Illuminati Hotties: the label-fighting LA punk on her wild new album
Sarah Tudzin – AKA the one-woman powerhouse behind LA’s Illuminati Hotties – released her acclaimed debut album, Kiss Yr Frenemies, in 2018. A sweetly scattershot album full of perky DIY tunes that she branded “tenderpunk”, it was a bold opening statement from Tudzin, already a veteran of the LA indie scene thanks to her background as a studio engineer for acts such as Weyes Blood and Amen Dunes, working as assistant to Chris Coady (Grizzly Bear, TV on the Radio).
Tudzin was well on the way to finishing up the eagerly awaited second Illuminati Hotties album when, just before Thanksgiving 2019, she discovered that all was not right with Tiny Engines, the independent record label that released her debut. One of Tiny Engines’ other artists, Stevie Knipe of Adult Mom, had called the label out via social media, accusing them of breach of contract and missing royalty payments. In an 18-part Twitter thread, Knipe claimed that their business model was: “Take advantage of the non-men on your label and attempt to manipulate them while stealing the money they make to keep your failing business afloat.”
Knipe alleged that at least 10 other acts had faced similar mistreatment. (In a Billboard interview earlier this year Tiny Engines’ co-founder Chuck Daley said that the payment delayed payments were due to accountancy issues, and that he is focused on ensuring all artists are paid on time going forward.)
Tudzin’s solidarity with her labelmates meant getting out of her deal was a priority; however, she and her band still owed them one more record. “But we were committed to not putting it out with them because, based on the way that they dealt with the situation with other bands, there was just no way we could promote it in good faith,” she explains from her home in Los Angeles with her lockdown purchase of a
dog called Maeby – yes, that is an Arrested Development reference – nestled by her side. So after months of tiresome back and forths, an exit agreement was nailed: her share of royalties from the first album would go back to Tiny Engines and Tudzin would also pay her way out of the second album deal, with the label receiving some royalties for whatever LP she put out.
Yet, Tudzin was wary about letting her old label benefit in any way from the material she had been pouring her heart into. “I’d been working on songs for the last year and a half that I thought was going to be record two and I didn’t want to put those songs out under such strange circumstances.” Instead, she decided to take a leaf out of the hip-hop rule book and “cooked up something real quick!” Enter the Illuminati Hotties mixtape Free I.H: This Is Not the One You’ve Been Waiting For. “Leaked” before its official release under the band name Occult Classic by artists in Tudzin’s indie inner circle (Lucy Dacus, Pup and Speedy Ortiz), the album’s title is a nod to Lil Wayne’s Free Weezy Album, released in protest when the rapper’s Tha Carter V album was held back by his label Cash Money, who said it wasn’t good enough to come out.
Considering its extremely tight gestation period – the album was written and recorded in three weeks right before LA entered lockdown – Free I.H … is far better than a rapidly released kiss-off to a record label has any right to be. Twenty-three minutes of wildly eclectic musicianship, its 12 tracks bounce around from powerpop, digi-samba and college rock to wistful emo and glitchy noisecore in the time it takes for you to reheat last night’s leftovers. Somehow, it is one of the most addictive releases of the year, acerbic and acidic one second and soft and saccharine the next.
“It was an exercise in letting go of the inner editor for me,” she says, casually. “I didn’t want to stress too much about whether it would be great or terrible. I wanted to just make something fun and make a lot of noise and go with my first instinct on everything.” This lack of overthinking means that Tudzin has no qualms about opening up with a frenetic doom-pop track called will i get cancelled if i write a song called, “if you were a man you’d be so cancelled”, which features the immortal opening couplet: “Let’s smash/ To a podcast.”
And although it might have come out of a negative situation, Free I.H … was still made with buckets of love. “It’s really hard for me to fake my way through anything,” explains an enthusiastic Tudzin. “Once I got started on it, I really did care about how the songs were going to sound.” Her initial plan was to create a nihilistic instrumental release, channelling the caustic energy of Death Grips to air her displeasure at her feelings of being “trapped by the drama” of the situation. “Just thrash and noise and feedback,” she says. “But I dropped that idea because I had a hard time not actually writing a song that I cared about and I didn’t want to tank my whole project in the process!”
So what now of the other album that Tudzin spent all of last year perfecting and has since kept tightly under her hat? Well, we might never hear it after all. “Seeing how people have responded to Free I.H, I feel like it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to use that information to my advantage in making LP3,” she says. “I have 15 to 20 songs that I’m really stoked about, but do I even need to put those songs out now?”
Whatever she ends up releasing, we’re listening.
Free I.H: This Is Not the One You’ve Been Waiting For is out now