Q&A: Quinn Oulton blends jazz and alternative in his new album 'Alexithymia'
2022 is Quinn Oulton’s Year – Multi-instrumentalist, vocalist and producer Quinn Oulton entered the music scene in 2017, releasing a self-produced first EP. Following the initial EP release, Oulton followed up with another EP in 2020. But 2022 is different for Oulton. With five singles already out this year, Oulton is finally ready to share his masterpiece and debut album, Alexithymia. Alexithymia stays true to Oulton’s jazz, alternative sound, which stemmed from picking up the saxophone at a young age and his forthcoming fascination with jazz and blues. Stripped-back acoustics, electronic production, and layered vocals are the classic traits of Oulton’s music.
Each of Oulton’s songs off the album carries a melancholic tone, often touching on relationships, between family, romantic, and platonic. Feelings of obsession, frustration, passion, false hope, grief, self-pity, helplessness, and acceptance are felt in the album. “Remember” shares feelings of longing, almost cinematic in nature the song includes jazzy interludes and encompasses Oulton’s sound perfectly. “Better” is rhythmic and lyrically touches on the complexities of relationships, somber emotions, and catchy drops take you on a musical journey. “Next Time” the last of Oulton’s singles released to tease his new album, is about feeling like a fool in a relationship and if there will ever be a next time. The song is slow and stripped back, it builds up tension to the chorus where Oulton feels louder and stronger, his emotions and pain are clear.
Read below to learn more about his album, single “Next Time,” and what sad music means to Oulton.
LUNA: Firstly, congrats on your single and album release! Alexithymia is out today. How do you feel about its release?
OULTON: Thank you! I’m honestly so pleased to finally release this music. It’s been a long time in the works and has developed a lot over the past two and a half years. I’m really happy with the result of all this work, and I’m proud to share it with everyone.
LUNA: Can you talk me through the process of writing and producing your single “Next Time”? What was the inspiration?
OULTON: I wrote this song sitting on a tube, a bit drunk, after having an argument with my girlfriend. I sat on the northern line for about 10 minutes, and by the time I got off, I’m pretty sure I had written the whole song. That was the only time I’ve ever written something so in the moment, and I decided to keep the lyrics exactly as I’d written them to capture what I was feeling in a really pure form.
Production-wise, this was the first song I started working on from the record, and I was really consciously trying to set a different tone from my previous releases. I was going for a darker sound, with lots of synths and minimal drums. That song gave me a strong place to work from when designing the shape and sound of the rest of the album.
LUNA: Your album is a beautiful blend of alternative, jazz, and vocals. How would you describe your music to someone?
OULTON: This is actually a question that I really struggle with - and as you can imagine, it comes up quite a lot. I normally say that it’s jazz-influenced alternative music, but that doesn’t quite sum it up for me. I like what you’ve said there, though!
LUNA: What song off your album resonates the most with you right now?
OULTON: “Far Away and Never” resonates the most with me at the moment. I pushed myself to another level in terms of energy and performative freedom in those two songs, and I am definitely going to expand on this sound in the near future.
LUNA: What is your favorite memory from working on this album?
OULTON: One of my favourites was definitely getting Moses Boyd down to my makeshift garage studio during summer of 2020. It was a boiling hot day, and we could only bear to have the studio door closed for about a take at a time without needing a break. He really transformed that song so much, and it only took a few passes to get a perfect take. Moses has been such a supportive figure for me since starting to work in his band late 2019, and I’m so grateful to have him on this record. Sadly, the SD card with footage of the session got corrupted and I never got to see the footage!
LUNA: A fun question – if you could give this album a color what would it be?
OULTON: Very dark blue
LUNA: I’ve heard that you connect a lot with sad music, something that is evident in this album as well, why do you think you and your listeners might be connecting to sad, melancholic music?
OULTON: I focused on this question a lot when I began to approach the album’s concept. I was drawn to sad music because of how comforting it is to hear others work through their own emotions, and open up so freely to total strangers. I was feeling some kind of envy, as at that point I didn’t feel capable of doing the same for myself. I also think that empathy is such a strong feeling, and to be able to feel for people going through things that you don’t face in everyday life is such a powerful thing.
LUNA: What is your favorite part of being a musician?
OULTON: Definitely playing with other people. Despite my production process being pretty isolated, I have grown up primarily as a performer. It is the best feeling to spend years on a set of music, and bring it to a group of people who turn it into something alive and organic. The musicians in my band are all extremely talented, and I like to give them a lot of creative freedom when we play live - my favourite gigs always have a real sense of spontaneity to them.
LUNA: You’ve revealed that working on this album has been a very therapeutic process, but with the nature of how long it takes albums to get out how are you feeling about the emotions you shared in the album? Do you feel farther away from them now or do they still resonate?
OULTON: I started to write this album as a response to recognising some deep issues that I hadn’t acknowledged or processed for a very long time. The idea was to force myself to unpack things that I had ignored in my past, and process them retroactively. This whole experience was really cathartic, and helped a lot. I also started to go to therapy during the writing process, which helped me learn to open up, and work through my emotions and reactions to day-to-day problems. All the songs definitely still resonate with me - they feel like a direct link to my past, and I’m grateful to have them as a reminder of the process I’ve been through whilst writing them. I feel like I’m able to close this chapter and move on now that the record is finally out.
LUNA: What are your plans for the rest of the year?
OULTON: Releasing the album is the first of several releases relating to the Alexithymia project. I have been working on some merch, the first drop of which is coming out very soon. I’ll also be releasing some music videos which I’m really excited about. I have some idea of what I’d like for my next project so far, and I’m looking forward to getting started on developing that in a few months. I’ll be doing a lot more live work later in the year too.
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