Cole Fairfield is a first year Arts and Science student at Camosun, but he has his eyes set on building a music career.
Fairfield—who goes by the name nothing. when performing—has been creating his sounds for about six years, taking inspiration from bands like Twenty One Pilots, Woodkid, grandson, Metric, and My Chemical Romance, among others. Like many other artists, Fairfield found that time spent at home during the pandemic ramped up his creative process.
“I’ve been making music since around 2018, so it’s been quite a while, but I think it feels like things started to pick up a lot during COVID,” he says. “I had a bunch of free time to just mess around and experiment.”
Fairfield—who describes himself as being a multi-instrumentalist—has been using the time to experiment by incorporating new instruments into his work.
“My main instrument right now, I’m taking guitar lessons at the Victoria Conservatory,” he says. “I’ve also been playing ukulele a lot since my parents got me a ukulele for a graduation present from high school.”
Although Fairfield has a few songs on Spotify right now, his aspirations are set on a bigger project: his debut full-length album. He’s already writing for it and has the name ready.
“The album’s called New Year’s Farewells,” he says. “It’s about a kind of letting go. I just wrote a bunch. I started it… Actually, I was inspired to write during my grandma’s funeral. So, yeah, it’s dark and sad.”
The young musician has managed a lot in his life, including fighting brain cancer when he was barely old enough to be considered a toddler.
“I survived a brain tumor I suffered at two years old,” he says. “And, yes, every couple of years, I go in. So I graduated from BC Children’s [Hospital] but every couple of years I’ve been going to BC Children’s at Vancouver for just long, long care follow-up.”
While he’s healthy now, Fairfield is still managing the long-term impacts that cancer can have. One of those impacts is on mental health, which is something Fairfield deals with through his music.
“I struggle sometimes with anxiety, and, I don’t know, I talk about it a lot in my music,” he says. “Cancer, maybe it affects your mental health. I don’t know… I don’t know. But yeah, I’ve had experiences in high school that were really difficult for me and affect me a lot.”
But Fairfield has found anxiety to be motivating for his music. Pulling from heavier emotions has been a consistent source of inspiration, starting back in high school.
“I spent a lot of high school feeling lonely, and that was a big inspiration for my music, that allowed me to write the album that I was telling you about,” he says. “I think now I struggle sometimes with anxiety. And writing about and making… I write a lot of songs that are personal to me [and] help me with that. And that’s what I write a lot of.”
Fairfield is excited to see where his music-making journey takes him, and wants to create something that Camosun students—and other listeners in general—can connect to.
“My plans are just seeing where everything takes me, how much of an audience I can build for myself,” he says. “And I just want to make music that people can resonate with, really.”
Find nothing.’s latest single, “Sing Me to Sleep,” on Spotify now, and find him on Instagram at colefairfield_music.