INTERCOURSE's Members Name The Things That Inspired Them To Craft Their Latest Noise Rock Masterpiece

We sat down with Intercourse – vocalist Tarek Ahmed, drummer Caleb Porter, guitarist Sean Prior, and bassist Pete Stroczkowski – to discuss what inspired their upcoming record How I Fell In Love With The Void, due out September 12. From movies and books to musicians and albums, this is what they chose! Check it out below and pre-order How I Fell In Love With The Void here.

Tarek's picks

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous – Ocean Vuong

I have this policy where if you read one of my book recommendations I will read yours, without hesitation. After my friend, Eva, read The World According to Garp by John Irving at my behest and subsequently messaged me to rave about it, I asked for her recommendation. It was this book and I went into it completely blind. It's honestly the best thing I ever read.

Ocean straddles this line between being poetic and using language as a blunt instrument. It deals with poverty, immigration, masculinity and queer identity through a series of letters a young Vietnamese man writes to his mother who can't read them. It also mostly takes place in Hartford, CT. This book deadass changed how I think about writing. Also the book he just released The Emperor of Gladness is sick. If you like novels, read these!!

Pulp – Charles Bukowski

I've been hearing about Bukowski forever but I never read him until like 5 years ago when I came across a copy of Post Office. I thought it was honestly kinda just gross. Then last year I came across a YouTube clip where he talked about his philosophy of writing which was mostly him just shit talking a bunch of other authors and calling them boring. For some reason that resonated with me so I picked up a copy of Ham On Rye and THEN I got it.

I read everything of his I could get my hands on but I gotta say my forget book of his is his last, Pulp. It's a noir novel with some sci-fi elements and the only one that forgoes his alter ego Henry Chinaski. I believe he wrote it after his cancer diagnosis, it seems like the musings of a man who's accepted his mortality and is staring death down. Also it's nowhere near as gross as Women which is just like some old drunk dude's penthouse letters.

Pet Semetary – Stephen King

This very well may be Stephen King's best book and I can confidently say I will never read it again. It's well written, the plot is great but I made the mistake of reading it while my own son was the same age as Gage Creed. Which would be fine but Stephen King drags the death scene out for 50 pages. Just back and forth going over and over the accident, lamenting what Louis Creed could have done differently. Which I suppose is a pretty accurate characterization of grief and trauma.

I don't know what it is about getting bummed out till the point I'm crying like a child with a skinned knee that makes me so creative but it honestly never fails. So if you have a kid and want to read this maybe just check out Green Mile instead. Just stay away from Stephen King's It, that shit's too long.

Sean's picks

Pony Express Record – Shudder to Think

A labyrinth of a record. Maybe the best use of 90's major label alt rock gold rush money there is. This record had been my standard for guitar work for the past couple years. There's a push-pull tension between chaotic no wave-esque chords and intricate songwriting that I've yet to find in any other band. It's been a huge influence on how I think about guitar and writing, and on what I wrote instrumentally on this new record.

Paterson – Jim Jarmusch

The best film about working class art this side of American Movie. A bus driver moonlights as a poet, but keeps his work to himself. Just writes for the sake of it. He gets tossed around by life but keeps making his art, just because he has to. I first watched it about a month before we started recording the new album. This is a great film to get into the headspace for recording, writing, or making anything really: just keep doing it because you have to. Feels even more relevant than when it came out (I wrote this while working my day job).

Shoot – Chris Burden

This last one's kinda out of left field, but I'll take any opportunity to talk about it cause I've been thinking about for easily ten years now. The performance is exactly what you think it is: the artist stands in the gallery and is shot in the shoulder. That's it. When I first learned about it years ago it really blew my world open as far as what art and performing specifically could be. That level of intensity is something that's always on my mind when i'm thinking about creating something. Performance art gets a bad rap, but anyone willing to put their life on the line for what they create is okay in my book.

Caleb's picks

Disgust – Kidnapped

My top hardcore album of 2024, crushing and fun powerviolence from a fellow CT band. Listened to this a lot while we were writing and besides the obvious influence of blast beats and breakdowns I was mostly inspired that another local band made an album that sounded so big and crazy completely by themselves.

Doppelganger – Fall of Troy

For this album, Sean and Peter wrote a lot of parts where a straight up blast beat wouldn't have done them justice. I really tried to incorporate more groove into some of these songs and I immediately thought of Andrew Forsman on Doppelganger. This album was in heavy rotation for me at the time and it was very fun to draw influence from it.

With Love From a Padded Room – Crippling Alcoholism

Absolutely in love with this record. The four of us listened to it so much during the writing process it was an obvious influence on us. I tell everyone I can about this record and now im telling y'all.

Pete's picks

Easter – These Arms Are Snakes

This album continues to blow my mind as far as what bass guitar is capable of in the context of a band and as a compositional tool. From the insane whammy solo of "Mescaline Eyes" to the unfuckwithable riff of "Horse Girl" to the bridge riff in "Subtle Body", there's a veritable goldmine of ideas and inspiration here. I always come back to this album when writing.

Aniara – Pella Kågerman & Hugo Lilja

I watched every space horror film I could find last year and this obscure Swedish film really stood out. An extremely simple premise: A spaceship carrying passengers bound for a new life on Mars gets knocked off course by a freak accident and just… continues to drift away. That's it. The execution of this bone simple concept results in one of the most beautiful, bleak and poignant films I've ever seen.

The Leftovers – Damon Lindelof & Tom Perrotta

Great premise here: the plot takes place some time after the "Sudden Departure", a global event that resulted in 2% of the world's population disappearing in rapture-like fashion. My favorite part of this show is that it isn't concerned with answering the obvious question of the supernatural event, and is instead a meditation on grief, family, and nihilism. Also accompanied by incredible musical scoring. Devastating while somehow managing to be uplifting, this hits all the feels for me.