Dogpatch Press

Fluff Pieces Every Week

Category: Music

November 16, 2020

Miss shows and music? Melt your face with Algerian Furry Death Metal from GLÒZÓNE.

by Patch O'Furr

In March I had tickets to see Lords of Acid. They’re the industrial-rave act known for their 90’s banger I Sit On Acid. Furries with special taste may know it from the eye-popping video “Sexy male bunny fursuit striptease” from Albany Anthrocon 1997.  (Thank you Silfur Bunny for making furry weird. I love the video so much, and it deserves the fame that John Oliver gave to 90’s rat porn. r/industrialmusic thinks “it should just be the official video at this point.”)

Covid killed my plan to go fursuiting at the Lords Of Acid show. It killed the whole club. That was Slim’s in San Francisco, which hosted some of my favorite events. It was in the city’s night life hot spot with DNA Lounge, where furries, raves, drag, and goth all melted together for some of the best times I’ve had. Missing good shows is frustrating, and watching their venues die is a tragedy!

This made me think about hungry musicians needing work. I realized if you aren’t spending money on shows… you can make your own band. Yes, there are musicians who can work with you to infest other people’s eardrums. You can bring the rock like you can be your fursona. That’s how the world has this:

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October 14, 2020

Q&A with Finn, founder of the Fuzznet Music netlabel for furries.

by Patch O'Furr

“World’s first furry-centered, full-service music distribution netlabel.”

A new netlabel for furry music has been announced! When I think of a label, especially on the small indie side, I think of curation for a certain sound or scene. (Example: a Q&A is coming soon with a fur from Sri Lanka where I asked about Goa Trance.) Here’s one I’ve been enjoying: Numero Group is a reissue label. Imagine digging through thrift store junk and finding a weird one of a kind record that sounds amazing — that’s everything they put out. They specialize in the history of unsung niches, local scenes and their heroes. It makes richer music history than the well-worn stuff on classic rock channels.

Specialty and indie labels make diversity. With that in mind I talked to Finn.

A music style for furries? 

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October 9, 2020

Fuzznet Music launches a netlabel to unite musicians of the furry fandom.

by Patch O'Furr

What if there was a convention for furry musicians? For BLFC 2018, a furry musical was created and performed there (and it wasn’t the first of its kind.) Imagine that kind of energy every year. Sustaining it would take a thriving scene with room for its own publishers.

But what is furry music? Why is it furry? A Dogpatch Press Q&A series asked musicians to explain. Some use animal themes or perform in fursuit. Some just share a social circle. Many music scenes work that way, so you don’t even need to ask why. A show takes a crowd after all. What kind of energy could they bring to a con? Furry DJ spots have a lot of competition, and musicians have played live for hundreds of fans at cons. Think: Matthew Ebel, NIIC The Singing Dog, or Fox & Pepper (who racked up $38,000 in crowdfunding for an album!) Some get lots of views, compose for films, and reach outside the fandom. FWA 2019 made brief crossover with mainstream act Mystery Skulls. Furry musicians are also collaborating to put out compilations.

That makes a scene with potential. Now they’re taking another step forward with a netlabel. So blow a horn and start a howl for FUZZNET MUSIC!

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August 10, 2020

The Furry Music Anthology releases “New Horizons: The Anthrology Vol. II”

by Patch O'Furr

The Furry Music Anthology is uniting musicians, just like other furry artists, to share their music and be recognized with one collective platform. A themed series was launched with “Anthrology Vol. 1: A Song of Your Sona“. 13 musicians contributed using the Furry Musicians group on FurAffinity and Twitter. Now there’s a new edition featuring 15 musicians.

Get it here: https://furrymusicanthology.bandcamp.com/album/new-horizons (It’s all still free!)

Here’s what perked up my ears and made the music sound furry for me in this thoughtfully sequenced collection.

  • Wings of a Dream – New Dawn is a percolating rock opener, like coffee for mice before they do a secret mission in Catland.
  • Indy Go Rat – Maybe This Time is loopy Hüsker Dü indie rock for questioning existence.
  • Skunk Surfeit – Passion has a minimal beat that flips out with angsty fuzz, for venting about feeling dogpiled.
  • Jayden Raske Productions and Ikodo feat. Rye – Long for Rain is chill aquatic and jazzy, for otter floaty time.
  • Byeonaraye! – Twostep is a nice little nervous instrumental with beats & piano, for sneaking down an alley in Toontown.
  • RobinG – Fuzz is throbbing neon synthpop candy for dancing with your fursuit crush.
  • I.S.T – Your Life Remade is moody post-breakup rock with strings for a long walk in the woods.

There’s more from What Eyleth Thee?, Edward Sebastian, Cordial, Entro-P, TELOS, Out of the Way, ✞FOX, and Tomas Walker.

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July 27, 2020

A 1990’s fax to troll Confurence shows how long there’s been culture war with furry fandom

by Patch O'Furr

Hairy Horny Freedom

Media was different in the 1980’s. There was a TV channel just for music videos. Furry fans got their fix from Saturday morning cartoons or cult films on VHS. Smartphones, Twitter and Facebook didn’t exist. Sharing a meme could need paper mail or a fax.

On MTV, there were lots of metal videos with men who acted macho but looked like hot women. Think: bikers in mascara who switched meth for hairspray. They sang about love over widdly-diddly guitar wizard pyrotechnics. (They were rockin’ like Dokken.) There was an arms race to be the most Glam until Grunge bands stole their place. But first, they were challenged by disco DJ music, minus the hair farming and augmented by rapping and controversy.

In Miami, a club scene rose up that thrilled crowds with rappers doing porn lyrics. Horny young people loved it. The rappers were a few young guys in the Air Force with a music hobby named 2 Live Crew. A recent rap history podcast (Mogul) tells the story of how their song “Me So Horny” went huge even without MTV. It helped rap cross from black to white people, and also pissed off a lot of them.

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November 25, 2019

A furry pilgrimage to the Adult Swim Festival and the Prancing Skiltaire house, Part 1.

by Patch O'Furr

Part 1 — Part 2 — Part 3

If you could do a furry travel tour, where would you go? Try some big conventions and mainstream destinations like Disneyland or the Mascot Hall of Fame, and some special stops that a non-furry wouldn’t think of. California has ones like the Prancing Skiltaire house, a shrine to cartoon animal art made by the founders of the first furry con, who open their house to fans by the hundreds.

A travel story wasn’t my plan when I got an invite from… let’s call them “Dr. Girlfriend”, to go to the Adult Swim Festival in Los Angeles on November 15-16, 2019. The opportunity just fell on me, so I made it a casual mini-tour including a stop nearby in Garden Grove, CA to visit the Skiltaire friends.

Dr. Girlfriend had tickets to the second live festival for Adult Swim, a now almost 2-decades old TV programming block for absurdist comedy and alternative animation. Cartoon Network hosts it at night while young audiences sleep, unless naughty kids are sneaking it (like I used to do for MTV Liquid Television). The leading show is Rick and Morty and it rarely has anything furry. But the show creators definitely know about us, and festival goers gave fist-bumps to a 6-foot rat scurrying among them. As “Patch Packrat” (I’m usually a husky dog) I was the only fursuiter in sight at the 22,000 capacity Banc of California Stadium.

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October 8, 2019

The Furry Music Anthology releases “A Song Of Your Sona.”

by Dogpatch Press Staff

Here’s a new initiative to bring together the musicians of the furry fandom, and give them a collective platform to share their music and be recognized.

The Furry Music Anthology plans to release “Anthrologies”: a series of themed albums, filled with tracks by various musicians. They recently released the very first album of that series, “A Song of Your Sona“. It’s free!

Get it here: https://furrymusicanthology.bandcamp.com/album/a-song-of-your-sona

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July 19, 2019

DJ UltraPup barks about what it’s like to be on stage the first time at Anthrocon.

by Patch O'Furr

(Patch:) It sounds like you had a blast at Anthrocon! I wanted to ask you about your first time DJing a big con. What’s your story and how did you end up there? Was it your first furry con, or just first time on stage at one?

(DJ UltraPup:) I’m a member of the pup community and I have been for quite some time. I am also however a member of the furry community, and one of my big goals is to try and bridge the divide between furries and pups. When a friend of mine suggested I apply to DJ at Anthrocon, I thought why not. I’m well known in the DC area as a circuit DJ and I have 3 club residencies, so I applied, and sure enough they picked me to play Saturday night at 11pm. AC was my first major con. I had gone to FurTheMore earlier this year just to check it out, but this was my first time DJing a furcon, and it won’t be my last.

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May 13, 2019

Avian Invasion – Children Of The Stars – Album Review by Enjy

by Dogpatch Press Staff

Matthew Ebel is a well-known fandom musician who has begun a new project that sees him shifting from his roots of piano-based lyrical works to what he has dubbed “progressive (bird)house” with hints of trance peppered throughout. Performing under the name “Bird One,” Ebel dons a masquerade-like beak and colorful outfits as he crafts melodies that have been played at such important venues as The Roxy and even the Grand Ole Opry. How well does Bird One’s musical prowess transfer from Elton John to EDM? We are going to take a look at his 6-song EP titled Children Of The Stars to find out.

We Looked Up is the first song on the EP. It sets the tone for the rest of the album, explaining in a narrative form over a pulsing, dark, bass driven beat that the world has transformed into a dystopian society of people who do not trust each other. “Now the people built only walls. The shadow whispered in their ears, told the people that only darkness could defeat darkness,” the narrator states, his voice tinged with flanges and pitch shifts that give it an eerie quality, as if maybe you cannot trust him, either. For those of you who wonder about Ebel’s piano work, it is front and center here, clean keys tapping out a spacey melody over the grimy bass and drums in the background, evoking images of a clean galaxy over a dirty megacity. Indeed that is where the narrative goes next, as the narrator explains that one man said he saw light, and the people looked up, hence the track’s title. The song breaks into a happy tone after a rise, painting the picture of the land being flooded with light as they break down the walls. This track is a master class in how to use texture and tone to create a soundscape, and Bird One did an extremely good job at telling the story with more than words. “Only the light can defeat darkness, and there is always light,” the line the song is closed with, is particularly powerful and important to remember in trying times such as these. Absolutely a 10 out of 10.

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February 25, 2019

Interview with LyricWulf, a top furry Youtuber who shares the positive power of music.

by Patch O'Furr

“If you’re someone who’s got something to share with the world, there’s no better time than now”

See more at LyricWulf.com

LyricWulf is one of the top furry Youtubers with over 100K subscribers. What’s special about his music?

Art, fiction and costuming are full of furriness. Music isn’t always recognized as a fandom thing, but a lot of other stuff depends on it. Dance and music videos are a big gateway for newcomers. Con dances are a crossroads for goers and might get the lion’s share of production budgets. Live events are glue that makes fandom stronger than just internet relationships, and furry dance parties are some of the biggest local meets where they happen.

Unlike other things in fandom, a lot of the music comes from outside (although that’s changing). But back in the 1970’s and 80’s, nerdy conventions featured “filk” music – folk songs with fandom inspired lyrics. That’s rare now, and dances are more like a hybrid with separate subcultures (like rave and DJ party culture), which makes “furry music” hard to define.

A recent series at Dogpatch Press asked 10 furry musicians “what is furry music?” It’s hard to say more than “it’s made by or for us”, but think about how it can evoke feeling by using visual aesthetic, being a soundtrack, or even representing animal sounds like Peter and the Wolf does.

A great response came from indie-pop artist ABSRDST.  His cartoon aesthetic (gay ducks with romance lyrics) wasn’t made for fandom, it was just welcomed after he got started (and that was mutual). He put it on a shirt that was especially popular. One of the team for a certain cartoon duck show even wore it to work. That seems like pure furriness, coming from inside rather than intentionally made for a certain target.

Some of the biggest mainstream names who have associated with furries are in music. Many pro musicians use fursuiters in music videos. Jello Biafra (ex Dead Kennedys) and Margaret Cho (from The Masked Singer) did the biggest interviews on Dogpatch Press. For unusual genre crossover, Ronan Harris of cult band VNV Nation gives special appreciation to furry fans, and metal band Periphery let a fursuiter fan sing for them. The biggest names who have used fursonas may be Violent J of ICP and Andrew WK (a wolf). Heavy metal can go well with wolves.

Today’s guest isn’t a metal wolf, he’s the cute and cuddly kind! Let’s look into why music matters with him.

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