Mustard had the pleasure of speaking with Giselle, or better known on the internet, as 37735i6. Together we discussed their relationship with music, their radio show, nature, and so much more!
1. Mustard is thankful to have you join them at Music Shelf. How are you doing today?
Hi 🙂 I’m doing just fine as I write this! Thanks Mustard! I love your character!
2. Mustard wonders what your relationship with music was growing up.
As a toddler, I was totally enamored with two artists: Whitney Houston and Selena Quintanilla. My parents and tape-based technology were a big influence in facilitating this love; I could barely speak yet I would RUN to start the portable cassette recorder when Whitney Houston songs aired on the radio. There are also plenty of home videos of me performing Selena songs in the living room hahaha.
My clearest childhood memory is this ritual I had where I would come home from school and lay on the ground with the boombox singing along to, from beginning to end, Britney Spears’ “…Baby One More Time” EVERY DAY. Once I got my own CD player, I “stole” the family Enya CD (Shepherd Moons) and listened to it before sleep every night 😴. I also took “Jagged Little Pill” by Alanis Morissette to play out loud on my PC speakers while I played Neopets and when I wanted to watch the Windows Media Player screensaver dance…. I thought her voice and instrumentation was the absolute PEAK of cool. And as an adult I can relate to the lyrical content much more hahaha. What really changed my life was when we got cable TV in 2004/5ish and I got into the habit of waking up early on Saturday mornings to watch the top music videos of the week on vh1. FINALLY my perpetual dreaming was validated by this exquisite art form hahaha; I still think about performing in a set like Coldplay’s “Speed of Sound” video!
Well then came the age of the iPod, when I really started to distinguish what I liked… : cheesy major record label rock like Avril Lavigne, Evanescence, Linkin Park, Blink-182 and the offshoot bands (+44, Boxcar Racer, Angels & Airwaves), The Killers, and Fall Out Boy lollll.
Looking back makes it easy to see and cherish these details about my childhood that continually motivate me to advance my taste and stylistic choices as I mature as an artist :’)
As far as playing music, I began taking viola lessons at the public school when they were offered to students, but I quit because I didn’t like the idea of graded and punishable practice expectations! Yeeeeeaarsssss passed before I picked up the strings again, this time an acoustic guitar in 2016 and the rest is new life! And now I practice whenever I want and because I love it 😇
3. You’ve got one of the most creative artist names, 37735i6. Is there a deeper meaning behind your name? Do these numbers represent something within the digital audio software used within your music?
Thank you – I always wonder what the external impression of my artist name is! The origin story is kind of funny: I was messing around on the calculator during algebra class and ended up typing my name as “3773516” in an attempt to transcend the comedy of “07734” and “58008” ;). I chose this stylistic name as a sort of alias, to be honest. It is pronounced just how I introduce myself and go as: Giselle 🙂
4. Who (or what) influences you?
So many things, my brain never shuts off 😪. This really is my personal challenge in life, though, and I have learned to love my broad thinking as I find ways to control inputs and outputs. To narrow my interests down for this answer, I’ll say reading philosophy and poetry definitely sparks my songwriting.
The most profound philosophers, to me, include Henri Bergson, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. I go to them when I need peace and a greater method to clean up my own ideas as I go about the world.
Poetry by the very decadent Charles Baudelaire is the inspirational king of my lyric writing process hahaha I like to listen to unintelligible music, like Liz Fraser’s singing in “Those Eyes,That Mouth,” and experiment with words like a maniac until I find sentences and meanings that sound particular to my form of beauty.
Poets who utilize passionate frameworks in their writing totally enchant me; Rainer Maria Rilke and 19th Century American poets including Emily Dickinson, Lizette Woodworth Reese, and Henry David Thoreau are especially dear to me! I completely relate to the very common human experience of clarifying the self by asking big questions too hard to answer, understanding the depth of sorrow, and finding hopeful resolution through the love of and artistic dependence on beautiful natural environments.
Missing from this little rambling about philosophy and poetry is my love of science and history. Time spent reading (or watching videos!) about universal and historical processes helps me see various properties and procedures as familiar shapes and interconnected relationships. This way of seeing and organizing problems supports my thinking as I design, because it’s a good reminder to try multiple approaches again and again while still keeping faith that there is a clear direction to follow.
Researching, reading, and writing helps relax my mind because it’s the time I give myself to organize thoughts that could last years. I’ll start building guitar around words once I have a plump matrix of information and an emotionally charged idea 🙂
5. What is your creative process?
So I tried to lead into this question with my previous answer because I really could spend forever talking about my creative process. I don’t believe it ever ends, even after I release something… that is when I especially feel the need to “keep it moving.”
My pattern usually begins by identifying and engaging with an intense problem, typically within me, and then following it as it lures me over a mountain. Spending time with Henri Bergson introduced me to the ideas of “creative evolution” and “mind-energy,” two ideas about intuitive knowledge that I have adopted as a daily practice. With the understanding that I have some control of what feeds into me and accomplishing things takes time, I intentionally organize my life to balance my energetic tendencies as I work towards the creative goals I set for myself. I do my best to build up my devotion and focus by warming-up and cooling-down from rigorous thinking, meditating throughout the day, and writing through everything. This helps me build the trust I utilize to keep going with myself during practice and work time… times when it’s necessary to be totally present yet thinking about many things at once. I mentioned the mountain before, it’s where I typically see myself sporting when I’m passing through ideas.
6. Last. FM is described as your ultimate form within your linktree. How does your Last.FM profile represent you?
My Last.FM, despite being a double scrobbler, is my beloved data tracker and librarian ❤ It’s nice to reflect on what I’m into over time. I really don’t listen to streaming service music as much as I used to these days but I will reach out to the apps when I need instant sound and when I have a block of dedicated time for listening to a certain piece of music. I correlate this behavior as little indications of my true desires since I’m following some satisfactory pathway my mind has set up for my body hahaha.
When I research music, I am much more abrupt and erratic with listening – I’m crazy, scanning tags and sneaking around people’s collections all over the internet to quickly decide what I want to get into during a full listen at a later time.
7. You host a monthly radio show on Moon Glow Radio called “BRIGHTER / SHINE.” For those who have not tuned in yet, how would you describe your radio program? How can humans listen to your show?
My radio show is the prepared version of my Last.FM habits. I have a description for this show that needs to be updated, but I think I have stayed pretty true to playing experimental pop music, dreamy rock, ambient of all kinds …. anything I want to give more attention to and share with other people. Lately I have been listening to Malibu’s new and archived United in Flames episodes which inspires me to practice producing while curating sets…. like a REAL ambient trance DJ hahaha.
BRIGHTER / SHINE airs every third Sunday of the month at 2 PM pacific standard time on moonglowradio.net! The archived versions are available on Mixcloud. I will always update my linktree with the most recent information!
8. Your Instagram (and album art) features lush photos of nature. Could you describe your relationship with nature? Do you have a favorite place to go? What are some ways human can better bond with nature and their surroundings?
Visualization of place is extremely important to my creative process. I like to escape!! And I admit I get wayyyy too lost in my own head so I have to balance those magnetic tendencies with a good relationship to nature. I really believe you can find beauty wherever you are – and the best dynamics for this practice are when the conditions are the harshest!! So this leads me to confess I don’t really have a favorite place…
I have a favorite feeling: when I am choosing beauty as the primary sense and experience. Most of my pictures are taken when I go running. Sometimes I will plan my routes around what I want to see that day; blooming trees, hot pink sunset, shade, flowers, water, birds… and other times I’ll just hope for a surprise, like finding solar glares and halos, unique cloud/light/color formations, moss, leaves, decaying plants, approaching storms, planets, moons, and stars 🙂
9. What are some of your favorite sounds? How do you decide to include these sounds within your music? Are there sounds that you dislike?
I try to keep my thinking simple; I categorize sounds by one dichotomy: soft or harsh, and I love soft sounds the most. I first decided I wanted to explore soft sounds when I was starting out with my first electric guitar experimenting with songs on my lovely large vintage 1977 amp. Formerly a punk megastar, its rebellious tone was rehomed by me and adopted by my airy voice. I got a looper pedal and a delay/reverb pedal to use exclusively on the mic pretty soon after that.
Weightless in love is how I would describe the feeling of looping and delaying my soft voice over the fuzzy, distorted sound of the fully reverbed amplified guitar – I continue to blush!!! For my first EP, I tried to articulate what I loved about the spaces I was playing in at the time and I continued exploring that for a bit until I got curious about recording with a proper audio interface. WOE TO ME ON THAT DAY hahaha. ILY but you gave me the only sound I don’t like: when my voice and guitar are not at the balanced frequency of a heavenly ensemble!!!!
Now that I have had a few years of gracefully easing into the transition from bedroom musician to computer musician, I feel much better about my methods of getting into that ethereal space again and again.
10. What is next for Giselle/37735i6?
I want to be open to whatever is next for me! I have some plans to keep releasing music and working on my creative methods, but I am more concerned about keeping myself faithfully free for new challenges as I flow deeper into my artistry. With all my wishes, I hope I’ll get to go on tour or do some work around and outside of the US sometime in the next few years 🙂 This dream feels huge yet so within my potential, and I am grateful “I’m not there yet” because it is important to me to get better and better at what I do xoxo
11. Where can readers listen to your music?
I am on all streaming services! Please do follow me on social media to keep up with my secret youtube uploads while I prepare music to be published under 37735i6! Check out my latest release, a track called “cryonics,” ! ♡‧₊˚
Music Shelf With Mustard 