Lissy laricchia biography of michael

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PAM:  Welcome. I’m Pam Laricchia from livingjoyfully.ca  And today I’m here with my son, Michael.

My little tiny intro, first is the apology that if you’re watching this on video, you may find that we look each other and you end up seeing half our face, sorry, up front, if that happens.

One little thing I wanted to mention is that he went to junior kindergarten for maybe half the year. So, that was half days, five days a week. And then I found homeschooling, you guys know that story. And when I asked him if he wanted to stay home, he said, yes. And that was that, so far anyway, for your attending school career.

Anyway, I was hoping you could give a little bit of an introduction.

MICHAEL: Absolutely, absolutely. So, I’m Michael. I am your youngest son. I’m about to be turning 23 and among many other things, I work primarily in the stunt industry of Toronto for film and live performance. I worked for two years at Medieval Times as a Knight doing sword fighting and jousting and all this fun stuff and then I left to go work on films and I did some really, really fun stuff. I got to be a Stormtrooper for Lucas Films. I got shot off horses as samurais. And then I just, last November, I ended up stunt coordinating for Apple for one of their iPhone commercials. And that was just absolutely bonkers.

PAM: So, let’s dive a little bit into the unschooling piece.

Thinking about when you were growing up, I just thought it’d be cool to share what some of your interests were and how you pursued them. 

MICHAEL: Well, throughout my childhood, my interests really changed a lot and grew into a whole lot of different stuff. I think up until I was around eight. It seems wrong to just pick out anything in particular, at that time I felt like everything was so interesting and it’s just like, you’re just so enraptured by just exp

photo credit: Lissy Laricchia

Today, Ones To Watch is exclusively streaming Michael Seyer’s Nostalgia EP; accompanying the stream is a new interview with Seyer.  Check out the stream & interview here. Nostalgia is out this Friday, November 8th via Caroline.

Japanese city pop, Brazilian boogie, and the songs his parents sang karaoke to, these influences help make Michael Seyer one of the most unique artists creating music in the indie-pop space today. On his new EP Nostalgia the 24 year old songwriter, born in the Philippines but raised in Gardena, a suburb of Los Angeles, set out to create songs which were both fresh and timeless.

Michael Seyer developed his songwriting in the SoCal bedroom pop scene and across two self-released full-length records, 2016’s Ugly Boy and 2018’s Bad Bonez. Now, working with Caroline, Seyer looked to his past for inspiration. The six track EP bares the unmistakable hallmarks of classic pop from the 60’s and 70’s – the kinds of songs which strove to find a perfect balance between emotion and technique.  Standouts from the EP include the 80’s pop of “I Can’t Dance,”the saxophone filled bossa nova of “Heaven Only Knows,” and the smooth jazz of “Oh! This is Love.” These are the sounds the next generation of parents will want to sing in their living rooms.

Tour Dates

11/6 – Phoenix, AZ @ Lunchbox #
11/7 – San Diego, CA @ Voodoo Room #
11/10 – Pomona, CA @ Tropicalia Festival
11/23 – Jakarta, Indonesia @ Lokatara Fest

# with Paul Cherry

Lissy Elle Laricchia is a young 18 year old photographer based in Canada. Exploring fantasy worlds which most of the times feature female characters or even herself as the main character, her imagery emanates a certain magic filled with a vintage vibe. Childhood fairy tales reinvented, tea parties, tutus, levitating girls, childish adventures with monsters and ghosts is what Lissy’s universe is mostly composed of. A fantasy universe that is filled both with beauty and tragedy. We’ve reached to Lissy to understand a bit more her creative world:

Add a little bit of manipulation and that’s pretty much what I want to accomplish in a nutshell.

Exploring her favorite themes such as Alice in Wonderland, fairy tales, surrealism, and magical worlds, Lissy has surfaced her inner child more often than most people do.

They’ve brought me more in touch with my inner child, whom I now hold in such a high regard inside myself and is a big part of who I am.

Using friends as models, Lissy questions the reality and puts her characters in surreal worlds which force the bounds of your imagination. There’s also an impressive number of works featuring herself as the model, but she confesses that she enjoys both experiences.

I enjoy them both equally; self portraits are personal and therapeutic and it’s a completely different experience from shooting with a model.

Lissy is a home schooled child who confesses that her background was of much help in her developing as a photographer and learning the process of being creative. While she acknowledges that this won’t work for everyone, she’s done great like this so far. As for her images, she can’t actually decide which one she loves most as her most recent update is always a favorite for a period of time until she shoots something new.

I’m biased as I was raised as an unschooler so all my learning was self-directed. I understand that a lot of people literally couldn’t do it, which given t

Photos: Lissy Laricchia

For Michael Seyer, when it came to creating his new EP, the inspiration was clear as day, even if it was an intangible feeling. Nostalgia, which we are elated to premiere here today, is birthed from not just an adoration for the records of yesterday but the very notion of growing up itself. It can be heard in the Filipino bedroom R&B artist's timeworn love numbers, which blur the lines between Japanese city pop, bossa nova, Brazillian boogie, and velvety R&B.

Nostalgia  follows his two self-released full-length records, 2016's Ugly Boy and 2018's Bad Bonez. Despite the forward progression of his music, Seyer hasn’t lost that '60s and '70s feel in his new project. As a matter of fact, Nostalgia  guides us through sights and sounds of the past to create an emotional and timeless masterpiece, belonging wholly to the present.  

As an introduction to this new era of his music, we were able to chat with Seyer about always feeling like an outsider, the most important love in his life, and, of course, Nostalgia. Check out our interview and take your first listen to Nostalgia below.  

OTW: Your music is timeless. It has this way of transporting listeners back to a distant era most of us weren’t even born in.

Michael Seyer: You’re making me smile, this is super sweet. I mean, I love really old music, especially for this EP. I named it Nostalgia because like, aesthetically, I wanted the sound to feel like finding an old record and just like popping it in and hearing something really old, and I guess timeless.

OTW: With Nostalgia would you say you were aiming for your fans to feel, well, nostalgia?  

Seyer: Yeah, I wanted that to be exactly the emotion that’s kind of evoked. I mean I think nostalgia is a weird feeling, you know. And like I wanted that to work in a lot of ways with this EP like music-wise, sonically. That’s why I also just chose old family picture