There’s a dreamy quality to the music of Orchid Mantis. On any given track, wobbly, lo-fi chirrups give way to charming indie-pop gems streaked with found sounds and other audio snippets to create an alternate reality not unlike that of a David Lynch film. Perhaps it comes as no surprise, then, that Thomas Howard, the mastermind behind Orchid Mantis, is not just a musician but a visual artist as well. A quote from his Tumblr page proves informative: “Working primarily with audio and photography, Howard creates analog totems reflecting the nostalgic veneer and evocative stylings of old films and decaying formats.” Curious to learn more, I dropped him a line.

Analog totems? Can you say more, both in terms of what they are and how they relate to music?

I guess that’s what I imagine my songs to be – a totem helps you remember something. When I record music, it feels like I’m creating an abstract diary. Years later I can listen back to a particular album & bring myself more vividly back into that time. I have a terrible memory, so I’m always worried about forgetting things. Songs help me remember. During the recording process, with rare exception, I’ll track a lot of the instrumentation onto tape, so everything is getting passed through an analog format. It’s important to me that my songs aren’t fully digital and sterile, the sounds need to exist in a physical form first & take on the qualities of whatever analog format that is.

What are the “decaying formats” your biography mentions? Do they account for the lo-fi elements of your music?

This sort of continues from my previous answer. I’ve always loved the unique fidelity of old media formats like tape, vhs, vinyl, film photography, 8mm video, etc. There’s just something about the inherent affects and qualities embedded within them. Recording a song to tape makes it feel older than it is – through what’s known as generation loss, you can make a song recorded today sound like a lost ballroom recording from the 60s. I was obsessed with that when I started out, because it was a way to obscure what I was recording & drench it in a fidelity I inherently enjoyed. Now, it’s more of an artistic choice than a crutch, I’ve tried to clear up a lot of that haze when necessary, and then bring it back to create pathos. That’s the other thing. In my opinion, these formats contain such a deep sense of sentimentality, maybe because they’re old, nostalgic, decaying. Like a memory starts to decay over time, that’s the comparison I would make. I just love the sound of a broken tape machine, a warbly vinyl recording, a toy synth with a dying battery. And that’s contained in all analog formats – I only shoot photography on film for the same reason. It really adds something, I think.

Going a little further with that theme, why does decay matter with respect to your music and art more generally? Why is it something you’re interested in as an artist?

I think I started to address this a bit in my previous answer, but I can elaborate! I just find the various associations one can conjure through imperfect analogue mediums really interesting. The warbly sound of an old cassette or vhs tape reminds people of childhood or their youth, but it’s more than that. I believe the inherent nostalgia of decaying is more a result of a direct connection to the decay of memory, the haze of trying to recall memories too distant to really make out – just like a thick layer of tape hiss on a track. This is why even gen Z producers are chasing those fake vhs plugins, retrocolor, etc. despite their lack of any direct experience with those actual formats growing up. There’s a symbiotic relationship between this production and my lyrics, which focus a lot on memory, recollection, or just half-conscious abstraction, etc. Honestly, I feared this subject was sort of played out in music after Boards of Canada, Bibio, early BMSR, William Basinki’s Disintegration Loops, etc. but perhaps there are endless ways to approach it. Any song can be colored and affected by a decrease in fidelity – that’s why I always love hearing lofi demos of classic indie songs, like the original piano demo of Julian Casablancas’ You Only Live Once. There’s just an immediate injection of pathos, I can’t explain it. On the Song Exploder podcast, Adrienne Lenker said something about this I really liked – I’m paraphrasing but she basically compared an imperfect lofi musical recording to a film photograph of a sunset, contrasted with a digital photograph. The digital photograph may technically be closer to what you actually saw that day, but somehow the film photograph more accurately portrays how it felt. The memory is flawed, and the lofi recording – whether on film or audiotape – reflects that.

How do you get the lo-fi sounds you use in your music? Specifically, I’m wondering whether you’re using plugins to create an aura of decay and degradation, or are we hearing actual artifacts of recordings made on analog devices? Is there a real tape player with sticky wheel in the mix, or is it all digital?

All of the above. I’m using plugins like sketchcassette, effects pedals like the vfx lofi junky & strymon el capistan, basic pitch lfos, etc. I’m also recording with 4-track tape recorders, handheld tape recorders, etc. Any approach is worth exploring! And nothing beats the real sound of tape honestly. I want to go even further and incorporate a vhs recording system into my studio. I’m also heavily into pitch shifting & slowing things down, so a lot of my songs have instrumental parts or entire mixes pitched down drastically.

I’m also curious about your use of found sounds. Where—and I suppose how—do you find your sounds? Why are they central to your art?

Honestly, it was more of a central focus on earlier records, when I was really trying to pad out compositions I wasn’t fully happy with. I had always enjoyed the use of field recordings in other people’s music, so I would give myself something to appreciate in my own work by doing that myself. That said, it is still something that’s in the background of my songs. I love the sound of real-world ambience in songs, moments when the drums fade out for a moment and you can hear the sound of crickets chirping outside. It can really turn a song into something that occupies physical space. There’s usually a “setting” in my songs, and I’ll try to emphasize that through the field recordings I use. For example, listening to the first two tracks of this new album I always imagined a place of travel and movement, subways, trains, airports, so I added my own field recordings of the subway in Seoul where I was staying last year into the intros and outros of both songs. I realize I’m not directly answering your question – I get field recordings and samples from all over! Internet archive is great for pulling from old 8mm films. Youtube videos, freesound.com, my own personal recordings, old vinyl & tapes from thrift stores. Anywhere at all.

What anchors it all together, at least in terms of Orchid Mantis, is a grounding in the relatively tried-and-true form of the three-minute pop song. What’s the idea behind combining the more esoteric elements of your art with more accessible popular forms?

All my favorite artists do just that. They combine weirder sounds and ideas with hooks and pop structures or just ear-candy sounds and production. I think that’s the shortcut to making something unique but still accessible. It’s not like I’m really trying to though, it’s honestly just an unintentional result of enjoying straightforward pop music and also weird esoteric ambient audio experiments. Both are such a regular fixture in my listening habits and they’ve had equal influence on my creativity. So I try to split the difference. 

You’ve been recording as Orchid Mantis since 2014. How has your sound evolved, and what have you learned over the years?

Whew. I could go on forever with that but I’ll keep it short. Before, I just experimented for hours until something started sounding good to me. I would never have anything particular in mind when I started on a song, it was an exploratory process guided by whatever I had already recorded for a song – just building and building until something clicked. I could be happy with a song very easily because I had no vision. Today, the process is the same at its core, but I have more of a formula, and feel way more equipped to actually execute a pre-existing idea for a song. I think this results in better work, especially as I’ve grown as a songwriter, but I do sometimes miss the anything-goes vibe of my earliest forays into recording. I used to have to start with a sample or something I didn’t fully create myself, just so I didn’t have to deal with the anxiety of a blank canvas. Now I know how to limit myself so that initial void is less intimidating. Oh, and my lyrics have gotten better. I used to just struggle to fit syllables to my melodies, haha. Now I feel like I can get across something specific I have to share, and its really allowed me to invest more emotionally in my music – especially on this new album.

Just out of curiosity, what does the name Orchid Mantis refer to?

A lot of things. It’s the hardest bug to catch in Animal Crossing. It’s an insect that mimics a beautiful flower. It’s a disguise. It’s an inhuman title that separates me from my work. I’d hate to release stuff under my own name, I really like the idea of my music existing outside any human interference, even if it isn’t that way at all. So I named my project after an animal. Maybe I’ll put something out under my own name one day, but it’ll sound really different I’m sure.

I like the collages on your Tumblr page. Is there a connection between your visual and  sonic approaches to art? 

Most of my visual work consists of film photography & collages of old magazines/printed material. For example, when I was looking for National Geographics, I wouldn’t purchase anything post-70s because the photos just don’t look the same otherwise. They lose that nice lofi quality. So whether visual or sonic, I’m still interested in the same thing. My collages are fairly surreal, which is also what I go for in my music. I was also heavily into sampling when I started Orchid Mantis, and still find ways to sneak that into my songs. With both sampling and collage, you don’t have to start from a blank canvas, which I’ve always found sort of daunting. I prefer to start with some foundation I’m personally interested in, like a unique sample or old magazine, and then build from there.

Does being from Atlanta influence your art in any way that you’re aware of? 

I could really try to speculate about this but honestly my music has always been a very isolated endeavor, not very collaborative or influenced by local scenes. I don’t know a lot of other artists in Atlanta, and my influences & experience with music were all online. I’m trying to change that though, and really meet more of my peers in person and play shows, collaborate. Hopefully that happens!

What’s next for Orchid Mantis?

Hmmm. I’m going to busy with school the next several months, but I’m going to try to keep recording when I have time. I want to make another ambient album, it feels like I’ve put that on the back burner for a long time & I miss it. I’ve been developing a few small indie game projects as a side hobby this last year or two, and I’d really like to finish one of those! I’ll have to stay really diligent if I want to put out another record soon – and I do. I wish I could always be working on music or art, there’s nothing like seeing something you put your soul into come together & reach people.