Meet the indie Bandier student artist who rose from SoundCloud

Q&A: The self-taught musician talks his latest indie-pop-alternative single "Tease."

Story by Hannah Malach

Published: December 9, 2018

SU freshman and Bandier major Aidan Ochre latest single 'Tease' has over 22,390 streams on Spotify.

The NewsHouse: When did you first start recording music?

Aidan Ochre: My junior year of high school. I’d been playing music a little while before then. I took a couple guitar lessons but then I decided to just be self-taught, basically because I didn’t like taking lessons and they were kind of expensive, so I was like, ‘I’m just going to figure it out myself.’

So I would play covers of songs and sing and play guitar. Then one year my parents got me a microphone and an interface to plug my guitar into my computer. I didn’t touch it for a while, but then one day I just decided to set up a studio in my basement basically which is just my computer and my amp and my microphone and I started making some songs.

The N.H: What made you want to start recording music?

A.O: It always seemed like something I could do but I just never knew where to start. And then I got really into the band The Internet and their guitarist, Steve Lacy. I got into his solo work, and then after doing some research I found out that he recorded everything on his iPhone using Garage Band. Then I thought, ‘Oh, I have Garage Band, so I guess I can do this.’

The N.H: What drew you to the Bandier program?

A.O: I didn’t know what I wanted to go to college for and then I started to make music and it started to be something I really enjoyed doing. And I was like, ‘Ok, I’m clearly very passionate about this,’ and music’s always been kind of been a part of my life so I might as well find a way to study it without being a musician necessarily. Because I was never classically trained or anything, I wasn’t trying to go to music school. So I started looking at programs that had a combination of business, communications, music and Bandier happened to be one that I found.

The N.H: When did you first start recording your latest single, “Tease?”

A.O: I recorded it over the summer. I sat down and had the chord progression already figured out because I had already been messing with that. Then this idea popped into my head, I wanted to make something that was kind of more indie pop or indie rock, so I laid out a drum beat that I felt would be infectious and then I just put the chords over that and did the bass and vocals. I had a rough demo within an hour. From there, I added some new parts, some different instruments, but it was basically all done within one sitting.

The N.H: So what genre would you describe your music as?

A.O: It’s hard to necessarily pinpoint a genre. There’s always been this blanket term of ‘bedroom pop’ but I don’t really consider myself as someone who makes pop music. Even the bedroom pop term has a negative connotation to it now. People seem to think if you’re a bedroom producer, that it’s amateur in a derogatory way.

A lot of people don’t want to be affiliated with that. For me, I don’t really care, you can call [my music] whatever genre you want. People have described me as R&B, alternative, indie, I don’t know. “Tease” was a little different from my previous songs, it was more like an indie pop/rock songs whereas my older songs are indie-R&B or something like that.

The N.H: Which musicians do you draw inspiration from?

A.O: Steve Lacy, Pharrell, Tyler the Creator. I’ve been listening to a lot of Benny Sings lately and I really like the way he writes. The Internet is a big one for me just because of the way they craft melodies.

The N.H: Are you planning on releasing an album or EP anytime soon?

A.O: That is the goal, though I don’t know how “soon” soon will be. Over winter break, I’m planning to just hole up in my room and just write a bunch of music.

The N.H: Which platform do you prefer to release music on?

A.O: For a while, it was primarily SoundCloud, and then I finally started releasing stuff on other platforms. SoundCloud is important to me because I got involved with a community of artists on SoundCloud, like other independent artists. Now I’ve become friends with a lot of them, people who I used to listen to even. I definitely want to continue to release through SoundCloud, but right now I think Spotify is the best place to release music. The algorithms they have to promote independent artists are definitely better than other platforms.

“Tease” is available now on all streaming services.