Come “Free of Expectation” to The Landing

Before you come out this Friday night to Littlefield in Brooklyn, let us introduce you to The Landing. In honor of How To Be Strange, digitally released today, we picked the brain of The Landing. In an open interview we learned what inspires his musical message and how he truly feels about “Anxieties.”

How did you decide to create The Landing as your stage persona?
The Landing: The Landing isn’t bound to being a person or a band that people can be fans of; it’s an idea or a point of view that we can all share and participate in. If the real goal is to convey a message, then all superfluous elements, all distractions from that message can be kept hidden. If you only know the persona and not the person behind the project, you’re left only to connect with the ideas within the music.
 
How did you come up with the concept of Space Pop as your genre of music (I believe the name is taken from the  50’ & 60’s) can you elaborate? Did you strive to create something unique or did your classical music background organically lead you to this genre?
The Landing: I wouldn’t describe the sound as classical mixed with EDM. When you use names/genres that people already have preconceived ideas about to describe your music, you’re judged by how well you fit that mold. “Space-pop” leaves people free of expectation, but I believe also gives an accurate representation of what I’m trying to do. Yes, my classical background seeps in. Yes, my generational background has me adopting qualities of EDM. In doing a project based around the Universe, space exploration, futurism, and optimism it’s hard not to be influenced by the “Space-age Pop” of the 50s and 60s when composers were reacting to the world around them at the height of the space race. Jazz, latin, and calypso influence, chord extensions and ideas about orchestration all organically made their way from this era of composition into mine.
 
What is the experience of scoring a film like? Do you prefer it to performing live or writing for an album, such as your sophomore EP, How To Be Strange released today ?
The Landing: In scoring for film you learn all about knowing when to hide, be transparent. Your sole purpose is to make a scene better, make the film better, and most of the time that means restraint. You can imagine how performing live is on the opposite end of this spectrum so it would be of little use to compare them, but I enjoy them both for very different reasons.

What does it mean to be voted NYC best Indie pop artist last year? Congratulations by the way!
The Landing: So there’s a little bit of confusion here with how Deli Mag run’s their “Best of” so let me try and clarify before there’s trouble. I did win the Best of Indie Pop 2014 in the “Open Submission Results” and the Best of Electronic 2014 in the “Readers Poll” and was placed #26 of Best Emerging Artists 2015… all of which doesn’t really mean anything, but is very flattering non the less. I was up against some amazing artists like Hey Anna in the Indie Pop category and GRUMBY in the Electronic category, trying to rank us in any kind of order is obviously a little disingenuous but the idea is really just to try and get fans engaged and aware of some of this amazing NYC talent which I’m all for so I’m extremely grateful for The Deli’s efforts.
 
I really enjoyed watching & listening to the “Anxieties” track (off the new . My first impression was that the visual (dark/grungy and harsher) and melody (airy, flow) contradicted. Then I realized that the juxtaposition of the lyrics and video actually blended really well and completely illustrated your message. Can you explain the concept of the video, and what the song means to you?
The Landing: First, thank you for taking the time to contemplate the message behind the song/video and how it affected you, that kind of attentiveness is all an artist can really ask for from a listener. For me, the song is an effort to get to a place, a point of view, where having anxiety about anything seems trivial. When you’re the remnants of an exploding star, given millions of peaceful years to slowly evolve into the cognizant entity you are today, do you really have anything in your life worth worrying about? Does that person who didn’t call you back, or that job you didn’t get really matter? It took 14 billions years to get to this moment, and you only have about 80 or so if you’re lucky, don’t waste a another moment, enjoy the ride!