Talking Music, Cowboys, & KGB with Naomi 10 Million

On a snowy Chicago evening, music lovers and adolescent guitar-enthusiasts made their way to the Ramova Loft, a cozy space above the iconic theatre. Playing that night, December 10th, was a mixed bill of bands ranging from noise rock and post hardcore to Naomi 10 Million’s genre-evading orchestra of commotion. Becoming increasingly popular in the city’s alternative music scene for their eccentric songs and instruments, the band has gathered support while also cultivating an aura of intrigue about their music. Seeking to understand what goes on behind the stage, I arrived at the loft during sound-check and began an exploratory interview with their five members.

Composed of Adrian Correa on guitar and vocals, Samara Savine on drums, Henry Madden on guitar, Nia Quiñones on violin, and Caden Shapiro on bass, they also have occasional saxophone or keyboard appearances. Formed in 2023 and playing together since, they have an air of humor and light-heartedness which translated into the room.

What is the backstory for Naomi 10 Million, where does the name come from?

The band started informally in 2023 under a different name, with originally just Henry. Adrien joined shortly after. We rotated members until we reached this lineup here, which has been steady for a year now.  The name is a mishearing of ‘They owe me 10 million.’ But, we also wanted to have a nice name, and we kept going back to ‘Naomi.’

What is the essence of the music you try to make? Is it definable by genre?

It’s like art rock, or noise rock. We try to keep it rock no matter what, our music always has to feel like it has a drive to it. We try not to put ourselves in a box or make something people can easily define, though a lot of our songs are in 4/4. We’re never going to sit down and be like ‘let’s make this genre of music.’ 

What is the creative process like for making new music and incorporating everyone’s musical background?

We usually come into practice with ideas then we’ll play or jam, then parse through what we like. Some songs have a few good sections in them and we’ll split them into multiple songs, or add onto pre-existing ones like ‘Portobello.’ All of our music is split up into different verses, it’s really cool how we divided it. For traditional instruments, we have a lot of classical influence and Nia will play around whatever songs we make. Four of us have formal music training, we’re all in school for music, except Adrian. 

What do you all think about being so widely liked in the screamo/hardcore scene despite not belonging to the genre?

Some of our members were asked to help the screamo band Juneau record and they started going to our shows, that’s how it started. Someone once called us hardcore and that made us happy, we’re sort of hardcore in a way. Samara and Caden bring a lot of the heavier influence. Samara really leans into the hardcore sound in her drumming, she uses a really high-tuned snare. We love the crowd, they’re so important. It’s cool that we can play with anyone. We enjoy screamo a lot, and appreciate all the music coming out of it.

How do the KGB training visuals on releases and cowboy clothing aesthetics play into the image Naomi 10 Million portrays?

It’s a crossover between the ‘perfect American’ and the Soviet Union’s ‘perfect Soviet’ ideal. We found the KGB images on an archived instagram account and figured out that since it’s a dead country, you could take their propaganda without copyright. For clothing, we all bring our own personal style on stage, we’ve been told we’re all dressed as if we’re dressed to play a different style of music. Adrien is always dressed like that, he likes to wear the cowboy hat.

Do you all have any musical inspirations that influence the band?

There’s a few. Zach Hill is Samara’s favorite drummer, she also likes Yahweh Nailgun and tries to bring the technical, math-rock drumming into our music. Caden likes New Wave and pop, Talking Heads is a big one. Henry and Adrien share musical inspirations like This Heat, Dog Faced Hermans, Steve Reich, and James Chance. Nia’s are First Day Back and Wombo. We’ve been compared to Black Midi a lot, every time we play a show we have a game where we see how long it takes for someone to compare us to them.

Do you all have any goals for the band and it’s presence in Chicago? 

Adrien’s goal is always looking to improve and re-invent our music. He’ll have Samara play over a beat and she won’t like it until a few months later and we bring it back thinking ‘we get it now.’ We have released music but we’re working on an album right now. The overall goal of Naomi 10 Million is to make music that validates the amount of work that we put into it, to create something that makes people happy and brings joy to their hearts. We’d rather have a smaller musical presence where people really love our music than a larger one where they don’t. We try to be uncompromising in that aspect.