In a cultural moment where music feels embalmed in its own nostalgia, Ash Barrett’s UNCAGED tears through the embalming fluid, howling like a poltergeist trapped in a pawn shop. It’s a record made of splinters and stubbornness, of busted amps and barbed emotion: equal parts junkyard liturgy and industrial exorcism. UNCAGED is dirty and authentic…a grease-stained rebuttal to the sterile perfectionism of algorithmic music culture. Tired of the same cookie-cutter 80s nostalgia, Barrett is getting right down to the real nitty-gritty: the genesis of rock n’ roll itself. Barrett’s sound smashes the spectral lineage of Einstürzende Neubauten and Fad Gadget against the feral pulse of John Lee Hooker tapes played through a broken speaker. NOW we’re talking.
Beneath the chaos is a slick kind of order; a radical correction in the economy of authenticity. Barrett’s process, recorded on a battered Tascam eight-track with no EQ, no compression, and no pretense, re-centres music as a form of psychic survival rather than content production. That raw immediacy made UNCAGED the perfect inaugural release for Feral Crone Recordings, a new label devoted to risk, resilience, and the ruinous beauty of art that refuses to behave. Together, Barrett (very much ex-Tassel) and Sam An (Lana Del Rabies) are building a home for the dispossessed frequencies of the underground: the sound of resistance for a 21st century dystopia thrust upon us.
Listen to UNCAGED below and order the album here.
For Sam An, Feral Crone is an act of insurgency. In an era when streaming platforms bleed artists dry and “independent” labels play by corporate rules, An wants to rebuild the sense of community that once kept the underground alive. Her vision is to connect outliers across genres and geographies: musicians, noise-makers, and experimenters who refuse to turn their pain into product. She’s cultivating solidarity, creating a refuge where artists can share resources, push boundaries, and survive the machinery that’s designed to chew them up.
In a very candid but brilliant interview, Barrett and An talk about the genesis of Feral Crone Recordings, Barrett’s new album UNCAGED, and their plans for what’s to come.
Interview with Ash Barrett:
UNCAGED marks your debut as a solo artist after your work with Tassel. What creative impulses or frustrations pushed you to break out on your own and explore new territory with this record?
I’ve always made things stream-of-consciously, like automatic writing or something. Some might deem that as “witchcraft” or some shit, but it’s just a loss of control and a lack of thinking. I just let shit flow and use whatever gear I can get my hands on, like Oujia board. I believe in God in my own weird little way, so it’s not evil – it’s a channel. If I try too hard, it winds up being fucking terrible, so everything is an accident.
I didn’t even plan to make a record, but this record is really sour. Being around this mentality for so long of everything having to be mixed perfectly, fuck that – I made this whole record on a digital eight track with no EQ and no compression. Woven Barbed Wire crashed some bullshit AI plug-in anyways. You can’t tell what’s real anymore with AI and shit, but you can tell that my record is real. It’s grease under the fryer at your dead end job that you scrape into the garbage and sounds like a trashcan, it’s fucking human.
Like half or more of the last tassel record wasn’t made with any intention. Like Drag was made during a night where there’s that fucked-up feeling of humidity, weird fucking shit happening around you, not just physical or interpersonal shit but the spiritual energy that’s encrypted in everything. I was probably having a panic attack, smoking Lucky Strikes and drinking those Circle K two dollar mixed drinks, spending my nights in a parking lot with some broken yellow street light strobing out against the concrete. It was made in like five minutes. Most of the sounds are just my voice. Total accident.
I hated being in that band, though I love Tracy (a member of Tassel) forever. I’m really grateful for the rad people I’ve met. I mean, the last tour was fantastic, but I look around now and I rarely see anything I can relate to. The direction of UNCAGED just happened really, I mean after the tour all I could listen to was my John Lee Hooker tapes. I was sick of four on floor kicks and the 80s thing. I hate the 80s, I don’t even know the 80s, I grew up in the 2000s, it seems like everyone has forgotten about the Now, but I ultimately support anyone doing any form of self expression because that shit is medicine.
I don’t care to be a marketable “hot” person, whatever the fuck that means. I’m me, scars, cysts, pus and all, take it or leave it. You have to say go fuck yourself and fight back in the way you know how. I make records and play shows. I’ll show you a freak.
The album title suggests liberation or transformation. What does that concept mean to you personally, and how does it play out sonically or thematically across the record?
I really don’t know, I think records are like psychic documents. I broke a cycle of domination and atrophy and put it in the grave. The album is big, bad and fucking loud. I wanna hear what people think it means to them. I make healing music. It’s like exposure therapy. On the last tour I had experiences that never happened before in the band, I mean the last half of the set I was so just fucking out of it, no drugs involved, just all these old wounds were coming up. We all have our dark shit and this is the release. This is how you transform outta that shit and take your power back from all that wickedness.
Having come from the industrial world with Tassel (which was itself a band that evolved in style and genre), how did your production approach evolve for this project? Were there any specific sounds, instruments, or emotional states you wanted to highlight or move away from?
In Tassel, a lot of stuff was made on GarageBand for iPhone, Tracy started that. It was what was available at the time. On the last record we also used this computer that had an “activate windows” sign on it the entire time. We only had sixteen tracks and two sends cause that’s all I could afford, but that’s more than enough. A lot of tassel was also midi, cause that was what worked at the time, but we were sampling sounds from places we worked at and shit or my voice. UNCAGED was recorded almost entirely live on a Tascam digital 8-track that I got when I was sixteen while I worked at Safeway. Staring at a computer screen made me sick, having too many options made me bored, I just wanted to plug in. It was about how I played the physical instruments, not the effects.
All the effects on the record are the shit that people were doing in the 50s, like in Memphis with Sun Records and shit. Reverb, Delay, Distortion. Boom, now I got a record. Nothing else. The bass and guitars weren’t tuned a single time during the recording of the album, all the vocals are a first take. I just had to relisten to the record to figure out what the fuck I was saying to write out the lyrics cause I was just coming up with all this shit on the spot.
I was possessed by this really weird fucking energy, that’s why it sounds like falling into barbed wire and getting dragged through piss, shit, pus and blood. Before Tassel released the Steel Patch EP, I was making this gritty concrete music, then I lost sight of important aspects of myself and it just wasn’t the right time for that anyways.
I definitely have never thought of myself as goth or anything like that, I mean I dig a lot of that early stuff but I like so much shit. One of the biggest influences in my life is Public Enemy, a lot of people would compare tassel to NIN and I would have to go, no you’re wrong, go listen to M.P.E. I don’t make genre records, I don’t make shit to fit in ‘cause even to the freaks, I’m a fucking freak. If you never had a chance, why waste it?
You’re releasing UNCAGED on Halloween, a date with strong symbolic weight for rebirth, ritual, and the uncanny. Was the timing intentional, and does the record carry any of that seasonal or spiritual resonance?
It wasn’t intentional at first, but it was totally fitting. My Octobers are always weird and haunted. Originally I was like, okay I want this to come out on October 3rd, so I made the second half of the record in two days. I wasn’t even planning to put it out when it was (just the tracks) KISS SUCK HOSPITAL through BASEMENT, but Sam An really believed in it and was starting her label Feral Crone Recordings and wanted to put it out. Then out of nowhere, this “guiding light” filled me and I recorded LUST UNLUST, GLUTTONY, BANG, NO PORNOGRAPHY and PUNISHMENT in two days. I then went down to the Pasadena Public Library and used their computer to bounce out my shit for Tracy to master it. That’s not to say there’s no significance, it’s like guiding spirits. I wound up just being like okay, let’s put it out on Halloween, I fucking love Halloween, it so happened to be a Friday, I didn’t even know. I guess I can say my visions were right.
Something Sam and I talked about a lot was how October is a time where the veil is lifted and more is revealed. I’ve already seen it, the seedy shit in LA, which was like that film SE7EN or something. I mean, after finishing the record, I wound up driving 24 hours straight to a small town in the middle of nowhere in the South to reconnect and see my family after a long while. After so much time away, I almost forgot about certain things. Now we’re smoking cigarettes on the porch and drinking coffee, C4 energy drinks and I’m hauling and selling scrap metal to scrap yards. I mean I grew up white trash, the fact that I’m even here or that I’ve toured or had a record on vinyl is insane, I’m really grateful. I thought I would’ve been killed by now. I don’t have control over the records, it’s something else, it really is, I just edit everything down. I have this fucking weird psychic or whatever you wanna call it thing, my mom was found by kids in a paper bag in a dirt lot in Glendale as a newborn baby with the placenta still on her, just left there. Who knows where we come from. But all that to say, I think the record is perfect for Halloween, for rebirth.
In Tassel, people saw this version of me live, deep throating a mic, dragging myself across the stage covered in fake blood, wrapped in duct tape, with barbed wire around my cock like a chastity cage. It was honest, but it was like a ghost. An entity. This record, I killed off a certain kind of wickedness I’ve seen time and time again in my life, by saying, “this is for the fucking freaks.”
Feeling disgust and hatred, music fuses it into love, for the estranged. I hope people feel relief when they hear this shit, cause punk and rock n’ roll has always been the thing I went to sleep with. When you have no one, or you’re living in fear of losing your life, it’s that energy that drives the natural instinct to survive.
Were there any specific moments during the making of UNCAGED, a breakthrough, a challenge, or a revelation, that felt like the heart of the album for you?
Oh definitely. I lived so many life times while making this record. The first chunk was made in my empty apartment in Phoenix when I was completely alone and like I didn’t talk to hardly anyone, the life I had previously, which was killing me, was completely erased, people and all. I don’t mean loneliness as if it’s bad, to be clear. I was recording these songs then going out in the street to smoke cigarettes while I was mixing them down to one track by hand, turning knobs and shit, like making a dub record while people were just watching me from the end of the street while I’m mixing this record.
I seriously didn’t think this record was going to come out, I was done with it so many times, just not interested. My spiritual path only progressed as I finished it, so who fucking knows. This probably sounds like some hippie shit, but I can assure you I’m anything but that.
PUNISHMENT, I’ve never heard anything that harnesses the sound of domination so clearly. Not just physical and sexual, but when you’re poor and there’s people with money around you and you’re at their bidding, when you have nowhere to go, so you have to neglect yourself for someone else’s pleasure.
When I first listened to it I had a vision of a kid, like Michael Myers in the Rob Zombie remake, just going insane in their bedroom with nothing in it realizing they’re queer, this kid just just sits in the same corner and stares at the ground in trance and intensity, cause mom’s working doubles at the grocery store and is never home. That’s PUNISHMENT. My records are for those kids.
Interview with Sam An:
Feral Crone Recordings launches with UNCAGED as its first release. What inspired you to create the label, and what kinds of artists or sounds do you hope to champion under its banner?
I’ve known for years that some of my motivation for building opportunities for myself as an artist was a part of a long term plan I’ve had to be able to connect and platform other artists in music and other mediums.
I used to curate DIY art shows before starting Lana Del Rabies, and I have always been energized by connecting artists and musicians from scenes that normally wouldn’t interact. I like to do this a lot in my own work, whether it is for the promo materials Lana Del Rabies releases, or remix albums that pull together artists from completely different subcultures.
Collaboration brings a lot of resources, perspectives and skills that underground art and artists need to survive, I think. Artists (especially musicians) tend to stay in their lanes of who they are around the most or who their most accessible audience is, which makes sense, but it doesn’t do anything for the culture.
I do think in times where (especially in the USA) there is dwindling support for music/art that doesn’t exist solely as a product, and younger artists are struggling more, starting a label that prioritizes the conviction and quality of dark, risk-taking music and art over genre purity and internet aesthetic trends seems important.
I also enjoy expanding the horizons of music fans, which I think is especially important now, given how risk-averse and algorithmic the music industry has become in the last five years or so.
I’ve had to figure out a lot myself in terms of getting my work out there because it doesn’t fit more genre-oriented labels. I think it’s a good time to use my resourcefulness for something bigger.
The name Feral Crone conjures imagery of power, age, rejection of social norms, and the wild feminine. How does that symbolism tie into your vision for the label’s identity and community?
I don’t think those themes were entirely conscious with choosing the name but it makes sense, they’re relevant to the ethos of the label. I had “feral crone” in my bios online because it summed up my “deal” as an artist and my personality that was also amusing to me (I need to have a sense of humor about things). Some people actually already thought that was a label I was on.
I call myself that because I have always been a bit rogue in how I do things as a person and in my art. Despite the ability to connect with a lot of different communities, I have always had to build things myself because I can’t compromise my work for an easier path. I am also used to being misunderstood and I know the name “Lana Del Rabies” didn’t make that any easier on my career.
I also have stuck it out with my work and had to personally evolve during some chaotic times, so that is where the “Crone” part comes in I think. It’s less about gender and more about being willing to become wiser and more authentic on the less obvious path. “Feral” is more about being drawn to risks and real, raw expression.
Feral Crone Recordings is a platform for artists who are dedicated to making music (and other art forms) with those values. It is likely going to be a platform for my work as well, but the intention long term is to build a community of artists and fans that want more from dark music.
There is a specific quality, dedication, and realness I am seeking in the artists I want to work with long term. I am hoping to connect those artists with each other and a global community that appreciates them.
What made Ash Barrett and UNCAGED the right starting point for the label’s catalogue? Was there something about this album that encapsulated the ethos you want Feral Crone to represent?
Honestly, UNCAGED and Ash are the main reason I started the label at this moment. Feral Crone was more of a “in the next five years” thing, but the right circumstances came up quickly to do it now with that record.
Ash and I are both from Arizona and his former band Tassel were an important part of platforming a sort of “comeback” that Lana Del Rabies had. Phoenix was a difficult place to be as an artist in the peak pandemic years, and Tassel was one of the few bands that I felt were trying things in a smart way in dark music. I appreciated their support a lot.
Ash and I have a lot in common in terms of our visions for the future of music and our motivations for creating and performing. We’ve talked a lot about how the kind of upbringings we each had in Arizona gave us a type of survivalist grit when it comes to our art as well.
UNCAGED is a record that was fervently made by him because it simply had to be. I could describe it in genre-jargon cliches, but I’d prefer that people approach it without any preconceptions.
I will say that I have a lot of respect for the confrontational output Ash has that still holds a very intentional vision, artistically. Especially considering the platform Tassel had, he could have easily created a more digestible record if his intentions prioritised short-term virality and making popular “content”, and I’m glad that he didn’t.
You’ve long been known for your own experimental work as Lana Del Rabies. How has stepping into the role of label founder shifted your relationship with music, collaboration, and artistic control?
…Collaboration, resource building, and perspective-broadening are kind of the point for me as an artist and a person who bridges different scenes and artistic mediums. Any success I have wanted or built for myself has honestly had a bigger goal of being connected to something more meaningful than the depressing hellscape of our current global reality.
The biggest difference for me as a label runner versus being an artistic collaborator is implementing tools to set artists up for success and staying out of the way artistically, unless they are seeking that kind of advice.
I think a lot of artists these days, especially younger ones, are expected to make their work for the internet. To keep my project going, I have had to learn the rules of the internet and the industry and make them work for me or break them altogether.
I am interested in being able to take what is special about these artists and art and to communicate that effectively to people who may not normally seek them out. I also want to experiment with new and old ways of letting artists express themselves that don’t beholden them to streaming numbers and views.
Obviously numbers have a factor in the longevity of a career, but there is a space between the niches of obscure music and resonating with audiences around the world. I would like Feral Crone to occupy and support artists in that space.
As the label grows, do you envision Feral Crone Recordings as primarily a home for artists in the industrial/experimental realm, or are you aiming to blur genre boundaries even further?
Genre is not a priority with the label. Obviously I am more drawn to dark art and music, and I find music that innovates upon genres much more inspiring. I feel lucky to have started my project in a time where “internet music” meant making sounds that had never been heard before and having the ability to share them with the world, instead of making 30 second soundtracks for outfit tutorials. People can like those things, but that shouldn’t be the main function of music, which somehow is where we are culturally right now.
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