Q: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and how your childhood impacted your musical direction?
A: The earliest memory I can recall of falling in love with a song is from the early 2000s, I remember listening to Numb by Linkin Park and thinking to myself “This is nice, I’ve heard nothing like it before” it was instant attraction and I couldn’t get the tune out of my head for weeks.
Rock and Metal weren’t a huge part of my childhood but the few times I heard them, it was magical and it wasn’t until my teenage years that I completely immersed myself in the genres. Passively listening to all kinds of music on TV, in collaboration with my Chromesthesia, painted such vivid imagery in my head and although I never played an instrument, I built my taste around what I thought sounded good and what didn’t.
Q: How are you planning on growing your fan base and sharing your music with the world? What message do you have for anyone who is about to discover “flotsam”?
A: I plan to travel and perform live next year and I’ve also started making promotional content for social media, especially Instagram. With how I approach music, my “fanbase” will swing between everyday music lovers and hardcore audio nerds, I intend to make content that is appealing to both listeners. For instance, I find that the music I make sometimes has atmospheric, dreamy soundscapes that make it a great match for visual sync and I’ve started to make that kind of content because I like how it makes me feel and cinephiles appreciate it.
On the other hand, I obsess about the theory behind music, its composition, physics, engineering and everything else that makes up the elements and I like to share and talk about that stuff too. I intend to create content in the form of short-duration videos where I demystify certain techniques within my own process or just geek about audio in general as it’s one of my favourite things to do.
Q: Who is the most inspiring artist for you right now? And where do you find inspiration for making music?
A: Easy, they’re a Canadian rock duo and the name is cleopatrick. I think I heard them for the first time in a random Spotify session in 2022 and at first, the music didn’t stick but they’ve been my top artist in the last two years.
The music cleopatrick makes matters to me for several reasons: the lyrics are deep and don’t rely on rhymes to be sonically interesting. They go for more interesting arrangements and they really push their instruments. Their Spotify page describes them as a “guitar band” and I think that’s cool because, at the core of it, it’s just a guy with a guitar and another guy on acoustic drums.
They make sure things never get stale too, exploring different articulations even when repeating a riff, slightly modifying existing passages, and just always keeping things fresh, even down to the storytelling. I have a guitar pedal where I designed a preset after one of their guitar tones and it was a really fun and eye-opening adventure.
Sometimes I recreate their songs as a one-man band just to get a feel of what it is like to capture such raw emotion and creativity and it’s always worth the effort. Recreating their songs has been a major lesson in audio production and engineering.
Q: Can you tell us about the story or message behind the song, “falling in love.”?
A: I didn’t learn to play an instrument (actually tried but failed) or produce music till 2022, I quit my job as a software engineer in Austin Texas and decided to learn music production for the first time so I could record my own songs. While practising the acoustic guitar in 2022, I stumbled on a chord progression with an interesting voicing and decided to arpeggiate it, it is that arpeggio that became the foundation for the whole song.
I played it to myself and began humming the intro, the notes and everything around it just felt like what it feels like to fall in love, what started out as two major chords quickly built upwards into a compelling composition laden with rich atmospheric harmonies.
That said, it’s a song about how love sneaks up on you, it starts with realisation and ends with surrender, the song is structured in a way that highlights this journey.
Q: How would you describe your sound in one word for potential listeners?
A: Psychedelic
Q: Did you face any challenges while writing or recording “falling in love”?
A: Ah, yes. A few too many!
Being the first time I was operating as a music producer, mix and mastering engineer all on my own, I was bound to encounter a lot of difficulties. I had problems with my computer; a specced out 2019 MacBook Pro had problems keeping up with the amount of processing and tracks in the project.
Had some challenges recording the acoustic guitar for the intro because the noise from my solar inverter setup and laptop fan was palpable. It also took a while for me to figure out the mic positioning and I did hundreds of takes before I moved the microphone to a better diffused spot in my living room.
While the chorus was comfortable for my vocal range (as I sang in falsetto), the verses were difficult to sing and I had to do hundreds of takes before I found a couple that worked.
The songwriting process itself was surprisingly straightforward, I came up with the chorus first, and then the intro all without a hurdle, then I had a friend over and he improvised over the looping sections and that became the verses.
Q: What is the message of your music? And what are your goals as an artist?
A: The music I make right now doesn’t have a singular message. There are multiple messages within, most of which come from the last five years; I want the listener to feel what I felt.
My life has been a rollercoaster of extreme emotions since 2019, perhaps the most alive I’ve felt, it is one of these experiences that birthed the name “flotsam.” I aim to bottle up those emotions and translate them as accurately as possible into sound waves, to be digitally consumed by others who would like to see what I’ve seen.
Q: Who is your dream artist to collaborate with? (dead or alive)
A: Let’s see, I’d say Daron Malakian and Layne Staley.
Q: What is your advice for people interested in pursuing music as a career or for those trying to enter the industry?
A: I debuted my single on Nov 21st 2024 so I’m quite new to the industry. Before this debut, I had no idea how brutally vast the industry is and how much effort you need to put in to get your art spread across as fast and as much as you want. If you’re like me who still sees music as just another hobby then I’d say you’re fine, get with it and make the music you want to hear and release it for others to share in your creativity.
If you’re going to pursue music as a career then I’d say that certain things might come as a surprise and the best thing you can do is make great music, research and have a release and promotion strategy. It’s a pretty competitive market out here and if you don’t have a manager who’s already experienced in this sort of stuff, you will need to wear many hats and that takes a lot of energy, and effort you’d rather spend on the music-making process.
Q: If you could go back in time and give a younger you some words of wisdom, what would they be?
A: Pick up the damn guitar!
The acoustic drums too, they’re the best.
Lest I forget, ABLETON! look it up, you can thank me later.
