Colin Miller

Interview by Phoebe Stubblefield

Who: Colin Miller

What are your musical goals?

Generally to make lots of music with as many people as possible. In addition to my own projects, I produce, record, mix, and master other peoples stuff. There's lots of people who want to make music and have good ideas but don't necessarily have the skills to do it, I really enjoy making other people's ideas into realities.

More specifically to my own stuff, I guess I want to continue to find that Nina Simone-type balance. The music I made throughout high school, everything on the Things You Want EP, just kind of burst out of me. It was extremely important to me and I focused a lot on it but it didn't really mean anything and I didn't have to the know-how to make it into something more than a thing that sounded nice to show people. The music I'm working on now is by and large much more well wrought; the music plays a character in the song and the lyrics represent something more than vague words in time. To me, lyrics, however vague or sparse they may be in a song, need to mean something and the concept behind a work needs to be accessible to someone who really wants to listen. I strive to make my work dynamic to a listener, where it can be listened to, not just heard.

Your music is quite technically complex. How do you envision translating your music to live performance (if you have such intentions)? At the last Grammy performance, Daft Punk played “Get Lucky” live and they did it in such a way that changed my personal look of performance. They caught the warmth of a live band and the spontaneity of a DJ set. For me, that's the direction I'm heading as far as performance goes (without the pricy flashy set). A lot of the time, I see sampling used as an accent. And for me, it's an instrument all on it's own, so that's definitely gonna play a big role in my performance, as well as enlisting the help of some good friends and talented musicians.

Your style, based on the music that I've heard developing over the last couple of years, seems to be continuously evolving. Are you searching for a definitive style? I guess so. For me it's a little bit more like collecting different genres that strike different parts of me. I didn't start out very intentional with my style. Like I said, the songs in Things You Want came from just playing around, never revising or looking back, just operating on what felt right at that moment. The style that came out was very indie folk-rock, Bon Iver meets Damian Rice meets Grizzly Bear, because those were the things I was listening to. With my newer project, called “gui.de”, I am being deliberate with everything, including going with the style that fulfills me the most which is more soulful, dancey, and in line more with R&B.

Will we get to hear a new album soon and where can we get it if so?

Absolutely! I'll be officially releasing a single soon for my first product as gui.de called Crush, both on soundcloud and bandcamp. And sometime in the coming months a song I'm featured in will be released by the awesome band “the bsement.”You can hear their stuff over on soundcloud and you can hear my older work here.

Colin Miller runs a recording, engineering, and music production business out of his home in Asheville, NC.

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