Ekkstacy Wants to Be Everything — and He Just Might Be
For Ekkstacy, being inspired by cultural touchstones as random as a morbidly-hilarious Hathaway deep-cut “happens a lot. Which is a good thing and a bad thing. It’s kind of hard for me to stick to stuff, because I think everything is cool. Sometimes I’ll be listening to rap, and I’ll be like, Oh fuck, I want to be a rapper. And then I’ll hear a metal song, and I’ll be like, Fuck, I want to do metal.”
It’s a few minutes past 8 AM on the West Coast, and the 20 year-old “indie star” — his words and ours — is yawning through contemplative spiels in a San Diego hotel, fresh off of last night’s performance at the nearby Observatory North Park. Besides the timing of our call and the events of yesterday evening, one of several things predictably making him tired right now is the do-it-all creative incentive his work hinges on. As far as rap and metal go, he seems to have threaded the balance between his restless inspirations quite well: his monochrome, face-tatted online presence echoes the SoundCloud era his ascension marked the end of, while at the same time, he prides himself on a stage act that boasts hand-picked rock instrumentalists — a full-scale tour ensemble consisting of guitarists, a bassist, a drummer, and himself on vocals.
His most popular track to date, 2021’s “i walk this earth all by myself,” cashes in on the multi-hyphenate dynamic with lush harmonies layered over light major chords, and a vocal delivery that sounds a little bit like a British Dr. Doofenshmirtz auditioning for Joy Division. But for all the various factors at play, he still sometimes has difficulty understanding what makes him an attraction.
“I asked my best friend a while ago — because I was sad that day and insecure about stuff — Dude, what makes my music unique?,” he says. “And he’s like, ‘Number 1: Your voice doesn’t sound like anyone else’s. Number 2: Just the way that you use words.’ And he said the sounds are different. But the sounds are the most easily replicable, and it’s hard to– I just feel like it’s a combination of everything.” Asked what he thinks people see in him: “I don’t know… shit. I don’t know, dude. I really don’t.”
When you’re evolving as fast as Ekkstacy is, not having the time to question what others see in you is understandable. Misery, his forthcoming full-length LP, marks a step further away from the exploratory indie-punk soundscapes of last year’s NEGATIVE, and further into a certain rock-rooted ethos he’s getting increasingly comfortable with storming head-on. All-out guitar is the star of the show on this record, and it wastes little time making its presence felt: its opening track is layered with the kinds of shredded power chords — and chirped, rebellious vocals — that populate early aughts skate video game soundtracks; lead single “wish i was dead” thrives on post-punk’s ironic duality, melding buoyant, strings-driven soundscapes with darker lyricism fittingly foregrounded by the song’s morbid title. “I really like the record; I’m stoked,” he says, seconds before cutting himself off with a brazen “What the fuck? You’ve heard it?” I’ve just told him that I love the record too, and — as much as he’s surprised that people have heard it already — come release time in September, he may be just as shocked to learn that I’m far from the only one who can’t stop playing it.
As this release gears up to mark further forward movement, the new-age rocker doesn’t exactly want to put the pain of his tumultuous past behind him. Born in Vancouver to parents that divorced on his first day of high school, his childhood was rife with rash decisions, restlessness, and lingering existential turmoil that bubbled into life-changing chaos over the course of his freshman year. He only began making music after a failed suicide attempt — the last straw in a long series of months that saw him leave school for extended periods of time, couch-surf at friends’ places while fleeing from fights at home, and make sense of the familial debris left by a household that broke just as he was coming of age. “That stuff made me who I am, dude,” he says. “It’s just a weird thing I’ve always dealt with. All my songs are sad; all the music I’ve ever released is sad. So I don’t know if I even want to get better. What if I just become terrible at music? Once I’m happy, what am I going to do?”
With the way things are going, he may just end up figuring it out firsthand. For now, if Misery is bound to tell us anything, it’s that — at least for the time being — he certainly hasn’t gotten any worse at guitar.
