Q&A: Prolific Artist Morning Silk on His Debut EP, Multimedia Experience and the Collaborative NYC Scene
THE LONG-ANTICIPATED, THEATRICALLY INTRIGUING — self-titled debut EP from Morning Silk is here.
With a storyline hidden beneath its voluminous synth and temptatious bass lines, Morning Silk sets out to accomplish quite a few goals. It’s undeniably biographic, as the tracks hone in on the recurring themes in Frank Corr’s personal life in the past few years, including imposter syndrome and breaking old patterns. But as the mastermind behind the alias, Corr has sonically crafted an imaginary world with a 1600s protagonist/crazy scientist of a composer. Glorious dressings of plot and production aside, Morning Silk is at its core a fusion of all things music and vibration.
Besides thematic tracks such as “Don’t Try Hard Enough” and “Not The Only Way,” the two collaborative numbers of “Skin” and “So Fun,” Sur Back and Koleżanka, are extra symphonic — cerebral in a therapeutic sense. Part of the ever growing, creative collective mind of the NYC indie scene, it only makes sense that the Morning Silk project also twists and turns with endless surprises.
We caught up with Corr upon the release of his debut project, with surprising questions and answers about the hidden sonic and visual gems of Morning Silk.
LUNA: How have things been? How’s life?
MORNING SILK: It's been good. I‘ve been producing for a lot of artists and I went on tour with Richie [Quake] two or three times. As that was coming to a close, I got back to New York with a little bit of touring experience under my belt; I was just excited to get back into the studio. I was back for a month between tours, and I went in with pretty intense scheduling in the studio and finished the EP. And then we left again… We were just listening to the mixes as we were driving around the country. It was cool.
LUNA: That's so cool! Then you also get to tie a little bit more memories to the songs collectively.
MORNING SILK: Yeah, absolutely, just experiencing the songs as we were driving. I went to Canada for the first time, which was very cool. It was cool to listen and reflect [on] everything I’ve made in the past few years and see[ing] the world like that [with the songs] was kind of interesting.
LUNA: How long did it take to make the EP?
MORNING SILK: I started it in the pandemic — I guess it was a few months, probably April or May. I'm sure you remember that time when everybody kind of lost their job, so there was this weird “I was kind of working, I was kind of not” period, but I had a lot of time. I never had that much time in New York especially. It was just a minute to pause and reflect on everything. I wrote two or three songs in my bedroom and then I was like, “Oh, I never really had a chance to use a synth.” So I pulled out the synth that I had and just started to realize I was writing differently using that instead of guitar. That sort of became the method of making the EP, just using this synth to carry along melodies. On guitar I'd be like, “It could be these three chords; what if I expanded it to be this larger core progression?” But on the synth, it just needs to be these three chords, it doesn't need much more.
LUNA: Did you always use the alias Morning Silk? Why is this particular project self-titled after Morning Silk?
MORNING SILK: I started this project with my friend Matt [Lancaster]. We went to RISD [Rhode Island School of Design] — it was in Providence, Rhode Island. I came up with the name. It sounds kind of smooth and synthy. We listen to a lot of yacht rock or ’70s records. There are these sprinkles of synth or high-end bells on the songs, then there's this rhythm section that was really groovy. So we always had this fascination with making a modern version of that music. I kind of grew out of it and I was like, “I just want to make indie rock,” but it found its way back in. Eventually I wrote the song called “How You Do It” — that was the sound that I had been chasing all these years. And so I was like, “I think I should just name the EP self-titled,” because it was the sound that I was chasing since I started the project. So that's kind of why we decided to name it that.
LUNA: It's so funny because I legit have a question that says: How do you build a track around an idea? Maybe use "How You Do It” as an example and run me through the process?
MORNING SILK: I love to talk about that a little bit just because it's my favorite one. A lot of the songs came to me in my bedroom. I lived in a tiny studio in Manhattan — it was cute but it was kind of awful, it was pretty cramped in there. It was so easy to write in there at that time. It was summer so I could just look outside and see the trees. The East Village is really beautiful too. But then I had about four or five songs ready to go and I had just gotten a new synthesizer. I was playing around with the patches and I found this one setting that sounded like a ghostly synth or something. I was like, “Oh, this sounds like MGMT, I love MGMT.” They were the whole reason why I started making music again. So I played this little riff on the keys, and I was like, “You know what, I should just do this and [play] acoustic guitar and make that a thing.” So I was like, “How can I tie in the chord progressions that I’d like to use with this kind of new technique of heavy synth and the acoustic guitar?” I made a little demo and wrote the whole song in one night, and then the next day I went to the studio and recorded it. It was a very quick and unedited process. That's probably why it's six minutes long.
LUNA: What is “Don’t Try Hard Enough” about?
MORNING SILK: I want to say it's the second or third song that I wrote. There's this ongoing theme [on] this EP that the lyrics are all talking about the idea of what you're supposed to do. Going to school, spending this money that I spent on school, sleeping one hour a night for four or five years… Killing myself to get this degree was honestly fun until the last year, when I was so exhausted and just done. I had already started building my studio in New York. So I was like, “Why? Why do I even need to be here for another year?” It almost felt wasteful. I've always loved design and art, I was a painter for a while, but I felt the pressure on me to decide what I’m gonna do with my life when I was 16. Design felt acceptable because it’s a real job, but you can't just be a musician, you can't write music for a living — that doesn't exist. It's just weird that you have to decide the rest of your life when you’re still a kid. That's what the song is about, veering off the path of what you're expected to do. When you shift to what you actually want to do, it never feels like you're working enough because you're playing catch-up the whole time. It's like, this is a disaster. I have to work twice as hard as everybody else.
LUNA: You also produce for a lot of people. What’s the balance of producing for other people and also working on your own music?
MORNING SILK: You know, I realized I didn’t really consider myself a producer until I met Richie on TikTok — now, we’re not good at it. He and I were on it at the very beginning of COVID. I had just built my studio and started recording my project. I was posting little clips of my project on TikTok and Richie saw my studio. He was like, “Hey, I really like your music, where are you located?” I was like, “I'm in Brooklyn.” He was like, “What? I'm in Brooklyn.” We linked up and did a session. It was kind of awkward at first because I couldn't tell if he liked what we were making or not. We just left this session and it was kind of quiet; then he texted me [and said], “We should do that again some time.” It was funny. It was like a first date or something.
The next time he came in, he was like, “How would you feel about helping me write some stuff for my record?” I was like, “That sounds cool. I'm down.” So we worked on a bunch of songs — it was really just me, him, Andreas [Kristos] and a few of his other friends. We made Voyager, which was his first EP. While that was happening, I had a bunch of people on TikTok reaching out to me, so I was just like, sure. It really was just being in New York and TikTok [that] allowed me to meet a bunch of people and started working as a producer. I feel super lucky that people reached out to me, honestly, because I don't think I would be producing anybody if that didn't happen.
LUNA: One more question about being in a community that way, and I'm gonna frame it on the spot. I think in any scene, it's always this kind of professional first date or music first date situation. I guess what I'm asking is, how's that first meeting and meshing process? What typically happens?
MORNING SILK: I guess I can talk a little bit about Caroline [Sans] because her project, Sur Back, is so prolific. We've been together for a while but we hadn't really made music together. We always saw ourselves in different places musically, but I honestly think I just didn't know enough as a producer to even work with her at that point. It was only until recently that we started writing together. I trust her ear the most out of anybody. I always carry that “first date” [mentality] with me to a new session — like, what do I think about it? And then my next question is, what would Caroline think of what we're making? Because she's different enough, but we agree on a lot of the same things. Going into any sort of session for the first time, I'm just trying to see what the artist wants first. So I can see how far to push it into my field or if I should push away from my field. But there's always a part of you that wants to be yourself in the session — that's the most valuable thing, just being like, “This is who I am, this is what I would do here,” and seeing how they respond to that. I believe a lot of artists can do this on their own, but I think the value of collaborating is that you get to an answer faster. So it's really about being yourself and seeing how the person you're working with responds — that's usually how you get a good producing relationship.
LUNA: I definitely want to ask about the artwork designs for the singles and particularly the album.
MORNING SILK: For the singles, everything was designed by me and my bass player, Matthew Lancaster. He studied illustration at RISD, so we just work together to come up with these concepts for all of the songs. We designed a bunch of different ideas for all the songs and through process of elimination, we came up with the image and what it represents. We saw each song as a color. “Don't Try Hard Enough” is blue, so the palette we want to use is blue. It’s funny, for that single, Matt made this drawing of a guy from the 1600s. And I was like, “Oh cool, we should have this guy looking into a well reflecting on his life.” And we have this whole music video idea for “So Fun,” and it was this epic story that we just haven't had the funding to make. We wanted to tell this sonic story about this time traveling character who came from the 1600s. A portal in his garden is transported into the future, into a dance club, and he hears dance music for the first time, and then he goes back to the 1600s and makes this futuristic medieval record. That's what the Morning Silk record is about.
LUNA: Funny enough, I think you just answered my last question. I was gonna ask, what's the story arc for the EP? And I think it would be very cool to see that video.
MORNING SILK: There are a lot of diminished chords used in the record, like some tension release of some sort of antiquity, classical contiguity buried in the psychedelic music. The idea is kind of silly. It's just like, what would it be like if castle music is met with R&B and dance music in a club? What would that sound like? What would that look like? And why? Why would that ever happen? So we made this narrative of this guy who has a castle and goes into his garden. He sees a glowing light and that's what transports him into the future.
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