Cobalt Blue — 5 May 2021 on Rocket Shop Radio Hour

Cobalt Blue joined host Tom Proctor on ‘Rocket Shop,’ Big Heavy World’s weekly local Vermont music radio hour on 105.9 FM The Radiator. Catch up with them at soundcloud.com/kayleigh-dimaggio

Rocket Shop was joined by our very own Cobalt Blue, an intern here at Big Heavy World. The first song played for us was in Icelandic, “Astarlag”. 

Cobalt Blue, who goes by Olive, is a Creative Media Major with a concentration in Sonic Arts at Champlain College. Olive is lucky enough to have access to recording and production equipment provided by her school and has the luxury of taking her time in the studio without having to think about paying for space and equipment. Especially now that COVID has placed restrictions on capacities, she was met with little competition when booking the room as people were using the studios much less. 

The first song is partially in Icelandic with the chorus in English. While “Astarlag” was originally in English, there was something about the sound that did not sit right with her, the lyrics sounded “too weird”, and she decided it was best to put it in Icelandic. Olive was inspired by her trip to Reykjavík and her visit to the Icelandic punk museum. This experience and her love of Iceland’s natural beauty has motivated her to look more into the genre of Icelandic Punk.

When asked about her songwriting process, she responded by saying it often started with a guitar riff in her head, the tune was then played out and a song was later built off that. Other times she keeps a notebook full of things she hears randomly in passing or in the streets to be “thrown together” to create a song. 

When it comes to the impact of COVID-19 on her music experience, she responds that Cobalt Blue would not have existed if it were not for the pandemic. The name appeared the first week of lockdown when she was doing an oil painting self-portrait all in blue tones. She kept running out of the color “cobalt blue” and thus was born the artistic name. As COVID allowed for some creative time and space for many artists, Cobalt Blue learned the more “technological aspects” of music, giving her the time to grow her skills as a musician to look at this past year and a half as a positive experience.

It appears Olive has dealt with music for the majority of her life. The first time she picked up an instrument was in 3rd grade for the school band where she played the flute. While she absolutely hated it at the moment, she began to form a relationship with music, listened to different genres, expanded her horizons, and realized the music truly meant something to her. Her dad and grandfather were both guitarists, so it was easy for her to start her oath in the music world. 

She spent a lot of time in high school trying to form a band, with little success in the long term as she realized she would take it more seriously than the others. While unfortunate, it taught her that she would be best in a solo act and learned as many instruments as she could like drums, guitar, and bass. 

Cobalt Blue can be found on SoundCloud for the time being, but Olive says that she doesn’t consider the few songs posted on that platform to be her “actual music”. She has written 13 tracks to be seen on her first album to be released in the August to September time frame. Everything is written, she just needs to start on the recording process, which she plans to do herself as it is within her field of study. Her goal is to find someone who would be able to help her in the music business area of the industry for marketing and getting her music onto other platforms like Spotify.

Cobalt Blue played another one of her songs, “As Plants Do”. This was written very recently, on the first day Vermont reached 50 degrees. Olive compares herself to REM songs where you have “no idea what they are talking about” and different meanings can stem from the music, different for each person. The main theme of this song, however, was coming out of winter and the depressive state that goes along with it, to feeling the sun for the first time again. It is a sort of celebration song.

Olive explains the Cobalt Blue never really had a concrete genre but always lent more towards punk. The only song she ever had a clear vision for was the last song she played for us on Rocket Shop, “Dream Girl”. While usually she goes into the songwriting process with no vision at all and changes her mind halfway through, “Dream Girl” was very clearly about the “manic pixie dream girl” seen in movies as a child. This is the female character that is meant to be quirky, fun-loving and aiding the main character. Growing up, she aspired to be this ideal but quickly realized that it actually wasn’t a great message to be spreading to young girls. This song became a song of rage and was written to the people that expect this pixie dream girl in their life. 

Keep an eye out for Cobalt Blue’s first album coming out in late summer/early fall on popular streaming platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music. 
Cobalt Blue can be found on Instagram and Youtube.

Text by Flore Barrillon - Photos by Abbey Berger-Knorr