Mr.Kitty

Mr.Kitty (aka Forrest Avery Carney) is not exactly the most famous name active at the wider fields of electro-pop yet it became one of our personal favorites in a rather short lapse of time. The secret of this artist can be found in the simplicity and efficiency of the work plus a fragile and sexy timbre of voice. The new album “Fragmants” has been just released by Negative Gain Productions inspiring us to get in touch with the band. - SIDE-LINE

Mr.Kitty Interview
Metanoia Tour 2015
Date: October 7, 2015
Venue: The Casbah
Location: San Diego, CA

Interview questions written by Jaymie Burzette
Conducted and transcribed by Jaymie Burzette

Jaymie: Ok first of all I want to say that, dude you totally fuckin’ killed it tonight, like seriously. The first time I saw you was opening for Alter Der Ruine, and that was really good, but this time you’ve totally evolved your performance. Your energy was on point, the bass was fat; it was awesome. What’s it like to face an audience that’s totally excited and is totally enraptured by you?

Mr.Kitty: This is something I’ve waited for for a very long time. I’ve worked very hard to get to where I am, and to be in front of an audience like this, it’s very special. It’s very rewarding because it’s like, I’ve played really bad shows, I’ve played under-attended shows, shows where it’s just me and my mom. So it’s very heartwarming for the most part, to see people that are there, and to have people that are open-minded, and it’s so cool I don’t have to really worry “are there going to be any people there?” The first show I was so overwhelmed like, “Whoa, this is scary,” [laughs]. I had to hide because when I walked out on the side stage somebody noticed me and was like, “There he is!” and I was like, “Oh no!”

Jaymie: Do you get a lot of attention around Dallas and Austin now? Like walking down the street, do people see you and go, “Holy shit, it’s Mr.Kitty!”

Mr.Kitty: It’s really funny, because when I’m in Austin, people from Dallas will come up and say, “Oh my god it’s so good to see you,” but when I go to Dallas they’re like, people that didn’t know me, or didn’t know what I did before were just like, “Oh, he’s just some new Dallas band, whatever, we’re going to try and jump him into this.” So when I moved to Austin and everything went uphill and apparently everybody in Dallas now is like, “Oh yeah, I know him, he’s my best friend.” It’s weird stuff like that, and in Dallas now they’re like, “Oh my god you really broke out of it” and I’m like, “What was I supposed to do?”

Jaymie: And see like, that was the time to see you, cuz now there’re bigger audiences and it’s awesome to see the evolution of it. I remember when I first heard Life, I was like, “Oh my god this is fucking amazing!” And it actually helped me get through a lot of stuff I was struggling with, so for me it makes me really happy to see how much fame you’ve gotten and how hard Roger (Jarvis) has worked to get you out there.

Mr.Kitty: I thank Roger for everything that I do.

Jaymie: Roger’s an awesome guy. Roger’s awesome!! [Yells to Roger]

Mr.Kitty: Shout out to Roger Jarvis! Shout out to NGP!!

Jaymie: Can we expect a Mr.Kitty Japan tour in the future?

Mr.Kitty: I’m really working on getting a show or two together for Asia. I don’t want to just play Japan, I’d like to play Japan to start, but I really, really, really want to play China, so bad. And then Vietnam I also want to play and then Korea. Not North. North would be cool, but then you would call me Laibach at that point [laughs].

Jaymie: Right? [Laughs] Your music definitely touches on some poignant subjects, do you have any advice for any young people or fans struggling with depression?

Mr.Kitty: With depression and different kinds of mental illness, it’s just something you have to accept. Every day I accept it. Every day I realize, it’s there. It’s in the back of my mind, it exists. And to struggle with something like that, it’s hard. Because, I have very craaaazy mood swings, and there are points when, you know, I get very depressed. I’m not super positive all the time, but, it just happens. The thing is to just take it head on and accept that you have, something. But my advice would be to channel it into something creative.

Jaymie: Awesome. Beautiful. If you had the chance to go to Mars, would you take it? Especially if it means being one of the first artists to establish the musical culture there. You could be one of the first musicians there.

Mr.Kitty: If I could go to Mars, yes. I would go to Mars because that’s creating a new type of history. That’s like, resetting a hard drive almost. There was a thing I read about where, there’s an exact copy of the planet Earth, and it’s out there, but there’s nobody on it. But it’s an exact Earth and we could all live there. But, I think that Mars would be cool because I’d be like, “Yeah, I live on Mars,” then I could say I was a Martian.

Jaymie: [Laughs] Awesome. Some bands have been releasing graphic novels, would you ever be interested in doing a Mr.Kitty manga?

Mr.Kitty: A Mr.Kitty manga? That would be something interesting, but there would have to be a certain artist to do it. There’s an artist I really like, Junji Ito, and he just makes some really fucked up stuff. It’s super cerebral and you just turn through pages, and you’re just like, “What the fuck is going on and why does this hurt? This is painful.” So, I think he would have to do something cerebral like that. And not necessarily as grotesque, but just something weird. So yeah, a manga would be very cool.

Jaymie: What about a kawaii clothing line? Or just designing your own clothes? Cuz I know you design a lot of your own stuff you wear onstage.

Mr.Kitty: A clothing line would be awesome. A lot of stuff that I’m doing right now, my friend who’s on tour with me has a company called Heavy Black, and it’s anime with bondage. He has this shirt that has Sailor Moon with a corset and a money bag and it’s called “Moonlight Mischief.” We do a lot of collaborations together, so I think if I were to do something like that it’d have to be with him, because he knows the direction I want to go in.

Jaymie: That’s very important. Do you have any plans to re-release Death and Eternity? Eternity is one of my all-time favorite albums; I love that album.

Mr.Kitty: These albums will be re-released on NGP, but the only way I’m releasing them is through a box set. Because Life, Death, Time and Eternity are all one thing. You have to listen to them as a giant super album, pretty much. It’s part of a collection called Dark Youth and it’s four really broad subjects that I happened to write about. I’ve had a lot of requests for them to be re-pressed and I want to do the box set because, I just feel like those albums, they’re so old, and they still sell, but I don’t want them to be unlimited anymore. There were only twenty-five copies of Death, and 100 copies of Eternity that I pressed myself with no label. I decided I wanted to do CDs so I saved up all my money, and then yeah, the Death CDs were gone in an hour, and they went everywhere, Sweden, Spain, and I was just like, “People are listening to this everywhere?!” It’s a weird thing. I just wanted to do dance music, I was done making breakcore. But they’ll be out, I’m aiming for next year.

Jaymie: So since you’re like, a hologram, would you consider doing an actual hologram show? Like pull some Chief Keef shit?

Mr.Kitty: Oh my god, I fucking love Chief Keef, you don’t even know!! I’m sorry, I just love Chief Keef so much [laughing]!! Oh my god, woooo, I’m about to go from Beyoncé to Chief Keef, I’m about to get some dreads [tosses hair comically]. Oh my goodness, yeah, but I would like to do more like Hatsune Miku type deal, where it’s more in-depth Ando detail. Where Chief Keef is only two-dimensional, Hatsune Miku there’s all this depth and different aspects to her performance, and then you turn off the projection and then she comes back on with a different outfit; that would be fuckin’ cool! So eventually I would like to have a backup Mr.Kitty, for in case I die or something, so I can have a hologram of my performance. Yeah, and have projections of different instruments cuz eventually I’m gonna be like, “I can’t play all this.” I just wanna sing and play a couple things and have a band with glitched out versions of myself.

Jaymie: Totally, have a bunch of Mr.Kitty’s onstage [laughs]! Ok, this is my last question: What’s next for Mr.Kitty?

Mr.Kitty: The next step for Mr.Kitty…well first I need to figure out how I’m gonna survive on this tour cuz this shit is craaaazy! But I just want to keep making music, but I need to like, space out what I’m doing. I’m aiming for another album next year, but I don’t want to start on it until later, since I’m figuring out how fast I work. It’s like, “Ok, let me take some time and not work on this thing, get some new inspiration then work on it.” With my last album Fragments, I felt it was very rushed, and I wasn’t using any computers, like it was all hardware. It was the biggest pain in the ass of my life. I was like, “No, I’m not changing that cable, I don’t know how to do this,” and so I’d have this sequencer on this box, and I’d play it, then I’d fuck it up. Then I’d have to delete it and play it again. So it was very tedious, and I didn’t want to do it at one point, and then Roger was like, “Oh, we need it in three days.” I was like, “Oh fuck!!” I didn’t have any of the vocals recorded, I didn’t even have lyrics for half the songs. So in three days, I had to get vocals recorded, wrote lyrics, mixed, mastered and I had it all done in three days. I was like, “This is it!”

Roger Jarvis: Some of my favorite songs are on that album.

Jaymie: It’s a great album. I can’t think of any of your stuff I don’t like. That’s it! Thank you for your time!

Mr.Kitty: Thank you! - COMA Music Magazine

This week we talked to the wonderful Mr.Kitty! We had a short conversation about touring with IAMX, pissing off Echo and the Bunnymen, shooting gin with Germans, and working with Negative Gain! - Talking To Ghosts