Vapor Talks #33: Dennis Mikula (Geometric Lullaby)

The black metal singer, vaporwave artist and label founder in conversation

To fans of heavy, dark guitar music, Dennis Mikula is known as the frontman of black metal band Ghost Bath.

To fans of sample-based, experimental electronic music, he’s better known as the founder of the popular vaporwave label Geometric Lullaby, and as a producer under aliases like Electric Specter or runescape斯凱利. Some people believe that he is also the creative force behind the mysterious Begotten project, which he’s never actually confirmed.

Dennis just seems to be into creating this kind of mystery and lore for his bands and projects. When Ghost Bath released their debut album in 2014 on a Chinese label, they were initially believed to be a band from Chongqing, China – it was only later revealed they were actually from Minot, North Dakota.

These days, the 35-year old Mikula is based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. While Ghost Bath blew up in the metal world and toured the globe, he’s managed to turn Geometric Lullaby into a key hub of the vaporwave scene. It’s become the label home for Telepath, arguably still one of the biggest artists of the scene, and he’s released albums by other established figures like 猫 シ Corp., Nmesh, 식료품groceries, MindSpring Memories or desert sand feels warm at night. Many of Geo’s releases sell out instantly, and the label is known for high quality and reliability.

Just home from an U.S. tour with Ghost Bath, Dennis generously took an hour out of his busy schedule to talk to me, so I got to hear some fascinating stories about his upbringing and his musical journey, as well as terrorizing sleeping bandmates on the tour van by playing vaporwave all night and bonding with Telepath over hot Chinese chicken dishes and 90s VHS rips from Hong Kong.

all photos courtesy of Dennis Mikula

You grew up in what I imagine to be a rather rural area, North Dakota. What was that like?

Well, I was in this rural area, but my dad was in the Air Force. On an Air Force base, there’s people from all over the country and even from all over the world, so it’s a bit more diverse than just growing up in a farmland. I was always touring too, even with my previous band before Ghost Bath, so I traveled a lot and stuff, but I lived in North Dakota for a long time and even went to college in Minot.

What music did you actually grow up on?

I’d say two main things. One was worship music, because my parents are Christian. I was a Christian till I was 15 or 16, but I still enjoyed the worship music after that – not for the message, but for the chord changes and the melodies. I can hear that influence in my metal stuff, because it’s really emotionally driven.

On my own, I would always listen to the alternative rock station. They would play 90s grunge stuff and alt rock: Sugar Ray, Vertical Horizon, stuff like that. I would have the radio in my bed when I was going to sleep and listen to it and picture myself playing the guitar to it, pretending I was on the stage playing the songs.

At one point you must have turned towards harsher sounds...

Growing up in North Dakota, we had a pretty good post-hardcore scene. At a certain age, I would listen to The Chariot, Norma Jean, Fear Before the March of Flames, all that kind of stuff, but then I would also listen to metal. I found Dimmu Borgir early on, this metal band from Norway. I would watch MTV Headbangers Ball, and I’d find a bunch of stuff on there, like Cannibal Corpse, even foreign artists and groups – if it was in a different language, for some reason I really liked that.

Was that why you invented your own language when you started Ghost Bath?

That came from being influenced by Sigur Rós. I was in a post-rock band called I, Apparatus before Ghost Bath, so when I wanted to do the black metal thing, it’s just natural that some of my post-rock, post-hardcore influences is just part of how I write.

There clearly was a post-rock to black metal pipeline in the late 2000s, early 2010s. I knew people that were listening to Sigur Rós, Explosions In The Sky and Godspeed! You Black Emperor, then got really into Wolves In The Throne Room, Deafheaven and Liturgy. Have you actually ever seen that that Noisey documentary about one-man bands from 2012? That became quite influential at the time of that shift.

Oh yeah, that influenced me too. Well, let me rewind. When I was in the post-rock band before Ghost Bath, we were already touring and really trying to make it, and we actually put out this really good record which didn’t go anywhere. I’m thinking, “We’re not gonna put out a better one than this,” so I quit the band and just went to college.

I was living in a house with six, seven other college guys. It was insane. I have a lot of stories about that time. But halfway through college, I was living there in the basement room, and then it flooded, so I moved back home with my parents. At some point after that, I guess I saw that documentary, and I was like, “Oh, I can just still make music and do it on my own.” That’s around the time I started Ghost Bath.

As someone involved in the post-hardcore and then the black metal scene, how did you actually discover vaporwave?

The first thing I found definitely was Floral Shoppe, and I found it on YouTube somehow, liked the thumbnail, clicked on that, and I was like, “Oh, this is really weird.” I started listening to it more and more, so I guess I kind of liked it. I started collecting tapes and posting in the Vaporwave Cassette Club on Facebook.

I remember Secret Schools – he’s a designer I’ve worked with before – reached out to me there. I sent him an album I’d made but never released, it was me just trying to make Floral Shoppe with my own samples. He found that interesting, and he was like, “Let’s have a phone call about vaporwave.” I was like, “What? Who does that?” So then he actually called me on the phone and explained vaporwave to me, and he told me, “You got to check out Death’s Dynamic Shroud’s I’ll Try Living Like This [from 2015, ed. note].”

So I checked that out, and that’s what really sold me on it, because to me it was super artistic and a little dark and abstract, and that’s what I really like in music. When I’d heard that, that’s when I made the first Electric Specter album. I was like, “Everyone’s slowing stuff down. I’m going to speed it up, and it’s going to sound all icy and cold.”

That record came out on Business Casual in 2017, right?

Yeah, Business Casual was one of the first labels I followed. I downloaded the whole discography for $1, and I was listening through all so many different albums. I still don’t think I’ve gotten through them all, but I sent my album to John [Zobele alias christtt of Business Casual, ed. note], and he was interested in it, which was awesome of course.

The first Ghost Bath album had come out in 2014, so the band already got some traction at that point. How did you find the time to start another career as a vaporwave producer and label owner?

At the time, I actually lived in Iowa, an even smaller town called Buffalo Center. It was on a farm, and the town had just [a couple of hundred] people, so I was just by myself in a house with a lot of time on my hands. I was doing the Ghost Bath thing, and we were starting to get tours and stuff, but I was also collecting vaporwave cassettes and making my own vaporwave albums. I made the runescape斯凱利 album and the second Electric Specter, and I couldn’t find a label, so I made a Bandcamp to put all my different projects in one spot. And I’m calling it Geometric Lullaby, which originally was the name of another Electric Specter album I was gonna do.

Did you have friends who were also into vaporwave? Did you try to get your bandmates into it?

None of my friends listen to vaporwave, and none of my bandmates. I’ve tried. I’ve shown it to them, and they’re like, “Oh yeah, this is cool,” but they don’t really listen to it on their own or anything. I don’t think they ever really got into it.

I’m pretty nocturnal, I stay up overnight, so when we’re on tour, I’m always the night driver. Everyone would be sleeping in the van, while I’m just blasting some weird vaporwave stuff. I get into a hypnotic state when I’m driving, and I just play whole albums. My band members were just so confused because we would be on a highway in the middle of Iowa, and they would wake up to some eccojams in the middle of the night. I can imagine it’d be kind of weird. (laughs)

As a collector on the Facebook group and a vaporwave producer, did you connect with other vaporwave artists and collectors online?

I mean, you would post and comment in the Vaporwave Cassette Club, but it was mostly about selling and buying tapes. Other than Secret Schools, I just became good friends with Jeff [Cardinal, who’s known as] VAPERROR. I remember talking to him a bunch on there. I also remember seeing David Russo [alias HKE] from Dream Catalogue having drama in there a bunch. He was like some mysterious figure, he just had some screenshot from this Hong Kong movie [as his avatar, ed. note], and I was like, “Who is this guy?”

But the main thing I remember is when you would buy releases back then, it was kind of a crapshoot whether you would actually receive them. A bunch of people weren’t shipping stuff. It was kind of sketchy. Everyone would always be complaining, like, “I didn’t get my tape, I want a refund, blah blah blah.” That was a little bit of a catalyst like, you know, “If I put out tapes, I will actually ship them.”

Was that the idea behind starting Geometric Lullaby?

Yeah, so the basic idea was just to be reliable and professional, make sure everything gets shipped out, and then just have a cool package that looks like I actually put my care into it. I didn’t want to just toss the cassette in a box and ship it off.

In the house in Iowa that I lived on the farm, I had this room where I set up a foldout table, and at first I would order 50 cassettes at a time. I thought it was a cool idea to do little extras, so I put a tarot card into each case. I also loved the obi strip idea, I’d never seen that before in vaporwave, so I did one with every single cassette. Originally I had a little crystal in there too, but it was kind of sketchy because it could damage the case during shipping, so I eventually stopped doing that. I also did a resealable sleeve to keep it in just to keep it safe, because I was a big collector myself. I wanted it to be a premium little package.

You also seem to love lore, fantasy and speculative fiction. Just looking at the stuff you did with the Begotten project for example, those little horror stories you wrote for the liner notes. Where does that come from?

I’ve always been a big reader, I’ve always read fantasy growing up, like my dad did, so he got me into it. I read a ton of books, mostly epic fantasy. What I like about albums is the whole package, not just this song or that single – I like the album art, the titles, the music and the storytelling together. I think it’s super interesting to play with as well. I could show you the same album with two different covers and you’re gonna perceive it way differently. Vaporwave allows you to do that, and I do that a lot, just recontextualizing things with different titles and artwork – with Ghost Bath too. The lyrics could be super dark, but the music could sound really happy, and that contrast is really weird and interesting to me.

Is Geometric Lullaby still essentially a one-man operation?

I run it, I’m in charge of everything. I do have some people help out here and there. I have a guy who makes all my YouTube videos, and I have one guy running TikTok, because I have no idea how to do that. Sometimes I’ll commission a designer or an artist. Other than that, I do everything else.

But the label has grown significantly since those early days, hasn’t it?

Yeah, even my first releases would pretty much all sell out on day one, which surprised me. I didn’t know what to expect, so when I first opened the label I had no credit. I got a credit card that had a $500 limit, so I could buy the cassettes and then I’d sell that out, and I’d have enough to buy the next release, and they were selling out right away.

People would basically get mad at me for artificial scarcity, but I just didn’t know what to risk. I couldn’t guess, “Oh, this is gonna sell 200 in one hour.” I didn’t know. When I made the jump to vinyl, it was scary, because it’s way more expensive to deal with. Luckily Jeff [VAPERROR] helped me out, because he had done vinyl before. I think my first vinyl was MindSpring Memories’ GATEWAY 2000. I really liked that album, and it sold well. From there, it just took off.

Back then you could put out any album and people would buy it, because not a lot of people were doing vaporwave vinyl. It wasn’t as big as it is now, with as many labels and stuff. I could even take a chance on more obscure artists. It sounds weird now, but Desert Sand hadn’t really blown up yet, so I could take a chance on someone like that, put it out, and everyone would just buy it. Now it’s so saturated that you have to be more careful about what you pick, because any given Friday there’s going to be minimum 10 different vinyl records coming out.

What about your own vinyl collection, how big is it now?

I keep two of everything I put out, so it’s accumulated quite a lot. But I try to be very strict with what I collect, because you can go crazy and start buying all kinds of stuff. It’s a really weird mix: I specifically collect vaporwave and depressive suicidal black metal [DSBM]. Because if I went into just black metal, it would be way too much.

What’s your process in finding new music to release?

Right now I just have like so many releases lined up that I haven’t really done that in a while, but usually, as far as demos coming in, maybe one in 50 will catch my eye. It’s not very often. It’s usually either an artist I already know, and I want to put out something that they’ve already had out, or I want something new from them. Sometimes I’ll go on Bandcamp and just search tags until I find something I like – that’s more for cassette releases and box sets, I can’t do that for vinyl nowadays. That’s just pretty much albums that I know from artists that I know, which for some reason never got pressed on vinyl.

Do you look at metrics in terms of deciding whether to put something out?

I mean, I’ve looked at Vapor Memory, so anything bigger on there that hasn’t gotten a vinyl release, I might look at it. But even if it’s big, I also have to like it. I don’t want to put out something that I don’t enjoy just because it’s big. For example, I don’t really do future funk stuff because I just don’t listen to that, it’s not really for me.

Is Geometric Lullaby a slushwave label now?

I’ve definitely went more in the slushwave, ambient direction. Before I was a little more open to stuff. It was still only stuff that I liked, but it was a little more all over the place. I think with so many labels now, I want to have more of a vision, more of a focus in the space. I did a few Barber Beats things, but my label is now more known for darker slushwave, ambient stuff, and it just helps build that audience.

For me, it’s been taking over where Dream Catalogue left off. You’re basically continuing their early work by putting out high quality, well-curated ambient vaporwave and slushwave music.

I can see that. They’re definitely a big influence, I liked a lot of the stuff that they were putting out. It definitely has a darker edge to it, which I also do. I’ve talked to David [Russo alias HKE of Dream Catalogue, ed. note] a little bit, when I first did the vinyl release of [Telepath’s] Antara. Since he was the first one to put it out, I kind of wanted permission. I know Luke [Telepath] still talks to him, so [David]’s like, “Oh yeah, you can put it out, just put the new Dream Cat logo on it.” It’s just a little meditating guy, so that’s on that record now. But I haven’t spoken to him since.

Telepath is now arguably the biggest artist on Geometric Lullaby. How did the connection come about?

Well, he’s always been one of my favorite artists. I really liked the mysterious aspect. I like that in black metal too. What really drew me to the DSBM genre was this band called Silencer: You didn’t know who he was or what he looked like, and he had all this lore and backstory to him. I feel like Telepath had that same thing, where the music’s emotional and soothing, but there’s this mystery and eeriness to it that really drew me in.

Anyway, I went to [100%] ElectroniCON 2 in L.A. [in 2019, ed. note], and I rented a car, and then Jeff [VAPERROR] hit me up – he was like, “Hey, you want to come hang out with me and Telepath?” So I picked them up and we went to a Chinese restaurant, and I started talking to Luke [Telepath]. I remember we connected over both really liking Szechuan chicken. At the end we exchanged numbers, and I said, “If you ever want to do a release or anything, just hit me up.”

More than a year went by, maybe even a few years, I don’t remember. One day I’m at the mall and I get a call, I look at my phone and it says “Telepath”. I’m like, “What is happening?” He’s just randomly calling me out of the blue. We had a long conversation, probably an hour. He wanted to do vinyl for Beyond Reality and Antara. Those were the first two releases. I was super excited that I get to work with one of my favorite artists. I think everyone was surprised when they came out. I like surprising people.

Me and him actually connected on a lot of levels with our philosophy on art and music. We’ve had four-hour voice chat conversations regularly. I’ll send him things I’m working on, he’ll send me things he’s working on. We’re definitely friends now. He actually stayed at my house last year. He lives two hours from me – he’s in Ohio, and I’m in Pittsburgh –, so he came out to work on music together, but I was having this weird problem with brainfog, I was super exhausted, I couldn’t really think straight, so we didn’t get anything done. We just hung out mostly and watched a bunch of 90s VHS tapes from Hong Kong that he’s ripped and brought over.

Like, early Wong Kar-Wai films?

Underground stuff – no idea what it was. Some of it was really messed up, some of it was just super pretty, some was just random shots. I don’t know where he got this stuff. He said he has somebody over there that buys them and sends them to him.

That’s such a Telepath story.

Anyway, we just have a trust in each other now. He trusts me putting out his releases, and I love his music, so it kind of works out that way. Like me, he’s very prolific, he writes a ton of stuff when he’s inspired. Last year he was like, “I’m gonna do all these albums,” so we put out these four new records.

Aside from Telepath, which ones are the most successful releases on Geometric Lullaby? desert sand’s Dream Desert must be up there, right?

Yeah, that one blew up. I originally did that as a cassette box set, and then it’s my only four LP box. It had a bunch of problems though. The original box it was supposed to go in didn’t fit, so I had to pay for all new wrapped boxes. It’s super expensive, so that kind of sucked. But yeah, that blew up on Vapor Memory, I think it has millions of views. Secret Schools made that cover art, and I even did sweaters and T-shirts with that on it too. That was definitely a bigger one here.

Off the top of my head, I know that 슈​퍼​마​켓​Yes! We​’​re Open by 식료품groceries was one of, if not the biggest. The first Begotten album, (life cycle), was really big, the Towers record too. The Sewerslvt one was huge, even though it’s gone now, because they wanted me to take it down, and I don’t take rights from any artist. NEWS AT 11 and Palm Mall Mars [by 猫 シ Corp.] were really big, and Pharma by Nmesh was pretty big for me too.

I’m surprised to hear that Towers was such a big one. I always liked that album, ever since I discovered it in the pandemic, but it’s extremely mysterious to me.

See, that’s another one I just took a chance on, because nobody knew who Towers was, and it was early enough to where everyone was still just buying any vinyl. I did two different variants with three colors in it each. I wish I could do that nowadays, but it’s so expensive.

If you can tell, who was actually behind that project?

Oh yeah, it’s Imcopav, he’s done some other projects, and he plays live under his own name. Towers was a two-person thing, but the other guy in the project ghosted everyone completely, screwed Imcopav over and basically said, “You can’t even play live under this name anymore.” He just kind of went crazy. I don’t know what happened to that guy.

Are there any new artists out there that you’re really excited about?

Yeah, right now I’m really into 818181. I just did two cassettes for them, working on some more stuff with them. I really like their stuff. There’s a lot of good slushwave stuff out, like Illusionary and Nether, and Psicadence is really good. A lot of newer slushwave is what I’ve been looking at lately.

Any future projects you wanna tease?

In August we’re releasing a new Telepath album for Bandcamp Friday. What he did last year was a series of four, but this is apart from that, so it’s gonna be different. I have not heard any of it yet. He usually gets me stuff right up on the deadline, then I have to rush and put it together, so I can’t tell you anything about it, but it will be a new Telepath album, under the Telepath name.

Are you working on any music right now?

I am in the middle of the new Ghost Bath record. I’m putting together the tracks. That’s the main thing I’m working on. Most of my vaporwave stuff is anonymous, secret stuff, so I am working on vaporwave too, but I don’t really talk about it.

Discover Geometric Lullaby on Bandcamp

Dennis Mikula’s Top 10 Vaporwave Albums

(unranked)

• death's dynamic shroud – I'll Try Living Like This (2015)

• t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者 – 現実を超えて (2014)

• t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者 – 永遠の愛 (2015)

• t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者 – アンドロメダ (2014)

• 虛擬夢想廣場 – 一見鍾情 (2015)

• MindSpring Memories – GATEWAY 2000 (2018)

• 鬱 – ・薔薇綺麗躊躇網羅就職痙攣蝋燭鷹麟爨齉馕龘爨齉龘・ (Pink Album) (2020)

• 猫 シ Corp. – NEWS AT 11 (2016)

• Outer 神殿 – Hidden Empire (2017)

• desert sand feels warm at night – 夢の砂漠 [Dream Desert] (2022)