1.) We’re very excited to have some time today with acclaimed masterminds behind the dreamy synthpop project GEMZ, singer and songwriter Jen Wood and electronic musician bar none Ted Chen; greetings and salutations to you two and welcome to Vents Magazine! Before we dive into the Q&A mosh-pit, how is the tail-end of 2024 treating the both of you?

Jen Wood: Hi hi!! Thanks so much for having us for this interview, I really appreciate it! I think the tail-end of 2024 is going magically well… Really no complaints, I’m in a good place in my life right now and I’m very grateful for that.

Ted Chen: Hi there! It’s definitely been a time these past few months. Lots of change and transition, but thankfully settling into a more steady rhythm with life and looking forward to sweater weather and making more music!

2.) Major kudos and accolades on GEMZ’s freshly-minted debut EP See The Future which is set to drop this coming October 22! Jen, can you walk us through the origins of this eagerly-anticipated EP?

Jen: Thank you so much!! It’s been a very long time in the making… I’m so happy we’ve finally arrived here and have these songs to share. The first GEMZ song was “Younger,” which I wrote the idea for way back in 2017. I shared a voice memo of just the first draft of Younger with Ted, when we both still lived in Seattle, and we began working on that song just in a very organic “let’s just see where this goes” kind of way. At that point I had no big visions or ideas, I just wanted to experiment with this one song idea and see what could happen. I loved the remix Ted had done of my song “Fell in Love” (from my Wilderness album) so I was intrigued by the idea of transforming my songs into something different, something more upbeat and dancey-pop.

A lot of big life events and challenges happened for me between 2017 and when I re-approached Ted to work on “Younger” in 2019. I went through a really awful divorce, I moved to California, Covid happened and then my mom got cancer again and we almost lost her to it that time around. I really had no time, energy or bandwidth to even think about working on my own music and honestly, didn’t have any plans on doing my music again until Toddrick from Sonic Ritual Records approached me about wanting to work with me on my next album. I was completely surprised and very flattered that he would even want to work with me. Making the decision to even start doing my own music again took me almost a year after Toddrick offered me an album contract. I had been writing song ideas over the years and was just keeping them as voice memos, but for some reason, I just didn’t feel inspired to make an album that was like my previous ones. I didn’t wanna make songs that were so sad and I didn’t want to put that energy out into the world when I felt that what people needed (and myself too) was the opposite of sad songs… I felt that people needed songs that were filled with optimism, happiness, strength and songs you could dance to. That is when my lightbulb moment happened, and I realized that I wanted to collaborate with Ted again.

I spent at least a week selecting a batch of voice memos that I’d been collecting between 2017-2019 so there was a lot for me to listen and sift through! I finally narrowed it down to maybe 15 voice memos to send to Ted, and I nervously awaited his response… I honestly didn’t know what he would think about all my other song ideas. Lucky for me, he really connected with my song ideas and was super excited to dive in and get to work on them! It was no small feat, as all my voice memo ideas were literally just snippets of ideas and sometimes just me working on a song idea for almost 10 minutes! I would usually tell Ted to listen to the voice memos with time stamps so he knew which sections I thought there was a song idea worth exploring. Ted had a lot of work cut out for him to go through all those voice memos! From there he basically began extracting small sections (finding the hidden gems) from a voice memo idea that he liked and we would work on the arrangement more until we turned it into a full and complete song. Most of my song ideas were super sad or were about some really serious, more heavy topics, so the job was for us to somehow transmute and transform that energy into something lighter and balance out the contrast of emotions. Again, because I wanted to be incredibly mindful of what kind of messages and energy I was going to be putting out into the world.

Teaming up with Ted to make this GEMZ EP has been such a unique journey in itself because we really have slowed the process down in order to truly give each song the proper amount of time it needed, and to give me the time I needed to heal and transform with and through these songs as well. It wasn’t an easy process for me to jump back into making music again but Ted and the support and immense patience from Toddrick at Sonic Ritual and everyone on the team has been incredible. There’s never not been a day where I don’t feel gratitude for this opportunity and I just hope that these GEMZ songs will help people overcome their struggles and know that they are not alone.

3.) Ted, as a rightly lauded producer in your own right, is it a safe bet that you did the producing honors on the upcoming See The Future EP? And, if so, what are the pros to tackling this role versus outsourcing it to someone else?

Ted: Yes, I produced all the songs that we’re releasing for this EP. The songs were born out of a collaboration process that Jen and I had developed and refined over an extended period of time. We live in different cities so we would send snippets of material back and forth to each other and build out the songs that way. In a sense, the production process went hand-in-hand with the songwriting process. So I guess the pro of producing these songs vs having someone else do it is that we likely wouldn’t have these songs because it was an integral part of our songwriting process.

4.) Jen, even as we speak the second single off of the See The Future EP – “Cycle Stops With Me” – is currently making the rounds and wowing audiences the world-over; major congrats! Do you feel that “Cycle Stops With Me” tonally represents the debut EP?

Jen: In some aspects, yes, because most of the songs on the EP have that upbeat dance pop vibe or just have a lot of backing beats on them. However, these 5 songs all together work in harmony, they are sort of an arc of ideas, thoughts and emotions… A contrast between lightness and darkness. Perhaps I would say that half of the songs are like “Cycle Stops With Me,” but the other songs are a bit heavier, somber yet very anthemic.

Ted: I think each of the songs explore a fairly wide tonal range from light to dark. Some of the songs lean toward the lighter side while others lean toward the darker side. Kinda like shining a wide flashlight, it just depends on where you want to point it.

5.) Ted, in your humble opinion what differentiates the See The Future EP from the Distinguished Competition on the 20024 music scene?

Ted: Firstly, there are a lot of challenges that musicians are facing at the moment so I don’t really see other musicians as competition because I just want everyone to thrive and succeed in this industry. But as far as what differentiates us, I would just say that the creative relationship that Jen and I have established is pretty special. Most of the time in our collab sessions we’re just talking about random new age hippie stuff – how to live an intentional life, how to be present and in the moment, funny synchronicities, crystals, chakras and auric fields etc lol – and somehow the music finds its way out of those discussions.

6.) Jen, in the wake of the October 22 release of the See The Future EP, can fans look forward to catching GEMZ on the touring/performing circuit?

Jen: We definitely want to play some live shows! Ted and I have been talking about what we would envision our live show experience to be like… there are a lot of great ideas swirling around. I really want to make our live shows special and unique, and do some things differently that truly make it an unforgettable experience. As far as touring goes, that is all yet to be determined, but we’re totally open to it. GEMZ is such a brand new project that there is still so much being discovered and figured out at the moment!

7.) Ted, with the debut EP for GEMZ about to make a tremendous splash, should fans keep their eyes and ears peeled for a possible LP release from you and Jen in 2025?

Ted: Yes definitely! We’re both constantly writing songs and beats and have a bunch of other songs in the works. I’m excited for them because we approach each song with a relatively blank slate so we never know what we’ll end up with. It’s been fun because we keep surprising ourselves with the results!

8.) Jen, who are some of the musicians who have inspired you and Ted over the years?

Jen: This is such a great question but yet also such a difficult one … I started typing out a list and quickly it accumulated to over 30 artists! I tried to narrow it down to a few of my very favorites mixed with who I’ve been obsessing on more currently:

The Cure
Talk Talk
Tears for Fears
Joni Mitchell
Peter Gabriel
Slint
Billie Eilish
Fred Again
Ariana Grande
Nina Nesbitt
Tove Lo

Ted: 10 that come to mind in chronological order of influence – I don’t necessarily listen to these artists a ton presently (except for Bon Jovi because my wife likes blasting it as pump-up music in the mornings, but they have played an important part in shaping how I approach songwriting and production:

Bon Jovi
Enya
Everything But the Girl
Daft Punk
Aphex Twin
Prince
Joy Division
Brian Eno
LCD Soundsystem
Nils Frahm

9.) Ted, both you and Jen come to the GEMZ project with a ton of acclaimed solo work under your respective belts. Looking ahead, can fans expect more solo work from you two, intermingled with periodic releases from GEMZ?

Ted: I’m just really excited about what we can do with GEMZ at the moment so I’m not planning on releasing solo work right now, but I’m always writing stuff so I guess you never know! But yeah I’m just really stoked on finishing the GEMZ LP and planning out our live shows, taking it one step at a time and seeing how the path unfolds.

Jen: GEMZ is my main focus and priority right now, but I would be totally down to releasing some solo work again, when and if it’s meant to happen. I’ve always talked with Toddrick at Sonic Ritual about releasing some more solo-ish kind of songs again… We shall see, I’m just not into forcing anything… Everything needs to flow in a very natural and authentic way.

10.) Jen, at the end of the day what do you hope listeners walk away with after giving many-a-spin to the beautiful debut GEMZ EP See The Future?

Jen: First and foremost, I just hope our listeners feel LOVE. I hope they feel the love from within me through these songs, and I hope it reaches their hearts. I also hope that listeners will be able to soak in the energy of being empowered to love themselves more, heal from their past traumas and make brave choices which honor and respect themselves in healthier ways. It is never too late to change for the better… If I did it, so can you.

GEMZ socials:

Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/gemz_songs/

Jen Wood’s web/socials: Instagram / Facebook / Bandcamp

Ted Chen’s web/socials: Instagram

INTERVIEW: GEMZ

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