There’s no ecstasy without agony, and there would be no EKKSTACY
without misery. The young songwriter/performer had already dealt with
a lifetime of depression, insecurity, and social isolation before a severe
depressive episode at age 17 led him to drug-induced psychosis and a
suicide attempt. As he bounced back from the episode, EKKSTACY
immersed himself in music. “I really needed something like an outlet,”
he says, “because I didn’t have anybody. So I started writing. And it kind
of just clicked.” Already a fan of the emotionally fraught melodic hip-hop
that had blown up on SoundCloud in his early teens, he now threw
himself into moody indie rock with the same intensity, binging on acts
like Beach Fossils, Current Joys, and The Drums in his downtime
between shifts at an Amazon warehouse.

Working alone, and teaching himself as he went, EKKSTACY soon
began channeling his musical obsessions and the PTSD from his
mental health crisis into his own songs. They were bleak—with brutally
honest lyrics about self-harm and sadness, and slate-grey production
that recalls the early-80s wave of post-punk and proto-goth—but they
also overflowed with melodic pleasures, hooks upon hooks that quickly
began catching ears. As soon as he began posting them to streaming
services, tracks like his breakthrough single “i walk this earth all by
myself” began finding audiences in the hundreds of thousands. When a
friend crunched the numbers and told EKKSTACY he was making
enough money from Spotify to pay his rent, he quit his job the same
day.