[Cover photo credit to Scott Montoya]
Suicide Squeeze Records are celebrating the first anniversary of Julia, Julia’s album Derealization with a deluxe edition digital release featuring five sped-up versions of the tracks. The additional material was mixed and mastered at Julia’s home studio, Coma Studio, with her husband and bandmate Scott Montoya.
Julia has also shared a video for “I Want You” (Sped-Up), which she filmed and directed in her current hometown of Long Beach, CA.
Derealization is defined as “feeling detached from one’s surroundings; a conscious confusion about the “realness” of surrounding people and objects: a feeling of observing oneself outside of one’s body: feeling like one is living in a dream.”
The idea is at the core of the project Julia, Julia, the moniker for Julia Kugel, founding member of Garage Punk band The Coathangers and the Dream Pop duo Soft Palms.
The album finds Julia playing almost all the instruments and taking her first stab at engineering at COMA, she and her husband’s home recording studio in Long Beach, CA.
Kugel says about the album:
You know how touring musicians often speak of whether home is real or tour is real? Well, it can lead you to lose grasp on ‘reality,’ especially when touring is taken away and you are left to wonder if anything was ever real, including yourself. Like you we’re just playing a character.
This trauma-induced sense of detachment was so severe that Kugel lost her voice, and, consequently, her confidence as an artist. Aided by vocal coaching and EMDR therapy, in addition to the healing power of things she loved, she was able to resume making music.
She adds:
Honestly, I kinda lost it, and through making this record I made peace with it and reconciled myself as a real person. I forgave myself and in turn forgave those around me. The song “Forgive Me” is the apology I wanted to say and to hear. I wrote every song from that place and gained the confidence I was pretending to possess.
