Dogpatch Press

Fluff Pieces Every Week

Tag: rock

February 4, 2019

What is furry music? Q&A with Bob Drake and Fox Amoore

by Patch O'Furr

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?

Bob Drake: Musician, furry artist and fursuiter in France who has worked with George Clinton and Ice Cube, who some consider to be a seminal figure in the avant-progressive music scene.

  • I’m furry, and a musician, so I’m not sure. Tee hee. Seriously I’m a life-long furry, been playing instruments since the 60‘s, and it’s all a deep and exciting part of the same mysterious and lovely something!
  • Whatever your imagination wants it to be. I used to listen to records when I was a kid and imagine it was a story about some anthropomorphic critters. In my own work I haven’t aimed at making music specifically for a furry audience, I just do what I like and it’s got a lot of furry in it.
  • When I do my solo shows, I wear a rainbow-stripey tail, fuzzy footpaws and a furry hat with long earflaps. People really seem to respond to and enjoy that, even if they know nothing about the furry community. And anyone who has come to record at my home studio knows I love stuffed animals and critters… I’ve got them all over the place! That said, I don’t constantly flaunt it either, anymore than I would constantly talk about instruments or songwriting with people who aren’t interested in those things. You can find all the info about my albums at: bdrak.com. I’ve performed in my fursuit with different bands too, none of them “furry” bands.

Here’s one fursuit performance – and another:

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January 31, 2019

What is furry music? Q&A with Runetooth and Bandit Raccoon

by Patch O'Furr

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?

EdgeDestroys (AKA Runetooth): A fandom commenter, graphic artist and musician.

  1. Yeah I’m a furry musician but I don’t write music about the community, at least not yet. I have a lot of music projects though so I suppose there’s nothing stopping me from starting a new one to do it in the future.
  2. As far as what furry music is, I don’t think there’s one answer that’ll do everyone’s perception of it justice, just like it’s hard to really define the community at large and make everyone happy. Furry music could be music with lyrics deliberately written about the fandom or just music written by furries, I personally write stuff to be accessible to everyone so I don’t know if I would count mine as furry music even though I am a furry. I feel like a more nuanced way of looking at this would be something like a venn diagram of music BY furries VS music FOR furries and the overlap between those. With the community at large, I think that overlap and the FOR furries parts are probably what’s perceived as “furry music” and thus tend to get more support which has always bummed me out because I’d like to see every facet get lots of support but I don’t wanna drag this out into some huge existential tedtalk.
  3. As for a fun fact about my stuff uh, one of the songs that got me like, a very tiny bit of attention was a remix I did of Bonetrousle from Undertale that ended up being officially licensed through Tiny Waves and Materia Collective and released on a remix compilation album. Myself and several other artists on it got together at Anime Festival Orlando to sign it and send it to Toby Fox so Toby Fox has a CD with my signature probably somewhere in some warehouse under a mountain of millions of other things he’s been sent from fans haha. That same remix (and the rest of the album) was played at Awesome Games Done Quick last year so that was cool. If people wanna check it out I have a soundcloud and if EDM isn’t your thing I goof around with tons of other genres, ambient, metal, my newest project I’m hopefully releasing soon is easycore/chiprock so I probably have something for everyone.

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January 29, 2019

What is furry music? Q&A with Tenkitsune and ZERØ 

by Patch O'Furr

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.

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January 28, 2019

What is furry music? Q&A with Pepper Coyote and ABSRDST

by Patch O'Furr

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?

Pepper Coyote: Solo musician and collaborator since 2010 with bands like Look Left and Foxes and Peppers. 

Hi. I’m Pepper Coyote, and I am a furry musician. To me, music in the furry fandom is just music that happens to be done by furries. That might seem obvious, but I have never seen any kind of gate keeping in the fandom based on what one’s music is about. I see music in this community as yet another example of how we are a fandom that cannot be bought and sold, and one that is not based on any corporate entity. It is our own.

The most helpful information I ever learned as a musician, was that you don’t need anyone’s permission to create. You don’t need a label’s approval to put out a CD, and you don’t need a company’s permission to start selling or shipping said CD. There’s never been a better time to be a musician. Your audience might be out there waiting for you, even if you don’t know who they are yet.

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January 28, 2019

What is furry music? Q&A with Matthew Ebel and Microdile

by Patch O'Furr

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?

Matthew Ebel: Piano Rock singer-songwriter who recently branched out as EDM/progressive house act Avian Invasion, beloved by audiences over many years as a convention mainstay. 

  • Yup, definitely a Furry musician. If playing shows at cons for the last 12 years wasn’t definitive enough, now I play on club stages in a bird mask. Pretty sure that’s enough evidence to convict.
  • Furry music is, in my opinion, separate from Furry musicians. There are plenty of proud Furry musicians who don’t write songs about the fandom or animals… Furry music is, like all furry art, something that expresses the creator’s particular affinity for critter characters.
  • I once had a talk radio network in South Africa use one of my songs as their network theme song for two or three years. I didn’t bother telling them the whole album was written about The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy… I’m pretty sure that would’ve just weirded them right the fuck out.

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January 28, 2019

What is furry music? Q&A with musicians.

by Patch O'Furr

Whoah. Look what came up by following a random link to what looked like regular music. The followers are all furries. Is this a performer who plays furry cons? Advertises to furries? Just vibes with things they like? Is he one himself?

Subculture bubbles up unexpectedly and can make you wonder where it comes from. Fandoms intersect and have many gateways. If there is “furry music”, the first question is what defines it? 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. A loose working definition can help get things started.

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June 22, 2016

Freaky Furry Music – from the punk, goth and industrial underground.

by Patch O'Furr

“What Is Furry Music?”  It’s a topic that Rakuen Growlithe started on Flayrah.  It can be music with furry themes, or music made by (or even popular with) furries, or both.

Rakuen dismissed much of the latter kind for not being furry enough.  I don’t think that’s quite fair.  Consider overlap with rave scenes and gaming.  Music related to those things can carry furry culture or spirit without animal themes built in.  Music has context – it even matters where you go for it (yay for dive bars!)  Some classic electronic/rave music was made with animal sounds for their musical tones. Doesn’t that bring out a little furry spirit?

I’d love to get into this and get responses from Furry music makers about how they personally define it.  This gets very much into “personal taste”, but that’s the fun of it.  Just like tasting different foods, it’s hard to say anything is right or wrong.

Arts, music, furry, and other subcultures have many overlaps.  A while back I covered the super incongruous overlap of furries and industrial music. (Part 1, part 2, part 3.)  I liked contrasting the extremes of cold, robotic and aggressive vs. warm, fuzzy and cute themes.  You could do this for many genres.  How about heavy metal?  It’s often associated with Wolves.

Here’s some personal favorite stuff that came out of 1970’s/80’s classic punk and goth.

I Wish I Woz a Dog, by Alien Sex Fiend.  (It’s easy, be a furry.)

This is like the anthem for an underground sewer club full of feral furry rats and stray mutts.  In the beginning of the song they’re banging on a real trash can.  Then it revs up like a washing machine full of spikes.  The drum machine and no bass/guitar-only sound makes exciting rawness.

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