The reflection of a new silent life that can be set to music.
Life always gives you new opportunities to create art, such is the case of Ernest Greenewho shares his new album with us Notes from a Quiet Life for your project Washed Out. In Indie Rocks! We talked with him about this new stage and what this new composition represents.
It could be said that Ernest She underwent a 180-degree change when she moved with her family from the big city of Atlanta, Georgia to a rural space. “I feel like my life is very quiet these days. So that was the idea that made the songs have a calmer, ambient rhythm,” she shares about the reason for the album’s title.
“I love coming up with new ideas, learning new techniques and experimenting with instruments I’ve never used before. I’d rather do that all the time and never finish anything.”
So not only did he change his lifestyle, but also a bit in the process of making his songs. “The process of an album takes three or four steps: first is experimenting, trying to figure out the sounds you want to hear, if it makes sense and what style it will have in general, Then there's the middle point, when you're writing the songs and you finally get to the little details, where you make sure everything is right,” he tells us.
“I created this whole lifestyle, so this is a reflection and I think that’s what the song is about, just realizing the pleasures and the simple things in life.”
It is known that an album can take months or years to be made and the artist may no longer feel familiar with what he wrote from the beginning or, on the contrary, return to all those verses and melodies that once represented him. Ernest tells us more about the song that represents him right now.
“There is a song called ''Wonderful Life' “That’s at the end of the album. It’s a very slow ballad and I think it represents a lot of the core ideas that I’m in – I recently turned 40, which is a big turning point. So you start to look at life and the most important and valuable thing I found was my family.”
I feel blessed to be able to make music for a living, if I wasn’t doing this professionally I think I would still do it. Creativity and creating things is at the core of who I am. If I go a couple weeks or months without doing things I would start to feel like I’m not myself, that purpose is to do things in my life.”
In addition to Notes from a Quiet Life, Ernest He shares with us a short documentary in which we delve a little deeper into his daily life and somehow make tangible all the musical elements that we find in the album. For example, how the visual arts have helped him with the creation of his music during this time and how he has managed to integrate them into his life, he tells us the following.
“It was a slow process. I realized that one of my favorite things to do when I'm on tour is to go to museums, so little by little I learned about the art industry, its innovations and the artists that make it up. The more art I appreciate, the more I have my own ideas about the things I want to try and it's been a great experiment because music has a clear commercial intensity, Washed Out “It’s my life, whereas visual arts… I don’t plan on selling my art, it’s just for my own sake and that’s been a lot of fun. The contrast between creativity in music and visual arts I feel like one and the other.”
Coming soon Ernest is about to embark on a new adventure touring some cities in the United States, returning to a bit of the lifestyle he left behind. Although it is a difficult process, Ernest does not rule out that in the future we will be able to hear new material from Washed Out in Mexico.
