Feature • Soon-Another, “Autodidact”

Originally Posted: October 7, 2013

‘The Garden’ opens the band’s live session album with fantastic female vocals and a unique, intriguing introduction. From the beginning, it’s evident that there is incredible talent in this room. Each instrument gives a great performance, and the vocal harmonies are on point. Their soft, subdued soft works so well with the music they play, and the overall track mix is very professional. The writing and structure of the song is absolutely outstanding, and is coupled with top-notch recording quality and great instrument tone across the board. ‘Like You Like’ follows, conveying the band’s emotion both simply without effort. It’s easy to feel a connection to the band through these performances; the fact that these are live takes is incredible in and of itself. Both of these songs are very memorable, every note seeming calculated and rehearsed. Each instrument’s performance is finite and perfect(!); this is what REAL music sounds like. It’s evident that each of the band’s members are extremely talented, and there is absolutely no doubt about that. ‘Fountain of Youth’ closes the live album in a soft, quieter manner. There are no drums until after two minutes in; this showcases another side to the band while still keeping consistent with their original sound we heard displayed on the previous two tracks. There is lots of ambience filling the sonic spectrum, especially once the drums kick in later on. This whole album is incredibly fun to listen to, and I can’t wait to hear more from this band. This band represents everything that live music should be: original, fun, technical, free, expressive and professional.

How did the band members begin writing material together? You all formed in Peru, but are now based in Brooklyn, correct? How did that geological shift come about?

“We all met playing in bands within the local music scene in Lima, Peru. Adele Fournet (lead singer/keyboardist) moved to Lima from Arkansas in 2010, and by 2011 she had met Felipe Wurst (guitar) and Sebsatian Apolinario (bass). The three of them began jamming songs in Felipe’s living room. We were playing in Lima for almost two years when Adele got an offer to go to graduate school in New York, so the band collectively decided to move together to Brooklyn to keep the music alive.”

Who are your biggest musical influences as a band?

“Some of our musical influences include St. Vincent, Tune-Yards, Dirty Projectors, Aimee Mann, Queen, Hundred Waters, and La Lá.”

Could you walk us through the recording/tracking process of this live performance at Rubber Tracks? 

“For this session we recorded live versions of three songs off our album “Autodidact”: ‘The Garden’, ‘Fountain of Youth’, and ‘Like You Like’. The Rubber Tracks studios are a really exciting place for bands in Brooklyn, because they have AMAZING gear and really talented and professional engineers working with new bands, and it’s completely free! We did a few takes of each song, and then the engineers gave the raw audio to Sebastian (bass) who did the mixing.”

What events or experiences inspired the creation of your debut album “Autodidact”? This album was recorded in three separate locations, correct?

“We’ve been writing the songs on “Autodidact” for almost three years. ‘Like You Like’ and ‘Up is Down’ were the first songs we wrote, and the others came about as the band evolved by playing more shows in Lima. The whole time we’ve been together as a band, we’ve done everything ourselves. We write and arrange our songs, we record them, we mix them, we put on our own shows, and we produce and direct our own videos. Throughout this process, there’s been a lot of learning and adapting, so at some point we realized that the biggest unifying theme of the album was teaching ourselves. So we thought the term ‘autodidact’ was a good fit, because it means just that: to teach yourself. And yeah, we recorded the album between Peru, Arkansas and New York. We are so grateful for DropBox.”

Your official website looks phenomenal! What went into the design and presentation of the site?

“The big picture at the top of our website is actually a still shot from our first music video, ‘Like You Like’, which we filmed in Peru in 2012. Our friend Tete Leguía— a very imaginative visual artist—created those masks for us. The idea behind our band name, The Soon-Another, comes from Jorge Borges’ “Book of Imaginary Beings”. In the book, he writes about a creature called the Baldanders (which is German for the Soon-Another), which is a creature that is constantly changing from one animal form into another. The idea is that the Soon-Another is always in a state of transition—never fixed, never permanent—always adapting and gaining new perspectives. We really liked this creature and what it represents, so in addition to the band name, we portray it in our costumes and images.”

Any plans for new music during the rest of 2013, or in early 2014? What about upcoming live performances?

“We have a new music video coming out in November for our song ‘Hogar’ off our debit album. It’s our first bilingual song (in Spanish and English) and our first music video shot in New York, so we’re really excited about that! We have a show at Freecandy in Brooklyn on October 26th, playing at the Crown Heights Film Festival, and we are hoping to release our second album in early 2014. We’ll probably have a few more shows in November as well in the New York area, so keep an eye out!”