The strains of spiritual and social infusion in a gothic Americana soundscape define NineFingers’ upcoming album ‘LOOP’. Set to release on November 15, the 12-song album addresses the American opioid epidemic and seeks reformative justice. A beautiful course of acoustics and heavy vocal bass make the album one of the most awaited ones in recent times.
Daily Music Roll: How important a role do emotions and themes play in your music?
NineFingers: Quite important. All my songs are autobiographical so to start with no song gets written unless I’m so brimmed up with emotions that I’ve got to crack myself open and let a song pour out. It’s very rare for me to write a song just for the hell of it. As for themes, I just find artwork to be so much more interesting when each piece stands alone but when you put them together you start to see a larger work emerge. That’s just craftsmanship and I think if you are going to go through the trouble of putting something together you might as well do it well.
DMR: How important a role does gothic influences play in todayís modern world?
NineFingers: Honestly, I don’t pay that much attention to the outside world, modern or otherwise. I think I’m most unhappy with everyone and how they choose to behave and what they choose to value so I don’t focus on them much at all when I can help it.
DMR: Are your cultural roots important in your journey as a musician?
NineFingers: I suppose they must be just because my work is so self-centered so how could they not? I’m a half Peruvian, half Canadian, all American. I grew up immersed both in Peruvian culture and Seventh Day Adventist culture which are quite different from each other both in terms of their values and their taboos. I think that probably had an effect on me as far as not really fitting into either but claiming both, that’s how I am with music as well. I’m not at all interested in being told I’m not allowed to rap because I’m a white indie rock singer, or then being told I’m not allowed to sing country because I’m a Latinx rapper. If something interests me I dive into it. I’m not at all interested in other people’s made-up rules.
DMR: How important do you think is music for society?
NineFingers: Music is one of the most important aspects of society. It’s sacred. And we’ve abandoned it. We’ve allowed consumerism to dull our attention spans so that 5-minute songs became 3.5-minute songs and now are 2-minute songs and soon will be 20-second songs. We’ve been slowly destroying our ability to educate ourselves and appreciate the world and therefore then be able to better the world. Music was supposed to be a place where we could express our foremost desires and fears and a place where we could grieve. Now it’s a place where we simply try to place a catchy hook to a good beat for 30 seconds at a time and don’t even attempt to say anything worthwhile. My whole country has been so stuffed to the gills with ultra capitalism that we’re rotting from the inside out. That’s most clear in the past 4 years of governing but the reality is it affects every aspect of society, including our music. Very few people have any interest in quality or artistry or poignancy. The fools are so diseased that if you tell them I have a new album out they won’t even listen to it, instead, they’ll try to determine its worth by looking at my follower count. I think music is one of the most important things any culture or society can have, and in America, in 2020 we’re failing it.
DMR: How do you arrange your songs? Do you use virtual sound technologies?
NineFingers: For the songs on LOOP I played and sang them out full-formed the way I would at a show, and then I sent them over to Kyle Appleton. The mans a wizard and can both play every instrument and also use the hell out of a computer. My understanding is that LOOP has both physical and electronic instrumentations all over it. However, Kyle is so damn good at it that you’d be hard-pressed to figure out which was which. I certainly can’t tell. An instrument makes a variety of sounds, a computer makes a variety of sounds. I’m the most uneducated songwriter alive. If I like a sound I’ll use it, no matter how the sound came to exist.
DMR: Which artists are your biggest inspirations?
NineFingers: Kobe Bryant, Ron Artest, Dwight Howard, Andre Ingram, Kendrick Lamar
DMR: How does your creative persona impact your personal self?
NineFingers: They’re the same thing, there isn’t any space between the two. This is who I am.
DMR: What is the purpose of your creative and musical work?
NineFingers: Survival first. Especially for most of these songs. They flew out of me in an attempt to keep myself alive. Untold traumas are poison. If you don’t get those stories outside of you they’ll eat you up from the inside out and leave you a husk. Songwriting is an alchemical process. You take the worst experiences you have and melt them out and then reshape them into something beautiful using the tools of rhythm and melody. And when you are outside of that danger and it is no longer about survival, then it becomes about appreciation. I have the ability to transform experience into artwork. To freeze time the experience and hold it within a few minutes that can be replayed and re-experienced and reflected on over and over again. I was gifted with this ability and chose to hone it. It would be disrespectful to the universe and to my own sacrifices not to use that talent.
DMR: What does the future hold for Americana?
NineFingers: My only experience with Americana is this album, which I’ve been told sounds like a dark and spiritual Americana album. It’s a space I’ve accidentally journeyed through rather than somewhere I call home. I won’t pretend to know anything about it. I wish it well and hope that it’s a place where true songs and craftsmanship can flourish.
DMR: Are live gigs important in the growth of an artist?
NineFingers: Every experience you can swallow into your existence is important for growth. Live gigs expose your limitations, exposing your limitations allows you to acknowledge and then attack them until they become your strengths. Personally, I find live gigs to be absolutely essential. But growth can come from a lot of places. Learning how to rap last year made me a much stronger singer, and being a much stronger singer this year in turn has made me a better rapper as I return to that field. All of it makes you stronger. Artists are forged by their experiences and we should embrace as many of them as possible, especially the difficult ones that terrify us. That’s where all the best stories are.
DMR: Any notes of advice for new and upcoming musicians?
NineFingers: I’m a garbage musician. I couldn’t sing or rap when I started and I still can barely play guitar. A whole lot of really talented people from every genre still hold a lot of respect for me and I think it’s because I just go for it. I see a song and I dive in, whether that’s in the writing of it or the performance of it. If you spend time worrying about not being good enough you’re wasting valuable time. Just move forward. You almost certainly won’t be as good as you feel you need to be at first, in fact, you’ll probably be bad, but it’s important to understand that the only way you’ll ever become good is if you are willing to be bad for a while. Whether learning how to walk, play an instrument, play a sport, write a song, the rules of the universe are constant. The only way up is forward. Further up and further in. If you commit to that path for long enough you’ll turn around one day and realize you’re actually quite good now. It’s a journey. Just move forward and enjoy the time spent walking it.
