Ohio-based artist Cacophony Kid released three singles recently, collectively called Yellow, and I am absolutely obsessed with them. Not only has Cacophony Kid been a powerful, positive force in the DIY emo and alt-rock scene for a while, but the music that he creates carries so much energy and so many feelings that you simply can’t ignore it. Yellow includes the tracks “Heated Seats”, “Brian Thompson”, and my favorite, “Lovely”. I love each single with my whole heart, but “Lovely” has captivated me in a way that is not a lot of music does.
What I love most about “Lovely” is its intro – it’s got a gorgeous, bouncy synth that is then punctuated by percussion and a vocoded voice saying the word “lovely”. Cacophony Kid is an extremely skilled lyricist – we see this in both “Heated Seats” and “Brian Thompson” but the same is true for “Lovely”. When the vocals come in, they’re slower and more drawn out, and then all at once everything explodes, and Cacophony Kid is singing loud and fast and the energy is palpable. Then he says “no, go lower”, and we hear one of the best and, frankly, coolest, screams that I’ve heard in DIY music recently. The track ends with him yelling the line “this goes against everything I know”, a powerful moment that completely enraptures the listener – because we’ve all probably felt like that before!
Like I mentioned previously, Cacophony Kid is a wonderful and positive force in the DIY community, and I am super grateful for his presence in the scene. I reached out to him to ask him about “Lovely” and to express how much I loved it, and I was able to get better insight into how that track came to be. When I asked him about his creative process, something that’s unique to each artist/band, he said “the creative process always starts for me with finding an initial sound or feeling a sound gives. I usually have a good chunk of a song done before I have any lyrics. Lyrics come sometimes line by line as I’m making the song but I also have a note that has random one liners I’ve thought of over the years that I pick out. For heated seats I’ve had that first verse written for probably 2 years. At least one line in every song I’ve made is from my notes app”. It’s always super interesting to me to learn about each creative person’s creative process, regardless of what kind of art they make. Like, for example, Cacophony Kid and I are different in the way that he works on lyrics line-by-line, whereas I write all the lyrics before even considering the instrumentals. I also asked him about the things that inspired both “Lovely” and the singles collectively, and he said “Inspirations is always a fun question for me because every person I’ve ever met every movie I’ve ever watched every book I’ve ever read every song I’ve ever heard has influenced me in some shape or form. Whether it be the sound that I’m looking for or the lyrical content of my songs it all connects. But my biggest inspirations that I can think of today is being in concert band and marching band in high school. It taught me a lot musically and it inspired me to make everything sound as big as I can, as if I was writing this for the field. I would even say LSD is a huge inspiration to me. I always strive to have my music come across how music sounds to me when I’m on LSD”. Like with creative processes, the source of inspiration and what it is by itself is completely different for each creative person. I think that experimenting with substances and their impact on creative inspiration is always interesting – I used to be more fond of marijauna than I am now, and when I would partake in it, I would always find myself behind the piano or messing around on my guitar for hours. The last thing I asked him about was in regards to the music he listened to growing up, and he said “the line in ‘Heated Seats’, ‘sing Good Charlotte on my sisters CDs’, is very accurate. My sister is 7 years in older than me and when I was younger she had a CD case full of music. Good Charlotte, Simple Plan, Sum 41, Blink-182, Taking Back Sunday, Four Year Strong, Hit The Lights, Green Day, just all the classics. That’s what I grew up on but I also grew up playing classical piano in competitions and festivals from 3rd grade to sophomore year and obviously concert band and marching band all throughout high school and I think that’s where my sound comes from, all the Blink-182 and Bach. There’s also an artist, and this kinda goes back to my inspirations, but there’s and artist named Woodkid, he makes almost like classical electronic music. I love the Assassin’s Creed series and I remember watching e3 in 2011 when the trailer for Assassin’s Creed Revelations dropped and this artist I’ve never heard of before called Woodkid did the music for it. And it was so unique and sounded so new yet so contemporary and it was just the perfect blend of everything I’ve ever loved about music and I’ve been striving to find my version of that since I started doing this on 2020 and I think yellow is the closest I’ve gotten to it so far”. Like most things, learning about what music someone grew up on is very interesting to me. I know that it can help shape the music we consume and the music we make as we get older. For example, I was a big fan of Blink-182, Taylor Swift, and Vance Joy when I was younger, to the point that my first concert ever was Vance Joy, and I know that those all influence the way that I consume and create music now as an adult. I am so grateful to Cacophony Kid for allowing me to pick his brain about his release!
Written by Valor
