Artist Spotlight: Meet Le Days
Credit: COVER : Photo by Nadia Ursu
How did you come up with the theme?
Daniel: It was more something that’s been growing inside of me for a long time. The process of grief is not linear, neither were the pictures and sounds I kept hearing. The questions of identity, and facing the whole of existence with loss, shame, and fear. One day, all I could hear in my head was ‘Are you here?’ And I felt I couldn’t really hear my own voice anymore. But still, my body expressed sounds.”
Were there any memorable or standout moments during the recording session for ‘Are You Here?’
I think the moment I stepped inside that church again, years after recording my third album ‘We Are Nowhere,’ I could still feel everything lingering in the walls, in the wood and even in the piano. And sitting there, knowing I got out from it, was an intense feeling. Then I just lost time—it was like a blackout of sound and emotions and what we did in there I can’t really describe but it really transformed me.
Can you talk about any standout tracks on the album and what makes them special to you?
Every part of this album is a process in itself. It’s really not linear, neither are my feelings about it. But I’ve always had this very complicated relationship with “death,” and I think this piece somehow was my conversation with it, finding it within me. Some people think death comes for you. I think it’s the other way around. Death doesn’t come for anyone; it’s just waiting. Like a clock ticking. Like a wave. And slowly everything moves towards it, and it is like an ocean swallowing everything that comes at it. But it’s peaceful somehow. It just is, it doesn’t care. And it doesn’t matter how much you fight it. In the end, you will become it.
Can you tell us more about you as an artist?
I can’t tell you everything about me, because I am sure you would have your own idea no matter what I would tell you. And I wouldn’t know how to define me. It’s for our imagination. But there is one thing that has ever really mattered to me as a person, and it is to express myself without any compromise to how it sounds inside me, and I believe that is the closest I’ll ever come to freedom.
How do you approach composing with the audience in mind? Are there ways you aim to connect with listeners through your music?
I never focused on that or tried to find it—it wouldn’t feel right to me. I believe that if you listen to the sound inside you and to your own feelings, and if you allow yourself to fully let go of how anything is supposed to be and just express yourself as you are, then whatever connection that could happen will happen. Or whoever needs the connection will find it. The truth of it, is not the anticipation, but in the honesty of our own expression, imagination, and freedom of our inner world.
