On Double On Time, Picastro abandons traditional rock frameworks for mutilated audio loops and percussive weight.

Transmission 391: Interview with Liz Hysen

Over three decades, Toronto’s Picastro, the project directed by Liz Hysen, has avoided conventional rock resolution through austere dynamic shifts and unexpected instrumentation.

Title: Double On Time
Artist: Picastro
Release Date: 2026-06-12
Genres: Experimental Music, Indie Rock
Label: We Are Busy Bodies
Description: Picastro interview: Liz Hysen details the boxing history, Charles Ives samples, and percussive friction behind the EP Double On Time, out June 12.

On the five-track EP Double On Time, released June 12 via We Are Busy Bodies, the project introduces electronic mutation into its acoustic weight. The material stems from a dual immersion: amateur boxing training and a technical study of Ableton Live under Ben Vida. The former led Hysen to the history of former World Heavyweight Champion Sonny Liston, whose career narrative anchors the record; the latter led to the integration of mangled samples from modernist composer Charles Ives.

Recorded with bassist Alex Fournier, the EP contrasts Hysen’s aggressive instrumental technique against her quiet vocal delivery, exploring themes of erasure, historical memory, and the lack of permanent origins.

Where did the name Picastro come from, and does it still mean what it did when you started? 

A friend and I came up with the name a long time ago. It’s pretty silly, actually a mish-mash of Picasso and the Japanese show “Astro-Boy”. We could throw in Castro but I don’t think he was in the sphere then.

What were the major musical influences that shaped your style? 

It’s pretty broad but I’d say when I heard John Cale play on those Velvet Underground records.   I didn’t know you could do that with an instrument and I feel like I seek out texture first when I arrange something. I think too something about the intensity of Nirvana, not that I needed to play loudly but I wanted that kind of melody and also intense emotion in whatever I made.  

You have worked with a shifting cast of collaborators. How do you decide who joins for a given release?

I just sort of let it happen. I think lately it’s been harder to be as free with it as I want it to be given everyone’s lack of time so now I try and think it through. In general though, I’d say I like to have whoever is playing with me live to be on a recording. Alex Fournier has been playing with me for a while and this is his first recording with Picastro.

Many collaborators come from Toronto groups like Eucalyptus and Pecola. How important has that scene been to Picastro’s identity?

I try to support the local scene as much as I can and end up seeing a lot of local bands as a result. So I always kind of keep things in mind as I am writing or recording about who I’d like to play with. I actually do think about friends far away too but I just see them less so I tend to think of local musicians first. But Pecola was one of the first group of friends to suggest that I do my own thing. I do lean on local musicians for support in a lot of ways.  

Are vulnerability and aggression opposing forces in your music, or the same thing? 

I think they’re opposing forces in terms of attack. Like my voice and lyrics are always the most vulnerable part of the music but maybe I could flip it around. My guitar and piano playing is very aggressive and percussive so I do use both but in different applications. Good question! Maybe I should invert them! 

What drew you to Charles Ives before you knew anything about his use of quotation?

His intensely unique compositions. There is no way I knew what he was doing in his use of quotation but I’d never heard music that sounded like it was going backwards and forwards at the same time. And his piano playing is just above and beyond. I really struggle to enjoy a lot of piano based music because it is a very easy instrument to be lazy with and it sounds cheesy to me but what he does with it is completely new sounding still! After all this time.   

Once you realized his pieces were full of citations, did that change how you worked? 

Yes! I realized it was totally fine to just let this mish-mash of influences I had going on in the back of my mind happen. You can even just take a few seconds here or there from something else and it will be completely different because of the way you present it. It really helped normalize the process. 

You call the EP a record about origins. What do you mean by that, and how did the theme emerge? 

I think just because Sonny Liston seemed not to have an origin story but at the same time, his upbringing just kind of followed him around everywhere and not one city he moved to “adopted” him in a way. He seemed kind of doomed by it. Then when I read about Charles Ives, it was almost as if he is saying that there are no origins, we are just constantly borrowing from each other. That was an interesting idea to me too.

Why boxers, and why during the pandemic? 

I had started to take boxing a little more seriously just before the pandemic and was sparring more. Then that happened and a sparring partner lent me a bunch of books to read about various boxers in the 70s and 80s and then I just kept going. There are a lot of similarities between music and boxing because luck and who you know plays a big part but because I was so drawn to that sport (and literally, not any other sport has interested me!) I guess I was trying to figure out what it was and what their take on it was. Not all the books were very good mind you, but seeing how much it mattered to everyone involved was interesting.  

Of all the fighters you read about, what made Sonny Liston the one you couldn’t let go of? 

It really didn’t seem like anyone was nice to him or even cared what happened to him. Like he was just a pawn that people used to push their cause and because he was just deemed as some sort of criminal, the cycle repeated himself and he was easy to pick on. But I guess that’s the way it goes, a person can go through their whole life and have no one pay attention to them or try and help them in a different way. It’s cruel and very real. He needed some redemption.  

The carved-tree story is really about who gets remembered. Do memory and erasure run through your work more widely? 

I spend most of my time just trying to forget things! I try really hard to not hold on to certain memories honestly. It is interesting to me what gets remembered, just by the general consciousness, collectively. And of course, people think if it doesn’t appear in mainstream news then it didn’t happen anyway. The written word has become so authoritative in this way.  

Outside of music, what books, images, or ideas tend to find their way into your records? 

I’m generally into outsider art, things that people make out of necessity rather than through a bunch of formal training.   That is interesting to me.   I do get a fair amount of ideas from books. I have to try different kinds of writers and styles though, sometimes I just get one idea from an entire book that turns into a lyric! I love movies too but they have to be a certain kind.   I am a big Yorgos Lanthimos fan.   Anything absurd and visual and heavily stylized.  

Are you working on new material? What are your plans for the immediate future?

Yes, I am working on new songs and trying to work on my recording skills as well. So ironing out technical things. It’s more straight forward stuff, aiming for like the Cure and New Order or something so it’s been fun.

Photos courtesy of Picastro

Matteo Damiani

Matteo Damiani is an Italian photographer and author. Curator of the sites Retrofuturista.com; weirditaly.com; china-underground.com and others