Jess Cron / FEASTofFETUS Interview

What’s in a name? Why FEASTofFETUS?
i have a mild form of self-induced tourette’s syndrome. basically, i talk to myself a lot and most of the time it’s just a bunch of nonsensical drivel, but once in a while it’s a phrase that ends up sounding really good to me rhythmically. “fetus eaters” was one of these phrases that i found spilling out of my mouth and i was immediately like “that’s my band name. i am making a band called fetus eaters and i am going to write little fetuses of songs as quickly as possible, and maybe they wont ever be properly finished, but then i am going to release them into the world to be consumed.” so i went home from work that night and immediately picked up this crappy guitar a co-worker let me borrow and wrote “mass clath”. it was only like a minute long and i brought it into work the next day and played it for everyone and they were pretty into it. so i started going home after work each night and just doing a bunch of these little ditties, until i found myself turning them into longer songs. this transformation seemed to give the name “fetus eaters” even more meaning. i would start with this quick fetal sketch and the song would just feed off of that and just start taking it to places i never intended it to go. then it turns out there is this grindcore band who was already calling themselves “fetus eaters” way longer than me, so i needed a way to rework the name without losing the idea or the rhythm that i loved so much. it ended up being a co-worker of mine who was like maybe you should call it “feast of fetus” and i immediately saw the genius in it. not only did “feast of fetus” have the alliteration that “fetus eaters” lacked, but the rhythm was akin to the title of my favorite steinbeck novel “east of eden”. i then did a bunch of research on fetuses and childbirth and what have you and i ended up discovering that while in the womb, a fetus’ body is covered with tiny hairs called lanugo and at some stage during the pregnancy the fetus sheds these hairs into the amniotic fluid. the fetus then drinks the amnii and ingests the lanugo that is floating in it. these hairs are essentially the “feast of the fetus”. then when the baby is born, it takes its first shit at some point and this shit is called meconium. meconium is different than any other shit a human will take in its lifetime because it is almost completely sterile and is made up of the lanugo. so, as the name of my project, feastoffetus has come to mean this immediate sort of ouroboros-like songwriting that i have been embracing. starting with a tiny infant of a song and letting it feed off itself until it becomes what it becomes. and my first album is called “meconium” because that was my first shit.
If you could play with any musician – alive or dead – who would it be and why?
probably nick cave. i love his theatrics. i love how his mind works. i love words and to me he is music’s ultimate wordsmith. he’s a fantastic storyteller and he has such a great ability to invoke tons of imagery with his lyrics. i’ve always loved music that could make me see a mini film in my head while listening. it’s the kind of visual songwriting i aspire to. plus i think we’d have a lot of fun being weird on stage together.
Any non-musical influences to your work?
tons. i would say that a good 80-90% of my music is in fact not influenced by musical influences. like i said imagery is huge for me. i’m a very visual person. i take a lot of my influence from books and from film. for example, my entire first record, “meconium”, is loosely based on alexandre dumas’ the count of monte cristo, as well as, a particular twilight zone episode entitled “the masks”. the concept of “meconium” is essentially about a dinner party in which the host has devised a way to exact revenge upon his guests (a la monte cristo) and the way that he does this is through a little sort of black magic which causes each victim to come face to face with his or her own ugliness (a la the masks). eventually there will be an accompanying book illustrated by an amazing watercolorist i’ve been working with, nikki rossignol. this book will work with the album sort of like prokofiev’s “peter and the wolf” in that many of the songs will act as a sort of theme song for each character in the book. for example, the song “diamond encrusted”, which is a song about fake, plastic, gold digger type women, will coincide with the character in the book who is a whorish woman whose only goal in life is to doll herself up in order to obtain the attentions and the wallets of men.