Aidann Gruwell is a 17-year-old San Fransisco native, producer, singer, and songwriter. They are also Amplify Sleepaway Camp alum and former Syryn Records intern.
In this Q&A, GRL Mag talks with Aidann about NFT’s, inspiration, pursuing music professionally, and surviving their junior year of high school.
Who are you?
I am Aidann Gruwell. My music was formally under the name Ant Digs but I don’t really like to talk about that. I think the Ant Digs project is dead forever, but I can never be completely certain. I am a producer, singer, songwriter. My pronouns are she/they. I came up with my most recent project idea about two years ago but never actually intended on doing it. I thought that it would be better, more comfortable to stick to the status quo. It’s pretty hard to define myself because I’m a different person from one day to the next and I think that’s pretty exciting. There are some things that won’t change though: I’m a San Francisco native, I hate being inauthentic, music is my life support. I am an artist in desperate need of a new stage name. I was pretty set on ‘ :/ ’ for a while there but most platforms don’t allow those characters for some reason. It’s a bummer, really. It would’ve been fun to see people argue over how to pronounce it, but now I’ve gotta go back to the drawing board.
How would you describe your music?
I would describe my new music as textural. I feel as if ever since I started using digital elements in my music it has become more abstract. I have made beats using film clips and sometimes I just go around the house finding random things to bang together and use that. I’ve recently gotten into coding different frequencies in order to create strictly digital samples. I like to show and not tell. My lyrics aren’t super obvious and can be interpreted in different ways. For a long time, I thought that electronic music and analog music lived separately but to me, computer music is just as valuable as rock music. I would describe the music I am currently making as electronic grunge. Sure, the instrumentation may be a little different than traditional grunge, but in my opinion, grunge is a mix of accessibility and emotional depth. My music is accessible in the way that anyone can open up something as limited as Garageband and sample random things together. I wish to show emotional depth by putting subject matter out there that many artists haven’t really touched on much. I just layer random stuff until I think it sounds good. I do admit that while I’m recording stuff I do sound a little insane but when I mix it all together it all just works. I want my music to portray the chaos of the mind. I don’t want my songs to be easy-listening. I guess that the best way to put it is that when people hear my stuff, I want it to feel like they are trapped in a boxing ring with the sound.
Who or what are your influences?
It would be impossible to cite all of my influences, but I’ll name some of the most important. Radiohead is my favorite band of all time. They don’t have a single song that I don’t like. Paranoid Android will always be my favorite song of all time but the Radiohead song that has had the biggest impact on my music is Idioteque. That was the first time that I had ever heard electronic music that made me feel just so emotional. I discovered Richard D. James in September. He’s better known as Aphex Twin. I know that it may seem cliche to say that his music changed my life, but when I first heard Xtal, the first track off of Selected Ambient Works I, I asked myself “Aidann, why are you still only doing analog?” With Aphex Twin came the influence of P.C. Music. If the track was produced by A.G. Cook, Danny L. Harle, or Sophie, then it has probably influenced my new music. The artist I relate to the most is probably Charli XCX, as she’s very involved in the business side of her music. Hyperpop is dope because it’s such an innovative judge-free subgenre that makes me feel safe.
Rappers are literally lyrical geniuses with amazing storytelling abilities and I don’t think they get enough credit for that. If I’m ever having writer’s block, I like to listen to rap and the words just flow. My favorites include Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, Lauryn Hill, etc…
I think I got my inspiration for sampling random stuff from Kurt Cobain’s Montage of Heck. I love St. Vincent. I wouldn’t say that I’m her biggest fan… but I kind of am. She perfectly marries analog and digital and I love her guitars. Björk is a literal goddess. I recently saw her Cornucopia show. If I ever go on tour and have a big enough budget, I want my staging to be as crazy as hers. I love anything theatrical. Arcade Fire is great at that. I’m literally inspired by so many people so I’m just gonna list off some more: Lady Pills, Kate Bush, The Postal Service, Sleater Kinney, Garbage, Nine Inch Nails, Guided by Voices, Veruca Salt, Captain Beefheart, Pink Floyd, Kraftwerk, The Caretaker, Beck, Fiona Apple, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Joy Division, MGMT, Smashing Pumpkins, The Pixies, etc…
But that’s just music. Books and movies inspire me too. Wes Anderson and A24 movies inspire me. I like body horror films and for some reason, so body horror themes always find their way into my music. It’s probably because of my rocky relationship with my own body and my fear of not being in control. My mental health is probably the thing I write about the most. World issues are a pretty big inspiration. I write about my life, other people’s lives, or whatever comes out in the moment.
When did music enter your life in a meaningful way?
I struggled with selective mutism when I was younger and though I can’t really remember that time in my life, I think music may have played a part in getting me out of that. I’ve been playing guitar since I was 8 and though I’ve always been singing, I started getting private instruction for that when I was 9. When I was 10, I believe that was the first time I had ever really started getting into the idea of commercial music. The first CD I ever purchased was Days Are Gone by Haim which I still think is an excellent record. I discovered Taylor Swift not long after and that was huge for me. I was obsessed with her and every day after school I would go through a cycle of binging her music videos and then learning her songs and then eventually trying to emulate her songwriting. I was like, I want to do that when I’m older.
That was great and all, but I’ve always been deeply emotional and the music I listened to didn’t really reflect what I felt inside until I was 13 when I discovered 90s alternative and grunge. I was obsessed with Kurt Cobain, The Smashing Pumpkins, Veruca Salt, Garbage, Hole, etc… I wanted to be this rocker chick and getting into that sort of scene made me feel so comfortable in my own skin that I stopped needing to go to therapy for a long time after that. Nowadays, it takes a little more than just music to mitigate the chemical imbalances in my brain, but still, music is my safe haven.
How did the San Francisco Rock Project help advance your craft?
Rock Project is definitely a one-of-a-kind program. Especially being a part of their house band, I’ve gotten so comfortable with doing performances that I barely even get performance nerves anymore. Due to the frequency of shows pre-pandemic, I’ve gotten pretty efficient at learning songs in short amounts of time, even minutes before going on stage. The instructors encourage learning songs by ear so now I rarely have to rely on sheet music and can instead transcribe songs myself. They also have an amazing original songwriting ensemble that gave me the confidence to create more complex musical arrangements. My favorite thing about the program is probably the fact that all of the instructors and alumni are so involved in the local music scene. Mainstream stuff is cool, but San Francisco Rock Project has really opened me up to a whole world of underground music that I am eager to engage in and support.
What did you learn interning for the Girls Rock label, Syryn Records?
While interning at Syryn Records, I led public relations and secured promotional opportunities for both the artists and the label itself. I learned how to communicate with my colleagues and our artists and how to use my network to find opportunities. The experience sparked my fascination with the business and entrepreneurial side of music, and it gave me skills that I will hopefully use for the rest of my life. I learned that for every opportunity I secured, I would also receive ten times the number of rejections. Some platforms never responded at all which taught me patience and perseverance. I learned from trial and error the best way in which to approach journalists, music curators, and radio stations in order to assure the highest chance of a positive outcome. Sometimes when an artist received an opportunity, they would pass on it because they believed that it didn’t match their preferred journey as an artist. Though somewhat disheartening, it was a reminder that musical artists are people and not malleable products. The most rewarding part was the joy that could be felt in artists’ excitement-filled emails when responding to me telling them about an opportunity I was able to book for them.
What was it like studying for a summer at Berklee College of Music?
Studying at Berklee was honestly wild. You get there with a mix of excitement and nerves. As you settle into the chaos, you’re overwhelmed by how kind and supportive everyone around you is. Then classes start and you start to think ‘Hey, I’m not as good as I thought I was.’ It makes sense since it’s a program that gathers amazing musicians from all over the world. You may be the best from your hometown, but at Berklee, you feel pretty average in the beginning. I felt a whole lot of imposter syndrome when I realized that a lot of the people around me were already signed to labels or had been on TV singing competitions. It was a major ego check for most people, but once you stop caring about that, you become more focused on taking in the whole experience. I made many lifelong friends while in the program. The professors were also insane with so much industry experience. My vocal coach at the program taught Ella Boissonnault of Lady Pills, which is a band that I’d been obsessed with for years. The Berklee 5-week program is definitely not a leisure camp. It doesn’t matter how good you are going into it because if you don’t put the work in while you’re there, you’re certainly not gonna get a whole lot out of it. I ended the program with all As which felt pretty great. The most valuable thing I got out of the program was probably the fact that your instructors help you realize your biggest strengths and encourage you to lean into them. By the end of it all, you realize that nobody is better or worse and that we’re all just different. As cheesy as it sounds, Berklee teaches people that everyone’s special.
Tell us about your aspiration to make an NFT album! Where did you get that idea and why is it important to you?
Over Christmas break, I overheard my brother and my cousin talking about how dumb they thought NFTs were… and that was my inspiration! I’m being completely serious. I had only just heard about the concept and I was instantly intrigued. I had already been working on an experimental music project but wasn’t too keen on the idea of releasing it through major streaming services. Throughout the pandemic, I got really into the local bay area music scene and was shocked to see so many artists needing to pick up side hustles in order to get by. Many of these artists, though having a decent amount of monthly listeners on Spotify, would share their struggles online. They were used to making most of their money from live performances, and those were now out of the picture. Many crises are unpredictable, so I knew that there just had to be a better way. I did some research into the NFT market and realized that there was a small group of music NFT creators. Snoop Dogg had done it, Kate Bush had done it, and now, I wanted to do it.
I’m only 17, and I recently came to the realization that since I’m not in a position where I’m making music for a living, I can experiment with certain things that would be considered risky to the professional musician. I want to see what can potentially come out of a sort of alternative form of music distribution that’s artsy, entrepreneurial, and innovative at the same time. When I tell people about the whole NFT idea, the ones who are into tech like me are pretty intrigued. Others laugh, but that’s okay. Life’s too short to only live by the status quo, and virtually all new ideas receive ridicule. I’ve considered the cons and know that many aren’t fans of Bitcoin due to its carbon footprint. This is a totally valid criticism. I’m a vegetarian and believe that protecting the environment should be humanity’s #1 priority. I also know that the concept of cryptocurrency is relatively new and I have faith that as time goes on, with green energy becoming more prominent, bitcoin will likely become more environmentally friendly. Bitcoin is far from perfect, and the environmental impact is definitely something we should keep talking about in order to influence change in the field. I hope to donate most of what I may earn to charities because my goal isn’t to make money, but to experiment and to maybe inspire other artists to ditch traditional streaming. Besides, there aren’t many women involved in crypto so it would be cool to inspire people to try it out.
What are you listening to right now?
I am currently listening to a lot of the artists who performed at this year’s Super Bowl because they are all legendary. I’ve been listening to The Smile, a relatively new band featuring Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead. I finally got into Carly Rae Jepsen’s Emotion and it’s probably one of the most cohesive pop albums I’ve ever heard, and there’s nothing I love more than a cohesive album. I literally just discovered Yeule, and man, I’ve been missing out. Their new album Glitch Princess is just so good, and it’s got this vulnerable sound that feels pretty close to what I’ve been trying to incorporate into my new project for a while now. The new Lady Pills album has been on my radar too.
What’s next for you?
Well, I’ve gotta get through Junior year and maintain good grades because I am still a kid after all. Other than that, I’m trying to complete this album and I am eager to get it out there. I want to do more solo performances in the future. At the time of my writing this, I have just been accepted into a summer intensive at NYU’s Tisch which is pretty exciting. I can’t wait to soak in all of that. Through it all, my mental health will always be a priority as it is the foundation for everything in my life.