The lead single from Xay Cole’s third album 21st Century Wrist, “Young Money,” sounds like 50 Super Nintendos lined up next to each other; its layers of electronics converge and diverge, melodies coalescing out of the noise before dissolving into a sampled whip-crack or a startling, atonal guitar solo. But the song is also catchy, centering on a poppy drum machine beat and an infectious whoa-oh-oh vocal hook. Both alienating and addicting, “Young Money” achieves something deceptively simple: It’s cool.
“Young Money” was the first song that I heard by Cole, and it immediately sent me down a rabbit hole; its combination of disparate elements made me want to learn more. When I saw via an Instagram press release that 21st Century Wrist, released on local labels Cherub Dream and Chris Records, had been retrofitted from music that was originally meant to be ambient found-sound, I was even more intrigued. How could something so cacophonously compelling have come from the minimalism that usually characterizes ambient music?
So I caught up with Xay to ask about the creation of “Young Money” and 21st Century Wrist, their musical inspirations, and the benefits of watching the Saw movies at a young age.
48 HILLS I was wondering what inspired the upcoming record. Was there anything in particular that brought it about, any sounds, ideas, concepts? What’s the vibe?
XAY COLE I actually technically started this album in 2021. I planned it to be the third album I released, but my original idea was I wanted to make a 30-plus [track] minimal electronics album. And then so much time had passed, and I got on this big Frank Zappa kick and was like, “I’m not supposed to be making electronic stuff right now.” The single [“Young Money”] is very electronic, but the rest of the record is really rock influenced. There was also a lot of confusing stuff happening on an interpersonal level, so that kind of sound felt like it could display that a lot more.
It’s kind of a funny record to me, because the initial ideas were so long ago, and it ended up being so completely different from what I first wanted. I actually technically did finish the 30 electronic songs, but then I whittled it down and turned them into these weird rock songs from that. That was a weird thing I didn’t expect to happen, because it was in the last couple months before I finished it that I did that.
48 HILLS I saw in the press release that it started as a more minimal, ambient electronic record, which I thought was really interesting because to me—and it sounds like this was the intent—the single doesn’t sound that way. So I was curious about, what was the process of turning the songs from this more minimal soundscape into what they are now?
XAY COLE When I first did it, I was trying to go over every song and load it up with layers of guitar and drums. It’s funny because “Young Money” is a cut instrumental from the last album that I did, which is called Ivy League Depression. I guess I don’t have a thing about using things from different times or anything like that. But really, on a technical level, it came to cutting out parts of songs that didn’t work, adding guitar and adding live drums to them. And doing that created new songs. I would do that and the song would be 12 minutes long, so I’d have to cut it in half. Not that I have anything against that, but I was like, “This song only needed to be three minutes.” And parts would get made from that that would then be totally new songs. So it is a mixture of older songs and new songs that came out of the process.
48 HILLS Was it something that you consciously were like, I wanna move this in a different direction, or were you listening to it and thinking, this isn’t right?
XAY COLE You know what it was? I played the album for one of my friends and I was like, “What do you think?” And they were like, [shrugs] “It’s pretty good.” And…
48 HILLS Oh.
XAY COLE You know what I mean? [laughs] They weren’t trying to be mean or anything. I still think it was good, but that mixed with me being so sick of hearing those songs [that] I’d been working on for so many years, that I was like, for me, I need to make them a new thing. It felt super right.
48 HILLS Have you had anything like that before, where you had this idea for what you were gonna do, and then had to start over? Or is this a new journey?
XAY COLE It’s kind of a new journey. For the very first album that I did, Street Preacher, I rerecorded all of those songs because I recorded them so shittily. Some new things came out of that, but that was more on a technical level. This is the first time that it’s been an entire re-face of something that was never even released.
48 HILLS Is there anything about this album that you think is different from your other ones? Does it feel different in any way?
XAY COLE Yeah, it definitely feels really different. I feel like a lot of the previous stuff I’ve done felt really personal—and this album feels really personal, but I don’t think in a human way [laughs]. I don’t know exactly how to describe that, but to me, it feels a little more outside of myself. I feel like I got so much of that vulnerable stuff out early on, and what I feel like talking about now and the sounds I’m making, to me feels more like… I imagine a robot or an alien making it, rather than me as a person. That’s something that really did excite me a lot about this album.
48 HILLS Is it you taking on a character or a persona?
XAY COLE No, not a persona. I think that stuff’s cool. I don’t think I’d be very good at doing that. Topically, it’s stuff that is really personal, but also is not so honed in on me. When words are being used, [I’m] thinking about how those can create an atmosphere rather than tell some kind of story from my life. Obviously, stuff that happens to me is really influential to me, that’s all in there in some way, but I feel like the importance is less on listing off these specifics of things that are going on, and more about the feelings they create. And I think the hope from that is that people can look at that and then apply their own things rather than it just having to be mine, you know?
48 HILLS It sounds like a more abstract approach.
XAY COLE Yeah, totally. It’s way more abstract. And absurd, in some moments. It’s something I felt like I had a hard time achieving in the past, which is why I feel like I’m doing it in a way that I really like. Because that’s the music I really enjoy. I feel like I’m getting that a lot more than with my previous stuff with this record, which makes me really excited.
48 HILLS Was it something that you set out to explore as a musician, or is it something that came to you in the process?
XAY COLE Yeah, definitely. I think more recently, I felt like it’s important to really have a lot of intention behind the scenes because, with some stuff, I didn’t have as much intention going into it. Which is cool, I feel like that’s an approach too. But if it wasn’t something that I felt purposeful about before, it is now. Thinking about what kind of art I’m making, or what it’s doing, what I’m setting out for it to do.
48 HILLS You’re thinking about it more consciously now?
XAY COLE Yeah. I always have ideas – whenever I think of making an album, in my mind it’s a concept album, even if it’s not super clear. It’s not The Wall, but in my mind, it kind of feels like that. Before [this album], my approach would be to get in front of the computer on the guitar and record and let stuff happen. Just very impromptu. But I want things [to] not just be a collection of songs, but be really purposeful next to each other. I’m having, like, a new renaissance in my mind about the possibilities of what that could actually mean.
48 HILLS That sounds like an interesting place to be in terms of being able to approach your music in a different way.
XAY COLE Yeah, it’s really cool. And also letting other things than music inspire the music. I’m really obsessed with films right now. I’ve been watching a bunch of Ryan Trecartin films. And I watched this other movie called Possessed, it’s like an 80s movie –
48 HILLS Oh, Possession?
XAY COLE Possession, yeah!
48 HILLS I love that movie.
XAY COLE It’s really good. I was thinking about stuff like that and how that could inspire music, because those visuals are just like music. Thinking about things as movies has been inspiring how I’m thinking about the stuff I’m gonna make going forward. It’s expanding what it can mean for songs to be next to each other, but also what things that aren’t sound that could inspire [songs].
48 HILLS Is that something you were thinking about when you were making the video for “Young Money” or putting the cover art together, stuff like that?
XAY COLE I don’t think I was really thinking about it when I was actually putting stuff together. I wanted to just make an awesome video, and also expand on videos I’ve done in the past. I feel like that’s the best video I’ve made. That and the other single, “Screen Time,” has like my favorite videos that I’ve ever put out. I don’t know if there’s a ton of intent behind it, but it was purposeful once it happened.
48 HILLS Yeah. I thought about it because of the filmic connection, the visual aspect of the music. I thought that was interesting and I was wondering if you could say more about it.
XAY COLE I’ve always wanted to make a movie. My friend’s dad showed me the Saw movies when I was really really young, so I got really obsessed with that and other stuff of that nature [laughs]. I remember when I was a little kid, for Christmas or something, my parents got me one of the little flip cameras. And I would recruit my friends to make little Saw reenactments. It’s funny, actually, I didn’t even think about that, but it’s one of the first things that I ever wanted to do. The album that’s gonna come out after this one, I started filming stuff to try to make a music video for every song – to make a film already having the soundtrack.
Since I started watching more Ryan Trecartin films, binging Harmony Korine movies, it was like when I made that music video. Watching a lot of these movies made it click in my mind how influential that can be for making sound. Like, I was watching I-Be Area, and watching that movie made me want to sample, which I never really do. I was chopping up this sample of this robot-woman voice and using it in the instrumental, trying to think about the song if it was in the world of that movie. And thinking about film as universes that you can make a song to be a part of. It’s cool, because I feel like there are a lot of movies that do the thing that any great art does, which is make you feel something indescribable. It’s almost discriminatory not to pull from those kinds of things, if they influence you. Or you could go the other way too, with music influencing movies. It’s been really exciting me.
48 HILLS Yeah. That makes a lot of sense to me. I really love Gregg Araki, and music is such a central part of what he does, because it helps to create the feeling and sensation. I feel like that makes a lot of sense the other way too because it can prime your brain to be like, how could I translate the visual of what I’m seeing into something that is a sound? That cross translation is a really interesting process.
XAY COLE Yeah. It’s kind of crazy [laughs].
48 HILLS I saw that you’re in other bands and that you’ve done engineering work. How does making your own music compare to making music with other people? And do you find that doing one kind of inspires the other, or are they completely separate?
XAY COLE I think of them as pretty separate things. When I’m working with other people, usually there’s an intent behind the project. So I’m approaching [it] in a different way than I would with solo stuff. I’m in this band called Buyer, that’s like my serious band. And that’s different, because… I think sometimes you meet a person who’s a really amazing artist, and then it becomes about the compromise. And about not compromising, you know? It’s about letting every idea through. I think of every project as a totally different thing that I have to approach differently, because the aesthetics are different, and it could be what we’re setting out to do is different. Especially if it’s a one-off project, then I feel like there has to be a real reason for that. Sometimes it’s just to have fun, but even that will make it totally different.
48 HILLS Yeah, that makes sense. Because when you’re doing stuff on your own, you only have to answer to yourself.
XAY COLE Definitely, yeah. When you’re doing something with someone else, what they add will influence you too, or will change what you were doing. Or maybe they’ll bring a song and then I’ll add my ideas. And over time, doing that more and more creates this different culture that you naturally get into. It just becomes its own thing.
48 HILLS I was listening to a lot of your music, and one thing that I noticed is that your music uses a lot of dissonance and noise. It is very melodic, but also not at the same time. Are those choices purposeful? What’s interesting about that to you as a musician?
XAY COLE I want to make everything that I like in one thing. That’s what I met my bandmate over – we thought that, in San Francisco, we couldn’t find anyone doing noise. We both really like harsh noise, like Hanatarash and The Gerogerigegege and stuff like that. I love that kind of stuff, I love bands like Hella or Lightning Bolt, I really like Black Dresses, Devi McCallion. And I like Galaxie 500 and stuff. I feel like I like everything. Naturally, making music is the accumulation of what I like and what feels good for me to do. So it’s my attempt at trying to do something interesting, combining worlds that are maybe usually not that together. And also I just think it sounds good. [laughs]
48 HILLS Yeah! I mean it’s really cool. The first song of yours that I heard was “Young Money,” and I found it really striking that it’s both super melodic and that the melodies are pulling against each other. That made me curious about it.
XAY COLE I’m glad you like it! Especially with how many resources there are with a laptop, I feel like there’s literally endless sounds you could make. It feels important to me to try to create something that sounds interesting, or a little like, “What the hell?”
