We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Neil Koons. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Neil below.

Alright, Neil thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Do you feel you or your work has ever been misunderstood or mischaracterized? If so, tell us the story and how/why it happened and if there are any interesting learnings or insights you took from the experience?

Yeah I’ve felt that way before. To start with, my music is fairly experimental and my own style, so I’ve had some people tell me before they didn’t really understand the music, or they couldn’t dance to it or whatever. That was more maybe 5 years ago than now. On a personal level, I’ve definitely felt misunderstood in more ways than just that. Part of it is I’ve had pretty serious mental health problems in the past. Since part of the art for me is the healing power of it, I want to be able to talk about that side of things. But its not always easy I guess to know what people are okay with hearing, sort of. There’s societal stigma about things like mental health, and bringing it up might give people the wrong idea. But since it’s such an important part of my creative works, the healing journey, I think it’s important for me to talk about. Feeling isolated and like an outcast is worse for mental health than anything. And music and art are about community, after all.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am an independent music producer / DJ and visual producer / VJ living in the Los Angeles area. My name’s Neil, as an artist I go by “the zlorngler”. I produce wonky electronic music that genre-wise is halfway between LA experimental hip-hop beats and west coast bass music. And the visuals match the vibe, they’re far-out, otherworldly, psychedelic. I also teach 1-on-1 music production lessons on the software Ableton Live online, and sometimes do commissioned music video production for customers.

I create and perform because I love to do so. Beyond just being something I find interesting and love to do, it’s helped me find more purpose and meaning to life. While the beats and visuals are all very abstract, I do channel my life and problems into the art, like most artists do I think. It’s trippy making an album for my own catharsis and healing, for instance, like my album “what black hole?” which I dropped last year with Beat Cinema. It’s sorta like creating art for that purpose pushes me to deal with the real issues in my life head on, but also since I’m creating a piece of art, its abstracted from that. It’s not the problem itself, its a work of art that reflects it. Life is what inspires my music, but also the stuff I make inspires my life too. It all feeds back into itself I think.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

I think the best thing people can do to support artists like me is to come to the shows. Buy the albums, the merch. Listen to the music online, check out the music videos. And be sure to listen to your favorite musicians’ music with your friends. Part of that, I think, involves having a love for music that’s more real than a lot of the famous musicians everybody knows of and listens to. Because for me at least, being part of a music scene means doing it for the love of the music. That’s the community and people I find myself gravitating towards. I know that a lot of musicians who get paid a lot more than I do and play a lot more packed shows than I do have a career in ripping people off basically. Which has never been what being a musician means to me.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Yeah, well earlier in the interview I know I said how creating music has been healing for me. There’s been times when I realize that focusing on music is actually doing the opposite. When it’s causing me to lose my sanity, and its become a painful thing for me. In those times, its usually that I’m fixating on producing too much, and not really being able to do it very well any more. Like the obsession and neuroses are all that’s keeping me producing, and I’m not paying attention to all the other things that I should focus on. It’s those times where I have to take a step back and not focus on music anymore. Sort of so that I don’t hurt myself. I have to let myself chill out and not push myself so hard.

I’m still alive. I haven’t given up.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.zlorngler.com
• Instagram: @the_zlorngler
• Twitter: @the_zlorngler
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@thezlorngler3700
• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/zlorngler
• Other: https://zlorngler.bandcamp.com

Image Credits

the last photo credit to Christian Sabilla, Enlightenment Pictures

all other photos / images created by the zlorngler