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For The Love Of Music With N & V From SYM FERA · HEAVY Music Interviews

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  We are two guys in LA who have always been kind of jamming with each
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  other at various you know, at at least, despite reputations, still kind
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  of a music town. So my partner and I have been jamming in clubs
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  and jam sessions and speak easies and all sorts of crap all around town for
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  quite a while. And by the time we started to make music and actually
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  record it put it out, we had already been playing with each other in
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  various things for years really, so as a way of intro to us,
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  it's just two longtime friends who I guess the pandemic inspired us to actually put
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  the shit out for a change instead of just doing it for fun. And
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  yeah, and we wanted to, I don't know, do it the old
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  way where you just you lead with the stuff and the artwork, and finding
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  out what people look like and what they're like in their personal lives was kind
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  of an afterthought and came way later, if it ever came at all.
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  Yeah, you know, I only really applied to like actual famous people getting
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  a people's personal life. Otherwise it was check out this band or don't So
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  I don't know that that appealed to us a lot, so we decided to
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  just like not tell people and just see if we would get some progress made
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  from the stuff itself and that alone, and so far it's been small,
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  but very gratifying, very satisfying. That's very good, gentlemen, Thanks for
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  joining us today. Thanks thanks for having us My pleasure said the bad way
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  talking about our cold si fear. Is that the correct pronusciation? Yeah,
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  sim farah like symphony and the word feral. Yeah, Ferald symphony. I
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  like it. You recently released your single Big, So how's the early reaction
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  been to it? Well, it's good. I mean, we kind of
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  operate with our hands tied behind our packs a little bit because of this thing.
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  So it's funny because we've we've done well in the sinking space and YouTube
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  and stuff, and socials are teeny tiny, and I think that's just kind
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  of the way. We've just accepted that as a reality of not engaging with
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  our friends and family and our personal networks to promote this thing. So like,
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  that's usually how you get you at least get started on yourselves so that
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  you, you know, you share it with all your friends, and you
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  share it with people you know in your town and hopefully that eventually leads to
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  the strangers, but we've we decided to not even do that first part.
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  So it's funny because you know, our socials are invisible basically, and yet
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  streams and the views on the YouTube are encouraging, and so that's kind of
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  we kind of did things backwards in that way. So yeah, I mean,
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  people have heard it, have really liked it, and mostly my partner
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  and I are just kind of operating under the would we like this if we
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  discovered it in what we what do you call it? V? Do you
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  call it the upside Down? On Spotify? Yeah, when you listen,
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  when you listen to a song and then Spotify goes, oh, you might
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  like this and kind of starts playing random crap at you. So we're like,
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  if we if we heard our stuff that way, it just kind of
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  popped up, would we like it? And that's kind of how we how
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  we judge whether we actually show it to anybody. So so far we've felt
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  that way about this one, and we're really proud of this. The music
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  video, especially that Josh Schaffner made for us. It's pretty incredible, So
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  we're grateful if anybody likes it, and we like it so that's that vida
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  anything that that. The reaction reaction to Bag, at least from our peers
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  and and such like that has been really positive in terms of it's it's a
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  very different sounding song than anything we've put out and has a very different visual
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  than anything we've put out so far. Are so obviously it's day one of
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  the music video and one weekend to the song being out, so we'll see
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  how it goes, but hopefully people appreciate the storyline and the artwork that we
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  put together with Josh. Yeah, Josh Is he's a you know, We're
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  not worthy. He's pretty awesome. He did that. I think he just
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  did He did the I know this is not a very heavy mag artist,
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  but he did the animations for the last Harry Styles tour behind you know,
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  on stage with him was like visuals and stuff. He did the all the
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  sort of visual curating and he animates everything himself. He's like a one man
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  studio, so he's not using AI or anything. He's just he's just very
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  very good at what he does. So we were very lucky, and we
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  keep it's funny that this project is kind of getting lucky like this a bunch
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  of times because we keep getting people we admire to work with us because they
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  seem to like it. So we were very encouraged by that. So Josh
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  obviously is a big pro and agreed to work with us solely because he liked
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  the song. So that's all that's been happening in various weird ways and small
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  ways, and we it's been That's what's been encouraging us to keep going this
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  way. Very cool seemed fair to described as an atmospheric rock outfit? Is
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  that a fair description? Like I got a feel and there's a lot more
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  to it than that, I guess. So, I mean, I think
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  when the word rock got expanded quite a bit since you know, the seventies
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  and the sixties, and I think I think it people forget even in the
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  seventies, it also applied to artists like Pink Floyd and you know, I
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  mean everything from Acy is a huge birth of a different so sonically between Pink
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  Floyd and like led Zeppelin or a CD Easy or something. So I think
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  if you use rock and that's sort of very very big umbrella term, sure,
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  yeah, I think we're atmospheric. It's funny whenever people ask us what
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  genre is like we can't really commit because we love artists like you know,
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  Beck and you know, I mean Pink Floyd's a great example too, and
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  Radiohead and all these artists that kind of won't pick a team and stick with
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  it. They just keep adding instruments and changing things and taking risks. And
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  so I think in terms of those types of rock bands, I think that's
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  that makes sense to me. So should you release the singles Nobodies, Little
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  Things, eleven eight, and now beg? So how did those four songs
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  represent Simfera as a band? Well, yeah, there was also a song
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  in the very beginning called Darkness Visible, and I think that was our first
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  one, and then there's some remixes we have out. But how do they
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  represent us as a band? I think I don't know. I mean,
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  it's been collaborative mostly, so it's like I can speak a lot about what
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  the lyrics mean because I usually leaning heavily into the lyric writing. And you
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  know, v can tell you what inspired him to create the production sounds that
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  he created. And we've had a bunch of people collaborate with us, and
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  I mean, we have this whole little community of artists here that we everybody
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  everybody shares weirdly, So how does it represent I don't know. I think
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  what is it? We said once we were just talking about like, oh,
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  we wanted to be like, you know, like a six playlist during
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  the apocalypse or something like post apocalyptic hookup playlist. Maybe I think we were
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  really trying to make music, like like he said, like for ourselves in
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  the sense of like would we listen to it? So a big part of
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  that is appealing to other producers, other music makers, you know. That's
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  a big part of like the start of this whole process. So I do
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  I do think that that that's kind of been a big part of the goal
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  and all the work I kind of put into the early production stuff was to
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  try to hybrid two sides of us into the to the sounds. So like
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  we love projects like James Blake, but then we also love projects like Jim
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  James and Jeff Buckley, So there's we're really trying to show both sides of
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  that. And the reason I was saying earlier is that BEG is such a
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  departure from those It's more heavy one side than it is a accumulation of two
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  sides of the coin. It's very much more of the James Blake leaning side.
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  So it's fun. We're trying to we're trying to show people, you
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  know, many just different aspects of us. Yeah, I think like you,
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  like you said, I mean, there's when people say rock, they
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  usually mean, you know, hard rock. They usually mean straight ahead a
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  CDC, Jet wolf Mother, you know, bands like this, Sabbath and
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  and they forget you know, Pink Floyd is always is really the band I
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  like to mention most of the time because even in the seventies they were kind
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  of an anomaly, but they were still weirdly thrown into that pile of Hendrix
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  and Stones, and really they sounded nothing like that. I mean, there
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  were saxophone, there was violins. It was very down tempo, it was
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  very cinematic. So I think I like to point that out because the word
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  rock has this sort of strong identity until you realize how diverse some of the
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  artists that get categorized that way are, if that makes any sense. Indeed,
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  there is singles standalione or as they part of a bigger album or rep
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  picture. The latest ones are are going to be part of a bigger,
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  longer release. We've got pretty much all the candidates picked out for that.
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  But I think there's more kind of being added lately because we've recently started collaborating
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  with a couple hours that we admire that are much bigger than we are,
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  and they're not mixed or anything already yet, so you know, we can't
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  say necessarily yet because it wouldn't be fair to them. But first of all,
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  we've been surprised that who wanted to collaborate with a you know, a
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  small, a kind of an underground project like this. But yeah, if
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  those songs move quickly, I think they could also be part of the longer
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  release. But yeah, we're definitely the album art of on Nobody's and beg
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  is clearly you know, they're they're similar. It's from the same painter named
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  Jessica Gabrielle who painted those, and I think the next couple singles and the
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  next release will all be from that same visual artist to tie them all together.
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  So yeah, it's it's definitely part of a longer release plan, but
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  I don't know. I've also found that a lot of artists I like are
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  kind of abandoning the ep LP format. They're just releasing singles and then they
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  all compile them. So I don't know, I mean, going forward,
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  I don't know how loyal will be to the you release a four song EP
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  and then you release this many songs will be I think we might just put
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  stuff out there as fast as we can and just let it accumulate. I'm
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  not sure now that'll play out, But yeah, a couple of artists I
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  like aren't doing the the forest. I think of this artist name is still
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  Woozy, who's got a pretty decent following. He's kind of just like lighthearted,
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  you know, electro alternative pop guy, and I think he just puts
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  songs out whenever he feels like it, and they're hardly ever compiled properly.
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  Yeah. Yeah, So you mentioned the sonic diversity. I guess between the
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  songs that you released so far, so along those lines, like, how
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  many more sonic layers have you guys got left to do to explore? You
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  know? I think with eleven eight, the remix bundle that we put out,
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  I think that showed a lot of our different sides. Like we put
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  out a version of the song that was very stripped down and really just showed
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  that the us, you know, playing piano and singing which was very fun.
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  The string, you know, orchestral version of that is something I think
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  we'll be showing a lot more of in releases. Like we've been having a
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  lot of fun collaborating with our buddy Jesse on the on string renditions and orchestral
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  versions of of such, trying to get more into the cinematic space, you
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  know, I think who knows. Honestly, I would say, just after
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  some recent recording that we've done, there's probably a layer of a more organic,
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  super raw side that we have yet to fully show. Maybe even Yeah,
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  just like way more stripped down. We can't pick a lane. That's
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  such a hard time. Even when we were West we got our first EP
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  deal, they were like, so you know what genre are you? And
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  we're like, I don't want to say, because then you'll hold me to
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  it, you know what I mean? I don't want to What if I
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  feel like making a crazy, weird choice tomorrow, I want to be able
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  to do that. Yeah, we say alternative. That's the easiest to get
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  away with. YEA true that No, it was sort of touched on this
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  a bit before in the intro guys, but when you started like you've kept
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  your identity secret the whole time. There's only a select few people in the
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  world know who the two of you actually are at the moment, So it's
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  some So I know you touched on it, but why the secrecy in it?
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  Like, from what I read it is, it's a fascinating way of
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  looking at things. Well, I mean, we've we've both got some we
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  both get really you know, you think we're born and raised in LA And
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  when you are born and raised in LA, you you meet people who make
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  the stuff everybody here and sees, and it's it's a music talent. It's
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  a filmtown. So you you start to you know, if you if you're
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  out kind of running around the live music scene, you do meet a lot
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  of people and you start to gain a sort of digital footprint of like we
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  used to play in clubs and stuff, and a lot of the stuff we
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  used to play in club sounds kind of nothing like this, And the people
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  we've started associating ourselves with online and out in public sound nothing like this.
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  And we were kind of just like, I don't want to go into this
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  with the preconceived notions of what people expect us to make. If we're planning
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  on just throwing a total curve ball because I want people, I want to
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  know if anyone actually likes the stuff on its own. And I think if
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  we went by our names, right, it's not like we're so famous or
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  anything. We're just I think everybody has a digital footprint. Now, I
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  mean you didn't used to be the case, but I think everybody and their
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  mother. You can look up. You can find a lot a lot about
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  somebody by just typing their name. And so I think our footprints of our
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  personal lives were very much in one musical camp and we wanted to go in
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  a totally different one. And we were also like, well, what if
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  you know, if somebody likes our footprint or doesn't like it either direction,
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  it would influence whether they whether they like the stuff, whether they want to
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  listen to the stuff. And we were like, what if we just took
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  that off the table and just people had no choice but to judge the stuff
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  on its own, with no face or personality attached. It's the only way
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  to know really whether you like it or not. I mean, like,
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  how many times have you seen a trailer for a movie and then an actor
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  you just you hate his face? He pops up and you kind of go,
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  ah, forget it. Then it's like, what if that movie's awesome
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  but you just hate that guy, or or what if that movie blows but
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  oh, that that actor is so great. So you go see some shitty,
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  you know, corporate bullshit, bullshit blockbuster film and it's like, ah,
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  he's usually so good. I guess he just wanted the paycheck. It's
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  like these personalities kind of get in the way. And I always love that
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  moment, like you discover a film as he's using the film metaphor and you
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  kind of go, I've never seen any of these actors before, and that
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  film was incredible. You know that the only reason that film was incredible was
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  the film nothing to do with Oh I heard that actor married this actor and
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  I heard that that person does this, and it's like, no, you're
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  going in blind. I haven't even seen a trailer. Is such an awesome
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  feeling. So I think we wanted to do that, and I don't know
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  if that makes any sense, but we're also just we're also just fucking sick
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  of everyone's overexposed, aren't they? I mean, isn't isn't it kind of
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  nice to just go no, you don't get to come in my living room,
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  you know what I mean. Yeah, I'm not sure if I'm allowed
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  to say this at all, but if I'm not, all cut it out,
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  But that one of your relatives, like, if that name was dropped,
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  you guys would be top of the charts straight away pretty much you does.
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  So I think it's very admirable the way you're doing it, and and
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  the fact that I think I think it also applies to one of our coworkers,
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  a couple of the coworkers. But anyway, but I know what you
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  mean. I think but the top of the charts is ambitious. But I
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  think we just wanted to know what people thought of the stuff without reference to
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  anything anybody else. And I think as you can tell, I mean you
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  you're it's it's it's nowhere near the same record store corner as that. Do
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  you think we wanted to be got to be so so happy with you,
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  so proud I guess of yourselves and your music. The fact that it is
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  getting these traction just based on the fact that it's music, not identity.
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  I mean, I were no one, no one is. I don't believe
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  in a total bootstrap, you know, Pully yourself up. I mean,
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  everybody, especially growing growing up in this town, is a leg up,
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  let alone any connections we have. So I'm not I'm not trying to say
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  like, oh, look we did it with no help whatsoever. Of course
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  we do. We have a huge leg up in so many different ways.
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  But in terms of just people digesting the the art piece, I wanted to
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  know what they thought of it without coloring their opinion of it with anything else.
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  So that was just It's not about like whether we get full credit or
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  anything. It's just like, I wonder what people actually think of this song
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  if we didn't lead them lead them in the water, so to speak.
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  I don't know if that makes any sense, that distinction. But and how
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  do you keep the a secrecy mindtrain, I guess when you play live.
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  So we've only we've only done one show, and we kept that show kind
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  of pretty private for friends and family and industry only, and so it was
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  pretty easy. But we kept the lighting very like ominous and backlit and stuff
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  like that. Anyway, and the show we did in December of twenty twenty
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  one, I think it was we we did phone pouches so no one could
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  even take photos. So that was really really fun, and it was like
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  a surround sound, surround sound, audio and lighting kind of immersive experience.
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  And when people didn't have their phones, it kind of validated this whole mission
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  statement to me because people were all the only place their eyes were looking were
• 18:48
  forward at the show, and the only place their ears were you know,
• 18:52
  listening with the speakers. So it was really cool to see how that altered
• 18:56
  everyone else's experience of the performance. Very validating also, I think just in
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  concept, but that's how we it's kind of nice of making them do it
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  like they had no choice. And we've put out a few live performance videos
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  and stuff like that of a bunch of our songs, and you know,
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  we just use lighting to kind of mask our faces and stuff. And again
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  to reiterate what my partner was saying, it's not it's not like there's any
• 19:26
  significance to what my face looks like, positive or negative. But it's just
• 19:33
  keeping the focus on what matters, which is the art and not the like
• 19:37
  what do they do with their lives and what did they have for breakfast and
• 19:41
  things like that. Yeah. Also, yeah, we to piggyback off that
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  it's uh, we're not we're also not trying to make that the point,
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  like, oh look, how look how mysterious they're being. I mean,
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  we we hope no one would even notice because it's an unknown band, So
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  who would even notice that? You don't know that unknown band's you know,
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  real names. We just thought, let's just lead with the thing we want
• 20:07
  to lead with, let's just not mention it. And I think a couple
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  a few people and you know, in in interviews we've done, have glommed
• 20:15
  on to the mystery as sort of a deliberate kind of a pr choice,
• 20:21
  And I want to emphasize that's really not what we're trying to do. We're
• 20:25
  just it kind of just ended up that way. We weren't trying to be
• 20:27
  like sleep token or like daft punk or something. We're just trying to We
• 20:32
  were just trying to like go unnoticed so that the you know, the cool
• 20:36
  music video with a cool song would would be the only thing people encountered and
• 20:41
  they wouldn't encounter our personal social medias in the meantime. I think that that
• 20:45
  was just like we wanted to keep it kind of pure, so we're not
• 20:48
  trying to be deliberately zoro about it. I mean that's not part of the
• 20:52
  part of the plan that's kind of ended up that way. But yeah,
• 20:56
  I hope again, I hope that distinction is clear, Like there's the there's
• 21:00
  nothing wrong with being deliberately mysterious. I think the sleep token thing is actually
• 21:03
  kind of rad, but that's not that wasn't what we were trying to do.
• 21:07
  We were just trying to keep keep focus. Yeah. So so basically
• 21:11
  it's not a gimmick you guys keep beyond any sacred It's more just a it's
• 21:15
  just a personal choice. Yeah, we were just trying to be shy.
• 21:19
  We're not trying to be like, oh, don't don't you want to know?
• 21:22
  It's like, no, it's fine, you don't have to know,
• 21:25
  it's fine, just like the song or don't you know whatever. So what
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  is next for us? Seems vera like it sounds like he's got got a
• 21:33
  bit in the wind. Say what's what's next? We've got I mean,
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  I think I hope, uh, pretty soon, I hope this year,
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  the early next year is going to be a couple different collaborations with these artists
• 21:48
  that we admire that have come forward. We we just finished a week in
• 21:52
  studio within artists we were both just fans of before who we just got connected
• 21:56
  with and he he freaked out over the stuff We showed him, the unreleased
• 22:00
  stuff, and he just spent a week in the studio with us just making
• 22:04
  stuff. So we have a whole other at least an EPs worth of stuff
• 22:08
  that we made with this artist and then another artist who's much bigger than any
• 22:12
  of us, who took an interest to We wrote a song for SYNC,
• 22:17
  which for those of you not in the not in the bid, that's a
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  song to pitch to TV and movies where we found some we found some success
• 22:25
  there that we liked the idea of maybe scoring someday. I know that's a
• 22:30
  that's a goal of my partners. He's pretty sophisticated at putting a putting an
• 22:36
  audio identity behind a visual piece. So I think at some point scoring a
• 22:40
  film or a TV show would be would be in the cards. But in
• 22:42
  the meantime, definitely these collaborations you'll see some more established artists featuring us and
• 22:48
  us featuring them and that sort of thing. Very good, All right,
• 22:52
  Gentlemens, much for your time. Absolutely, Yeah, do you have anything
• 22:57
  I feel like I talked over? You do you have anything to add,
• 22:59
  but oh you're good. I'm fine. You feel good me? Oh mom,
• 23:06
  fantastic bro. I've really enjoyed this interview. It's been great. It's
• 23:08
  even even the fact like I'm not looking at your faces and talking to you,
• 23:12
  but it's been good, like it is added to the to the whole
• 23:17
  element of the band. It's good. Now, I've really enjoyed it.
• 23:18
  It's been a good chat. Well, thank you, Chris. You really
• 23:21
  you're very sweet for playing along with our bullshit. We appreciate it. My
• 23:25
  pleasure, guys, and hopefully if you make it over to Australia with the
• 23:26
  project one day in the future, we'll catch up. Now. I would
• 23:33
  love to do to Australia. That would be amazing, right, guys,
• 23:36
  will enjoy the rest of your day and I'm good luck with everything at Thank
• 23:40
  you very much now wise boys, take