The producer and collab queen discusses the fantastical reality of emerging from behind the scenes
Piloting a mecha and blasting spells from her fingertips, blackwinterwells is on her way to kill God. Sure, her battle station may be an outdated version of FL Studio and her fingers are technically tapping computer keys, but the SoundCloud producer’s decade-long battle with the godly gatekeepers of internet pop-stardom is finally being recognized. As one of the most sought-after producers among her peers, Wells’ reality is based around constant collabs, with production credits appearing on some of the most impactful tracks of the year. But Wells’ reality can only be attributed to her love of fantasy, and especially, escapism. Tales of ghostly realms and giant robo-space battles are the narratives that the Wells character escapes into when reality becomes too much. But when it is inescapable, Wells is content to slip into the songs of her contemporaries, providing the support of a 24-year-old musical engineer who’s on a quest to make her teenage collaborators blow up.
“The Wells character is not the hero, necessarily,” Wells explains from her bedroom/studio in Hamilton, Ontario. “I don’t think of myself as a pop star. Like, two years ago, I was getting two plays on a song. No one cared about the blackwinterwells project.”
Now, Wells’ songs are racking up thousands of plays across SoundCloud—millions if you count the tracks that she’s produced for or has been featured on. Wells believes that in order to become a successful producer you need to make one thousand different songs, which doesn’t seem to be an issue for someone who claims to be incapable of making the same thing over and over again. Wells attributes this to her ADHD and “whatever combination of weird mental stuff [she] has going on,” which she claims is an incredible benefit to her songwriting. As someone who gets bored easily, Wells is the perfect candidate for SoundCloud’s DIY ethos as it continues to evolve. In a scene being carved out by experimental amateurs, it pays to have an extensive and diverse discography because you never know which song might become a hit overnight—or over quarantine.
“I’ve been making a shit-ton of music because there’s nothing else to do,” Wells laughs about her hyper-productivity over the course of the pandemic. “I planned to [perform] in a million fucking cities this year, but I accidentally just made my SoundCloud blow up instead.”
Pre-pandemic, blackwinterwells was not the only SoundCloud moniker Wells performed under. She has been producing music for over a decade, establishing herself in the EDM underground as drainpuppet. But, over the course of the pandemic, Wells admits that drainpuppet died; her SoundCloud grave marked with the simple epitaph, “this project has concluded.” Wells is not stricken with grief over the loss of her alter ego, though, as she believes that her music is changing for the better.
Wells’ hit single “IRIS,” released earlier this year, marked a pivot in her career as well as her mindset. As her most streamed song on Spotify, the self-produced and performed hit obviously struck a chord with Wells’ audience. She describes the track as “unhinged” and says it was written in a kind of manic state over the course of one six-hour session. Since writing “IRIS,” Wells says that she’s mellowed out, but still takes pride in her manic expression. As someone who has struggled with depression for most of her life, sadness has been a constant companion and has overshadowed her ability to write about much else.
“A lot of the early blackwinterwells stuff is so crushingly sad that I don’t want anyone to hear it,” says Wells, whose musical venting can be categorized as “ethereal emo.” “Even when I was happy, I just had decades of sadness behind me to draw from, but I don’t want to make sad music for no reason anymore.”
Recently, a switch flicked in Wells’ brain, providing a departure from sadness, along with a catalog of diverse emotional tracks released over the course of quarantine. That isn’t to say that Wells has totally abandoned her emo roots, however. “take loop,” one of Wells’ latest singles, is considered “the first happy Wells song,” but it is not without a touch of melancholy. Wells sings about taking a chance on love after being hurt in the past, and she does so in a way that is both cautious and brave. Wells sings, “If I try I might slip / I think that’s worth the risk,” which indicates that the next iteration of the Wells character is courageous in the most human of ways.
While Wells’ more emotive music is largely autobiographical, she strives to exaggerate her experiences by placing them within the context of fantasy. As a self-proclaimed “cute whispery ghost,” Wells is fascinated with the incorporeal realms of the hyperreal. Her latest album, Seraph, is an exploration of the immaterial: from ghosts to angels to the lunacy of Lovecraftian cultists. These fantastical themes are often unheard of within the context of current sounds, but Wells manages to deliver these extraordinary storylines with the precision of one who has their finger fixed on today’s musical pulse. When Wells sings “my heart begins to harden as I near the day / when the angels pull me higher to my final fate,” she’s being thoroughly emo without relying on the contemporary motifs of aesthetic cliches—forever expressing their dissatisfaction with the four walls around them.
“It’s kind of boring to sing about, like, ‘I’m a human. I’m made of meat and flesh and stuff,’” Wells says. “Being a space wizard or killing dragons or whatever is really cool. And I think it’s really valuable for me to think insanely grandiose things.”
These grandiose thoughts don’t start and stop with Wells’ fantasies, as her pursuit of greatness has established her as a leader among young artists. Wells acts as the director for Helix Tears, a high profile online collective comprised of scene superstars osquinn, 8485, and d0llywood1, to name a few. Wells believes that it’s difficult to come up solo, which is why building a community of artists can be so uplifting for those looking to really break music. With the support of big-name artists, musicians with lower follower counts can gain exposure much faster than they might on their own, and Wells claims that there is little contention between the two groups. Simply put, Helix Tears is a collection of “good people who make good shit.”
“You need big artists putting smaller artists on because if you don’t keep it moving that way, growth stops and [the scene] starts to stagnate,” Wells explains. “In this scene everyone just seems to like the music a lot more. They seem to care about the music more than they care about their image or brand cohesion or any of that shit—it might be because a lot of them are really young.”
With 10 years of music production under her belt, Wells is an elder in a scene that is otherwise dominated by teenagers—some of whom, despite their overwhelming popularity, have only been making music for a few months. Wells isn’t distressed by the success of her young contemporaries, however. Instead, she feels like she’s been given a second chance at making her mark in music, and says that she’s blessed to be able to work alongside such talented kids like 15-year-old osquinn, who has been deemed the face of a movement. Wells has worked with osquinn to produce hits like “bad idea” and, more recently, “oblivion,” which unify the experiences of two separate generations through the singularity of song. Wells explains that this unification is built on the creativity of her younger artistic counterparts who always have the most to say, coupled with her ability to manifest a vision through her years of experience as a musical engineer.
“It’s kind of a perfect combination to have, like, a young kid who has all these crazy, creative ideas, and then an engineer on top of that to sculpt it into something very shiny and presentable,” Wells beams. “I like being the technical overseer of this big explosive thing.”
As this potential continues to explode, Wells takes a moment to commemorate her growth over the course of the pandemic with the release of her new album, Stone Ocean. Slated to drop in October, Stone Ocean is a kind of time capsule, filled with a slew of tracks created during quarantine that Wells describes as “fluffy.” She describes it as being an album that can be thrown on in the car or at a party and “not feel weird about it being sad or freaky.” The work is a collaborative project filled with features from artists and friends Wells might not have otherwise met if she had spent less time quarantined in her studio. And it also represents the journey of the Wells character who struggled for so long to find footing in a ruthless realm otherwise known as SoundCloud. After working so tirelessly over the last few months, Wells has only one fantasy in mind:
“I’m really excited to make less music.”