Picture Plane Talks Queer Music and Denver Warehouse Life

It’s 2020. The world is literally burning, and we’re about to enter World War III. The queers have pretty much decided it’s the last chapter and there’s nothing left to do but break gender rules and dance. That’s why Picture Plane should be your soundtrack to the apocalypse.

Picture Plane, also known by his muggle name, Travis Egedy, has been making dark, dystopian pop music with elements of everything from metal to underground country for a while now. He was originally making music here in Denver, as part of the collective of artists who lived and played music in warehouses, but has since moved to New York. Still, his heart is very much in the Mile High, and you can hear it in every dark, subversive note he plays.

We chatted with Picture Plane about music, darkness, queerness, and the changing landscape in Denver.

Tell me about having your roots in Denver and how you got your start here.
I moved here right out of high school when I was 18, from Santa Fe, New Mexico. I came up here to go to art school and study painting at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, which was really cool. For the first few years, I was living out kind of in the suburbs, but soon, I got exposed to the warehouse music scene in Denver. At that time, I started going to a lot of shows and meeting a lot of local musicians and stuff. And that’s what I really wanted to be doing was playing music.

I was making tons of music in my bedroom at the time, and I just wanted to be involved any way I could. That kind of became my whole life, playing music and throwing shows in warehouses in Denver. It was this incredible education there of just meeting so many interesting people, booking shows for touring bands, and throwing art shows and local events for all kinds of people. It was really an incredible, safe place for people to just come and express themselves and be totally free. It was beautiful.

What prompted you to move to New York?
I was touring and playing a lot of shows at the time, and I kept going to New York and had a lot of friends living there. And I was kind of just like, ‘Why am I not living here?’ And it was a good decision; I’m glad that I left. Denver is amazing, but it always felt like a little bubble at the time that I was here, and it always really felt like we weren’t supported by the city here, and no one really cared what we were doing outside of the underground community.

I feel like Denver really needs to understand the importance of art and culture. You can’t just push everyone out and grab all the money in real estate. You need to give the place value with art and culture.

How did your sound evolve to become what it is?
Being a part of a community of artists in Denver was really important because we could bounce ideas off each other and just play for each other all the time. My sound came about really organically. I was always into electronic music and a lot of like rap and hip hop and stuff. But I was also going to, like, crazy noise shows and punk shows and stuff. So, it was this kind of fusion of these electronic beats but with kind of a DIY, noise-punk spirit or something.

I wanted to write pop songs but still have it rough and fuzzy around the edges, and noisey. I’ve always been sort of a postmodern artist in that way. It’s like, the influences are all over the place. And I’m gathering and bringing things in from seemingly very different genres. A lot of people wouldn’t put those things together, but that’s what I like to do.

Tell me about the themes of androgyny and post-gender in your work as Picture Plane. How did those come up, and why are they important to discuss?
I think that was a huge influence from Denver on my my art living inside of Rhinoceropolis being around a lot of, like, queer and anarco-punk type kids. Everyone was really expressing themselves, and I found the concept of playing with gender really fascinating. And during those years, I made an album called Thee Physical that was predominantly about playing with gender.

I just found it to be extremely empowering and really radical to be confronting these rigid binaries that to me are totally absurd. I was always concerned with radical freedom, people being free at all costs, and gender is a big part of that, portraying your sex or your gender. I wanted people to be completely open and free and encouraged to be themselves.

How do you feel like that message has evolved or changed?
Well, I’m not making every song about those themes, but it felt really crucial at that time in Denver. I was thinking a lot about the year 2012 also, like leading up to 2012.  I was seeing it as this moment of a radical possibility for an expansion of consciousness and evolving to a higher state of being humans.

You know, I don’t know if that really happened or not. But, at that time, I was super optimistic. I was wanting just, like, a total revolution, really. And In a sense, what we were doing here in Denver was a revolution; we were living that reality, and people were just so open and free. Everyone was just really encouraged to be themselves. There was a lot of queer optimism, a lot of cool parties, and I just found myself really immersed in the community. It was really inspiring to me.

Do you feel like when Trump got elected, your music got less optimistic or got darker?
There’s always kind of a line of optimism in my artwork, I guess. I don’t want it to be too bleak. I’m not a pessimistic kind of person, even when things are pretty bad, which they are right now. I don’t want to beat people over the head with like, ‘Oh, this sucks; everything sucks.’ You know? It’s kind of just boring. There needs to be some escape or some sort of release.

Check out Picture Plane’s clothing line, Alien Body, and stay tuned for more music and visual art in 2020.