WUNDERWORLD Domination: An Interview With Aries

You direct and edit your music videos. Is it important for you to have the creative reigns across mediums?

Yeah yeah, because it turns out the way I want it.

Would you ever direct outside of music?

Yeah, but that’s not really where my brain’s at right now. I could see myself doing it but I don’t think right now. It’s the same thing with cooking for me—I know one day I’ll get into cooking but not right now. I can’t make food at all. 

It’s weird, I feel like it should have come to me by now because I had a really weird haircutting phase where I’d love to cut people’s hair, and I think that’s where my artistic side came in. I got super into it and now I’m not as into it but I’ve gained the knowledge and I’m happy knowing that I did it. And it’s weird because I feel like cooking would have happened by now but it hasn’t.

I’d be making some gourmet shit that I probably wouldn’t even eat myself because I don’t have that big of a palette. [Laughs] I’m honestly kind of a picky eater. But I just want to make some nice ass food, maybe start up a YouTube channel, I don’t know. But I’ll probably be 40 by then.

It’ll come eventually.

Yeah, I don’t know, I think I’m going to make music until I’m dead. I think I’ll always be doing some kind of music, it’s always fun for me. There are always ways to make it fun, even if sometimes it’ll become really draining and I’ll wonder if this is good for my mental health. There’ll be a lot of times I’ll get myself caught up in the perfectionism aspect of it which doesn’t even exist to normal people’s ears.

It’s a lot of time to spend on your own music so I think it’s natural to kind of get caught up in and overthink it.

Yeah, it drives me absolutely insane. For “FOOL’S GOLD” and “CONVERSATIONS” it was the first time that I brought an actual engineer to work through with me all the way to the end of the song, and we would bounce back and forth on mixing. It just takes a huge load off of you.

Do you do anything outside of music to keep your head grounded?

If I want to go watch a movie, I’ll be like, “Oh I’m going to go and watch this movie, I think it’ll be great and it might inspire me to make music.” Or, let me go take a walk and I might get some inspiration. Everything I do that’s outside of music is somehow still connected to music and I can’t escape that. Not that I want to but it’s like I lowkey signed a deal with the music devil. He said everything I do now has to be for this music thing. Not that it’s bad, I mean if I was trying to escape it, that would be pretty scary but I’m not. I like where I’m at.

Tell me more about WUNDERWORLD.

WUNDERWORLD is the world I’m trying to create. It’s everything that isn’t Aries I would say, like my merch. It’s still connected to me because it’s me pulling the strings and painting the picture, but it’s not me at the same time. I want to develop merch and do cool stuff over there that doesn’t have to be entirely attached to Aries. And WUNDERWORLD stands for Wonderful Underworld.

“CONVERSATIONS” and “FOOL’s GOLD” feel like an evolution in sound. What prompted this shift and where do you want to go from here sound-wise?

The reason I wanted to move away from the WELCOME HOME stuff is because I just wasn’t really happy with anything that I made past that point. Even if it sounded remotely similar I just wouldn’t end up being happy with it, so I was trying to experiment and see where I could push myself. 

Lately I’ve been trying to focus on doing something different and not getting too comfortable with where I am. Still trying to make the music sound good, but I want WELCOME HOME to be WELCOME HOME. I want to make new music because that’s what makes me happy, just pushing myself. Because at the time I was pushing myself with WELCOME HOME. But now if it ends up sounding like that era, then it doesn’t sit well with me. WELCOME HOME, that’s like my baby, but he’s grown up now, I can’t play with him anymore. I need to make something new. I think that once people see my vision more drawn out, more things coming out, and I’m able to paint the picture of where I’m going, people will get it. 

Right when I put out “FOOL’s GOLD,” some people were like, “Oh no, go back to your old sound.” But that changed when I put out “CONVERSATIONS” and they ended up liking “FOOL’S GOLD.” So I just think that with every release people will start to see where I’m trying to go a little more. People love those songs but you can’t make everyone happy. 

How do you feel when you put out music?

I enjoy putting out music once it’s done and finished but by the time a song is out I can 100% guarantee you that I hate the song. I despise it, I cannot listen to it. I wasn’t able to listen to “FOOL’S GOLD” for a month, even the music video, I just couldn’t watch it because I’d spent so much time on the video and song. Now I can go back and watch it objectively and it feels really good.