Music
IN CONVERSATION WITH: 505
Tatiana Tardio
18.05.26
Music
IN CONVERSATION WITH: MACHINE GIRL
words: Luca Menenti
29.10
One year later, Machine girl comes back to roar with PsychoWarrior: MG Ultra X, second chapter of the saga inaugurated last October with MG Ultra.
After a period as a live performer, the guitarist Lucy Caputi officially enters the studio alongside the founder Matt Stephenson and to the drummer Sean Kelly, giving life to the first album conceived and produced by this new formation.
The album, released on 24 October, is a detonator of energy and visions: the source from which the sound blasts shaped to awaken the psycho-warrior which is in each of us he who fights to bring clarity and balance to the schizophrenic madness of the present.
We talked with Matt, Lucy, and Sean about how this urgency was born, and how the group is experiencing a moment of profound renewal, but also of continuity with its origins.
Matt, what was it like working in the studio with this new lineup for the first time? How did the creative process evolve with the three of you together, and how much did Sean and Lucy's ideas influence the process? PsychoWarrior: MG Ultra X?
Frosted: I'd say it was a much more collaborative process than previous Machine Girl records, for sure. Again, I wrote and developed many ideas alone at first, but then we started working together to give them a more complete form.
Lucy, however, hadn't yet moved to New York until a few weeks ago, so she wasn't able to be with us as much as we would have liked. We often worked remotely, and to meet deadlines, I sometimes had to work on some songs alone.
That being said, some of my favorite parts and memories of the whole process remain those moments when we were together in the studio working side by side.
Lucy and Sean: What was it like working on this record?
sean: This was the first album with Lucy. Matt and I had already produced records in a similar way—he wrote the music, and I stepped in to shape it or develop certain ideas. This time, we faced new obstacles, and on more than one occasion, Lucy stepped in and saved songs. You know, adding guitar is no easy feat.
Recording the drums was already a challenge, but writing the parts was a more natural process, because Machine Girl has always been a very percussive project, even before I joined. Adding the guitar, on the other hand, was a real puzzle: every section of every song had to be reinvented. It was crazy and very difficult. So yes, this time the challenge was even greater.
Lucy: Yes! Joining the band was awesome, but also a little… overwhelming, I'd say, because Sean and Matt have been playing together for a long time and I admire them so much. So I felt a little pressure, because there was a certain level to maintain.
And as Sean said, the guitar was an enigma, we just called it “the puzzle guitar”In many songs we deliberately treated it like an electronic instrument, trying to make it sound more like a synthesizer, even if there are moments when you can really feel its soul.
It was part of the concept: to push the instrument toward a more concise identity, and I think we succeeded. The process was fun, even if it was time-constrained, but in the end we're all very satisfied with the result.
Psycho Warrior It appears, musically and lyrically, as an irreverent yet sharp critique of contemporary life. Brilliant, biting, and even ironic. Would you like to share how the concept for this album took shape, and specifically how your visions converged?
Frosted: The expression psychowar It's something I'd thought about using as a track or album title years ago, so the idea was already there, layered over time. The album is very much a reflection on contemporary life and the difficulties of navigating it – a theme that, among other things, is also present in MG Ultra – trying to navigate the madness of our time, facing the fact that our brains aren’t designed to constantly filter and experience all this information.
And especially now, with the introduction of artificial intelligence and the emergence of bot accounts and misinformation, people remain trapped in their own little worlds. And it's complicated, because how can you get people to agree on something when they live in fundamentally different realities? They can watch the same event happen and see completely different things, which contradict each other.
And so the idea of a was born psychowar, a war for the mind—which, in fact, has always been fought by humanity in various ways—with the difference that now there are tools that are often beyond what our brains are capable of processing and understanding. I think the combination of social media and artificial intelligence is a nuclear bomb.
And the point is, when you don't learn how all of this works – And most people don't—and then you get something like ChatGPT or AI-generated videos, and everything can get completely distorted. So the concept basically came from watching the world descend into madness.
I mean, this is America, so…
Lucy: It's a bubble in itself.
Frosted: And the last point I want to add is that the idea of the psycho warrior It's a deliberately ironic and slightly kitschy notion—a sort of Joseph Campbell-esque character or archetype, a hero who rises up and fights, cutting away all the trash and strengthening his mental capacity to respond to it all. Because those in power are waging a veritable war on our minds, a process of manipulation and mind control that is taking place in real time.
The mental war that each of us must fight every day, even just to distinguish the truth from fake news...
Frosted: It's like in 1984, exactly. Especially with people like Donald Trump, this happens with practically everything he says.
sean: Il doublespeak...
Lucy: The erosion of truth…
Frosted: Yes. And the constant gaslighting that's being pumped out from everywhere.
We live in a time of ever-widening inequality, governments disconnected from the needs of people and the planet, and dystopian realities seem to be creeping ever closer. How much of this tension is reflected in Machine Girl's lyrics and sound?
Frosted: This is definitely all part of who we are. We still feel like a working-class band: we don't have homes, we don't own anything big. We're a successful band, but we're constantly working. The weight of the world and the economy is reflected in our music—it's always there, like a fire burning beneath us.
This album contains the song “Despite Having No Money At All I'm Just Another Rat in the Mall”, probably our most openly anti-capitalist song. It's ironic, but it comes from the outburst of living in a world where everything has become transactional. Everyone has to sell something or have a thousand jobs. Even relationships between people, at times, seem like transactions.
Lucy: I completely agree with what Matt said. It's hard for anyone to be in a band these days. There are always limitations, and you have to learn to make the most of what you have, between touring, tight schedules, and limited resources.
sean: I try to bring vitality and a touch of absurdity into my music. Many people today feel tired and disillusioned as music fans or concertgoers. I try to infuse creativity into every part of the song and the show, to lift people's spirits—even through humor. There are lots of puns, double entendres, and little bits of madness.
Frosted: Yes, and that's important. Our music is aggressive, but not necessarily angry. One of the fundamental elements of Machine girl It's just the absurdity: the world is so crazy, and we've decided to embrace it fully.
Sean and Lucy: How did you meet Matt? Were you already following his work before joining the band, or did the connection arise in another way?
sean: Matt and I have known each other for a long time; we played together as teenagers. When he had already created Machine Girl a few years earlier, I would go to his shows and get involved. When he decided to expand the project into a real band, I was the first one recruited.
Lucy: Matt and I had been friends online through SoundCloud for a long time, dating back to around 2013–2014. We were on a compilation together, had similar tracks, and that's how we met. During lockdown, we started thinking about incorporating my guitar into the project. It all seems a bit random now, but it's actually something we'd been planning for 4–5 years.
Frosted: It had never materialized until now. It definitely took at least two and a half years for Lucy to officially join.
So it all happened very organically, you could say. Matt, can you trace the influences that fueled the initial, strictly electronic phase of Machine Girl? And what ultimately drew you to this incarnation as a full band?
Frosted: Well, from the beginning I wanted it to become kind of what it is now. It just took time. I wanted Machine Girl to be a band from the beginning, but I didn't really know how to do it, so from the beginning until… Gemini, in 2015, I was doing everything by myself. Then, towards the end of Gemini, I felt a little stuck, so I decided to try to make the band thing happen.
The influences have always been the same, only that initially they translated into strictly electronic music, while later they flowed into more band-like sounds.
Even today, the electronic influences of Machine Girl's early records are easily traceable, starting with the footwork and rave sounds...
Frosted: My meeting with the foot work It was pretty random. It was around 2013 and my ex was working at an art gallery with a guy who made music. When she asked him what kind of music he made, he replied, “footwork.” We had never heard of it before, and at first we almost made fun of him because we didn't know what it was. Then I came across a mix of Kode9 of that period. He was super immersed in the footwork scene and was already signing DJ Rashad and other artists of the Teklife. Listening to that mix – I think it was on Rinse – when the footwork tracks came in I thought: “What the hell is this?”
It was just amazing, new, exciting, and crazy to me: I loved how frenetic, chopped, fast, and crazy it was. It felt like something completely new. At that time in New York, footwork was everywhere, until about 2016: at every party, at least one DJ was playing it.
sean: Yes, it was around the time I was old enough to go out and discover places to dance. 2012-2013 was when I started going to clubs and I loved it. HyperdubIt was an overwhelming phase, with so much new music. And of course, besides dancing to it, I could also listen to it on my commute to work. Crazy stuff.
Despite the attention and authority you've gained, Machine Girl's music still sounds incredibly original, spontaneous, and free from commercial logic. How do you protect this independence and keep your music so authentic?
Frosted: I think I'm simply incapable of creating anything that doesn't sound like "Machine Girl," and in any case, my sensibilities don't mesh well with pop marketing. So I don't think it took a lot of effort on our part to stay weird. It's just the way it is.
Lucy: We're just weird.
Frosted: Yes. And it's a reflection of the music we like. We're passionate about outsider art, crazy bands...
Lucy: I'd like to add that an often overlooked aspect of Machine Girl is its references and inspirations, which come not only from music, but also from films, books, and more. But it's not something you immediately notice.
sean: Drawing inspiration from crazy comics and crazy movies, without feeling tied to a single genre or scene, fuels the project.
Lucy: We’re not like, “We want to sound like X or Y… or “We like that bit of that song, how can we do it our way?”
Recently, the world of electronic music has become increasingly vocal about social and political issues. However, there's a sense that electronic music has lost some of the revolutionary energy that has always defined it, and that even the underground is falling victim to conformist logic.
Frosted: Historically, the most revolutionary electronic music happened at raves. Now there are no free spaces anymore; everything happens in clubs.
sean: I think the gentrification of the last fifteen years has stopped everything. Watching videos of '90s warehouse parties makes me think that by 2013, it was all over. Now you can have whatever you want, sure, but everything is more complicated. Music remains cutting-edge, but live events are hindered.
Lucy: I was thinking about when we were in Tasmania and walking through a festival. Crazy things were happening, and we wondered why the police didn't intervene. Then we remembered that we're used to the police climate in the United States, where anything interesting is somehow censored.
Where do you imagine the sound of Machine Girl will reach? Do you already sense the next mutation in the air?
sean: I feel like we always end up running out of time. Every time we have a new idea, we have to finish the album we're working on.
Frosted: Yes, that's true. Next time we create something, we'll do it without deadlines. I'm considering concepts similar to that of PsychoWarrior and I already have some ideas to develop for the next album, making use of the sounds I've experimented with so far.
Lucy: Yes, we've learned a lot in this process, so having that background will be helpful.
Frosted: I've said in other interviews that this album is also MG Ultra For me, they're like assorted chocolates, boxes of songs in different styles, or I used the analogy of a Chinese mixed platter. There's a lot of variety. For my next album, I want to do the opposite: extract a sound from one of these songs and make it the core of the entire album, simply pushing it to the limit.
Machine Girl has always had a very original visual identity, ever since the days of WLFGRL. What are your references?
Frosted: Everything is heavily influenced by what we grew up with. Things that disturbed me as a kid, like VHS covers, weird anime clips, cyberpunk stuff, and '80s and '90s sci-fi action. I love all of that, and I think about it when I create a song or think about an album cover, trying to convey that feeling, to recreate that world.
Lucy: We all draw from the same "well," musically and visually. Machine Girl has created a well-crafted world: you see or hear something, and you know it's related to us.
sean: I've always had a connection with anything that has, even vaguely, the spirit of culture jamming. Visually or musically, it can be anything extreme.
Have you already planned a tour for this album?
sean: We're going to Asia this year, and we've already announced European dates for January. And yes, there's a lot more to come next year. We'll keep moving.
