(EDITOR’S NOTE — We’re happy to bring you this interview with Buffalo indie musician Daniel Joseph, who’s dropped a new single titled ‘Night Time’ and an accompanying video. The song has a really cool vibe, and we spoke with Daniel about what inspired not only the single but the DIY approach behind the video which you can check out below.)
1120 PRESS: Congratulations on the new song and video! We really dig it. Can you talk about the inspiration here and what you were aiming to convey?
DANIEL JOSEPH: My song ‘Night Time’ has a theme about a struggle that many of us face: Sleeplessness. We have nights where all we can do is toss and turn, thinking about the worries and things we go through day-to-day. I wrote the lines…
“Take a minute,
Tell me how I can fix it,
Sometimes you have to cry.
It’s just a feeling,
Relax your mind
and know that everything’s
gonna be alright “
… to remind the listener that they are not alone. Everything will be okay. Which is the reason I have the urge to write songs in the first place — people deserve to be okay.
1120: This song is a different sound in terms of what we normally hear come out of the scene. Correct us if we are wrong, but we hear a blend of singer-songwriter (we get a Joe Jackson vibe here), with jazz and Hip Hop. From where’s the influence come that you’re drawing upon on this song?
DJ: The sound I chose for this track was a calming jazzy, hip-hopish type mood that I just happened to write the chords for a day before arriving at the studio. With a bassline that accompanies the chord progression like it does, it hopefully makes you feel good when listening. This made me want to write about something we all deal with, as a way to make the listener feel good about a situation they may be dealing with.
1120: Tell us about the process of shooting this video. There was a very cool DIY aspect here.
DJ: The video for ‘Night Time,’ along with the track, was an idea as a whole. The idea of not being able to sleep and having your mind wonder and think the whole night, was used to create the metaphor of wandering the empty streets at night, which you see in the video. The song was recorded at Mammoth Recording Studios in South Buffalo, where I would play the instruments and sing on the track. And the video was self-edited and recorded on a $6 camera I found at a thrift store. For a week, I would wait until about 1 am to head out to the empty streets of Buffalo with nothing but a camera and a tripod to record the lonely feeling on camera.
1120: ‘Night Time' is your second single, and follows the song ‘My Socks,’ which came out in June. What else do you have going on and what can we expect from you in the near future?
DJ: I’m working on recording a bunch more tunes that will be coming out in the near future.
(Checkout the video for ‘Night Time’ below…)
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