Foreword: this will be more than a biography. It comes with great privilege for me to be commissioned for writing and sharing this experience, albeit longer than I expected. This is a lens to an artist, a beautiful mind, a dark soul, and an electric performer. It’s a tall order to translate how captivating this interview was, but let’s jump in.
Miles David, named after the late jazz musician Miles Davis, probably doesn’t need an introduction if you’ve come this far. Miles is the music artist Fi – the musician, producer, engineer, vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, creative mastermind.
His eyes are intimidating; they read you. He nods with a soft smile, as if to signal that he sees your secrets – and they’re safe with him. He sits calmly, a curious face with a catalogue posture, dressed for a Brazilian night club. I’ve already thought maybe I prepared the wrong questions, but after formalities we shift right into Q&A.
Fi came to Colorado in diapers, a struggling family of five from Arizona fled from a starving market to move in with his cousin’s family. His father, the oldest of 9 kids, starting over fresh as an electrician in the northern suburbs of Denver.
That’s the extent of generic crowing over a fat bobble-headed infant, I did ask the wrong questions. Until later years, Fi admits he wasn’t much to marvel at. “Scout’s honor, kids thought I was a girl before puberty, and I wore the same three shirts for three years. I was too oblivious to know we were broke. You might’ve seen me, but you never heard me.” It’s no mystery that every artist pays their dues in awkward floundering and insecurity before they discover how to cash in for brilliance, and Fi was no exception. He took in every finite detail, as if every day were the first to exist. “The amount of attention to every subtle detail was so overwhelming, I couldn’t turn it off. For years and years I was so anxious and overstimulated. I thought I had ADHD – but I could recall the details – I aced the tests.” This anomaly is wildly common in bright artists, and for many of them it’s a struggle to turn it off without resorting to substances.
Let’s move into the music story with a birthday.
Rewind to January 18th, 1996 in the northern rural Denver, Colorado. The gift was a battered Fender guitar, and an amplifier the size of a happy meal. “It was a really big deal, I didn’t feel worthy of it.” Fi was born into a struggling family, raised with two siblings and two working parents, surviving on hot dogs and bread. “My clothes were huge” he smirks with his hands up, “they were all someone else’s, I wore them for years until I got too big. But I had clothes at least, and a home.”
Time hop: Fi proceeded to log over 700 hours of practice in two years, with a fascinating devotion to mastering his new gift. He fostered more and more instruments, played and learned with other artists, and fearlessly adopted every challenge. He admits to not understanding failure as a real concept, as he quoted later in 2003 after a sour gig with his teenage band Lithium, “maybe people confuse failure with defeat. Cash out if it’s not worth it to you, but you can’t fail if you’re still trying.” In a culture that saturated him with optimism, criticism was taught to be motivation. Percussion, keys, cello, whatever – if it made a sound, he conquered it. He believes this saved him from the crippling detail of everyday life, somehow allowing him to find a sense of self in between the spaces of anxious earth.
By 16, the world of underground electronic music was peaking, and Fi quickly followed suit with producers BT and Trent Reznor, adopting digital production to expand his potential. But the most obvious instrument was still missing – the one instrument that could be played anywhere, and taken everywhere; Fi couldn’t sing.
Like with most things, the boy genius became painstakingly devoted to vocal excellence, and learned to sing every note from G0 to C5, in every style from rock to soul, with no guidelines or mentors. But unlike other talents, Fi’s voice was a gateway beyond music, blooming into social integration, love, and inspiration; the seeds of a rock star. (He winced at the nickname ‘boy genius’ – but let’s face it – none of this is ordinary.)
Through the remainder of his teen years Fi experimented and toured as a guitarist with several groups, all of which ended in disagreement, motivating him to make better use of his skills as a music producer. After building up a healthy clientele, America’s economy took a massive dive, leaving his artists without income and his business abandoned. It was the ultimate defeat: he was strangled by the means to survive, and forced to explore other professions – but a brilliant mind with no concept of failure is never far from success.
Later majoring in electrical engineering, the young Fi stumbled into the automotive field and built a thriving business developing computers for race cars while dealing his canvas work in the budding RiNo art district. Now with financial backing, the optimist turned a new leaf to leisure. Romancing the Colorado night life, vibrant with dance clubs, concerts and costume parties. He recalled “the more I transitioned from an artist to a human, the more I discovered about this common thread between all of us, this… constantly evolving soundtrack that … colorizes all of our memories, and influences how we create them. Then it dawned on me that I have the ability to make my own soundtrack – I mean, I can be my own influence. From that moment music was my religion. I found love. I endure everything for it.”
“Is that where Fi comes from?” I asked.
“Um, I’d just say yes to keep it simple, but [chuckle] I think the long story is what makes it simple.” He smiled into a sip of water. ”I fell asleep at the wheel one night with my foot on the throttle and crashed into two trees. I had glass everywhere in my skin, and I just sat in the car bleeding. Suddenly all the pain and fear was gone, and I left my body.” His posture and expressions begin to change, and the atmosphere gets… real.
Fi goes on to explain how this trippy eternal-like experience of not being himself provided the clarity to see his identity, and find a relationship to every complicated problem with strikingly basic principles, almost as if he rehearsed for a charmingly quixotic Ted talk. This is Fi; this dedicated, relentless, deeply passionate creature. Tortured and tamed by greatness, stirring in a current of perfect flaws, he embodies a fraction of an ancient word which modestly represents his entirety. Fi, a genuine artist.
His relationship with Fiona from the Clocks music video and the inspiration behind the first 2016 pre-album single Asleep remains a mystery. Fi was recklessly open and intimate during the interview of his past, but when it came to Fiona, he delivered only one final quote before we closed our session. “[Fiona] is the only one of her kind. Our souls are tethered, but we are oil and water. There will be a day when I deeply regret those choices, and I’ll give up everything just for her to come home… But this isn’t her home.” The curse of a legend, the eternal bachelor. This story is sure to emerge in a later album.
Fi said goodbye as if he were going somewhere far away and was sorry he wouldn’t be back. From the first moment to the last, the Fi experience was oddly familiar, yet otherworldly.
Best of luck in all things, Fi. Remember oil and water may not mix, but they can still live side by side. Don’t be afraid to shake things up.
– Malìna Sava