What is your name?
NavelGaze

What is your genre of music?
Electronic-Shoegaze

Who are your influences?
Oh, I have a loooot of influences haha, but for my overall approach to NavelGaze at least, I’ve been mostly influenced by a lot of drone and funeral doom metal stuff (Sunn O))), Nadja, Khanate, Skepticism, Mournful Congregation), some 70s prog rock (Peter Gabriel-era Genesis, King Crimson, and for my live shows especially Emerson Lake & Palmer), a lot of Nick Cave stuff (especially the album Skeleton Tree), kinda “sad noisy queer EDM” (Sewerslvt especially), shoegaze, post-rock, and some weird 20th century classical composers (especially György Ligeti)!

Are you a signed?
Nope! I have some help with promotion from my very helpful PR manager Emily Keefe, who is absolutely lovely to work with, but aside from that I’m completely independent

You released your new album ‘who/am/I’, tell us more about the album and the meaning behind the album.
Sure! So, when I was writing this album, I was going through a whole lot of massive changes to my life and circumstances, and that kinda left me reeling trying to figure out who I was after all these changes. This album, for me, was basically my way of working through that, I guess — of trying to figure out who I really am through it all. I don’t know if that makes much sense, but yeah!

Describe each track in two words.
Okay this is a very tough one haha, but I guess I’ll mostly just try to describe the general sound or vibe of the tracks?
Nothing — “very loud” 
Abandonment Girl — “big synthwave”
Struggle — “11/8 industrial”
Keep You — “big shoegaze”
Aria — “platonic lovesong”
Goodbye — “post-vapourwave”

What was the writing and recording process like?
So, the process at first was very similar to how I normally write all my music — I’d have a few rough ideas, whether that was for a specific musical idea like a melody or chord progression, or just a vague overall “style” I wanted to work with, and I’d gradually add more and more to it, just working on my laptop on my bedroom, recording guitar parts and programming drums and synths on my DAW, and getting feedback from some of my friends along the way, until I had an overall idea that sounded pretty good to me. But then this time, I contacted my very talented friend Amy Sargeant, to see if she could mix and master them to get a more professional sound quality, and she agreed! I sent her the stems and some reference tracks to explain the kinda sound I was after, and we’d go through a few different mixes until we found something that sounded perfect the way I wanted it to! It was really new for me, working with an actual professional producer, but I’m really so happy with the results.  

Who did you work with on the album?
Well, all of the music itself I wrote and recorded by myself; I got feedback through each stage from various friends and family (both musicians and non-musicians); Amy did the mixing and mastering; and then Emily helped with promoting everything!

Will we see a music video for ‘who/am/I’, and if so what can we expect from the creative process
like?
Oh, I would looooove to make a music video! I’m not sure if it’ll be something I can pull off soon — I don’t have much of a budget to work with professional video people, and even just making the short track animations you can see on Spotify has taken me a lot of time and effort to figure out — but maybe some day!

Do you have any live shows coming up? Let us know where we can get tickets if so.
Nothing planned yet! But hopefully should play at least a couple of local shows some time in the next couple months, so be sure to check out my Facebook and instagram feeds for updates! I’ll keep you posted

What else can we expect in early 2023?
Probably not too much else for a while! After working so hard on getting this album out, I think I’m gonna take a few months to rest and creatively recover, but should have more updates soon. 

Where do you see yourself now in 5 Years?
I honestly have no idea! This album has been performing so much better than I could have ever imagined, so I really have no way to predict where I’m gonna go next. Ideally I’d love to do more collaborations though, and if I could get the chance to work on soundtracks (for films, games, anything at all), that’d be absolutely amazing for me. But we’ll see!

What quote or saying do you always stick by?
Hmm, that’s a tough one! I guess musically, the one “saying” I always go back to, if you could call it that, is “fuck it, good enough for jazz” — whenever I’m obsessing too much over making everything exactly perfect, and sinking too much time into going over the same thing again and again and again, it’s just a good way to remind myself that sometimes? It’s good enough as is, and it’s better to have something to work with and see what happens, than it is to waste my time trying to get something that’s absolutely flawless. 

When you are at a gig, what are 5 things you cannot forget?
-My laptop
-My guitar
-My audio interface 
-My midi synth input
-My drumsticks

Do you have social media accounts so your fans can follow you?
Yeah! You can check me out on Facebook @navelgazeofficial and Instagram @navelgazemusic, and all my social and music links can be found at https://linktr.ee/navelgazemusic