A Look Into The Seasons with thomTide
Photos by Kristina Shakht
Since embarking on his creative voyage in September of 2020, San Diego-based producer thomTide has been riding a strong wave of momentum. thomTide truly gives listeners a breath of fresh air from his bi-weekly drops that comprise his debut project. The themes of his tracks fittingly coincide with the seasons taking listeners through the Fall of a relationship, a trying isolation of Winter, and on one of his latest singles “sunCrest,” the bloom of an outward connection in Spring.
Eager to hear more about his journey and what's to follow this Summer, we had the chance to catch up with thomTide to talk about the west-coast producer’s charming discography, connecting with your audience, a masterful visual directed by Giles Perkins for the alternative R&B jam “doveTailed” and more.
Hello - excited to have you here!
Yeoo, guys thanks so much for your interest in hearing from me. Excited to be here!
How has the beginning of this year been compared to what’s in the near future?
Hmm I feel like 2021 definitely started out feeling like the worst was behind us at least, but there was still plenty going on. As far as what’s in the near future I feel like there are plenty of things I’m hopeful for. Not just in the music space but in life, looking forward to seeing friends and family more freely. I’ve enjoyed myself this past year but it would be nice to get out of my apartment haha
Your songs continue to express a tremendous amount of purity and tenderness - Who have been some of your early mentors in sound and thought?
Sound and thought, wow. Love this question. I want to explore ideas with the listener as opposed to telling them what’s right. It’s kinda like I wanna start the conversations with what I think as opposed to ending it with what I think. I like that my message is non-invasive but I’m sure it goes over a lot of people’s heads when it isn’t aggressive.
Early mentors in thought would definitely be my family. I feel like I got my storytelling from my dad and my gentleness and understanding from my mom. And my brother is just so structured and precise in his communication and thought. Love ‘em all and look up to them infinitely.
Early mentors in sound is an interesting question. I think it’s cool to look at artists from a distance and learn by analyzing and sometimes even mimicking what they do, but I found that’s very different from having a person you’re close with who you can interact with and get real-time feedback. So I’d have to say my boy Pierre was that for me musically. Every time I thought I was onto some stuff, I would have a talk with him and he’d make me see things differently, and it still holds to this day. I recently sprung a random idea on him that I was exploring at the time, and on his toes, he gave me back some super thoughtful responses. I think it was like “what is your relationship with video”. I asked my brother the same and Dom too. They all gave really thoughtful and interesting answers. Also my brother from another Spence has always been super honest in how he feels about what I do musically, and that's definitely shaped what I pay attention to when making music as well.
I’ve been loving each release - how have you been finding your sounds?
Preciate that! I mean I’m just super careful as I produce/write them haha. The more I make music the more I pay attention to smaller and smaller details. Early on I felt like I grew comfortable with searching for the chord progression that accurately communicated the feelings I wanted to capture. Chord progressions have a dimension of time, so they capture a sort of history of emotions. Like the same major chord might feel different nested between a bunch of other major chords versus nested between a bunch of minor chords. So an isolated feeling can feel different in different contexts is what I’m saying.
If we wanna get super nerdy, sound design could arguably be the next step, which is the case for me nowadays. It’s kinda like a chord the way I see it. On one hand, with a chord, you stack notes together to make a chord, but if you break down those notes, they each have a timbre which I like to think of as stacking harmonics together. And since a harmonic is just a sine wave, technically I would argue that’s still a sort of chord composed of sine waves. So almost like the harmonic makeup of a sound is a chord of sorts. Short story long, I’ve been geeking about the importance of sound design and how it affects melody, chord progressions, drum patterns, all that. It’s crazy to think every moment of a song is just a bunch of sine waves stacked on top of each other.
Sound design is very important to me nowadays and I’ve been very intentional with having the most variety while staying in certain “bounds” that say “these choices make sense together”. I think this project is a very colorful project from a genre perspective but I think all the songs and sound choices do fit together and make sense together. I think genre is a whole other conversation I haven’t fully explored but would love to have that conversation, maybe another day so this response isn’t a novel haha.
Congratulations on your recent Pigeons & Planes and Lyrical Lemonade coverage. How does it feel to have a tide already growing in recent years with the release of the seasonal collections?
Yess shout out to the guys at P&P! And Chuck at Lyrical, I will see you soon! Uhhm to answer your question I think it’s deceptive haha. I’ve been producing for 10+ years and I’ve been releasing music seriously since January 2017. I actually connected with P&P all-around 2018 and have been more casually in touch since. It was just the right time for things to happen this year. I think they’re super generous and they really hold it down for folks at the right time. I’m still humbled that they helped me out with that feature, all love. Hope they’re doing well.
So this year I kinda came in having a lot of things that worked and having a lot of hypotheses I wanted to test out. I think I started somewhat strong because of having some things in place, like relationships and limited knowledge. But I definitely made plenty of missteps along the way and learned a ton, because I was also trying out those hypotheses. So it feels great to have things moving the way they are for sure. Nothing is outpacing me as a person just yet.
“doveTailed” is great song and video, I had to rewatch it around ten times no joke! Can you tell us about the creative direction and creation of this visual working alongside Giles Perkins?
Oh yeah Giles is incredible, Jacob at Treble (co-director) made the connection, and super glad it happened; we got more coming! I wasn’t too familiar with the visual creation process so I was in a lot of ways just soaking things in working with them. It was the most thorough experience I’ve had working with any director. I do think it was/is a learning process as always with a new collaborator, from the perspective of converging on creative direction. They’ve got a lot of cool ideas and these visuals are a sort of middle-ground for all of our ideas, I feel. And I’m still learning what I want and what’s possible visually.
I’m still grasping my thoughts when I finish watching, it leaves me eager to know what’s to come in the Summer Edition. Can you share some insights about the sentimental choices throughout the video?
Yeah I do want to explain this visually in the coming seasons, but if it’s not too much of a spoiler, I will say yes it is an awakening. The whole Spring installment is switching between a dream and reality, even after my eyes are open I’m not sure what the dream is until I’m given the mystery object. The plan is to have the visual series span all 4 seasons so stay tuned till 2022! Hopefully, we will answer these questions with each new season, or when it’s all over.
What can fans expect from you in the coming months?
Yes! Summer is the last season of new music but the visuals will keep dropping into next year. Honestly, I say it every season but it’s always true, the next season is my favorite season of music. I think I’m growing for sure but I also saved some of the best for last. Cannot wait to show everyone “rightBack”, that’s my all-time favorite. But every song this season is so different.