For the past sixteen years, D.C. Myers has been plugging away at any instrument he could find, starting in rock bands as a youth in Illinois.
“I began learning every instrument I could get my hands on,” Myers says, as well as obsessing over any record he could find that had weird, atmospheric soundscapes impossible to re-create on a guitar.
Around nineteen, he dipped his toes into the sprawling world of synthesizers — and hasn’t looked back since.
“When I got my first Yamaha synth, everything changed for me,” he says.
Myers moved to Denver three years ago and quickly found himself frequenting Milk — “the best club ever created, in my opinion,” he says.
Drawing inspiration from Milk's goth-themed nights — as well as synth-pop groups from the 1980s like Depeche Mode, New Order and the Human League — Myers released his first solo single in 2020, “Losing Game.”
“It was the first single I ever mixed, mastered and recorded all by myself,” he says. “It really was more a jumping-off point for myself to light a fire under me and get the ball rolling.”
On March 19, Myers put out the single “Dear Departed,” off of his forthcoming debut EP, Lighthouse Sessions. Depeche Mode’s seminal Violator album came out on the same day 31 years ago, a coincidence that Myers noticed only after the single's release.
"The first record that ever completely blew me away was Violator," says Myers, noting that the melodies mixed with "a moody sense of darkness and despair" helped shape his musical direction.
The opening notes of "Dear Departed" resemble Violator's first song, with sharp synth jabs plunking out a simple, catchy melody. Adding a more modern pop twist to the groundwork laid out by Depeche Mode, Myers incorporates brooding chord progressions that are painted over with quick strums of his electric guitar — all while his clear alto voice cuts through the rhythmic beat.
“This song stemmed from an idea I had of falling in love with someone from a different time and place that you had never met,” going so far as to try to raise the dead to get the person back, Myers says. “Dear Departed,” aims to conjure up the imagery of visiting the grave of an unrequited love, “thinking you hear them calling you in the distance."
The title of Myers's upcoming EP references the sense of complete and utter isolation during the pandemic, like a lone lighthouse looming in the midst of a storming sea. “But in that loneliness, I felt free to do whatever I wanted,” he points out. What initially provoked a feeling of smothering isolation turned into unrestrained creative freedom for him.
“Even though I do miss the beautiful aspect of creating music with other people, I think there's something to being able to create music or art with no other outside influences. You can be your true self,” Myers says. “This EP has been the best musical experience of my life. One hundred percent me.”
Lighthouse Sessions drops on April 19 and will be available on Spotify and iTunes.
