(Editor’s Note — Solo-artist akloh. will be dropping a three-song EP Sunday Aug. 4 — the first batch of nine forthcoming new songs in all that will be released over the course of the next few months. We recently sat down with this talented Buffalo songwriter and musician, who at the start of the year made the life-changing decision to walk away from a steady, well-paying job to devote himself to music full-time. Check out our piece below. We thank akloh. for his time and for the wide-ranging conversation in which we discuss the new EP, titled ‘Anthology Part One: The World’s Most Dangerous Man,’ his immediate future, life-defining moments, the music industry, algorithms and more. Visit his linktr.ee HERE to save and listen to ‘The Word’s Most Dangerous Man’ and to follow him on the socials. — Album art provided / Photos by Matt Smith -1120 Press)
1120 PRESS: Thanks so much for speaking to us and congratulations on all you have going on. So, we’ve listened to the new EP a few times and it caught us off guard. We’ve seen you perform live, and we see you on social media, and you’re the guy with the acoustic guitar and big smile. But the EP rips right out of the gate. It’s not what we expected. Let’s start with the title of the record — is there a meaning behind it?
akloh.: Yeah, so it's ‘Anthology, Part One: The World's Most Dangerous Man.’ When you look at the songs themselves, they're not deep songs at all. They're superficial songs about human emotions. They’re very basic emotions but those emotions are still very strong. And emotions lead people to do some crazy things. Emotions like desire. And the song ‘Little Mama’ is kind of, like, about lust. And ‘Fake Bitch’ is, like, a hateful thing. So, the songs are about emotions, but they are emotions that can produce a lot of volatility. That’s how the title first came to my head.
The idea, too, behind the name anthology is that all these songs are ones that I've written and released in the past, but it was all just me. It was just me in my basement or, my dorm room, recording and they sounded good and everything, but I knew that my recording abilities were never going to do the songs full justice. I’ve never considered myself a great musician. I think I'm a really good songwriter, though. When I came back to music after stepping away a while and I started the akloh. thing, I wanted to bring with me the songs that I believed in but that just never went anywhere because I didn't know how to promote, and because I didn't have good recordings and all that shit. So, the goal was to grab people and catch them off guard with these songs.
1120: So what's different then about the songs this time around compared to when you had them out before?
aloha.: In all honesty, it was working with RJ — this is all produced and mixed by RJ DeMarco, the lead singer from (the Buffalo band) Fernway. He's in Monterey, California now. We recorded probably 50 to 65 percent of this album remotely from across the country. We did all guitars and bass and shit like that. And then I went out there to do vocals and acoustics, and I hired Jeremy Shields to do drums. I can drum, but my drumming doesn't add anything. It's just there, you know what I mean? So that's actually another big thing that's different. Jeremy adds feel and with him drumming it also adds another human element to it. RJ, in my opinion, is one of the most musically smart people I’ve met in this scene. Really, all the guys in Fernway are kind of next level. But RJ is so smart. I've wanted to work with him for so long.
1120: What do you think he added?
akloh.: Number one, just the tracking process. He was hard on that in terms of getting all the tracking as solid as could be. He would say when ideas weren't good. He would let me challenge him. Production-wise, he added layers that I wouldn't have heard alone. He doesn't let himself put out anything that's not up to his standard. And that's why I wanted to work with him, because as a solo guy — and I've been a solo guy since high school — I don't ever have that input.
1120: It’s hard for some artists to give up that control sometimes.
akloh.: Yeah. For sure. Quite frankly speaking, many of the artists RJ’s recorded, even though they sound good live, they end up sounding phenomenal on the recordings he has done. And I was like, ‘well, if he can do that…’ So I definitely trusted him.
1120: You took all of your music off Spotify recently and you also removed content from your social platforms and appear to be reworking those. We’re sensing that there’s some sort-of rebuild going on?
akloh.: Yeah, I think, number one, I wanted it to not be my real name. I have an artist identity in the name akloh. I just feel that makes it more real. There was no separation between my personal social media and my music in the past. So, the music got diluted, I guess. When I didn't really have shows those first couple of months when I was starting out, I was doing Instagram covers and stuff like that to just get myself out there and introduce myself. I didn’t have music coming out yet, but I wanted to be creative, and I wanted to start showing people what I was doing. But the gradual idea was to move away from the past. Looking back, the promotion I did was cheesy, and it was insufficient. When I was young, I didn't know any better. There’s more of a framework now for social media promotion. But it gave me time to book shows and start working on the music, and it started to show people as well that I’m doing something.
1120: You mentioned your musicianship. Is this something you’ve worked on? You said you’re not that great of a musician but one of the things that struck us in listening to the new songs being released tomorrow was that the guitar playing on the EP is banging.
akloh.: Thank you. Yeah, I'm proud of the playing, for sure, and a lot of, like, the phrasing and stuff, that was definitely the result of RJ's assistance. But in all honesty, I got as good as I am now very young. So since then, I feel like I've been pretty stagnant. Like, the next step is understanding the fretboard better and, like, theory better, so I can improvise and not sound like a robot. I want to have more feel and less thinking. That's what I want to work toward. But I can play fast and I can play clean. If I know a solo, or if I learn one, I can rip through it. But that next level for me is true music proficiency on the guitar. I don't feel like I've gotten there.
1120: At the start of the year, you made a major life decision to give up a good-paying full time job to do music full time. What did it take, in terms of reaching that point and actually pulling the trigger, and how has it gone? It’s a huge step and you seem now to gig and grind relentlessly.
akloh.: Yeah, I got to keep busy. One, because I have an ADHD-brain that always needs to be doing things. But also, playing out is important. When a band is good, or a musician is good, playing live consistently adds a different element to how they're perceived. And I feel confident in my live performances, so I've wanted to keep up on it.
But, yeah, I went on a road trip last year to the Harley Davidson Homecoming Festival in Milwaukee. Green Day and the Foo Fighters were headlining, my top two bands of all time. I was supposed to go with a friend. My friend couldn't come, so I went by myself. So it's like a 10-hour drive. And then I was there for a couple days and it’s another 10-hour drive back. So, a lot of time by myself. A lot of time reflecting. I had a phenomenal weekend. Milwaukee is a really cool city, and the concert was incredible. Just being in that environment after being out of it for so long, like, working and all that shit, and I was like, nothing has ever made me feel like that. So at that point, when I got back home, I kind of thought: ‘OK, maybe within the next two or three years, I’m gonna make that move.’
One of the songs that I do live is called ‘Fighting for My Life.’ And when I got back, little shit started to annoy me, more than it did before. After that experience in Milwaukee, I felt like was coming back to, like, a sort of mediocrity in a sense… and I was feeling a lot of work frustration and so on. I was on vacation with my family, and my bosses were puling dumb shit and I just kind of had a moment right there and then and I was like: “That's it. I’m done.”
1120: Still that had to be scary because there’s a level of security you’re walking away from.
akloh.: I had been good with saving money for the past five years, so there was a cushion. And I've always been like, if I'm going to do something I dedicate myself to it really heavily. So, I was like, if I take this leap and really work at it, something's bound to happen. So I was there mentally. The first couple months were very uncertain. That was the toughest part about it, that security was gone. But as uncertain as those months were, I just kept myself busy. I was either watching YouTube videos about the music industry, or going to shows or practicing guitar. Anything that was music-related that I could keep busy with.
Networking was a big thing during that time too. And then once I started getting shows, that added another element. Now with music coming out, that adds something else too. At this point, I feel very much like I'm on the right path. I'm proud of what I've been able to do. I feel like people know who I am. And that's a cool feeling.
1120: What have you learned about the music business since taking this step?
akloh.: I'm definitely doing the thing that I love. I'm more involved in it, and I can make a very modest living in terms of being comfortable, which I didn't know if that was possible. So I feel there’s a foundation now that I can build on. But I've realized too that I don't like the way the music business is as a whole. I don't like the way you have to get noticed now. And I don't like the fact that record companies are kind of pointless at this point.
1120: Yeah, now getting big gigs and attracting the attention of promoters etc. depends on things like your Spotify numbers, which is kind of bullshit because there are bands that pay bogus marketing firms that have bots visiting band pages and artificially boosting numbers. A lot of times, artists don’t even know they are paying for bogus schemes. Then Spotify catches up with the bots, and the music is eventually removed. So, yeah, there’s a false premise that exists to the game now.
akloh.: There's a framework, but there's not, like, a direct path, if that makes sense. Whereas before, you'd try to make good music and you'd pitch it to a record label. Now it's like there's multiple avenues, and you gotta figure out which one is gonna help you the most. So you might have some trial and error, but you have to find that path. And, you have to train the algorithm to know who you are, which pisses me off. It's so annoying. It's the dumbest thing.
1120: So, of the nine songs, the first three are coming out tomorrow, and then from there the next six will be released all as singles. How will that rollout go?
akloh.: Generally it'll be six weeks between each release. And that was one of the things that I read and learned. That seems to be the sweet spot for the algorithms. You have to keep feeding it, but you also have to seem like you are not feeding it that much. There’s this psychology to it that they talk about. Like, fans can think it feels desperate, or of lower quality, when music comes out too frequently. And then, if you let it go too long, it can feel like you don't have stuff and that you’re not doing anything.
1120: And you also have short videos rolling out on your social media kind of serving as introductions to these songs.
akloh.: The goal of these videos is to add a more human element. So, in one video, I talk about how I quit my job and decided that I wanted to do music full time, and now I'm really doing that. So, that makes me feel dangerous in the sense that, ‘I can make shit happen.’ And the other videos touch on some different aspects of my life where the word ‘dangerous’ kind of fits too, not in a violent sense or meaning, but in the sense that there’s a capability or there's a potential or energy. That's what I'm going for. I'm trying to add some humanness to the name.
1120: Speaking of the videos, you mentioned the way the music industry operates now frustrates you. One of the elements that is required today in the business is having a strong social media game. There's a lot of good and bad with social media. We talk to a lot of artists here in Buffalo who are really good at it, but who hate it at the same time. What's your relationship with it? What's your philosophy toward it? Your platforms are very strong and well done.
akloh.: It is mainly a necessary evil to me. I really don't enjoy the process of making the videos, and the editing and pictures and this and that. But I love the feeling of putting something cool out there. And I know that when I finish whatever it is that I'm spending time working on I'm gonna think it's cool if I did it right. Hopefully other people might have a chance to think the same. So, yeah, it's a grind that I don't enjoy, but I do love all the videos that I have out there. When you're not in a release cycle, and you can just do social media as you want to, that's more fun. The thing that sucks now is, to get places (in the business), you have to be in, like, a perpetual cycle and that takes the enjoyment out of it.
1120: Thank you so much, again, for speaking with us. Before we go, what’s up for akloh. in the near future that your fans might look forward to?
akloh.: Yeah, I mean, continuing to play shows. The goal is to keep playing. I usually play two a week, which is great. Sometimes I land three or four shows.. But to consistently have two-a-week would be great, especially going into the fall and winter. And then, really, just getting the music out there. I'm super stoked that all nine songs are going to be released. They’re incredibly solid, and they form a cohesive body of work. So I'm excited just to share that. That's really what it's about at this point. I just want it to be about the music.
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