GATA recently met the Los Angeles-based band Sextile. This group merges elements of post-punk, electronic music, and raw, unfiltered energy to create a sound that feels both nostalgic and futuristic. Melissa Scaduto and Brady Keehn founded the band towards the end of 2014, and since then their music hasn’t just attracted attention, it has grabbed audiences by the collar, before throwing them into an inspiring world of chaos.

But Sextile is more than just music; it is also a state of mind Melisa explains, “[You are] free to be whoever the fuck you are, whatever you want to be.” It is this kind of personality and authenticity that has resonated with listeners across the globe. After the release of their albums A Thousand Hands (2015) and Albeit Living (2017), Sextile took a brief break, before returning in full force with Push (2023), an album that leans in to the darker world of EDM.

In this interview, Sextile talk about their journey from DIY shows to international tours, the influences for their new album, and their excitement for their upcoming shows in Tokyo.

GATA: Nice to meet you, Melissa and Brady! Thank you so much for your time, it's a pleasure to do this interview since GATA loves your music. Could you guys tell us a little bit about how you met?

BRADY: We met in Brooklyn’s McCarren Park through a mutual friend. He introduced Melissa as someone with an impressive record collection. She approached us, headphones on, and immediately started talking about a band called The Germs, which I hadn’t heard of. We grabbed food afterwards and bonded over our shared passion for music…It wasn't like we met and just were like, oh, let's start a band together. But we did kind of right away start trying to make music together. Melissa even taught me how to play guitar, and that’s how it all started. I think there are like four old demos of when we first met; which is now 13 years ago.

MELISSA: Brady taught me really how to use synthesizers. That was the first time that I had really played with one. This was in a basement in New York with no windows. We messed around writing demos for that first year, but we didn't take it or start Sextile until we moved to Los Angeles. So that was like two and a half, almost three years after we met that we really started trying to make a band.

GATA: I think I've heard similar stories with other bands I've liked. They connected quite early, but it took them a couple years to really start making music.

MELISSA: I mean, to be honest, we were just really young. We were also doing a lot of drugs and drinking and we didn't have our priorities. That's really what it was. We both went to rehab and then when we got out we started Sextile. When we stopped doing drugs we started doing bands.

BRADY: Yeah, you take all that energy that you put into partying and put it towards something good, and then Sextile was really made in recovery from all that shit.

GATA: And if your band had a manifesto or a message what do you think it would be?

MELISSA: It's a lot of things. I want everyone to feel free. And in whatever way that is, in terms of, free to be whoever the fuck you are, whatever you want to be. And free to dance. We really bring a message of honesty, the high that you get from dancing.

BRADY: Yeah, I agree. I keep mentioning this quote I saw recently that I think perfectly encapsulates the energy of our music, which is like: it's music to live to. And that's absolutely what we're trying to do, the manifesto is just live, don't let life pass you by and kind of put energy in your life, put energy in your passion, put energy into you, your friends, life in general.

In my opinion, the problems of the world stem from a lack of education, which might stem from laziness. This might also stem from just not wanting to get out and see the world, understand other people's ideas or try to experience other people and their humanity in life in general.

GATA: That's an amazing message. We're gonna go back in time to your first gig as a band. If you could send a message back to your past selves from that night, what would the message be?

MELISSA: I would have told myself: don't worry. You're gonna get better at this and this band is going to be better. I remember being very nervous at that show and being unable to face the audience, but now I love to look them in the eyes and engage. I need them, so it's interesting because back then I was afraid of them.

BRADY: Forme, just don't put so much pressure on yourself. But also don't sign the first contract you get. Because our first contract and record contract was pretty shit. Well, now in retrospect, when we look back at it, we were absolutely desperate to just make music and get it out there. And then also it's weird because one of those people isn't with us anymore. And maybe I'd probably say “cherish the moment“ to myself.

GATA: You’re currently based in LA but you guys are originally from New York. What's the thing that you love and hate the most about these two cities?

MELISSA: I dislike LA’s spiritual yoga scene. I mean I now appreciate working out for its mental and physical benefits, but there's a certain air of bullshit that comes with people with this spiritual shit where they have a certain language that feels like it's constantly a self-help language.

LA’s sunsets and backlit trees are stunning though. In contrast, New York has a strong community spirit, especially post-9/11. New York is a type of place where you can get on the train with a boombox and everyone will start dancing. But, the high cost of living and constant hustle is crazy. People don’t have time for shit. Both cities have their pros and cons.

BRADY: Once you've lived in a bigger city, I kind of feel like if you come to LA with a very hard-working attitude, you can kind of do whatever you want here. There are so many pockets of music and art. You could be a 70s garage kid or a punk here if you wanted, and find your friends, or you could be a fucking crypto tech bro and find your friends. You could be whatever you want and find people here.

GATA: I have to go to LA. You guys have sold it.

MELISSA: I will say, the first time I came here, I hated LA because I was in a shitty area that just didn't appeal to me as a person. I didn't realize that the eastside of LA was where all the punks and the artists were.

GATA: So as artists, there must be a million things that inspire you, your lyrics, your sounds. What would you say has been the weirdest or most unexpected influence on the two of you?

BRADY: I guess I'll go two routes. I would always be listening to the world around me, in terms of everything from electrical buses to the clanking of cars or the motors and that kind of stuff has inspired the sounds and the music that we create. One of the sounds on the new record almost sounds like an engine revving up, but it's a bass line.

What also inspires me to make music is the magic of moving a room with the press of a button. It feels like wizardry, hitting a low note on a synthesizer, letting the sub-bass fill the space, and physically feeling the room shift. Now, if you did that a thousand years ago, you'd be burned at the stake, you'd be called a witch, you'd be dead. It's crazy.

GATA: So now, we’re going to talk about your upcoming album called Yes Please. Is there anything you want to share with GATA about it? What's the concept or the meaning, what inspired the album?

MELISSA: We made the album in two different sessions. The first focused more on energetic tracks for live shows, and the second aimed for more focus on the lyrics, and the meaning behind our songs. Because we never expected that this many people would like the band, where the lyrics get sung back to us now all the time. And that sort of also gave us a perspective where we were like, damn, some of these lyrics are kind of dumb. We spent a lot more time thinking about what it was that we wanted to say.

BRADY: Yeah, absolutely. Now that I know that the songs have more lasting power, I definitely want to make sure that the lyrics that I'm singing are meaningful for me, and will continue to be meaningful for me in the long run.

MELISSA: Sort of backfired for me though, because there's a new song on our record called Resist, that is about abortion rights. In America, we've lost the right to abortions in many states. It's actually really painful for me to sing those words. I get emotional on stage. And the song's not even come out. So I'm like, what is gonna happen when people are singing these back to me? People rage during the song, because we wrote it with a gabber kick drum. We have a lot of young female fans. So when I look at their faces and I'm saying this stuff, it makes me weirdly emotional. And I'm just such a sensitive person that I'm like, fuck, how am I gonna continue singing this song to them while things are the way they are?

GATA: That must be difficult to get into the right mindset for the show.

BRADY: I think for this record, we were also trying to tap into a lot of the stuff we liked when we were in middle school and high school and stuff. And Melissa has a song on there that she wrote a long time ago as well, but we readapted it.

MELISSA: Yeah, it was a song I wrote in 2011. It's like a country song. We've somehow managed to turn it into a Sextile song. It’s the saddest song on the album, inspired by my time in a nursing home after I had an accident when I was 27. The experience was surreal. Watching New York from a wheelchair in a place with terrible care, it was more like a prison in a lot of ways. I originally wrote the song as a joke, but re-recording it made me realize it has some of my best lyrics, even though it’s painful to relive. It’s a very vulnerable and sad song. I felt sad for my old self having to go through that.

GATA: Thank you for sharing that story. We are going to talk about your live shows which are a big part of the band. How do you keep your energy so high for your performances? Do you have any pre-show rituals or routines that you go through?

MELISSA: Yeah, we definitely do. We also drink a shit ton of energy drinks. I wish they had Club-Mate in America because that shit is the best, but we have this thing called Celsius that we drink like crazy. And we stretch for a really long time before we go on and we have to stretch after. When I was younger and I played in other bands, I was so reckless and crazy. I could never do this band and this type of work we have, living the lifestyle I used to. Now it's definitely like all the needs have to be met, all the supplements I take, all that shit.

BRADY: I just do some kickboxing in between.

GATA: Cool! And what's the wildest or funniest thing that you've experienced during a show?

BRADY: I’ve seen somebody stage dive into a person in a wheelchair. They didn't know they were there. That was pretty wild. I don't know how you top that one.

MELISSA: I think one of the craziest shows we ever had was when we played this sold-out show on a boat in France. The capacity is around 500, but it sold out months and months before. The boat was going so crazy that the moment we started, both me and Brady were like, I'm going to throw up.

BRADY: Like dry heaving, but there was such a lack of oxygen because there was just one tiny window in the boat up there and there were 500 people in there.

MELISSA: 500 people like crowd surfing, climbing on the stage, everyone was going nuts.

BRADY: Some of the stinkiest, stinkiest body odours. Occupational hazard of being in a band.

MELISSA: Sweat was coming from the ceiling. It's way too much. The show ended up being so epic and so fun, but there are moments where I get the panic of like: “If I had to get out of here, how would I get out of here?” There's always that little fear that comes over me. Plus, the audience really wants to grab at you.

GATA: How would you get out of there? I don't know, maybe stage dive your way out?

MELISSA: Yeah and there was a girl on ecstasy in the front. She was just looking at me and licking her lips and touching her breasts. And so I was like, can't go there. Can't go here. There's like this dude here…

GATA: Are there any artists that you're excited about at the moment?

MELISSA: I don't know if this band is under-appreciated because I think they're killing it right now. But this band from Berlin, Brutalismus 3000. I love them. I just love their delivery of electronic music. It also seems really punk. I think that they're really good at mixing the music and generally just sounding fresh and new.

GATA: Are there any creatives or artists that you think should be shouted out?

BRADY: Yeah, for sure. For the past year or two, more the past year, I've been trying to incorporate more contemporary instruments into our music and celebrate the instrument creators of today. Like those from a Company called Make Noise in North Carolina, which create tools to make music we haven’t even imagined yet. Their devices let us manipulate sound in exciting new ways, helping create unique, emotional music.

GATA: That sounds really cool. I've seen some of those modular synthesizers and it looks like a science fiction movie set to me. I have no idea what's happening. There's so many dials and wires coming out.

MELISSA: It’s crazy. It's me trying to figure it out too, because we use some of them live. So, I have to figure out how we're going to use it. Brady breaks it down for me really easily. When you first look at it, it's very intimidating.

GATA: Yeah. How do you guys even remember what button does what?

BRADY: I fucking read a lot of manuals.

MELISSA: He doesn't read books, he reads manuals and all he does is sit on YouTube watching videos of it, new gear that's coming out. He's a real gearhead. All of our drum sounds on this new record, Brady made himself with all these modular synthesizers. So it's pretty insane.

GATA: Are there any movies that have inspired you guys or inspired your music?

BRADY: Apocalypse Now. I love the tone of that movie. I don't know, it evoked some crazy emotion while I was watching it. And I feel like those feelings seep into the music, for sure. It's intelligently dark, and you just hear screams and, but they're just on acid. And you're like, this is the most fucked shit in the world, you know, but I can't get my eyes off of it. It's crazy. I could have never imagined being around guns and explosions while on acid. That would be the most terrifying shit ever. There was this sense of hopelessness that kind of comes with that. When you are able to get to that point where you feel comfortable, you don't give a fuck. I watched that movie and really connected with that movie. But just that feeling and that vibe of just that movie never left me. I love rewatching it.

MELISSA: Maybe for me, Gregg Araki’s movies would be a visual influence on Sextile in lots of ways. Sort of being honored to be in any of his movies, like musically. He tends to use random musicians for random scenes. I also have a list of classic movies I can never get over, and a lot of them are teenage films. Like, you know, the movie Over the Edge?

GATA: No, I don't know it!

MELISSA: Oh, you should watch that movie. It's from 1979. And the soundtrack is The Ramones and Cheap Trick. But it's about when people move out of the city in America at this time, they start these new suburbs and then the kids have nothing to do. So eventually, there's a lot of crime that the kids are doing. And they eventually overtake their high school and lock up all the cops and teachers and parents in this high school and blow up all the shit outside of it. It's fucking epic. Yeah, that and River's Edge with Keanu Reeves. Are you familiar with that movie?

GATA: No, haven’t seen it.

MELISSA: Classic 80s movie—they find a dead girl by the river. And their friend killed the girl. The girl was their friend. So there's this whole internal fighting with the group. Chris Van Glover's in that movie too. He plays an amazing role in that movie. Yeah, a lot of teen films are my shit.

GATA: How do you guys feel about the upcoming gig in Tokyo? Have you been here before? And what do you expect in your time in Tokyo?

MELISSA: I desperately want to go to an onsen. And it feels like I'm gonna go crazy wanting to buy clothes. I love clothes. I love fashion. I used to sell clothes for a really long time. A lot of my clients were Japanese buyers, and they would always buy the best shit that I had. I already have a list from some mutual homies who are fashion people. I already put the money aside with the idea that I plan to spend it on some dope shit there.

GATA: Yeah, I think everyone comes back a lot poorer. First time in Tokyo. How about you Brady?

BRADY: I don't know what to expect. I mean, I have actually been to Tokyo before but I was really young and traveling with my mom. I have no memory of this spot really, so I'm going in kind of fresh and I don't know what to expect. I'm just there to have fun and take it all in.

GATA: I think that's the best idea. I've seen some people make an itinerary that's so strict. I need to do this and this but just get lost in Tokyo man. Have fun!

BRADY: Yeah, exactly, that's what I'm gonna do. I think I kind of like going in with no expectations or anything. Just see what's cool.

GATA: Amazing! Thank you so much for your time.!

MELISSA: I hope you guys come to the show.

GATA: Of course! We will go insane. See you in Tokyo!

Interview by JAMES ELLIOTT & LUNA ROHMANN

FROM BROOKLYN TO LA: SEXTILES JOURNEY THROUGH MUSIC, CHAOS, AND FREEDOM