Rising Stars: Meet Chad Fjerstad of Los Angeles

Today we’d like to introduce you to Chad Fjerstad.

Hi Chad, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
In 2005, I got really into a band called Zombi, which is strictly analog synthesizers and live drums. Prior to that I spent most of my musical time listening to and playing really heavy metal, but when I got my hands on Zombi’s debut LP, “Cosmos”, it really opened a door for me, and I became inspired to begin composing with synthesizers. I bought my first synth that year at the age of 20 when I was still living in my mom’s basement in the suburbs of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Fast forward several years, and I made my way to Los Angeles. Though I was already super into Zombi, electro-pop bands like The Knife, The Faint, and Ladytron, as well as synth-drenched horror scores, L.A. showed me yet another community where dark synth sounds were worshipped, and that was the underground goth scene. Bands like Cold Cave were just breaking through, and lesser known modern legends like //TENSE// were making a serious mark with their own new-school body music, inspired by classics like Front 242 and Nitzer Ebb, all of which was new to me, and all of which was very inspiring to me.

More Ephemerol began as a solo project for my synthesizer-based experimentations, and was primarily instrumental at first. This was encapsulated in the form of an LP called Fractal Bath which came out in about 2015. But a couple years later, I felt ready to turn More Ephemerol into a synth-pop machine, also newly inspired by old-school new-wave greats such as Human League, OMD, Fad Gadget, and some lesser known minimal wave projects like Turquoise Days and Oppenheimer Analysis. I knew the one thing I couldn’t do on my own was bring a feminine energy to the music, so that was my next goal. When my friend and favorite local DJ, Tamara Sky, expressed an interest in joining me for the next chapter of the project, I knew it had to be done. Her and I always had the exact same taste in tunes. So, around 2018 I began composing the songs which would end up shaping the Apotheosis Pageant LP, which didn’t get released until 2023. That about brings us to what More Ephemerol is now, in spirit.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
There have definitely been some untimely bumps in the road. Right after we played our first live show with Tamara on deck, the 2020 pandemic hit, so that brought the bit of momentum we had started gaining to a halt for a good while.

Trying to do a serious band or music project without the support of a label, booking agent, manager, or a trust fund gets more challenging every single year. I think the last More Ephemerol tour I did in 2024 was the first time in my 23 years of touring in which I witnessed about half of the venues no longer even giving their touring artists drink tickets. That was always the one thing you could count on.

Making records with great recording engineers is also extremely expensive. You start getting older, and you start to think, “Well, do I wanna make another record? Or, do I wanna own a house some day?” And, the clock is ticking.

But it’s not all bad. I feel very fortunate to have met and connected with my girlfriend Madeline Goldstein. She happened to be recording her EP “Other World” at the same time that we were recording the “Apotheosis Pageant” LP with the great Matia Simovich at Infinite Power Studios, and that kind of introduced us to one another, and ended up bringing us together in a way. Since we are a big fan of each other’s projects, it felt well suited to tour together, so it was because of Madeline that More Ephemerol had the opportunity to do its first proper tour in 2023, supporting her project.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
There are a lot of synth-based duo bands out there now, and a lot of it ends up feeling really similar. It’s tough when it takes five years to complete an album and by the time you finally get out there to play something, a sound may have become tired or oversaturated to you, or to the audience, but that’s just the name of the game, its inevitable. You have to be ready for that if you’re gonna do this. I’m still quite fond of the majority of the More Ephemerol material, fortunately, though a lot of the songs we play are now technically about 8 years old to me.

I can’t say exactly what might make us stand out from the pack, but I know that melody is very important to me. I want my synths to be singing or screaming. I love a wailing synthesizer. And I like treating them like dueling metal guitars when it fits the song. Ripping harmonized leads. I don’t hear a lot of bands doing that.

We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you?
Everyone who knows me knows that I have an inexplicably insane amount of bad luck.

But I’ve also been very privileged in life in a lot of other ways, so it all balances out.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://moreephemerol.bandcamp.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/moreephemerol
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/moreephemerol

Image Credits
some images by Venom Verbatim