The hyper-digital world we live in is impossible to ignore. On Factory Reset, the new album from Retail Drugs, Jake Brooks interrogates our dystopian technological reality. Departing from the guitar-driven, home-taped sound that defined his earlier records, in Factory Reset, Brooks doesn’t touch a guitar. Join me in extending a warm welcome to Retail Drugs into the DAW-verse.
Listening to Factory Reset feels like the blissful mix of sleep deprivation, a hangover, and hyper-caffeination. Anti-analog to its core, the album darts around with a frenetic, unpredictable pace. Factory Reset’s inspiration comes from the album’s artwork by John DeSousa; a work reminiscent of a 2008 Windows default wallpaper: cyan skies stretched over a wide, vibrant green field. As Brooks wrote the album in response to DeSousa’s work, Factory Reset is evocative of one of the truest, and most literal, digital landscapes.
Prior to the album’s release, I sat down with Jake, Josiah, Aaron, and Ali to talk about Factory Reset, and the LP’s sonic shift. Retail Drugs is a friend to experimentation, and only Jake knows where the project’s sound will go next.
Hey guys. Can you introduce yourselves for our readers?
Jake: I’m Jake. I sing and do all the recording for Retail Drugs.
Josiah: I’m Josiah, I play drums live, and I’ve made a bunch of music videos for Retail.
Aaron: I’m Aaron, I play bass.
Ali: I’m Ali and I play whatever Jake tells me to play.
Your sophomore LP, Factory Reset, drops Dec. 5th. How are you feeling about the release?
Jake: I’m feeling good. Factory Reset is definitely different from anything else I’ve put out for the project. I don’t like being overly proud of anything I do, because I feel like I eventually get sick of it, but I am proud of this release, and it was a lot of fun to make. The album was heavily inspired by my friend John DeSousa, who made the album art. The art was one of the album art options for i love you so!, but it didn’t fit the album’s sound. In Factory Reset, I wrote the music to the album cover. It was a fun process to try. I’m excited for people to hear the album and make sure you look at the album art while you’re listening, or else it’ll probably not make much sense.
Have you heard of ekphrastic writing? It’s when you write a poem or a story about a piece of art, so the body of work is referential to the art. I feel like Factory Reset is similar to that.
Jake: Yeah, that’s cool. John just gave me the thing, and I ran with it. He’s a super talented dude. Definitely check out his art. It’s really good.
How do the rest of you guys feel about Factory Reset?
Ali: It’s one of my favorite things Jake has made.
Josiah: I’m excited for how we’re going to figure out how to play it live. It’s going to be different. A lot of energy is going to go into it.
Jake: A lot of brain power.
Factory Reset’s title is a clue into the album’s sonic shift. What inspired you to set aside guitar music and your signature tape-recording set-up to create sample-based music on Ableton?
Jake: I was writing Factory Reset when brat was in the process of coming out. I’ve always been really inspired by Charli ever since Ali and her friend Alice showed me how i’m feeling now. Charli makes sick music that has so much rock energy, but no guitars. So, that was the rule I set. I wanted to try and make something without guitars. Though I used a bass guitar, which I guess… I don’t know if that counts. I was just tracking stuff and throwing a fuck ton of distortion on it and seeing where it took me. I also didn’t use any tape on this record. I ran out of tape.
Is tape expensive?
Jake: No. I was too lazy to go get it. I think another important part of the project is that it’s a very impatient process. If I feel like doing something, I’ll use whatever resources I have at the moment.
Did some of your more experimental work, like “Dubl Vision” and “Stairs” off i love you so!, provide a blueprint for Factory Reset’s direction?
Jake: Yeah, I think so. Those are also two songs that we’ve gotten positive feedback on when we play them live because of their raucous, unhinged energy. People resonate with that. “Double Vision” was the last song I recorded off of i love you so! and was the first song I recorded when I moved into New York for Retail Drugs. Most of i love you so! was recorded in Troy, New York right after Ali got me a tape machine for Christmas one year. Ali’s great at giving gifts.
Ali: Well, I don’t think I’m good at gifts, but you’d said enough times that it would be cool to have a tape machine. I knew you weren’t going to buy it, so I was like, he will be happy.
Jake: I love my tape machine. I had been spending so much time on screens, doing music and mixing music and stuff before getting a tape machine, so it was nice to have something without a screen and just write. But, I do think that good music can come from anywhere. It doesn’t really matter how you do it.
Speaking for myself, as an artist, when I write, I feel this pressure to create something great, something meaningful and deep. On an emotional level, sometimes songwriting can feel exhausting. Did stepping away from your standard writing routine on Factory Reset bring levity to your writing process?
Jake: Definitely. There was much more spontaneity involved in the process. Most of the vocals and lyrics are improvised, I was having fun. When I was writing the album, I was pretty unhappy at my day job. Frustration came out of that and on to the DAW. “Gansett” is a song about going to work and also wanting to go out and network and be a music person. Having to do those two things can be really frustrating, especially when you have a day job.
You wrote Factory Reset sequentially, is that a quality of the album that you took from your background in like songwriting? What inspired you to create a narrative?
Jake: I don’t know. Just for fun? I’ve never done that before, except with Ali in Levada’s first record where we wanted to drive this narrative of a post-apocalyptic vibe. Ali had just read The Road and it was a huge influence on trying to paint this picture of this dystopian reality. So maybe, there’s a part of me that wanted to try doing something similar again. Factory Reset stays in the vein of painting a dystopian picture that involves digital burnout and our phones controlling us, of being able to turn our brains off and letting a machine drive our life instead of ourselves.
Is the loss of agency that comes from the use of technology the theme of the album?
Josiah: Yeah, the sub-narrative for the videos are definitely in that direction.
Jake: Yeah, the album revolves around losing a sense of self. I think everybody’s frustrated with social media and burnt out a bit. Especially as a musician, you’re constantly seeing yourself and your image.
So you’ve “reset,” what’s next for Retail Drugs?
Jake: For the next record that we’re working on it’s gonna be a little more acoustic, more organic. Because you know what? I got more tape.
Don’t miss Retail Drug’s album release show at ALPHAVILLE on Dec. 13th.
Photos by Tess Breeden and Sima Sharafnia
Listen to Factory Reset: