Artist Spotlight: Abbadon
BBG Duluth artist releases their first album: 'Hold Out Your Hand'
Nico Cartier, whose artist name is Abbadon, released their first album called 'Hold Out Your Hand' on Friday, August 25th, 2023. Abbadon is involved with the BBG Duluth chapter, and created this album surrounding the theme off mental health, hoping to create space for conversation on this topic. We had the chance to interview this talented artist just ahead of this exciting release!
Can you start by telling me your artist name, pronouns, and where you’re based out of?
My artist name is Abbadon. My pronouns are they/them, and I'm based in Duluth, MN.
Tell me a bit about your musical background! How did you get into music?
My family has a lot of history already with music. It’s been a huge thing through multiple generations. And so, my music... started when I started doing musical plays when I was really young. I was at a rehearsal and my dad picked me up, and he told me he had a surprise, and that surprise was one of Adele’s songs that we listened to on the way home, which I fell in love with. And, that kind of started everything. So ever since then I’ve been listening to a lot of different artists, a lot of different kinds of music. I’ve picked up a lot of instruments and stuff. And when I was about 9 I signed up for Shaunna’s class because she is a really good friend, and my mom told me I would like it. I play a lot [of instruments]. I play electric and acoustic guitar, I play the piano, ukulele, a little bit of banjo and a little bit of drums. And in high school I might pick up the saxophone.
How did you get involved with Beats By Girlz?
When I was 9, Beats By Girlz was a ‘for fun’ hobby type thing. And the first time I did it, I absolutely fell in love with it. Ever since, I have always been a devoted student in Shaunna’s class. If you ask her, you can tell I was very committed. It was just so so fun, and I would definitely do it again. But I’m kind of branching off doing my own thing.
Do you write your own music?
Yeah, I make and write my own music, I kind of do everything involving. I started really doing it this year, with this album. This will be my first really honed in, focused piece of music ever. I go to a little bit of a different school than most people know. And we had this assignment at the beginning of the year to pick something to do, like make an album or create something and work on it for the entire year. So I chose to make an album, so that’s what I’m working on. So that’s my first time writing any piece.
Tell me about your upcoming album. What was the process of making it, and what was your involvement?
I started with the basic idea of making the album, but we needed to have a community service aspect of it. This album is going to be all about mental health, all across the board. And it’s kind of made to help spread awareness about it, and open it up and talk about it more, because there’s still some people who don’t like to talk about it, which is okay. But just to normalize it a bit more. So I started with that basic idea, and I wanted Shaunna to be my mentor for the entire project. Together, we’ve been creating each song, one by one, she would kind of help me with the basis of it all, and I would go write lyrics for it, if I wanted lyrics. And towards the middle of it, when it felt like everything was together, we went to Allister at Pinnacle Pointe Studios, and we recorded the vocals there, and we took those and put those into each song. And then we went to Krithi, who’s another artist, and she taught me how to mix everything. So we did a Zoom video, and we went over all of the different things about mixing. And now we’ve very much on the tail end of mixing and putting it out there. Most of it is electronic instruments, but there will be one song with guitar in it. It’s just acoustic and nothing fancy yet because we didn’t have a lot of time to be able to put a lot of external instruments into it. We did everything on Ableton.
What are some of your hopes and dreams for the future with music?
I have a really ambitious dream of becoming one of those really big influencers. I wanna be touring all around the world and stuff. And I want to have my own studio where other people can come and I can record their vocals. I always shot far with those dreams. I think that most of my schooling choices in the upcoming years are gonna be mostly based on music. I do know for a fact I really want to go to college in Colorado, but I’m not totally sure about all of the details yet of what I want to do in my future. I do know I want to travel a lot.
Who are your musical influences?
On the musical side of things, Cavetown and Green Day are big influences, and also just other random songs that I’ve heard. That helped a lot in the process. I would say my genre is synthy, electronic sounding, maybe a little bit of Indie in there. It doesn’t have much of an exact genre, it’s kind of its own style.
If you could give advice to your younger self, what would it be?
I would say to have more fun with it, and kind of branch out more with what I was doing. Because I kind of stuck with one genre and one way to produce music. It would have been a lot more helpful if I did other things.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received?
It was from my Grandpa, who is absolutely so happy that I’m doing this. He’s the biggest supporter, I think just him existing is the best piece of advice. Through his stories, he’s taught me to keep on persevering even when you don’t really want to. Him being so supportive is advice to me to keep going, not only for yourself, but also for other people around you that are watching you and want to see you do great things.
Listen to Abbadon's new album 'Hold Out Your Hand' now, released 8/25/23!
Interview by Nan Macmillan