Traversing through the deepest parts of space and time is where you’ll find guardin, the New York based rapper and producer who speaks on raw emotions in a way that’s both poetic and easy to relate too.
Starting as an experimental production project back in 2014 with releases like Lost In A Fantasy and Astral Agenda, guardin originally paved his way into the underground with a variety of sounds from chiptune to witch house style songs.
It wasn’t until the summer of 2016 however that guardin began working with his vocals. “My friend flowars and I were always fucking around with free beats on YouTube and [we] started dipping into our own creations and adding vocals” he explains. In December of 2016 guardin premiered his first vocals in the lost & found EP, notably taking his music career in a brand new direction.
2017 was the year that guardin gained significant traction in the underground community. guardin started off the year strong with ＡＴＡＲＡＸＹ, a 7 track lo-fi inspired album that has racked up over 230k plays to this day. He continued into 2017 with a 4 song EP titled [daydream], a project that was started and completed in the span of only 48 hours. The EP was produced by notable names in the underground deadalive, mewsyc, hkfiftyone and hateful, each song with its own unique style and truly showcasing how diverse guardin can be.
It’s arguably his latest album lacuna that has best defined who guardin really is. “lacuna was my first official album release so I really wanted to try to find my sound within the creation of that project,” he explains, “the first song that really set the bar for what I was going for was “suffocate” with 9tails. I wanted a perfect blend of emo with a modern hip hop sound.” Described as the “pre-breakup album,” lacuna’s songs touch base on everything going on in guardin’s life – the good, the bad, and everything in between. It was 5 days later that guardin’s relationship (which lacuna was largely inspired from) ended, prompting his next release take me home.
When talking about take me home guardin describes it as an “overload of emotions of how I felt after the break up. It was meant to be a short follow up to lacuna, especially with the last track ‘trafalgar.'” His song “trafalgar” is easily the most emotional song on the EP, meant to originally be an “I miss you” ode to his ex. When asked about the name, he explained that Trafalgar is “a super long road in Ontario that my ex and I used to meet up on when we’d visit each other.”
guardin takes his biggest influences from Oliver Francis, Blackbear, nothing,nowhere. and included bands such as Dance Gavin Dance, From Indian Lakes, and We Were Promised Jetpacks. He also stated his friends yung van, flowars, 9tails, and guccihighwaters were very big influences for him as well.
A last minute message from guardin:
I just want people to know if they’re ever feeling down about anything, they’re more than welcome to come to me. I wanna help people as much as possible. I wanna be not only an artist they look up to, but a friend.
Make sure to keep an eye out for guardin’s new album outsider, releasing on March 17th.
