Interview: Milwaukee Based Artist/Producer Monti Korbelle Discusses His New Single/Video "Dreamlike"
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“As much as I would like to grind and produce and get more stuff out there, I have to take some time to absorb and process. One needs input before there can be output.”
What are some things/people/places that inspire your creativity when you are working on new music?
In many ways I feel art is universal; it all starts with a vision. I found that music producers and cartoon animators are similar in their process and technique, and of course you can branch out and include instrumentalists, sketch artists, photographers, 3D sculptors, and pretty soon you have an umbrella over all types of artists all linked in some way with their artistry approach.
Someone who inspires me— there's a YouTube channel called The Art of Photography that did a series called Artist Series, which I recommend. Episode 3 features a photographer named Laura Wilson, and she deeply connects with me on her approach to art. I'm not a photographer, but her techniques in how to approach the art of bringing a vision to life is the same energy I like to apply to my music.
Congratulations on the completion and release of your album "Mount Moon", which includes your single "Dreamlike". Tell us about your creative process for this song and the album overall.
The album is about looking within and uncovering the hidden pieces of oneself. A functional society requires us to mask our emotions, but this leads to our emotions becoming masked from ourselves. In the process of looking within, we find positive and negative, and this album emphasizes the negative.
"Dreamlike," on the other hand, is a moment of peace— euphoria, even. We all have the chemical cocktail in the chamber ready for release within our own brains; it's like free drugs— a rush of joy produced by one's own thoughts. Except triggering this mental response is the challenge. "Dreamlike" is that moment of bliss one is able to feel, even when the person exists in a slump of depression.
The music video for "Dreamlike" is awesome; how did you come up with its treatment and can you describe how you developed it?
Yeah, this is sort of a funny story. I was at a bar with friends on a Friday night; I don't drink much, but I was at a bar. It was a hip bar that played popular music loud with rows of televisions on the walls showing the music video. That's where I heard for the first time a song called "Astronaut In The Ocean" by Masked Wolf.
I didn't realize it at the time, but this song was going to be the biggest song of the year. Nevertheless, I'm watching the music video at this bar, drunk, mind you, and I can't help but become upset with how much I thought the music video looked like shit. The transitions and effects looked cheap and corny, and there were shots of the music artist wearing a space suit standing in-front of a green-screen with outer-space as the digital backdrop. He was blatantly standing in a film studio accompanied by a very obvious amount of Earth's gravity.
I was so upset with how this music video looked. I thought, "Why didn't they suspend him mid-air to create the illusion of no gravity? He's in space— is he not?" The anger over this music video got me thinking about how I would have done it better— how I would have made a music video that didn't look as crappy as "Astronaut In The Ocean" by Masked Wolf did. Then, I decided to take that energy and apply it to a music video of my own.
How would you compare the "Mount Moon" album to your first, "Global Carbon Tax Economy", from a sonic and thematic standpoint?
I hate to admit it, but I do feel like I suffered a mild case of mental illness during the production of my first album, "Global Carbon Tax Economy." For some reason, where I found value in myself was through my intellect, and with that I wanted to move people. While I was getting mind-blown by political podcasts and conspiracy theorists, further increasing my knowledge, I was wishing to recreate the same mind-blowing effect through my music.
The idea sounds fine when briefly explained as such, except with art comes suffering, and when the source of suffering is the paranoia of oligarchical shadows that wish to strike down the middle to lower class for capital gain, then the pain is more intense than simply trying to create great art.
One of the first songs I produced for my second album, "Mount Moon," was a song called "Find a New Direction," and that's exactly what I was doing for the new album— finding a new direction. Becoming obsessed with politics and current events works fine for many, but not for the mentally fragile, which is something I unfortunately had to discover for myself.
With the "Dreamlike" music video now released, what are some of your goals musically for the rest of 2021?
From my first album to my second, I found a new direction, and I wish to repeat the process for the third. I've been listening to a lot of artists, especially artists that don't fit into a specific genre, but instead create their own sonic signature— genreless.
There are a lot of music artists featured on DOPECAUSEWESAID that I plan to listen to as well. As much as I would like to grind and produce and get more stuff out there, I have to take some time to absorb and process. One needs input before there can be output.
I wish I could predict what my album 3 will sound like. Currently, I am thinking less drums, less rapping, more cohesiveness, but these ideas are very broad for now. I work slow, I take my time, and I only put out what satisfies me.
Stream and Share “Dreamlike” on Spotify
Connect with Monti Korbelle: Instagram