Formula Indie Sessions _ Interview with Zeroz

What is your earliest memory connected to music?

If we’re just talking music, not playing music, it would likely be watching Amadeus on VHS with my broken family up in the hills of North Alaska: cramped, poor, scared and being dazzled by a fiction of Mozart.

How did your passion for creating music begin?

When I was turned on to music (around age 10), it became immediately obvious that I was meant to write and play music for the rest of my life~I’ve never questioned it.

What’s the story behind your current music project?

A while ago, I had just finished reading a lovely Mozart biography, and I was thinking a lot about his operatic work, especially Die Zauberflöte, and I also love anime and just couldn’t shake the idea of combining my love of anime visuals/storytelling with the story telling of Mozart’s operatic work, but in ‘kool-guy-rock-music’ form. So I ended the project I had been working on and started Zeroz.

How would you describe your sound to someone who has never heard your music before?

Noisy Kool guy music with glitchy ideas and fun vocals and nice, if not aggressive, drums.

What is one thing you’ve learned that completely changed the way you make music?

I was studying Mozart on the piano, and I realized he composed ambidextrously. I am self taught, and I had read from a piano book (when I first started playing) that you should use your right hand as a dominant hand and use the left for chords, which is wrong–I realized I had taught myself wrong. So I spent like two years relearning piano and the drums ambidextrously, and learning how to do everyday things ambidextrously (which really helps). It was pretty crazy, and difficult at first, but it made me soooooooo much better at piano and drums, and probably guitar/bass (and typing).

What tools, instruments, or software are essential in your creative process?

For Zeroz, a 7 string guitar and 5 string bass, a DAW, some kind of drumkit access along with sample-kit, a nice microphone for vocals and a full set for drums, and some kind of mixer/input device (I’ve been using the zoom R16 for a while), along with cables and effects board, and nice monitors. But, personally it’s kind of anything goes, I use and play a lot of instruments, but for Zeroz I like keeping things consistent, while evolving the quality of equipment.

Which indie artist or song are you loving right now?

Freak by Feeble Little Horse ~ lovely tune for a quick blast

How have your personal experiences influenced your music and artistic vision?

My personal experiences have been quite rough. I grew up extremely poor and in abusive households. Since then I’ve continued to be really poor and face problems like Crohn’s disease, a car wreck, crippling poverty and more. My personal experiences have taught me that the world really doesn’t give much of a shit about people, and if you can’t be incredibly strong in your convictions, you’re probably going to end up very disappointed–and no matter how tough you become, you should never let that rob you of your own kindness.

What emotions or messages do you hope listeners take from your work?

That’s not really important to me: maybe check out some cool anime? I hope they like the music and find their own way to connect with it really.

What’s the most important lesson music has taught you so far?

To love art wholly and without remorse or regret, because it will always be there for me.

What is a dream venue or festival you would love to perform at?

I don’t know any really. It’d be nice to play to a big ass crowd: I’d be grateful, basically, wherever. It’d be funny to play one of the huge festivals, since I’ve always been so far removed from anything like that, but I imagine the humour would wear off.

If you could collaborate with any artist, past or present, who would it be and why?

I would love to simply talk to Mozart, maybe play piano with him–that would be enough for me. I’ve actually studied German for quite some time, so that I could speak to him if we ever met in my dreams, although I am, admittedly, a bit rusty.

Where can our listeners follow and support your music? (Website,Spotify, IG, links)

spotify: