Cloud Rat interview with Rorik Brooks: guitar tabs for “Pollinator”

Cloud Rat guitarist Rorik Brooks recently hosted a Facebook Live event where he played songs from the band’s catalog and answered viewer questions about the band’s writing and recording process, among other subjects.

The band later shared guitar tabulature from the latest, acclaimed album Pollinator.


Speaking to D.U. over email, Brooks explained that people have been asking him on and off for years to write tabs for the band’s songs. And then when he announced he was going to do the Facebook Live stream, he was asked again. “And I figured that now is the time to learn how to do it correctly, as my only previous experience had been as a teenager, writing tabs by hand when I would write songs. It’s been a really fun and surprisingly fulfilling project to work on. It’s neat to visualize the material,” he said.

“It feels a bit like organizing thoughts in a very tangible way, like writing down spells or knowledge that were previously only in the mind. God, that sounds cheesy and pretentious as fuck, but it is at the very least personally cathartic.”

He said he was “kind of taken aback a bit” by the reception to his video: people have been positive and appreciative about it. “So it’s definitely a mutual joy. It certainly gives me strength to hear that kind of stuff during this incredibly challenging/strange time.”

And as for how COVID-19 is affecting the band, Brooks said vocalist Madison Marshall is quarantined. “She and I initially both had income problems but have gotten that sorted out, thankfully.” Drummer Brandon Hill is “creating a lot with modular synth stuff and doing remote DJ sets.”

“We are hanging in there,” Brooks said. Let’s hope we all can do the same.

Related: Speaking of guitar tabs, Discordance Axis tabs are online as well.

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