heroek

My first question to you, Heroek, is:

Chad
What pain, struggling or suffering—whether personal or observed/witnessed—drives the messaging in your positive songs?

Heroek
I think a lot of it comes from a drive or desire of mine to make positive songs. A lot of songs and artists that I love have helped my mental health. I've listened through tough times, through moving across the country, moving away from everything I know, and it helped me in that sense.

Then it actually started with my first bigger music project, my EP I'm Sad, but It's Different. It’s like: we're going to sit in the sad for just a tiny bit to show you where I am, and then get out of it. That was inspired actually also by the visual artist Sammy who at one point was talking about this rough patch she was going through. She said out loud, “it's like I'm sad, but it's different,” and that really stuck with me.

I had just moved from Los Angeles to New York and I was kind of feeling exactly that where there were times that I'd be sitting in my room and I wasn't sad, but there was just like a tiny little weight or like sadness to like my. My baseline was a bit lower, it felt like. So I. And that's right around when I was getting into music production. Made that couple lo fi ambient tracks. Very like nighttime or space, like ambient themed.

And then again kind of innately I started making songs that were more upbeat or sounded happier. That's where you get the song on that EP called Recalibrate, with its classical, maybe melancholic violins, but it's under a four on the floor kick drum. It had probably one of the happiest feelings on the EP and it’s towards the end.

From there, you have later songs of mine like the one I made with you, Hero's Journey. For me it was about promoting yourself, being a small artist, not letting things get you down or get in your way. It’s just a feel good, upbeat song. It's hard to hear that song and be in a worse mood than you were before hearing it. I love songs that can do that to you, and I'd love to make more songs or continue making songs that have that similar effect.

Chad
I love that. So you used music to tell a story from sad to happy. Much more complicated than that, but are those good markers?

Heroek
Much more complicated, but yeah, sad to happy. And then, now, trying to stay in the happy whenever I can.

Chad
What are some of your own favorite positively-tilted songwriters, artists or bands?

Heroek
First that comes to mind is The 502s. I just saw them live recently and they're like, similar to what I was saying about our song, you put it on and you feel good. They call themselves the happiest band in the world, but I'd believe it. They're awesome. The 502s, who I also had on my podcast, very like beachy, folky, indie vibes, super cool.

I feel like John Bellion has been there for a while. Human Condition is a fantastic album. A lot of. A lot of the songs on that, like, Morning in America, I would kind of point to or put my finger on as: “this is the music I wish I could make.” The kind of thing that's storytelling but in a real way. Like sending a message—sending a positive message and bringing attention to things more through songs.

You know this about me at this point, that I love, love Twenty One Pilots. They're kind of where I started taking sadness or bad thoughts and turning it into good. Their song Guns for Hands is about something like if you're in a bad headspace, if you're struggling with mental health, whatever it is, maybe you have some harmful or some bad thoughts, just this anger built up inside—don't point that at yourself. Point that anywhere else. Put that into art, put it into music. Put it into something positive. Make something from that.

Chad
When did you realize that popular music wasn't just for sugar coated bops, dance grooves and flexin’?

Heroek
That's a good question. Generally overall, I think it's when I got more into listening to lyrics, like, diving deeper into songs. Not just playing something because I like to listen to it, but also understanding it, wanting to know meanings behind songs, things like that.

Ironically, I think that goes hand in hand with Twenty One Pilots, when they're song Stressed Out became a hit and it was on the radio everywhere. I was young. I was still living in LA, so probably definitely under 13, yeah, 11-12 years old. I was like hearing it driving in people's cars on the radio all the time. This song saying: I miss the good old days. Take me back there. Because now I'm stressed out. I have to deal with the real world, and everything's a bit harder and tougher and weighing me down. I wanna go back to when I was like sung to sleep and just having fun with my brother as a kid.

That song opened my mind to be like, oh my god, this guy, this adult is stressed out and making music about it, and it's popular, people want to hear that.

It was definitely a gradual change. I got into them specifically and I was like, that's so cool what this band does with their music. And then I started hearing more popular songs, started wanting to discover and hear more new music instead of just the artists I already already knew. And slowly I realized, oh, this artist over here does it, that artist does it.

And then you get the ones that rise to the top. You get like a Billie Eilish where like that's one of the biggest artists in the world.

Chad
She's one of those that the compass is built to analyze.

Heroek
Yeah. Well. And she does so much. So many different things. You have songs like Xanny asking “Why do all my friends need to do drugs? I don't see the need for it. What's the point?” Right next to Bad Guy, which is just a boppy, pop hit.

Chad
What messages have you not written about yet that you want to?

Heroek
A lot of random, various modes of unity, if that makes sense. For example, I think one of the coolest musical things ever done is We Are the World. Seeing the documentary about that and being like, oh my god, every big name at that time came together on one song, a positively driven song, and has actual real world benefits to it?\! I want to do something like that.

The idea of a global rap cipher was so cool to me. Let's bring our community together. Let's get a bunch of our friends together and rap on a song. Let's do a XXL freestyle and highlight this new generation of up and coming rappers.

Chad
Didn't you do something like that?

Heroek
Yeah, I've done one of my own, building to my point. My goal is to take hundreds of artists from different countries or backgrounds coming together for something, something like a global cypher.

I think Macklemore had a similar song. He made some song analyzing/criticizing what's going on between Gaza and Israel, when it was very much at the peak of everyone's mind and you saw it in the news every day. He brought in Palestinian artists to work with and made this kind of rise up or protest of, you know, bringing attention to it, using his own platform to point them in the direction of look what's happening there. Why aren't we doing something about this? What, what can you do to help? Which was awesome.

So I think there are a lot of different ways of connecting music and unity, or building community through it and help helping the world, which is such a broad, vague, idealistic idea, but it’s what I kind of want to do. I love songs with real world impact like that.

Chad
Well that's the whole point of this (website.) That's why we are such good friends and that's why you're here. Because we are in the minority of people that make music these days. Less and less people are using music to do what you just spoke about. It wasn't always like that.

Nobody wants to hear that these days. But that's what the Rising Compass is built to expose. So I love that.

Okay, two more.

What non-music media channels or public figures do you trust and get motivation or inspiration or guidance from what? For example, TV shows, movies, or YouTubers that give you motivation, inspiration or guidance and are not just entertainment.

Heroek
Yeah, I feel like I have a couple. This first one is going to be half nerdy, half maybe cliche. Spiderman. I saw the latest Spider man but also have watched a bunch of the older ones. The plot point, like the, the storyline that leads up to—spoiler alert—his uncle dying is: his uncle is this father figure for him and tells him he has a moral responsibility, a moral obligation to help people when you can help people and just help make the world a better place. Do good and good things come to you. And that, you know, kind of comes full circle in this moment where Peter has the opportunity to help someone, but keeps on walking. And that domino effect eventually leads to his uncle getting killed.

What is the harm or what could really weigh you down by helping others? If you let someone go at the stoplight, are you gonna be 10 seconds late to where you're going? Kindness is so easy and it costs basically nothing. So why not do it?

Chad
That's a great example. I would never have chosen that, so I love that I got your insight. It's true. Superheroes… their intention I think was, originally, to show something good missing in the world and maybe be a modern day mythology.

Superheroes are just our modern day Greek gods and they're here to teach us something.

Heroek
Yeah. I did have another one, Maya Higa who runs Alveus Sanctuary in Texas. The entire sanctuary is closed to the public, but streams live 24/7 on YouTube and Twitch where the ad revenue goes into supporting the sanctuary. She makes educational content around them so that the animals can live more or less undisturbed by humans. It's not like a zoo where you have thousands of people coming in every day, looking at them, maybe tossing food or viewing them like an exhibit. But through the content, through the live streams and cameras, you get that on a bigger scale of millions of people across the world and the animals are more or less unaware of it and can just like live peacefully, not be stressed out by people coming into their space. She teaches about different animal trades, fur trade, why people shouldn't have certain animals as pets, endangered species, and all kinds of things. It’s some of the most wholesome, feel-good content I found in a while and I love it. I can't get enough of it.

Chad
I'm glad you shared that. That's exactly what I'm talking about. We're trying to unearth the ultimately positive stuff.

This last question kind of ties into that.

How can consumers change their media diet when the mainstream media has such a tight grip on what is promoted to the masses?

Heroek
It’s kind of anticlimactic, but you have to go digging for it.

Ironically, the way I found out about Alvea Sanctuary and Maya Higa was I'm a big, big fan of smosh on YouTube who also do feel-good content. And their whole thing is comedy rooted in friendship. A group of friends. They play board games together. A lot of them have some kind of comedy background or improv background, so they do things around that but you watch and you feel like you're in a friend group playing these games or like get, you get inside jokes the more you watch them.

Ironically because an algorithm knew so well that I liked Smosh, it showed me when Smosh went to visit an animal sanctuary and I was like, okay, this is cool, I'll like it. I had a great time watching it. It was hilarious and fun to watch, but also educational and took me into that Maya Higa rabbit hole and I ended up liking her. I like what she's doing. I like these animals. I want to see more of this. It was a cut down version of the full on like live stream that they did on Twitch. And I thought, maybe they have other animals. Maybe I could keep watching.

To your point, it led to me needing to do the digging. I had to go type in Alvea Sanctuary or Maya Higa and make sure I subscribe and get notifications.

Don't let the algorithm just tell you what you should watch or what it thinks you want to watch. You, in an indirect way, have control over it. And so if I watch a bunch of these animal videos from Maya, it will start serving me more of Maya's videos and animal content. And so you have to be very conscious of what you're liking, what you're viewing, anything like that.

Chad
Well that was an excellent wrapping up. I've never interviewed anyone in a traditional format like this before, so I'm excited to see what kind of insights I can get out of people I interview. I'm glad you've been the first. You have provided a lot of insight. More than I anticipated and I appreciate that. So thank you very much, Heroek, for being the first artist profile on ELDATUM.