ZENITH MOON

Matthew Burrows (Guitar)

My biggest Inhibition as an artist? I’d have to say it’s crippling self-doubt, which if I’m honest, I can keep in check pretty well these days, but a while ago it was a different story. I had an overwhelming sense of not being good enough or not feeling ‘worthy’ of where I was as a guitarist or just a musician in general. This mindset as you can imagine quickly became rather unhealthy, it’d hinder my practice at times to the point where I may not even pick up the guitar for days on end and even when I did, I’d feel like my playing was terrible or just forced. I’d usually get this feeling during long breaks between gigs, wondering why the next one hadn’t come along yet. To get past this feeling I found I had to sit back and do some serious self-reflection, (which I think is important for any artist) I’d just take a long look at what I’d achieved as well as watch old videos of myself to see how far I’d actually come, I find it’s easy to lose sight of how much you’ve actually improved when you’re always looking ahead at what you can’t do. After a while of maturing and finding the kind of musician I wanted to be the feeling of self-doubt has become less and less but that’s not to say I’m complacent in my ability as a guitarist, I’m always pushing to be better and trying to reach the next level of my playing!

Kahli Rose (Vocals)

My biggest Inhibition is confidence. I’m not a naturally ‘confident’ person. I am the type of person who has slowly become more confident through time, however I can get embarrassed really easily. When I was younger, yes, I was actually quite a confident kid, so much so, that I would perform little concerts for my family on a weekly basis. However, once my primary school years ended, things changed. Adolescence made me become a lot more self-aware. In primary school, I would do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, as I didn’t care about what others thought since I was enjoying myself and having a great time. However, once I reached high school, it completely contradicted everything. I became very self-conscious. I became self-conscious of my looks, my body, and I became afraid of what people thought of me, especially whenever I would perform at school assemblies. It is so easy to get trapped in a negative headspace, so much so that I didn’t realise I had major depression and anxiety issues until I was four years in. It gets to the point where feeling extremely self-conscious and self-aware actually becomes the norm for you. It got so bad that I stopped singing and performing for 3 years - I was literally too afraid and I felt ashamed. I felt ashamed because I didn’t perform songs people liked. I was so afraid to sing a ‘blues’ song instead of a pop artist like Rihanna because I thought I would become more of an outcast. Something which I now realise was completely idiotic and wrong. It took many years for me to realise what I was doing to myself. It took the death of my uncle to get me out of that head space and make the changes I needed to, to make me healthy again.

Andie Zarins

For me, my greatest creative inhibition is my ambition. Let me clarify what that means. Ambition is a beautiful thing and it can be your greatest asset combined with precise vision, but for some people (like me) it needs to be checked. My ambition when left alone runs rampant - I see something that inspires me and it becomes my focus. This is all well and good, but when you’re inspired by almost anything that’s done well, that’s a problem. I’ll see someone shredding on piano, or performing a flamenco piece on guitar, or maybe I’ll hear a super well produced edm track… That’s all it takes. Whenever I get inspired by something like this, I’ll get stuck into it for a few days to a week, most of the time at the cost of whatever it is that I was inspired by before or what I really need to work on. Unchecked ambition is synonymous with ‘lack of focus.’ Without razor-sharp focus, you’re busy all the time, but you’re sprinting on a treadmill: you don’t move anywhere. This all being said, this can also be my greatest superpower if harnessed properly. Recently I’ve been trying to identify exactly what I want to move towards. Finding out moves and shakes you the most is as simple as waiting till there’s no moving forces acting upon you - no job, uni, or band commitments - and then sorting through your mind in the silence. If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll find there’s a pull that’s always been there, but it’s duller than those sudden surges of inspiration - but not dull enough to fade away completely. For me, that pull is drums, and composing. Those two things satiate my soul and leave me going to bed happy, at least until the next thing that will come along and throw me off my path.