Jasin Cadic who is based in Union City, New Jersey, is currently working on his latest music project PASSWORD:(dOOMsDAY) with Kelsey Warren. Their latest single is “I Don’t Believe in Ghosts,“ which is available on all music platforms. Later this month they will be filming a video for it with our own Mike Ruiz. Cadic, an IMDb featured artist, is recognized for producing and co-writing the critically acclaimed documentary film “Sidemen:Long Road To Glory “ Jasin’s latest Art Show “JASIN CADIC:2020:6:6:6” features 18 intense and thought-provoking pieces painted in 2020. This art show can be viewed on his website.

Jasin Cadic Tearsheet: Xi Lang — Jasin Cadic
Tearsheet: Xi Lang

How did the pandemic help you create new music and expression?
What moments during this time stuck with you and inspired you (if any)?
Last January, I started a new series of paintings that was intended for an art show scheduled for March 2020. As I began those paintings Covid-19 started making its way into the news, and for the next several weeks reports, speculations, and fears grew. Looking back at what was going on I can see that the paintings got more fearful and paranoid about what was approaching. World events and human behaviors are always a huge part of my art, but this was different. My last painting before we realized the pandemic was going to change all our lives, features a faceless figure walking into the darkness and black rain while being blown to pieces, with the words “THIS IS AN EMERGENCY“ scrolled over it. Looking at it now, I feel that figure represents all of us about to walk directly into the dark unknown as our lives were going to be blown apart.

Just before the shutdown I left town and that painting sat on the easel in my art studio. A dark fantasy of mine was what if I never returned home and some people one day opened my art studio and saw that painting staring back at them. What would they think? Or what would the state of the world had been if I never returned home? At that time, it was so scary no one really knew what was going to happen. The reports of 1-2 million dead were unfathomable. From that point on, the pandemic, the shutdown, the news, and our general new reality definitely made it into everything I was going to create for the foreseeable future.

How did the pandemic impact your paintings? Were you still able to create huge canvases? And did any of these mediums transform for you with creating new material and isolation?
As I mentioned earlier just before the shutdown I left town, with my Muse Velvetina Taylor, my cat George, and her Dog Rocky. We loaded my van with the essentials and headed to my friends 125-acre farm where we spent the shutdown in an RV. Other than for the reason we were there it was an amazing time on a beautiful piece of land.

As far as creating there, I tried painting every day to pass the time. My paintings are usually on large canvases however due to space in the RV I was forced to paint a lot smaller, which was new for me and actually a welcomed challenge . As far as music goes the seeds of PASSWORD:(dOOMsDAY) also started during the shutdown. At first it was quite simple beats and loops for fun and to pass the time, but I quickly started to share them via e-mail with Kelsey Warren, who is someone I’ve been wanting to work with for years. It all just clicked and with the mixture of our new abundance of free time and emotions to pour into things songs quickly started to take shape. Lyrically the songs reflect all the same topics and feelings found in a lot of my paintings. I always see my paintings as a story or song and vice versa.

What was the emotion and intention behind a special piece made during this time? Where did you paint or write lyrics? Did your environment influence your work?
If one moment sticks out that is directly tied to a painting, it was when Trump had the BLM protestors tear gassed, and he walked across the street from the White House to that boarded up church for that bizarre photo op, where he held a bible upside like it was some sort of prop while making that weird grimace on his face. It was a surreal moment, and I went straight into my paint studio and painted “PHOTO OP,” which depicts that moment with Trump as a sad clown but, at the same time, a Devil. The cross on the Bible is upside down along with the American Flag pin on his lapel as the stars fall off the flag. For me it was capturing the moment and the exact emotion I was feeling. I’m sure a lot of us wondered, is this guy a Clown, the Devil, or both? That combined with the palpable feeling that the country was in real distress at that moment and there was definitely a sense of things unraveling. When the BLM protests started and as COVID-19 continued to rage, it literally felt like everything was going to explode and that “Photo Op” didn’t help a damn thing. That painting also went on to be the cover of PASSWORD:(dOOMsDAY) first single “THIS IS AN EMERGENCY.“

You just released online art closing out 2020. What was this like and which pieces did you choose to show?
The online art show was an idea that came together around November. As the year drawn to a close I started to look back at the year of paintings as a whole, and I began to see the story and emotions play out in order. I felt there was a story there. I then decided to choose six paintings from each time period: before, during, and after the quarantine shutdown. I chose the ones that I felt best tell a story and represent what I was feeling throughout the year. Hopefully, they resonate with others who felt the same way. There’s also the added bonus of the tongue and cheek use of 666 in the shows structure as it relates to 2020 as a whole. The art show is presented in three sections on my website. I would’ve loved to have shown them live at a show, event, or gallery, but it’s fitting that a collection of paintings done during 2020 can’t be seen in person.

What was the idea behind your piece “Welcome To Doomsday?”
That painting represents the entertainification of doom and gloom, which we all now consume 24/7 in some form. Disasters and bad news are a commodity now, and we would even make the actual Doomsday into entertainment at this point. I can see the headlines now “highest ratings ever for an end of a society, watch it here!“ What better way to show the commodification of something then to use the all-seeing Mouse, that seems to control all things entertainment. However, the painting shows even his bones have been picked clean, all while gripping the melting rainbow he was selling ever so tight. When I finished the painting I quickly wrote DOOMSDAY Above the rainbow and I could just see it, Come on down and “WELCOME TO DOOMSDAY“ In a recent turn of events Disneyland is closed and has actually become a huge Covid-19 vaccine site. If that doesn’t give you a feeling of surreal gloom I don’t know what would.

PHOTO OP ( cover art for PWDD single This Is An Emergency)

What is your memory behind a favorite piece, or lyric created during the lockdown?
My favorite lyric created during the lockdown has to be the lyrics for my vocal parts in “I Don’t Believe in Ghosts.“ Whenever I read or hear that line it just sums up how I felt then and throughout the year. This will always remind me of 2020.

“Say what you know
What all this is for
With slit throats
Coated in gold
This whole thing is going to explode
On the edge of the abyss
Masks exhausted
Eyes glowing pale and cold
Water up to our knees. Flooded
Do you mind Running on borrowed time?
Swinging on the end of our own rope
Failed Puppets Grasp to disorder and hope
The believing has deduced us Into being sick and useless
We are the virus blood stained fists
We are death
Will the ghost please save us
A pale sick idiot
Mumbles Goodbye
Saying Sorry you got stuck
Here honey
While Taking
An eye for an eye
The cackle of a predator laughing at you
saying Grab what you can because
This whole failed experiment is coming to an end “

What lessons have you learned that impacted your art?
A lot of things have been learned in the past year, but one that stood out was to keep creating even though it might not ever have a chance for an audience to see. This applies to creating paintings, songs, new film ideas, etc. In the beginning of the pandemic, I had no idea about when I would ever get to show these: will I ever get to perform these songs live? For the first time I was creating with no end goal In site or purpose, and it’s definitely changed the way I work on things.

How would you describe your style both musically and artistically? Have they changed during the pandemic?
My style, artistically and musically, has always been driven by apocalyptic imagery, human behavior, questioning who we are, why we’re here, and what really is the point to any of this. However, I also combined all those dark concepts with a juxtaposition of fun colors, familiar images, and obvious tongue-and-cheek references, or in the case of songs with catchy music or choruses that get stuck in your head, which I feel when all combined lightens the blow going in. You’re not turned off right away but once you’re in and you realize what i’m saying artistically or musically it’s to late. In some cases, I feel it even hits harder and is more impactful because you weren’t expecting it. My style hasn’t really changed due to the pandemic, it’s always growing and changing and hopefully getting better whatever that means in an artistic sense . However, what the last year has done is reaffirmed what I’ve been creating my whole adult life, and it’s almost as if real life has caught up with what I thought at times were fanciful, nightmarish possible future outcomes and paths for us, but now those things seem to be not that fanciful anymore and the cracks in our world and society over the last year have exposed things and created more possible outcomes beyond merely some of our worst fears.

Your music genre is Heavy Metal/Industrial. Did any thoughts occur during lock down that made you self- reflect on your music? How did this style begin and how did come to where it is now in your life?
It’s funny that a lot of the music I write and have been a part of is heavy metal or hard rock, but for the most part I don’t even listen to that style that often. When it comes to writing songs and performing and what I’m trying to say the aggression and the urgency just takes over like I just want to grab you and scream wake up! It’s coming! It’s here! Musically I began singing in hardcore punk bands when I was a kid, but with the more metal and screaming type stuff, I found industrial bands like NIN Ministry, Rob Zombie and that quickly got absorbed in what I was doing. Then every band after that was hybrid mixes of Hard Rock, Metal, and Industrial . My style has changed a lot throughout the years but at the same time stayed the same, but the reality is I think it has just gotten better, songs are a lot less metal or screaming as they once were, but I think that just comes with age, or It might just mean I wanted people to hear what I’m yelling so passionately at them about.

I’m a huge fan of music from the 1950s and 60s. I had always been trying to find a way to incorporate a horn section, piano, and backup singing elements into the metal bands I was in. I started to toy with this idea when I was in the band Star Killer. After I was a part of creating the film SIDEMEN and traveling the country for a few years interviewing and filming blues musicians all over the country I came back inspired from that experience . At the time I was lead singer of NYC band PANZIE, and again I started to incorporate those elements into and over the hard rock metal sound. After PANZIE I still had the itch to explore this sound, so I put together a 10-piece short lived project called Jasin Cadic + THE END, which was a five-piece metal band: a three-piece brass section, a piano player, and backup female vocalist. This was the culmination of exactly what I had in mind. It was basically a cover band in its initial performance at Gramercy Theater playing a mix of covers and songs from past NYC bands I was a part of, but it was more of a proving ground that this idea would work. It was one of the most satisfying things musically I had ever done.

Kelsey Warren, my now partner in PWDD, was a part of THE END, and it’s a concept I would always love to explore more in the future. I just love a brass section, and there’s nothing more powerful then piano and female vocals, all of that for me is just the heart and soul of music.

From the 10-piece dream with THE END things had to be shrunk down at the moment, and PWDD is now just Kelsey Warren and me. It’s definitely aggressive at times, I think that’s a given, but it is less metal for sure. We’re exploring more of our love of industrial music and programming , experimental sounds, hip hop beats and loops, etc. I’ve been a fan of Kelsey and his music for so long, and it’s amazing to be working together.

Later this month PASSWORD:(dOOMsDAY) will record our debut live performance, which is part of an overall effort to save the rock club Arlene’s Grocery from having to close due to the pandemic. To me Arlene’s is the best sounding Live room in the city and the staff is so amazing and have poured their hearts and souls into that place. It would be a real shame for it to close, so anything we could do to help I’m all for it.

For this we have enlisted two of the best- and well-known musicians in NYC, Michael Maclvor (Candiria, Poison The Well ) and Joe Letz (Aesthetic Perfection , Emigrate, Combichrist). Mike and Joe are also two of my closest friends, and I’ve been in bands with both of them in the past but at different times. The line up of Kelsey, Mike, and Joe is amazing and a dream come true. I’m a fan of these guys and as the added bonus I get to sing with them! I can’t wait for everyone to see it; hell, I can’t wait to see it myself! The performance will be streamed at end of February on the Arlene’s Grocery website; more details will be on mine and PWDD Instagram’s very soon.

Well, it sounds like you’ve had a jam packed and very productive year despite the pandemic. Have you had time to work on anything else-- film projects or set designing?
Yes, both actually. Right after SIDEMEN premiered in 2017 I began working on what I wanted to be my follow up film project. It has been a passion project for the past few years with some interest here and there, but over the summer it really started to pick up some serious momentum. It looks like it has a real shot of getting made. I can’t say much more about it, but what I can say it has to do with a long, lost piece of artwork, and my favorite character of all time “The Joker.”

As far as set designing goes most of the production industry has been hit hard over the past year, but it’s slowly coming back. I was fortunate enough to have been asked by DJ, Event Producer and Nightlife curator Frankie Sharp to join him and help to design elements for his next super-secret project he will be unleashing on NYC nightlife. It’s extremely exciting to be a part of and I can’t wait until people see what Frankie is cooking up.

I DON’T BELIEVE IN GHOSTS ( cover art for PWDD single of same name )

What is your life’s motto?
Well, I have a bunch, but here’s a few of my favs. I think they actually could be seen as one big one. One, never say no to an artistic endeavor, especially if that “no” is based on money; two, the you that you were yesterday is your only real competition, so for today just be better than that guy and don’t worry about what anyone else is doing; and finally, be grateful of the ridiculous odds it was that you were even born a human being at all and don’t waste it.

Website: https://www.jasincadic.com/
Social: IG: https://www.instagram.com/jasincadic/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jasin.cadic
PASSWORD:(dOOMsDAY) Music : https://linktr.ee/Passworddoomsday

Interview by Alaina Randazzo

Jasin Cadic, A Multitalented Artist in Film, Art & Music

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