New Name. Same Artist. Mostly.

As you may or may not know, I’ve been playing around with the idea of a name change for a couple of years now. Recently, I settled on making it a reality, after a bit of back and forth with myself, conversations with my brothers-in-bars GRYSKLL, some hard decisions, and allowing myself to let go of what started as a joke.

Initially, I was merely trying to differentiate myself from the millions of other artists named “Q” floating around, and instead of reverting to or appending one of my old stage names, decided to go a totally different and ridiculous route. The name came from an old company of mine — Media Pimp Studios. I operated my graphic and web design business under that name back in the early 2000’s, for a short period. It was a wild time — I won’t even go into detail on my original logo for that company or how it came about. It was a wild time.

At any rate, Q. aka Media Pimp is no more. Moving forward, I will be known as… wait…

First, a bit of backstory…

What follows, is a fairly long-winded telling of how I chose my new stage name. If it interests you, and you don’t mind the ramblings of an over-thinker, by all means, continue on. Otherwise, jump down to the TLDR.

It started with a song back in 2024. When I wrote and produced this song, the theme, title and beat of the song all came to me while my wife and I were watching a brilliant horror show titled “Them.” Something about the way it was filmed — along with the background music, and overall sound design, really struck me. It was late in the evening, and the vibe was just right for horror and there was a specific moment where the idea for the track came to life. It was during a fairly wild scene, where a specific sound stood out to me. From that moment, I knew I had to make a beat that had an 80’s style horror influence, and I already had and idea for exactly what I wanted to do.

After watching the episode, I immediately sat down at my workstation, plucked a couple of keys, and the rest just pretty much came flowing out. Before I knew it, I had recorded the sound of my dog (Raven) breathing heavily, distorted it, added an ominous bass-line, threw in some wild effects to bounce the main melody around a bit, and added some weird, unsettling sounds of someone speaking in tongues… but in reverse (that I later took out, because I really had no idea what I might’ve been summoning… even though I don’t actually believe in any of that stuff. It just sounded like a bit too much). Before I knew it, I had a sound that felt like I was on to something. Once I figured out the drums — a chopped up drum break, with a well placed drumroll — it was settled. I had something (that I thought was) special.

The next day, I woke up and played what I had created the night before, and it was even better than I’d remembered. Once I sat down to write, I realized that I’d already written a couple of verses that would fit pretty perfectly. All that was left was to extend the second verse and come up with a hook. After a few minutes of trying to write a hook for the song, I came to the realization that the beginning of the second verse made a perfect hook. I also realized that I’d given myself a potential new name.

What’s in a name?

To know me, is to know that I love horror, sci-fi, fantasy and everything that has anything to do with the genres. Doesn’t matter the medium. I’ve watched, read, listened to, played, created, and dreamt in these realms pretty much my entire conscious life. Growing up, I became quite attached to the Evil Dead film franchise (1981 – 1992). A series of films that I watched frequently with my grandmother. That and Pumpkin Head. A film she really, really loved, along with Army of Darkness (technically Evil Dead 3). It was the Evil Dead series that introduced me to the Necronomicon and the mind of (the incredibly racist) H.P. Lovecraft.

The young me, was captivated by the stories of the “old gods” and the horrors of the world during those dark times. It was there that I was introduced to the “cosmic entity” Cthulhu, in the short story “Call of Cthulhu.” These tales, full of details that made them feel like real events, as though I was reading ancient texts, kept my attention, and inspired my own art in various forms, during my youth. Little did I know, that I would continue that fascination well into my adulthood…

So much so, in fact, that the name came up in a rhyme… only with a slightly altered spelling/enunciation. It was there, that the idea for a future name change was birthed. I toyed with the idea in my head for a bit and then moved on. Then the thought occurred again, when I created that song I spoke of earlier.

Call of Qthulhu

Once I created this song, it became clear to me that a name change was definitely going to happen at some point, relatively soon. The cover art was basically a logo concept that began as a hand drawing (on the iPad, using an app named Concepts, with an Apple Pencil), that I then decided to create as a vector illustration instead. An updated version of that illustration will be replacing my “Q.” moving forward, and the “Q.” will become the brand mark for Media Pimp Studios, which will be focused on the business side of things — mix engineering, music/record production, and other things that I’ll speak about at a later time, when I have everything in order.

The few people that I’d informed of the name change, all seemed to be in favor of it, much like the two people who have been in on the idea for the past couple of years. Now that I’ve gotten it out of the way, it’s time to focus on the hard part, which is updating that information (song credits, releases, social media accounts, etc.) where applicable. I already have new domain names ready to go, and will be transitioning my music, merch and blog to the new domain… with a new look and feel. Keep on the lookout for that.

I’m excited for the name change, and excited for what’s been going on that finally convinced me that it was time to stop dragging my feet on finally making the change official. For those of you who have been along for the ride for the past few years, I thank you for being able to look past the old name, and giving the music a chance to speak for itself. Hopefully you stick around for the next chapter.

Until next time…

This will likely be one of my final posts on this domain. In this next chapter, I’m going to be moving a bit differently. I’m committing myself to posting, pushing out newsletters, and releasing music and merch more consistently, and doing a bit less hiding from public view. Pitchfork and I have been in and out of talks about what that means, but things will become clearer in the coming days/weeks/months. So with that… wait…

In case you haven’t caught on, or paid any attention to my social media accounts, recent features or clicked the link above, the new name is Qthulhu (queue-thool-ooh). You can still call me Q., if you prefer.

TLDR?

Basically, I’ve changed my name. It was initiated by a song I released in 2024, and I’m finally in the final stages of the transition. Moving forward, I will be releasing music as Qthulhu. Media Pimp Studios will remain (for now, at least), but will be geared more towards my mix engineering, and music/record production business, as well as other things that I’ll speak on later.

Peace.