Are you guys looking for a new artist to dive into? Well, look no further than MORGXN! MORGXN has just released his album BEACON which is chalked full of so much honesty and artistry and we have been blown away ever since the first listen!
We were lucky enough to get the chance to pick MORGXN’s brain about all things surrounding BEACON! We hope you all enjoy this interview as much as we do!
Listen to BEACON here!
Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us! To kick us off, how would you describe your music to someone who hasn’t checked out your music before?
A little bit of an emotional overdrive mixed with singer-songwriter tendencies and anthemic production.
We of course want to dive into all things BEACON starting off with, looking at the tracklist, is there a particular song that you could instantly tell would be one that fans attached themselves to? (We instantly connected with ‘Faded’)
What I have loved about releasing this album is that everyone seems to have a different song that is pulling people in. On my face irst album I had a song called ‘translucent’ and there was a group of the best fans who called themselves the ‘translucent rights committee’ and petitioned to have me play the song whenever they came to a show. I’ve heard from them that the torch has been passed to ‘backbone’ on my new album. I love that people are also finding threads between my 2 studio albums (VITAL & BEACON) and 1 double EP (MERIDIAN) .
BEACON appears to be an incredibly personal record, how would you say that affects the writing process, are those heavier sessions easier because of the true-to-self nature? Or possibly harder to get through because of the emotion behind it?
After my first album VITAL I was not prepared for having to talk about the songs – many written around my dad’s passing. But it also made me really grateful for the chance to talk through what was going on in real-time. It just also was hard. I find that any song on any project of mine has a level of difficulty when I talk about it. I also resonate with that David Bowie thought that he never knew what he was writing around until after he wrote it. There are some songs that just channel feeling and life ads meaning as I go.
We know that you wrote many songs for this project that didn’t make the final cut, how do you go about crafting that final tracklist?
I actually have a poster board in my room with a bunch of songs crossed off the list and adding to the hero’s journey. I knew I wanted to make this album a song cycle journey and used the hero’s journey as the template for where the songs would go. I’ve never made an album like this.
And kind of piggybacking on that last question, is there a particular track you really loved but cut that you hope to release in some form in the future?
Yah… there is a song called ‘OLD ADOLESCENT’ that I think is the most elder millennial anthem of all time, or at least of any song I’ve ever written lol.
The decision to leave LA to head back to Nashville had to be a multi-faceted one, what was the catalyst for choosing to do that?
Failure and defeat, to be honest. I was sick of LA and sick of the grind and felt that I had failed. So an opportunity came up to move and I just did it. I can be quite impulsive and sometimes it leads to a whole new rainbow I didn’t expect.
With the decision to move back home, and with the album being made there, what was it about being back home that allowed this record to be made? Do you think you could have made the same record in LA?
i think the temperature of LA is different than what I want these days. I want space and time and love and peace. I think many songs in LA are made ‘in the box’ as in they are made on the computer. But this one was about writing all the songs and then coming together to share what a recorded version of some of those ideas would look like. It captures a real feeling of moving home, starting over again, falling in love, questioning myself, and then ultimately digging my heels into my own roots.
When looking back at your first body of work, and reflecting on where you were then and where you are now, what are the biggest artistic differences that you can clearly point at?
I think there isn’t a HUGE shift sonically but some people have told me there is. I am with myself every day all day and I can’t always see it. I know that I set out to make the record differently. more real instruments throughout. I think it sounds real. I also thought my first record sounded real. I think every record is a snapshot of what is available at the time. on my first album, I used voice memos and sounds that weren’t “100% professional studio audio” and people told me that was ‘wrong’. I continue that trend of using whatever I have around me to make a record.
We can already tell what this record will mean to people, the Beacon it will be to the audience it finds, we were wondering was there a record that has been a Beacon of sorts for you?
Sometimes you’re the boat and sometimes you’re the beacon. i’ve felt very much like the boat these days. My fans and the response to this album has really been a light in a pretty bleak time.
Now that BEACON is out into the world, what is next on the horizon, where do things go from here?
By the time this interview airs… I will have announced a new version of ‘WONDER’ with the winner of Canada’s Got Talent (Jeanick Fournier) in French & English. and I can’t say much more about this.. but April is going to be a very fun month 🙂
TO LEARN MORE ABOUT MORGXN: INSTAGRAM | TIKTOK | TWITTER
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