A Wet Tile Saw Blade, a Song Called Leonard Cohen, and the EP Nobody Planned to Make
- Jun 11
- 4 min read
How two strangers became collaborators, then “best friends” and why the music sounds exactly like that.
Liam will tell you he’s a “music enjoyer.” Just a guy who learned guitar during COVID and has strong opinions about open tunings. Not a musician. Definitely not a producer.
Kai will tell you that’s ridiculous.
“Well, what are we doing right now?” they’ll say, laughing. And they’re right — there’s an EP to point to now. Three songs. Streaming everywhere. Even on Roblox. Physical proof that something real happened here.
That something is GAFF — a debut collaboration between the two, released this year and already the kind of record that feels like it was made by people who genuinely like each other. Which, it turns out, is exactly how it was made.
The story starts, as a lot of good stories do, with someone new to a city and not quite sure where they fit in.
Kai had just moved back to Los Angeles after college. Liam had come west from New York for grad school (he’s training as a therapist) and knew almost no one who made music. Both ended up on OpenMic, a networking app for musicians that matches based on values, taste, and sound. The app flagged them as compatible. Kai looked at Liam's profile. They met up at a spot across from Zebulon in October, passed the vibe check, and agreed to jam sometime.
It wasn't until the third or fourth hang that the jam turned into something real — the early shape of "Leonard Cohen," one of the EP's three tracks. "That's when I was like, 'Oh wait. I really enjoy making music with this person,'" Kai said. "I didn't want to work with somebody whose morals were different from mine. And it was clear we share very similar views."
By December they were recording. By spring, they had PERSON / PLACE / THING by GAFF, featuring 3 songs: “Leonard Cohen”, “Pastrami”, and “Enclaves”.
Here is what the recording process looked like: Kai’s bedroom. Two microphones. The drums wedged next to the closet and the bed. Kai engineering, mixing, playing— the painter, as Liam describes them, who could take an idea that existed only as a feeling and figure out how to make it real.
What they discovered was that their skill sets were different in exactly the right ways. Both are multi-instrumentalists. Kai is the primary drummer and audio engineer, “painting” with tracks. Liam has an exceptional ear and a refined guitar sensibility. Both write and sing. Together, the blend lands somewhere between textural dynamics and neurotic spirals, in the best possible way.
At one point, in true visionary fashion, they attempted a blind harmony session in which they decided to record vocal harmonies without being able to hear the previous track. “We muted it and I recorded another track on top going blind,” Kai recalled. “Terrible, terrible idea,” Liam said. They listened back. Their faces said everything. “It was like in a Thelonious Monk kind of way,” Kai offered jokingly. Sadly yet understandably, it did not make the final cut.
Then there was the wet tile saw blade.
A mentor of Kai's once swore that a wet tile saw blade sounds like a ride cymbal. This seemed credible. Kai bought one. They strapped it to a hi-hat stand, contact mic'd it, and hit record, fully expecting a breakthrough. "It sounds exactly like what you'd expect," Kai said. "Just... metal." Forty minutes of pedals and reverb later, it still sounded like metal.
What actually made it onto the record is harder to manufacture than any DIY cymbal hack: two distinct voices that genuinely complement each other. Kai is more likely to spiral productively into a seven-bar loop for 45 minutes; Liam is more likely to say okay, let's move on and come back. Sometimes they swap. Sometimes they spiral together.
Their references? The Microphones (The Glow Pt. 2), My New Band Believe, Unwound, Water From Your Eyes, Elliott Smith.
Next up for GAFF: more space, more volume, more intention. Kai is now the house engineer and studio manager at Top Coat Music Studio, a queer- and women-centered creative space in LA co-run with their business partner, lead engineer and owner, Elana Carroll. The plan is to bring GAFF there. To get loud, go maximalist, and make something even more deliberate. More research. More reference-gathering. More of the sessions where they don’t finish a single song but come out of it having a better picture of what they’re chasing. Liam is mid-exams right now (grad school waits for no one), so the timeline is loose. Playing live is on the list too.
Before we ended the conversation, Kai wanted to say one thing directly.
"I had no idea I was going to meet my best friend on your app. Dead ass." They paused. "I moved back to LA hungry for community and creation, downloaded OpenMic, and it turned into this beautiful friendship beyond the music. Like, it works. The thing that you wanted to do. It's working."
Liam, for his part, still sometimes forgets to call himself a musician. But he made a record this year, with someone who saw exactly what he was capable of before he did. The EP exists. The friendship exists. The wet tile saw blade exists. And it’s all finding its purpose.
Some matches just work. Why? Well, that’s what we are here to figure out. If you too are looking for a best-friend-level collaborator match, download OpenMic today.
PERSON / PLACE / THING by GAFF is out now on all major streaming platforms. Yes, including Roblox.
Stream it. Or BUY it on Bandcamp. Tell your grandmother!
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