Solidarity, iterative intent, and voice memos: Mozz cultivates rebirth with EP “Breadt”

It is a sunny, still-cold March day when I sit down with Cole Triedman in the middle of Central Square. The train was late so I almost am, too. We both seem to make it just in time. 

Cole, the man behind Mozz, gets his own pot of tea. He’s on the precipice of releasing his solo EP, Breadt, and about to turn twenty-seven. This will all happen within the same week. 

The five-song collection has blown me away. I’ve listened in the car, in my room prepping for the chat, and on the way here. There is something tranquil in its simplicity, a painting of sorts. Banjo layers upon harmonica, sounds of nature seep into both the intro and the outro. It’s uncomplicated, direct, and enveloping. By the time the interview has rolled around, I’m full of questions. After a three-year hiatus, he is eager to answer.

Yellow Light Mag: What separates this solo act from Fortuna 500 for you? Where does Mozz start and Fortuna end?

Cole Triedman: Mozz was my first attempt really at recording songs that I had written. I'm from Providence, but after school I moved out to a small town in Colorado. Mozz has been publicly dormant for a while, but it's also just been an outlet for me to write songs that are a little bit more vulnerable and a little bit more exhausted and a little bit more reflective of the actual lived reality I experience.

Fortuna 500 is a project that started when I decided to move into a house with one of my childhood best friends, Ryan, in Somerville. And we were like, “let's start a ridiculous rock and roll band.” That's a whole different thing and pulls entirely different songs out of me. 

YLM: Field audio starts the album with “Oscar Nominated Short Film.” Where was that recorded and how did you decide to incorporate it into the EP in production?

CT: That was on my front stoop on one of these days in April where everything's just bursting for the first time. That was just, me sticking my phone on my thigh and noodling on a nylon string guitar for a couple minutes. I don't think I could play that again unless I really tried. It’s kind of in the spirit of the project. I also really mess with the sound of the birds and the sound of spring, and it just feels really relevant to the ambiance of the EP. 

YLM: Was it intentional to bookend the EP with the rain field recording in “Lord Knows”? 

CT: I guess, iteratively intentional. I think there's a lot of seasonality in this EP, and that rain was late November torrential rain. It just feels like those are counterweights of the seasons, which we're all very in touch with here in New England. I think there's a lot of building up and breaking down. 

Some of the energy of the EP is supposed to reflect a little bit of the booms and the busts that I experienced in the world. I experienced those a lot in stride with seasons like any good New Englander.

YLM: “Wide Awake” feels like the budding of spring, the melting of the ice we’ve been under. Is this EP a bit of a rebirth?

CT: It definitely is a rebirth of the project insofar as it's the first thing I've released in three years. It's cool that it's at the crescent of spring and winter. It's suggestive that good shit’s coming. 

YLM: You worked with local acts to master the record, and recorded in Somerville and Brooklyn. How was the making of the EP a “patchwork” of your friends?

CT: I recorded some of it sort of privately in my room. I recorded some of it in this little makeshift studio in Greenpoint with some friends of mine from college. “Another Day (of Heavy Rain)” brought together a friend from college, Patrick Murray of Dogwood Gap, who's produced some of the songs in earnest and engineered them. 

Friend of a friend from college, a friend from when I lived in Colorado, my cousin, a totally separate friend from college. I was like, “yo, I'm in New York this night.” So it was cute. 

Julian, who's in Fortuna 500 and in Otis Shanty helped me with a lot of the mixing and mastering. Patrick and Hayden Carr-Loize of the band Sock Eye helped me record the two most substantive songs. It's fun. 

I'm more of a social creature. I'm also not a very technical person. And so the quality of my outcomes are improved dramatically by just doing what I'd like to do anyway, which is chill with my friends. 

YLM: What can you share about the music community here in Boston? How have they supported your solo project?

CT: I've only done three shows total for the solo project. So the music community has been amazing and hugely embraced me and hugely embraced Fortuna 500. I think a lot of people maybe have an inkling that I'd be doing other shit too. But I think this is gonna be a little bit of an introduction for some people. 

This is more for me and and for my community and giving a little bit more of myself than this freak frontman of Fortuna 500 that people don't fully understand. I'm happier with friendships and with acquaintances just presenting myself as a bit of an open book. And I think the songs that I write for this project are my effort to be like, “here I am.”

YLM:  What are you so tired of?

CT: I'm so tired of chronic illness. Oh yeah, and heartbreak

I'm a super active, curious, excited person who's just been dogged by different illnesses for as long as this project's been existing. A lot of the spirit of how the songs have taken shape and how the projects have taken shape reflects the cruel irony of trying to live a life and not living in a body that lets you. And trying to do love good, but it's hard.

YLM: Do you have a yellow light at the moment?

CT: I've been living in a year of impasse. I quit my job back in the summer. And had all these grand ideas. I have been able to realize many of them, and many of them have been unrealized because I've had to spend time taking care of my somewhat broken body. I feel like I just overcame an impasse in getting into grad school. I actually feel like a lot of sorting out this small EP was like sitting in the yellow light. It's kind of just now turned to green, and that feels good. 

YLM: There’s a simplicity in, “lord knows it’s been a long time now,” a bittersweet look to the future as the melody blends into just banjo and rain sounds. What do you hope to leave listeners with?

CT: Solidarity. It's lonely out here. Everyone's on their own path, battling through their own adversity. The fact that we all have our own mountains we're climbing, goals we're pursuing, doesn't mean that the act of climbing and pursuing needs to be solitary. It's nice to basically put yourself in a position to share the grind with people irrespective of the details of what each individual's grind is. We're all living under the same late stage capitalism anyways. So,yeah. It’s simple. 

Breadt is available across streaming platforms March 27th.