> Brief History
Who are we? Two musicians...
Too brief?
Well then... the short-short version is that we've been friends for years; the kind of friends who can get too busy in other aspects of our music careers, but after 9 months of silence won't miss a beat the next time we speak. The old and dusty jokes are always funny, and the new ones are ruined from over use within hours. Our careers, although following different paths, seem to merge together momentarily before diverging yet again. It's very common in a musicians world.
One of these mergings happened early in May 2020, where during a recording session the conversation turned to our love of 80's New Wave and Pop music and how we had both discovered a host of bands and songwriters who were already creating music that represented this synth-heavy throwback. The sounds of the era we both love were being reborn again, and were actually charting!
We're both musicians: we write, perform, and record. Why can't we jump on this (synth)wave and make the music we both want to make and not worry about it sounding "too 80's"?
> Gearing Up
Over time, one of us had amassed a gigantic collection of vintage synthesizers and drum machines that were the common studio instruments our favorite artists used to write some of our most beloved songs. We could plug in and power up a synthesizer and instantly hear the sounds that we came of age to.
Trust me: we attempt to play our favorite themes and melody's every time we set up and write... seldom for inspiration, always for the jokes.
The challenge of setting up the staggering amount of gear is unbelievable. It takes almost an entire day to assemble stands, run cables, find the right power cord, trouble shoot, synchronize, troubleshoot again, flip through vintage manuals, decide what to have for lunch, troubleshoot once more, and then... finally... play the "Top Gun" theme in all its glory on the Yamaha DX7.
Why do we go through all the trouble when every other Synthwave artists simply uses plugins on their laptop?
It's. Just. So. Cool.
You are surrounded by hundreds of lights, black and white keys, countless knobs and sliders, nests of cables, and the warm hum of transformers. It's like standing on the bridge of a star destroyer barking commands at a screen, but you're occasionally asking "Why am I not getting any sound?"
> Creators
The big question you face with any new project is "where do we go from here"? Its obvious why we both suddenly had time to sit and focus on creating music, and we did write a LOT of music, but now what?
It was clear from the beginning that neither of us had a desire to perform our music live, at least for the time being. Making this choice freed us from nailing down a single singer, or to have a full-time guitar player just because one of our songs needs a solo. Focusing on simply writing and recording music without the constraints of instrumentation really frees us to create for each song as individual compositions. Perhaps one song would sound better with a soft female lead and another would sound better with an aggressive male lead, or maybe no vocals at all! Perhaps a guitar needs to rip over the chorus of just one song, or maybe we use live electric bass instead of a synth in another. It's liberating to not have to worry about Bass-Player Bobby's ego being crushed because he's not playing on half the record. It also allows us to rotate in singers who we feel "fit the vibe" of a track we are creating.
With this method, we quickly created enough music to fill 20 EP's! Well, at least enough music that we both needed to upgrade our dropbox storage...
> So Now What?
For the both of us, creating the music is the easy part. The hardest part is yet to come: finding our fans/fans finding us, building interesting content, and figuring out the best way to keep doing what we love doing. We have both been on the "other side" of the music industry for a while, so building a fan base without actually playing shows is a new frontier for us.
We hope that our music will bring anyone who listens some enjoyment, and if this is the case, perhaps our tracks can be shared with friends and followers alike. We work hard to create what we think is great music, and are excited to share everything else that's in our dropbox folder waiting to be completed.
Stick around and see what we got!
