In the post-grunge years of the late ‘90s and early 2000s, the future electro producer Ted Chen, who at that point had bounced around from Taiwan to New Jersey to North Carolina to Missouri, finds himself in the former grunge capital: Seattle, Washington.

“Originally, I moved to Seattle to loosely start a band with some friends from college,” Ted tells Post-Burnout. “We all went to school at Washington University in St. Louis, and I got in touch with some friends, and one of them was already living in Seattle, and then two of us were like, ‘Oh, let’s just move there.’”

In Seattle, Ted worked at a video rental store and was introduced to the city’s independent music scene. It was there that he met Jen Wood, famous for her short-lived indie band Tattle Tale, who had been signed with the renowned Kill Rock Stars, famous for their roster that included Bikini Kill, Elliot Smith and Sleater-Kinney.

By the time the two met, Tattle Tale had been dead for several years and Jen was now working as a solo artist. Ted was finding his musical footing by listening to a mix of electronica, IDM, indie, and post-punk revival. In 2014, Jen released her third (and, at the time of publication) latest solo album Wilderness, which featured the song “Fell in Love,” which Ted felt the need to remix.

“I just reached out to Jen, because I heard that song and was like, ‘Wow! This is a rad song’,” remembers Ted. “In my head, I could hear other instrumentation behind it and remixes, and it was around the time where my other bands had winded down, and, I don’t know, for some reason, I was in this ‘remixy’ mindset.

“So, I was hearing songs, and I was like, ‘What else can I do with them?’ So, I reached out to Jen, did that, and that was really fun. From there, we organically grew some more collaboration together, and that’s when she came over and we got to listen to some of her voice notes. And that’s where a lot of this came from, actually.”

Inspired by his remix, Jen saw the prospect of collaborating with Ted. “I was just ready to explore, experiment,” she says. “I had been writing the sort of indie singer-songwriter stuff for a while, so I was just very excited to try different styles, like try something new and different.

“Also, [it’s] just representative of who I am as a person now. I’ve changed, and we change. Hopefully, we evolve and we change. I’m not the same person that I was in 2014, right?”

Life events brought Jen to California, where, among other things, she sang with the metal band This White Light with Greg Anderson of Sunn O))) fame and worked as a touring member of the legendary indie project The Postal Service on a North American tour. Soon, life also brought Ted to the Golden State.

“It just feels so fated that Ted and I’s paths kept bumping into each other, very organically,”  Jen says. “The minute we started working together, I just knew there was something magical and special about the way that we collaborate. So, yeah, it’s been really fun.”

The distinctive collaborative sound of Jen’s indie songwriter roots and Ted’s electronic production coming together bred a new project, called GEMZ. For both participants, GEMZ has been very rejuvenating.

“The places that we were in in life kind of complimented each other, in a way, that we were both looking to transmute our own energies,” Ted says. “For me, just a couple of months ago, I left a job where I was a product designer at Microsoft. I had been there for fourteen years, and, at some point last year, I realised that it wasn’t serving me in the ways that I needed it to, or it wasn’t feeding my energies in the ways that I needed it to.

“In the middle of that realisation, the burnout, going through all the classic things of burnout – like depression, anxiety, all of this stuff – trying to find your way again, this music project was like Boom! It was like, ‘OK, I feel completely lost and disoriented in so many ways, but at least there’s this.

“‘At least Jen and I can funnel our energies and our hopes and dreams and wishes, our optimism, into this.’ So, that was a way to balance out and reorient, at least for me, life at the time.”

Jen feels similarly. “GEMZ, working with Ted, has been a huge catalyst for me,” she says. “You know, personal growth, transformation, spiritual growth, mental and emotional health and wellness, everything. You know, music is a tool. It’s healing, it’s transformative, it is one of the most powerful things that we have as humans, that can change us.

“It changes our brain chemistry. It changes how we feel. You can call music a drug or music medicine. So, working with Ted has been life-changing for me. It’s been incredible. He’s a total genius. I call him ‘The Wizard.’ He’s a wizard.”

Last Tuesday, GEMZ released their debut EP, See The Future. “The See The Future EP has been a really long process, to be honest,” Jen says. “What I love about that is that Ted and I share a similar vision, in terms of never rushing the process.

“So, these five songs, we’ve really carefully crafted. We’ve taken a long time…we’ve probably spent too much time, but that’s OK. There’s no such thing! Honestly, for me, these songs, they just feel like a batch of songs about healing and transformation, and See The Future is actually a lyric from the last song on the EP, ‘Humans.’ I got the name for the EP from that song.

“So, sending out this message, that’s the closing song of this little mini-album, of wanting to share my love, my hope, my light with people. To be like, ‘Hey, you know what? Whatever you’re going through, you’re going to get through this. Do not look back; the past is in the past.’ So, I feel like every song just has a special little healing message, you know?”

On what’s next for GEMZ, Ted says, “We’re working on a full-length album and some live shows, so keep an eye out for that. You can find us on our socials, at @gemz_songs on Instagram, and we’d just love to hear from people, when they hear the music, how they feel about that and their reaction and response to that, so just hit us up.”

“Yeah, all lines of communication are open,” adds Jen. “Message us. We’ll message you back. We’ll want to show up for our listeners and people who are just curious about our music or have questions. We really appreciate it. Also, I’m starting an old-school email list, a mailing list, because of algorithms and major ticketing companies who have this stronghold on artists’ live shows and stuff like that, so please sign up and send us a message.”

GEMZ’s debut EP, See The Future, is out now. You can find the band’s music, live dates and more on their Instagram.

Tune into POSTBURNOUT.COM Interviews…at 22:00 (IST) to hear this interview in full. Available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Amazon Music Podcasts.

Aaron Kavanagh

Aaron Kavanagh is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Post-Burnout. His writing can also be found in the Irish Daily Star, Buzz.ie, Totally Dublin, The GOO, Headstuff, New Noise Magazine, XS Noize, DSCVRD and more.