Hello James! How did your classical upbringing influence the music you make today?
Hi! I really didn’t like being forced to play by notation, but maybe some elements of discipline and focus filtered through from those times.
Walk us through the beginning of your songwriting. Where did your first inspirations come from?
In the beginning I covered a lot of stuff and copied everybody’s style, teaching myself to write songs on the side. Now I work a lot on my own stuff and look for cool covers to learn on the side.
Tell us about your upcoming, debut album “Clarity.” How long have you been working on it and who else played an instrumental role in making it a reality?
I worked towards “Clarity” for about one and a half years, though a couple of the songs are older than that. I guess the album wouldn’t exist at all without my manager Gonzalo at Manta Ray, my engineer Thomas at Puresound Recordings, and the entire team at Lichtdicht Records.
Who should listen to your new album? Fans of which other artists?
People with open ears and open minds! I think that fans of Coldplay, Foster The People, Phoenix, John Mayer, and The Police will dig it.
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.
1. You’re the band FROM KID. How long have you been playing music together and what was the initial spark?
We two started playing together about one year ago. For a small charity concert in our hometown we got together to write a few songs. While we were playing for this purpose, we both realized we really like that kind of sound. Our music that was growing back then was really simple. Based on a warm organ sound, two voices and some guitar we played a few concerts in our area. At this time we more and more liked what we were doing. After these concerts we decided to hide from the world to work on new songs. We added more different sounds and tried to refine our music. The result of all that, was the birth of FROM KID.
2. How did you find your unique sound?
Our songs develop in a natural way. We let our songs decide how they’re supposed to sound. And that’s changing from one song to another. What all songs may have in common is our love for melodies in two voices. Many things in our music change from song to song. SOme are supposed to be played softly, others can be loud.
3. Who are your influences and how do their styles show up in your music?
The most important influences for us are people, their way of life and the collision between them. If you ask us for any artist we like, we probably would say, Fink, Sophie Hunger, Björk, Tom Odell, Empire of the Sun, C2C, and about a hundred more. Our best concert so far was a concert of Fink. We were obsessed by this incredibly good live performance. Back to the question; everything is influenced by everything. FROM KID could be a mix of everything.
4. Tell us about the new single “Sun.” Who should listen to it?
"Sun" is our new single. It’s also our first single. This is supposed to be our "Hello you all, we are FROM KID track." We recommend "Sun" to everyone who is curious. And everyone who is on the run to explore, to dream, to live.
“Sun" also climbed the ranks of the Hot Tracks, briefly resting in the top three of all tracks shared on Whyd. If you needed any more convincing to listen to this amazing track, there you go!
Every time we would get together to make music, cool stuff would seem to happen, so we thought we should make it official, find a band name, and make a record. You know when you meet someone and you can just tell you’re on the same wavelength by the way the conversation just flows? Burning House is the musical equivalent: we fire up the gear and ideas just start flowing. The process is a lot of fun, which I think you can tell when listening to the album.
2. How does working together as Burning House pushes each of you out of your comfort zones and into a new place of musical creation?
I wouldn’t necessarily say that we find ourselves out of our comfort zones, it’s more like we find ourselves in a new zone that we both feel comfortable in. That said, this new zone springs from the fact that, as Burning House, we’re not making exactly the music we would be making by ourselves. ‘Walking into a Burning House’ is obviously related to Chief Xcel’s productions and to General Elektriks, but it’s a grown up kid with its own personality. This is what’s so great about taking part in a collaboration: the surprise. Neither X nor myself can predict where a track is going to go, we just watch the kid take us where it wants to go. Letting the song grow and listening to where it needs to go as much as dictating where it’s headed is something you do in any writing or production process, but the ‘letting the song grow’ part is even more accentuated in a collaboration.
3. How would you describe your first track Turn Off The Robot?
Future Funk! We could go into more detail but i don’t know if it would be very interesting, like a cook describing how he whipped up his last dish. I think it’s better to let people taste the dish by themselves and decide what it tastes like.
4. Does your inspiration for the album come from the same places, or are you each drawing from separate sources and combining the result?
We both have a similar taste in both music and aesthetics but at the same time we traveled down different musical paths to get to where we are today. Those paths have rendered different experiences. Those experiences have given us different musical perspectives and that is what makes the sound unique.
5. What should we look forward to in the near future?
We’ll be on tour in Europe and the UK this fall. So hopefully more great music and great live experiences in a venue near you.
6. What do you think of the Hip-hop / Electro funk scene today?
We don’t really consider ourselves part of any particular scene. We just do what we do, make the music that inspires us, and let the listeners categorize it.
1. Can you tell us about yourself? What are the different sides to your personality and how do they show up in your music?
I’m a 20 year old musician, pianist, performance artist, creative director, dancer, screenwriter, songwriter. I’m incredibly passionate, so anything I compose and write is really visceral. The dance records are intense, their layers rise and fall and build. I’m also a young blood, old soul kind of girl, and the slower songs are sadcore - they meditate on the experiences I’ve had. Finally, I’m an alpha type personality, extremely ambitious, tenacious - I’ve got thick skin, which is how I know I’m in the right business. All that comes through in my work in that I write, compose, produce, design absolutely all of it. I also have a wonderful team of friends and artists around me who are instrumental in bringing my visions to life, to the screen and to sound. You can find our work on my facebook page - and all over the internet.
2. When did you start singing and was there a specific moment that you remember when you thought “I was born to do this?”
I’ve been singing for as long as I can remember. I never had a eureka moment - instead, one day I realized that being a star - performing, making music and leaving my mark on the artistic realm - was really the one dream that kept on coming back. I have a real affinity for show business, too, and that played a major role in my development. I watched film, old and new, and studied great artists and works.
3. Where does your inspiration come from, other musicians? Any non-musical sources?
Inspiration really does come in all forms for me. In terms of songwriting, I write and compose my best work spontaneously, when that uncanny wave washes over me and I just have to write and play. In under 10 minutes, I’ll have a fully structured song, and those are the best - the ones that come to you as if out of thin air. I’m inspired by film, fashion, photography, art, history - I’m an avid student of culture, and I study everything from classic lit to runway shows to photos on tumblr.
Studying past performers is also incredibly important for videos, photo shoots and my live stage shows. I’ve always been both musician and performance artist, and so my goal for every show and every piece I release is to push boundaries, to challenge the audience, to excite them, to give them a vicarious experience. Marilyn Monroe, Madonna, Elvis Presley, Dita Von Teese, Lucille Ball, Janis Joplin, Freddie Mercury, Jim Morrison, Gene Kelly, Marlon Brando - they’re all performers I revere and absolutely adore.
You can find many records that inspired me on the "My Loves" playlist on my Whyd profile! The Doors, Elvis, Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin, Duke Ellington, Azari & III, Sinatra, Jack White, Daft Punk and more. xxx
4. What should we look forward too in the near future from you?
*My official music video for #TheOne is dropping JULY 1
*In the meantime, BEHIND THE SCENES featurettes of the making of #TheOne can be found on my CALLIA CAM YouTube playlist:
*The debut EP “CALLIA BARA” is available for purchase on