Riding the Time Machine: An Interview with Velvet Starlings
Fresh off the release of their newest album, “Pacific Standard Time” (PST), L.A.-based band, Velvet Starlings, have a busy year coming up packed with new musical projects and a new creative direction. Formed in 2016, the band has gone through numerous personnel line-ups and album cycles, but they seem to have landed on something that’s sticking. Christian, Mia, Abby, and Aaron (and DeRon in spirit) sat down with amplifiedsd to talk about their recording process, their new album, and answer questions about their plans for 2024.
I noticed there’s been a lot of line-up changes going on across the band over time, so how did you wind up with this team of people and how did you get to know each other?
VS: “Ok so basically, I started [Velvet Starlings] in 2016 and it had a totally different line-up of people and then, stuff happened, people had school. My first drummer was like a school teacher and he was like, “yeah man, I can’t keep taking off all these days [of work] for shows” so things just happened and you end up playing with different people. Over time it kind of was like, we do music videos and stuff, and everyone would be in a position where its like, you know, people have a life, which has happened to me A LOT and we kind of tried to incorporate that into the last set of music videos and make a joke about it being the multiverse, because that’s all we could do, but this kind of version of the line up is sticking. Abby here has only been in the band for like, a couple months, Mia has been in the band for a couple months and another part of it, we all play in each other’s bands. So DeRon, our guitarist who used to be our drummer, I used to play guitar in his band, now Abby plays drums in his band, and then he’s also in another band with people that me and Mia play with, and we all play in each other’s bands. There’ll be like, ten bands and the same eight people in all of the bands.”
Have you guys done any shows or recordings with this line-up yet?
VS: “Not any recording with this line-up, I actually just finished up recording our next record and we’re just in the mixing process right now, but we are gonna be doing music videos with this lineup. And we were going to try to get it out this year, but we’re thinking we’re gonna save it, make sure everything is perfect, and we have a music video for EVERY song. We just put out this last record, “Pacific Standard Time,” which by the way, “PST” was recorded in 2020 so…Even though it just came out, it’s pretty old in our minds.”
It’s been a while since you recorded PST, but it looks like it just came out this summer.
VS: “It did just come out this summer, that's what’s crazy. It was finished in 2020 and actually the order’s weird because “Technicolor Shakedown” which came out before “PST,” like we recorded “PST” in 2020 and we were like “ok this is going to be fire” and then COVID happened, so we couldn’t put it out and then we were like, “let’s just put something out in between” so we made “Technicolor Shakedown” while we were waiting, and then 2022 happened and we were like, “ok the vinyl’s old” because the vinyl turnaround was like ten months or something… so many things happened and there was no time for us to put it out until this year. So it finally just came out after three years.”
Photo taken by unknown
What's the studio process like for y’all? Do you like to record at home, in a studio, what’s the process look like?
VS: “Well, so our first sort of record, “Technicolor Shakedown,” came out in 2021. I recorded it in my living room and I used one microphone for everything, even the drums, which is kind of…stupid, but it worked. I would set up the kit and I would put a microphone in front of the kick drum and try to record it… it sounds…pretty rough, it’s a rough recording, but our next record is NOT going to sound like that finally. We have a bit of a lo-fi aesthetic going on musically– but it's on its way to not sounding like that.”
What are you excited about with this new record coming out, in terms of how the sound has evolved or changed?
VS: “Oh it’s so different, and what’s funny too, is all these songs were made in 2021 so it's like, I need to stop doing that thing where I’m in a totally different space by the time we’re releasing the music. Some bands are really good about that like King Gizzard, they write a song and release it. Their hearts are in it. Are our hearts in it?”
Aaron: “Our hearts are always in it 100%, the cool thing about waiting is that you have time to let those feelings, when you played it initially, you let it simmer and then you can look at the music through a different lens and be like, “how can we improve upon what we started?”
Mia: “It’s like marinating a steak.”
Aaron: “YES! It’s like marinating our songs. And our cutting board.”
What influences did you take with you when recording this upcoming album, and are those the same influences that are coming into the songwriting process?
VS: “The songs when I was writing them had a totally different set of influences than when I was recording them. So recording them I was like, “we wanna sound like Death Grips level, harsh sounds, but with Beatles-y song writing.” And I guess that’s kind of always been our thing the whole time. There’s a lot of distortion, but what the songs are, like on paper, it’s like a lot of distortion on them, more than there should be, but that’s been a staple of the Velvet Starlings.”
Photo taken by @sebastiankeefephoto
When you play with the Velvet Starlings, who are you channeling?
Aaron: “Whenever I get asked about playing in the Velvet Starlings, “what kind of music do you make?” I always resort to, to generalize the sound, it’s like The Doors meets the White Stripes. It has that classic garage sounding rock, but also a bit of that, because we use a lot of different sounds, like synth stuff, that always adds to the songwriting to get a bit of that Doors-y keys parts. At least that’s from my perspective because I play keys, that’s what I focus on. I’m not even sure about other people’s parts honestly, I just try to focus on what I’m doing and hope I don’t mess that part up.”
Mia: “I described it to my friends and other people, kind of like Black Keys adjacent, but like earlier Black Keys. And then I get the Doors influence too, especially with the keys and stuff like that.”
Abby: “I agree with everyone else, but I try to think of more harder 60s music. So Beatles too, but 60s garage music and idk how to explain it without going into drum details, but [I play] with a lighter drum feel of the 60s and kind of put in more heavy fills and heavy kicks to match the synths. So Beatles, Doors, the Monkees.”
Christian: “This is funny for me because that was my favorite music when I was 12 or 13 and you can hear that’s all my favorite music in these songs, but now I only listen to bands from the 2000s forward. I just haven’t listened to music from the 60s in a couple years, so when you guys say that I’m like, “ugh dang it,” but I completely agree. It’s totally like older music and it sounds so much like that, that I’m in the process of making it not sound like that so you guys will be the judge of it on the next record. But like, “Bullfight,” some of the songs on PST, “HG Wells” does that sound like the 60s? Ah damn, maybe it does, I’m thinking about it right now.”
Aaron: “I mean, I think it’s just the soundscapes that are used in the song that kind of have a retro vibe. I think that definitely influences how it’s perceived. It’s the sound of it more than the songwriting I guess.”
“Imagine if a band from the 60s walked into a studio, right now, and there were only like 808 drum machines, and synthesizers and none of the gear they’re used to, that’s what Velvet Starlings is supposed to be.”
It sounds like your influences might not match up with what you like to listen to, what do you all like to listen to in your free time?
Aaron: “Radiohead, stuff like that. I like that eeriness, not in the sound, but like the songwriting is really ear catching, which is one of the things I noticed first when I joined Velvet Starlings, was like, “Yo Christian, you’ve got some killer songs bro” and everything else kind of enhances that aspect. From what I connected to, in the music, the most, that’s the big focal point and everything around that enhances it for me.”
Mia: “My two favorite bands right now are Rocket and Millie, they’re L.A. bands, like smaller, local bands, but more of a garage rock, grungier sound, that’s my type of thing.”
Abby: “Well, I’ve always liked the Strokes and The Gorillaz, but I’m trying to get into more, like, I’m recycling the 60s and bands like Foxygen etc. I like garage stuff too, that’s it haha.”
Christian: “For me, um everything you guys said, like Aaron I love Radiohead, I think we all love Radiohead, right? They’re in our top ten bands for sure. I do this thing where I obsess over bands and I only listen to one band at a time and then I throw them in the trash in my brain and I don’t listen to them for years. I did get out of a Lana Del Rey phase, but before that I never heard her and I haven’t listened to her in a couple months.”
Mia: “Yeah but you still have your Lana del Ray jacket with ALL of her albums on the sleeve.”
Christian: “OK, well when she plays Coachella this year, that will be the culmination of my Lana Del Rey THING and I probably will not listen to her again for the next couple years.”
Aaron: “Yeah, but you did go to a DJ night where they only played Lana Del Ray, that was me and Christian.”
Christian: “That did happen haha. That was our answer, I did get Lana Del Rey out as an influence.”
Photo taken by @samssseye
What does songwriting look like for you? Are you just sitting in your car and it comes to you, do you sing into your phone, or do you sit down at your desk with your guitar and pen in hand?
VS: “I feel like a lot of people do this thing on their voice memos, where they’re like, ‘Im gonna play this riff and that’s fire!’ and they record it and anything they do and they have a voice memo app full of thousands of recordings, but I’m more like, I’ll write one riff I wrote three months ago and think ‘that’s a cool riff’ and every time I go back to the guitar I play that same riff. And then I’ll add another part that fits with it, I add to it and for me, I know people that have 60, 70, songs started at a time, I can never do that, I only have a couple at a time and I feel that every song should matter and be sort of big deal, like a big painting, it’s not just a casual stick figure song. I used to be like that and save everything and now I discard 95% of things that I write.”
Do you do all the songwriting as well? Do you also write the lyrics or are those two separate jobs in your mind?
VS: “They honestly should be separate jobs, but the way I’ve always written songs is like, I sit there with the acoustic guitar and I sing one line that just sounds stupid and then, everytime, I’m just lazy and I keep the stupid line and try to rationalize in my head how I can make the stupid line make sense. And that’s how all these songs are on this new record. When I think about the moment that I wrote them, singing them in the car or whatever, it’s the same lyric and that’s why the lyrics are kind-of cringe on some of these songs, but you guys will see, I am excited.”
On this upcoming project, do you think all the songs stand very much on their own or is there some kind of theme or overarching composition tying all the songs together?
VS: “So I will say, yes. I cannot tell you what the theme is, but yeah they all are in the same world, but all work on their own at the same time. Like on ‘PST,’ as much as none of the songs make sense together there’s a theme of time going through the album, and some songs I take it literally like “HG Wells” about a time-machine whatever, and the song ‘Pacific Standard Time’ and ‘Turning Point’ .... All the songs are about time. There’s a big clock in the middle of the album cover and I think that album did a good job of having one concept that is a through line of the whole album, but this next one is definitely like that, more so than the last one [PST].”
Do you have a release date or target release time you want to get that out, and what are your plans going into the future?
VS: “Yes, 2025. We have a whole year to just be sitting ducks, but no, we’re going to be at work making the greatest music videos of all time that the Earth has ever seen and we will be releasing them next year [2024]. This year we’re going to try and do a California tour, play some shows, make music videos, keep writing songs, playing old songs, and focus on this new album. We just have to stay excited and make extremely fire videos.”
