Presenting the Eclectic Sounds of ZEN@

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A brand new artist, one who used Whyd as a tool to help start her career, presents herself after releasing her very first EP, say hello to ZEN@

Introduce yourself! 

I grew up in Shanghai, and went to the States for high school and college. I love wandering around, outdoors, tech and the cosmos. The most interesting thing to me at the moment is “time.” I like to think it as an object and pretending that some things in the scale of time are fixed. 

When did you start writing songs? Can you walk us through your songwriting process?

I started last fall when I was in Shanghai and traveling around Europe. I just write whenever I got an idea, and I picked four to make this album. They were all written in different ways. Both “SoundCloud" and "One Of A Million" had the chorus first, then I finished the whole songs weeks after. "Kairos" was written over an instrumental track that the producer Bravin, gave me. When I first heard this track, I had the melody of the song right away, so I just asked the producer if I can write a song over it. "Treasure Island" was fast. I wrote both the lyrics and melody in one morning. It’s not really or only about Pirates, but it’s based on an Oscar-winning documentary film.

I actually used Whyd to communicate ideas and inspirations with my producers. The playlist is the best feature for that!

Which artists have the strongest influence on your music?

Really a lot. I listen to a variety of very international music, from all over the world.

The strongest influence would be Sia. And even everything evolving around her music is so artistic.

Each of the 4 songs of your EP sound very different, what are some of the common themes that link them together?

Yes, they are! I wanted this album to have songs of very different styles initially, so it ended up like that. I worked with producers from three different countries to make them all sound different. I have many international friends and I love traveling. I guess it’s important for me to make music that has very diverse elements and feels like traveling. These four songs are still not enough to be diverse. It’s an experiment. It could be good or bad. A lot of the artists have their very distinctive music style, but I never want to have a specific style. I like changing, as long as the biggest goal is the true emotion with a good melody and lyrics.

One common theme is that they are all adventurous or about adventures.

Tell us about your song “SoundCloud.” What’s it about exactly?

It’s about graduation from college. I met many cool people in college. They have crazy hair, crazy outfit, crazy attitude, crazy dreams, and crazy cool everything. But when it’s their fourth year, everything changes. They cut their hair, start to wear black suits, delete all their social network accounts and hide in dorms to prepare for the next job interviews, mostly in finance or consulting. They said they want to work in those industries for two or three years. And afterwards, they would do whatever they are really passionate about. This is just blowing my mind.

Then I read two really good essays by Marina Keegan that talk about such phenomenon and graduation from college - “Even Artichokes Have Doubts” and “The Opposite Of Loneliness”. There are some references in “SoundCloud” from her essays. She was going to be a writer for The New Yorker, but died in a car accident just five days after her graduation from Yale in 2012. It’s really sad. She’s so talented and so inspirational.

What are your plans to develop and promote yourself in 2015?

I don’t know if I will have time to promote haha

The priority is to write more good music.

I definitely hope more people will hear my music. I am also designing and building some stuff. It is primarily about music, but it will also be some other things about creativity. I will probably share some of my crazy inventions there, too. I have more songs to be released very soon.

Thanks ZEN@!  

Music Creation, Heartbreak + Intercontinental Collaboration: DYLLAN Interview

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Hello DYLLAN! How’s it going? Can you take us through a quick recap of your musical life? You’ve been at this since you were quite young! 

Hello! It’s going well, thank you! Yes, I’ve been writing songs since I was twelve and started playing shows in my hometown (Los Angeles) at fifteen. In high school I recorded my first EP and I recorded my second, “Anything But Scared,” my first year of college. 

I studied music there but I also studied film and literature. I lived in Paris for a year where I studied le cinéma français and le dessin. I played some shows there and connected with some great musicians. After college I moved to Brooklyn where I’m now living, producing music out of my apartment. 

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Why did you start writing music? Were you inspired by themes in your life? Or were you inspired by other musicians? 

My first influence (and constant idol) is Joni Mitchell. And Jeff Buckley. There is so much depth to their work - their lyrics are poetry. I had always wanted to sing but I was too shy, so I picked up a guitar first. Eventually I sang along, and then started writing my own stuff. To this day I am constantly writing songs, and yes, they are usually about heartbreak. 

Songwriting is therapeutic for me. It’s a necessity. I am not a diligent worker, though, so going out and seeing shows is what inspires me to sit down and write. Or to go out and play!

How did you start working with THYLACINE? How did you end up coming to Paris in the first place? 

As I said, I moved to Paris for my junior year abroad in college. Ironically, it wasn’t until after I had left that I discovered THYLACINE’s music and decided to contact him. I thought he might be interested in working with me and he was. This was how we did our first collaboration, “Distance.” I had written a song called “NYLAPARIS" and sent it to him. He took my vocals and composed original music around it. I think the result was quite beautiful and unique. 

Our second collaboration, “Closing" was yet another virtual collaboration but with the opposite arrangement - he sent me an instrumental track he had produced and I wrote, recorded and arranged the vocals at home in Brooklyn. I’m also very pleased with the result and amazed that he and I have still never met in person! I look forward to him making a trip to New York soon so we can fix that. 

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What can we look forward to from you in 2015?

I have quite a few projects to release this year! Notably, the single and music video for my new song “Moments Like These” will release in March. We funded the whole thing through Indiegogo so I am really excited to share it. Following that, I’ll release my next new single “Try” in April. Stay tuned and thanks so much! 

Track of the Weekend #33: Johnny Cash - “Hurt”

We have written much about how wide-ranging the styles of music added to Whyd are, in fact it’s part of the reason why our platform is named the way it is. Yet it might still seem bizarre that from a community of music lovers that produces tracks of the weekend from artists like Ryan Hemsworth and Yuksek comes this Track of the Weekend. It topped the Hot Tracks all week, and represents some of the most emotional music we’ve heard so far, digging deep into hidden skeletons buried in the recesses of all of our hearts. Few voices can penetrate further than Johnny Cash’s, that instantly recognized timbre which tames even the most-hardened soul, no matter what the lyrics express. “Hurt" is a pinnacle of sorrow, yet at the same time so beautiful that the sadness withers away. 

We have Basile Petit to thank for adding it first, and if you are one of the many metal heads on Whyd, this is a dude that you definitely need to subscribe to.