The Hobbyist #10: Interviews with More Eaze and Lynn Avery of Pink Must

The musicians speak on working full-time, Thrill Jockey, and discerning consumption of media

Photo by Laura Brunisholz; graphic design by Thomas Euyang

One of the main reasons I started this newsletter was to speak with independent musicians about the difficulties of maintaining artistic practices while having full-time jobs to pay the bills. More Eaze and Lynn Avery —AKA Pink Must — are precisely the sort of artists most affected by the shrinking opportunities for sustainable careers in music. More Eaze, the moniker of Mari Rubio, teaches at The New School in New York City, writing her own compositions in between classes, studio sessions, and private lessons. Lynn Avery works full-time at a liquor store, so she spends her mornings trying to muster the energy to write, compose, or do anything music-related before the work day begins.

I wanted to speak with both Mari and Lynn because of their unique perspectives on independent music creation in this cursed era but also because their debut self-titled Pink Must LP, out now via 15 Love, is absolutely brilliant. Sometimes it’s enough to want to talk with people about the cool shit they do. At times, Pink Must sounds like Sparklehorse reimagined by a robot programmed in the early 1990s. Elsewhere, lo-fi tape experiments imagine a world in which Kid A-era Radiohead was a K Records band. In short: Pink Must is extremely my shit.

Both artists have other projects, too, that I’ve grown extremely fond of. Lynn’s 2024 LP with Cole Pulice, Phantasy & Reality, is another stellar entry within the Moon Glyph discography. Woodwind and acoustic guitar-based ambient meditations that will make you at least 50% more peaceful. Guaranteed.

A week prior to my call with Mari, she had dropped another LP, this time with frequent collaborator claire rousay. That album, No Floor, was released on the seminal experimental-ish label Thrill Jockey—one of the record companies that play a pivotal role in her development as a listener and artist. A big part of my chat with her was about growing up with these seemingly unapproachable idols, pillars of music who, eventually, became peers. I know that doesn’t pay the damn bills, but it’s still pretty cool.

Despite seemingly having zero time to make their own music, both Mari and Lynn are inspiringly prolific, which is why they make perfect Hobbyist guests. Whether music is a full-time commitment or simply a full-time job they don’t get paid nearly enough for, they are creating works more important than the methods in which most music gets consumed. A reminder: BUY PHYSICAL MEDIA. GO TO SHOWS!

Lynn Avery and More Eaze part of an extended experimental scene that is reimagining the practice of songwriting for our digitalized age, a community that emphasizes support and honesty. I’m very happy that this world exists.

More Eaze

Is music your full-time job?

More Eaze: Yeah. I teach at the New School. I teach composition and audio production, but then also do ensemble coaching there. I just started doing this last fall. I used to have a full-time job. Music used to be the only hobby because I was just having to dedicate any time I wasn't at work to recording and working on stuff. Thankfully I worked from home, so it was pretty easy to do that. It has been weird all of a sudden having this be the only thing I'm doing and also realizing how exhausted I was when I was trying to do this and a completely unrelated job on top of it.

It was a full-time job that you didn’t get paid for.

ME: Right? Yes, it was. That's still a problem a lot of the time.

You were in San Antonio before you moved to New York?

ME: I was in Austin, actually. I was in Austin but I grew up in San Antonio, I have a lot fonder feelings for San Antonio than I do for Austin.

What brought you to New York? Was it the music scene?

ME: Yeah, that was a big part of it. I was coming here just about every two to three months in 2022 and 2023. I just kept coming here. Every show I would play here was great. I kept meeting people who previously I had only really collaborated with online and instantly found fast friendship with them, and that was a big part of it. Obviously, getting out of the political climate of Texas was a huge thing.

Do you have a set time when you're writing these days, or is it mostly just whenever there's time?

ME: It's definitely whenever there's time, because I do a lot of arrangement work and production work outside of teaching and performing. It’s been kind of difficult these days to actually write, but I've managed to write a lot more in the last few weeks, which has been good. I just was really caught up with a lot of session work for months, and so that became my life for a little bit

That’s a good problem to have, I imagine?

ME: It is a good problem to have. Yeah, right now I’m back at a point where I'm like, ‘Oh, I could use a little bit more session work.’ At the same time, though, I’m grateful to have a little bit more time to work on my own stuff.

I know the record you just dropped with claire rousay came out on Thrill Jockey and you wrote an Instagram post about working with one of your favorite labels. What’s it like working with some of your idols, people you grew up loving?

ME: It's really quite surreal a lot of the time, especially living in New York and getting to know people who I really looked up to. It never stops being strange, but then at some point you're just like, ‘oh, everyone's just a person.’ It has been really interesting actually getting to know a lot of the people in this world and realizing how easy it is to get along with a lot of them and also work with them. That's been great. With Thrill Jockey, it has hit and it also hasn't hit that I have a record with them because they have been a pretty pivotal label all throughout my life. Before I even really knew how to keep in touch or follow labels, there was so much music that I was listening to that was affiliated with them. I didn’t consciously think about it, but I listened to it so much when I was 18, 19 years old from that world. It's in my DNA at this point.

All of these things have been pretty surreal and pretty amazing to actually see myself in, or to some degree, understand myself in the same lineage as all of these people, which I can't get over in a way. There's also this constant thing of all of a sudden getting to talk to and have access to people that you previously thought were completely beyond you. That's very interesting to me. It continues to be very humbling and also inspiring. David Grubbs is one of my favorite musicians of all time, and I see him and chat with him pretty regularly. It's pretty crazy to me that this guy whose music I've listened to countless times is just my friend now. The magnitude of all of this is not lost on me, even though there's still a sense of imposter syndrome.

When you're not teaching, writing, releasing or touring, what do you do to decompress or just enjoy your time?

ME: Two big things. I watch a lot of TV and movies and I also read a lot. Those are two big things that I feel like are intertwined, just taking in some kind of media or art form that is not directly related to what I'm doing. It really feeds back into my work in a way. It becomes something that allows me to critically think about what I'm doing outside of composition. I find it very helpful. I really watch an embarrassing amount of TV and movies throughout the week, and some of it's really bad. It’s interesting because it raises these questions of ‘Why do I like this? What is it about this that I think is not great?’ It also makes it really impactful when I watch something good. A lot of that ability to critically read and assess definitely feeds back into the music that I make and how I think about what I'm writing.

Right now I'm reading three or four things very slowly and they're all really different. It has been interesting to have this huge swath of information around me. Taking in other work that is not music makes it so that I am a lot more considerate when I'm actually making choices related directly to music. It forces me to think about those things outside of my typical palette or my direct practice.

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Lynn Avery

Where were you when you and Mari began exchanging ideas for the project?

Lynn Avery: I think it started while I was in Oakland. I was living there for a year. I had some voice note guitar ideas and we just started passing them back and forth. I moved to New York and I was here for a while before Mari moved here. Pretty much everything was just done remotely to start. Then we came together once she moved here and we wrapped up the songs. Some of the songs changed a lot when we did that, but a lot of them were just adding some strings and doing some mixing. The only song I think that we wrote together in the room was probably “Himbo.” We wrote that as a jam.

Do you prefer one method of collaboration over the other?

LA: Things get done a lot faster when you're in the room together, but I would prefer to work on things separately. There's only one mouse and sometimes you can really feel that. You can't both be getting in there on the computer, especially because the stuff we do is so heavily in that domain. I have a guitar and I have a laptop.

Are you writing on guitar or are you fucking around on your laptop?

LA: Both. I write on the guitar a lot. I have this other project called Iceblink. I haven't released anything in four or five years, but I do write a lot for it and I play a lot of shows with it and that stuff always starts out on guitar. Because of that, when I approach the Pink Must stuff, it's like writing on guitar. There are always ideas that are pretty clearly Iceblink songs or ideas that are pretty clearly Pink Must songs. If it gets too indie rock or grungy or whatever, it's definitely a Pink Must song. I usually start there and then go.

I have some songs that I've been writing on the six string bass, and that’s been inspiring; just plugging that in through a bunch of distortion and effects, trying to mimic some of the sounds that I have in my head. I didn't really grow up listening to anything very heavy, and I never have had an amp or distortion pedals or any of that stuff. I feel like I'm making outsider rock a lot of the times because I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to just making a simple rock song, no idea how to make tone and stuff like that.

Do you feel like not having that experience is freeing in a way or allows you to bring something to the table as a collaborator and songwriter that other people might not be able to—people who were immersed in it from a young age?

LA: It definitely is freeing in the sense that it's more punk rock than the ambient music I make. It's like jazz. It's in this sphere of influence that's full of people who are incredibly practiced performers and musicians. I had piano instruction as a child, but I was barely following the lessons even as an eight year old. I never learned how to play jazz. I never really played in an ensemble or with a Real Book or anything like that. I approached the stuff with Cole [Pulice] as outsider jazz in a way as well, but that feels a lot more precarious and scary because I constantly feel like I'm stretching the limit of what I'm capable of doing on piano and what I'm capable of writing. This is while also trying to keep things interesting to me because I do listen to a lot of modal jazz and post bop progressive jazz and stuff like that, but I just don't really know how to do it. I am not someone who practices four hours a day or can do scales in every mode. The rock stuff has been another way of trying to sound like the things that I really enjoy, but it feels a lot less pretentious and a lot more fun. There are definitely some pretty math-y and talented rock musicians that I'm inspired by. But on the other end of the spectrum, I'm just super obsessed with Mica Levi’s guitar improvisations. Their tone is so simple, but so impossibly good at the same time. I really want to be able to do that sort of thing.

I do get caught up trying to write these songs that are super complicated with the chord progressions and time signatures. I quickly hit a wall of what I actually am capable of because I've never played in a band with a drummer or other people and I'm just doing this all on my own in Ableton. I'm trying to remind myself that it doesn't need to be so complicated, especially with the kind of music that I make with Cole or with Iceblink. I’m constantly overcomplicating everything, especially the chord progressions and stuff like that. I'm so scared of writing a two chord progression for some reason.

Are you working on any Iceblink music that you want to release?

LA: Yeah, I have two albums worth of Iceblink material that I'm hoping we'll see the light of day this year. I just don't have a very good solo practice when it comes to mixing and doing final editing and that sort of thing. When it's not immediately flowing for me, it just doesn't end up happening. I do have a record that we went into the studio to record as an ensemble with a bunch of friends, but that sounds so different from what Iceblink sounds like in my head now. I'm struggling to find out how it's going to sit within the realm of Iceblink right now.

Maybe even under a different moniker…

LA: No more monikers. I think three is enough.

That's a good catchphrase. I like that. No more monikers. Are you doing music full time or do you balance this with a day job?

LA: Oh my God no. I work 40 hours a week at a liquor store. I don't make any money off of music at all. I've never seen a cent from royalties or streaming or anything like that. The most money I've ever made has been playing live shows and that happens pretty rarely.

How do you get the motivation to work eight hours a day and then come home and write music? It must be exhausting.

LA: I mostly don't is the problem. I have to force myself out of bed as early as possible and start my day so that I can have one or two hours of fucking around on the computer. When I come home from work, there's no doing anything anymore. I can't work at night, really. I have to work in the middle of the day while the sun is out. Otherwise, it just doesn't happen. My productivity has been pretty low since moving out of Minnesota, especially just because I'm working more than I ever have just to live in this stupid city.

Is there anything outside of working and music that you love or have a passion for? Or is there no time for anything else?

LA: Oh no, I have a million hobbies. That’s another problem. There are so many ways to distract myself from working on music. Music is no longer a hobby for sure. It really has just become an unpaid job. I do a lot of other stuff on the computer, too. I obsessively categorize my music library. I've been teaching myself to code a bit. I used to be really into making video games when I was younger. That's something I'd like to get back into again.

Is your music library physical or digital?

LA: It's digital. I don't have anything with me in New York besides my clothes and what I've purchased since living here. I left pretty much everything I own at a winery in California two or three years ago. I'm still working out how I'm going to get that back over here.

Recently I decided that streaming just wasn't going to work for me anymore. Besides the obvious ethical reasons, I don't want to be told what to listen to. Every time I go on Spotify, it feels like the stuff that comes up has been heavily PR influenced or paid for. Even just the Release Radar that's supposed to be just my own favorites has so much random shits sneaking in there. It’s just not a very romantic way of listening to music. I’ve been trying to seek that romanticism again with my own music library. Mind you, I am absolutely stealing shit. I'm on Soulseek, I'm on private trackers. I'm paying for a lot of stuff on Bandcamp and Nina these days, especially a lot more since I stopped using Spotify.

There are so many musicians that have one album on Bandcamp and then they just keep dropping songs on Spotify. That is the place where most people are going to hear their music. They don't even think about Bandcamp because who's going to buy it? Now I'm in this position where I'm listening to these small artists that have four or 5,000 listeners on Spotify, which is a lot for this genre of music, and they're popping off on the playlists. They have plenty of followers on Instagram, but you can't even buy their music anywhere. I'm having to message them on Instagram like, ‘Hey, can you send me some files? Can I buy this from you?’ They're like, ‘Oh yeah, I guess so.’ Then I’m MP3 tag organizing and tagging people’s WAV files. I used to be super obsessed with the blogspot days of vinyl ripping and music sharing across MediaFire and Mega. It reminds me of that a bit.

I've enjoyed being on private trackers for the feeling of archivism. Where will a lot of this music go if Bandcamp disappears or Spotify decides to just delete everything under a thousand streams a month because of a lawsuit or something? Having my own music library is a little bit absurd because it really makes me appreciate just how much music I listen to.

How would you want to be paid for your music in an ideal scenario?

LA: Government funding. Grant processes can be pretty corrupt. It's not a great model either, but I think that our tax money maybe should be going to the arts instead of war and killing people. Music should be free for everyone. I think the government should be paying for it to a certain extent. You're still going to have to be good at making music, and I don't really have the answer for how that's going to work, but the model already has worked for us in the past. So much of this great art that we take for granted has been funded.

American art has become ubiquitous because it's an English speaking internet that we live in. It's like the globalism of American art. We have no reason to try and sell it when all of music can be bought for $10. Why would the government care to fund it? People are just going to eat it up regardless.