acloudyskye specializes in the larger-than-life. The independent singer-songwriter and producer, real name Skye Kothari, has become one of the most exciting artists in the wider online music community with his colossal fusions of EDM and post-rock. Kothari’s self-made artwork and extensive lore with characters Enth, Ila, and Izi turn his albums into immersive multimedia experiences, with his incredible new record This Won’t Be The Last Time being no exception.
I had the opportunity to chat with Skye about the process of making This Won’t Be The Last Time, what makes it so different from his past albums, and how he approaches the fictional world that he’s created.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity purposes.
Photos courtesy of acloudyskye
Interviewed by Ethan Kung
Ethan Kung: So it’s been a few months now since This Won’t Be The Last Time came out. First of all, congratulations! I know I’m absolutely in love with it, I think it’s a top 5 album of the year for me.
Skye Kothari: Thank you, I appreciate it.
Ethan: Second of all, how have you been feeling about the reception to it so far?
Skye: The reception has been amazing! It’s the most positive response I’ve seen from the people who regularly listen to my music. On There Must Be Something Here, which was my last album, a lot more new people got exposed to my music, and I think those people really enjoyed that album. But there were a lot of my core fans who weren’t as huge on it because it was a bit of a departure in sound from my previous stuff.
So I remember feeling when that album came out that I could have done a better job at balancing those two things. I felt like the reception wasn’t exactly what I wanted it to be. But this time around, it’s been much more than I could have asked for – I think people really resonate with it, and seeing the response online has just been absolutely wonderful.
Ethan: Going back to your point about the last album introducing you to a lot of people, that’s certainly how it was for me! But with This Won’t Be The Last Time, I’ve really fallen in love. I think you achieved your goal of trying to balance your EDM influences, your rock influences, and everything that’s orbiting those things. It’s probably the best example of that in your entire discography!
Skye: That means a lot to hear! That’s something I’ve been going after for a long time. I feel like it was working on this album where I learned a lot in terms of how to achieve that sound, so it definitely made me feel very happy to see that other people felt the same way. Yeah – super, super validating.
Ethan: What do you think was the secret ingredient to putting all those pieces together?
Skye: That’s honestly a really good question, because I just said, “Oh, I really figured it out!” But if I had to put it into words… it’s hard. One thing that I tried to make sure of when I was working on this album was that I didn’t want to be super mathematical about things. The two albums that I struggled with the hardest were There Must Be Something Here and What Do You Want! I will say that I’ve struggled with all of my past albums for different reasons, but on those two albums, I was super crazy about having ornamental details in songs. I would come up with something that would lay the foundation for the whole track, and while I was doing that, I would just keep thinking, “This needs a bell here, a whistle there…!” There’s times on those albums where there’s a whole layer that just plays one note, one time during a song, and I was thinking, “You know what? This feels like a really weird way to be making a song!” It’s very slow to do, and I feel like it was holding my songwriting back.
So on this album, I tried to get out of that. Because There Must Be Something Here was a much more guitar focused album, I went straight to the guitar again and just tried to record voice memos of me playing. I remember there was this one day, not too long after putting out that album, where I wrote like 10 different song ideas in a day and was like, “Okay, I’m going to choose a couple of these to turn into actual tracks – the ones with the strongest progressions.” That was the big thing that I wanted to focus on – the base progression of a song has to be able to carry it all the way through, without any extra stuff. So a lot of the production on This Won’t Be The Last Time is super simple and straight to the point.
I think that really let me focus on other parts of songwriting, lyrics, and vocal production that I wasn’t letting myself do because I was spending all my time on these tiny details that no one was gonna notice. So yeah, I feel like the big thing for me was that I needed to look at the bigger picture and get out of that mathematical approach of making music.
Ethan: Well, I think you definitely succeeded in that regard. This is probably your poppiest album so far, it’s super straight to the point. But I also think that there’s such joy in your past albums with their lengthy build-ups that, as you said, are very mathematical and planned out. I do feel like on this album, there’s much more of a focus on your vocals and less of an EDM influence overall. Is that a fair assessment?
Skye: Yeah, I would say that’s a fair assessment. I think the way I approach mixing drums and stuff is still very EDM-pilled, for lack of a better term. But because I had more time, I was really able to focus more on my vocals and lyrics – I learned so much about my voice on the last album that I was actually able to apply here. This was the album where I felt the most confident about my vocals, so they’re mixed louder and they’re more present.
I also learned a lot about vocal mixing, so I think that not only am I singing better on this album, but the way the vocals are processed is much cleaner than on stuff I’ve done in the past. I felt that if I was going to write more straightforward and to the point songs, then I would need to make sure that the elements that I did put in, especially vocally, were hitting the way I wanted them to. I wasn’t going to be able to bury them in the mix – there just isn’t enough in the mix for me to get away with that!
Ethan: Not enough one-note wind chimes to protect them?
Skye: No, not enough wind chimes. No flutes that play once!
Ethan: Well, going back to the EDM pill, I think it’s not completely absent or anything. Like “Home” for example, with its super crunchy drums! I feel like that’s absolutely a…
Skye: A crowd pleaser!
Ethan: Yeah, a crowd pleaser! Because This Won’t Be The Last Time is so indie rock centric, but “Home” totally harkens back to your older albums. And I read an interview from a while back where you said that you started off making EDM, and then you would switch between it and indie rock for each album. But this record and There Must Be Something Here are sort of continuations on the same idea – it feels less like the pendulum swinging away and more so like it’s swinging even further in this direction.
Skye: Honestly, for the past couple of albums, I’ve thought, “Okay, this is going to be the crazy electronic album – super noisy and super industrial. The whole concept for the album is going to be the noisiest industrial album that I could make!” Then I’d be working on it and feeling like it’s not “me.” I think that even if I make it to the vision that I have in mind, I don’t think it’s going to be enjoyable for a lot of other people. So I’ve realized that when it comes to songwriting, I should just focus on the things that I’m going to enjoy making the most!
When I was getting into EDM and I made some of my earlier albums, that was a new thing for me. There was a lot to explore and a lot for me to figure out about my taste. I don’t think I’ve nearly explored everything that I can do in EDM, but again, the whole mindset I’ve been in recently is just making stuff that’s straightforward to me. I want to make songs that write themselves in my mind. But sometimes with songs like “Home,” that did lend itself to being the final moment on the album. Because what’s more grand than a melodic dubstep EDM drop with those big ass drums? So there are moments like that where I’m going to do something really EDM, but the way that I write songs the fastest is always just over a guitar chord progression. That’s honestly how I’ve always written non-EDM stuff, and that’s always the stuff that comes the quickest to me.
Ethan: Well, something that’s really impressive to me with This Won’t Be The Last Time and the evolution you underwent is how quick the turnaround was between it and There Must Be Something Here. It was one year! That’s one of the shortest gaps in your entire discography, which always has short gaps! Was that really just a lot of inspiration coming at the right time?
Skye: I would say it was inspiration, but part of it was pressure, because as I mentioned earlier, the response to There Must Be Something Here wasn’t everything that I was hoping it to be. I figured out that there was stuff on that project that I would want to do differently even a month or two after it came out. So I just felt like I had to strike while the iron was hot – I didn’t want to let that album simmer for too long, because I really felt like I could do something similar to it, but even more exciting.
Every time I put out an album, I’m like, “Oh you know, I’m gonna take a break. I’m gonna relax.” And I kind of had that for a bit with the last album, but then I just felt like I needed to make something. I needed to really prove to myself and to other people that I can do this. It’s weird, because that pressure wasn’t a positive pressure – it’s not the kind of thing you typically want to have in mind when you’re working on an album. But it did force me to think of ways that I can make songs faster, and the songs that I make faster will be better than the songs that I work way too long on. There’s this phenomenon that happens sometimes where an artist spends a day on a song and it ends up being either their most streamed song or the song they like the most, and I was trying to do that for every song on the album! So if I came up with an idea and I wasn’t immediately loving it, I’d toss it away and wouldn’t come back to it.
Ethan: You’re not much older than me, right? You’re 20-something…?
Skye: I’m 24 now, yeah.
Ethan: Well I literally just turned 22, so I don’t know how you do it! You’ve released five albums in the past six years, all of which are great and are doing a different thing or telling a different story. How do you balance all of that and the life that comes with it while also being a young adult going through college and work too?
Skye: I went into college doing computer science. That was the thing that I thought I was going to do, because I liked making games on my own. When I was in high school, I co-taught one of our game design classes because the teacher saw me making my own stuff. He was like, “Do you want to be the assistant teacher and help students?” And I was like, “Hell yes, that’s awesome!” So I really thought for a while that I would do music on the side, and computer science and game design would be my main thing.
But then college came around and I went to Northeastern. So their computer science program is really… well, they try to weed you out. And I gotta say, they weeded me the fuck out! *laughs* I think it’s a good CS program, but I really did not enjoy what I was doing. It didn’t feel like I was creating stuff that was meaningful to me at all, and I felt like if that was the future for me, I was going to have such a bad time. So I ended up switching into media arts, where I was mainly doing animation, and that ended up letting me have a lot more time to work on music. The music video that I did for “Team” on the last album was basically the capstone project for my major, and it was really cool to be able to work on a music related thing for one of my classes.
Now that I’ve graduated, I’m still job searching, and I’m in New York City. It’s expensive as hell here! So if I want to live here and have a comfortable life, I either need to get famous as hell right now or I need to find another job to do music on the side. Balancing between that, I’ve come to the conclusion that whatever I do in the future, music is going to be a permanent part of it.
Even if I’m working a full-time job, the moment that I get home, I’m probably going to open up Ableton and start working on something, because it’s what I grew up doing. It’s vital to the way I live, so balancing that and social life… I mean, I do a lot of social stuff that’s music related. I’ll DJ places, I’ll meet my friends at shows they’re doing, and I’ll invite my friends to my shows too. So not every aspect of my life is music related, but because I’m so ingrained in the music scene of the city, it’s hard to stay away from it. I just end up living and breathing music at all times.
Ethan: This purely out of curiosity, but going back to the music video for “Team,” what was your grade on that?
Skye: Oh, I don’t remember. My university gave me an award for it! We also had to do a write-up for it, so that music video ended up in this tiny student art gallery at Northeastern. It was on one of the screens there, which is really cool. But yeah, I think I got a 98 or a 100?
Ethan: I would hope so!
Skye: I would hope so too! I put my ass into that shit, so I hope I got a good grade on it. But I wasn’t caring about grades at that point – I needed it to be good and also to come out within the time frame that I was rolling out the album. Which was really weird, but it ended up working out!
Ethan: Well, your visual art has always intersected with your lyrics and lore, and I think that This Won’t Be The Last Time synthesizes all of those things really well. When you’re going into an album rollout, how do you work out the visual language of the album and how it’s going to tie into the lyrics or stories?
Skye: For this album, the lyrics are less tied to the whole “world.” On There Must Be Something Here, literally all of the lyrics are in-world. The characters are thinking these things, they’re saying these things, or we’re talking about another character saying these things. So in a certain way, There Must Be Something Here was my least personal album, and this one is my… well, I wouldn’t say it’s my most personal. But the lyrics are much more entwined with stuff that’s happening in my life, as opposed to stuff that’s happening within the world of the album.
It’s mainly the themes of the songs that connect to the world building this time. There’s a lot of mentions of home on this album, and I knew early on that was going to be a theme. With There Must Be Something Here, I felt like I didn’t know what the future was going to hold for me, so everything was sort of misty, and with the cover art, you can’t see anything but the mist. But now I feel like the skies have opened up – I’m back in the city, I’m back at home, and the characters are also on their journey going home.
Another big thing is that I have these images of art that I just stare at while I’m working on songs. That helps tie everything together because while I’m working on a song and listening to it, I’m thinking, “does this song sound like the cover art?” And if it doesn’t, then I need to change something.
Ethan: I’m glad to hear that your overarching story and characters aren’t completely gone. As you were making the album, what did you imagine as Enth, Ila, and Izi’s story this time around?
Skye: Have you watched the little YouTube animated short things that I did?
Ethan: Yeah, I watched the most recent one where they climbed the tower!
Skye: So the whole journey is them coming back from the ruins excursion that happened during the “Team” music video and then going to Ila’s house. It’s the house that’s on the album cover, and that’s where they’re living currently. I was thinking, “Okay, this album is going to be personal stuff that I relate to,” but I was also thinking about where the characters are situated in their world at this moment. I imagine all the songs being like slices of their lives over time and the different adventures that they’ll go on. They’ll leave home, go somewhere, stuff will happen, they’ll come back… I see each song as its own departure. I guess that’s the thing that made the most sense to me while sequencing the album – that it’s all just the thoughts that the characters are having on their journeys.
Ethan: Although these are fictional characters that you’ve developed, they obviously have parts of yourself and your personality embedded in them. How do you think that the characters and worlds that you make reflect on you?
Skye: That’s a really good question! *laughs* I honestly haven’t thought about that, because I don’t think too much about how people seeing my characters might affect their interpretations of who I am. I think Enth is definitely a character who I project a lot of my worst fears on. They’re kind of giving, “you make an original character and then you put all of your trauma on them.” Enth is my little creature that I throw all of that onto! Ila is more so the embodiment of different friends that I’ve had, and Izi is sort of like… I guess that there’s the people in your immediate circle and how they interact with you, and then there’s the people who are outside of that. I feel like it’s interesting to analyze how all of those circles interact with each other.
Ethan: To wrap up here, what do you think is going to be the future of acloudyskye?
Skye: I’m working on some music right now that I’m really excited about, but it won’t be finished for a little bit. I want to do a lot more live shows, but performing live is like, honestly terrifying for me sometimes. I realized that I enjoy DJing a lot more than I do performing my songs live and singing with a guitar in front of a lot of people. With a DJ, you’re not always looking at the DJ – it’s more about the music that they’re playing. But when you’re playing your own music live, there’s people trying to connect with you and not necessarily the music itself. But I do want to overcome that fear, because I think that I make music that sounds like it should be played live, y’know? So that’s one thing.
Honestly, in terms of what I really want to see happen in the future, I just want to release more music! That’s all I want to do at this current moment, I just want to keep putting stuff out. I also want to do more animations of the characters – I’ve kind of been slacking on that since I was putting everything into working on this album. I just didn’t have as much time to put effort into another animated short or music video, but I definitely want to do more of that stuff… hopefully soon!
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