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Choker (musician)
Christopher Lloyd (born December 17,1995) better known by his stage name Choker is an emerging American R&B artist, singer, songwriter, rapper and music producer originally from Detroit, Michigan, yet is currently based in Los Angeles. Choker is known for blending different music genres in his work, with particularly recurring themes of Psychedelic Rock, R&B and Hip-Hop.

He started his involvement with music in his teenage years but mostly kept quiet presence within the music industry and social media until his debut album Peak (2017).

The name Choker originated from the search for a name that clashed with the type of music Chris produces; as Choker is a name that relates more to metal or more aggressive music types.

Choker acquired popularity mostly through social media. As his presence is not very vivid on social media platforms, many of his fans result to his fan-based Reddit to discuss and inform other about his work and update about his tour “Help Yourself”, promotional merchandising, artwork, videography, and press coverage.

Early Life
Growing up in Detroit, Michigan, Choker accredits the place he grew up in as an environment that encouraged him to create music and be more conscious of the environment he is in. Having many different artists and work which he respects like Feist, Björk, The Postal Service, Sufjan Stevens, as well as other Michigan-based artists like Danny Brown, J Dilla and Elzhi.

His first approaches to music production started with the keyboard, then moving to guitar at around the age of 17-18. He lists his mother as a major influence, since she was a singer. He started to experiment with his singing voice in mixture with his musical production, he feels like it represents more expressive possibilities within his work.

Choker's different musical taste led him not to feel defined by only one genre or style of doing things when it comes to music, since his focus is on the people who listen to him feel diversity, while at the same time producing prefers a constantly changing environment.

Musical Career
Choker started producing music and uploading it to various digital platforms like Soundcloud. Some of the singles and albums he made during his early years in music have now been deleted from digital platforms. His fans discussed in his sub-reddit page that this might be due to not feeling identified with that early work anymore or because he wanted to clear the space for his newest work.

The inspiration behind Choker’s art comes from movies, focusing and following the idea of the visuals going together with the script. The idea of mixing different types of media provide Choker with the main ideas for his art, since the aim is to mix and remix visual, fashion (respecting merchandising and his personal style) musical elements that coexist with each other and surround his projects with an aesthetic that differentiates between the work he does. He also claims rights for all of his song-writing, his songs are filled with deeply personal and sentimental lyrics; consisting of personal experiences of the past or simple stories of his interest. Choker involves a lot of feelings to his lyrics and the flow of energy and fluidity of his songs are the ways in which he personalizes his work.

2017: Peak
Peak is his debut album and first studio album he produced, in which he merged synth-pop and indie music together. Peak is a fairly experimental album, evidencing Choker’s interest in merging different elements of his art. He is also not very attached to stereotypical music structure, as he just wants the sound to be enjoyable to the ear. An example of his disregard for musical structure is “El Dorado” from Peak, which consists of various hooks that do not lead to a chorus, while various music elements are introduced as the song goes by.

2018: Honeybloom
His second album, Honeybloom, was released under his independent label Jet Fuzz. With this album, Choker resorted to a less experimental side of his music spectrum to a slightly more structured one, without still lacking the characteristic of mixed elements and genres that he introduced in his first album, Peak.

2019: Filling Space
His latest project, Filling Space consists of 3 EPs ("Mono no Moto", "Dog Candy", "Forever & A Few"). Each EP had 3 songs in them and were released over a span of 3 weeks. Choker drew inspiration from a picture he saw by Pascal Maitre, portraying three girls after their first communion, somewhere in Africa. This picture gave Choker the idea of release his project in a format of "threes" as it felt natural with the project.

Mono No Moto (2019)
Mono No Moto is the first section of the EP that was released for the project "Filling Space". The is inspired by a Japanese term "mono no aware".

Dog candy (2019)
This EP is oriented to electropop and synth-dance accents. There is a variety of experimentation with synthesis and different chords and sound, put together based in sound aesthetics. Chris made a tweet about the possible meaning behind the name Dog Candy, saying that it refers to something that is strongly liked by someone but disliked by anyone else.

Forever & A Few (2019)
Forever and a Few is the third and last section of the EPs Choker released. It is more oriented to acoustic beats and melodies. Choker found inspiration in plant-life and growth, as the main focus was to create natural and organic sounds, offering a great amount of simplicity.