‘Brown Steel’ off of the album PEAK, performed at Camp Flog Gnaw 2019
Choker’s debut album was released May 12, 2017, 9 years ago
Time flies! Thanks for all the years with this one.
Do you remember how you heard your first song off Peak? What’s your favorite off this one? Tell us anything you want to share, we’re feeling sentimental 🥹💙
HEAVEN AIN’T SOLD OUT NOW
Cannot believe those words are able to leave my mouth now, truly unbelievable. I’d love to say this process was all sunshine but holy shit this album kicked all of our asses in such insane ways LMAO. A lot of firsts for me all over this one, and after each first i truly felt like i gave everything I could. I couldn’t be more proud of all the visuals I brought to the table for Heaven Ain’t Sold.
The list of thank yous is immense but I’ll just start here; Thank you Chris, you are my brother, my best friend. Thank you for allowing me to live in and create from your sonic worlds. I always say I barely actually create anything, I just extract what’s already in the music and your music makes my job so easy. Thank you Euni for doing anything and everything to make every single thing we can dream up possible. HUGE Thank you to all the fans who inexplicably stuck around for years while we tried to craft the best album experience we could, I truly hope it is worth the wait and I have an unwavering appreciation for each and every one of you. It’s so cliche but genuinely from the bottom of my heart none of this would be or is possible without you. Thank you Roy for believing in me when I first moved to LA and inspiring me to constantly push myself and what I am capable of creatively. The leaps I feel like I took on this one wouldn't have been possible without you as a sounding board and motivator. Thank you to every single crew member for our video shoots, 2 of the best days of my life all thanks to you guys. Thank you to every artist and album and film that inspired me over the past years to create what I did for Heaven Ain’t Sold. There are too many to list but I could feel each and every one flowing through me from start to finish.
This is not a goodbye in the slightest, truly feels like the beginning. Full steam ahead. Thank you all ❤️❤️❤️❤️
One of my earliest memories is watching this VHS tape called, Michael Jordan’s Playground, over and over, multiple times a day. Specifically making sure to catch the musical number at the end, a song named ‘Anything is Possible’ by Full Force featuring Lisa Lisa and Cheryl Pepsii Riley, that otherwise went unreleased.
That has to be the first song I was consciously obsessed with.
‘Proof’ is my first attempt to hunt for a refreshing way to approach how Full Force, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Teddy Riley, Dallas Austin, and many others from the late 80s-early 90s era of black pop music make me feel.
It’s less about the nostalgic view for me tbh, more about how any drum programming remotely in that ballpark melts my brain and imo there’s a lot of room to roam still in those bugged out fields.
I want to keep exploring all the pockets of music that have inspired me, and continue to get better at producing and writing, hopefully in honor and not in vain of those who’ve laid down the groundwork
-chris
PROOF, music video out now, directed by myself 🙏
I’d done music videos before but on way smaller scales with a skeleton crew. For Heaven Ain’t Sold the first thing I wrote down in my rollout notebook was this needs to feel like an obvious step up, no horizontal movement. Music videos mean so much to me, so many of them have shaped me artistically and I want to make 100 more.
Huge thank you to our producer Minye for assembling such an incredible team for the music video to make that step up possible, Artur our DP who was the absolute goat, James our 1st AD who helped so immensely to keep things running smoothly, Cynthia who made our set ideas come to life and Daehyun for coming in 6th man off the bench at the very end with the steadicam takes that blew my mind LMAO. So many more people who made this video possible all included in the last slide they’re incredible. Cannot express enough how sick it was to see so many skilled people come together for a common goal and watch a concept i scribbled in a notebook come to life. Thanks so much to Nick for locking in the coloring, the blue section goes so crazy (shoutout Belly). Finally getting to shoot on film and do some practical lighting stuff made my heart smile, hope everyone liked the video 🥹 and we still not done, more soon 🫡
HEAVEN AINT SOLD FEB 20.
PROOF OUT NOW EVERYWURRRRRRRRRRRRRR DAS A WRAP
Heaven Ain’t Sold, Choker’s third album, cover by me.
Came up with the concept for the cover a little over a year ago to print my photos onto glass, shatter and collage them together after getting inspired by a Busta Rhymes cover I loved. The idea itself sounded cool in theory but even I was surprised how well it ended up working out lol. I had a lot of ironic/thematic emotions during the process of making the cover. When I first got the glass portraits I waited weeks to shatter them because I was super nervous about how they would break, was trying to think of ways in which to control how they would shatter etc. Then when we finally shattered them I lowkey crashed out while trying to collage cause my head was spinning with all the possible configurations LOL. Thankfully Chris and Euni were there to help me just start layering things together and stop me from being so precious about it. My initial goal was to set up a situation in which a million happy accidents could occur, to relinquish control and see where the chips fall and then try to piece it together. Turns out that was terrifying for me LOL, but I genuinely learned a lot about myself making this cover and it has a really special place in my heart because of that.
Here’s a few behind the scenes photos of the process, super proud of my visual contributions to Heaven Ain’t Sold, and will share more soon 🙏
giving away free jet fuzz shirts as a thank you 💕 tag @choker & @jetfuzz in your story describing ‘what you’re looking for’ to potentially win 🤠 -chris
