STORY BY HANNAH KIRK
Additional reporting by Raphael Beretta
ILLUSTRATION BY JANINE PULTORAK
Upon being nominated for “For The Record,” Jackson Klarsfeld ‘21, did not necessarily know what he was being nominated for. When asked, he replied, “I’m not sure, but I’d love to talk about my music.”
The creative heights of Jackson’s music transcend his striking humility and straight-forward nature. Under the name Retrograded, Jackson has grown as an artist and has developed his passion to find a creative outlet for himself and for collaborators.
As a freshman, Jackson was posed with the idea to make a music video by close friend Steven for the Silver Fox Awards. A year later Jackson won the award for the best music video as a sophomore with “Spaceship Boy,” the titular track of his EP. The song has nearly two thousand plays on Spotify and its accompanying video has nearly 1.6 thousand views on YouTube.
In the beginning, Jackson faced some hesitation, he did not have formal training in music or audio production. “I thought that I couldn't do it because I didn't know the rules of music. The more I did it, the more I realized that there are no rules. That’s one of my favorite parts about it.”
Over time his mixing and producing capabilities began to improve. Often he’ll create music that he initially really likes, but in looking back months later, picks up on things he wished he had changed given more relative experience and education.
“Even if something doesn't turn out the way I want it to sound, it's kind of freeing to just be able to say, ‘that's the way it turned out’ and just move on. Even though that's not what I intended, I still made it.”
Jackson has come to understand that not everything he does needs to be perfect. “I've sort of learned that there's like a beauty in imperfection. In computer-based music, it's grid-based so you can make every timing perfect,” Jackson emphasized. “But there's a beauty in the imperfection of letting it be human.”
Jackson’s musical creativity has been present since childhood. He and his friends would shoot music videos to songs that they wrote parodies to. After they filmed them, Jackson would edit the footage together.
When thinking about his childhood however, swimming is what stands out the most. “I actually wrote ‘Spaceship Boy’ while I was swimming. I heard a melody that I liked, and I don’t know why but I just began singing the first few lines about a ‘little baby spaceship boy’. I actually got out in the middle of practice and began saying the lyrics into my phone so I wouldn’t forget it,” Jackson said. “That is the nice part about swimming; you can just like zone out.”
Music allows Jackson to express himself in ways that he thinks he never would have otherwise. Sometimes he will write songs that seem fairly meaningless, but looking back, the lyrics hold more meaning than he realized initially.
“It is easier to come out and say certain things you are feeling, even explicitly, in a song than to say it out loud. If you just say [your feelings] it can sound like you are complaining. [But] in a song you make it rhyme and sound good. Then you can complain all you want.”
Despite having found a clear-cut outlet for his emotions in producing music, he never thought he needed one. Jackson said he grew up a lot in college. His artistic voice arrived alongside his collegiate career: his outlet came exactly when it was needed.
Connecting with people around him is an aspect of his music career that Jackson emphasizes is very important, he relishes in the ability to provide an outlet to someone who may need it. “I can write something that I'm experiencing right now and someone can come up to me months later and say, ‘Hey, I went through that same thing that you wrote about it in your song’,” Jackson said.
Jackson recounts writing his first EP following a breakup. A friend of his went through a breakup soon after the song came out. He told Jackson how much the song helped him and that he experienced similar emotions. “It's just the fact that people can identify with what you are talking about,” Jackson said. “It was nice to be able to tell him it gets better.”
Along with using music as an outlet for his emotions, he also uses his music as a coping mechanism for growing up. “There are things people say like ‘life goes by fast’. You think that is just something people say. Then you grow up and realize holy shit, we don’t have that much time. You might as well enjoy all of it, not just when you feel like it.”
Jackson looks back on his first EP as Retrograded, and how he has grown as a person and an artist.
“I have spent a lot of my life zoned out, just thinking in my own head. I have been trying not to be like that, and be more present, rather than in some fantasy land. That is what Spaceship Boy was about.”
On April 3, two days away from the one-year anniversary of Spaceship Boy, Jackson released a complete album as Retrograded, titled Red Lights at Midnight. “Hi I Miss You”, one of the catchier tunes on the six-track album, is quickly gaining popularity on streaming services.
“I’ve got almost 6,000 plays on Apple music alone….I designed it to be listened to in order and on repeat...if you put the ‘loop’ on the end of ‘At Midnight’ [the final track] it loops perfectly back into the beginning of ‘Red Lights’ and the beginning of the album,” Jackson said. As of April 28th, 2020, the album has 6.4K plays on Apple Music and almost 11K streams on Spotify.
Production, from pen to keyboard to digital tweaking, took nearly seven months, and a large portion of Jackson’s junior year. With more production experience in the classroom under his belt, experimentation and refinement beyond what was previously possible was suddenly available for Jackson.
“A lot of the big synth and big bass sounds come from my inspirations of Eden, Chelsea Cutler...there’s a lot of sounds on the album because there’s a lot of genres on the album,” Jackson said.
“It sounds unique because I couldn’t sound like everybody else even if I wanted to.”
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