Dogpatch Press

Part 1 of this series of short Q&A’s asked: what defines “furry music”? Furry dance parties are one of the strongest real life furry movements besides conventions. In a growing fandom, con stages now use millions in equipment and are the crossroads for congoers. Sound is half of the performances and videos furries love. But music isn’t exactly made by animals, it isn’t visual, and it’s an ineffable experience to even write about. “Furry” isn’t really a music genre, but it matters enough to fandom that it’s worth treating it like one for a deeper look. Start with a loose working definition: It overlaps with fandom, it’s made with furries, or it shares a general theme. Then comes the fun part of asking musicians about it. (See part 1 for the full list):

1. Are you a furry musician?
2. What is furry music?
3. Can you share a cool fact or story about your music?

Tenkitsune: Vietnam based music producer with 15,000 followers on Soundcloud and an upcoming tour with Maltine Records. 

1. No, I am not a furry musician, I am just generally a musician, however I am very deeply involved with the community and the furry fandom and myself have worked with and would love to work more with many amazing content creator furries.
2. To me, in my perspective, furry music might be produced /composed and arranged by furries within the fandom. However it is also what makes this community become more vibrant with the creativity and work of furries who deeply love music and the music culture in general.
3. My music project was originally having a fox fursona as my music branding for the longest time since the start of it. That’s how most people found my music! I get art commissioned frequently for music covers, and probably just a character look over time. Most of the time people know Tenkitsune as a fox figure. As it keeps evolving everyday and I’m getting signed with great record labels like Warner Music Hong Kong, Trekkie Trax, Maltine (all great electronic music recording label from Japan with love), I find it slowly disconnects the fursona as music branding when it comes to working more closely with people from the music industry, so I slowly put down the picture. It’s really good and it made me very happy when people still come to me about the fox character, when people find my discography.

ZERØ: Electronic musician in Kansas producing under the name since 2014.

1. I’d consider myself a furry musician, in the sense that I’m a furry and I produce music! I’ve even used my fursona and some of my other characters in the artwork for my music and as representation for my label, which I’ve also created myself. It’s great being connected to a community of understanding people from a wealth of different backgrounds with a common interest in cute furry characters. It’s great to have a group of people that will support you in whatever you try to do!
2. This is a tricky question to answer because there are so many different types of furry music out there! A lot of it has a very DIY feel, and you can tell that the musicians and producers put their heart and soul into their music. Most of the more popular stuff seems to be based around electronic music, using well-known digital audio workstations such as FL Studio to create things such as breakcore or happy hardcore, but there are also a ton of other things out there from harsh noise to indie pop! It really is a very interesting scene, and definitely more about the creators behind the music than any particular genre, which I think is really cool.
3. Well, I actually started making music a long time ago in about 2005, at the age of 12 or so, and almost everything I’ve learned since then has been self-taught. My mother sings but other than that I don’t really have a strong musical background in my family, and I’ve never been a fan of watching tutorials to do with music production because I just prefer to do things my own way, which leads to a really interesting perspective on how I approach music making. Recently I created Voidcore Productions as a way of re-branding and allowing more freedom with how I represent myself, using more furry characters, etc. and it’s really been a lot of fun! If someone wanted to check out my stuff I’d definitely recommend one of the singles compilations on that label, and I hope to have more music out in 2019 sometime, so look forward to that!