oso oso - Sound In The Signals Interview
First off, thanks for the interview.
Of course! No problem.
You just released your new album 'The Yunahon Mixtape'. Can you tell me a little about the recording and writing process of this album?
Well it was written over the span of a year and a half-ish? It was weird, there would be pockets of like 3-4 songs at a time and then I wouldn’t write anything for a couple months, then 3-4 more and so on. Recording wasn’t too long just a bit tedious and like spread out over whenever we could make the time to track.
I really like the sound of the guitars on the album and the overall production. How long did you spend on that process?
Thanks! Um I wouldn’t say too long, when we had a tone we liked we’d just kinda go for it and track it. Rule of thumb though was that we wanted a record that felt “light” so not too much distortion anywhere or stuff like that.
You kind of surprised released this. What made you decide to release the album like that and have you been pleased with the response so far?
Just a bunch of things that made it seem like that was our best route to go. It didn’t really seem like any labels were too interested in putting it out, the one’s that did seemed like it would be the type of deal where I wouldn’t receive the money I invested into making the album back which can be a crippling move for a band/project our size. Also I'm not into the culture of single by single and expecting somebody to drop money on an entire album they haven't heard yet, people have been really good to me in the time I've been making music and it just seemed like a chill thing to do to be like “hey, no wait. Have this now for free, if you want donate some dollarooskies”. And honestly its been sick, we’ve made enough in donations to cover the album already and at the same time I’ve gotten messages from college kids who are like “hey I don’t have any money right now, its cool that you made this free” so I'm happy.
You've called this 'an album about a mixtape'. I was wondering if you could go in depth a little and explain what you meant by that?
It just kind of goes along with the narrative to the story I shaped writing this. There’s these people spending time in this place called yunahon, all with their 6 degrees of separation. It’s not focused on one person’s journey but rather it focuses on several people’s journeys, who are in the same place. I can go deeper specify, but I’d rather people make their own interpretation out of it. I will say that “get there” and “great big beeches” are 2 songs that are on the fictional “yunahon mixtape” in the story of the yunahon mixtape.
One song I like off the album in particular is "The Secret Spot". Can you tell me a little about how that song came together?
Maybe the last song I wrote for the record? All I really remember about that song is that I had the ending of it (“when the walls are caving in…”) written for a while and everything else got written around it. That was a song where I just tried to keep on myself for being honest and when writing the lyrics kept saying “don’t sing it if you don’t mean it” and by the end it just came out as like the saddest song I've think I've ever written but that good, I love that. If somebody can come up to me at a show and say they really connect with that song that’s a positive way for me (and hopefully them) to get better at dealing.
I really like the artwork you picked for this album. It almost invokes a Wes Anderson movie in feel and color. Why did you decide to go with this image for the album artwork and how did you feel it fit the music?
Thank you! My buddy Matt Lamourt took it. He had a bunch of photos from this particular trip he took where I guess the film got overexposed or something like that, but the colors in all his pictures just came out so great and like heavenly. I was writing this album and had the yunahon story in mind and came across one of the photos from his trip he posted on Instagram with the caption along the lines of “..I’ve never been to a place like this before” or something like that but I was just like this is so perfect this is the feeling I'm trying to give people with this music/lyrics and he was into letting me use his photos so that was rad. Not only does it fit with the record but I actually think it helps get the record across, sometimes I would listen to it and just stare at the art while listening to it haha.
Uhhhhhh we’re gonna tour soon, music video soon, vinyl soon, be good and ~thanks for asking those quiznos~
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