Q&A: Jess Chase Reflects on Growth Through "Carnage" EP
RISING INDIE ARTIST — Jess Chase shares a preview of her debut EP Carnage. Chase reflects on her growth over the past few years, which serves as a source of her EP. The songstress asserts herself as an independent artist and is ready to debut the creativity and ingenuity that shines brightly in the album. The Brooklyn-based singer recounts stories of her high school experiences in Tacoma and the transition to the New Yorker lifestyle. She points out her massive development as a songwriter during COVID.
The fresh indie artist, now releasing her debut EP this summer, is ready to charge forth with her passion for music. Her creativity has shined throughout her experiences in cathedrals as a child, to now with her music production skills. Carnage is an EP representing Chases’s young adulthood, as she grapples with significant change.
Read below to learn more about Chase’s journey and hopes and dreams with her career.
LUNA: Since you grew up in Tacoma, when did you move to New York City? What was that transition like and how did it influence your music?
CHASE: That's a great question. Because I moved here five years ago, and everything was so much different. I was on food assistance. I had no money. I was a student working three jobs at a time. Everything has changed since then, and now I have a really good job. I'm financially stable and independent. A lot can change in five years. I didn't really have a lot of infrastructure here. I came here for school and then I was able to figure out how to really live in New York. I eventually finished my master's degree in Integrated Digital Media/Music Technology as a specialty.
LUNA: Did [having that background in] music technology influence your music creation process?
CHASE: Singer songwriters could literally just sing and write songs and then work with other people to make their music, whereas — because of my background in technology and music technology — I was able to do a lot of that myself and have a lot of personal expertise in helping running recording sessions. Additionally, for “Pure” that just came out, I actually created an instrument which was using speech to speech synthesis that MacBooks come with as an instrument. So pitching all the speech synthesis voices, and changing the speed [of the sounds]…
LUNA: That's really, really interesting. Let's talk about Carnage, your newest EP. What was the inspiration behind the cover art for the EP?
CHASE: Aesthetics-wise, I was really inspired by game memorabilia and Catholic imagery. All the saints with the halos and the gold leaf you see in these cathedrals. I love going to different churches with my mom. We go and look at all the art. I've always been doing that since I'm Colombian. Art has been a big part of my childhood growing up. I always found that imagery really beautiful. I always found game memorabilia very intriguing as well, because it also captures an element of chance and luck and intrigue, like anything could happen. So that's kind of like this weird hybrid aesthetically that I liked for Carnage. I think this whole EP, the conceptual aspect is between good and evil, and bad to pure. The first song is called “Bad” and the last song is called “Pure.” If you really listen to the lyrics, “Bad” is a much more pure song than “Pure.” “Pure” is more edgy, but it's really about hope, luck, chance and change, which is all related to games and related to religion, belief and theology.
LUNA: What inspired this evolution in the album?
CHASE: I think that it's chronological, a lot of my songs are very storytelling based. I wrote those songs over the period of right before I moved to New York. After I moved to New York, I was getting way more passionate about music technology and recording music and songwriting. I reconnected with [my friend,] Carmen [Ortiz] and we came together and [rerecorded “Pure”]...With the help of my amazing friend Wendell Ratliff, we were able to bring this song to life. [“Pure”] was written all the way back in 2016, and the latest song in the record was written, two years ago…during the pandemic. This whole record, conceptually tells the story of figuring out who I am as a person and grappling with my darker side and my hope [and] desire to be a good person…So a lot of that questioning [of] my character is [a] very prominent theme in this record.
LUNA: So since you're exploring change and evolution, does that effect the sound of Carnage?
CHASE: It's changed because of conceptual reasons for sure. When Carmen and I were writing “Pure,” we wanted to create like the sweetest melody, [that had the] most edgy lyrics and have the most tight, beautiful harmonies, but be saying the craziest things. I learned guitar during lockdown and I wrote a lot of music during that time. I think that not only did my musicality change over the course of this character development in the last five years, but specifically learning a new instrument and letting that speak to me. It's a new avenue to express myself, and it's going to have different characteristics. “Bad,” “Unemployment” and “On My Way” are all guitar songs.
LUNA: How else did [lockdown during] COVID help inspire the concept of this album?
CHASE: During lockdown, I was single for the first time since I had moved to New York, I was really, truly, on my own. I was able to fully rely on myself. I had to depend on myself, but at the same time, I didn't have to rely on anybody else. I was able to create a lot of music. I was able to really learn how to use my home studio to the fullest extent. I was able to develop my musical ideas to a whole new level. I came out of that a lot more confident in my own abilities.
LUNA: How are you feeling about releasing your EP, Carnage?
CHASE: This EP basically wouldn't happen without the help of Phillips [my manager]. [Who] pretty much has been instrumental in helping me get organized and commit to making this be real in the world. It's been a lot of work and a lot of coordination over the last year and a half, we've been working nonstop on this. I feel really excited to have the record released. I'm also of the mind that you should do it in a way that's right for you. I care about if the music is going to represent the emotional response that I want to elicit with this music. Another thing I want to just say is the music industry is totally broken, [especially] in terms of an independent artist. There's very little agency of the artists to have control over their own music and own catalog. It's a very costly endeavor. I don't think people realize how much work and how much fine skills go into releasing music and doing it right. If you do anything wrong, there's such a high penalty, and there's no way to fix things when they go wrong. I hope that in the future that I can be a part of making the music industry a less hostile place for individual artists. Everyone starts out as an individual artist at the beginning, nobody starts out with everything figured out, and we shouldn't make it such a hostile environment for those of us who are independently releasing music.
LUNA: What inspired you to get into making music?
CHASE: What really got me into [music was Tacoma School of the Arts], my high school. I started off just as a singing major and then I switched to songwriting after I took a songwriting class with my teacher, Paul Elliot. He just taught a certain type of songwriting style approach that really spoke to me and it made me way better at music and I had always been really into music and I always made up songs as a kid but it was gave me a structure in which. I could evoke certain emotions if I use certain chord progressions and it's all in my grasp. I know how to create these feelings.
