On the face of it, you wouldn’t expect a collaboration album like “Wavefinder” to be so brilliant. Sure, both Sferro and Makeup and Vanity Set (MAVS) have honed their superb synth skills for over a decade – but their production styles are vastly different.

Sferro’s work is decidedly digital, featuring brilliant melodies driven by a disco heartbeat. MAVS, on the other hand, has honed his analog feel – slicing through soundtracks and albums alike with a keen edge of atmosphere.

So, I expected “Wavefinder” to be good – even great, given the sheer experience and quality of musicianship from these two artists. Truthfully though, I also expected some fragmentation – a certain disjointed feeling that is frequently noticeable with similar collaboration albums. It’s a sad fact that often when artists collaborate, there is a clash. Sometimes it’s ego, sometimes it’s production style, or wanting to go in different conceptual directions. Sometimes the final tracks just seem out of order. After listening to dozens and dozens of collabs, I can tell you there’s always something…

“In a lot of ways… the music sort of… tells me what it needs, you know? Then I just sort of let it happen.”

But then, as the first remarkable ripples of “Wavefinder” washed over me, I realized this record is something special. There is no clash – in fact, the opposite is true. The diverse styles of Sferro and MAVS complement one another in a unique way, merging into a gestalt of splendid sonic bliss that neither producer would have likely created on their own. From the initial vox-like trill of ‘Cursors’ to the final 90s-infused ambient decay of ‘Do You Really Want An Answer,’ every track on “Wavefinder” is truly exceptional.

MAVS + Sferro Wavefinder Vinyl From Stratford Court Records

Between syncopated kicks and stuttering hi-hats, there is a tangible atmosphere that pulls you in, demanding your attention. Brilliant polyphonic melodies emerge in perfect counterpoint to thick, juicy basslines – all punctuated by eccentric synth stabs that give the tracks an intense sense of movement and groove. And, of course, all of these elements are masterfully mixed and mastered. All of these different elements complement one another perfectly – much like Sferro and MAVS – and the end result sounds magical.

Throughout the album, there is a pervasive 90s nostalgia feel – which makes sense considering Sferro revealed during our interview that several of the tracks were actually outtakes  “Emotion Engine.”  Often the synth leads or stabs are also just slightly detuned, filtered with the analog wow and flutter warble of a VHS cassette in a very similar technique used in MAVS’ latest EP, “Gradient Ultra.” (Both of those releases made our yearly top 10 lists in 2021 and 2022 – and you should absolutely listen to them if you haven’t already!)

But, for MAVS and Sferro, that lush analog sound was not infused into “Wavefinder” for the often-cited stereotypical reason of feeling “warm” or “fat” – but instead to add a sense of organic decay and randomness. Chance.

“Anytime I can add unpredictability, I’m surprised by what it’s doing…” MAVS related in the same interview. “In a lot of ways, [through analog effects] the music sort of… tells me what it needs, you know? Then I just sort of let it happen.”

Makeup and Vanity Set at Human Music 2

Surprisingly, Sferro also related that although his workflow is digital, chance plays a large role in his production as well. “I can’t really explain it, but it happens to me digitally as well, because my computer sold. Like every render, dude… every render is different.”

“I don’t want to do the typical synthwave stuff anymore. I’ve done that beat and that to death… so the early 2000s, late 90s kind of thing – that’s what seemed attractive to me.” – Sferro

Perhaps most surprising is that MAVS and Sferro had never created together before, in spite of growing up within a few miles of one another in northern Ohio. In fact, the closest they had come to working together was when they both independently created tracks for the Demin’s “Initiate (Remixes)” – which happened to be very important to the genesis of “Wavefinder.”

Demin’s work sounds a lot like a sort of shimmering Com Truise. In fact, when “Initiate” was released, it led many to speculate that Demin may actually be a side project of Seth’s. This rumor is false, of course – as MAVS related perfectly in our recent interview, “…having talked to Seth over the years, I know that he’s into drum and bass and other stuff…. it would be weird for him to just do another thing that sounds like Com Truise.”

In fact, that sound – the Com Truise sound – is quickly becoming it’s own small microgenre called “Datawave,” Similar to how HOME’s work spawned Chillsynth. After working on the Demin tracks seperately, MAVS and Sferro thought that datawave sound would be perfect for “Wavefinder.”

“I didn’t want to deviate in the remix too much from [Demin’s] sound because I liked the sound. I was curious about the ‘datawave’ space…. so I just sort of leaned into that for the remix…and… it felt good. [Later] when I started to dig into the stuff [Sferro] had sent me, it just seemed like the logical progression, like the place to go. You always want to do something that’s exciting to you…and in that moment, that was what was exciting.”

Sferro at Neon RetroFest

But, in spite of finding inspiration in the Com Truise / datawave sound, no part of “Wavefinder” feels pastiche. Instead, the entire sound feels somehow new again – like re-experiencing your favorite movie for the first time. (Or, in my case, my favorite album.) That… genuine feeling – I think that’s what makes “Wavefinder” feel so special. At times it feels like so much synthwave today has been over-produced and polished into nothing but a rose-tinted mirror. It’s so incredibly refreshing to hear two old-guard synth artists creating sounds so new and fresh.

Like I said in the beginning of this review, it’s rare to find a release that reminds me of why I started writing about music in the first place. Those are nice words, sure – but what does that really mean? Well, the reason why I started writing about music was because I wanted to share the music that I loved with as many people as possible – and that sort of sums up how I feel about “Wavefinder.”

I love it.

Top tracks: “Hit Bit,” “Rubber City,” “Memory Screen,” and “Wavefinder.”

But, believe it or not, this brilliant collaboration almost slipped through the cracks of history. Heck, even this interview almost didn’t happen!

“…would it be possible to reschedule the call for tomorrow? Eric’s been out of commission today with a migraine…” – Makeup and Vanity Set (hereafter referred to as MAVS)

My heart sank. I’d been interested in interviewing these two “reclusive” synth pioneers (separately) for years. But the truth is, in spite of MAVS infamous robber mask and Sferro’s disdain for being photographed, neither of them are truly reclusive. They’d just rather focus on what really matters – creating music – instead of being a “brand.” MAVS is also notoriously busy, often working on multiple film soundtracks and albums at once.

Sferro’s Only Known Photograph – Trust Me, I looked!

All that work and a surprise bout of COVID almost stopped this album from being produced. Thankfully, sometimes the stars align even in this, the darkest of timelines. Never say never.

Looking back it was kind of like a very nice,  “…you blew it.” – MAVS

So, what was the genesis of the album? How did you two come to work together?

Sferro: “I reached out to Matt just to see if he was busy…. if he had time to maybe do a track. I thought it was just gonna be a single track…and yeah, he’s a very busy guy so it took a while.”

MAVS: “I had a million things going on – and I just sort of sat on it. It was totally my fault. He had followed up a few times, and I said “I still want to do it!” but… it just kept slipping to like the bottom of the stack.”

I’ve loved Eric’s stuff for so long – and we have the Ohio connection – and I thought this would be super cool to do. So finally I scratched out some time and I sat down one day and did a track…and immediately after, I got COVID. So I was bedridden for a week, and Eric DM’d me on Instagram and said, “Hey, man if you’re not gonna do anything with these tracks, I think I’m just gonna… uh, finish them.” Looking back it was kind of like a very nice,  “…you blew it.”

Sferro: *Laughter*

MAVS: “So I replied back and was like, “NO no, no, no, no – I did one! I did one!” and I sent him a dropbox link and he was really into it. I got better from COVID, and we just… kept going. After that the record itself came together super fast. I mean, it took like three weeks.”

That’s a great story! But what’s this “Ohio connection”? I’m from Ohio myself.

MAVS: It’s funny, Eric and I have never met in person – but he actually lives in [Northern Ohio,] which is where I’m from. He’s actually super close to where my family lives.

Sferro: We had no idea until he posted a picture while visiting and I was like, “Oh Shit you’re like two minutes away from my house!”

MAVS: *Laughs* “Yeah, so we had flirted a few times by having our remixes featured on the same album. More recently we were both on the Demin Initiate (Remixes) album – but yeah we’d never worked together properly before this one.

A lot of people seem to think Demin’s work is actually a Com Truise side project.

MAVS: “I don’t know man…Having talked to Seth over the years, I know he’s into drum and bass and some other stuff. It would be kinda weird for him to just do another project so close to his sound, sonically.”

That tracks. So, other artists have started making more music in that “Com Truise” style and calling it “Datawave” – and your new album “Wavefinder” definitely seems to fit that category. Was that intentional? what’s your take on that?

MAVS: “Don’t get me wrong, I love Seth’s work – and the idea wasn’t just to make something derivative… But we had just finished the Demin remixes, and…man, I really loved Demin’s track. I didn’t want to deviate too much in the remix… because I just liked the sound. I was curious about it. I had never done anything in the sort of “Datawave” space.

The last couple records I’ve been working on have also been masted by Ben Braun – Hotel Pools. I’m a big fan of his music. So, I started listening to a lot more chillsynth… and one of the things I thought was really interesting about it is that the tempos are way slower… I started to think about the fact that it really took my back to my roots-roots. Like, as a kid, finding Autechre… you know, all those guys were Hip Hop guys. And I feel like, chillsynth, datawave, these kinds of artists have a similar root. They have one foot in that genre – that kind of “head nod” feeling. There’s something appealing about that.

So no, it wasn’t like, “Hey this sounds like datawave” – that was the last thing on my mind. It was more that I just enjoyed going back…so I thought, “How can we slow this down even more?” And then the when you slow things down, the resolution gets a little wider. So you can suddenly like, bit more, you know, interesting things and have more interesting sort of syncopation happening musically.

So later on when I started to dig into the stuff Eric had sent me, it just seemed like the logical progression, like the place to go. You always want to do something that’s exciting to you – you know? And so in that moment, that was what was exciting.”

I also felt like there were some strong 90s references in “Wavefinder,” and you seemed to have really delved into the 90s vibes on “Emotion Engine” too. Was that move away from the 80’s intentional – or a sort of spontaneous occurrence like the “datawave” sound?

Sferro: “I will say that at least one, maybe two of the tracks were actually “Emotion Engine” outtakes I had sent over…but [in general, it does feel like a progression.] I definitely don’t want to do the typical synthwave stuff anymore. I’ve done that, beaten that to death. It just kind of felt right and it’s what seemed attractive to me: an early 2000s, late 90s kind of thing.

I don’t think the next Sferro album will be datawave though. I think “Wavefinder” is really awesome, and I think it’s awesome as a collaboration – but I don’t think I’ll explore that direction myself. It’s not the direction I want to go. I think I’m going to lean more heavily toward the early 2000s kinda… well, you’ll see in the new Hyperlinked Dream Sync album! It’s more like, Portishead-y.

“I definitely don’t want to do the typical synthwave stuff anymore. I’ve done that, beaten that to death. It just kind of felt right and it’s what seemed attractive to me: an early 2000s, late 90s kind of thing.” – Sferro

BUT, I do think datwave is awesome. The term is still kinda fresh to me… honestly I only recently heard of it when we started making [Wavefinder.]”

Eric, you’ve mentioned in interviews that your workflow is mostly digital – and Matt, you seem to mostly like analog – or as you like to say, “Play with the noodles.” Did those difference cause any conflict?

MAVS: “First of all, in spite of the room around me, I’m not an analog purist. Whatever works, you know? If you can make cool stuff in GarageBand, go for it. I’m not precious about that. What’s exciting to me is figuring out new ways to approach a workflow.

MAVS In His Studio

Anyway, Eric had sent me fully formed ideas… that I thought was really cool, I dug it. But, it was different that what I’m used to and I had to totally reorient my thought process. I had to come out of that comfort zone and be challenged a little bit by someone else’s thought process – sonically.”

It was awesome trying to experiment while still being reverent to it too. It was it was fun – I had a blast working on it!”

“I’ve put out a lot of records, and when you go through that process, there’s always at least one thing that totally shits the bed….but with this one, none of that happened.”

Sferro: “That reminds me – at one point Matt was saying, “I think we need a couple songs in here without drums…” So I’d send some stuff over without drums… and then drums ended up on it. It just had to have it.”

MAVS: “Right? …Other times he would add stuff on the back end and send it back…. It was a total democracy the whole way through. We were just trying to make something that was exciting to the two of us.”

It sounds like perfect match! Was there anything that caused conflict? You know, caused some sort of problem?

MAVS: “The thing came together in a way that was the least forced, you know, like it, it all happened really fast, it all felt really good!”

Sferro: “That reminds me of one track in particular, I sent a demo over and said “Uh…I don’t know if this will work…. And Matt said “Never say never!” and then sent it back – and it sounded sick!”

MAVS: “Right? I gotta say… I’ve put out a lot of records, and when you go through that process, there’s always at least one thing that totally shits the bed. You’re forced to work with an artist you don’t want to work with, or you can’t release on a certain date, or there’s a huge backorder on vinyl…”

Right? Thanks Adele! 

MAVS + Sferro: *Laughter*

MAVS: “…but with this one, none of that happened. We went back and forth and thought, “Okay, we have an album here.” Then we sent it off to Ben Braun [Hotel Pools] to get it mastered, and that guy just knows how to make bass happen in ways that, well, I’m both comfortable and uncomfortable with! Then we started talking to Andrew from Stratford Court. Stratford Court was almost a shot in the dark… [I’m] a huge fan of the label. It’s so well curated. We waited a while, and then Andrew reached out and said he’d love to do it!”

And honestly, I was floored. I hadn’t sent it anywhere else, but I had a list of [labels]… I just figured you know, Stratford Court to me was like swinging for the fences…and there’s no preorder. It’s all ready to go on Friday.” [Today]

MAVS + Sferro Wavefinder Vinyl From Stratford Court Records

Sferro: “I really love how “into” the record [Andrew] seems. Every time he replies to an email he says how he’s like… ‘really excited about this.’ It’s so cool – it’s awesome!

I’m excited too – and not to spoil the review, but I really think this album is special. Do you two think you’ll be working together in the future?

MAVS: It’s funny with this record, this is the most PR I’ve done for a record in a long time. But I think it’s just because I’m proud of the thing we made, you know? I want to make sure that we do our due diligence to Stratford and present it to the world in the right way.

Really.. I’m just, I’m happy to make music. I’m happy to be able to process the all of the shit that’s happening around us through music…and I’m super happy to have somebody like Eric to collaborate with…

Sferro: “Likewise!”

MAVS: “…and to you know, to see it, see it go out into the world man. It’s all good at this point. So I’m just happy to be here.”

Sferro: “I mean, I have ideas for the future. Things I’ll bring up to Matt eventually, in due time.” *Laughs* But I’m just super stoked we got the opportunity to do this. Matt’s fucking awesome. He’s a super chill dude. I’ve loved his music forever. And it’s cool that some OG’s Got to work together. So… I’m stoked.

So perhaps this isn’t the end for this dangerous duo?

Sferro: “Never say never.”

Editors Note: There is so, so much more to this interview. Both MAVS and Sferro discussed their creative evolution, how they came to find electronic music and two kids stuck in Ohio, and how the digital age affects nostalgia, and their own approach when it comes to organic-feeling synthesis. For more of that, keep an eye out for my upcoming review of “Wavefinder” after it drops!

Before getting into the current EP which you’re about to release. I’d like to go back to the start of your career as a solo artist. Where were your musical goals and ambitions at as you moved on from Yellowcard to a solo career?

When Yellowcard first split up, I had been making plans. My original plan was to produce records for other artists, but I learned pretty quickly that it wasn’t necessarily where my heart was at, creatively. If I was going to put in hours and hours of hustling to create a new path for myself, that just wasn’t the way I wanted to go; going to shows five nights a week, doing the sales pitch to bands to get them to come in and work with you… It didn’t feel very fulfilling to me and everything just led me back to making my own music.

It really kickstarted when my buds in New Found Glory offered me a full US tour with them, as an opener and rhythm guitarist. They didn’t really specify what “opening” meant. They probably assumed I’d bring an acoustic guitar and play some Yellowcard songs and I did play some, but it was also a catalyst for me to think about having a record to sell at the merch booth. That’s what led me to record the first EP Thirteen. It was sort of a double-edged sword because I wanted something to have on the tour, but I also wanted to make something so far removed from Yellowcard and anything I’d done before that I knew the hard pop-punk fans on the tour were going to be weirded out. I could’ve leaned harder in the sounds of the past, but I decided to stick with what I thought was right. It was an EP of very stripped down, ambient acoustic tracks. It was hit-or-miss on the New Found Glory tour, for sure [laugh]. There were some nights that were really cool and some nights where I couldn’t hear myself playing because everyone was talking over what I was doing and totally uninterested. I was mentally prepared for that, though.

I started getting some more opportunities to tour, which led me to record a second EP, Virtue. That record took me all over the world and I got to open for Mayday Parade on a full US tour. I also did one solo headlining tour. At the end of all of it, I had to take stock of how much work I was doing to stay on the road and be touring full time versus the return and growth that was happening with it. The pandemic hit around the same time, forcing me off the road. During that time, I really honed in and focused on what I wanted to do, where I want to go.

I really have a desire to move into scoring for film and television, and you can hear the cinematic elements on Everything Except Desire because it’s the first time I didn’t have to consider touring. I was able to cut loose and let all of my influences, which have been primarily electronic, experimental, EDM… It’s been that way for many years, much more than rock n’ roll. I was able to experiment and not worry about how it would tour. Maybe I will play some shows with it, but what it has really done for me is get the ball rolling with a few tracks. I’m constantly creating now. I’m in my studio every day, practising scoring, creating ambient pieces and doing as much as I can to build a collection of songs to show to people and get closer to the goal of scoring film and TV. I think the sound of the EP was very much done with that in mind. I tried to think in a cinematic sense. It’s very movement-driven and I wanted it to feel like the EP had “scenes” that were developing and changing. Being forced into staying at home and working on these tracks really opened a floodgate for me and I’m in a totally new place, musically. I really enjoy what I’m doing and what I’m working towards.

How would you describe this EP if you were to translate it into visual form?

As electronic music does, the whole thing has a certain “pulse” to it. A good example of seeing it visualized is the music video for ‘Face in a Frame’, directed by Stefano Bertelli (Seenfilm : www.seenfilm.com ). The way he used light flares and flashes is one good way to describe it. It’s got pulsing flourishes of light. I tried to make it very colourful with the sounds that I was choosing and the layers that I was adding. I’ve had a lot of experience in the last few years working in the space of electronic music. My close friend Ryan Mendez from Yellowcard and I have been working on a project called JEDHA, which is strictly instrumental experimental EDM. I’ve had a lot of experience working with him building these big, lush soundscapes. This was the opportunity for me to translate a lot of that experience into my solo stuff. My favourite song on the record is the last song ‘Union Chapel’, and one of my favourite moments on the record is when the bass and kick hit at the end of the song to take you out after you had been lost in the trance of the piano arpeggio. It may be a cliché visual, but it does feel like this warm blanket that comes over you at the end of the EP, to cruise you out at the end of your journey.

Back in 2014, you released the album Lift A Sail, which marked quite a departure from Yellowcard’s established sound through its inclusion of electronic elements. Looking back, how did that experience affect your approach to writing electronic music?

That is my favourite Yellowcard record, contrary to popular opinion [laugh]. It’s a very personal record for me and it was a time when my musical palette was shifting so dramatically away from Rock n’ Roll and into Post Rock and ambient EDM. Ryan Mendez has had such a cool, broad palette of musical influences from a very young age. He’s into original Aphex Twin and old Daft Punk. I, on the other hand, grew up fully as a rock n’ roll fan that I had a stigma connected to electronic music, like many people I’ve talked to still have. It still exists. There’s still an idea that it’s not made with ‘real instruments’, and I was that way for a long time too.

Around the time of Viva La Vida, Coldplay started working with Jon Hopkins, and Ryan Mendez is a huge, longtime fan of him. Around that time, Ryan helped me connect the dots from Coldplay to Jon Hopkins by giving me a copy of Immunity. I had never heard and seen a piece of music like the title track on that Jon Hopkins. It just changed my whole perception of electronic composition. It changed everything for me. I started asking for more recommendations went down the rabbit hole of playlists and recommended artists. That all led to Lift a Sail. I was so inspired by these influences but we still had to make a rock record.

Ryan being the more knowledgeable person in the world of electronic music, we tasked each other with him writing the nastiest riffs for the intros and choruses whereas I was in ‘Studio B’ pressing buttons. I was building loops, experimenting with sub-bass and all kinds of stuff I had never done to use for the less intense sections of the songs on the album. I played almost no guitar on that album. I spent most of that record writing lyrics and producing my first ever loop and beats. We ended up with this interesting hybrid record that no one really understood [laugh], but we loved it and I still love it! It was the first record that felt like I was genuinely standing on my own two feet as a writer, as opposed to writing within a genre. I don’t want to minimize or say that the records don’t have value, it’s just that there was this undeniable shift that happened with Lift a Sail. When Yellowcard broke up, Ryan and I immediately decided to make electronic music together. Four years later, we’ve just finished a full-length record, we’re doing a remix for a big band and we’ve been hired to score the first season of a new show for a massive brand. It’s starting to happen for us! It’s funny that you mention Lift a Sail, I appreciate it because that is where it started for me, from a writing and production standpoint.

The first thing that struck me on the album, compositionally, is the heavy emphasis on ambience and space. Vocals are sparse, the arrangements feel quite stripped down and you really give each idea the breathing space it needs.

I owe a lot of what you’re picking up on to the artists that I listen to. I’ve been on a crash course of learning how to make great music through their albums and learning how to create that sense of space. Part of what you’re sensing comes from two things. First, there’s the way the EP was composed in the middle of that summer during the pandemic and I was by myself in the studio, very focused on this specific batch of songs. The songs do feel like they grew up from the same roots. Secondly, there’s the cinematic element of it that I’ve been learning as I’ve worked towards this goal. I pay attention to what showrunners, music directors and editors are looking for. While this wasn’t something that I was writing for a show or a film, I was conscious of how hand in hand this type of ambient electronic music goes with visuals. I wanted to make sure that each song would rise to these places and take moments to breathe because when an editor is looking at a waveform, they’ll just delete the message if the waveform doesn’t look right.

You’ve lived in quite a lot of different places. You’ve been moving around!

Too much! I even lived in Osaka for about two months when I was producing a record in 2019. I left home when I was 19 for the first time to go to California with a band I was playing in. I went home, ended up playing in Yellowcard, moved back to California for a couple of years before going to Manhattan for a year. I moved back to California again… My family is on the east coast and my job was on the west coast, so I struggled throughout my life to find where I’m going to settle. And here I am moving again!

As an album that has such a strong sense of space, would it be fair to say that location  physically affects the places you end up emotionally and how you express them?

Being so nomadic has always inspired my music. It’s helped me as a creator to have new experiences in new places, meeting new people, new people, new bars … it’s always helped me not get stuck in rut as a writer. When my environment is constantly changing it helps my music change as well. I think it’s particularly true for this EP because it was made during such an unsettling time. I was feeling very unsure because I would normally try to do is knock out one or two tours a year, which provides me with the opportunity to be home working on scoring and composing, which isn’t paying me yet. I’m just making stuff right now and hoping that someday it will go somewhere. When the lockdown happened, I was in California and had no place to go and I was freaking out, so I moved back to Florida for a bit. As a result, this EP has so much exploration of self in it. There’s not much storytelling, it’s really about self-reflection. I had to make a choice when I got to Florida to wallow in this stress, anxiety, sadness and fear, or turn it into something good. At the beginning of the pandemic and before leaving for Florida, a lifelong friend of mine got stuck at my house with me in California for a whole month. He’s very active and expresses to everyone he knows how important meditation is in his life, so I started doing it with him. It was the key to my success through the pandemic. When I got to Florida, I was really bummed, I was excited to live in LA again and start to work towards film composing, and here I was back at square one. So meditation really helped me to let those thoughts pass through and not let them consume me and direct my path. This allowed me to compose with such a clear mind. Had I not gone through those moves and those shifts, I wouldn’t have had those dark thoughts to overcome which poured into this record. I think it’s always been a part of me as a songwriter. Maybe even more so now than ever.

Was it a particular challenge to distil your thoughts into so few words for this record or was it a natural byproduct of the songwriting process?

I think it fits into what we were talking about with JEDHA. We’ve learned so much about restraint and refining a loop or synth melody so much that it’s all that it needs to be, it doesn’t need to change later or have another layer added. Vocally, there was very much a sense that I didn’t need to add any more. There’s peace in this. ‘Face in a Frame’ is such a different style of writing for me; to have the same verse happen twice in a song. It felt right, like the things I was learning about composing this style of music bled over into the vocals, using them more as an instrument than a “storytelling element” in a song. I was pretty conscious of that, yeah.

You’ve stated before that you’ve been a fan of video games for a long time. Yellowcard’s music has even been featured in a number of videogames throughout the years and you’ve done a couple of gaming streams over Twitch. What are some of the games you grew up playing? Have you ever been into a game that happened to feature one of your songs?

As a lucky kid, I never wanted for anything. I wasn’t spoilt rotten, but I had a great life as a kid and I had a Nintendo. I’m an eighties kid and I was the prime age for the NES when it came out. That said, I was such an imaginative, theatrical, outdoors kind of kid that I didn’t play the Nintendo anywhere near as much as other kids around me. I loved it but it was never my instinct. I was more of a worldbuilding imaginative type of kid, acting out movies I liked and stuff. I wasn’t so much into Mario at all. I loved Kung-Fu, I loved Contra and I loved The Legend of Zelda. I didn’t get the SNES but I got a Sega Genesis and so I was obsessed with Sonic the Hedgehog. Then came the N64 with Ocarina of Time, the most iconic game of all time. I actually played it at a buddy’s house a month ago, along with Goldeneye! I still have memories of sitting on the floor with friends and playing 4-way split-screen Goldeneye. Those were the glory days! After that, I’ve been an Xbox player. We got free Xboxes. One of our songs was featured in SSX3, so they gave us consoles to be able to play it. That was when I got back into gaming after high school. The thing about gaming now is that I never got into competitive online gaming because I was on tour and we never had Internet. For a long time, we played video games all the time. We had consoles on the bus and that was a huge time passing activity. FIFA tournaments were bloodthirsty! It was so hardcore! With the pandemic, my social interaction throughout the lockdown was playing Call of Duty with other band friends. I was dragged into it because I thought I’d be terrible at it, but it became more about the hang, spending time with friends. In turn, I actually became addicted to it. I’m actually trying to ration what days of the week I let myself get on a game because I love it. I’m a PC gamer now and I think my favourite game now is Warzone. I also really got into F1 Racing. I want to get a racing rig in my new house if I can and be able to race with an ultrawide setup [laugh]. I love it! So I was a spotty, touch-and-go gamer throughout my life.

Closing off, can you name one of your favourite albums, movies and books?

I’ll go with the pandemic theme. First, Some Kind of Peace by Ólafur Arnalds has been a sanctuary for me. I still listen to it regularly. All of his work is incredible. He made the record during the pandemic and had to work with the string players at a distance and whatnot. You can really feel the solitude in the recordings.

For books, I’m actually reading Dune right now and I’m obsessed! It’s the fastest I’ve ever read a 600-page book in my life. If I’m thinking all-time favourites, I think I’d have to say The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I think I read that book on one cross-country flight. I’ve read it several times since.

For movies, I’m not allowed to say Star Wars. It can’t count. I’m going to go with what I think is one of the greatest feats of filmmaking in History. I’m much more of a film person than a book person. I think the greatest film is Schindler’s List. I just can’t think of a film that carries more weight and is more beautifully shot. It perfectly encompasses everything a film is supposed to do. It’s heartbreaking, it’s funny, it’s beautiful… the script is incredible and the score is unbelievable.

Everything Except Desire is out now on all streaming platforms.

What can you tell us about the concept behind this new chapter for WOLFCLUB?

We’ve always tried to make cinematic sounding music, songs that you can imagine playing in the scenes of a movie. For this record, we have leant further into that concept and written it as if it were some soundtrack to an imagined or lost film. I was really interested in blending our favourite genres together to try and experiment with our sound more, mashing synthwave and indie rock with our usual melodic vocal lines.

What does Just Drive Pt.1 represent musically within the context of your discography so far?

The new records overall sound is still us but a little bit further down the road. I’ve often written songs on the guitar and then transposed the notes, chords, melody lines into the computer onto synthesizers. This time we decided to leave a lot of those guitar lines in to add a different feel and texture, so that they intermingle with the usual synth and analogue bass sounds we use. We’ve collaborated with some amazing new vocalists as well as some of our past favourites.

Driving and cars have been somewhat of a staple theme in your discography. From your point of view, what is it about the idea of driving that lends itself so well to the eighties retrowave mood?

It’s the idea of escape, getting away, going on a journey into a fantasy world soundtracked by nostalgia. The driving basslines have the feel of movement, of going someplace elsewhere.

Can you name some of your go-to driving music?

Bloc Party, Miami Nights 1984, Com Truise, Lazerhawk, Chvrches, Timecop1984

Do you have a favourite driving game?

I loved Mario kart as a kid and recently found a website online where you can play retro games, so I kind of lost myself for a few days revisiting those old tracks. 

Can you name one of your favourite albums, movies and books?

Sonic Youth – Candle: The album really blew my mind when I first heard it, all this intense wall of noise, I try to capture that spirit in a few of our tracks for the chorus sections, fill them with dense synth sounds to attack the senses.

Book – I’d find it hard to choose just one so I’d go with all of Kurt Vonnegut’s entire catalogue. If I have to choose one I’d go with Timequake.

Movie: ‘Infamous’ Directed by Joshua Caldwell, starring Bella Thorne and featuring 6 of our tracks. It’s been a dream of mine for as long as I can remember to have my music featured in a film, so to have them soundtrack a Hollywood movie was one of my favourite things to have happened.

If you’re reading this on Friday, March 5th, be sure to tune in to the band’s Reddit AMA session at 5pm GMT.  

Drive Pt.1 is now up and running on Bandcamp and major streaming services.

Over the course of two hours, we discussed everything from his unique production style to an intense period of burnout – and even the destruction of an entire unreleased Dan Terminus album!  We hope you enjoy this deep-dive into the mind of a true sovereign of synth.

Got a question yourself? Check out the upcoming Dan Terminus Reddit AMA October 1st in /r/Outrun at 12pm ET.
(This interview has been edited for clarity and length)

Artist: Luca Carey

Thanks for taking the time to talk with us! 

“It’s cool, man. And thank you for having me! Ask me anything. I won’t dodge any question.”

In 2015, you had an interview with Decibel magazine. You mentioned that you began making electronic music to pass the time – as an outlet for your creativity. Now, five years later, after touring with Perturbator and gaining more fans – is creating music still the outlet it used to be?

“It’s a difficult question – almost a loaded question! But, my answer is yes and no.

I must say I never thought that I would be touring with James (Perturbator). I never thought that one day I would play in Paris – in a big, big concert hall called Le Trianon – in front of fifteen hundred people! I never thought I would end up doing this.

So, I try to keep the same state of mind – which is to say I’m still the same loudmouth asshole, turning knobs, twisting buttons, punishing keys, and beating up synthesizers. Because I think that if I stay true to myself, then maybe the music will be fresh – or at least, it will still truly be me.”

In an old Reddit AMA when asked about producing music, you mentioned that you create a track in your head and work on it in your head – and you place it on a “mental shelf I built for myself, like a mini-library.” Then you patiently reproduce the track on your DAW. Can you tell me a bit more about your mind library? Is that still a method you use to produce?

“Absolutely it is. I started doing this when I was a child because I read a book in which the character said that since libraries were burning, Monks had to build their own mental libraries, and would have to memorize dozens of books. So if a library burns, at least there will still be somebody out there who’ll be able to rewrite the whole book.

In fact, it’s just a visualization of a shelf, like a metal or wooden shelf in my mind. When I have an idea, I put it there. It’s something that helps me remember a lot of things – and yet I still don’t remember everything I would like – especially you know, from childhood and everything.

Lets say, well, to be honest with you, to describe my mental shelves… it’s not a palace. It’s not gothic, it’s not dark… it’s not a cyberpunk Los Angeles city. It’s just a warehouse filled with shelves. I connect it to rooms or bedrooms from my childhood, like lets say the village I used to go to when I was a child in the south of France, or my grandparents cabin in the countryside. For some reason those elements are very precise in my mind.

There is no map. If I want to go there I’m there. I don’t have to walk five miles down memory lane if I need it – it’s just there.”

Photo Credit: Laura Lyson

Your first album, “The Darkest Benthic Division,” is very atmospheric. You mentioned some of your influences were Noir Deco and the original Vangelis Blade Runner soundtrack. Then, as your albums progressed, they get much darker and heavier.

What inspired you to take your music from that atmospheric, dreamy sound into the darksynth territory?

“Two things, the first thing was gaining technical knowledge in terms of music production and getting to know my DAW better. The second thing was that I really wanted to push my music harder because I wanted to try new things – new sounds. I wanted to go dark and heavy because I’m also metal head.

It was difficult. I could have gone on writing “The Darkest Benthic Division” forever – writing the same album five times, really. But I didn’t want to make a fool out of myself and write the same album twice.

Sometimes when I strike a few chords on my keyboard I go back to those very simple, yet efficient atmospheric tracks. Something that I’ve also noticed, is that when I play such songs like ‘Abandoned Ship Graveyard’ or ‘Underwater Cities’ people go crazy.

It’s when I get the most attention. People look at me, and I look at boyfriends hugging their girlfriends – and it’s a fantastic experience. But in retrospect, it’s the most simple album I’ve made. So that’s the beauty of it. Maybe one day I will write another whole atmospheric album. I have no idea – I’m not against it. But now is not the time.”

The Production Style of Dan Terminus

Speaking of new music, I understand you used  FL Studio to produce “The Wrath of Code” and other albums. Has that changed? Did you use any new hardware, VSTs or DAWs or for the new album, “Last Call For All Passengers?”

“I’m an in-the-box producer. I love working with VST’s, and even the cheap stuff. I don’t care. As long as it sounds good it’s okay with me. As long as I can distort the shit out of it then I’m fine!

The new album was created on FL studio 10. As far as hardware goes, I didn’t use any hardware for the album. I only use VSTs like Synth1, Korg M1, Korg Wavestation EX, FM8 – and a few plugins like Multiband Distortion – stuff like that. Nothing too fancy, I’m sorry.

Basically, my setup is just me, my 2012 computer, a midi keyboard, two Fostex monitors and the screen – and that’s it. I’m a pretty simply guy you know? I don’t feel like having multiple synthesizers or clicky, shiny gear will help me become a better musician or a better producer – it’s all in my head first anyway. It’s all about being yourself.”

“So, was your creation process the same for previous albums and “Last Call For All Passengers?”

“I still create in my head and then reproduced the tracks in my DAW. I would like to tell you something though – it’s not necessarily about gear, but knowledge.

I feel like when you buy equipment, you don’t necessarily learn new things. But, if you can create the bass sound in your head by snapping your fingers, you don’t need to spend three or four hours designing a sound.

I think everyone should keep on learning every day, to get a wider playground. I try to learn new things every day in terms of production by reading books or reading articles. Every time I discover new things. So, I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily a good idea to buy a synthesizer. It IS a very good idea to read books and articles and to make sure you’re learning new things – even if it’s just a small, little piece of knowledge. I certainly don’t want to sound arrogant either – there is still much for me to learn!

This also lets you make things sound bad, in a good way. You know what I mean? If you listen to “Last Call For All Passengers,” you will realize the mix is kind of like a roller coaster.

Many times I voluntarily left the EQ alone – because if I EQ’d them properly, then they would sound too clean – and it would not be interesting!

If I were to work with another person or other people, things would be different. But when you are a one man project, I have to surprise myself. I have to outdo myself. I have to challenge myself. Otherwise, it’s too boring. And I would not wake up. I would just go to the countryside, take care of my horses and say, “Fuck music, fuck all of you, I’m just going to stay here forever!”

Art From Luca Carey

That’s interesting – so you own horses? Is that why the cover of your album is this sort of nightmarish horse? Did Luca Carey do this album cover as well?

“Absolutely, in fact, it was kind of a challenge because I wanted Luca to use black and green only. And I mean, if you’ve seen look at Carey’s work before, you know he usually paints with a thousand colors. He asked me if he could use grey, and I said, “Okay, but no more!”

I asked him for a mix of a Mérens – which is a black French mountain horse, and a Trait Comtois, which is a draft horse. He threw me three ideas, and I picked the one I liked the most.

As a relief, I told him for the back cover – you do whatever you want to do, because forcing him to only use two or three colors was an ordeal for him. So, he painted a big Cthulhu, and he painted it his way, and it’s fantastic. And let me tell you, it’s going to be nightmarish, really.

Technically, the horses are not mine yet. It’s just a matter of, you know, papers – but I love them with all my heart.

But with Luca. I believe that this guy is clearly not human, or at least he must have some alien DNA in him because his vision. No, I mean, really, his vision is so singular that it’s hard to compare it to anybody else. I love what he does. I would like him to get more recognition because it’s just not fair that he’s such a genius does not get more recognition!”

Check out Luca’s work Here!
Follow Luca on Facebook Here!

Artist: Luca Carey

I read in another interview when you were creating “Automated Refrains” you were listening to a lot of Bathory, Type 0-Negative, things like that. What were you listening to for inspiration when you were creating “Last Call For All Passengers?”

“My heavy rotation records was music from the 90s. Bomb the Bass, Nation 12, Fatboy Slim, The Prodigy. Because, I started hearing such music in my head. I said to myself, ‘Hey, Bomb the Bass was so fucking good!”

Burnout and Album Destruction

From the little bit I’ve heard, it sounds like it’s going to be more danceable than you previous work – is that a fair assumption?

“It depends on what you define as dance music! You will hear a lot of breakbeats and lots of bigbeats, just like, you know, the Chemical Brothers and everything.

I think it’s almost on purpose. when I started doing this I made it spontaneously because this album – “Last Call For All Passengers” was born from thrashing, dumping another album that I made as I burnt out. So. So, yeah.”

That’s interesting – you dumped a whole album? Surely it couldn’t have been THAT bad?

“I worked nine years for a big company. I had to resign, and at the time I was suffering from extreme burn out – I even fell asleep at the wheel and I crashed my car into a wall, as I was burning out. The doctors ended up ordering me to stay home and rest.”

What? That’s crazy!

“Yeah, but to be honest, the burnout is one of the best things that ever happened in my life because it helped me refocus. You know, it’s cool. I was burning out and I started writing songs and in fact, I wrote a whole album that was super fast paced and very primal. It was primitive… and also it sucked big time!

It was a shitty crappy album with distortion over everything and it sounded like crap. But I wrote it as I was burning out because… I don’t know, I was angry or something. Well, I’m still angry – but angry in a good way, if I dare say so!”

Is there any chance we’ll get to hear this terrible burn-out album? I know you say it’s bad, but it sounds fascinating.

“No! When you write an album and when you release it, it is a very serious matter. You don’t make an album for fun. You don’t release an album for the purpose of releasing an album. You release an album because you want to fulfill yourself as a producer or as a musician. It’s like getting a tattoo. I don’t want to look back 20 years later and think – “Oh fuck, I should never have done this!”

When it was time to go back to music again, I listened to this album it sounds definitely like shit, so I got to get rid of it. I dumped the whole album. Quite recently, in fact, as I was saving projects on my external disk drive, I found a copy of this destroyed album. So I really listened to it again. And let me tell you, it was so fucking bad, like really – it’s horse shit, really.

And then I wrote “Last Call For All Passengers,” which is all about being back to life again. Not in an artsy-fartsy phoenix rising from the ashes kind of thing. I think that’s fucking ridiculous. But, that is how the album was born.”

With a title like “Last Call For All Passengers” – and with the current state of the world, I thought the album might be about this looming science fiction dystopia or climate change?

“The true explanation is that I was watching a movie by Mel Brooks – Young Frankenstein. There’s a scene where Frankenstein is hopping on a train, and the ticket collector says, “Last call for all passengers!” I think. Maybe I misheard it, but I said, “That’s it!”

After I picked the album title, now we have COVID-19, the fires in California, two thirds of Australia have burned. The pentagon releases papers saying, “Hey, maybe UFO’s are a reality.” Then we dodged a bullet with war between the US and Iran – and so much more. So, now I look at the title, and it really fits the world we’re living in.

The world we live in today feels like the X-Files from 1995. It was supposed to be a television show, not reality! Really, if I saw the heavens splitting open and a fleet of motherships landed, I feel like that would be just a normal day in 2020. Great! Now we have Big Mac’s on Mars!”

Cyberpunk or Darksynth?

Life really does imitate art! Speaking of which – you mentioned before you don’t really care about being labelled as a “darksynth’ producer – but do you think the genre is moving away from it’s synthwave roots?

I don’t really listen to much darksynth – I only hear what people send me from time to time, for guidance or feedback. There is one guy I listen to because I think he’s brilliant – SurgeryHead. He’s one of the very few guys I saw live that really, really scared me – and I admired him at the same time. His music is perfect, and his on-stage persona is, well, let me tell you it’s fucking scary!”

As far as synthwave – I would like to see it keep on evolving instead of becoming a sterile representation of the music. Any form of music needs to evolve.

I definitely agree with with that! But, it’s odd to hear you don’t listen to much darksynth, I think many fans might consider you a darksynth producer? What do you consider yourself?

“There are three layers, OK? The first layer is that I am an electronic music producer. The second layer is that I am a cyberpunk music producer. The third layer is, as long as it sound good to me, I will make that kind of electronic music.

I don’t mind if people label me darksynth, and if people label Dan Terminus as synthwave too, I don’t mind. I wont get fussy about what it is. As long as it sounds good and as long as people enjoy what they are listening to, it’s fine with me really. I do understand that from some people’s perspectives, some of my tracks may be considered darksynth, and a label is always necessary I guess.

Like, when I say, I listen to death metal, I mean old-school deathmetal. Bands like Carcass, Obituary, Pestilence, Deicide. Some people who say, “I listen to deathmetal too” and they bring up artists like Meshuggah or those totally insufferable bands who play on a 12 strings guitars that sound like a horde of guys banging on telephone cables with hammers.

People have different definitions of what deathmetal is – what any genre is. So, no – I don’t consider myself a darksynth musician. But, if people label me as such, I really don’t mind.

So you consider yourself a cyberpunk musician?

Absolutely. Absolutely. I had never heard cyberpunk music – the closest I got was when I read Neuromancer by William Gibson, and there is a colony in space where guys from Jamaica listen to “Zion Dub” which he described as bass-heavy music.

So, it’s very selfish of me, but I wanted to write music that to me, would be a kind of cyberpunk music. It’s selfish to want to define a new genre – but it was just me thinking, “Okay, what can the soundtrack to a cyberpunk setting?”

I was totally flattered when I first heard people actually calling my music cyberpunk! It was a huge compliment; I was humbled and honored.

Well, we’ve been talking for quite some time now – thank you deep-dive interview! What’s next for Dan Terminus?

“I’m not sure yet, more music for sure – we’ll just have to wait and see.”

Your percussion machine is named “Rails,” and it costs upwards of $4,000. I’m sure your other gear is expensive too…. Have you ever gotten too absorbed in a set and  popped a sprocket, sprung a spring – mashed it a little too hard and broken it?

“Absolutely, yes! The things that break are not the major things that’ll cost a lot of money though, it’s usually just wires or buttons.”

“Rails” – TristansShone.com

What do you do when your gear breaks and you’re on the road?

“It’s a concern, it’s the same with the van. I’ve a Sprinter that I own, if that thing breaks I miss a show, I miss x amount of money, x amount of merch, it’s a big deal. It’s a whole process from the van, to my health, to the instruments. Like that is a basically like I’ve learned over the years how to be professional about that stuff, how to have backups for certain things, belts for the van, or like for the thing I’ve got to have buttons, a soldering iron, extra Arduinos that are already programmed with the code that I need, cables.”

I read you’re an engineer with a Master’s in Kinetic Sculpture, and you worked as a researcher at UC San Diego, is that still current? What are you researching at UC San Diego?

“Yes that’s current. I am basically a mechanical engineer in a lab that is run by a bunch of– a really brilliant scientist, Dr. Mark Ellisman, who’s a neuroscientist. It’s his lab, he has engineers and scientists working for him about research, different ways to image stuff with electron microscopy. We’ve developed new, inventive ways to look at like mouse brain, cancer, Alzheimer’s, things like that. I basically helped them modify these microscopes.”

How do you the time to get away from your professional life, where you’re a researcher, you have degrees, and you work in a laboratory. How do you find time away to tour and to do stuff like this, how does that work?

“Well, the way it started was I basically I was an engineer who already went back to grad school for art. When I was graduating art school I got a job in the lab, because there was an artist there doing installations, basically as like taking some of the data they use to make, to look at like the mouse brain, for example, on these huge panel displays so you could have a virtual reality walk-through of the brain.”

“I got hired to help them with that. When the main guys who worked at the lab found out that I was a robotics guy and automation engineer, they hired me. When I got out of art school, I was like “Well I could go and be an art professor or I could just work with at this lab”. I stayed at the lab – those guys knew that I was an artist already. My bosses are the best. Someday they’ll get sick of me and fire my ass! I’ll understand. I deserve it,” he says with a laugh.

You grew up on a farm and you surf in your free time but you build these machines that rasp out cold and unnatural sounds. That’s an odd kind of dichotomy way of breathing life into these inanimate objects. Is that metaphorically related to the music that you’re producing?

“It’s funny, I was just talking to my agent about this, about me. I’m not exactly the most typical doom or industrial producer but for me, it’s just like dark music, dark ideas, dark poetry, dark literature, dark form, that comes from so many different places. If you looked at the most film makers who make this kind of stuff, they just don’t look weird, like Lars von Trier, you see a dude with glasses and a dress shirt but – because we’re in the performance world, I think I get more scrutinized because I don’t have a persona that exudes make-up and costumes.”

“If you make dark shit and it’s fucking effective on people. I think it’s better if you’re not wearing a costume. I think it’s better if it’s just real. That’s the way I feel.”

Are you cooking up any new infernal machines and deviant contraptions?

“Every time I build a new machine, I say I’m never doing it again,” he sighs through a chuckle “But now… it looks like I’m going to be building for an eternity because we’re starting a company… We’re going to start making this stuff!”

“Not that I want to enough of these EDM douche bags—Fucking playing my shit – and you can quote me on that – because they will, and it will be painful, but we’re gonna do it. We’re going to make tactile and industrial instruments in a way nobody has ever done before.”

“Is there anything you want to add that we haven’t talked about?”

“Yeah. fuck fascism all forms and you know what, if you are involved in dark music you’re not protesting through your fucking teeth – then you’re not doing your job as a human. This is ground zero for the apocalypse and you need to get your ass out there. You can quote me on that too.”

Are you still the Earthly Avatar of Baalberith?

“Yes and no,” GosT says through a chuckle. “Trying to spread through a couple of other demon names as of late because I’ve heard that– I’m not superstitious, but maybe I am a bit — I’ve heard that you focus on one demon long enough it will fucking ruin shit for you. I did have a really bad year last year….I’ve been fucking with the Stomidod a little bit, which is a lesser demon, but I don’t don’t know. I’m down to change.
I think the music’s changing so it makes sense anyways.”

Your music has changed since you began producing, becoming darker and harder with each release. You said in interview a little while ago, “Possessor was the first release where it’s all me.” Can you explain a little bit about that transition to becoming something that’s more you?

“I’ve gotten to a place were I can take a chance more on writing. It just took me getting to a place of security. Once I knew people liked it, so I could take more risks. It’s stupid.  ”

Was that switch to corpse paint maybe a metaphor or a symbol of your evolution into the darker music? Did that have anything to do with that transition or was that just something that happened?

“No. It was a lot of things. Definitely an ode to the metal genre, and there’s a lot more vocals now. On the new album there’s pretty much vocals on every track. It’s impossible to sing through a piece of plastic. I tried a couple of different variations of latex, but it just doesn’t sound right. It’s just more of a quality issue than anything,” he says with a laugh.

Did you feel nostalgic about letting it go?

“I mean, it was kind of scary. People react horribly to that sort of thing generally and I did have some blow back, people being jerks.”

Chris, who backed GosT on stage, speaks up.

Chris: “I think it’s a progression, honestly.”

So how did you two meet each other? 

GosT: “We came up in high school and used to skate together. Some both played together in some of our first bands. When I needed some help on the road, I asked him. Of course he was downand then it just naturally progressed.

Did it have anything to do with your progression into the more metal aesthetic – the harder music?

GosT: “Actually, it’s just weird being on stage alone. After being in bands for years, when you’re on stage alone, being that much the center of attention is just fucking weird. I can’t explain it….
I don’t know how big name DJs do that shit. It just feels awful. Just having someone to share it with also helps set the stage vibe and everything. It feels like a forward step.”

Chris: “I think that’s an important thing for music. You have to be able to push limits and move forward, instead of making the same album over and over again.”

What’s Chris’s input on the new album? Are you guys co-writers?

Chris: “No, this is all [REDACTED]. I’m pretty much the person that helps him make this happen.”

GosT: “It’s a live environment, and he has a huge influence on that. There’s all the sound checks when we’re setting up a show before tour, it’s all input for him as well. We communicate creatively that way, but it’s still– Writing, it’s still just me.”

Speaking of the new album, Do you plan on going darker and harder? Is that even possible?

GosT: “Yes, there’s a mix, dude. There’s a lot of really fucking gothy, almost industrial sounding tracks. There’s a lot of mix on this album, whereas in Possessor there was either a heavy track or a postpunk sounding track. Expect tracks with postpunk and black metal all mixed together. It’s a lot of experimentation on this record.”

The next band starts up and I end the interview, I ask him if there’s anything he would like to add.

Gost: “Columbus fucking rules! We had a great fucking show tonight. Crazy crowd!”

Strangers on Film by Yota

First off, how did you start playing music?

I used to take some piano lessons as a child but I wasn’t motivated to learn all those music notes so I made my own notes by typing like A1, A2 etc on small pieces of paper and scotched them on each piano key and tried to write some songs after that. One could say I was a bit rebellious by doing that my way, but I was probably just being lazy and tried to find a shortcut. That didn’t lead very far, so it wasn’t until many years later that I actually started to even consider music as something that I should do. My father was a Greek singer and he used to perform in parties, weddings and such. He was incredibly talented, so hearing him sing might have affected me on a subconscious level.

I understood that I should consider taking singing to the next level in my early or mid 20’s, when I was going to art school in Stockholm and one of my good friends heard me going all in, singing along to Al Green in the car. I overdid the falsetto I believe, but she told me right there that this is what I have to do. My friend had been working as a manager for American soul artists and for Brazilian samba artists. She was about 30 years older than me but we were very good friends. I listened to her and trusted her opinion. I had plenty of friends in the music business during that time and I started a band called Metamorphosis with a friend of mine. I was recording the vocals in a program called Sawplus.

One night I met a guy, Peter Sahlin, in Stockholm who had a band called Plastico and he said that I should send my demo to Håkan Lidbo. I did which led to Håkan calling me. I went to meet him and signed with Container Publishing and Misty Music. Signing with them was a real turning point for me and I started to focus on songwriting on another level. After that, I thought that art will be something that I’d pursue later on in life instead, which I still think I will do.

What were your first ideas you had for this project before you started writing any music?

Usually, the ideas grow and come alive after I receive some music from the producers I’m working with. If I don’t have a track in stock that inspires me, so to say, then I usually work on vocal melody ideas in Logic and send them over to one of them (producers). This project for NRW is a quite dreamy creation. Emotions are my inspiration and sometimes I loop a favourite part of a song (any song that I like) and sing over it just to get the ideas flowing. My topics are formed after the emotion so the feeling is the ruler or the boss, and the idea will kindly have to follow after that 🙂 The ideas for this album were quite a lot about contrasts like tough and soft, warm and cold, serious and playful.

As someone originally from Sweden who now lives in Paris, how would you compare France’s approach to music to Sweden’s approach to music?

Wow! This question is huge and depends on genres etc and could be discussed for hours but I’ll keep it short.

My impression is that in France the respect for the past is huge and music is no exception. The knowledge about artists that were known a long time ago is still kept alive by those who dig deep and take music quite seriously. Of course, this does not go for all and is also accurate in Sweden (respect for the skilled and serious musicians in Sweden) but somehow, I feel that the nostalgia is more apparent here in France – at least this is my impression, build on the people I meet over here. On the other hand, I’ve lived here since 2007 so I might be too disconnected from the Swedish music scene by now. In Sweden, I feel that the business keeps an eye on what’s going on outside in the world inspiration-wise, while in France it sometimes feels like the inspiration stays within the borders, but now I’m generalising so I better stop here to not upset anyone 😉

Your latest album is called Strangers On Film. Who does the title refer to? Who are these Strangers? Why this title?

When I received the instrumental from Douze (Arnault Esteve) I opened it in Logic and started to go with the flow and the mood. I pictured an outdoor club in front of me. There was a big screen playing a movie and there were a lot of people. The view was of someone watching the scene. Imagine a decadent place with music that gets hold of you in a way that it becomes what you feel. Then, further along, I had the idea of that electric connection between two people in the middle of this crowd, the kind that burns your stomach or something. The mood is tense and a bit exaggerated with the lyrics but that’s the mood I was aiming for in a way. I recorded the title track in 20 mins because it just felt right. The strangers are random people with good taste in music and some kind of wild side.

What can you say about the concepts behind this record?

I feel that there’s a lot of gathered emotions in a small place in this record. Gathered in a sense of things that I’m going through at this time in my life.

How did you meet your collaborators for this album?

I know Douze (Arnault Esteve) for many years now as he used to work with Kris Menace and came over with him to my place in Paris. Ever since we really connected and did plenty of tracks. He gave me the idea to do my first album “Knight in Shining Armour” where he wrote about 70 percent of the tracks. So, once I started working on new material, which later led to this release on NRW, it was natural to ask Douze if he had some nice tunes to send over. As always, I received plenty of nice tracks that I could work on. I’m very lucky to have him as a producer, he’s a real talent.

I know Stephane Lozac’h through my publishers in Stockholm and Paris. They connected us as I asked them if they had someone skilled in Paris I could work with when I had moved over here. They introduced me to Stephane and it turned out that he was kind of my neighbour, only living 2 blocks from me. We became good friends and it was only after years of friendship that we actively started to work on tracks together. I am very happy we did so because he’s very professional and skilled. He can tune into what I like and create a track after that.

Johan Emmoth and I go way back. I met him when I was still living in Sweden and I wrote tracks with him and John Andersson from Zoo Brazil and Laid. It was during the time when I was working with Håkan Lidbo, John Dahlbäck, Stonebridge etc. Me and Johan stayed in touch and started the project Mauvais Cliché together and our first release as MC was on Strictly Rhythm, a track called “Stop Watching Me”. Johan is a very close friend of mine. He is always ahead of his time. I think he has one foot in the future and I have yet not figured out why 🙂 He is one of a kind and very talented.

I know Laurent (Lifelike) for more than 12 years now. We have released some tracks together where I believe “Sunset” on the label Vulture is the best-known one, along with “Silicon Love” on Computer Science. As many people might agree, Laurent is basically brilliant but then again I’m quite biased here 😉

What is the main message you want people to take from your music?

What I want is that there are some people who can get something out of listening to my music, and preferably something positive of course, but this is not rocket science, so a good mood will do just fine. There are so many people liking different things out there but for the ones who get affected by similar tunes to me, then I’m happy if I can contribute something like a little natural high or a little dreamy break from reality or such.

Finishing off: can you name one of your favourite albums, movies and books?

I really like the Tears For Fears album called The Hurting. Overall it’s an album that has a lot of richness in the sense of content. With that said I’m not a fan of all tunes on the album but most of them are great, like the track “Start Of The Breakdown”. That is just amazing.

Some of my all time favourite tracks are “Heroes“ by Bowie, for me, this song is beyond brilliant. Prince’s “Purple Rain“ is pure bliss. I love some fabulous tunes by Earth, Wind and Fire. My favourite tune by Depeche Mode is a song called “In Your Room” which reminds me of my art school time in Sweden.

The track called “Isolated” by Trevor Something is amazing and the funny part is that only a month ago I discovered he was signed to NRW, just like me, whereas I’ve been listening to his songs since a while now.

“Love On A Real Train” by Tangerine Dream is everything one can ask for in a song if you ask me. If the song makes you feel and it makes you associate to things and your mind starts to spin, then it’s usually a good song. This tune just does it all time and time again.

The band Cigarettes After Sex are really amazing. They can be on repeat on a rainy day, and it rains a lot in Paris lately.

When it comes to movies I really like Rear Window by Hitchcock. The colours have that kind of shine, just like when the sun shines in your eyes and you need to put your sunglasses on. Then the silence when the camera kind of slides over the courtyard and the apartments, slowly like they never do these days. There is something with the light in this movie, really. There’s an awkward silence that can be heard in this movie. I can’t really put my finger on what it is but it intrigues me.

I like One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest a lot but at the same time, it kind of depresses me to watch it. I really like Jack Nicholson and his acting style.

The Eternal Sunshine Of A Spotless Mind is a beautiful story that got a hold of me.

Regarding books, I’m not really a novel person. I mostly read about psychological theories or human behaviour. Right now I’m reading and listening to podcasts and interviews about the polyvagal theories in neuroscience and psychology and it is really fascinating. There is not only a fight or flight response in our primitive part of our brain once we detect or think we’re in danger, but there’s also a third one that is all about immobilization as a defence mechanism. Anyway, this is what I read about at the moment. 🙂

I also like to read about true stories of people who have gone through a lot, but at the same time, I would not be able to call any of these my favourite books as they tell stories that are very dark. Calling someone’s darkness my favourite just doesn’t feel right.

Our  review of ‘Strangers of Film’ (By Andrew Zistler)

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First off, can you tell us a little bit about your musical background?
I went to a music school when I was a kid. I played the violin and piano but I hated it [Laughs]. I was avoiding the lessons and I didn’t listen to my teachers. When I finished with the music school, I was in seventh grade and I felt so free and turned the page on it. I was done playing and thinking about music. It was towards the end of school that I eventually started thinking about music again. When I was studying political science at university I felt the urge to sing, so I started writing songs. I also had some requirements for myself: I wanted to create songs that could sound like ancient Lithuanian songs, so I started learning how to do this. I made a lot of … shit things [Laughs], but they were my first steps. Later on, I met up with my old friends and we started a rock band which lasted seven years. We had a great time and we played a lot of gigs, and the experience of playing in a band gave me the basic background on how to feel the stage, how to prepare myself, how to perform live and how to create songs that “flow”.

Did you have any formal training as a singer?
No, I’ve always been self-taught. I was so eager to sing by the end of High School, yet everyone at my University would tell me that I was a terrible singer. I was too loud and off-pitch. The band allowed me to find myself and develop my own sound. That was the start of my musical journey.

Your vocals sound more “classical” that “rock” oriented. Did you have any particular role models or references whilst learning how to sing?
I think my biggest influence as a singer was Amy Lee from Evanescence. She was my idol. I’ve also always been in love with Broadway Musical songs. There’s also Lisa Gerrard. I discovered her through the Gladiator movie soundtrack and then through her Dead Can Dance project. She definitely helped a lot in shaping my vocals.

Photo by Eimantas Žeimys

You also mentioned that you wanted your music to draw influence from ancient Lithuanian music. Did you grow up listening to Lithuanian folk songs or is this a more recent interest of yours?
We have a very strong ethnic background in Lithuania. I’m not even sure we even realize how strong those roots are. We have a very colourful music background ranging across many different styles. Everyone, whether young or old, is very much aware of these different pieces of music. We’ve preserved this traditional background. My idea was to mix these musical traditions with modern technology and more modern sounds to create something different, something new. You can’t just disregard your roots. You can travel, you can move somewhere else and learn another language, but your roots will always be with you. You can’t change your core, but today you’re able to change your appearance. You can become anybody. You can change your face. If you lose a hand or a leg, you can get a biomechanical replacement limb. The biggest meaning always lies in your consciousness. I don’t think you change that. That is why it was important for me to acknowledge this background. In my performances, I sometimes sing some old traditional songs in their original form, other times I reinterpret them in my own way.

How did you eventually get into Synthesizers?
That happened three years ago. Everything related to composition, mixing and mastering with a DAW is totally new for me. Three years ago, my son was born and it changed me a lot. We stopped playing as a band because everyone was starting a family and we just couldn’t find the time to rehearse and play. I couldn’t just take a break, though, so I thought about starting my own project. So I started composing from scratch. I had a free Cubase trial with only a couple of tools, and a pair of headphones that was only working on one side of the Stereo. I was basically listening and composing with one ear. [Laughs] Eventually, I started talking with a friend of mine who owns a professional studio and I told him that I wanted to make music inspired by Eighties movies. My friend told me that I didn’t need to buy all of the synthesizers, I just needed to get the Arturia Analog Lab. So I gave it a try and I’m still working with it to this day.

Can you give us English listeners a few insights as to what your lyrics are about?
The album is about the meeting of two worlds. On one hand, there is the “Ancient”, the “Soul” world and the “technological” world. One day, I was reading some posts on Instagram about the Cyberpunk world and the robotic world and I thought to myself “If I were to come into this dystopian world where there’s no foreseeable bright future and no way to distinguish technology from human consciousness, what would I be thinking? What would I know? Would I remember the name of my land or the name of its ancient melodies?”. This album my way to reflect on these questions. I had this vision of this Cyberpunk woman lying on the ground with a light shining from her neck, as you see on the cover. You can’t say if she’s sleeping or if she’s dead. I was able to find this great British Artist Noel Guard to paint the scene and he made this amazing cover art that perfectly encapsulates what the album is about.

Do you see harmony or conflict between Nature and Technology?
I think that conflict is everywhere. Wherever two opposites meet, there will always be conflict, but I’m always positive about finding a way through these conflicts. I’ve always been met with closed doors in life. It’s never been as simple as “Yes, we can do this! Go ahead! We’ll support you!”. I only get no’s, but I’ve realized that just because these people aren’t with me doesn’t mean that they are against me. They’re just not with me. It’s the same in this case. It may seem as though these two opposite elements are in conflict, but it doesn’t mean that they cannot coexist alongside one another.

The Cyberpunk aesthetic usually portrays technology through a dystopian lens. The outlook is usually pretty bleak and pessimistic.
You’re right, and I agree with that. We can see all around us that this is the case. We develop new technology and we’re moving forward without even reflecting on their impact. It’s true that people are selfish and mostly think on the short-term, but I think that if you’re true to yourself you can find the way. We mustn’t give up. I think that some cyberpunk fans want to give up though! [Laugh] It’s such a beautiful aesthetic; the neon lights, the flying cars… They want it to turn out that way. I think this wave of Eighties fashion came because we’re standing on the edge of human knowledge. Twenty or thirty years ago, people didn’t know as much as we do now. We know a lot, and that’s why we like to turn back and remember a more “innocent” time. Everyone says that the girls looked better back then, and it’s because they looked more natural. I also think that everyone tends to look back and say that things were better before. [Laughs]

So what is the meaning of the Number 8? The album is titled 8 Vol.1. Does that mean there is a second volume awaiting release?
Yes, I was actually working on Vol. 2 this morning. I have a lot of songs, but I’m doing everything by myself, from start to finish, so it’s not easy. I live in a small city and there aren’t too many venues for artists or much of a “scene”. If you want to create art, you need to rely on yourself as much as you can, so it takes a lot of time for me to release new music. We’ll see what will happen. Regarding the title 8, I’m not sure why I picked the title [Laugh]. I’m a visionary person, and the eight symbol just appeared to me. I think 8 is a symbol for immortality. You can say that the positive scenario we were discussing earlier lies in the immortality of the spirit. I believe that death is not the end. Your body dies, but your energy lives on and finds new life to inhabit, whether it be in the universe or in a new body. A body is basically a vessel for this energy that is life. It’s a cycle. The energy comes and goes. The immortality of the energy can be the key to this positive scenario. The 8 symbolizes this undying energy. Machines can be turned off, but the soul can never be turned off.

Do you think there will come a point where this energy will be able to be hosted by technology, like in Ghost in the Shell?
With nature’s creations, the whole body starts out with a single cell. Nature is creating the body and hosting this energy. The body is alive but without conscience. It takes conscience from the universe.  All cells in the body have a memory and fulfil their functions. It means that all of this memory is in the energy. The machine taking this energy will also take this consciousness. It will allow it to think and memorize.

It seems like dance and movement plays an important role in your performances. Do you have a background in contemporary dancing?
Again, I was self-taught. I don’t like coming on stage and standing still in front of a microphone stand. I like to express my ideas in a lot of different ways. I started performing last year and for my first show, I asked a contemporary dancer to come onstage with me. I wanted to see how he would interpret my music through dance and he did great. It gave me a totally different outlook on things. I understood that I can’t just stand and sing. There needs to be some dancing, there needs to be movement. People were surprised by the show, and I wonder at which point we lost the physical movement that goes into performing. Somebody wrote to me on Instagram saying “Thank you for bringing back motion onstage!”.
Nowadays, I’m trying to interpret different aspects of the performance. From the very first note down to the last second of the show, everything links together into one whole performance. I interact with the crowd if the audience is small, but if the crowd is too big I try and stitch the songs together as one piece, as one single performance. Movement plays a big part in that.

Do you follow some examples or references?
I do watch videos of other dancers. One of my idols is Sevdaliza. She’s really great. She creates electronic music and has an incredible voice and dances all throughout her shows. It’s incredible to see this kind of thing live. The motion really adds to the experience. I need to learn a lot and I know that every time I step onstage, I do something different and I’m constantly learning.

Most of us know very little about the music of Lithuania. Is there a “scene” for Synthwave or / Synth music?
The Eighties trend is everywhere, really, and Lithuania is no exception. Some rock artists are switching over to Electro-pop, and even in my small city, we have some Electro-pop and Synthpop composers. Lithuania is too small though and our music scene isn’t so good. We have venues in Vilnius for any genre but you have to live there to take advantage of them. If you live in a smaller town, those venues will not invite you because they won’t have the money nor the interest to bring you over. It’s always a struggle. That’s how it is.

Photo by Eimantas Žeimys

Do you plan on doing some tours abroad?
I was in Switzerland a month ago, actually. I hope I’ll be able to play in more countries in Europe. I want to come to France. I have a lot of supporters there that ask me to come. I also want to go back to Switzerland. I definitely want to play in London. Before being able to play these places I needed to release this album and I need to show my performance in video format so that people can see how I perform. We’ll see how it goes, but I hope I’ll be able to tour Europe soon.

Closing off: can you name one of your favourite albums, movies and books?
There are a lot of movies that I love, like Inception, Interstellar, Alien, The Andromeda Strain, the original Star Trek TV series… But I’ll have to go with the first Terminator film. Everything is in the concept. It was a pioneering film with its concept revolving around cyborgs and time-travel. The film also proved that the hero can be a totally simple person. In the second film, she becomes a much more complicated character. It shows the nature of the human being. It doesn’t show the perfect story that we like to see these days.
I have two favourite albums. The first one is Def Leppard’s Hysteria and the second one is Slor by Eivor. She’s a great singer that mixes ethnic tribal sounds with electrical sounds.
The book I’ll name is Women Who Run with Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés. It’s a book about Women and Human psychology. It talks about Archetypes that I use in my songs, but that’s a whole different story. We’ll be here another hour if I get into it [Laugh].
The second book is Vytaute Zilinskaite’s  The Robot and the butterfly. It’s about a robot who is visited every day by a butterfly, who tells him about this thing called “feelings”. The robot doesn’t understand what it means to “feel” until, one day, the butterfly disappears. The robot then understands what it means to feel because he misses the butterfly. This book is my childhood and I still have it in my studio.

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How’re things? What’ve you been jamming on your way here?

It’s funny you ask that, because I was talking about that on the way here. I cannot listen to music anymore; I’ve managed to ruin music for myself [laugh]. When I listen to music, it’s “research” now. When I hear a really good song, I’m like “Goddamn it. How do I top that?”, and if I listen to a really bad song I just go “ugh, why is this popular?!”. If I listen to some of my own music I get frustrated at the production. So 99% of the time, I actually listen to podcasts now [laughs], and while doing that there’s another part of my brain that’s composing music. I start thinking about song progressions and somehow find a way to link it back to the subject I’m hearing about in the podcast. It’s like I always say: a butcher doesn’t go home to eat steak. Your vocation is rarely your hobby.

Is this a recent thing or has it somehow always been this way?

I think the more seriously I start thinking about music and where to take it into new, interesting, fresh places, the more I feel the need to compartmentalise it and keep it in a specific pocket of time in my day. It keeps it focused, it makes it a ‘craft’ rather than a hobby. Besides, we’ve all been inundated music. Everyone has a band right now and there are too many things to listen to. If I can get on Spotify, that means everyone can get on Spotify, and there’s no quality control, so you have to sift through a lot of bad music to get to the good stuff that will inspire you. I try to really curate and moderate what I listen to, and how much. Even when I find a song that’s super inspiring, I actually limit myself to limit to it once every two days, otherwise you get “numb” to what makes the song magical. When I listen to it, it just pops out more and it doesn’t get boring as quickly, because that tends to happen a lot.

The main acts you play alongside on tour and in festivals are generally labelled as Synthwave. Does this heavy exposure to this one style and aestheti c hinder your ability to find this space to develop your own distinct identity?

Sort of. But the thing is that I’m so pathologically stubborn that there’s absolutely no way that I can get “persuaded” to switch lanes. At the end of the day, I want to make the music that I want to make, and I really don’t care if it sells or not. That’s why I haven’t really dipped my toes in Synthwave. I don’t really “gel” with the sound that much. My references just seem to be on a very different trajectory from most of Synthwave. Not better, just different. So I never really feel threatened by being too much “in contact” with the scene. If anything, it just confirms in my mind that I’m just weird, that I listen to weird shit and make weird decisions in music. Most of my albums have orchestral overtures, and I had a manager for a very brief time and he wasn’t too sure about that decision, but his going against the idea made me really want to do it! [laughs] If you don’t want me to do it, I’ll do it twice over! If you tell me to make more Synthwave like ‘Pompey Pirate’, I’m going to make a polka album, just to fuck with you! It’s going to bite me in the ass eventually! [laughs] But that’s what you do to keep it adventurous.  As a musician, when you’re writing, you want to be in the unknown. If you have the same basic Synthwave sounds and samples you’re going to make the same song again and again. It will sell in the circuit, but circuits all live and die. Songs are supposed to go on further than that.

Whether we were born in the eighties or not, everyone has a different perspective on what the Eighties and Nineties felt like and what aspect of pop culture left the biggest impression on them. Is there anything you’d like to see more of in this Retro and Synthwave scene?

That’s a really good question! It’s one that I’ve been thinking about for a long time. I think Synthwave is verging on becoming Hair Metal at this point if you know what I mean. I really like Hair Metal, actually, but there was a point where there were too many imitators. Sure, you had Guns N’ Roses, but you also had Ratt or …

… or Stryper!

Stryper! Oh God! A shiver went down my spine when you said that! [Laugh] You had a lot knock-offs that were really bad, but they also had the same producers and the same gear. It was just a bloated mess of an industry. The only thing that killed it was Nirvana.

My problem about the Eighties resurgence – which has sort of come and gone at this point, as we’ve moved on to the Nineties resurgence – is that it made people cling on to a romanticised version of the Eighties. People keep repeating “We want the Eighties back!”, and all I’m thinking is “Alright, guys! You got the Eighties back!”. Instead of Reagan we have Trump, the economy is down the shitter except for the 1% who’s having a great time, we’re out here asking who’s the most coked out and who’s got the weirdest fashion sense… It’s the Eighties again! Music is all about decadence. Trap is no different than hair metal! It’s all about opulence. All the signifiers of late-stage capitalism are still here. It’s not only in Synthwave. We wanted to re-live the Eighties because as kids we were pandered to. We were being raised at that time and we thought the Eighties signified safety, but the decade had a big, dark undercurrent, economically and culturally. It was shit back then, except for the rich people!

So you’re saying that you want a grittier, more grounded representation of the Eighties?

I listen to a lot of stuff that has a lot of weird, edgy lyrics or album covers, but I think that at this point in time artists have a moral responsibility to put out shit that either gently guides people towards something with meaning. They shouldn’t be irresponsible with the message they’re putting out. If all you’re putting out is “my dick is three miles wide” and “everything is neon and everything is great!”, you’re pretty much feeding opium at that point.
I could’ve gone full steam with a thematic soundtrack to all of these things, but I really needed to have songs like ‘Trapped in America’, which is basically claustrophobia. It’s about being trapped in this economic system that follows you even outside of America. What is popular in the US will be popular in the rest of the world, unfortunately, or fortunately. Everything is a butterfly effect. Musicians are a cultural frontline for what you should be putting out there.
I think pandering has become a point of desperation for big brands at this point. The whole Marvel Cinematic Universe is based on pandering rather than making movies that piss you off for a good reason. The best films I’ve seen lately are Mother! And Hereditary. Those movies will give you a panic attack if you truly understand what they’re telling you. I was in pieces by the end of Mother!, I was balling my eyes out. On the other hand, movies like Infinity War are straight-up heroin.

What about the new Star Wars trilogy? On one hand, The Force Awakens was criticized for pandering too much to its audience, whilst The Last Jedi got slammed for taking too many liberties.

What’s funny is that I went to watch The Last Jedi with my best friend – we were both huge Star Wars fans back in the day – and we thought it was really fun! I thought it was a little bit weird that Luke died without us noticing too much, but other than that I thought it was great! I posted on my social media about how I thought it was a good movie when I got back, and suddenly a truck full of shit unloaded on my feed. People were like “No, no! This is why your childhood was raped. This is why this is bad and everything is ruined for everyone”. What movie did they watch? I believe that’s just a consequence of where we are with the Internet. We weren’t ready for the Internet. It’s the big tragedy. I would be nobody without the Internet, I made my name with the Internet and yet I would give it all away if it meant that people would be sane again. They just don’t know how to handle it. I grew up at age without the Internet, without cell-phones, so I learned how to live and have fun without all of that. My nephew started swiping and unlocking I-Pads when he was two years old, and it’s really impressive, but what are we going to do when we don’t have it.

It’s the most natural thing in the world if you grow up with that technology. You could even argue that phones have become an extension of our body.

The worst part is that it’s an extension of their opinion. People get their opinions online and the more people yell, the more they believe that particular opinion. Take Star Wars, for example. Maybe it’s not a bad movie. Maybe it’s just not your thing, and maybe you shouldn’t send death threats to people.

Given that there’s this catering towards instant gratification, how do you position yourself with regards to expectations when writing music?

Writing an album is a bit of a long process for me. I need to get all of the shit songs out of my system first [laugh], then I can start figuring out what every song needs to be about. I just can’t bring myself to sit down and write a song that’s just about everyone having fun and everything being great. There needs to be an undercurrent to everything. I have tons of sketches and ideas, and I have to sit on them until I find that connecting “link” as to what it’s about. Once I do that with every song, I need to figure out how to blend them together into a story that fits what’s come before all of the other albums and write a script. It’s a very articulated, intense process to tie everything in together.

Last we heard, you were about half-way done with the second part to Midnight Signals. What can we expect from this new instalment? Were both parts composed together?

Yes, that’s part of the reason why it took two years to make Midnight Signals. I basically wrote both albums together. I am one song away from finishing Midnight Signals II, but things can change. You sometimes find out that one song just doesn’t work anymore and you have to write a new one. This second part will basically be a ‘dark mirror’ to the first. Every song will have a counterpoint and will be connected narratively. It’ll basically be a ‘flipped’, darker and heavier version of the first album, more of a deep dive. There’s more influence from artists like Soundgarden.

Given that your releases follow the same narrative; do you have the entire storyline fleshed out or do you expand it as you go along? Has it evolved from what you had originally set out to make?

Yes to all of the above! Me and my co-director Rob O’Neill basically started with the narrative on Sunset Blood and when it came to Midnight Signals we wrote the entire mythology. We have a script for Sunset Blood and its prequel Midnight Signals. Everything connects and follows this pretty meta-narrative. ‘Freak Night’ is right at the end of Midnight Signals, so they connect that way. The interesting thing with that video is that it feels like a straightforward Eighties movie throwback, but it’s not. There are ways that the concept has branched off in many unexpected ways that I didn’t see coming. One of the recent things was the importance of Sigils. I’ve been researching and looking into the theory of practice of Chaos Magick. There meta-concept of a belief system. It’s definitely informed a lot of what we’re doing with the overall narrative. I’m letting it sit for a little bit though. Hopefully, we’ll get some more attention with the Freak Night video and get the opportunity to tell the full story. It’s super fun.

So you’re still pitching the film project as we speak.

We’re pitching it left and right like crazy, hoping to get some catches. We’re trying really hard. It’s all part of the process, really. You have to get to the point where people get really comfortable with the idea, especially the people that fund these things, as they want to make sure that people really want to see it. The more attention we get from our videos; the more chances we have to tell the whole story. Otherwise, we have other options to tell the story. We could go another way, whether it be with comics or with a video game … Whatever helps us tell the story. That’s what matters.

This reminds me of an interview I did with Coheed & Cambria. The singer is based in Brooklyn as well and he’s been putting out comics for the whole Sci-Fi saga he’s created with the band. They’ve been trying to get a feature film project off the ground for a few years now but it looks like they’re facing a tough road.

It’s hard to invest in new intellectual property nowadays. They want the remakes and they want the sequels. It doesn’t make any financial sense to them so I’m not going to blame them, because it’s their money. On the other hand, this goes back to what I was saying earlier. People need to push themselves to look for more adventurous things rather than get the same old placebo and stick with a genre or whatever you’re used to. It’s good to do something that will piss you off or make you feel weird. It’s a good thing.

Open access to music and film has unfortunately led to tighter budgets and thus tighter ‘risk management’ for film and music.

That’s exactly what it is. They will market things that they know will make money for them. I go out of my way to find weird Indie Horror movies and I usually have to dig through articles, podcasts or Reddit threads to find good recommendations. I’m not going to get it from what’s being advertised to me, that’s for sure. It’s the same with music, too. It’s a shame. It used to be blogs that people read daily, but now it’s just Youtube and Spotify. That’s how you get the maximum advertisement. The devaluing of all art-forms really is biting us in the ass. It’s not like we didn’t see it coming, but this is where we are now. We can’t get any original ideas off the ground. We still do it though. That’s why I had the big graffiti in the ‘Interspace’ music video that said ‘We will still be here’. I have a day job and I’m clearly not going to be Daft Punk anytime soon, but I really don’t care. I’m still going to make the music because I’ll go crazy if I don’t. I need it. If people like it, that’s amazing, but if they don’t that’s okay too. God knows there are other bands they can listen to [laugh].

So how did you meet Rob O’ Neill, and how did you know that you’d be able to pull this ambitious project together?

That’s easy, he was my teacher in School, back when I was getting my Master’s degree in VFX. He taught scripting and coding for 3D. I’ve always struggled with trying to find out what I want to do for a living. I didn’t know if I wanted to be a filmmaker or a musician or do some job that actually pays [laugh], and he was the one that made me realize that I could be all of those things. You can actually have a mathematical brain and do art. His future wife was the assistant chairperson in the department I was in at Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute. We really connected and I ended up helping him do a bunch of research. He gave me the time and space to sit in a corner and code and come up with cool stuff. He also ended up giving me my Green card and my first job.

I was making wildly different music to Starcadian before that. I started working on the first song while I was working at his company. Eventually, we moved on to different companies, but one day he texted me saying “Dude, I got a cockpit!”. He works at Dreamworks in L.A. now, and he got a cockpit for 200 bucks. So we started working on a video together. We came up with half of the mythology of Starcadian real fast to justify using this cockpit. This was before Sunset Blood. ‘HE^RT’ was just a single. To this day, Rob has been the star traveller guy with the helmet in every video.

I stole time in my company’s render farm to render all of the 3D I had to do for the video, overnight. I snuck in, edited it and rendered everything on their systems. It was so fun and so intuitive. Whenever one of us gets stuck on something, the other person fills in and finds a solution. It’s a very organic back-and-forth. It’s a very fertile relationship with regards to where to go, visually, how to branch things out or pivot stuff if we don’t have the money, which happens all of the time.
We were chased by cops whilst shooting ‘Chinatown’. Apparently, you need a permit to film for everything. The live show in ‘Chinatown’ happens at the back of a diner. We had no idea until we showed up. So I had to digitally add dozens of people to make it look better. We’re both pretty good at staying on our toes and flipping ideas.

Given that the visuals and the music are so closely related, is there a specific order in which you work on each, or are there any back-and-forth re-adjustments that happen?

Usually, it stems from the music. For ‘Freak Night’, Iconoclasm – who did the cover for Saturdaze and is the creative director for a lot of our stuff – had the idea for this monster prom. I thought it was really cool so we went for it. ‘Freak Night’ might have been written because of that idea that she put in my brain. We were building monsters and we were getting ready to go, but then someone sent me the video to ‘Pressure’ by Muse, which features monsters at a prom. I just remember walking through union square and just losing it. I was thinking “Oh my God, we have to cancel the pre-production!”. Luckily, Rob told me to calm down and suggested the idea of it being an underground club rather than a prom.
Usually, I do write the music with some ideas in mind, so I try to put the concept for every song in the song already, to have a starting point. When you’re DIY, one of the main things is that you make sure you film videos according to what you can afford to shoot in. If you have a cockpit, you film a spaceship. If you have a warehouse, you film a nightclub.

Alright, on to my closing question: can you name one of your favourite albums, movies and books?

Sebastian’s Total. It’s one of those things that’s so perfect and well done that I hate it. There’s no way anyone can touch that album. I think it’s a modern masterpiece. The only thing I’m annoyed by is that he didn’t include a song called ‘Threnody’ on it. It’s a 13-minute song which includes this sample from Penderecki. If he played that song in a club, no one would stick around, but on the thirteenth minute the track just drops like a classic Sebastian beat drop and it’s magical! That’s the only thing I can think about to say about Total.
Film-wise, I would say Mother. It’s one of the films that shook me the most, lately. Besides that, there’s Labyrinth [laughs].
Book-wise, I was a pretty big fan of The Thief of Always by Clive Barker. That’s a really great book. It’s a pretty glib answer though, so I will also add Condensed Chaos: An Introduction to Chaos Magic. It’s a really great book. It’s a very heavy book, it can be hard to understand sometimes [laugh]. I appreciate reading what people think about it. It helps you realize how much of an optical illusion perspective is. It makes you look and think about things a different way. At this point, I can’t even read fictional books because I’m trying to focus on my own stuff. So I mostly read non-fiction or philosophical stuff like that to keep me interested.

Special thanks to Anthony and Jet Set Trash for helping make this Interview happen. Get well soon, Zak!

Live Photos taken at Retro Synth Fury 2019.

The show itself was fantastic – from the opener Violet Days amazing, punchy synthwork to the mesmerizing light show courtesy Cory Mattonen, to the audience singing along right up until the final shimmering track, it was truly a don’t – miss experience.

Hours before, as Lito Hernandez’s sax pealed in the background for soundcheck, I had the wonderful opportunity to sit down with McEwan and Lyle for an interview.  Before our time was up, they revealed the name of their upcoming single and teased a new album!

The pair spoke first about how astounded they’ve been from the audience reception they’ve received, in the U.S. and in Europe.

“I would say we’re used to playing to the states – and when we got to Europe we didn’t know how they were going to react. I would say though, when we got to Europe that had even more of a hardcore reaction. It was really great to see the energy levels there.” McEwan said. “When we announced the European tour last year – off the bat the sales were really great, much stronger than we expected. We actually needed up upgrading a lot of the shows to bigger rooms in Europe.”

“I was really surprised by Baltimore last night. We were pleasantly surprised by Seattle and Denver. I would say that the variations were much more pronounced in Europe. Spanish audiences were NUTS, they were all for it.” Lyle said through a laugh.

Both of them related that the tour had been going well, and the support from their touring staff was indispensable. Believe it or not they’re travelling by van – something they said they’ll have to upgrade soon.

“Our poor Tour Manager, Chris Paules, I think it’ll be his last time driving. He wears about 5 different hats and I think we’ve broken him now.” Lyle chuckled. Our merch staff Minaz Rayani has been driving too.”

McEwan explained, “It’s all hands on deck. We’re still kind of in the early days. We didn’t know how many people were going to show up to these shows – we’re doing a lot of first-time markets…. We’re very lucky to be working with a great group of people, management team, booking agents, our tour manager – they’re very good at what they do, much better than we are at what we do. It makes for an infrastructure that we can trust in. We can just show up and play, which is an incredible luxury.”

After the tour talk we got down to the music. McEwan and Lyle explained a bit behind why they were drawn to the synthwave sound.

“I’ve always been drawn to the bittersweet, nostalgic, uplifting but slightly melancholic chord progressions. I grew up with 80’s music so the aesthetic was kind of natural to me. It was liking finding something you knew you could go all out with – where it was okay to just be over the top.” McEwan said.

Lyle picked up, “My songwriting comes from a more narrative country Nashville pop writing sensibilities and it was my writing exercise to write images. With the synth sound – the aesthetic is so specific the images are kind of already there, you just put them in the right place.”

They also explained that they don’t want to be placed in a genre box, and that they still plan on expanding their sound.

“We’re trying to connect with people.” Lyle said in a point blank fashion. “This is a human connection business…we’re artists but we’re here for mutual healing. The strict genre boundaries or the narcissism of small genre differences aren’t important. Splicing up the definition of genre that’s 5 years old is – It’s a palette of colors, not a box.  We’re still trying to find the corners of the room.”

After, we spoke about the “Kids” album. Some fans had related they thought it was a bit short, and I asked if it was originally intended to be an EP. This is when they revealed some awesome news – “Kids” may end up being party of a trilogy.

“We had some tracks that just didn’t fit, and we thought …this is thematically maybe the next step of where we go from “Kids,” so maybe it makes sense to save these tracks for the next one and that’s when we realized, “Oh, this could be a three-parter!” McEwan said with a sly smile.

Lyle continued. “As of now, it’s a trilogy. Everything is open to change. But we have a lot of songs written, and a direction we’re going in so… yeah.”

As we wrapped up our interview, the pair looked at each other and McEwan took a serious tone.
“Should we tell him?” – “Sure, why not” came Lyle’s reply. Then they further revealed the first single from an unnamed album is coming soon – that single is called “America Online.”

“We teased that there might be a new single, but we did it on April 1st….” McEwan laughed. “We wanted to give it a few days to kind of confirm it, because people were going “I can’t tell if this is a joke or not!” and we were like ….’Excellent’” he said, doing his best Simpon’s Smithers impersonation before continuing.

“Basically, it’s going to be the first single from the next chapter, it’s more of an instrumental feel, It’s a thesis of the next album. It speaks to the disconnectedness and sort of the loneliness of… let’s say we’ve moved into the internet age from “Kids.” It’s sort of modem sounds and that kind of thing. The track is called “America Online.”

Lyle perked up. “As a kid you’re sort of [disconnected] from the world… But when you’re in your teenage years, everything is sort of inner-conflict, relationships, all happening at once. The tensions of romantic love, acceptance in groups and things like that.”

McEwen closed with a brief description.

“…it’s not a sunset right? It’s more of a sort of blog track. I love going on vaporwave track playlists on youtube. I love the low-grade, low-fi, bitcrushed sound – it’s like that but with a bit more of a cleaner palette, a cleaner mix. So, that one will set the tone. Tyler is definitely on it, but in a bit more of a…vocodery way,” he chuckled.

 For those who might not yet know the story, can you tell us a few words about the origins of Maethelvin?
Maethelvin basically started in 2010, around the time David Grellier was starting the Valerie blog. The whole idea of Valerie was to dig up and share Eighties tracks for our mixing sets. Valerie really developed around “silly” mixing nights we were hosting in Nantes, which is where we all come from. It eventually turned into a blog and eventually David started developing his project as College as well as the Valerie collective as we now know it. College basically grew out of the Valerie blog. I was working on my Dance/Techno project Dach Tünner and David was playing in Sexy Sushi when he asked me to work with him. We started working together and our friends Gaël and Arnaud started The Outrunners as friendly competition. They kept at it and it turned out pretty well for them since they were a lot more focused than we were. David and I tried to work together but nothing really came of it, namely because our ways of writing were too different, so he continued College – which, at the time was called Dusty Haze – on his own.

In parallel, he would also post Eighties songs and visuals. At the time, there wasn’t nearly as much of it as you may find online today. David slowly started adding College tracks as well. I decided to pull a prank on him one day by showing him some track I had made and pretending it was by some obscure artist from the Eighties. I chose the name Maethelvin because there were no search results for that term on Google. The prank worked really well and it drove David crazy for two whole weeks before I finally admitted I had written the song. Thus Maethelvin was born, which accounts for “unbankable”, incomprehensible name. It basically comes from a bad spelling of “Maethelwine”, which is old English for “Melvin”.

So you originally tried to work together on College?
We tried to start it together, yeah. He also worked with Gaël, who played with him on College’s first live show at Le Lieu Unique in Nantes. Le Lieu Unique is somewhat of a cornerstone venue. We have a mutual friend called Frédéric Sourice – who goes by the name Phonème – who books shows there and who knows the local scene very well. He’s the one who started booking us there.

 It’s fairly interesting to note that the Valerie artists are often tagged as founding members of the whole Synthwave genre, despite the fact that you don’t exactly see yourself as a part of the scene.
The thing is that we were just playing Eighties music. I’m not too big on the term “Synthwave”. To me, it just feels like a vague term that people felt the need to come up with, to group together all these artists that were starting to make Eighties music. We were just making music with Eighties gear, thus making it “Eighties music”, nothing more. We were also born in the Eighties. I was born in 1983, so I got to live through that time. I don’t think we made anything new, really.  We just make music that borrows from Video Games and Nineties dance culture. What I do is nothing new. Our purpose is pretty much the same as that of pop music, which is to have fun, to party and to play gimmicky, accessible songs.

At which point did you become aware of Synthwave scene?
Pretty recently, probably no earlier than 2014, which is around the time we started getting more gigs and around the time we started meeting artists from the scene. We met Andreas (aka Robert Parker) for example when we played Helsinki. He came to see us and we had no idea who he was, despite the fact that he already had a pretty decent following. He was super friendly and we got along really well. I remember Gaël (The Outrunners, Forgotten Illusions) telling us the next day “This guy seems pretty legit!”.
That’s the time we realized we had probably missed the mark. Until then, we had no idea that a whole scene had developed with people that were regularly namedropping our projects and the collective in interviews. We had stayed in our little bubble since 2010 with our friends Anoraak and Minitel Rose. Back when Valerie started, we knew of acts like Electric Youth, Hot Pink Delorean and the whole Australian movement that was emerging from the Synth-Pop scene. It was a whole different side of things. There were also some British acts like Fear of Tigers and Russ Chimes, who worked with Valerie for a bit. They were amongst the first in the whole “Eighties Revival” movement.

 Having lived through the Eighties’ is there anything that intrigues you about this “retro” aesthetic?
It really depends whether you’re talking about the Eighties from 2010 or its 2019 version. I make a clear distinction between our Synthwave fans and the audience we had back in 2010.  I’m nearing my forties now, and I’m under the impression that the average Synthwave fan demographic is between 25 and 30 years of age. What I find really interesting is how Eighties culture is being re-appropriated by a whole generation that didn’t live through it. I find it really awesome.

It’s true that one must remember that this current “retro” aesthetic is the result of Eighties pop culture being filtered through the lens of people who weren’t necessarily born at the time. I assume that the streets back then weren’t paved with fluorescent neon lights…
Indeed, it was probably more of a club thing. It’s also not really what we’re drawn to in the Valerie Collective. We don’t really identify with the whole ultra-glittery neon aesthetic or Tron grids. We feel pretty distant from all of that. To us, we associate the Eighties with shows like Miami Vice. There were neon’s too, but it’s less “Retrofuturistic”, less Sci-Fi. It’s more grounded, closer to what the Eighties actually felt like. There was actually a pretty realistic feel to Miami Vice. The atmosphere and the stories weren’t too far-fetched.
What I also enjoy about the Eighties is its creative freedom. To me, the Internet came with a form of standardisation of music, everything tends to feel the same whereas this was less the case in the Eighties. The record industry was releasing heaps of crap every minute and people were making all sorts of things with the arrival of all these new machines. It’s what allowed genres like Acid to develop. We really enjoy that freedom.

It’s hard to deny the fact that the Synthwave genre also came with a saturation of gimmicky copycat projects. Would be fair to say that your affiliation with this largely “standardised” scene is what once caused you to somewhat grow tired of Maethelvin?
Absolutely, though I’m not sure if “tired” is the most fitting word. All of the songs I wrote prior to last year, including my latest EP – which is made of tracks from my first live show in 2014 – are things I don’t necessarily identify with. I’m really glad to have made them, but I wouldn’t feel too keen on playing them live again, simply because they sound like a lot of music being released today. They rely on gimmicks that are a little bit overdone. I didn’t feel like doing that anymore, so I briefly turned to Techno to change things up, to try out new gear, new songs, and return to Maethelvin with a more Italo-influenced club sound, which was the essence of what we were trying to do nine years ago. It’s got more of a Techno edge, as opposed to the «poppier » side of Synthwave. A lot of Synthwave songs tend to have the same structure, I find. I’m not pointing fingers nor do I want to pull anyone down, because it’s usually pretty well produced and done by talented people, it’s just not what I’m after. Producing for the sake of producing isn’t my thing.

 Does this mean we’ll be seeing a new side of Maethelvin for your upcoming set at Retro Synth Fury Fest 2019?
Absolutely, I’m going to be switching things up for a more Italo-influenced sound: lots of drum machines, much fewer breaks and more of a « club-oriented » sound.

Has this led to a change of gear or approach to your songwriting?
Somewhat. I’m also starting to realize that I’m an Eighties kid as well as a Nineties kid, given my age and the fact that the Nineties was when I started listening to music and playing video games. I’m also growing increasingly aware of a sort of symbiosis between Dach Tünner and Maethelvin. The former is starting to sound a little more « Eighties retro », whereas Maethelvin is starting to borrow a little more from Dance music. I’ve been told that my new stuff sounds like the Soundtrack to Streets of Rage, which itself was inspired by Black Box.

If you could bring back something and banish another from the Eighties, what would you pick?
We need to bring back the moustache, I’m thinking of growing one.
Also, the Internet should have never existed. Things were better back in the day. I’m going to sound like such an old fart for saying this [laughs]. I do love the Internet, but not so much these days. A lot of great things did come back from the Eighties though: Air Max shoes, Digital watches, retro-gaming, Gameboys, analogue synths…

When I asked David the same question he said he would banish the haircuts.
[Laughs] That’s easy for him to say, he’s got no hair! [Laugh] That’s a good answer though. Those haircuts definitely shouldn’t come back.

Closing off: can you name one of your favourite albums, movies and books?
The album that left the strongest impression on me is The Man Machine by Kraftwerk. It’s one of the most modern-sounding albums I’ve heard. It’s also been sampled to death. It has this Hip-Hop edge, the band work wonders on their gear, the songs are incredible and the overall aesthetic is incredible.
Film-wise, I’m going for something pretty basic: Shining. The cinematography and the Soundtrack by Wendy Carlos left a strong impression on me. My mum had the great idea of showing it to me when I was seven years old, and I think it scarred me for life.
Book-wise, I’m going to say Ubik by Philip K. Dick. That book messed my head up. That book is insane. It’s said to be unadaptable to film, simply because the book is so out-there.

European Retroheads, be sure to catch Maethelvin and many more heavyweight Synthwave acts at Retro Synth Fury in Paris. 

Retro Synth Fury
April 4th at Supersonic, featuring Réno (Fr), Grimlin (Fr) & Maethelvin (Fr)
https://www.facebook.com/events/303022477023907/

April 5th at Le Petit Bain, featuring Yx (Fr), Christine (Fr), Starcadian (US), Morgan Willis (Fr), NINA (UK)   https://www.facebook.com/events/321622565224863/