The Story Behind Impulse Nine: Grief, Joy, and the Music That Holds It All Together
By Natalie Wheeler
For Steve—better known by his artist name, Impulse Nine—music has always been less about technical perfection and more about translation: turning emotion into sound, memory into texture, and complexity into meaningful harmony. A longtime music producer, Steve is now stepping into the spotlight with his original album, NOTHING IS EASY. We had the chance to dive into the story behind Impulse Nine—a project built on joy, grief, ADHD wiring, and fierce, unpolished authenticity.
Music was part of Steve’s life from the very beginning. His parents' stereo system was rarely off, and his dad—fresh out of fighting in Vietnam—spent all his service pay on hi-fi equipment. “The stereo was the size of a small car,” he said. “And I absolutely worshipped that thing.” Decades later, he’s bringing it back to life.
Later, there was an organ in the house, which he mostly used to explore sound rather than play in any traditional sense. Though he was objectively very good at violin, he never took it seriously. “I was always much more interested in making stuff up.” Looking back, he wishes there had been more understanding around neurodivergence and ADHD in childhood. “I was just fumbling around in the dark, trying to understand things that, in reality, were pretty easy to explain.”
In middle school, Steve joined the prestigious Phoenix Boys Choir—an experience that shaped his musical instincts for life. Their final concert together was a performance of the National Anthem at the Fiesta Bowl, broadcast on national television. While memorizing Benjamin Britten chorales at age 12 was no small feat, what struck him most wasn’t the music itself but the discipline it required. “The most amazing thing,” he said, “was that they got 12-year-old boys to sit still and concentrate on complex music for hours at a time.” Singing alto meant he almost never sang the melody, which rewired how he processed music. Harmonies became so ingrained that, for years, he couldn’t sing most Christmas carols straight. But that training paid off. Countermelodies now come to him instinctively—he’s constantly building them in his mind, and they appear throughout his work as Impulse Nine.
After the choir, he picked up a guitar in high school, but the pattern held—music was always intuitive. “I’ve actually never really practiced anything,” he admitted. “I’m not very good at playing anything, really. I’ve always just learned enough to do whatever the music in my head requires, and that’s it.” Around the same time, he began experimenting with early DAW software like FruityLoops, Cakewalk, and CoolEdit. “It was all pretty terrible back then,” he laughed, “but I was already trying to capture what I was hearing in my head.” That approach defined his early years, but things have shifted. “This was much more true then than now; I’ve gotten better about this in the last few years, and this album was part of that process,” he said. “All-Nighter in particular forced me to take actual bass lessons.” Part of the drive to finally release music came from a sense that the tools had finally caught up. “The technology has finally caught up to the sounds I’ve always wanted to make.”
NOTHING IS EASY is about joy in the face of grief, perseverance through strife, and redemption amid doubt. Steve began taking the album seriously around 2018, but the pandemic deeply shaped its direction. “That period took both my dad”—he played him the track "I'm Sorry About Your Everything" just minutes before they took him off life support—“and a lot of my faith in my fellow Americans away from me.” The album also wrestles with the death of his mother (Heavy Metal Mama), the loss of his job (It Might Be Fine [But I Just Don’t Know]), and moments of grounding stillness or “touching grass” (Fireflies). Yet listeners might not immediately pick up on the heaviness behind the music. “There’s an inverse correlation between how upset I am and how sad the music is,” he said. For instance, the main rhythm guitar riffs in Heat were written after seeing his father in a COVID coma via video call. “I was feeling the same feelings everybody else was in that situation. But the song is mostly in a fast-paced, major-flavored Phrygian Dominant scale.”
At its core, NOTHING IS EASY is not only about emotional survival, but also about intention—being ruthless in the editing process while still balancing urgency with clarity. Amid all that discipline, Steve wrote Call of the Void, a 17-minute post-rock track. “It was nice to ask a little more patience from the listener,” he said. “I actually tried to make it pretty efficient with its time. No, really.” He contrasted this with some pop songs, which “feel like they throw everything at you because the writers don’t trust the music to actually hold you.” This album, he explained, was a direct response to his own past creative habits. “I had hundreds of demos that were half-finished—often just chord progressions or incomplete ideas. This time, I trimmed.”
Looking ahead, Steve is eager to explore more of his post-rock influences and collaborate on future projects. He’s also made it clear he won’t be doing another album entirely on his own. “That was definitely a one-time challenge.”
When asked about the artists who shaped his sound, Steve doesn’t hesitate: U2 was the gateway. Discovered through MTV, they became both a musical and ideological North Star. More than just a band, U2 introduced him to a constellation of collaborators and influences—Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Brian Eno, Rage Against the Machine (“yes, really—they opened for U2”), and even anime, via their contribution to the Ghost in the Shell soundtrack.
What struck Steve most was their willingness to take creative risks. “Integrating gospel, techno, rock, hip-hop—whatever felt true or interesting at the time—has always been part of their thing,” he said. “It doesn’t always work. Frankly, sometimes it’s been pretty cringy.” But that kind of risk-taking, especially from artists in power, left a lasting impression. So did their activism—U2 spotlighted global issues like AIDS and international debt when it was far from fashionable. “They called attention to the hard and boring work of diplomacy—when none of it was cool.” Though he notes the band has mellowed over time, the influence still runs deep.
Beyond U2, Steve also drew inspiration from the raw, sculpted sounds of ’90s producers like Flood, Butch Vig, and Alan Moulder. Raised in the era of physical media, he developed a lasting appreciation for singles, b-sides, and album tracks. “Even if someone comes to my Spotify page,” he said, “they should be rewarded with at least one more oddball song to accompany the track that brought them there.”
That b-side philosophy pulses throughout NOTHING IS EASY. “Some songs are clearly front-facing, meant to catch your ear right away,” Steve said. “Others can be a little more patient.” In his view, this album isn’t just a collection of singles; it is structured to flow from one song to the next, with clear A and B halves for the vinyl release.”
With NOTHING IS EASY, Steve offers exactly that: a layered, thoughtful album shaped by decades of influence, sharpened by loss, and grounded in the belief that the work we bury in the margins often says the most. When asked what he hopes listeners will take away, he’s direct: “I hope others feel comforted knowing everyone goes through these small tragedies. And I had a lot of advantages in getting through them. By talking about them openly, I hope to make them feel less distant.”
His parting advice isn’t about the music industry or craft—it’s about staying human in a world that too often feels too loud. “Don’t get caught up trying to understand an argument that’s made in bad faith,” he said. “No one remembers your screw-ups better than you do. Nobody cares if you haven’t texted in a while—send the message.”
