There has always been a little bit of a junk-drawer quality to They Are Gutting a Body of Water. And im not saying that as a pejorative, but its more so that Doug seems to have very little interest in deciding that two things do not belong next to each other. A guitar part can sit next to a breakbeat. Something beautiful can get interrupted by something silly. A song can sound finished and then suddenly feel like somebody opened another tab over it.
A couple years ago that all became swanlike (loosies 2020–2023), a collection of material pulled from the years between records. Half-finished ideas, demos, beats, old uploads, little pieces of songs that had been sitting around in different forms. Instead of cleaning all of it up into something that felt like a proper album, Doug let the loose ends stay loose.
KOOL FAITH / LOOSIES II feels like that door has been opened much wider.
Doug has described the idea behind the mixtape by going back to the CDs he remembers finding in convenience stores when he was younger. Cheap jewel cases put together by local DJs, loaded with favorite artists, new beats, vocal stems moved onto things they were never originally recorded for. Sometimes the combinations worked perfectly. Sometimes they probably should not have worked at all. The point was hearing somebody else look at all of those separate pieces and decide they belonged together anyway.
That seems like a pretty good way into these 29 songs.
Across the mixtape, people from different corners of the world surrounding TAGABOW keep wandering in and out. Bands Doug has shared records with. Artists connected through Julia's War. Friends. Rappers. Electronic musicians. People who have been around this thing for years and people whose presence still feels strange enough on paper that you want to hear what happened.
And rather than have Doug explain every one of those collisions from his side, I wanted to know what the record looked like from the other end.
So I reached out to all of the contributors on this tape and asked each of them the exact same question. What did they give Doug to work with, what was it actually like making something together, and was there some accident, conversation, weird decision, or small moment from the process that they thought was worth remembering?
Below are their responses in no particular order.
Drawings by: Ray Morgan
LUCY (Cooper B. Handy): He mentioned the project to me more after I sent him some vocals and I was blown away with the amount//variety of artists he had on board~ we’ve worked together before in a similar way. I like how busy he keeps himself with communal projects. For my song on the album he asked me to try a range of vocal registers after I sent him my part, then I sent him higher vocal takes and he blended them in nicely. I sang about the spotted lantern fly
Hotline TNT (Will): Doug sent me the instrumental for this off the bat and made it clear that he wanted a halfway point between Tagabow and TNT, and I think he achieved that. I took a crack at the vocals one afternoon, and I’m happy to say that he and I are at a point in our friendship where he can give me very open feedback, basically told me “this is good but you can do better”. He was right, I went back to the lab and came up with a new melody and lyrics and got the song to where it was always supposed to be. Doug is a collaborator and peer, but also a hero of mine and I was really honored that he asked me to chip in for this record.
Beat Fella: Doug originally reached out to dupontpavilion who then reached out to me because he thought the track fit my vibe. I’m a small Instagram rapper so it was crazy to be invited on such a cool project. I remember Doug sending a picture of himself in the group chat with me and DuPont with his tongue out and that really stuck with me.
Dupontpavilion: Doug brought me in just by hitting me up. I had poste about liking some bands like horse the band and orchid and he messaged me being like "i like your music and im working on something and i see you fw this type of music" and I was like I know you tagabow. I had been calling him tag. he ended up just sending me an instrumental he had made. I thought it was mega fire and i recorded a verse doug was like "that shit weak you gotta change that shit fr fr brodie" thats verbatim wat he said brodie and all and i was like for sure brother so i rerecorded a new verse and he was like "i fw this one od. old was was kind of ass ngl but this one global"
Then i was like this shit acoustic af lemme get beatfella on this cause i fw beat and he works acoustic and shit so i was like you should fucking get beatfella on this i sent doug some beatfella and he liked it so he was like bet but he gotta get on it fast
I sent it to beat and beat was like this is dope and recorded like 7 different verses
Frankly an eps worth of verse in like 3 days just working working working on it crazy.
Cashier (Kylie): Doug texted me asking to collab on a track, which was an immediate yes. I asked him if he had any references to which he replied with 3 of my own songs lol. Doug provided the track- I wrote a melody and lyrics, and me and Jo played guitar on it as well, added some feedback etc. It was very seamless and fast and came naturally, the vision was clear from the track he sent me. One weird decision was not really putting “real” bass and drums in the track which kind of makes it stand out from the rest of the record, as well as it being a very melodic, almost pop song. I’m really grateful for the opportunity to write with him and he was so supportive and encouraging the whole time, so it was pretty easy and beautiful and fun.
Options (Seth Engel): Doug and I made this track after a show I played solo in Philly with Echotracer. We went back to Doug's spot in the warehouse after the show, and he busted out a Casio midi guitar - nylon strings but with a MIDI pickup, and a wild array of funny MIDI sounds. It was super fun watching Doug go thru his sample library and pull beats and samples quickly.
We tracked a bunch of the MIDI guitar and chopped it up until we had something we both liked. Pretty sure I did the ambient layers with a regular electric guitar.
The original version had a sample of "One More Time" by Daft Punk at the end, was super funny and fit nicely. The whole experience felt very playful, didn't feel like either of us were trying too hard to do anything other than have fun and throw stuff at the wall until it stuck.
Tony Bontana: Doug sent me a beat pack after we were speaking about making something together - I wrote to 2 / 4 of the instrumentals that he sent We were both pretty excited about the track. I mixed the song probably about 20 seperate times over a few months and ended up with the version that’s on the mixtape only after sending the stems to Doug did I realize I unintentionally put autotune on one of my vocal layers.
Taurus Judge (Ian): Our song “old irish” started with Doug just texting me up asking if I wanted to jam. He didn’t mention the project at first but explained it when we linked at his practice space. I was stoked because the lineup was just a list of our mutuals and people whose music I love. He showed me some of the stuff he had been working on and this guitar he’d been obsessed with and wanted me to play.
It was this weird Casio guitar with a tape player built in. It looked like it had to be from the 80s by my guess, and I had never seen or heard something like it. Super blown out. Extremely dope but the opposite of the tone I use in our band which pushed me to play things that I wouldn’t normally gravitate towards. You can hear it the first couple seconds of the track.
I improvised with it for like 3 minutes and Doug immediately chopped it up into a song. It was my first take but Doug heard something in it and arranged it into this whole ass song on the spot in like a half hour. Verse, chorus, bridge. Doug works really fast. From there we just took turns doing random overdubs we thought of on the spot: different guitars, amps, feedback, noise, some acoustic, synths, and eventually bass. Doug and I’s rigs are pretty different which helped us get a range of sounds; I play a Jag thru this wimpy old Traynor combo amp from the 70s and Doug plays a strat thru this huge stack and the contrast was really nice to bounce between. We ended the session with this skeleton of a pop song and a longer improvised noisier section that we didn’t super know what to do with. What stood out to me was how different our processes were and how despite that we could make some we both thought was dope. Doug mixes as he goes which I’ve started doing a lot more.
He also showed me what a sans amp was haha I bought one the next day
Over the next couple days we tried to fill in the gaps of the songs. He thought we should get some vox on the poppier part and suggested Gage from Fib who I’ve recorded a bunch at our practice space. I thought that was perfect and suggested Charlie from Fib also come by to add some live drums.
Hooky (Scott): These songs that I’m on were from the past year or two when we were working on the new god of war album
Wed either work on music at the warehouse or in his apartment, most of what I would contribute to any of those song would be a guitar lead or and sequence on his minilogue xd synth, and what always sticks out to me is we get to smoke cigarettes in the warehouse and usually would meet to work on them at like 10 pm and go super late.
Very relaxed setting and not having any goal in mind just making beats and seeing what comes of it, and Doug would chop everything up and make a song out of it.
I love making music with Doug he’s super encouraging and knows exactly when something hits lol
Melaina Kol: I mostly did sound design and provided samples for the song old Irish, it was really fun I’ve never worked with him before.
He kept telling me to add more and more as the process went on.
FearDorian: I had just moved houses, I spent about three days directly after a tour i had been on packing and unpacking, & doug reached out to me about a track on the mixtape.
I was overjoyed to be apart of the world he’s created, funny part is , he probably sent it to me on a wednesday and was like “is it possible to have this done by friday morning?” i had been in a bit of a runt recording, and exhausted from moving but I went to an empty room in my house, sat on the floor of that room for about an hour and just recorded the verse there.
Honestly given the circumstances & if it was anyone else i would have just said no, but I love doug so much & appreciate everything hes done for me (he cleared my first sample ever) i knew i had to record right then,
he told me after that the song was gonna be with rxknephew, so even crazier
Haloplus+: Working on this song was like throwing a ball back and forth but only a few times, trusting and respectful:
I like you, I like you, I like this, ok, I like this, ok, lets go.
Cooking: Ive known Doug for a long time now but this is the first time weve ever worked on something together, it was nice I like working with Doug we're both the same type of fried so it worked out well. I think he just sent me a snip of a.song initially and then we hung out and went ooo this would be cool or oooo that would be cool that kind of thing.
All pretty normal stuff, I think the thing that stands out is that Doug had the ability to organize and wrangle a whole group of people, my self included, that aren't exactly known for being "all there" so to speak. Music's one thing, everyone can do that, but not everyone can execute someshit like this idk.
Toner: It was nothing really crazy though he just sent me a track & i wrote lyrics & a guitar lead over it - i didnt know it was going to be on an album & that was pretty much it!
Her New Knife (Edgar Atencio): I went into recording with this pitch shifted guitar part. We tracked it and looped it and I continued to track different guitar layers. Enough for a form.
Eventually I wanted to try out this baritone guitar Doug had recently built and I used it to make the low guitar hook at the beginning and the end of the song. A fire alarm in the warehouse rang and we cut the session there. A few days later Doug had more or less arranged the track into sections and added these awesome drums and some bass and extra layers. I remember telling him I wanted it to sound like “walking in the city” -not surprising that he knew exactly what I meant by that.
That’s how it felt working with him, everything was very natural, nothing was forced. I wrote a verse, he wrote a verse, we made some final edits, and it was done.
(p.s pitch shifted guitar part was inspired by Delius by Kate Bush)
Morgan Garrett: I think doug first sent me 2 audio files, the beat and maybe the melody. They were separated into 2 files. The percussion track sounded crazy, it was in a really weird timing. The core of the rhythm is all Doug. He just wanted me to do my thing, there wasn’t any direction given although I initially asked, he didn’t want to get in the way. I think I sent back a demo and all the stems as I was working them out, lots of layered vocal takes, some heavily processed electric guitar and maybe bass, and a slew of MIDI orchestral sounds and reverb busses bounced down to audio. I sent him a rough mix but then told him to add anything else to the track. I think there were more audio quirks and noisy sounds added in the mixing stage, maybe some more bass added somewhere too, and I think some moments were chopped and moved around a bit after I handed off my audio to him. It was hard to tell who did what by the end. I think that’s what makes it special.
We didn’t have a lot of back and forth on the track, it really came together seamlessly probably maximum a week, I had two 3 or 4 hour sessions of developing sounds and recording vocals and guitar.
Doug sent me a video of our song playing through an insane speaker and tape machine setup which also included those speakers that are hidden in plastic rocks in someone’s back yard. I think it was during a mixing session or maybe a final production session. I couldn’t wrap my head around the video other than I heard our song playing at what sounded like a crushing volume. It was awesome.
Izzy Camina: Doug sent me a bare bones demo. I sent back an edit with some vocals and new production. After a few weeks the track ended up completely taking on a life of its own, with some of my vocal melodies replaced with synths, new people on it, etc. It evolved enormously. My OG vocal didn’t stick around, but the consistent thread was Doug’s kindness and care and interest in me being involved beyond just my voice, which was liberating. Overall top notch human and a great privilege to be involved in the project.
Doug saw me as a whole person/artist/producer, not just a vocal. That’s a rare experience for me, so it was extremely meaningful, especially as an established TAGABOW fan.
Spirit Of The Beehive (Zack): I didn’t have much to provide considering we were busy finishing the new spirit record and I was fried creatively so I mostly just played 12 string and nylon over a demo Doug already had. We wrote and recorded vocals in the same session. It was nice collaborating and would be cool to do again under less time constraints.
Horse Jumper Of Love (Dimitri): This was January 2025 I drove down to Philly and stayed with Doug and Emily for a couple nights. I had a great few days with Doug, I love hanging out with him. We were driving around Philly in his van. I think Doug had just started doing the custom guitars and we were going back and forth to our buddy Bay's crib who was helping him work on one.
Recording was great at Heather's studio. Doug had everything written and was coaching me. He was not afraid to tell me if I was being pitchy which was very helpful - I had never had someone do that for me. We did the lines until it was totally right. I had always been lazy about vocal takes and this literally changed the way I do it. Now when I do my vocals I think of this experience and I think of Doug telling me to do a line over cus he knew I could do it better. It was one of the best things someone could have done for me because now I don't settle for "good enough" vocal takes but only the best ones.
His work ethic is inspiring.
Full Body 2(Dylan & Cass): We made a few of the tracks a long time ago tracking guitar at his warehouse spot and I didnt know they were still around until i heard them w/ Lucy and Haloplus so it was awesome to hear old forgotten ideas resurface. For heart knower, we worked on that one largely ourselves but we went into Dan Angel's studio with Doug and got to slam the track onto tape and utilize the echo room which was super fun.
Scarlet Rae: Doug sent me “letter and point” as just an instrumental, without Dead Sullivan on it. He wanted to see what I’d come up with before I heard what Boone had done, which I liked because it’s easy to get pulled in a different direction once a melody and lyrics are already there. I sent my verse back, then Doug sent me Boone’s rough vocals. What we’d both come up with was completely different, so I roughly mixed the two together & started mapping out a structure. Boone had written the outro vocals, and we all thought it’d be cool to make the ending more of a call-n-response, so I sang on that too and reversed some bits of the lyrics for some glitchy pieces.
Honestly making music with people I meet online like this is has such a special place in my heart, and always centers me back to why I love music so much. It’s how I continued to stay inspired in high school and made friends with people across the country, so being part of this was truly a pleasure, and genuinely one of the only things I like about the internet.
Greg Mendez: About a year or so ago Doug hit me up about this song that tagabow had done the whole instrumental for and he had done a couple vocal parts and he asked if I wanted to fill in the rest. So we went over to our friend Scoops’ studio and I wrote a melody and lyrics on the spot in front of the mic and within an hour or so it was all tracked.
It was fun, I had never really written vocals in that way before and it’s always sick to work with Doug on something. I didn’t hear it again for like a year and when I did I was like “wait I think I could do better than this” and then recorded an entirely different idea one day before I left for a long tour. It probably wasn’t better. In the end I was like “I hate everything I’ve done” cause that’s just the vibe sometimes, but they ended up combining the two versions during mixing and that is what you hear on the album.