If you’re not familiar with Locate S,1 (formally known as Christina Schneider), you will be soon. Her immense amount of talent and her vibrant, bubbly personality shines through in her music and in any conversation had with her. She is taking music to a new level and she is here to stay. HC St. John’s got a chance to catch up with her and see a glimpse into her colorful life and her creative mind that has no intention of stopping any time soon.
Her Campus: So, you went to Marlboro College and created a major of photography and aesthetic philosophy. Why did you choose those two areas for your major?
Locate S,1: I love both of those things. I really loved working in the dark room, just because I’m kind of a loner and I’m a hermit and I love being in the dark room-it was really nice. I got into aesthetic philosophy because I was doing a lot of self-portraiture and then I was really interested in female narcissism and how that could be a powerful or not powerful thing, that definitely formed a lot of my studies.
HC: Do you think that those studies help you at all now in your career?
LS1: I mean it definitely gave me the experience of being in an art school and having to go through being an artist who has to defend their work. I think that it prepared me for that affect of being an artist.
HC: And then, besides creating music, what do you do in your free time? Any hobbies?
LS1: You know, aside from making music I’m a really voracious music collector. I just love music and collecting records and I have kind of like an encyclopedic obsession with it. I love baking too, cooking and baking.
HC: Okay, that’s cool!
LS1: Hahaha yeah, I’m like secretly really lame.
HC: How did it feel to get signed by Captured Tracks? What emotions did you have?
LS1: It was really unbelievably amazing, because I’m so used to just doing things in an underground kind of DIY capacity. I really think I have kind of like an anti-establishment problem. So, to be kind of welcomed into this world, you know they’re pretty independent, but it still felt like I was being seen.
HC: Yeah, of course.
LS1: Kind of called my bluff, haha.
HC: When did you start creating music?
LS1: I’ve always written songs on the guitar, I have a video from when I’m like five years old writing a song on the guitar. And I guess I started taking it seriously more when I was in high school and I was hanging out with friends who were also really into music. It made me realize that I didn’t have to just listen to it.
HC: Yeah, you could make it.
LS1: Yeah, I could be serious about making it.
HC: And what was the thing that made you want to get into it, was there a particular artist or genre?
LS1: I just love music from the bottom of my heart, it’s my first love and I think I just always wanted to be a musician. I didn’t even really have to make that decision; I feel like it was kind of made.
HC: Who is your biggest inspiration now as an artist?
LS1: That’s impossible to answer. I mean there’s so many amazing people in the world making amazing things, I think if you’re serious about what you’re doing then you take inspiration from all kinds of things and you take inspiration from people who aren’t artists too. So, it’s just kind of hard to answer that in any honest way.
HC: What genres of music do you take the most inspiration from, or is it a mixture of a couple?
LS1: It’s definitely a hodge podge of things. I was thinking today about how much I love disco and I’m a really big ABBA fan and I love all kinds of music. But, just particularly now since disco has kind of been related to this kind of naïve, kind of brain-dead place in music when really, it’s so politically interesting and also just joyful in a way. It feels like music isn’t really expected or allowed to be in a complicated way. So, I’m really interested in that right now and I think that did influence the album.
HC: How did you come up with your stage name (Locate S,1)?
LS1: It’s something that Kevin and I saw spray painted on the street outside of our house. It turned out to be kind of like construction zoning codes. But then I was thinking about the name and I found out that S1 and S2 are the 2 beats of the human heartbeat. S1 is the first one.
HC: Oh, wow that’s so cool. I did not know that!
HC: Do you have any advice for people that have the same dream and want to get into the music industry?
LS1: Find a rich person to put your music out for you…hahaha. No, just make music like don’t wait for anyone to tell you to make it.
HC: Alright, that’s all I have.
LS1: Okay, cool!
HC: Thank you so much for your time!
LS1: Thank you!
Locate S,1’s newest single “Whisper 2000” from her upcoming album Personalia is out now. Be sure to give it a listen!
Locate S,1 on the single: “‘Whisper 2000’ is about knowing your worth even when you don’t fit into the traditional confines of what is considered valuable and refusing to measure yourself by somebody else’s standards.”