RECORDS LiVE

Tamara: My god guys, thank you for being here in my living room tonight. We’re so excited to be here today at RECORDS LiVE. If you haven’t been here before, RECORDS LiVE is basically like listening to music in a living room with your friends. And you guys are all my friends here today, so thank you for joining us. This is a very special night because this is the two-year anniversary of RECORDS LiVE. Can you believe it’s been two years? Thank you for being here. Basically, let’s get reminiscent about the two years. It’s been a long two years. I’ve only been here for four weeks of them, and it’s been so special. I’m so happy to be here. I’m so happy for everybody who will be joining us today and listening to amazing music.

*Doorbell Rings*

Tamara: Oh my god, it’s Diego. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Diego: Thank you for having me.

Tamara: Hey, let’s get into the first track that you’ve chosen today. So, you’re a big Cage the Elephant fan?

Song Plays: Cage The Elephant – Sabertooth Tiger

Diego: Yeah, I really like their first album. I didn’t really listen a whole lot of other stuff, but this was one of the first indie albums I ever listened to. I’ve been revisiting it a lot with some of the newer stuff we’ve been writing. Brian’s in the crowd from Rangoo… We share a lot of the same influences, like these guys. It’s a lot of fun stuff, a lot of chaotic sounds. The guy’s just kind of going crazy in the mic. It’s cool.

Tamara: What in particular do you like about this sound?

Diego: I like the heavy stuff for sure. I listened to a lot of heavy music before I listened to softer music. The weird jangle and the leads there. Random bends. Like it’s punk, but it’s not just doing the thrashy stuff. The guy’s vocals… He’s just kind of wailing in it.

Tamara: He goes in on this. What era of Diego discovered this song?

Diego: I was in eighth grade.

Tamara: Were you making music then, or no?

Diego: No. I was playing music, but mainly just learning covers of songs I liked. A buddy of mine who plays in Open Late, if any of you guys know them from the local scene around here…

Tamara: Open Late! We love Open Late. Shout out.

Diego: He gave me this album, Thank You, Happy Birthday, and Wolfgang Amadeus by Phoenix. He gave me those to listen to. They were the first indie albums I’d ever heard, and I just loved it. I kind of went down a rabbit hole from there. I play in garage rock bands and indie bands now and it’s my earliest foundation. This song is just so different from anything that they put out. It’s creative. And even if you do whatever you do, you can still make cool sounding, interesting, weird things that some people might be like, “What am I listening to?” But if you like it, you like it.

Tamara: And what in particular about this part here? What do you notice when you hear this part of the song?

Diego: A lot of fuzz guitars. It’s distorted. The drums are cool. The dude’s just saying “run away” a bunch of times like he’s out of breath. He’s frantic. If you see live footage of this, he goes even crazier. It’s gnarly. It’s super cool.

Tamara: Hell, yeah. Does that influence the way you perform on stage and how hard you want to perform?

Diego: Sometimes. Performing has been an adaptation. Not just for me, but for the bands I’ve played with as well. We’ve tried to just keep building on a live show. I mean, definitely different stuff for different music, right? But if you’re playing energetic music, you need to show people that you’re into the music, that you like the music that you’re playing. It is a performance in that way, and it’s also cathartic. It’s fun. It’s a good release. 

Tamara: That’s beautiful.

Tamara: Okay, we’re gonna listen to the next record. Do you think Froth is a very influential band?

Song Plays: Froth – Turn It Off

Diego: They were to me for sure. I think they were influential for a different generation because when they were around, I didn’t know about them. By the time I found out about them, they weren’t a band anymore. Yeah, it sucks. I want them to come back. I want to play with them for sure.

Tamara: You absolutely will play with them.

Diego: I think some of the members are in different states now. You can always get a different bassist or whoever. It’s cool garage rock stuff. It’s reverbed out. I took a lot of influence from how they play, the sounds they make. I was like, “I think my amp can make that sound. Let me try and push it a little.” It’s twangy, but it’s fresh. It sounds beachy.

Tamara: It does sound beachy. With this in particular, what do you take out of it as a musician? What are you listening for in particular?

Diego: For sure that lead in this part. That’s a motif… It appears. It disappears. The lyrics in this are pretty good, too. I still don’t really know what the song’s about, but the song writing is just good. I like the way the words sound together. If you haven’t listened to this band, just listen to them. Their first album is super psychedelic. They end up going in a more electronic direction for their last albums. A little bit of a shoegaze thing. Then they just disappear, but I think it’s a good way to go out, honestly. You just explore what you need to do. Maybe they got older and did their own thing or whatever it was. It was cool.

Tamara: Nice. I think with this one compared to the first song, the first one was very chaotic, and this one does have more of a feel-good vibe to it. Do you think you gravitate more towards the chaotic or more towards something like this?

Diego: I think both can be a lot of fun. I think both can coexist, too. I like fun, poppy songs that also have a grunge influence to them. I like songs that sound happy, but they’re actually sad. You listen to the lyrics and you’re like, “Jesus Christ, that’s what they’re singing about?” People are happy and people are sad, and you can experience both at the same time for sure. For this track, they just kind of jam. They do cool things as a band. They’ve got the surf beat. I think the snare drum sounds cool. I think the delay in the guitar is just wailing. It sounds like the guitar is crying. 

Tamara: I know, it really does. Let’s listen.

Diego: Especially that part. I listened to these guys a lot in college and that kind of shaped how I approach playing guitar because I used to play a lot of heavy metal and thrash stuff. If I take that approach in an indie band, our bandleader at Archer Oh would be like, “Hey, maybe dial that down a little bit. Maybe more like this. Maybe try doing other things.” He was like, “Listen to some indie bands. Find the ones you like and play to that.” And this was definitely one of those bands.

Tamara: Do you think that’s helped you grow as a musician? Having someone collaboratively work with you say, “Hey, why don’t we try this? Why don’t we try that?”

Diego: Yeah. I think in a lot of ways, even with Archer Oh, we influence each other and we kind of found a sound. We write for that now, too. We write for ourselves and we’re also all listening to a lot of different music. We take what we think could sound cool or fit in. We’re actively writing right now, too. Nothing’s recorded but you know.

Tamara: Are you guys playing any new songs?  Anything unreleased?

Diego: Not as of now. We’re hoping to play the album to SoCal. We haven’t played the new stuff. Really excited for that.

Tamara: The crowd are big fans of Archer Oh here.

Song Plays: Balkans – Edita V

Tamara: So, walk me through a little bit of this song. Walk me through the sound.

Diego: Yeah, Balkans is just frantic. Their chord choices are weird. There’s tension everywhere even when it doesn’t need to be there, and the dude’s just singing over it. This is the start of the album, and I love it because right off the bat, if you’ve never heard this band, you can get the gist of what they’re about. It’s so good. I love the lead playing, Frankie Boyles, who also plays in Omni, which is the band he’s in now. This band existed for four years maybe, tops. They released this one album and then they broke up. They’ll occasionally play shows, usually on the East Coast, and I have still never seen them. I really want to see them. It’s so fun. It’s a lot of garage stuff. My bandmates put me on to this band. I just loved it since then. It’s like punk, but it’s not.

Tamara: Would this be a wish list band for you to play with one day?

Diego: Oh, 100% yeah. I went to see Omni once with Fake Fruit. They’re from the Bay Area, if anyone’s familiar with Fake Fruit. They’re doing such cool things. I mainly went for them and then I realized that the guitarist from Omni is the guy who’s singing in this band. It was so funny. Every agent in LA was there trying to book a gig for Balkans.

Tamara: That’s crazy.

Diego: None of them did because there’s still no LA Balkans gig. Every agent in there, my agent included, were there trying to get a gig with this band. Trying to get them to come back, get them to come back to SoCal. I don’t know what their deal is. They have a good underground following. They’re up there for sure for me.

Tamara: Okay, and you would say they’re influential to you and your music as well?

Diego: 100%. Yeah.

Tamara: That’s beautiful.

Tamara: Okay, we’re gonna get into the next record.

Song Plays: Lorelle Meets The Obsolete – Balance

Tamara: I love this one because it was a little more synthy, 80s vibes versus the other ones, which were more chaotic. So, why did you pick this? There’s such a stark difference from the other ones you’ve chosen so far.

Diego: To start, just look at that album art, right? It just caught my eye right off the bat. They have a really cool music video to it too, where it’s just a bunch of jellyfish and sea life just existing. They don’t really do much visual effect wise, but as a psychedelic band, for them to do that kind of a thing? The ocean in itself is kind of psychedelic. Super trippy. That’s a whole thing about ecosystems or whatever. But musically, these guys are great. They’re from Mexico City. They usually sing in Spanish. This one’s in English. I resonate with it. I resonate with a lot of the psych rock scene that exists in in Mexico City. Mengers is really good, too. Lorelle Meets The Obsolete have KEXP sessions for those of you who know KEXP. There’s a lot of other cool stuff. They do Hipnosis out there in Mexico City, a festival out there which is super cool. Their shows are just insane. This is one of their calmer songs for sure. I felt this whole thing needed a break, so I threw this one in.

Tamara: This is good. This is a good palette cleanser. Is this one of the only bands on your lineup so far that you’ve seen live? Have you seen them live?

Diego: I wish, no.

Tamara: No? You just watched live performances?

Diego: Yeah, I wanted to see them in person. They played Lodge Room last year, but we were on a tour. And that’s just my curse where we leave for tour and then other really good bands tour at the same time. Usually because it’s spring or summer and it’s a good time to tour so everyone just does it, and then LA is just filled with really cool shows that I can’t go to. But yeah, I like fuzz. I like fuzz on guitars. It’s super cool. The swells. It’s broken, but it still works, it repeats, it drones. They’re a really cool live band. They do some interesting stuff with synths. I’d like to write with synths in music. Main thing is just limitation of not having a lot of money, so I can’t buy synths. From when I’ve been able to mess around, I like to tweak on them and it’s a lot of fun. It’s cool.

Tamara: This is such a good song. Honestly, I think of the records you brought, this has been my favorite so far. Do you take influence from it at all, or is it just something that you can admire?

Diego: In my own writing, I would say so. For the writing I do in bands… I’ve been writing with Brian and Rangoo a little bit more, and that’s given me another creative outlet. But with Archie and Archer Oh, our chords are very progressive. There’s a lot of changes and this is more jammy. I like this kind of stuff, but it doesn’t always get the same play. I think in terms of tones or this kind of stuff, swelling stuff, throwing random sounds in there, ear candy, it’s all good fun. I’ve got a whole pedal board, so I just turn things on sometimes and hope for the best.

Tamara: That’s awesome. When you hear a song for the first time, do you hear the instrumentals first or do you start to pinpoint the lyrics?

Diego: Definitely the arrangement, the instruments. I think the lyrics are part of that. What I notice as a lead player is that a lot of times less is more when you play. And for me at least, it’s noticing while other things are happening, what would I do? What do I do in that role? A lot of that time, it really is just shutting the hell up. No other way to put it. Sometimes it’s just seeing whatever the song needs, and I like to listen to music to find ways to do that a little bit better.

Tamara: Does listening to other music help you improvise on a song when you’re writing with somebody else?

Diego: It can. I think if I’m writing, it helps in the sense of, “Okay I’m doing this kind of thing. What do other bands like this do?” Because I’m not classically trained or anything, I usually just go off ear with a lot of the things that I play and write which works out to different degrees. I’ll get input. I thankfully have a community of people I can reach out to for opinions. It just depends for sure. I think more than anything, just trying to get influenced by what other people do. Sometimes just getting out of my head. Just going for it, just trusting things or trusting other people too. Just being like, “Hey, what if we do this instead?” And I’m like, “Well, yeah, let’s try it. Let’s give it a go.” I think collaborators are really important for that. They can ground you. Whether it’s musicians or producers or whoever you end up working with along the line of getting a song to be something that people end up hearing on their phones.

Tamara: Hell yeah. I think that’s great advice for any beginning musicians or anyone who’s aspiring to be a musician.

Tamara: Hey, we’re on the final song now guys. What’s next? Let’s see.

Song Plays: Astrel K – Is It It Or Is It i?

Tamara: Okay, so let’s get into this one. I was listening to the song earlier, and I was just vibing with it.

Diego: This guy likes his samplers for sure.  He likes his little synths, the tiny little ones and samplers. This one always reminds me of a film score almost.

Tamara: Yes, that’s exactly what I was thinking. I’m like, “Oh, they got the little phone sound.”

Diego: Yeah, it’s cool. This guy plays in a different act called Ulrika Spacek, which is how I found out about them. They’re one of my favorite bands. They just do things so cool. But this is just a solo project. I really like a lot of the stuff from it. It’s a blueprint for me. I resonate a lot with the writing, and I think I see it as a blueprint if I were to do something myself. This is somewhere along the lines where I would try to head into. The guy doesn’t really limit himself with the instrumentation. I feel like he sees a bigger picture of all of it really well.  To do it himself is just super cool, I think.

Tamara: What does the Diego solo album sound like in your head?

Diego: That is the question. I’ve written a lot of stuff, but it would be like the things that I play, just more directed on my own terms. With that stuff, I’m not much of a singer myself. So, the fact that he can do this without super demanding vocals and center other things, layer so many different arrangements, take the piece of music so many different places and then have it all be coherent is just… it’s just cool. He’s got a Rhodes or something there. I know he’s used one before.

Tamara: Yeah, this song is so good. I like the progression of the records that you chose. We went from harder, more chaotic songs to something like this at the end.

Diego: Yeah, it swoons a bit for sure and towards the end he just kind of drones on stuff. It’s so weird how he’ll just keep it going for so long. It’s the atmosphere he builds with the music that just makes it so compelling. I can just listen to it for minutes. The dude’s hitting three different chords the entire time. And it’s like, “How do you make something that interesting?” I don’t know.

Tamara: It’s so simple, but it’s something that you’re drawn to.

Diego: Yeah. Right now, the bass line is super groovy. Guitar just came in. There’s so many different ways to think about approaching music, and I think this guy does a really good job. If you listen to another one of his tracks or something off a new album, it’s completely different, but it’s still in the same atmosphere of what he’s creating. It’s just cool. This one I would just listen to a lot when I’d be walking around campus, typically.

Tamara: Just with your headphones on having your main character moment.

Diego: Yeah, it’s got the nice keys. It’s got the synth in it. I don’t know what to compare it to. They’re from the UK. They’re from out there. They’ve been to LA three times or something under their main project. I got to talk to him once and I was like, “You should come out. You should come out to the US again but under this project.” He was surprised I even knew about this. Not a lot of people typically do. It’d be really cool to see.

Tamara: Yeah, this is so good.

Diego: Yeah, this is the part. I don’t even want to talk over.

Tamara: We’re not talking over.

Diego: We can talk over it too, though.

Tamara: I know it’s so good, though. Honestly, moments like this in songs just hit for me. It’s a great song. So, were you a fan of his other project before you found out about this side project or was it vice versa?

Diego: I found out about the other project first. I’ve been listening to him since 2018. I’ve kind of been stuck on them since. It was just something off a Spotify algorithm. Then I realized they were also playing Desert Daze, but I had missed them because I didn’t know about it, and I went that same year. I didn’t actually get to see them live until last year. The show was amazing. They got a whole light rig set up so it’s super dramatic. It feels like theater almost. It’s super cool. They’re such a good band. I’d highly recommend honestly.

Tamara: And Astrel K is amazing, too. That song really took me through a moment right now. It was so good. So, we’re at the end of our journey, Diego. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for coming into my living room and listening to some amazing records together.

Diego: Thank you for having me.