Petalbyte’s <10>< (“fish”) is the first installment in a three-part concept album following a fish lady trying to get her music heard by the humans above the surface. Glitchy, bright, and bursting with effects, it is a gem of electro- and hyperpop, with maximal, glitch-heavy production, bitcrushed, layered vocals, and character-driven lyrics throughout. This September, WVAU sat down with Petalbyte over Discord, whose album has climbed to just outside the top 100 on both Album of the Year and Rate Your Music, to discuss the song that started it all, her take on talent, and the album’s reception.
WVAU: Could you start by giving us a brief bio?
PB: I am Pebby. I am a musician, I guess. I’m one of those musicians that doesn’t really care too much about the music, but I care more so about the lyrical content and the story inside of it. I’m not saying that music is unimportant to this process, I’m just saying it’s less important. But yeah, I’m trying to make a musical right now, and it’s hard
WVAU: About your project <10><, about fish—is that what you call it?
PB: Yes. Unfortunately, it’s just fish. Um, but the reason why it’s fish is because it’s part one of three and there’s, there’s fish, there’s net, and there’s fin.
WVAU: Wait, whoa, that’s so exciting. So it’s a three-part album. Are you already working on those?
PB: Yes!
WVAU: What are five words or phrases that come to mind when you’re describing fish to someone who’s never heard your music before?
PB: Okay. This is a weird first word, but immigration is one of them. Success is another one. Um, there’s this other thing: Judgment, qualification. And the last word is hard, because I feel like I have to make it matter. Probably self-worth.
WVAU: I saw on your Instagram that you recently performed something live. What was that like? Would you ever go on tour?
PB: Yes, but I, um, I kind of never perform my songs as they are on the album because people don’t know me yet. Like people aren’t just gonna listen to one of my songs and go, “Oh, that’s a thing I recognize.” So I usually mash it up with other songs that they would know. And then touring, I mean, only if I get the chance to. And only if I’m prepared; I guess I am not currently. There’d be a lot of pressure, especially because I don’t think I’m good at singing. I genuinely think I suck balls. A lot of takes, you know?
WVAU: How do you go from an idea in your head to a song like fish’s leading single, “Girl Just Quit Music Already”?
PB: So “Girl Just Quit Music Already” came from a situation that I have seen. I’m not the person in that song, of course, because it’s a concept album about a character, but it’s something that I have seen happen where, um, someone is basically banking on a lot of risk, and they have someone they’re relying on that initially is very supportive until later on that support kind of erodes and turns into contempt. It’s the first song I’ve ever finished. As my first song, I just wanted it to be important to me, because I didn’t want that Girl who should quit music to be me. I don’t want to let people down because I’m banking on a risk. I wanted that first song to be a reminder to myself to not see life as a path that is set. The album stemmed from that song itself, gaining a lot of traction. I, that was just one one-off song. And then it became this, like, story about a fish lady.
A couple of people told me that they were, um, doing music for years, but they never reached the success that I had in one first song. They were like, “Darn, there must be something with you that you know that I don’t.” And I realized there wasn’t. Because I was less skilled than they were. I came to terms with the fact that this song was just lucky that it reached the people that it reached…Um, so like I personally, at this moment in time, have a very different definition of talent compared to like what people usually define as talent. I think talent is just understanding your own taste, and skill is like the application of that understanding to get you to what you want, basically. But I know that’s probably not like what people define it as colloquially. People just say you’re talented because you’re good at something.
WVAU: When you’re creating one of these songs, do you know where the structure is going to take you from the start, or is it more organic?
PB: Oh, um, I think neither. Um, because I adjusted the structures of each song so that the whole album would be 33 minutes and 33 seconds long. So yeah, like I tried to be intentional with the pace of it to make it more varied and stuff. But, um, at the end of the day, if something felt to me, like it needed to be shorter or longer for the sake of like, a cool number, I did that. And yeah, like I make more than I put out. So there are a lot of different versions of songs, and it’s all sort of like, it’s synthesized into something cohesive.
WVAU: Where do you draw your inspiration from?
PB: Oh dude. Um, Filipina Queen Underscores. Of course. Like, oh, did you know that my album actually came out the same day that Underscores’ U released? But let’s see, my biggest inspiration right now, I’m trying to look… there’s Underscores, there’s Sophie, there’s, um, Phoebe Bridgers. And there’s Carly Rae Jepsen. And like, just assorted K-pop. Oh, and Olivia Rodrigo. This is very out of my style. She’s more poetic recently—but back when her early albums came out, I really liked them. I liked, especially “drivers license,” and like, all that stuff, like the very useful energy that it brought. Yeah. Um, I wanted to reflect that on fish too.
WVAU: The project has received a pretty immense amount of critical acclaim, and is just outside the top 100 on both AOTY and Rate Your Music. How does that feel?
PB: Oh, so I actually don’t really, I don’t think too much of it. The thing I like most, though, is that because it was so high up on the charts, the band Yulia got inspired by that album when they made their album Kindness She’s So Jealous. And I love that album. I only found them after the album came out. Knowing that my album had an influence on other art is like way better than any like reception that I could get. Because especially like, I read my reviews sometimes. And they don’t mention the part that I actually care about. People are like, “I love the sound of this album,” or like, “the lyrics are so personal.” And I’m like, you guys are missing the whole story.
WVAU: That’s probably kind of frustrating, to feel like people are missing a lot of the point of the album.
PB: I mean, that’s why I’m making a deluxe edition or whatever. Or like a side story. I don’t know what to do with it yet. But like more projects to come to help sort of expand the storyline in the universe. Because the first album is just—it’s not the full story of the two characters that are there. I want to add in between songs from another perspective.
WVAU: Where do you want to take your career in the future? Do you always want to create music, or can you see yourself branching out to other mediums?
PB: Oh, dude, the only reason why I started to make music was because I had a little bit of music knowledge through analyzing my favorite songs. And I was also an unsuccessful writer. As a teen, I wrote stories, and I’m not going to say which fan fictions I made, but I really liked having, like, the experience of impacting people through characters and what they do and how they navigate and negotiate with their environments. And then, because my original work couldn’t find that reach that my fan fiction did, I just made music to like put the stories I have into a packaging that is like unique to me. I don’t know if there’s been a hyper-pop concept album about, like, a science fiction fantasy world before. Like, does that exist? I’ve never heard another one, but I don’t think so. I’m making a book right now, which is like a companion piece to the musical. The book that I’m writing is the same story and the same events as the musical. The book gets more into what they do specifically, and the musical gets more into what they feel doing what they do.
WVAU: To end off, what is your album of the year, or what artists should people at WVAU check out?
PB: My album of the year is You by Underscores. Like, that’s it. Like, it clears. And my runner-up is James Ivy’s The Seams.
Image Credit: AmberVSTheDark