Blending beautiful guitar melodies and synth/electronic production with smooth vocals, Little Shadows’ music has gained the attention of other artists in the underground as well as a growing following of fans. Having just released his latest single, “Down,” I spent some time talking with Little Shadows about the story behind the song, his own style of emo music, and why going on tour is so important to him.
Photography by Brian Vu
UU: You’ve released quite a few songs in the past year under the name Little Shadows. How long have you been making music overall?
Little Shadows: I started making music in high school as a hobby since I was pretty much on the computer all the time anyway. That was probably about 2011 or so!
What made you decide to start taking music seriously? As something you pursue not just as a hobby, but full time.
Little Shadows: I think that I’ve always wanted to take music seriously ever since high school, but it took me a really really long time to find out exactly what kind of art I wanted to put out into the world and jump into fully. My art has also followed my personality pretty closely, and up until I started Little Shadows, I wasn’t confident enough in myself or my art to really put myself out there.
Going back to what you said about it being a hobby due to you being on the computer all the time. Does this mean learning to use FL Studio and similar programs? What about playing the guitar? Your music features a lot of impressive guitar work. Did you pick that up with the aim of becoming a musician or was it something you picked up as a hobby as well?
Yeah exactly! I first started on Logic when I was like 16 or so. As far as guitar work I took guitar lessons when I was younger cause my dad played guitar and I got really into blues and 60’s/70’s rock music when I was like 12-13. Around that time I started guitar lessons and wanted to be in a band but never found anyone to be in a band with. But then I found out you could make music all by yourself with software!
What else did you grow up listening to?
It was mainly rock and blues music until I was like 15, and someone showed me deadmau5 and I got SUPER into electronic music from then on – especially stuff like Armin Van Buuren and ATB. So high school was just like all dance music all the time.
As we start talking about your music, I wanted to bring up your Twitter bio which says “post-emo”. If you were to label your music genre-wise, is that what you’d classify it as?
I definitely think so – I found a lot of inspiration looking backwards at lyrical and stylistic trends of early 2000’s alternative rock music (i.e. Fall Out Boy). I find myself writing vocal lines and melodies that are very similar to those. But at the same time I like to fuse that with the sort of electronic production background that I’ve had to really change up the instrumentation and give “emo” a different landscape to exist on.
That makes a lot of sense, as I’ve listened to your music I’ve noticed – in addition to your higher tempo, guitar driven songs – you have the electronic and synth additions in others. Do you do all your own production and mixing?
Yep! Everything is done by me in my bedroom.
You touched on your writing process, such as drawing inspiration from early 2000s alternative rock, but I when I listen to your music, your lyrics seem personal. Is that accurate? Are the the words you write based on personal experiences?
Definitely – there is an element of storytelling and imagery but everything I write is directly inspired by personal experiences for better or worse. That being said it’s more of a way to reflect and understand my own feelings on things than to try to tell as many people as possible about something that happened to me. I think by documenting my feelings on experiences in songs I get to comprehend myself better, and maybe people can empathize or relate it back to their own experiences.
I get that sense from your music as well. Often times you seem to be recollecting something from the past and trying to make sense of it. I was really impressed with your latest single “Down,” the song both in sound and lyrics is rather melancholic, but the song is both sad and confident at the same time. Do you agree with that statement? Can you tell me a little more about your newest song in general?
“Down” is definitely an emotionally complicated song – I actually started and finished the whole thing in one night. I had seen someone who I hadn’t seen or spoke to in a really long time and was reflecting on the gaps that people leave in each other’s lives when they leave. But once you see them again you think about all the ways you could be better or do better (not necessarily for them but just in general) because of the time you spent learning or growing as a person while you were apart.
Do you have a song you’ve released that you hold a little dearer than the rest? If so, what’s the reason?
Hmm, that’s tough – I think I want to say “Down” but maybe I’m biased because that’s the most recent one I’ve put out. I also really have a soft spot for “Bad Vibe” because I just think it’s so different and cool sounding!
Shortly after the release of “Down” you tweeted that you wanted to get famous and tour. I know you’ve done a couple of shows already in Brooklyn. Is going on tour a personal goal? What’s the allure of going on tour?
Doing a full blown tour is a huge goal of mine. Playing shows and having an audience of people to share my music & performance with is so unbelievable – especially since my music is pretty heavily personal. I want to go to as many places as possible and see how people experience that or react to it in a live setting.
Can you tell me more about some of the collaborations you’ve done ? I know you’ve worked with artists such as Yitaku and Madnap in the past and more recently contributed your vocals to MISOGI’s Death Metal EP. What was that experience like?
One of my favorite things about music is the art of collaboration – I love teaming up with other people to try and make something different using our individual skill sets. For almost every collaboration I’ve done it’s simply just come out of being mutual fans of one another’s work, which makes the process really easy. For my work with Yitaku and Madnap it was just a matter of them sending me an instrumental and I would write and record vocals and send it back. For Death Metal it was a little different since the whole record was written and recorded already – I did mainly harmonies and background vocals which was insanely fun.
Tell me about Big Drama Recordings
Here in Brooklyn my friends and I started BDR as a way for us to all put our work under. As I mentioned before collaborating is pretty important to me, so by starting a record label we could release my work and all of my friend’s work under one “umbrella” of sorts, whether that be music, videos, clothing, etc. Instead of us all trying to do things independently it’s much more fun to team up.
Is there anything you want people to know about you? Whether they’re an existing fan of your work or someone listening to a Little Shadows song for the first time.
I think that I put enough of myself into everything that I make that I don’t really have to say much about myself – I would hope that my music gives people all they would need to know about me.
I respect that and I think your music definitely shows the effort. Thank you for talking with me tonight. Is there anything you’d like to say or shout outs you’d like to give as we conclude this conversation?
Big shouts out to UU cause ya’ll are dope! Shouts out to my homies Breaking, Teddybear, Jxsh, MISOGI cause I love them all very much, and shouts out to you for listening to everything I had to say!
Check out Little Shadow’s SoundCloud here, or take a listen to him on Spotify here.