Welcome to the official website of Cassie Candles!
let's talk about me :)
I'm Cassie Candles, a queer creator in Eugene Oregon. My main passion is music, but I also love riding my bike, the occult, dark chocolate, linux, hair science, kink, overlanding, and a bunch of other stuff!
It's hard having so many passions and no where to share about them. That's why I made this website!
This website is currently under construction!
This will probably be an incohesive mess as I figure things out. My dream is to make this a sort of personal diary for my inner world to be seen and appreciated by folks who come across it. I plan to update this with my various projects and thoughts about life. I also plan to use this as my professional artist website. Something between this and this (my friend's site), all the while containing a whole rabbithole of interesting stuff to share.
Cassie, Cassie! Tell us about your music!
I'm so glad you asked >:)
I make Dream Pop, which you can find on Spotify, or on Bandcamp where I post lyrics for all my songs. If you're a fellow producer, or want to hear my songs before I publish them, you can check me out on SoundCloud.
I really like the term Dream Pop to describe what I create. It's not the cookie cutter image of what Dream Pop sounds like, but it's often quite dreamy, and poppy. I love writing songs in 6/8 time signatures, with a lot of ukulele, white noise, and often otherworldly drum sounds. I write songs about big emotions I experience, and have songs about love, figuring out life, obsession, and travelling among other topics.
My biggest influences are Renata Zeiguer, for her use of interesting harmonies and general dreaminess, and ARTHUR, for his unique voice and blatant use of sonically bright colors. Other influences of mine are Still Woozy, Jacob Collier, Nnamdï, and Crumb.
Great. Where'd it all start?
Cassie Candles: Origins
I've been making music for the last 5 years. Ever since I got my first real instrument (a ukulele for my seventeenth birthday) my pursuit of music has been spiraling out of control. A year later, at the end of 2018, I made my first track, "Goodbye" featuring guitar, fake drums, harmonies, etc. After which, I began writing a bunch more songs. They weren't good. I just thought it was so exhilarating to channel my emotions through creating beautiful and interesting sounds. I didn't think it would go anywhere, but my girlfriend at the time believed in me more than I did. She said I should publish them to an album. I did, and it felt so good. Since, then I've published more albums and have grown my production skills, and my ability to channel emotions into the art I'm making.
I wasn't always musical. My parents tried to raise me to be musical. While, in hindsight, I appreciate their efforts, they ultimately failed. When I was eight, my dad tried to teach me guitar (something he's passionate about). My child fingers hurt from trying to press down the steel strings of an acoustic. I got frustrated by how painful it was, and gave up. Similarly, my mom tried to make me take piano lessons (something both of my brothers embraced). I felt like I'd never be as good as my brothers. I went along with it for a season, then gave up at the first chance I could. I needed music to be my own.
Growing up in a musical family wasn't all bad. Sure, I felt like learning any instrument would be futile as most of them were already mastered by my family members, but there were a lot of blessings that came with it. I learned so much second-hand knowledge about music theory from my brother passionately info dumping all the time. I was always exposed to new sounds and styles. I learned to have an innate excitement about all the possibilities that music made possible. I saw myself as a very talented listener of music, up until I found my niche. The set of skills that I could explore without fear of being bested by a sibling. Something purely mine to specialize in.
I heard a song on the radio I really liked, "No Man Is an Island" by Tenth Avenue North. In the last eight seconds of the song, I heard it.
Ocean waves, subtle birds, and the strumming of a ukulele. I was mesmerized. That sound. Ughghghgh.
It was so beautiful I decided I needed to get a ukulele of my own to replicate it, so I asked for one for my seventeenth birthday. My dad got me one, and I couldn't put it down. My brother taught me about chord charts, and I would learn every chord. I'd make up chords, I'd hypnotize myself with all the pretty sounds I was making. I took it with me everywhere I went. Friends houses, school, grocery stores, etc. I had found my thing.
From that foundation, everything grew. I grew up singing in church. I never thought I was that good, at least relatively. I would slink into the background and try singing my own notes. Not the ones everyone else was singing, but ones that made pretty sounds when placed against them. Ones that made me feel good. I was never told I was a good singer, or that I was 'good at harmonizing'. I think this was a good thing. It was never something I'd do to impress anyone. It was mine.
There came a point when I realized I had software on my computer that would let me record my voice, then let me record my voice again at the same time. When I discovered this, my world changed. I knew things would never be the same when I had the power of God at my fingertips. The ability to harmonize with my own voice.
I became obsessed with this newfound ability and the software that enabled it; a little known Linux DAW I still use to this day called Qtractor. What started as a way to explore interesting and countless harmonies evolved into exploring effects, simulated drums, unintelligible but intriguing noises, etc. I had found my niche, twofold! I was the best ukuleleist and the most passionate producer I knew.
What I'm working on now
Here's a list of projects I'm currently working on. It's hard to know what to tell people about what I'm working on. On one hand, I want to prove to myself I'm doing enough as an artist. In all the gaps between finished projects, I want to be able to say I'm still contributing to something meaningful and build excitement for it. On the other hand, these are projects that take time to complete, and I don't like killing the momentum or excitement by taking a long time on them. Regardless, I'm excited about these, and I think talking about them in their unfinished form keeps the goal alive for me.
- This Website
- My Fourth Album - a concept album about romance and codependency
- Misc. Music Videos - for some of the songs on said album
- My New Band - bass, drums, and violin with me on lead vox/guitar
Imposter Syndrome
I think I'm doing enough. It's hard when imposter syndrome follows you everywhere you go as an artist. It's so easy for me to look at how much quality content another artist is outputting, or how many gigs someone is playing, or how self-sustaining someone's art is and think,
"Damn, what am I even doing if it's not even close to that?"
These people I'm comparing myself to are people I know personally in real life. Friends of mine who I want to emulate, but don't seem to have the spoons to. I think the pursuit of emulating them is noble, in that it really takes me out of zoning out to a phone all day, and more in the routine of creating stuff. And while it's frustrating, I can only think to myself that I'm doing the best I can to get there, that it takes time and practice to reach these places, and that somehow there are people, talented people even, that look at me and think,
"Damn, how does she do so much? What am I even doing if it's not even close to that?"
List of Dreams I've Yet to Pursue
I can't do everything I want all at once (though I'd like to). Here's a list of Dreams I've wanted to pursue for awhile, that I probably will once I finish a few creative projects.
- Record a DJ set - on a mountaintop and post it to YouTube
- somewhat dependent on weather/season
- Make Cassie Candles - either prayer candles of myself, or different scented candles for different songs
- e.g. Flowers and Ocean Spray
- most likely in collaboration with someone
- Print Tapes - not cost effective, but cool af, and a few people've asked for them