FINGY Talks ‘Taste Test’
Photography by Julien Carr
Captivated by entrancing synths and four-on-the-floor beats, the L.A. to Chicago artist FINGY is producing the perfect dance soundtrack for this new generation of clubbers. Taking pride in her growing appreciation for R&B, soul, and electronic music, the 22-year-old singer/producer/DJ works to blend these influences together to form a contemporary sound that’s distinctive to herself.
Hungry for knowledge, FINGY is still learning as an artist and is always looking to dive deeper into the origins of Chicago house and funk with the aim of paying respect to their pioneers within her own music.
Read our Q&A with FINGY below where we talk more about how learning and self-discovery shaped her debut EP, Taste Test.
How did you first get into producing?
I learned music through dance. I started dancing when I was five years old. I didn’t have rhythm and I didn’t have any sense of musicality, but dance really taught me a bunch of different types of music, how movement plays a role in sound, and a lot about confidence and presence. Through that I started making little mixes on Garageband because my dance teacher would do that, so I wanted to do that too. Then my brother told me about Ableton and he was like, “You can actually make your own music. You don’t have to just mix music.” He got me Ableton when I was fourteen, but I started using it when I was fifteen or sixteen. I just made shitty, little beats for fun. Mostly ‘cause I was either bored or depressed and needed to take my mind off it. It was honestly just a thing to do to keep my brain busy and to show my friends silly things I was doing. I’m the type of person to pick up so many hobbies. I’ll pick up a hobby, do it for a couple weeks, and then dip. So I would work really hard at [making music] for three months, and then go off three months, work hard for two months, and then go off six months. But I always kept seeing myself coming back to it. I was like, Oh that’s interesting I usually stop doing that and go on to something else. At the same time, that’s when I really started diving into music discovery and listening to a whole bunch of different types of music. As I was really training my ear, I was like, Wow I wanna make music that makes me feel this way or I want to make music that makes me move the way this song makes me move. So combining just the action of making music for fun with my slowly growing knowledge and trained ear of music, those two together really inspired me and made me realize making and performing music is what I need to do. It happened very organically. It was all passion and excitement
Congratulations on your debut EP Taste Test! I for real need to see you live ‘cause you had me straight up dancing around in my room listening to that. And that trumpet on the first track? Wow.
That was my friend Eric. Yeah, he’s crazy. I was staying with him because he was roommates with my old roommate and I was staying with her for a bit. He makes music too and is in this boy band called trdml. He produces for them and plays trumpet. He was like, “If you ever need trumpet, let me know.” Usually people say that or are like, “Let’s collab,” and it never happens. Two weeks later, I made the demo of the song and I got to the second chorus and was like, I need a trumpet now. I hit him up and was like, “Dude, can you just go crazy on this one section?” A day later, he sends it back–which never happens. It takes people forever. But a day later he sends back this whole marching band vibe. I was in the car with my manager listening to it and was like, this is fucking it! It sealed the track together and Eric is awesome for that.
I definitely felt a house music influence on the EP. Where did your attraction to this sound stem from?
I mean I grew up in the 2000s and that’s when the European house wave was really coming back. But I didn’t learn until I came to Chicago that house was made in Chicago. I guess I started making kind of house-y music. I used to make more hip-hop beats and there was some house influences, but I didn’t know that. I just knew that four-on-the-floor down-tempo beat was what I liked ‘cause it was easy to move to. And then I came to Chicago in 2018 and learned about The Warehouse, Paradise Garage in New York, and all the guys that were spinning here like, Steve, Frankie, and Marshall. I thought it was super serendipitous ‘cause I came to the city to make this type of music and now I’m learning what this type of music is and that it started here, but I came here without knowing any of that. I definitely took that as a sign that I’m supposed to be here.
What did your process look like during the making of the project?
It was July 2020 and I was in Ohio with my partner at the time. I came up with an idea of making a sonic charcuterie board in the sense where it’s a bunch of different genres on a plate. It’s not super filling. It’s brief, but they’re all cohesive in some way, shape, or form. I figured that out because I was sitting on this rock in the middle of this creek. There was water coming down at all angles, but they were all flowing the same way. It was at a time where I did not have a lot of inspiration ‘cause it was COVID, so I was staring at this river and was like, How am I going to make music out of this river? I’m seeing the water move and I was like, What if I can make a project where every single song has its own motion, direction, and is completely unique, but it still all works together to get to the same endpoint? So…lesson number one, look at rivers when you’re trying to make music because it’ll give you great ideas (laughs). But, yeah I basically came up with this idea and I was like let’s do this sonic charcuterie board and four different genres unified under house undertones, seal it and go. The goal was to have it out by December 2020. The only songs that were still there were “You” and “I Want.” “You” I had made in January 2020 with Ondine and was already done. “I Want” was something I started in March 2020, that was the first song I started in quarantine. Then I went through a massive shift, went through a break-up, and that obviously evoked a lot of emotions. So I definitely first just needed time for my mental to recoup and find myself again. Then I also needed to make a little music about that, so “End Of The Day” is the process of slowly discovering what I wanted, what I needed, and how I felt. I didn’t have exactly an answer, but that was me kinda figuring out, Oh shit I’m realizing a bunch of these things, but at the end of the day this is how I feel. “To Be Free,” the last track, is a track that you’ll have to talk to Aminata more about because her lyrics are geared towards being a Black woman in America, so it’s not something I can speak on. But the way in which we were talking about how the lyric process was going and how the song was going was that we wanted to make a track that enabled the listener to feel free, to not feel like they’re being watched, and that they can be themselves unconditionally. That was something that I was really trying to learn through COVID, this break-up, and this time.
What’s next for FINGY?
We got some shows coming up, but they’re still in the works, so I won’t say it yet. I’m trying to produce some really cool events for the summer. When I got to do my EP release party, that was the first event I got to put on and I was like, Wow I really like not only DJing events, but curating events. As far as music, I’m in the works right now of making a new EP. I just upgraded from the bootleg Ableton 9 to a bought Ableton 11, so I don’t have to worry about all my files going away. “End Of The Day” music video is in the works. We filmed that in Berlin and Paris, so that’s gonna be cool. Music to come, events to come, videos to come.
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