"You heard them in the darkness, speaking in voices like your own."
To see the FULL VERSION of An Endless Fiction Click HERE
Spoken language places limitations on how we are able to verbalize our feelings as to be understood by our fellow Earth angels. Three examples of feelings people have felt, but cannot explain:
- Sonder – The realization that each passerby has a life as vivid and complex as your own.
- Opia – The ambiguous intensity of looking someone in the eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable.
- Monachopsis – The subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place.
St. Terrible is the sound culmination of emotions that you have felt, yet cannot explain. Trying to describe what impact the sound of St. Terrible has on a listener has proven a complex task for me. Lead singer and Idaho resident Zach Herbert utilizes his vocal talents and stage presence to bring an organic power to the musical experience of St. Terrible. Several artists contribute to everything "St. Terrible" and all aspects of the collaboration are "fine art." I truly believe that they are masters of physics, enchanting sound alchemists, coaxing beautiful sound from other spectrums into our reality.
I asked Zach several questions about St. Terrible and An Endless Fiction. Here is what he had to say about the collaboration efforts:
"I have been lucky enough to work with a close knit-group of friends over the past 4 years who have been instrumental to helping create the look and feel of St. Terrible. Friends like Brenna Cavanaugh (production design and co-art director), Meredith Richardson (co-director and co-producer) and Alessandra Avellanet (Hair/Make-up and additional art direction) were my main collaborators in terms of developing and producing the film, along with Jonnie Peterson, a long time performer/dancer with St. Terrible and friend going all the way back to high school. Even the non-musician performers in the film were just good friends who were enthusiastic enough to volunteer their time to get wrapped up in our our strange world. Along with that, there were some new faces: I met Cody Gittings (cinematographer and editor) and Lila Streicher (first camera and lighting design among many other things) not long before we began working on the project, and have felt incredibly grateful to have connected with them (I’m hoping to do more with them in the near future).
In terms of music, the project was created with long-time collaborators/members(it’s always hard to say what the right term is when we fluctuate in form and approach so often) Sean Dahlman (who I started my musical journey with in high school), Aaron Atkins and Ashton Jenicek. We also brought in Boise locals Mike Ward (of Green Zoo/By Fire and Sword) and Jordan Harris (of Optiflynn) to play horns."
Lyrics for songs are in Zach's domain. He expressed that even if he works on a song by himself, he will bring it to his friends and collaborators for input.
When working on the songs for An Endless Fiction, Zach said, "For this project, I came up with the initial demos by myself while at Agapolis, and played around with them during my live solo shows throughout the fall of 2018. Then in late 2018/early 2019, I brought some of them to Sean, Ashton and Aaron. We worked and reworked them for a year or so, each person adding or taking away pieces. Sometimes that process looked like someone like Sean coming in and adding an entirely new piece or section to a song, while other times it was something smaller, like Aaron suggesting tweaking a few small things that would end up changing the feel of the song in a big way. St. Terrible hasn’t been in its full(er) band form for all that long, so we’re all still in the process of figuring out what the writing/collaboration process looks like. Working on this project certainly made that apparent."
If you would like to hear from Zach on the origins of St. Terrible and of the film project featured in this article, please CLICK HERE to listen to A Fresh Perspective Podcast. These are audio clips sent to me answering some of my questions for this article. Much of what Zach sent me over audio clips resonated with me as an artist, and I intuitively felt others needed to hear it too, in his own words. We often subjectively feel and assume what an artist "meant" by their work, but rarely have the opportunity to hear from the artist.
SUPPORT St. Terrible by purchasing An Endless Fiction (CLICK HERE). The short film can be seen on YouTube, under the youtube channel HOUDofficial. All music can be streamed on platforms like Spotify, Bandcamp, Tidal, Apple Music, etc.
FOLLOW St. Terrible on Instagram (CLICK HERE).
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