS: How far back does working on music go for you? It sounds like your world includes people from a mix of media anyway, but was there a jumping off point where you wanted to make music?
MXO: I’ve played guitar for a relatively long time, so I always knew it was part of who I am, what I do, and what I want to do. I started playing at age 12 or 13, and had a guitar teacher, but then I played with a few bands in college. Then I started making music by myself more seriously. Friends and partners were encouraging and I just kept it up, basically.
HMS: Is collaborating with the band behavior a really new thing for you, or have you worked in that way before?
MXO: It’s a new thing for me for sure. I’ve been playing for myself for a while. Behavior and I were talking about wanting to jam, just to have fun together, and it ended up feeling pretty good and seamless. So we made the record together, but it’s all recorded from jams we had together. We didn’t set out to make a record, we just recorded the improvisations and made a record out of it. But we wrote the lyrics together and it was really fun to write collaboratively in that way.
HMS: Did you use remote methods to work together at all?
MXO: It was mostly remote for a long time. So it took us a long time to make the record, but we were eventually able to record vocals together.
HMS: The song “Horsehoe”, which I think is the first song that you worked on with Behavior, is quite long. Is that something that was talked about? Is a song just as long as it needs to be?
MXO: That one’s not on our record, which was intentional. That’s just how long the song itself needed to be, but we were aware that it’s quite lengthy. That didn’t stop us from proceeding, but it feels like a kind of standalone epic. It felt like it could exist in its own realm rather than be on the record.
HMS: I really enjoyed it. It’s unexpected and interesting. It seems like a compelling way to work with vocal layers, including duets. It’s a song that almost seems to use all the tools in the toolbox at once.
MXO: Totally. It’s got a lot going on there, which is why it feels like it can exist of its own accord. That was really fun to give ourselves permission to do a lot of different and varying things on that track and have it be a real journey.
HMS: I saw that the album XO is influenced by the idea of connectedness and separateness. Is that something that’s particularly important to you, in music, or in your other art? Do you think that it’s something that people should reevaluate or reconsider?
MXO: I think so. Also, just in thinking about other kinds of beings on the planet. That’s where I’m coming from even more. I’d like to infiltrate the idea of separateness between human beings and all other kinds of beings. That’s sort of where I was coming from.
HMS: Do you find music a useful medium to express that?
MXO: I think so, though I’m not sure. None of my music blatantly expresses that, though it can sometimes. I took writing about the record as an opportunity to explicitly address it. I do think that music can be a guide. Sometimes when I listen to music, I feel that way. I hope that if the intention’s there, it kind of seeps out in one way or another. I guess I’m thinking beyond human connections to the earth and other animals. I think about that a lot.
HMS: One thing that seems to have happened during the pandemic is that people have become more aware of the natural world and spending more time outside. At least it raises a question in some minds.
MXO: I hope so, but who knows? I hope that can have a lasting effect in terms of thinking about those things more. I hope it’s not just back to business as usual. Maybe it won’t be.
