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Pinwheel Valley, welcome to VENTS! We’d love to explore the emotional themes that run through the veins of your latest single, Reverie.
Were there any personal experiences that led to the creation of the single?
I guess I can respond to that with “What is music if it isn’t in some way drawn from personal experience?” I won’t dive into details as to what culminated in that experience as I like to make music as a form of homage to the universe. As the song description suggests, “Reverie is a love song about losing someone you love, and the arduous longing to win them back”.
The Jeff Buckley influences pull through strongly in the release, what is it about his sound that inspires you and in what ways do you strive to differentiate your sound from your influences?
I find Jeff Buckley to have been one of the greatest singer / songwriters of all time. He just makes performing self made music look both beautiful and easy. And although a lot of people drop his name in passing while pulling up muses from their inspiration bank, I’m not pandering to popular opinion here. I see myself in Jeff Buckley in that I’ve worked my whole life to write music that presents itself with an equal eloquence.
I strive to differentiate my sound from my influences by first reminding myself that no matter what I make, there will always be a fingerprint intricacy to everyone’s creative output. Also, when I feel the oncoming of a new idea I quickly get into capturing and drafting it, all the while keeping in mind that whatever materialises, will sound different to artists I’m influenced by, if I’m deliberate about stepping out of my comfort zone each time to find that original-concept-summoning creative sweetspot.
How do you infuse such profound depth into your releases?
I do a lot of inner work when I have some down time. That involves journaling and hacking at the layers beyond the everyday reality of our lives (sleep, wake, work, relax, repeat). I would go as far as to call that ‘the evolutionary process of the spirit’. There is a hole in my creative expression when I feel out of touch with my inner depth, so I really place importance on self reflection and shadow work. Glad to hear it comes through in my music.
What’s the story behind your new moniker, and does it signal a departure from your earlier work?
Pinwheel Valley is a name I went with because it represents where I live today, in the valley of a hill where a lot of wind turbines are. I like to drive up there sometimes and marvel at how giant they are, and while I’m there I enjoy doing some journaling. That’s where the name comes from, because in some way I see the turbines like colourful pinwheels turning in the wind. The place gives me that familiar sense of childlike solace when you see a pinwheel catch air.
Also, I’m aware that it’s a big deviation from my last artist name, but if I’m being 100% transparent the shift had to be done when I realised that I couldn’t correct the SEO problems associated with the four letter word of my former artist name (KAIS). It was a lot more popular than I thought and I was constantly drowned out on youtube by anime vids and other accounts that shared the same spelling. Either way, I’ve committed now. And Pinwheel Valley just feels more right to me. It encompasses how the music sounds: like a colourfully warm, vast and rolling landscape. It also helps incorporate without bias those who work equally hard to record and sometimes write parts of it with me. Not to mention perform it.
Can you tell us about your new affiliation with Levantine Music?
Well I’ve been signed for a distribution deal with Levantine Music. As the name suggests they represent music that emerges from the Levant region, and as a Jordanian by origin who lives in Cyprus (which is within the Levant as well), I met the criteria to pitch demos. Levantine are also both London and LA based, so their outreach is broader than the Levant. I’m glad to start this new collaborative journey with them.
Finally, looking ahead, what can fans expect from the full Reverie EP, and how does it represent the next step in the evolution of Pinwheel Valley?
That’s always a good question. I don’t really know how it represents a clear cut evolution as I like to think the creative process is always evolving as our experiences change. For starters it’s the first EP written fully under the new artist name, and I know that carries a certain charge with it that hopefully translates into the music. It also marks over 100 songs written since I embarked on my songwriting journey, so all I can hope for is that its a lot better than my previous work. I can’t remember who it was that said this but it always stuck with me. An established artist said “it takes a hundred songs to start making good work”, and we may have just crossed that bridge!
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