Interview: Marc Anthony Figueras Discusses His New Single "Wash Out" and Growth As An Artist
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DCWS recently chatted it up with singer-songwriter and producer Marc Anthony Figueras about his recently released single “Wash Out” featuring Majesty Rose, his debut album An Introduction, and more. Check out our conversation below.
You recently dropped a single off your upcoming album An Introduction titled “Wash Out” featuring Majesty Rose. How did you go about creating it?
As far as the songwriting process, it was probably the last song on the album that I wrote. Production wise, I did the composing and everything myself. And the girl that's featured on it, Majesty Rose, who was on American Idol a couple years ago out of Goldsboro. She wrote her own melody, and lyrics, and everything. It was a really good experience, and I'm lucky that she went ahead and helped me with it.
You have two other projects. They’re titled Blue EP and How Things Have Changed. How do feel your music have grown since releasing them?
I can say it's definitely grown. Because I went ahead and learned how to engineer, mix, master, all of that on my own. So I can work the music from start to finish, completely from scratch. Pretty much it has sounded a lot better. I still love the Blue EP, it's very close to me. But production wise I feel like this album is light years ahead of the Blue EP.
There are many different sounds found in your music. For example, you approach An Introduction cuts “Wash Out,” “Speak,” and “Ever” from very different angles? How do you go about production?
I like to think of my songwriting process as paying tribute almost, to all the musicians artists and filmmakers that I really look up to. As far as the music goes, it's about what I grew up listening to. Like “Ever,” I kind of felt like there was a little bit of influence from Childish Gambino’s last album. Not his new one, which is amazing. But his last one Because The Internet. And then “Speak” has influence from neo-soul like Bilal and D’Angelo a little bit. And then “Wash Out” is really like a lo-fi, old school, kind of pop. I don't know how to describe it, synthpop. It's really just paying tribute to all the stuff I grew up listening to, and basically saying these are my influences and this is how they've influenced my life experience.
You're about a week away from releasing your album An Introduction, what do you want people to take away from it?
An Introduction is a literal introduction to my life, and everything that has happened to me so far. Except it's super impressionist, I want it to be relatable and applicable to a lot of people's lives. So they could see that no matter how different our experiences are that we all kind of have commonalities through all of it. And we kind of all grow the same way, we kind of all break the same way.
What made you start taking music seriously?
I started with music really early on since I was a little kid. I had a really vivid dream when I was about 9 that I'd be playing for thousands of people. But I think I really started taking it seriously when I was 15 or 16. I felt like I was seeing a lot of artists that were doing what they loved. Putting the work in, and things were actually working out, and it wasn't completely a shot in the dark. That was encouraging, even though it still kind of is. I guess I didn't really start taking it seriously until like 15 or 16, where I was writing seriously with a couple of my friends, and going and performing at different places.
Since your album is titled An Introduction, I wanted to ask what artists you would like to introduce the album, in an ideal world of course.
It's nice to dream every once in awhile. Pharrell Williams because I love his production work, and I think he has a really awesome way of looking at music. Frank Ocean, who’s another big influence of mine. And then Kimbra. I've been a huge fan of her for many years now.
The other An Introduction tracks mentioned in the interview are available on BandCamp after pre-ordering the album here.
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