Opal Gibbons Visits Section 36 Music!

Section 36 Music had another visitor! Opal Gibbons has an upcoming EP, "Pilot", that you won't want to miss. I was so flattered that she wanted to visit with us to discuss the song, her future goals, and more! I'm sure you'll love what she had to say.

So, let's see what happens when Opal Gibbons visits Section 36 Music! 

I am incredibly excited about your upcoming EP, “Pilot”. What can you tell me about it?

Hehe thank you for the compliments!!! The EP is 4 songs and I like to describe it as dark wave & synth pop. The single off the EP, GiRL WiTH NO ONE comes out Sept 18, and the EP comes out the 22nd! Two of the songs were actually products of my required music technology 101 class at Berklee (which sparked my love for production)! The song “Adrifting” was written on piano during quarantine (sooo long ago!!!), and then produced by my dad. When people say their albums have taken a long time to release I chuckle a little because sitting on this song for 6 years has genuinely been torture. I feel incredibly lucky to have my best buds feature on this project. My amazing friend (and guitar teacher!) Ryker Savage plays guitar for the single “GiRL WiTH NO ONE”, I have my friend Lincoln Rasmussen playing guitar on “Adrifting”, and my dad is actually the one who finished all the mixing and mastering for me! I also have the anarchist-run electronic/indie label eMERGENCY heARTS helping me with this release. I highly recommend everyone checking out their website, it’s just a hub of outlier and underdog music for all the weirdos in the world.

Do you have any favorite memories from the recording process?

Photo: Liliana Watkins

GiRL WiTH NO ONE was definitely a fun one. I produced it entirely with Logic Pro presets that I opened and mindlessly fiddled with. I probably spent weeks staring at my computer screen cluelessly turning knobs in bewilderment. I asked a classmate from my music tech class to come record a guitar solo for it, and then spent the following 4 days chopping his takes up and placing the notes where I wanted them to be. That classmate ended up becoming one of my closest friends, and I hold those early memories with him very close to my heart. Shoutout Ryker! 

I also had the idea of placing whispering/crying/gossiping in the background of the song which lead to some fun memories. My dad engineered the whole vocal recording session, and had to pull some real mean tricks to get my BGVs to sound.. not cringe? I am not an actor… It all sounded pretty awkward before my dad stepped in. If you listen closely you can hear us talking about my cat, Sita, pooping during the laugh tracks, as well as her meowing later in the crying tracks. My crying tracks sounded especially fake and embarrassing!!! My childhood cat, Tink, had died just a month or so before this recording session. My dad pulled out the memorial we had made from her ashes for the first time in our session to get some real cries from me. I love my dad, he’s so cruel to me. But damn it got the job done.

Is there a favorite song of yours on the EP?

“Hostility” has been the crowd favorite so far. The production is definitely the most advanced, given it was the last song I wrote for the EP. I think the selling point for that one is the vocal layers. I suffered a vocal injury before doing all the vox recordings and it makes me joyful as hell that I sound so good despite the obstacle. I personally am a big fan of “Afterwards”. I produced it as my final project for the music tech 101 class, and my professor approached me after presenting and told me I HAD to apply for the sound design major (EPD) at Berklee. I was prepared to be a vocal performance major prior to this interaction, but he genuinely changed the course of my life with that statement. Every time I listen to that song I feel insane that my beginner level skills were able to output such an awesome product. 

Who or what would you consider your biggest musical inspiration?

Oh my goodness I am going to name one bajillion artists. The artists I listen to tend to rotate as time goes on. I really deep dived into goth culture and music during the time I was working on this EP. My main rotation was Skinny Puppy, Depeche Mode, Cabaret Voltaire, Bjork, and Goldfrapp. The music I’m creating now is heavily influenced by Scott Walker, New Order, Yaz(oo), and Gary Numan. The only constants in my music rotation are Elliott Smith, Fiona Apple, and David Bowie. I will never stop listening to them no matter how depressed it makes me. Y’all will have to cut my ears off before I go cold turkey on my boy Elliott. 

What is the biggest challenge with your musical career?

Honestly, the biggest challenge has just been myself. Not to get all emotional, but after almost a decade of misdiagnoses and years of unnecessary antipsychotics and useless mood stabilizers, I finally got my freaking ADHD diagnosis!! I spent years thinking my lack of motivation and intense exhaustion and outbursts were just a broken factor of what makes me Opal. I finally found a psychiatrist that was willing to meet with me for more than 15 minutes and he saw through the 21 years of professional masking. That diagnosis absolutely changed my life, and I think this album would’ve come out MUCH sooner if I had been properly diagnosed all those years ago. This is a PSA to all mental health professionals to treat your women differently! Our symptoms are not the same as men and we deserve better than years of carelessness and ignorance to our issues.

What are your immediate musical goals?

As of lately, I’ve been focusing a lot of my DJ career! I started DJing like 8? months ago. I decided to post some of my mixes on instagram and they blew up pretty fast- I went from 1.5k followers to over 10k in less than 2 weeks! Fame is incredibly scary and intimidating to me, being a “pop star” is definitely not a goal I have. I think all the attention would make me go actually insane. And that bar is pretty high for the life I’ve lived. My ultimate dream is to get hired by a game animation studio and write music for video games. All of the music I’ve written with code is very game reminiscent, and I hope I get to use it in that context soon! As for the school year, my goal is to just write and release as much music as possible, play as many gigs as possible, and enjoy the remaining time I have with my friends and professors. I’ve been treated with so much love and compassion at this school, and I’m really going to miss all my buddies. 

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I'm so excited to hear all this new music!

As always, I want to thank Opal for visiting with us, and for sending along the pictures to accompany the interview. 

I'm sure you’ll all want to follow her and see what she has going on. Here are the best places to find her:

Instagram

YoutTube

Website

Thanks again Opal, and good luck reaching your goals!