Artist Profile: Xindiex
XindieX, the explorative indie artist from Martinsburg, West Virginia, came to music relatively late in life, as a result of a devastating football injury that left a void in his heart, and, as he experienced a growing passion for music and the fading of his youth simultaneously, a unique sound, born from the crucible of reverb-soaked indie and saturation-laden post-punk, was born.
While XindieX grew up in a highly musical family, with a father who made hip-hop music and a brother, Brian, who was an artist as well, he did not seriously consider himself to be even an avid listener of music throughout his childhood. Yet, they had a home studio in almost every place they lived, and, through natural osmosis, XindieX picked up on the post-punk and hardcore tastes of his older brother Sion: a development that was aided by his growing interest in skateboarding and skateboarding video games.
As he neared the end of high school, in fact, XindieX was almost wholly focused on athletics; he had dreams of advancing his football career to the next level and perhaps even beyond.
Yet, when a catastrophic collarbone injury dashed these dreams, XindieX was left isolated and suddenly without an immediately tangible purpose: a frustration and a feeling of powerlessness that he channeled into a newfound interest in listening to music.
During this period in his life, he discovered artists like Mac Demarco, Eyedress, and Zahara, whose unique harnessing of melodies and complex layers of instrumentation drew him in immediately. He began listening to music almost around the clock, relishing the new spaces he could allow the sounds to transport him to.
“That's when I realized I really had this different connection with music. When I listened to music, I would calm down, I would close my eyes and picture settings in my head or imagine myself and this place that music has taken [me to]... I didn't really have much to do, so I only had music to listen to, and that's when I really started to figure out that I had this different connection with music that not most people have.”
At the time, he had never even really picked up a guitar, but the kindlings of a new passion had begun to burn inside of him. He joined an online community and began making ambient beats: an experience that would later inform the complexity he was able to inject into his music as he carved out his own sound.
Yet, through this time, XindieX was graduating high school, trying to find his way as an independent while still being laden with the desires of his youth. While a definite direction in life was something that was a far-off thought at the time, he knew that, when he ultimately did create his own artistic outlook, that it would have to have something to do with this unique, and universal, period of his life.
“I was in the car with my friend Nas.. and I was like, ‘You know, one day I'm gonna make an album, and I'm gonna call it Indie Days’. And it was just all the days in between the pivotal moment of me graduating high school, and feeling lost, and feeling like I don't know what I'm gonna do with myself. Through all those ‘Indie Days’, I was having fun with my friends still, transitioning into a young adult… but there still was that stress and sadness of what happened or what was currently going on in my life. I felt like I was thrown into this life; now I got to figure out what I want to do.”
From this period of struggle his debut album, Indie Days, was born, harnessing the subdued vocal style that XindieX had cultivated over the years he had become a self-taught musician and playing out the synth-soaked, reverbed sonic landscape that he had come to love in his initially headfirst dive into music as an art form. From the haunting caverns of songs like “Graduation Day” to the strung-out apathy of songs like “My Purple Selis Guitar”, the project seamlessly weaves together the youthful essence of the indie music it emulates while injecting a distinct darkness into its core.
Now, as XindieX works toward releasing new music, he acknowledges that the unique days that spawned the first album are behind him, and he hopes to harness this new era of his life, young adulthood and its resultant responsibilities and confidences, just as aptly on his next project.
“The only thing for me is forward, and I'm doing really good at that. I'm definitely shifting over to a new sound now… I feel more confident and more experienced. I really haven't announced it yet, but the current project I'm working on now is [about] what I'm going through currently and [what it’s like to be] a young adult that is feeling comfortable and confident, and just moving through life with my head up high and knowing the direction I need to go.”
