ADA ROOK - Interview

COSMOS.PRESS

Tell us a bit about Ada Rook.

ADA ROOK

I'm a musician/game developer/artist. I'm a girl. I live in Toronto with my wife and I play in the band Black Dresses.

COSMOS.PRESS

Tell us about the album art for 'Ugly Death No Redemption Angel Curse I Love You.' What was the intent behind it?

ADA ROOK

The intent was to have a cool picture drawn by Porpentine Charity Heartscape. She's an old friend and one of the most prolific and influential net artists, in my opinion.

I've been pretty influenced by her work in the past, and since I wanted to take kind of a raw net art direction with this album cover, I thought it would be cool to ask her to draw it.

I basically just gave her free reign to do whatever but i think it fits the music really well, it has a very toxic vibe which I really like.

COSMOS.PRESS

What was your intention behind the music video to GRAVITY WEAPON?

ADA ROOK

To drink pee. The puke wasn't planned, it was just from eating Denny's and dancing a lot on some kind of hangover.

So after that, the pee was pretty useful, to get the taste out of my mouth. It all worked out really well. We shot the piss/puke stuff by the LA river, one of my favorite places, and the more dancy stuff at some arcades in LA. I wanted to play more DDR in the video but I went a bit too hard and almost threw up again in the arcade so I had to stop.

COSMOS.PRESS

Does 'Ugly Death No Redemption Angel Curse I Love You' follow a narrative throughout the album, or is the message more thematic?

ADA ROOK

I hate narratives, messages, and themes, so this album is completely hollow.

There is absolutely nothing inside of it.

COSMOS.PRESS

Tell us about being featured on HEALTH's DISCO 4...

ADA ROOK

I love HEALTH and I was really excited to hear that they wanted me on the album, since I learned to sing by trying to imitate the vocals on DEATH MAGIC in 2015. HEALTH told me they needed the feature very quickly so I wrote and recorded it in like 2 hours because I really wanted to impress them.

I think the finished track came out super beautifully, I'm still extremely happy about it, hearing my vocals on a HEALTH track is like a dream come true. I would love to work with them again in the future.

COSMOS.PRESS

Outside of music, what inspires you creatively?

ADA ROOK

Cute clothes, robot girls, girls being best friends, artists who spend their entire life making 1 thing, selling all my shit and moving somewhere new (but I don't do that anymore). I also really like the LA river and the train tracks in Toronto.

I love big cities, even though I'm pretty shy.

COSMOS.PRESS

What's next for Ada Rook?

ADA ROOK

I'm working on something called BLACK BOX DAMAGE INDICATOR which will either be an album, a video game, or some awkward combination of the two. It's about robot girls and memory. I'm feeling really excited about it right now.

The music has been there for some time, I'm just building a weird egg around it. I don't know what will come out of the egg, but there's a chance it may be popular.

I also have a new band, which you'll hear about soon, and I'm finishing up vocals for the third crisis sigil release (my grindcore project), which will probably come out in the winter sometime.

Black Dresses also have a show with Sleigh Bells in Toronto on August 2nd, so I'll be getting ready for that, too.

Lastly, I have a softer album project called nostopath that I'm trying to find the right shape for. Some singles from both that and BLACK BOX DAMAGE INDICATOR will probably come out soon regardless of the full projects' release dates. Lately I really like singles, I'd like to have one new single out every month from now on.

It's a nice way to show off all the different album projects I have in the works without releasing them before they're ready, as well as just a nice way to release tracks that work best as standalone pieces instead of waiting for the right album project to insert them into.

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ADA ROOK: TWITTER - BANDCAMP