Act II: An Interview with Neverending White Lights

By Liem Vu

"Scream out all the ways you notice the past is gone, forget what you had…you say you believe in all this but you can't pretend for the sake of faith." Like a musical eulogy, Daniel Victor's voice serenades the residents of the Seattle Grace Hospital. While the fluorescent lit walls reek of sterility, they are anything but, as they have been witness to Death, Life, Love, and Despair, the very themes that have embodied the two albums by Victor's Neverending White Lights.

After the drought of the Writers Strike, Grey’s Anatomy audiences will now be reintroduced to Katherine Heigl's tears and T.R. Knight's awkwardness while concurrently be sonically exposed to Canadian-bred Neverending White Lights through the song, Distance.

While audience members may be spurred into high emotion by the acting and music: the composer, himself, carries the most intimacy with the piece.

"That song to me was written about and inspired by Lexi Valentine from Magneta Lane and the sort of relationship her and I had at the time I was making Act II. The song was written to sort of explain the space and proximity between two people who were trying to find each other and find something out about how they felt about one another and the fact that they couldn't see each other as much as they wanted… the distance, even when they are together, is the thing that is holding them apart," said Victor.

Not one to usually write love songs, Victor has dabbled with ideas of spirituality, eternal life, and death in his albums. While Victor's vision is well-defined, he doesn't take creative license over interpretation. When asked whether he was concerned that Grey's Anatomy usage would change the poignancy of the piece, he refuted.

"People will always get their conclusion. It's obviously going to have meaning for that particular scene. It’s quite a personal lyric for me but I’m sure people will draw their own conclusions," explained Victor.

His advocacy for open interpretation has become apparent with a recent cover of Nelly Furtado’s Maneater. Infusing the Neverending White Lights melancholic tone with the catchy melodic hook by Timbaland, Victor’s version is a devastating self-contemplative piece.

“People perceive it as very poppy, upbeat and clubby and very simple. I just wanted to show that you can take music in any way and translate the same melody, same chords, and the same idea to the complete opposite with a different feel. I'm really big in making music an experience for the mind body soul, more than just the superficial fun that people look for in music.

Victor has done other covers which will periodically be released, one being an acoustic cover of Ciara’s Goodies,” which he promises will be “beautiful and depressing.” While doing covers of certified pop hits, Victor continues to tour and work in the in-home studio that gave birth to his two albums. While the home is often considered a safe and relaxing haven, during the production of Act I and Act II both physical and supernatural forces plagued the production.

During the first album, Victor had the ordeal of being a new artist trying to get guest artists alongside bouts of insomnia, stress, and weight loss. While Act II saw more ease in ascertaining guests, new difficulties would emerge in the aftermath of mainstream commercial success. Victor admits that Act II took a quarter of the time that Act I was, but he assures that it was not done haphazardly.

“I’m still the same perfectionist as I was (during Act I). I would still mull over every part, every guitar line, every keyboard line, and every drum part. Produce it to death, Do a million remixes. I still pulled my hair out on it so it wasn't overall an easier thing to make – plus I had the pressure of following up a record that sold over 30,000 copies. So I had to make sure that the content was up to par and that people would like it.”

In doing so, Victor decided to release Always as the first single off of Act II which he chose purposely due to it’s a stark contrast to the first single from Act I, The Grace.

“I chose Always, because it was a quadruple times faster and it was a 180 degree turn from The Grace. I wanted to say that I can do more, I can change and I'm all about progressing.”

Self-imposed perfectionism was not the only thing affecting his music, as spiritual occurrences started occurring at the genesis of Act II. Originally conceptualizing his sophomore album as being about spirits, Victor quickly stopped when strange incidents occurred in his home.

“I don't know if it was mind over matter. I don't believe the house in particular is haunted. I think I was opening myself up to certain things, which were coming into my mind, and it’s something I don't have a lot of experience with and there were clearly things that were happening during the research for the record. I was really immersed with studying aberrations and spirits. When you start researching those things you start opening your mind to spiritual things.”

While subsequently dropping the concept, spiritual occurrences continued recently after the newest album was released. In collaborating with a few friends to produce a Neverending White Lights slideshow for a video, Victor visited churches while sharing personal anecdotes of experiences with hauntings.

“Weird things started to happen again. Just the other day, we were discussing this one particular experience that my cousin keeps having and he didn't want to tell me with whom and as he stood up, the light exploded over his head. And usually when it explodes it is a surge of energy, but he just walked over and stood under it as he was about to mention the person he was going to talk about. I also have a photo that a fan sent me and we just noticed that in the corner it looks like a face is looking at me. And that face kind of looks like me which is weird...There has been some interesting activity lately,” Victor recalls.

Nevertheless, Victor still continues with his musical endeavours as he continues to co-run Ocean Records, which him and his father started. While the label has only done the past two Neverending White Lights' albums, they are producing for a band called The Pleasure Machines which they intend on releasing through Ocean Records.

As if that was not enough, Victor has recently completed a record under the name, Black Ribbon which is described as “80’s synth, dark wave pop.” While originally started with Lexi Valentine, Victor eventually ended up finished the project himself. As a side project, he is in negotiations to find a label to release although Neverending White Lights fans should be aware that it has nothing to do with that, but should be seen as “it’s own entity.”

With 15 million viewers having seen the Grey’s Anatomy episode which featured Victor’s music, things seem to be going up for this Canadian artist. Where American music often penetrates the internationally community, Canada has often been self-contained aside from a few artists. But with such exposure, things can only bode well for Victor.

“One of my priorities is getting out to the U.S. not just for population’s sake but for the sake that I have worked in Canada for 5 or 6 years. Sometimes you feel like you’ve reached your capacity in one particular country and you want to get out. (With Grey’s Anatomy) I think that it is a great avenue to find out who I am, gain new fans and add another milestone to my career and where I can tour and where I can play and where I can sell my records to make a living. It'll be cool to knock down those doors.”