We recently connected with Vincent Connell and have shared our conversation below.

Vincent, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

“Pyschosis”, an album I wrote/produced in 2019 is one of the most meaningful projects to me.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had an irrational fear of losing my mind. Mental illness runs in my family, (I myself have Bipolar type 2) and I have seen more than my fair share of terrible outcomes associated with a broken psyche. This left me with an everlasting need to understand human behavior.

In 2019 I began to study the various works of Carl Jung, which led me to discover “Shadow Work”. I won’t go into lengthy detail on what it is, otherwise this would turn into a book all it’s own. Briefly described, Shadow Work is the process of developing a better understanding of your shadow (“shadow” being an amalgamation of your unconscious beliefs and instinctual nature). Unconscious because we must push some thoughts/beliefs “down” in order to be productive and accepted members of society.

I decided to take the Shadow Work a step further. I was so tired of constantly worrying about my sanity, that I decided to test it. What would it feel like to really jump off the ledge? What would it feel like to be truly “crazy”?

Now, I want to make it clear that the following passages are by no means a recommendation. If I could go back in time, I would’ve done things differently. I think I have experienced permeant impaired cognition because of this little experiment,

For the next 30 days I did everything I could to push myself over the edge. To my mind, the quickest way to insanity is sleep deprivation and pyschoactive substances. So I went days without sleep, and only wrote under the influence of my own personal cocktail of different substances. This cocktail would induce dissociation, auditory hallucinations, paranoia and gut wrenching anxiety. I began to see my friends and family as strangers. I began to see myself as a stranger.

These writing/producing sessions (as terrifying as they could be) elicited a level of creativity freedom and output, that I had never experienced before. An infinite amount of ideas flooded to my brain faster than I could get them down. I’d stay up all hours of the night obsessively composing, trying to express this bizarre realm in the form of music. I must’ve written at least 30 songs, however only 8 of them were comprehensible enough to be considered songs.

By the time I finished the album, I felt like a different person. I threw away my old clothes and began to only wear black t shirts that I’d stain with bleach in abstract shapes. I no longer had a sense of “me”, and so I didn’t feel comfortable wearing clothing with logos, sayings or bands, because I lost my sense of opinion or ego. Luckily with time and healthy sleeping habits, I stopped dissociating and found my way back to stability, however I’ll never be 100% back to normal.

Though I wish I had taken a more responsible approach, this album “Psychosis” completely changed the way I create, and gave me a new sense of creative fearlessness that I still hold to this day. Just like everyone else, I hate my art sometimes, however I’m now able to get out of my own way and create without borders. This album is so meaningful to me because it was a door to a new way of thinking and creating.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I wrote my first song when I was 9 years old. My dog died and the only way I could confront the grief was by singing about it.

I am an artist first, producer second. I’ve released over 150+ songs through various artists names since 2018. I started writing with an acoustic guitar, then I moved to dubstep, then rap beats, then producing my own songs, then to making cinematic music for influencers such as Evan Carmichael, and eventually I came back to producing my own songs.

ChillPanic is an authentic representation of my brain. I write about feeling like an outcast, about love and heartbreak, and more recently have been focusing on music about philosophy, psychology and religion.

In my catalogue you’ll find everything form synth pop to heavy metal. I have no intentions on “making it” with the ChillPanic alias. I just want to make the most interesting and authentic music I can.

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

Ok, so picture this. You’re a single parent in you early 20’s, making minimum wage doing manual labor, while also trying to make a full time income with music. You work 40-50 hours a week, and when you get home you have to do parent stuff. How do you possibly get good at a craft in those circumstances?

The answer is, you f*cking do it. You cut off all your friends, all your leisure time, and take every second you can to work. When I first started out, I would only sleep every other night so that I could still get 6-8 hours of practice/learning in as much as possible. I brought my laptop to my assembly line job, and produced during my lunch break (sometimes even on the line.)

Luckily now I have an office job, so I’m not physically exhausted all the time and making music is a lot easier.

I’ve done countless amounts of free work for mid level artists in the industry, and cinematic music for Evan Carmichael under the name “Cinematic Unicorn”.

I’m as resilient as they come

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The therapeutic benefit of it. Don’t get me wrong, I intensely love when a client is ecstatic about the work I’ve done for them. I absolutely love turning someone’s idea into an actual finished product.

However, music is the medium by which I understand and express myself. Without it I’d probably be depressed and purposeless.

Contact Info:

• Website: withkoji.com/@chillpanic
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chillpanic_music/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chillpanic/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincent-connell-9401b0199
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/chillpanicmusic?lang=en
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCj83I0PrbdTDmoUXBosTyXg/featured