(EDITOR’S NOTE — 1120 Press recently had the privilege to speak at length with noise/industrial/harsh-pop artist STCLVR — (pronounced ‘Street Cleaver’) — the decade-long solo project of George Moore who recently released a split titled ‘Making Ends Meat” with fellow-Jamestown industrial artist ‘Succulent and Sinister’ (aka Rosalie Hewitt). It was an excellent talk during which we covered their new release, a forthcoming album, growing up and living in Jamestown, and their art, influences and upcoming shows. We thank STCLVR for their time. Please enjoy our story and be sure to see the excellent video by STCLVR at the bottom of this page for the song 'Coward'.)
1120 PRESS: Thank you for speaking with us and congratulations on the new split ‘Making Ends Meat,’ (Phage Tapes) that you did with Succulent and Sinister. How are you feeling about it?
STREETCLEAVER: I'm feeling pretty good. Rose and I have known each other for a while. We’ve both been in bands and stuff around the Jamestown area for, like, close to 20 years now and our older projects used to do shows together. We hadn't really talked in a long time and then we just kind of found our way back to each other when she started doing Succulent and Sinister. I was like, ‘Oh, wow! This shit's good. This shit's awesome!’ and we just connected and started doing some shows together and the idea of a split just sort of came up. I think it came together really well. I'm really happy with the way it turned out.
1120: In reading some of the credits while checking out your catalog, Rose mixed and mastered some of your previous work, right?
STCLVR: Yeah, the last few works. And she'll probably be mixing and mastering my upcoming full-length that I'm working on right now.
1120: Oh, cool. When can we expect that?
STCLVR: I'm going to say by the Fall. Yeah, I'm pretty excited about it. It's got a lot of cool stuff. I've actually got Dwid Hellion from Integrity on a track.
1120: Whoa!
Yeah, vocals. He just sent them to me like a few weeks ago. So, I'm pretty excited.
1120: Just going back to Rose for a minute. You've collaborated with her a number of times. What is it about her that makes you like working together?
STCLVR: I've been doing Street Cleaver for about 10 years this year. There was never really anyone else in this area doing anything similar to what I was doing up until a couple years ago. And so, it was nice to have someone to work with that's so close and whose own project was similar. Rose brings in so many different ideas. That inspires me to take more risks with my own project and kind of explore other territories. We've talked about her playing guitar on a few of my tracks and maybe doing some other stuff. But it’s good to have someone that close to collaborate with and who I have a musical history with. I feel like the material she puts out just kind of speaks for itself. It's just so heavy and emotional.
1120: When you both sat down to map out this split and write and record it, was
there any particular direction or aim you guys wanted to take on this?
STCLVR: There wasn't anything specific. Like, thematically, not really. There are some similar lyrical themes, but for the most part, we wanted to put something out that reflected what we're doing right now. A lot of times, people will ask me to do a split, and they'll just want to collaborate with another artist, but they're not super familiar with me as a person or with what my project is about. But with Rose, it just makes sense to do something like this and do shows together. It's been really exciting.
1120: You mentioned that some people ask you to do splits or to collaborate, and they're not really familiar with your work. Yet you and Rose are very familiar with each other. With that familiarity or comfort that you two have, is there anything that stands out to you on this split?
STCLVR: On my side, yeah. A few of the tracks are ones I had sort of kicking around for a while that I didn't really have a home for on other releases. The track ‘Sixes,’ which is the last track on my side, I might have started working on it in, like, 2020 or something. Every time I tried to record something with it, it just didn't turn out how I wanted. When I put vocals to it and sent it over to Rose, she just added all these other production elements — like, ambience and synth sounds and bass drops and samples and stuff. And that track I’m really proud of and how it turned out. Her contributions turned it into something I wanted it to be.
1120: One thing we took note of in your catalog is that you have a lot of splits and mixes with other artists. A lot of artists are very protective of their process and they're not into collaboration. What appeals to you about doing that?
STCLVR: Being involved in different facets of the underground music community and getting to do shows with so many different acts and meeting all these different people, I try to reach out to as many different people as I can. I reach out to hip hop artists I know and noise artists and people who do more instrumental electronic stuff. And as far as collaborating, I'll just think of someone I think would be a good fit for a track or something. I don't like to just pigeonhole myself into one certain community or one specific genre. I don't limit myself.
1120: Let’s go back to your album that you're working on. In one of the interviews we heard you do, you mentioned you normally just put out EPs and not full lengths. So, we’re wondering what inspired you to work on an album now?
STCLVR: Well, it's funny because I guess some people consider some of my EPs to be albums. There's such a weird line there. I personally don't understand the difference, honestly. I would put out something that has seven or eight tracks and is a certain length and a friend will tell me it’s an album. But I don’t know. I don’t really consider it an album unless it has nine or 10 tracks and it's at least 30 minutes long. I mainly have always just wanted to get stuff out. But now I just want to have longer releases, and that might mean the process will take longer. But I like the idea of having a more solid release that maybe even has more instrumental parts and more noise compositions and is sort of fleshed out, rather than just like ‘Bam, bam, bam. Here's five songs’ and that's it.
1120: You play a lot of places outside the area and your output seems very prolific. There’s a well-known saying in writing that ‘the writing generates the writing’ — meaning the more you write, the more you're inspired to write. We’re curious about your process. Do you feel like you're a better artist when you're prolific?
STCLVR: I definitely agree with that saying. I will have kind of long periods of inactivity and then periods where there's just a lot of stuff happening. When I play these noise and industrial festivals, I'll always come home so inspired to make more and do more. But usually when I'm seriously working on something, I'll kind of wait till I don't have a lot of stuff going on so I can just focus on recording. And then once I'm done, I want to get it out there and do as many shows as I can.
1120: There’s such a strong visual element to your art. But what strikes us is your
live performances, which sometimes appear to be so stark because you're up there alone. How do you translate the visuality of your art during a live performance when you up on stage alone with often nothing to help you, or fall back on, in terms of a band or projector, etc.?
STCLVR: I come from the noise scene in which there’s a lot of solo acts. It's a little, I don't want to say ‘intimidating,’ but at certain venues if there's a big stage and it's just me up there, it’s a little tough to feel like I'm not up there doing karaoke or something. But when the venue can provide projectors and a background, or a screen and stuff, and if I have a backing video, it contributes a lot. That can make it feel a lot more cathartic for me. But there's times when I just have to make do without it and I just kind of have to get up there. I used to be a lot more reserved. I would hide behind my table and just kind of have my head down. But I got this new sort of confidence a few years ago that just kind of made me think: ‘You're making this sort of energetic-dancey stuff. You should be up there moving around and actually feeling things’ — the things I felt when I was creating it.
1120: One thing we noticed in your music is, yeah, the power and the noise and the aggression are all there, but you also have this sense of rhythm and melody that permeates your art. Where does that comes from.
STCLVR: I guess it’s a combination of all my different musical influences put into one thing. As much as I love aggressive music and noisier stuff, I'm also like a big fan of early Madonna and pop music. I like catchy melodies, and I like messing around, you know, with different sounds and stuff. I just kind of plug things in and if it's something I feel like I could work with, I'll use it. And I like that there's a sort of contrast between an aggressive vocal and a kind of pretty synth melody or something that's more poppy sounding but still has this aggression to it. And that's probably what drew me to industrial music in the first place — the electronic elements as well as the aggressive element.
1120: Can you talk about the range of your influences? You mentioned Madonna on one side, but who are your influences on the more aggressive side? Also, in delving into your catalog, we felt this undercurrent of a sort-of New Order vibe which was awesome.
STCLVR: Yeah, I appreciate that you dug in so far. That's really cool of you. I've kind of been all over the place. I started with alternative music, like Alice in Chains, and then probably, hearing Nine Inch Nails ‘The Downward Spiral’ when I was like 13 years old and very impressionable — it was like nothing I had ever heard before. So that kind of got me into Ministry and Skinny Puppy. But I'm also big into grindcore and heavier bands. I love Pig Destroyer, and I love Converge. So, there's a lot of heavy stuff and electronic stuff, and pop stuff.
1120: You grew up in Jamestown and have lived there your whole life. Do you think the place has influenced your art.
STCLVR: Oh, very much. I’ve been influenced by everything here. Growing up and kind of being like this outsider in a sort of close-minded area and all that I'm surrounded by — the relationships I've had here, the people I know and the music community or lack thereof. Yeah, it's all there. I mean, a good 90 percent of it is based on my life here. There’s a lot of general disgust. But I mean, it's not all terrible. There's a decent group of people here who I work with.
A buddy of mine, Paul Clemente, put a bunch of us together as sort of a collective. We were doing this bimonthly event — now I think we're just going to do it quarterly — where it's comedians, poets, performance art and just kind of facilitating a space for the people around here who don't fit into the typical scene. So, you know, there's finally some context for what I do here. And that's good because I’ve planted roots here. My kids live here. So, I'm not leaving anytime soon. So, it's good to have something that makes it a little more tolerable.
1120: We’re coming to the end here, but before we go, what else do you have planned for 2025 besides the album?
STCLVR: I have a couple shows in Rochester next month. I'm doing a show with Deli Girls from New York City. I'm really excited about that. And Fed Ash is playing, too. That's on April 8 at Psychic Garden in Rochester. And then a week after that, I'm doing a show at Record Archive that's sort of a monthly event they do showcasing one artist, and there's a DJ. It's called ‘Tragic Tuesdays.’ A friend of mine, Zach, from Komrads, puts that on. That's on April 15. I don't really have anything else booked right now. I just kind of play it by ear. I would like to do some sort of tour maybe in the fall when it gets closer to the release of the album. I’m hoping to do, maybe, like a week of Midwest states. I’ve primarily really only done east coast stuff, so I'd really like to get out west. That's one of my goals, to get out that way and try to make something happen.
(Check out STCLVR's video for 'Coward.')
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