Q&A: Taking A Moment With Gerrard
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY GIGI KANG ☆
WITH GENUINE PASSION AND A CLEAR VISION—self-taught artist Gerrard is one you can’t help but appreciate.
There’s always a distinct energy that comes from self-driven artists who know what they want and take the initiative to make it true. They’re open about their boundless curiosity and they create simply for the love of the craft. That is certainly the case with producer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Gerrard.
His new album ii. How Many Seconds in a Moment? released on June 12 and it’s a showcase of the impressive DIY approach he has been polishing since picking up music at age fourteen. The project is self-produced and accompanied by visuals that Gerrard shot, directed and edited himself.
The album establishes an immersive electronic world with experimental guitar as its foundation which changes shape throughout. On finding the right sound for the album, Gerrard shares, “I was really fixated on old house music and also guitar music. I wanted heavy guitars, kind of ambient, but still have a driving rhythm, which is kind of antithetical to something like shoegaze. When I started playing with that, it felt like the right home for a lot of these songs.”
Thematically, ii. How Many Seconds in a Moment? centers around presence. Gerrard explains, “A big part of the project is the thought that every individual’s perception of a moment is occurring concurrently with every other person’s own moments.”
It’s an interesting theme for an album because music is the tool that brings those individual experiences together, after all. Maybe you’re listening to a track at the same time as someone across the world. At that moment, you’re linked.
From its sonics to its themes, ii. How Many Seconds in a Moment? is a complex expression of who Gerrard is an artist at this point in time. Its strength is that it doesn’t necessarily provide answers. Rather, it draws you into its world and makes you consider what your place, your presence, in it might be.
Be sure to check out ii. How Many Seconds in a Moment? and read our full conversation with Gerrard below.
LUNA: You started making music very young. When we find something at a young age, it’s inevitable that our relationship to it will change. From then to now, what about the role of music in your life changed and what stayed the same?
GERRARD: I started in middle school experimenting on a computer because I was a big video game nerd; my outlet was always through technology. It was something to explore and express myself—that hasn’t really changed. I feel like everything has been the same structurally, but it’s broadened. When I first started out, I was messing around with MIDI instruments in FL Studio with no idea what I was doing. Now, I play most of the stuff live and I have a better understanding of how things work structurally. Before, I had the ideas and none of the tools and now, I have the tools. This album was the first time that I was able to implement what I wanted with specificity.
LUNA: You clearly trust yourself to bring the vision to life and do many things independently. What have you learned about yourself as an artist from that self-reliant approach?
GERRARD: It hasn’t necessarily been deliberate. I love working with other people and learning from them; that’s something I’m always open to and excited about. There’s just a certain ease to doing a lot of things on my own. If I have an idea and I know how to execute it, it’s usually easiest to do it myself. It’s taken a long time to get to a place where I feel like I can do that with the music, graphic design and videos. All of those things have taken a long time to feel like I understand what I’m doing, but it all has roots in DIY.
LUNA: What does dreamchasing mean to you?
GERRARD: I love to dream big and see what happens. Sometimes it’s hard communicating that in a way that feels authentic because life is complicated and challenging for a lot of people. In some ways, it’s naive to be like, “Just do it.” Everybody has certain restrictions and challenges that they face in their life. At the same time, I think if you let life defeat you, it will.
The epitome of dreamchasing in a super unrealistic way was when Brockhampton first came together. They got together from the internet and moved into a house. Within a year, they were huge. Obviously that’s not going to be feasible for most people, but that doesn’t mean people can’t still follow their dreams or passions in their own ways.
Say a single mom has a dream of being a famous painter or having her paintings in a museum. Maybe it takes her 20 or 30 years to get to the point where she feels successful, but she paints 10 minutes every day. That is dreamchasing in the same exact way as the guys in Brockhampton. It might look and feel different for everybody.
LUNA: Let’s talk about production because there’s a soundscape you’ve created on this album which is very specific. It’s a world of its own. Tell me instrumentally what you played around with to get to what this world would sound like.
GERRARD: That was definitely a big focus for this album. [The first goal was] finding a specific and distinct sound that I wanted the project to embody. Second was having that be continuous throughout the project, but not having every song feel the same. I tried really hard to juggle that, but a lot of it is curatorial too. I made way more music than what you hear on the album. It was a lot of experimenting with different textures and instruments, then mixing them and seeing what works.
I was throwing stuff at a wall after my last project for a while and nothing was sticking. I was really fixated on old house music and also guitar music. I wanted heavy guitars, kind of ambient, but still have a driving rhythm, which is kind of antithetical to something like shoegaze. When I started playing with that, it felt like the right home for a lot of these songs.
LUNA: At what point do lyrics come in?
GERRARD: I do instrumentals first because producing is like second nature for me, whereas songwriting is a very intimate process. I have to step aside for a few hours and really give it my all. I usually will sit down and hum a melody, then start to fit lyrics and words that make sense.
LUNA: In addition to music, you’re passionate about film. How did you first discover that?
GERRARD: It started around 2018. Someone I knew had an old Canon Rebel camera and I started messing around with it. Then I got an old film camera and had no idea what I was doing, but it was fun. When I moved to LA, I got really into exploring film photography and some friends worked in the film world. It really opened my eyes to how everything works.
I had a friend, James Wyatt, who was directing music videos [and] he was working on the movie Everything Everywhere All at Once. James was fully entrenched in the film world so it was a natural curiosity to learn more through our friendship. He would invite me to stuff and that’s how I ended up helping on a Magdalena Bay video where he was assistant directing. I love learning and I think it’s important to always be open to whatever the next step in learning about something might be.
LUNA: Do you find that music and film inform each other?
GERRARD: I’m always thinking in tandem—the visual element with the music element. Music will typically evoke something and, for me, I’m always imagining images along with that. As I’m creating, I’m thinking about how I want to present it and what world it would live in.
LUNA: A major theme of the album is being present. What does it mean to you, either musically or personally, to truly take in a moment?
GERRARD: It’s something I continue to work on as a person. Sometimes being the most present is when you’re not thinking about anything—you’re experiencing whatever is going on in its most pure form. At the same time, that could look different for anybody. Maybe one person’s version of presence is meditating on a thought and that becomes their everything in that moment. A big part of the project is the thought that every individual’s perception of a moment is occurring concurrently with every other person’s own moments. This time right now for you and I, someone else is having their own experience. I find that really interesting; us being present is co-occurring with everything else.
