Hi there Allan! We really enjoyed your album and we’d love to ask you some questions about it.
Your debut album Who Pays The Price? has been out for some time. How has the positive reaction from the public impacted you?
Well, worth noticing it’s a 50/50. Positive reactions are obviously reassuring, negative ones sometimes hit me for themselves and sometimes hit me as pity for the person who did it! You know, sort of mentally uncared for people as is the internet tradition. I care about it all tho, I think it’s clear that I do.
How was the process of creating this album? Were there any obstacles? If so, what were they and how did you overcome them?
Well, ever since I stopped playing covers live (end of high school, COVID…) I started doing stuff by myself and the identity starts showing up after a while just naturally. At a particular point a friend of mine would be like, hey try a trap beat, I’d whip something together and we’d laugh at how much it just resembled my own take on it. I think that there was nothing I needed to do here instead of capturing that. I felt like it was a thing. The obstacle is right now though, doing things like this, letting everyone know cause I hate things that are cringy to me, and most ways to call upon like minded individuals feel cringe at this point.
You seem to have a clear message to the world and an even clearer musical style. Which aspect is more important to you personally, your music or message?
Oh, I don’t know. In a sort of abstract way I think that they are mutually influenced at this point. A while ago, when I was demoing this, a person from theater music direction asked me about what she felt like was a big presence of “cinematic minor progressions and melodies” in my music that she felt a sort of mystique about, and I can’t help but think that the thematic choices ask for this sort of theatricality in a way that wouldn’t be the same were it done by me for just a regular old pop production. Someone else? Sure, they always do it. But not my annoying edgy habits lol.
Do you have artistic influences outside of music?
Oh, yea. Dave Chapelle rings a bell straight ahead, much as he has been kind of condescending to the trans community, and that bums people off, myself included, I was deeply called upon recognizing racial issues by his humor, keep in mind I’m already from the generation where young boys are deeply affected by the sort of “fuck minorities, long live capitalism and picking oneself by their bootstraps” mentality planted by people like Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, represented politically and radically by Donald Trump in the american scenario, I can give you many other examples both within and outside the U.S., too. So on that same train, people like Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, Cornel West, bell hooks and Mahmoud Darwish had that sort of effect on me.
Would you ever dabble into a very different genre of music? If so, what kind?
Yea, there’s a lot of territory to explore. But I like to think that I can’t control my own taste and craft. It’s a thing that has to happen naturally. If you start to get pretentious, all sorts of downsides start to appear.
How do you think your environment has influenced your music?
As much as anyone else. Art stems from the world around. That’s why good art is always in touch with a particular aspect of the human condition at least. That’s why reactionary people kind of despise it overall.
When were you aware of your talent as a musician and what made you decide to pursue a music career?
Oh, my, I can’t answer that! What made you pursue the career of a journalist originally? It’s all kind of happening for everybody, and I’m hanging on to this train, you are hanging on to yours, and everyone to their own. It would be not mentally well of me to try and pin it down particularly at this point. Thanks for having me on anyway, and just bearing it haha!