Emanate uncovers: Pierce Fulton
Tell us about Piece Fulton — Whats makes you tick, how did your love for music start?
I started playing music very young because I’d just kinda gravitate towards anything that made noise. I was also a very talkative kid so I think it maybe satisfied some of that compulsion. Started on guitar as a child and have continued to play it but I’m always excited by new sounds so I always try to learn something new. A jack of all trades, master of none but I don’t mind because I like the variety. Even as an adult at parties or get-togethers, I typically gravitate towards the piano or turntables in the room because it’s where I’m most comfortable
Who are your influences?
My influences change quite a lot but always remain in the back of my head, I think. Starting out producers like Eric Prydz with his Pryda and Cirez D projects were really influential, as well as early Anjunadeep and that mellow progressive sound from the early 2010’s. I eventually started discovering more artists outside the electronic music I knew and found artists like Apparat/Moderat, Bibio, Baths and Bibio. In current times, it’s really whatever knocks the socks off of me. Some examples are: discovering the band Big Thief and learning that basically all their albums are good, going to an Eris Drew & Octo Octa b2b set in LA and realizing I had ways of moving my body to music that I hadn’t known until then, and simply my older brother showing me new tunes in the car while we drive around California. I love to be surprised.
Last couple of years you took a step back from touring… What was behind that decision and how have you created new business opportunities to offset that?
I started touring while I was a sophomore at the University of Vermont. It was the craziest thing to be doing as a 19-year-old in the states and I had the best time. I continued on touring pretty consistently for 5 or so years after that. As time went on, my influences and musical taste changed but the music I was being booked for remained the same and eventually it started to take a toll on me. It didn’t feel right to play music for people that were excited if I wasn’t 100% excited. The last tour I did was in 2017, which was my first step into a live tour rather than a DJ set. It was a really great experience but as I mentioned before, I think I was moving faster than my audience in terms of where I wanted to be musically. I eventually decided to stop because it didn’t totally feel right to get back out there without any idea of where I’m heading musically.
Thankfully, just before I slowed down the touring I had started self-releasing all my music. As a result, I started seeing a lot more income from my recorded music that I hadn’t seen in the past and over time it’s grown into a consistent source for me to live on. The more you put out yourself, the more potential you have to create more opportunities to get your music out there and get paid for it and that’s a pretty cool feeling. In the past few weeks, due to some creativity during this COVID-19 quarantine, I actually started holding online classes to learn about making music which I’m hoping will be another source of income for me! I’m just always adjusting to whatever feels right at the time and right now it’s really fun to talk to people about making music.
Walk us through the Leaving Laurel Project
Well, Leaving Laurel is this semi-mysterious group I started with my friend Gordon (of Botnek and Belle Envie). We had been friends and roommates for many years but for some reason hadn’t made music together until around two years ago. It all started while we were both living in the Laurel Canyon area in LA and we’d just discovered that an old portable radio/cassette player could record sounds to tape.
It was all experimentation with no destination in mind so we were just having fun together as friends. Eventually, we ended up with 5 or 6 really strong ideas and we were like “Woah, this could be a thing” and we continued to work on them in our time away from our existing projects. We then found a home for the music with our friends at Anjunadeep, where the project fit in really well. We’re just starting out so it’s all very exciting!
We also heard whispers you have a new label launching along with its first release?
Yes! My brother and I have bonded over music since we were very young and almost always shared a very similar taste in music. In the past few years, he’s started making his own music under the name Aspetuck and the impact it’s made on me has been so incredible. To watch my brother, who wanted to make music because he always had ideas in his head, figure out how to use Ableton and create his own sound over time has been incredibly inspiring to me. As a result, we decided to start a label!
Growing up we watched a lot of snowboard and skateboard movies from the early 2000s and they were the only source of music discovery for us as kids in Vermont. We didn’t have a music scene or music shops in town so as a byproduct of being snowboard/skateboard fans, we found so much music from these videos. The goal with this label is to harness the same feeling that we had as kids discovering a new artist or genre from a video’s soundtrack. We have a lot of ideas and are excited to continue to build it together.
Production classes! Is that a new thing for you? What motivated you to start this?
Classes online are new for me! In the past few years, I’ve gone to visit my old high school in Vermont maybe once or twice a year to assist in music classes. My town was blessed with an incredible music teacher and music department and as a teenager, after discovering all of this music from snowboard videos, I was seriously interested in making music on my computer. My high school music teacher was a fan of electronic music himself so he had a few classes each year that were dedicated to learning how to make music on the computer. It was a dream come true. As a result, we became very close and I continue to visit whenever I’m back home to talk to the students and catch up with my old teacher.
The decision to do online classes came from of the isolation we’re all experiencing because of the COVID-19 pandemic. I had always wanted to teach more because I can talk about making music for hours and I figured that this was a perfect time to just jump right in. The idea came from me DJing a birthday party hosted on Zoom, the group video chat platform. The friend we were celebrating made the connection and immediately after the party asked me if I was interested in doing more things like that. I told him I’d always wanted to have music classes and a week later we had our first 3 classes and they were super fun! I’m now using the feedback from the first classes to develop my next batch of classes — more focused topics for specific levels of experience. It’s all an experiment still but I’m loving how it’s going.
What you do think about being an independent artist VS getting signed to a record label
I think a label is great if it makes sense. I have songs currently signed to a label I’m very happy with and I have songs I release independently that I’m very happy with. I think if you can create an audience for yourself and are okay handling all of the steps of the process to release music yourself, go for it. It’s an adventure and if a song does well, you have full ownership of it and reap the benefits. It’s all up to the artist on what they want out of the process of releasing music, personally I love doing it myself and seeing what can happen.
If you were to give advice to on up and coming artist independent what would it be?
If you believe in the art you’re making, just keep going. Keep creating, keep releasing and don’t get too attached to anything. The wonderful thing about self-releasing is you can put out songs whenever you want, however way you want, whatever version you want. If you’re happy with it, great, if not, you can just remove them! It’s a much more natural way to put out art. If you’re up for the extra steps of the adventure, I highly recommend.
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