driftwould, the Southern California emo band encompassing a diverse set of artistic skill and vision, sits down at KSDT Radio to speak on their origin, influences, and creative collaboration. The band, forming at UC San Diego in 2023, performs in local San Diego venues and debuted their self-titled album, driftwould, on November 15th, 2024. 

This May, I had the opportunity to sit down with two members of the driftwould; the band’s bassist Luke Nuyen, and lead singer guitarist Guy LaBorde. Exploring themes of surrealism, weirdness, and vulnerability, I learned about the band’s individual backgrounds, sound influences, interdisciplinary process, their home-built studio, the formation of their debut album, and a little about their next project.

A Conversation with driftwould:

KSDT: Today we have two out of four members of driftwould. How are you guys today?

Luke: Good! Thank you for having us. 

Guy: Yeah!

KSDT: How’d you guys originally come together as a band at UCSD?

Guy: All right. Well, Luke and I were in the same class, a jazz class, and we were both kind of doing different projects at the time, but we both also produce electronic music. We noticed that in the class, and Luke invited me over to come hang out and make some beats. We got together and met up. It was just me and Luke. At first, I don’t know what went down—Luke, you could finish up there.

Luke: Yeah, I think we just met because we were talking about hyperpop, and we were just gonna, you know, cook something up! Somehow, we ended up making a song that we really liked that neither of us would have came up with on our own. So, we were like, “Let’s try and do something with this.” I knew a bunch of people from the jazz scene, so I called up one of my friends, who’s a drummer, and we went through a few guitarists, but we ended up with another one of our classmates.

Guy: The thing we made was what would become our first song “hippo,” which was a kind of breakcore-y kind of thing where we use drum breaks. The obvious choice was to call in Bruin, because we were like, “Oh, we want to play stuff that has this kind of drum break feel”. And who comes to mind? Obviously, Bruin. He’s really good at that style, and he’s just around the whole scene. So, yeah, it was kind of obvious.

KSDT: That’s great! So your music blends emo with jazz. Also, East Asian math rock and post–hardcore. How would you say those influences came together organically?

Luke: I mean, I’d say the main thing was we were just listening to a lot of music, and we were hanging out. We were just showing each other cool songs that we found. We just kind of wrote and assembled that.

Guy: I’d say that’s the direction we picked for the band—with that influence from East Asian math rock, stuff like that. That’s kind of the more intentional side of it. I’d say the jazz, because we all just do that anyway. That’s kind of the more unintentional side. Luke says this all the time, but our actual style is all the stuff we don’t really think about. Us trying to make something that we’re inspired by ends up with us making something different, and then that ends up as our actual end product.

Luke: Also, I think we’ve been influenced a lot by other local bands. 

Guy: Oh, that’s true!

Luke: Every time we go to a show and a local band kills it, we got to do something like them, you know? They’re all super cool.

KSDT:  Who are your influences for your self-titled album, driftwould?

Guy: First main influence that started the whole thing; a band called toe from Japan. They’re a post-rock thing. They’re super awesome—really cool guitar, interlocking melodies and things like that.

Luke: They’re very sparkly. Not midwest emo, but along those lines.

Guy: Yeah, general vibe of that. Origami Angel, too. Luke started getting way more into them, and that definitely inspired the way we mixed the album and a lot of how we kind of ended up doing it. I guess some of the songs were even stuff I’d written before even starting the band. So, it kind of was things that I just had sitting around; guitar music that I’m like, “Man, I really don’t have a place to put this out.” I brought those ideas to the band, and we just sort of workshopped our own ideas and kind of developed them into a new identity.

KSDT: You guys are very involved in your entire artistic process: songwriting, mixing, mastering, and your own cover art. I think that’s a really great touch! What part of that process was most rewarding for you?

Guy: Oh man. I think for me, because most of the time since our band has been recording and gigging, I’ve been graduated. I haven’t been on campus, where most of the facilities are, anymore. I think a big rewarding part of doing the process ourselves was… in my household, we built a studio. We made a new thing that has what KSDT has here; a recording studio with a drum set, full-room mics, everything you need. We recorded it all in-house, in the room that me and my roommates have built up. That was really cool to fully utilize the space and get it going and actually make a full project from that.

Luke: That was a good answer.

KSDT: What would you say the biggest difference is being in your studio, an area that you built up yourself, compared to the KSDT Radio practice room?

Guy: I’d say, they all have their quirks, but at least with this one, it’s a little more optimized. It’s my own computer, my own workflow. It’s easier to just plug in and go and do the techniques I already know, that we’ve already tried. It saves a little bit of the hassle of learning a new space. So, sometimes if people are used to here, it can be kind of fast. If you were to walk into a studio, you have to learn how everything works before you can go. This one, you can literally walk in and just go.

Luke: I think KSDT is a little more clinical, I guess, where you kind of have to go through this whole process of setting up the mics and getting in the control room every time. I think when you’re recording yourselves, that feels a little maybe, impersonal. I don’t know. When you’re recording at home, it’s nice that it’s the same room that we just chill in and jam and hang out in. It feels a little less like the red light syndrome, when you’re recording all of a sudden and you can’t play when you’ve been playing for years. I think being at home helped alleviate that.

KSDT:  Would you say your collaboration process as a band is more effective? More free in your own space?

Luke: Yeah, I think we definitely have some debates over what we actually want to bring to the band. I think being free to do that definitely helps.

Guy: Yeah, true. I’d say it helps. I mean it’s kind of sad; after this lease, we’re losing the space. But the thing is, it’s really nice to have it because it’s a place where we can just meet and practice and do our thing. I feel some spaces like that are kind of rare. So, it’s really convenient for everyone to have it and just be able to meet up easily without a ton of scheduling.

Luke: Being able to stay super late helps, like staying up to 4 AM. You can’t really do that in other places. 

Guy: Definitely.

KSDT: How does your collaboration process work as a band?

Luke: Honestly, we’ve had a bunch of… not debates, just talks about how we like to collaborate. I think the one thing that we were talking about is; it’s nice to partition and not need to have everyone give the same amount of creative input. That’s kind of weird to say, but two of our members, they like treating it more as session musicians sometimes, where they come in and play their parts. They obviously work with it and see what they like to play, but overall, I think it’s mainly me and Guy actually pushing the ideas and the vision forward. I think we’re all happy with that! I feel like a lot of times, you don’t actually want too much creative freedom, because then you have to do everything.

Guy: Yeah. We avoid that groupthink where too much of everyone pulls it in a different direction. This way we can pick a direction and go with it and even though it might not be everyone’s personal favorite taste, it ends up being a stronger decision and a stronger message just because of that. So yeah, it helps.

KSDT: With all of your different backgrounds and everyone coming from a different space, how did that shape driftwould, your debut album?

Guy: Yeah. Personally, I come from a more electronic music background. I would say that just from producing and making the background audio and stuff, I don’t necessarily come into the thing like maybe some bands do, where it’s all about thinking about the parts or instruments. For me personally, it comes from filling out different layers and things that only went so far into the process. After that, we did actually try to emulate what other rock bands do to learn it. It sort of took that inspiration from all the other stuff I’ve been doing, stuff that we’ve collectively been doing with electronic music, interdisciplinary stuff, and then applying the format of a rock band on top of it.

Luke: I definitely was a pure jazz musician before. I think a lot of the songs we wrote ended up being played the way jazz musicians would play them with a form that people kind of just improv over. As we played more, it became less and less improv because we knew we want to: hey, hit beat two on this part every time. But initially, I just showed up with a jazz lead sheet, and then we read down, the same way you would in a jazz gig. Like you said, we’re moving a bit away from that, and we’re trying to ride more like a rock band—just kind of all play together as one unit. 

Guy: Yeah, and I think on the next project that we’re currently in the works on, we’re breaking away even more from the jazz stuff, and going a little heavier more in the style of our peers in the scene. And trying to get a little bit more raw and right for ourselves, but also for the crowd—like let’s make this part go hard. Writing a little more functionally, and not like a form.

Luke: And less intellectually.

Guy: Yeah. Less intellectually, writing more emotionally.

KSDT: How does vulnerability play in your work? In your songwriting? Your performance? 

Luke: I feel emo as a genre is kind of about just saying shit that really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things; you just talking about your fucking first crush, or you’re gay, or something. And I don’t know; I’ve always felt that’s a nice vibe just in general. Also, I feel Gen Z is a little less grand about our fucking dreams and shit. It feels very fitting to just talk about a nice day, nostalgia, small stuff, because I feel that’s kind of how it is these days.

Guy: For me, I’ve never been a lead singer on any project before. I guess in my own music that I make—I sing for it, but I’ve never sang as much as I have for driftwould, and I’ve never written as many lyrics as I have for driftwould. I’d say a big part of the vulnerability just comes from me learning how to get up in front of the band and actually sing, perform on stage, but then also from being that role of the front person; the vocalist. I guess that has made me look inward a bit and try to embody the person that is sometimes the narrator of the stories of the songs we write, or if it’s actually my own experience; try to be the emotion I was in when I wrote the song and show that to everyone. 

I think it can be a bit nerve-wracking; sharing some of the stories and things, even if they’re changed or altered in a way to make it like the song. Sometimes it does feel like, “Wow, this is a part of who I’ve been,” and I’m putting it forward. It’s really rewarding because some of these things I’ve been sitting on for a while; some of the songs I had written or had worked on before bringing them to the band. It finally feels like there’s an outlet to show everyone. The ones that are a little more personal to me, I’m a little nervous to show. And then to finally get to tell everyone, it’s a bit cathartic. 

Luke: I think it’s definitely something that we’re actively working towards, too. I think, like we’ve been saying, we were a little too intellectual. But this second project, I think we’re going to be even more vulnerable, because it’s crazy seeing some of these other local bands, how open they are and how much they give you, and we’re trying to be more like that.

KSDT: Would you guys consider driftwould a separate persona from your personal identity, or are they combined?

Guy: I’d say a bit of both. I’d say some of the songs are something that me or Luke made; it’s us, it’s our thing. At the same time, with the aesthetic of the band and some of the inspiration, I think that we looked at these weird, sort of beautiful scenes of weird, surrealist, liminal, imagery and spaces and conceptual things. Some of the paintings that Luke made for our album covers, for instance are just a weird abstract thing. In that sense, some of the songs as we were making then, since they weren’t something so personal to me or Luke when we first made them, they were a collaboration. Those ones ended up being a way of exploring that new idea of other narrators—some sort of other concept, and then feeding into that. Those things became pretty cool to me because you get to offset some of your own experience and make it about something a little more generalized for everyone to pick up on, but also something a bit unique or interesting enough that it makes you think as you listen to lyrics or pay attention. It’s kind of like, “What is this about?” Just sort of surrealist and weird.

Luke: I feel like being a performer, in some ways you definitely do play a character. You’re not necessarily self-assured or confident in your daily life or when you’re looking for a job and stuff. But also, I think in a way when you’re playing a song that you wrote about, something dark, stuff that means to you personally, it does feel like you’re saying something really personal in a way you wouldn’t be able to say through other means. Some of the stuff I’ve written, I feel like talking about it in a normal conversation—that would be a really heavy type of conversation. But when there’s loud music and drums and guitars and you’re screaming, you can get it out in a way that you can’t normally. That feels personal to me in a way that I don’t get to be in my daily life.

KSDT: driftwould is your band name and driftwould is the title of your album. What’s the story behind the name driftwould?

Luke: I don’t think there’s a serious story behind it. Just some cool ass vibes that we felt from it. We were thinking of a name for a while. We’ve written nearly all the songs that we put on the album before we even came up with a name, and we just had to get it over it. “Drift” feels like some, I don’t know, it just feels kind of some floaty, slightly surreal stuff. So that’s why we went with it.

Guy: Yeah, yeah. I would say there’s nothing—it’s just up for everyone to kind of interpret on this one. But yeah, I think that the word itself, the compound word, and the way that it looks and feels, it just fits with the other imagery that we built, and just seems to fit perfect now that we’ve done it. But at first, we were just kind of making it and being like, “Okay, this is where we’re going with it.”

KSDT: For listeners, what do you hope they take away from your music?

Luke: I think for me… I feel I genuinely thought this would never happen; having people that I’ve played for that aren’t my friends come up to me and say this song that we wrote actually affected them and they felt the themes that we were trying to convey, and they connected with it, and it meant something to them. That means so much, and every time someone says that, I’m like, “Aw.” Basically, it’s crazy that people will actually look at our stuff and be like, “This is something that connects with me emotionally.” The fact that they’re taking away, I guess, what we put in whatever we were thinking when we wrote this song, that means a lot.

Guy: Yeah, exactly what Luke said. It’s so interesting with this project, I’ve definitely had that happen more than with other things I’ve worked on, and it’s pretty surreal. It’s rewarding. And also a nice thing to think about—to have people react and respond to the music. That’s all I can ask, that people just try to embody it, to be in the music while you’re listening. Then take whatever you get from it.

KSDT: That’s lovely. For those who haven’t listened to driftwould before, where do you recommend they start? Which track do you think they should listen to?

Luke: We kind of all have our own favorite tracks, but the one that people seem to like the most is this track called “you!!”. I think it does make sense, because we wrote that track to be the opener for our shows live. 

Guy: Yeah.

Luke: And it’s very accessible, but also, I think it’s got some interesting stuff in it. We say it sounds like an anime opening.

Guy: I’d say the same thing. And then if you want to hear a little bit of the weirder end, and also what we kind of call the core of the band, the track “hippo,” the first one we made, the one that started it all. It, to me, holds that essence of what we are, and that one’s a good place to start as well.

KSDT: Well, that is all the questions I have for you today. Thank you so much for joining us here at KSDT Radio! 

Luke: Thank you so much!

Guy: Thank you! Great to be here and give some words.

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