Interview with Halo Coast

Halo Coast is the Minneapolis-based Lindsay Miller, an electronic musician and producer. She creates compositions that blend both analog and digital elements.  

​We've asked her a few questions about her music: 

Who are your biggest influences; who inspires you?
I'm influenced by everything from Rage Against the Machine to J.S.Bach. Phantogram, Bjork, Sia, Led Zepplin, Queen, The Glitch Mob, I would say i'm influenced a lot by any music that has a very dominant emotive quality. If I hear it, and it makes me feel something, then I like it!

Why did you start making music?
I started making music I think because I have like tons of feels haha. Music has been the thing in my life that has been a total outlet and like so foundational, it's always there for me, I can always depend on it, and it's so fun. It's like my best friend, or like a whole community I'm in - but all my friends are waves.

Your EP "Century of Self" was released in February this year, what influenced the sound and songwriting for the tracks?
This EP is really a collection of singles that were all written over about a year, with the exception of one track, Pangea. I had written that song years previously, but it suddenly felt relevant in my life again. Since I had never really been able to capture it well in a recording I thought I'd try reworking it. Ultimately I was really happy with how it came out! As far as the sound of the EP overall I'd say I'm really interested in the convergence of analog/organic sounds and digital/electronic sounds. That intersection is really interesting to me so I continue to try new things, bringing together "real" instruments with virtual ones but still maintain that emotional connection that I feel is so central. I write, play all the instruments, sequence all the sounds, produce and mix everything on this record. 
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What's your songwriting process?
I usually start on guitar, I've been playing guitar since I was a child and it's super easy for me to get my feelings or inspiration out of my head or my heart, then through my body and instrument, then into the air that way. It's really easy for me to write whenever I'm feeling really strongly about any particular thing, then I just channel that feeling like a lazer and music comes out of me. I usually start with just like some chords that feel right and then the melody develops around the chords, words start coming in to describe what I'm experiencing and then through lots of iterations the lyrics form. I really spend a lot of time on lyrics even though I think most people really don't care that much what I'm saying. It's important to me and part of making something that is true and real, which I feel like is really important culturally right now. Then I kind of deconstruct it and start recording sounds and creating beats and stuff - sometimes from start to finish it's the same general vibe - but other times what I started with on guitar sound legit nothing like the final thing. 

Is there a hidden meaning in any of your music?
I would say almost all of my lyrics and music have hidden meanings, or things that are so particular to the story of the song that they would be a little puzzling to try and figure out. I've done lots of things that way I guess when I stop to think about it, encoding meaning in the lyrics is really fun for me, I've even hidden meaning in binary code in lyrics before. 

What are your future plans for your music?
I want to continue to create and explore that intersection of the real and the virtual, I see the genre I'm trying to create as kind of an expression of augmented reality, where I'm using computation to enhance the landscape of sounds in real time. I'm constantly looking for ways to be more emotive on the digital side, and create my own human/computer interaction devices and setups so I can interact with the sounds physically. I also want to get better at sharing what I've made because I put so much effort into it! I think there's nothing better when I hear some music that happens to be just right for the moment, and makes me feel fully alive, so if I could ever share something that does that for someone, or just helps them through their day, I'd be mega stoked. I need to get better at social media and promotion things - I'm awful because I spend all my time creating stuff and thinking about creating stuff then it's hard to have energy left over for that part - which I think happens to lots of us! So super grateful to be on your blog! 

What are you interested in that most people haven’t heard of?  
The visual art, poetry, performance art, and music of all of my friends! 

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