Ben Lasky, better known as Quadeca, is the type of artist whose imagination knows no bounds. Lasky was born in 2000 and early on he found ways to express himself through YouTube. Growing up, he made videos based around soccer and the video game FIFA, but later on as his interest in music grew he started drawing inspiration from child prodigies like Justin Bieber.
"My first bits of expression were me playing the piano and singing ballads on YouTube," he told WUNC. "It's not really something I ever thought of becoming a career. It just grew over time because I was doing it so relentlessly. It gave me this initial platform where I was kind of growing up and figuring out who I was in a very public way."
Quadeca eventually started rapping, and in 2014 some of his YouTube clips went viral. The next year he self-released his debut album "Voice Memos," and it ended up on both Billboard's Independent and Heatseeker charts.
This year he released the album "Vanisher, Horizon Scraper." It's a musically ambitious album that combines experimental rap with art pop and tells the story of a sailor on a solo journey where he eventually loses his mind.
"He goes on this journey because he thinks that it'll bring him this newfound enlightenment, but then he just ends up chasing the horizon," he said. "It's kind of this metaphorical, metaphysical journey of chasing something that you can never reach, and losing yourself in the process."
The record features guest appearances from the English rock band Maruja and Detroit-based rapper Danny Brown, who plays the role of a mythical moon-eating dragon.
"Danny is super open minded and will do whatever," he said. "That's part of what makes him so iconic, he really has a generous view of art, no instrumental is too crazy, no concept is too crazy, he'll always deliver."
The album is also accompanied by a movie-length music video that was written, directed, and edited by Lasky.
"When I'm making my songs, I see them very visually, and I kind of want to bring all of the images in my head to life so that other people can understand them more," he said. "Coming from that YouTube space, I've been pretty moved by the visual medium, and I also have a good handle on how to do it."
To make the video, Lasky and photographer Brendon Burton traveled to Camiguin, a small island in the Philippines.
"The reason we went there is because there's this cemetery called the sunken cemetery. In the 1870s there was a volcanic explosion that caused the tides to overtake and sink it. When you go now you can swim and snorkel around there and you can see all the graves covered with algae," he said. "And then there's this monument that they built that looks like a ship. It really looks surreal. It looks sad and apocalyptic and otherworldly and I really felt like it aligned with the place that the album ends."
"Vanisher, Horizon Scraper" is out on Quadeca's own label X8, which he launched this year. He says that his goal for the label is to help share great music with his loyal fanbase.
"I think that I am in a very unique place in terms of the audience that I've built up around my music. It's a lot of music listeners that are extremely analytical, and they're critical listeners, and they love good music, and they love to love good music," he said. "It gives me an opportunity to curate something, and to show the community that I've built music that they probably wouldn't have heard otherwise."
Quadeca is on tour for the album now and will be at Motorco on October 24.
Watch the full album movie for "Vanisher, Horizon Scraper" here.
