RECORDS LiVE

Tamara: Hello, guys. Welcome to RECORDS LiVE. I’m so excited to be here today. You guys are here in my living room. If you guys don’t know what RECORDS LiVE is, it’s going to be a listening experience with two amazing artists from the Inland Empire and the San Fernando Valley. This is a great experience. It’s kind of like listening to records with your best friends. These guys are actually my best friends. They’re also actually my cousins. You can tell when they get on the stage that they are, in fact, my co-

**Doorbell Rings**

Oh, okay. I guess I got an early arrival. Let’s see. Come in. Hey, how’s it going?

Cesar: It’s going great. I feel like I’m in a sitcom.

Tamara: This is so sitcom right now. We are so Seinfeld.

Cesar: Yeah, well, it’s good to see you.

Tamara: It’s great to see you. Thank you for coming. Thank you for weathering the traffic.

Cesar: Yeah. Oof, what’s the deal with that?

Tamara: Stop driving, guys.

Cesar: I have some records for you.

Tamara: We have some records to listen to. I’m so excited. I’m here with Alex Andre. If you guys don’t know this person, get to know them. This is Alex Andre from the San Fernando Valley. Okay, so we’re going to slide in the first record and we’re going to get to listening. You guys got your listening ears on? Okay, let’s listen to the first song.

Song Plays: Linkin Park – Breaking the Habit

Tamara: Okay, it’s loading. Oh, beautiful. Okay, so Linkin Park. Yeah. This kind of sounds like the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire music at the beginning? When did you start listening to Linkin Park?

Cesar: Yeah, since I was a kid, like a little child, this is kind of the blueprint for everything that would come after in terms of my interest in music. This song in particular shaped everything. Yeah, I was probably eight, nine, I don’t know.

Tamara: Was this one of the first albums you ever owned?

Cesar: Yeah, I think I actually asked my parents to buy it. Yeah, and actually I think my dad had it anyway. He’s a wedding DJ, so he just happened to have a lot of records. So, I was also able to listen to a lot of music after my Radio Disney phase. It was like immediately from Radio Disney to Linkin Park, System of a Down, Dr. Dre.

Tamara: Okay. Very eclectic music taste.

Cesar: The early Eminem stuff I was listening to by the time I was 11. Yeah, shout out my dad for that.

Tamara: Shout out to his dad. That’s really cool. So, do you think that Linkin Park inspired you at all with your music that you make today?

Cesar: Yeah, for a lot of reasons. And with this song in particular, I don’t remember exactly the age I was, but my cousins who were older and also listened to this. I thought their taste in music was so cool. They were watching MTV in my grandma’s house and, you know, Modest Mouse came on, the “Float On” video — that was cool. I thought it was a little freaky at the time. But right after that was the music video for “Breaking the Habit,” which was, you know, an anime and rotoscope video, which I thought was so cool. I had never seen anime of that quality before. I would also eventually become a big time anime fan and incorporate a lot of that, the aesthetic of anime, into my music, and anime visuals in my music. And of course, the electronic and rock fusion became a through line in the music I would make moving forward.

Tamara: That’s amazing. And I noticed with a lot of the music that you release, you do a lot of animated images in your cover art. Do you think that was a direct inspiration? Was that an epiphany for you as a child?

Cesar: I think, I’m gonna say yeah. I’m gonna have to say yeah. I didn’t hear this and immediately think, “Oh, I’m gonna start a band now. And I’m gonna do anime, like animations with it.” But when I did start a band, that was definitely a thought in my mind. Yeah.

Tamara: Amazing. And the animation, what did it make you feel at the time? Why was it so remarkable to you as a child?

Cesar: Well, so it’s funny that I said that the “Float On” video was freaky because the Linkin Park video, I don’t know, has anybody ever seen it? It’s pretty dark. It’s about a guy that falls off of a building, he’s committing suicide. It starts with him dead. And he like, rises back up to the building he fell off of. And then the band is playing on the rooftop. So, pretty dark for a kid. But for some reason, that didn’t faze me at all. I just thought it was really cool.

Tamara: It’s life changing, honestly.

Tamara: Hey, we’re gonna get into our next song.

Song Plays: Big Moves – Brontosaurus

Tamara: I love the music that you’ve chosen, because I feel like I hadn’t heard of a lot of these artists. I’ve heard of Linkin Park, but I haven’t heard of them all before. So, “Brontosaurus.”

Cesar: So, Linkin Park really got me into alternative music, Big Moves was the band that made me want to be in a band. I don’t think anybody outside of a few people who are around in the Valley and Echo Park in between, like, 2006 and 2011 know about this band. They are a San Fernando Valley local band that started in 2006. And they incorporated a lot of, as you’ll hear, like dance beats, jazz chords. They’re a lot of fun. And in some of their other songs, they also include electronic elements. The popular music of the time was very, I guess emo-centric or whatever you heard on KROQ. I had never heard anything like this at the time. And I was just taken by it. I was like, “I need to make music like this.” Because I had also just started learning how to play an instrument. And I was like, “This is what I would do. I need to learn how to play some jazz chords now, so I can do this.” You know?

Tamara: How did you approach learning how to play jazz? How did you explore that genre?

Cesar: I had guitar lessons, which I’m very grateful for. I had a very, very old teacher. He kind of looked like Joe Pass. He wasn’t Joe Pass, but he could play like Joe Pass, which is a very famous solo jazz guitarist. And so, I learned from him for a while. And then it was YouTube videos. At some point, I just coasted and learned my few seven chords. And I’m like, “Off to the races. I know jazz now.”

Tamara: You’re like, “This is good enough for me.” Honestly, I do hear a lot of inspiration from this band in terms of your music. With that, do you think it helped shape the sound of your music? Do you think any lyrics kind of are inspired by this at all or no?

Cesar: No. For the longest time, until now, I have not really been a lyrics person. I’ve definitely been a vibes person. So, I actually wasn’t writing lyrics during this time. I think it’s not until later, when I actually had to write lyrics, that I found inspiration from other people. But this is fun, you know, it’s just they’re not saying too much.

Tamara: Yeah, this is fun. I like dancey music. I think sometimes we’re afraid to create dancey music because we want to be taken seriously in the scene. But I think it’s okay to have fun. Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Cesar: That’s kind of my MO. I’m just trying to get people to dance.

Tamara: Alex Andre is about fun and he’s about dancing. Have you gotten to see this band live?

Cesar: Yeah. So, these guys were way older than me at the time. They were mainly playing 21 plus shows when I was a teenager. They were in Silver Lake and Echo Park playing at the Bootleg and the Silver Lake Lounge. I couldn’t go to those because I didn’t have a car and I was not 21. And then finally one day, like right before they broke up, they played one of their last shows at the Guitar Merchant, which is a San Fernando Valley venue/music store and lessons place. It was the place where I got like my first lessons actually. So that was very special to me. Like, everybody in there danced their ass off. I was so happy that I could see them at least once before they broke up.

Tamara: Oh my god. And they’re a defunct band now?

Cesar: Yeah, they ended, I think like around 2011. And now all the instrumentalists are producers. They have produced a lot of pop records. I feel like I’ve learned over the years that for progressive musicians – there’s a pipeline of them making their weird eclectic music, and then producing pop music. So that’s what they’re doing now.

Tamara: Okay, well, that’s cool. I love that. When did you write your first song?

Cesar: I don’t remember.

Tamara: Come on. Dig deep, dig deep.

Cesar: It was like, I think it was in middle school. And that it was before I had heard any of this music. I think I knew that I didn’t have a lot of emotional depth, despite, you know, how influenced I was by Linkin Park. So, I wrote comedy songs, but I still don’t remember what I wrote about.

Tamara: I hope you find that song one day. It like comes to you in a dream.

Cesar: I will probably bury it.

Tamara: Do not bury it, release it.

Cesar: I might. I’ll rework it. I’ll find a way.

Song Plays: Art vs. Science – Parlez-Vous Français?

Tamara: I need to ask you another question. Parlez-Vous Français?

Cesar: No. Does anybody here? Okay, good. That’s fine. Because I don’t think this band speaks French either.

Tamara: This song’s so crazy.

Cesar: Yeah, this is really silly.

Tamara: This is like the artsy LMFAO.

Cesar: Yeah. And you know, I think they came out around the same time as LMFAO.

Tamara: Why does this inspire you?

Cesar: By the time I had heard this song, I had started my first band. And as you heard from the last song, I like fun music. I like dancing. My MO has always been to make other people dance. And so, I found this band, I had initially I found them in like this mixtape of just electronic club music. I found out later that it was a full band – like drummer and like two synth players. And I’m like, “Wow.” At the time to me that was so unheard of. I wanted to make music like that. I bonded with my drummer at the time over this song in particular. He was one of the only other people that I knew that was like, “I want to make electronic music and I want to do it live.” He was a big Skrillex head and a big Pendulum fan and like, Pendulum is another band that does electronic music. Like very strictly electronic music with the whole band. So yeah, this band is so is silly. They’re not French. They are Australian. And the song doesn’t mean anything. I think they’re saying like, “Do you speak French? If you do, please take your shirt off.” So, really goofy.

Tamara: Heavy LMFAO vibes.

Cesar: Exactly. You know, literally, actually, literally.

Tamara: Honestly, yeah, like “Sexy and I Know It.” This is on par with that song.

Cesar: Yeah, there’s like a few… No, I don’t want to. I was going to say some LMFAO lines.

Tamara: You’re like, “I love LMFAO. Alex Andre is an LMFAO fan.” What is your live show like now? Do you use a backing track as well as live musicians?

Cesar: No, it’s all live. I have anywhere from two to three synth players at a time. You know, the recorded music is very electronic sounding and we try as much as possible to bring all of those elements with actual instruments. I think we do a pretty good job.

Tamara: Honestly, the last time I saw you was in December. I thought it was amazing. I think you bring such like, character to your live sets. Did it take a long time to develop that and develop confidence on stage?

Cesar: No, early on my parents put me in acting lessons. I was always dramatic and my mom is also very dramatic. So, I feel like I get a lot of that from her. I won’t elaborate on that.

Tamara: We want to elaborate on that. Were you a child star?

Cesar: No, no. I think they tried to have me audition for a commercial once. It was for grape juice, I think. Yeah, I did a terrible job because I was pretending to glug the juice and they were telling me, “Can you just read the lines?” I’m like, “I’m an artist. I’m adding, I’m putting some worth into this whatever you just gave me.” And I did acting for a little bit in school. So singing wasn’t as crazy.

Tamara: Yeah, you were like, “This is child’s play. I was guzzling grape juice for commercials.”

Cesar: I was faking it. It wasn’t even there.

Tamara: It was an empty carton and you’re like, “Mmm, so good.”

Cesar: I was literally doing this. [Pretends to chug down juice]

Song Plays: Hiatus Kaiyote – By Fire

Tamara: Okay, this song, 100%, I’m just like, “This is an Alex Andre song.” I feel so much of the inspiration you took from this song. Where did you discover it? What was the first moment you heard this song?

Cesar: Yeah, so I ended up becoming friends with some of the members of Big Moves and I got a couple of them to teach me guitar lessons. They were all jazz heads. I think one of them graduated from the Jazz Department at CSUN, another from MI. And one of them wanted to – he also kind of felt like he was a life coach in a way, trying to help me navigate doing music and stuff. So, he was like, “I want to inspire you. I want you to listen to this band. I really like them. I think you’ll really like them.” And literally the moment, the first two seconds in, I was like, “Wow, you’re so right. This is… I’m going to do that now.”

Tamara: Yeah, it’s such a special song. Like honestly, I hear a lot of the influence in it. I also think it sounds like one of your collaborators, Britta Raci. Did you show her this band or did you both bond over this band?

Cesar: We bonded over this band. She already knew about them. She was already trying to learn how to sing those riffs. This is a band that we definitely want to emulate a lot when we collaborate.

Tamara: What is your synergy when you collaborate with other artists? Like how does it work? What’s the process with that?

Cesar: It varies. Sometimes I will have already made an instrumental from front to back. And then I hit up somebody whose vibe I feel like it fits. Sometimes somebody will come to me and say, “I want a specific type beat.” And I’ll be like, “Okay, let’s see if we can do that.” You know, for Britta in particular, the first song we did together, I had already created the instrumental. The second one that we did, she texted me at like, two in the morning being like, “Can we make drum and bass?” I’m like, “Oh yeah. Yeah. I’ve been thinking about doing that anyway. Great minds.”  

Tamara: Yeah, you’re like, “I’m ahead of it.”

Cesar: Yeah. I’m ready. Let’s do it. And we did it. It was great.

Tamara: Yeah, I love the collaborations that you do, and I also love that you seem to work with a lot of women in your collaborations. I feel like sometimes it’s a little bit of a boys club and it’s like, “Boys support boys and we want to uplift our boy bands and everything.” I like that you work with these pop girlies and these jazz R&B type of girls. Was it hard to seek out these artists or do you think it was just kind of finding them in the community? Like it was kind of easy?

Cesar: Oh, it was so easy. Yeah. Because I mean, with Britta, I had known her at this point for years. She sang with Luna Lluvia, who I’ve done a couple of songs with. I mean, just based on these records, I mean, most of them are female singers. So, I think I’ve just always gravitated towards wanting that sound. Not to say that I don’t want to work with a guy. I would. It just weirdly hasn’t happened. But one day, well, I have worked with Shalfi for instance.

Tamara: Oh, I love Shalfi. Shoutout Shalfi. Redlands legend.

Cesar: Yeah. And that was cool. And I would love to work with them again.

Tamara: That’s amazing. I honestly love this song. This is probably the one from your playlist I like the most.

Cesar: It’s a vibe.

Tamara: It’s such a vibe. Honestly, like it reminds me so much of Britta. That’s so crazy to me. I want a message to be like “Britta…” Yeah. Britta Raci is an amazing artist from, where is she from?

Cesar: She’s from Burbank. Also from the San Fernando Valley.

Tamara: Amazing lyricist. I resonate so much with a lot of her lyrics too.

Cesar: She definitely has started making me feel like I should be a lot more honest.

Tamara: Yeah, she’s so honest.

Cesar: She is the most blunt – I don’t think I know anybody who like, literally just says what she’s saying.

Tamara: What would an honest and blunt Alex Andre look like?

Cesar: Oh, you know what? I did try being really honest and blunt in a song once or in a couple songs. And it kind of upset my mom. Because the song was about how I had just broken up with an ex of mine and I was still down bad for her. So the song was about literally just texting her at like three in the morning type thing, you know, just being like, “Just come over here. It’s okay. No, no, we won’t feel bad about it at all. We won’t feel bad about that.”

Tamara: “It won’t make me feel like shit later. I promise.”

Cesar: So, you know, there was a lot of heavy implication of the kinds of things that I would want to do at 3 a.m. And my mom was like, “You shouldn’t be talking about those things. That’s not appropriate. Why can’t you just write a nice song?”

Tamara: “Just dance. Please just dance. Stop being honest in music.“ That’s so amazing.

Cesar: And you know, to be fair, we don’t need more men’s feelings in the atmosphere.

Tamara: I would agree with that. I would agree. No offense to men. We love you guys.

Song Plays: Panic! At The Disco – London Beckoned Songs About Money Written By Machines

Tamara: This song was the only song on your playlist that I know, but I religiously love this song so much.

Cesar: It’s beautiful. And it took me too long to recognize that it is a work of art.

Tamara: Yeah, to not be shameful about it.

Cesar: Yeah. I picked this song because back in high school I was trying to be a cool, like, indie kid that knew all these obscure bands like Big Moves, whatever. And of course, this was like the height of emo and metalcore being prominent. And there was, some people might not know if you’re a little bit younger, there was like a stigma to liking that music. A pretty bad one. Like you’d be called the F slur for liking that music. So, I lied to myself and was like, “I don’t like this music. I hate it. Don’t bring it near me.” All the while, you know, right before bed, I’d go on YouTube and search up “Stick Stickly” by Attack Attack! and just watch it over and over being like, “Yeah, this is so dumb. This is so cringe”

Tamara: “I hate this. I’m going to listen to it 10 more times.”

Cesar: Yeah, exactly. And that was definitely the case with Panic! At The Disco. My sibling would blast Panic! At The Disco at the time.

Tamara: Younger sibling?

Cesar: Yeah, younger sibling.

Tamara: You’re like, “I’m not going to let you think that you’re putting me onto anything. I actually have better taste than you. I like Big Moves.”

Cesar: Exactly. But, as you get older, you kind of release the shame and you’re like, “You know what? I like what I like.” I did like that Black Veil Brides video.

Tamara: Which one? “Knives and Pens?”

Cesar: “Knives and Pens.”

Tamara: Hell yeah. I love that. Thank you for bringing that up.

Cesar: Yeah. And so, if I was going to be an honest artist, I wanted to incorporate as much of my influences as possible. And, you know, this is part of that. You know, I can’t lie and say I didn’t go to Warped Tour twice. I did.

Tamara: Period. I love that for you. That’s amazing.

Cesar: So that leads into the music, initially unintentionally, but now I think a lot more intentionally.

Tamara: I think too, at least like Panic! At The Disco with this album was like Cabaret Pop. So, it still has those fun dance elements that you incorporate in your music too. It’s not even such a far jump from this.

Cesar: Exactly. Like why would I lie to myself and say that this doesn’t sound like something that I would make? But, you know, credit to them. I could never make something like this. It’s too good.

Tamara: And they made this at 17. I’ll kill myself. That’s crazy.

Cesar: I was not making this type of music at 17. Far from it. I was not making good music at 17.

Tamara: You were making music though. And that’s important. That’s so important. So, with you saying that you let go of that shame with music, do you not believe in guilty pleasures?

Cesar: No. There’s no guilty pleasure. Like what you like. I will. Even things that I would ironically enjoy. It’s like, you know, there comes a point where if you’re listening to it so much, it’s not ironic anymore. I’m a pretty unironic enjoyer of things at this point. And that’s not even just music. That’s just life. I’m really sincere pilled at this point.

Tamara: I love that so much. No shame in 2025.

Cesar: Yeah. Because I feel like irony pilled is so like, you know, the 2010s.

Tamara: Yeah. Just enjoy yourself. Have fun. Love things. It’s okay to love things. I feel like so many people want to be nonchalant nowadays. Be chalant. Love things.

Song Plays: Salt Cathedral – Move Along

Tamara: This is by Salt Cathedral. It’s a song called “Move Along.” Beautiful cover art.

Cesar: I agree. It’s pretty great.

Tamara: Yeah. It’s so beautiful. I love it so much. How did you discover this song?

Cesar: Um, I think in one of my previous bands, there was a guy who was a fan of my music and he just came up to me one day at a – I think after a show and he was like, “Hey, you sound like this band.” Usually, I kind of take that with a grain of salt because my music is so varied. When somebody tells me that my music sounds like something, I’m like, “Okay, buddy, we’ll see, we’ll see.” But I was pleasantly surprised that it did sound like my band. And in fact, I was like, “Wait, I’m like a huge fan of this.” That kind of speaks, I think a little bit to cultivating fans that you would want to be friends with. You know, that have the same taste as you. It was cool. It was like a synergy kind of going on. Like, I show them music, they show me music, you know, and that kind of still happens. And it happens to this day, whenever I post on TikTok or whatever, somebody says, “This reminds me of something.” And I’m like, “Oh, that’s my new favorite artist now.” So that was kind of the case with this band.

Tamara: And I feel like when people suggest artists like that, at least when it’s something that you like, like Salt Cathedral, it shows that this person has an understanding of the type of music that you make.

Cesar: Oh yeah. And that’s what I want more than anything is to feel seen.

Tamara: You have to feel understood by others.

Cesar: That they understand the through line of the music that you’re trying to make. I think that if somebody comes up to me and is like, “Bro, like emo Mario Kart,” I’ll be like, “Thank you.” So yeah.

Tamara: I love that so much. Emo Mario Kart is an amazing genre. Yeah. Advertise yourself as that.

Cesar: I do.

Tamara: I know you do. You’re great on social media.

Cesar: I do my best. It’s hard out here.

Tamara: It is hard out here. How hard is it honestly to market yourself as an artist? Because you’re so sincere. You want to keep the sincerity of it. You want to pretend like, “Oh, like I’m just like a funny guy on the internet. And like, if you guys listen to my music, that’s awesome. But if you don’t, I don’t care.” But you want people to listen.

Cesar: Yeah. I don’t even do that schtick at this point. I get really bare bones with it. I don’t even want to plug my TikTok to y’all because it’s like, really –you know, I believe in being cringe, but being free. But I think there’s a limit. And I think what I do on TikTok is the limit. But please understand, if you do find it, I’m just doing what I got to do. And that is posting slide shows of just, like, a random anime girl being like, “Listen to my music.”

Tamara: Yeah, I love that.

Cesar: And then thousands of views and thousands of streams later here we are.

Tamara: Here we are today. And I’m so proud of you.

Cesar: I would say that’s the secret formula, but truly, results may vary. You know, we have our off days on TikTok.

Tamara: TikTok is kind of brutal with the algorithm.

Cesar: Yeah, I feel like we know this.

Tamara: We know this as curly haired individuals, as cousins, we know this. OK, so do you want to plug any of your – not your TikTok, but if you want to plug anything else today, plug it. Go ahead. Where can they find you?

Cesar: I’m everywhere. I’m on the Internet, Instagram.

Tamara: Easy to find.

Cesar: Yeah. Instagram is iamnotalexandre, because that is not my real name. And Alex Andre on all the streaming platforms. I play shows a lot. I’m trying to play more out here.

Tamara: It’ll be cool. We could do that. We got some people who throw shows out here. If anyone wants to…

Cesar: Yeah, I wish I had an Inland Empire show to plug right now, but I don’t think I do.

Tamara: You just did one.

Cesar: I did just do one. I was at the Birdcage the other day. Yeah, but, you know, follow me and find out when the next time I’m here.  I’ll be holding a mic similarly, but I’ll be singing my feelings over some break beats, over some jazz chords. And yeah, I’ll be hopping around and hope that I see you guys too.

Tamara: Beautiful. Thank you so much.

Cesar: Thank you.