“Maybe it’s just our generation, but there’s always been this constant pressure to actively work towards success, money, or fame… There’s this fear that if you haven’t made a name for yourself by the age of twenty, you’ll never be successful,” says a member of Kindergarten Breakfast, a highschool-based satire band, “And when you’re working with the arts, that pressure is even more extreme. You have to be amazing. You have to be the best. You have to be something the world’s never seen, or it feels like you’re nothing at all. It’s absolutely dreadful on the mind—it makes you feel worthless, it makes you feel guilty if you’re not always working, working, working . . . and it’s exhausting. Oh boy, is it exhausting.”

Amazing. The best. Unique. The band Kindergarten Breakfast is only one of those things.

Unique—to say the least—the band produces unpleasant, discordant, ear-grating music. The band’s personality stretches far past music, however. On their Instagram page, the band posts only the ugliest of pictures—senselessly named, too—from a high-contrasted toad labeled “teen hangout room”, to a smashed tomato called a “turquoise splat”. On top of it all, the band attempts to remain anonymous; when members are spoken to about the band, they deny its existence (“What band?”), or they refer to it entirely in the hypothetical. Nothing makes sense, nothing is easy to swallow, nothing is amazing or the best. Even unique is a complimenting word to it; it’s downright ugly. And every bit of ugliness is intentional.

Considered genreless, Kindergarten Breakfast dubs their music a form of “anti-art.” Anti-art it is, as the band’s music can only be described as pure, chaotic noise. Distorted guitars blast across the scene, electronic cymbals crash off-tempo, and synths buzz with non-complimenting notes. “There’s no tempo in our songs because we don’t care,” a member admits, “It adds to the element of surprise; there’s no song structure at all.” When vocals are brought in, they are far from singing voices; they’re guttural, screechy, and uncomfortably close to the microphone. On an opinion of their work, a band member states, “I would not force anyone to listen to this for one minute. I listen to it every once in a while to laugh, but it’d be miserable to listen all the way through. There’s only so much you can take.”

Essentially, Kindergarten Breakfast took the idea of a song, the idea of music-making, the idea of art, and threw it into a metaphorical blender to create their anti-art. “Despite its sound, we have a blast creating our music,” claims one of the band members, “It’s funny, you accidentally fry one of your speakers while working with sound, and instead of thinking, ‘I should fix this,’ you think, ‘Ouch, this is awful; I need to keep it in!’”

Style and talent have no meaning within the Kindergarten Breakfast production. “I’m sure somebody finds it artsy. They shouldn’t,” laughs a band member. The artists behind Kindergarten Breakfast knows their work is ugly. They know their work is unpleasant to listen to. They know nobody—other than their thirty monthly listeners—will listen to their hours and hours of work.

So . . . what’s the point of it all?

Each of the band members devotes themselves to the arts, whether that be in visual arts; poetry and creative writing; or producing music outside the band. Thus, each experiences the dual nature of art: the bliss from creation and the pain from perfectionism.

“Art is supposed to be freeing,” says one, “but with all of this pressure, especially on Gen Z, it’s really easy to get all caught up in the idea that if something isn’t good, it’s a waste of space, which is very limiting to the creative process. When we started the band, we all wanted to be good, we all wanted to be talented, but to do that, we played it safe. And it was miserable. So we said, ‘screw that’ and threw everything out the window. Now we fight those ideals with . . . whatever this is. We’re making wastes of space because, well, why not?”

For Kindergarten Breakfast, it’s all about creation and the joys that come with pure experimentation. “We make these songs for ourselves,” one member says, to which another adds, “No one finds this funny except for us.” After stifling laughter, the band continues, “I think everyone in the band—if the band exists—is a perfectionist. If we were to try to create ‘real’ music, no ‘real’ music would ever be released ‘cause it wouldn’t be perfect enough.

“For Kindergarten Breakfast, however, nothing’s meant to be perfect, and if it’s perfect, it’s by chance… You never hate anything you create, you’re only proud of the things you accidentally make beautiful.”

As the band emphasizes, they create their anti-music to entertain themselves, and to feel proud of accidental achievements. “It’s as if you stripped back the creative process to the moments of pure bliss. I never feel bad about my work. There’s no stress to be objectively good at what I do—I don’t have to be good at all!”

While scrolling through their countless releases, a band member notes, “We originally put a lot of thought into our music. We spent about three hours on each song, and that went on for the first few albums. But then it stopped working, and our songs didn’t have the same kick that they used to have. So, we’ve switched to spending around a minute of work per song—sometimes we don’t even listen to them while we’re creating them. It’s worked so far, and the results have been pleasantly surprising.” With their unconventional methods, Kindergarten Breakfast has churned out over 200 songs in a year.

However, despite being anti-art, Kindergarten Breakfast still experiences what all art experiences: judgment. On the topic of audience reactions, a band member complains, “Every time I show people Kindergarten Breakfast, I have to preface that it’s all a joke. People really look at our music and expect it to be good.” Despite the drastic difference between Kindergarten Breakfast and regular music, the band is still compared to normal music. The band expressed their distaste for this, as they do not want to be judged on a scale of good to bad at all. They want to be judged as horrible, and nothing more. “It’s the same-old expectation people have for music.” A member shakes their head. “They expect it to be good, or at least they expect to be able to judge it. Which is unfortunate—that’s exactly what we’re trying to tear down.”

While the band began in a joking matter, it has, truly, become a keystone for each of the member’s relationships with art. It’s freeing, it’s a beautiful gem amid some ugly, ugly music. As a band member concludes, hand sentimentally to their chest, “It’s always there to remind me, that like, it’s art; it’s Kindergarten Breakfast. It doesn’t have to be good, it just has to be weird, to be fun, y’know? And I can sort of… lower my shoulders, unclench my jaw, and create for a bit. Without all that pressure. It’s nice.”

– Natalie Timmerman