Hi, how are you today?
Wonderful to be having a conversation with you. I just enjoyed a few spoonfuls of ice cream, so I am ready to rock.
For those that haven’t heard of you yet, how would you best describe your sound, and who have been your biggest influences so far?
As much as I would like to join all of the successful music artists that can mesh perfectly into the background of most life situations, whether that be a social gathering or doing the dishes, my music is rather like a book one should sit down and be fully engaged with. Positive or negative, my music is distracting. It will pull the ear. I am influenced by those who break conventions. Artists that come to mind are Holly Herndon, Oneohtrix Point Never, and Nicolás Jaar, though my new album sounds nothing like these artists. Maybe there is some Bon Iver influence this time around? I don’t know—I guess I’m just Monti Korbelle.
Do you remember what the first song was that made you want to start a career in music?
For me, it started when I was in college. I was simply making songs as a joke in hopes to entertain my friends. On a whim, I made something a little bit more serious. Then on a Friday night at a basement college party, one of my friends put this track on the party sound system and the reception was positive. It was at this moment I realized that maybe there was something here I could continue digging for.
Congrats on the release of ‘Our Conclusion Is in Arizona’, the album sounds great. What was the inspiration behind it?
Around this time last year, my ex and I decided to call it quits on our relationship—a mutual break-up, except this interfered with our planned vacation to come three days later. It was her idea to not cancel the vacation to Arizona and we enjoyed our time there as if we were still a couple. Deep down we both knew the truth, it was over for us, and that emotional rollercoaster is what is heard on the album. Naturally, I’m in denial of it all at first, but as the album progresses, we hear my fight and struggle, until at the end there is resolve.
What’s your favorite track on the album and why?
My favorite track on the album is Sunscreen on Our Shoulders. Knowing this concept album is based purely on a very true event, I would like to mention the first and last song of the album were first conjured as voice memos during this event, the break-up vacation in Arizona, which I recorded into my phone in secret of course, with the last song of the album being Sunscreen on Our Shoulders. We had an Airbnb with a swimming pool for our stay, and the lyric “sitting by the poolside in our swimsuits for the fourth time” gives us a vision of what our time was like there. And while we sat by the poolside under the hot Arizona sun, we slathered ourselves with sunscreen. That’s what I used as a metaphor for the “acceptance” phase of this break-up album. Sunscreen is absorbed through our skin and I planned to also “absorb” my ex as opposed to rejecting her and our history. We spent years of our life together, and the choice to absorb that as a part of who I am is the choice I went with.
And how would you say it compares to your previous releases?
I’m in a way on some sort of journey. I’m not sure where I’m going or what I’m doing, but that’s usually how life goes. My first album, Global Carbon Tax Economy, was the first glimpse of how my mind works and all I was able to show was insanity. My second album, Mount Moon, was my way of reassessing myself to resolve the strangeness of the mental state that was captured by the first album. So this new album, Our Conclusion Is in Arizona, comes as more of a surprise-moment in this arc of wherever I am going. A break-up is rarely something we plan for, but in my case I had the foundation and basis for my artistic expressions that I was able to use those established tools to tell this story of my experience in Arizona. So, for how it compares, this new release captures a very specific event rather than a current state of being.
Where are you based? Can you tell us how the music scene there has inspired your sound at all?
I’ve lately been “on the run” in some way. I lived in the midwest, now I’m in San Antonio, Texas, and I plan to move to the east coast. I say “on the run” because I’m considering the possibility that I am running from many things internally that I refuse to force myself to face. Some of this spills out in my lyrics, but until I can allow myself to reach a full resolve within myself, I believe there will always exist some form of running. I’ve seen many music scenes of the places I’ve been, but my ears are always open to what I experience IRL as well as my discoveries online. I am a clay vulnerable to many influences.
What is the biggest challenge of being an artist?
I always push myself to make bigger and definitely better music. In my head I am only given a foggy glimpse of what a new song could sound like, and the fog is usually thick. It likely doesn’t help that I prefer ignoring the standard operations of procedures for adhering to a single genre and that also my ideas begin so abstractly. Scraping up these mental glimpses and transcribing them into reality as a completed product often takes substantial leaps.
What’s the best advice you’ve been given as a musician?
I’ve recently been told I am too hard on myself. It’s true. It’s a battle, but I need to learn to love myself. My previous album, Mount Moon, included a heap of self-hatred, and I hope I can reach a point where listeners will hear in my music that I have excelled above that mindset.
What’s next for you? Is there more music or any live shows on the way?
My first album was hip-hop, my second was dark pop, and Our Conclusion Is in Arizona is alt-pop. It would only make sense for me to find a new direction once more. I have been listening to a lot of psychedelic rock lately. I don’t play guitar, but I enjoy the sound. I often wonder what a Monti Korbelle version of this might sound like.
