Moy Cohen from Mexico to Oz
Photo by: Ayla Jennings
Moy Cohen started writing songs at the age of 13 as a way of dealing with life’s difficulties that he was being subjected to. Parental relationship break up meant a cross Atlantic lifestyle to be able to keep in touch with his mum and dad. Most difficult was a sense of not belonging to anywhere and travelling between England and Mexico brought anguish and a struggle to settle.
Cohen is now settled in Australia with his girlfriend and the songs he wrote as a younger self have finally seen the light of day.
I spoke to Cohen to reopen some old feelings and background to his upbringing and how the songs on his Overgrown EP came about.
Dan :“Some background to your beginnings, for those who don’t know, would you count yourself as British or were you born elsewhere?”
Moy: “I was born in Mexico. My dad is Mexican, my mum’s British, so I am half and half. I am very proudly British and very proudly Mexican as well, although no one ever believes me when I tell them I’m Mexican so I must spend a lot of time convincing people and speaking Spanish to them until they do.”
DR: “You were born in Mexico. Whereabouts?”
MC: “In Mexico City. I lived there until I was seven and then moved with my mum to Bristol in England, where I spent the next 14 years, always travelling back and forth to Mexico to see my dad. After uni I went back for a couple of years to live in Mexico again. And yeah, it was great. I kind of felt like I needed to reconnect with my Mexican roots a little bit because, when you’re growing up you don’t have many vivid memories because you’re still kind of in that formative stage of your life. I didn’t have any vivid real memories of living in Mexico and I wanted to form some.”
DR: “So, you were returning to see your dad. Was he still in what was your original home when you were growing up?”
MC: “No, he’d moved out of Mexico City by then. It’s a big crazy city and I think, yeah, he wanted a break. But we still have a house in the city that I always used to go on holidays to visit where my little brother grew up and stuff like that. So, yeah, it still feels homely and familiar. When you live between two places, each time you go back and forth, little things change and that’s become the subject matter on some of the songs, that sort of feeling.”
DR: “On reflection this played a huge part in where you’ve got to and evolved to with your songwriting, the subjects are all harking back to, I suppose, disruption, movement, new places or going back to old places?”
MC: “Yeah, I felt quite displaced growing up.I always felt kind of pulled between the two homes, not sure where I was really at home. So that was definitely a big, big thing I had to deal with growing up, personally.
“I use songwriting really too, to make sense of those feelings when I was a teenager and I was all over the place. That’s how it naturally became the subject matter of the EP because it was really something that I had to work through. Generally that’s a big part of my creative process, a type of almost self-therapy”.
DR: Did you surprise yourself sometimes by what came out when you’ve written a song, you maybe didn’t plan it to be so deep and honest?
MC: “Yeah, a lot of the time, it’s like a journey of self-discovery”
“I may not know how well I’m feeling and I’ll start writing, if I don’t sense it myself, it becomes clearer what’s really bothering me. There’s lots of things that I’m happy and grateful for in my life as well”.
DR: “There’s a lot of artists out there who just write “happy” songs all the time, they do this naturally. I’m sure they do have down times,though choose not to write about it and also the opposite is the case as well. Both are creative, it just depends what is your trigger, would you agree?”
MC: “Yes, I think so. I’ve always gravitated towards sad songs.
It’s something very human. I think that we can take these negative experiences and make them into art.”
Photo by: Ayla Jennings
DR: “What is your method of writing? Do you have a routine?”
MC: “I think it’s a very natural process and each song is different. I have on my phone something like 1,500 unlabeled voice notes. Some are gibberish, others are ideas I will occasionally comb through to then work on.”
“Usually I’ll just get an idea for a melody while walking down the street or maybe when I’m at work. I may just be playing on the guitar or on the piano and I’ll just play the same chords that I like over and over again and then the words may come to me or sometimes I get ideas for lyrics and I’ll just jot them down in my notes, maybe I’ll use them in a song that I write that day or maybe I’ll circle back to them a year later.”
DR:”The five songs on the EP Overgrown, were they all written at the same time?”
MC:”They were all written between the ages of 15 and 17.”
“So they spanned a few years and there were quite a few songs to pick from. I worked with my producer and we picked originally nine songs and then I dropped one last minute because I didn’t feel like it fit with the vibe.”
DR: “It wasn’t an upbeat one was it?”
MC:“Yes, It was an upbeat one.” (laughs)
“The lyrics weren’t necessarily upbeat but the music was more upbeat and it just felt out of place but I’m sure I’ll release it sometime down the road, maybe just on SoundCloud or something like that or maybe on streaming platforms. But yes, they were all written between that sort of 15 to 17 year age, that was when I really started writing songs from personal experience.”
“I really found that my songwriting took a step up once I started channelling my personal experience in the songs, I mean “Childhood Photographs”, which is one of my favourite songs, was the first song I ever wrote on the guitar. My granddad gave me that guitar as a present and I’d never played before and I just started. It uses just two strings and I slide my finger in the most unorthodox way of playing, but it works and we kept it as close to that as possible when recording because it works great.”
DR: “There was obviously a big gap between you writing those songs and actually getting them down to record?”
MC: “So they were recorded between 2017 and probably 2021 then it was getting them mixed and I found that I was waiting for a right moment that was probably never going to come around. So in the end I just wanted to release them and let them live their own life because when you put so much of yourself into songs and you’re holding them in a private link in your pocket, it was kind of weighing down on me a little bit.Now that I’ve released them it does feel like a weight off my chest.”
DR:”The songs have some amazing strings and accompaniment, a gentle build up as the accompaniment comes in. Did you work on that yourself or was it done through a producer writing the strings?”
MC” I worked with a producer in Mexico City, his name’s Pablo Valero.
He’s a friend of my dad’s and he’s a great musician and we recorded in a studio there (Mexico City) . We embellished the songs taking them where they needed to be but we didn’t do anything crazy with them. I think you can hear that we wanted to keep the focus on the voice and the lyrics and then the string arrangements were done by another guy but I already had some sort of midi string tracks on that were a guide for him so we kept it closer and it’s simple.”
“I think it’s simple because it needs to be, it’s my introduction to the world as a musician and it doesn’t need to be an overproduced album”
DR:”I think you’ve achieved exactly that to be honest. The first track I listened to was “Ocean” and I really loved the way the strings came in on that song.”
“You recorded in Mexico and wrote those songs when you were quite a young teenager. Where were you living then? Were you still in England or had you moved on?”
MC:”No I was in England when I was writing those, living in Bristol.”
DR:”You’re a bit older now, how did you end up in Australia?”
MC:”My girlfriend’s always wanted to move here and we’d done a few years of long distance when I was out in Mexico and she was in England so we decided to just do the move here together, see what it had to offer and so far so good. I’ve been here for a year and a couple of months now and it’s great. I recommend it to everyone.”
DR:”Obviously it’s a lovely place to be. I suppose my first thoughts are, could this change affect your songwriting?.”
MC:”Exactly, I’m going to be in a surf rock chill. Beach boys here we come. Yeah exactly.”
“I mean I’ve always, despite releasing this EP which is predominantly melancholic, I’ve always tried to write different types of music.I have a back catalogue of songs that I’m sure I’ll release soon which have more upbeat music and some of them more love songs than sad songs because also naturally I’ve been in the process of writing these songs over these last years I’ve also healed a lot as a person and therefore if I keep circling around and writing about these things and not moving on and writing about the things I’m experiencing now which there are a lot of great things in my life, then then I wouldn’t be staying true to writing about my personal experiences or keeping the process as natural as possible.”
DR:”Have you written songs now you’ve been there a year or so, and felt they’re to the same level that you’ve written before?”
MC:” Yeah for sure the same quality but maybe a slightly different vibe.”
“I’ve also made some good mates out here who love music as much as I do and we’ve jammed and come up with songs together. I’m now at the stage where I’ve released this project and I’m trying to figure out the next steps.”
DR:”You’re out near Sydney, are you in Sydney itself?”
MC:”I’m living in Bondi.”
DR:”Is there a good music scene out there? I’m sure there’s a lot of bands?”
MC:” I’d say Ocean Alley, Spacey Jane, Lime Cordial, Sticky Fingers, all of those bands. There’s a great music scene here and I’ve enjoyed it.
I’ve enjoyed going to gigs. There’s a lot of sort of indie surf rock which I’ve always enjoyed listening to so it’s been cool and I’m trying to find a place for my style of music here which I’m sure there is,then I’ll be out gigging and spreading my music.
DR:”Have you stepped out and found any venues to try out to play?”
MC:” Yeah I played a gig a few months ago in Sydney which was really great with a friend of mine. We did a sort of double headliner gig here and it was really fun.”
DR:”What about coming back over and doing some shows in the UK?
MC:”You know if I’m ever back in England I’ll definitely play but it’s an expensive flight to take back. I definitely love playing in England I miss England and the people there a lot so I’m looking forward to eventually coming back and playing a lot of new songs.
DR:” You had a song used in a U.S TV show called Walker that must have felt good to have your song Ocean playing on the TV?
MC:”So I worked with someone in Mexico who connected me with this sync agency in LA who just shot my songs out for tv opportunities, yeah that one came through, it was really cool. I think in general my songs on this project are quite cinematic in their sound with the strings and quite a lot of emotions so I guess in my head it was kind of only a matter of time until a song was used in a tv show.
I remember when I found out I was out for lunch with my girlfriend and my dad in Mexico, yeah I couldn’t believe it and then it was on the tv that night and I desperately scrambled to try and get a VPN to try and watch an American show. It was surreal and exciting and I was very proud at that moment.”
Listen to Moy Cohen’s EP ‘Overgrown’ down below:
Written by: Dan Reddick
Photographed by: Ayla Jennings