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Interview: Heirsound

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Heirsound are a two-piece alternative group from Long Island, New York. Composed of former Love, Robot vocalist Alexa San Román and former Sink Swim vocalist Dane Petersen, they’ve steadily been gaining traction for a busy year ahead, revolving around their debut EP. Recently, Legendary Kids Press was able to speak to the duo before their first gig about what they have in store for 2016.

For starters: describe the difference between Love, Robot and Heirsound for fans of Love, Robot who haven’t yet ventured into this new project.

Alexa San Román: This band is a little bit, I don’t know, less just hard rock and roll than Love, Robot was.

Dane Petersen: It has more ambiance to it, despite the obvious things. I sing a little bit more - we switch off vocals. Overall all, it’s just more ambient. There’s a lot more going on.

ASR: Definitely. Things are more equal, more split-up. The big difference is how even we are in our vocals.

 What made you realize it was time to move on from Love, Robot?

ASR: I’ve been in Love, Robot since I was 15-years-old, so that was a nice 10-year stretch. I started feeling like I was hitting a wall with it and wanted to start a new thing, a new chapter. I just wanted that one to close because I grew up through Love, Robot and my music has changed through it. People got to witness me change through it too and I just kind of felt like it was time to start fresh and anew.

DP: As for me, I came into the band in its last year of existence. I had fun while it lasted. [Alexa] and I support each other; I support her decision every step of the way - it wouldn’t have been my place to tell her “no”.  I think we had a good idea of where we wanted to take it next and I knew we both didn’t want to stop playing music by any means. We weren’t worried about it, and it didn’t have to be the end of the world.

ASR: And it wasn’t the end of the world. We could still play a Love, Robot show if we wanted to.

Going into Heirsound, did you have any prominent musical influences?

DP: Oh, yeah. So much.

ASR: Definitely a lot. A wide spectrum of things.

DP: Anything from Kanye West to Coldplay to Death Cab For Cutie. I think it was more of the hip-hop side of things this time, but there was a lot of alternative rock stuff. We really just listen to so much music that it was easy. 

Was it easy to find Matt Collamore [bass] and Jon Brick [drums] to join the band and for them to feed into the vision you had for its foundation?

DP: Easier than we thought it would be. We started this just as the two of us. We wrote all the music, and we were really just working closely together for some time and we did think it was going to be just the two of us for the time being. Of course, best case scenario, we wanted a few people on board that we vibed with and connected with and could work together with to play show. With Jon and Matt, it’s just so much smoother than we ever thought it would be. They’re our best friends.

ASR: I’ve known Matt for awhile. He actually lived up in Maine, so I kind of just called him up and said, “Hey, do you want to come play bass in our band?”

DP: She tends to do this a lot. She’ll call people from all sides.

ASR: Yeah, I told him to come down - he had to do this - and he said “okay”. He comes down from Maine and we realized we needed a drummer. The producer who worked at the studio [where] we recorded our EP at ended up linking us up [with] Jon, who is from Long Island, so that was easy. We had a practice or two together and it just clicked into place.

If music didn’t work out for the two of you, after Love, Robot and Sink Swim, could you see yourselves doing anything else?

DP: I don’t like to think about that! I couldn’t really pick one thing. All I know is that it would still be very hands on. I would still have to be doing something creative.

ASR: Probably only video work.

 Alexa, How did you get into film and video?

ASR: It’s definitely been a long term thing that I didn’t even fully realize was long term until recently. When I was, like, really young and I only had this digital camera, I’d be the one to film family things like Thanksgiving with my family and make little compilation videos of just funny things that happened. That kind of just changed into, well, why do we have to pay someone to shoot our music video when I know what I want to see? It can’t be that hard. So I decided to try it and it snowballed from there.

Heirsound seems to be entirely something you do yourself, from music videos to promotional photos, instead of sourcing somewhere else. Is that hard on you or is it ultimately rewarding enough that it balances?

DP: It’s so rewarding.

ASR: It’s definitely a lot of work, but it’s rewarding. It’s better to have it come out the way that I know I want it to come out and Dane knows he wants it to come out, and we’re trusting ourselves to our job, so it’s worth it. It’s worth it to do as much as we can ourselves.

Tell me about the debut EP. Anything from when you plan to release it to the writing process to any struggles or moments you had putting it together.

DP: It took awhile. We wrote a lot of music before going in to actually record what we chose to be the handful. It’s six songs and we can’t give you a release date yet. As far as the process went, it was just her and I working very closely together in our usual practice space. I would have a guitar riff and we would usually just build off of each other’s ideas and structure out songs together. We did that until we had about 20 songs written.

ASR: A lot. We had a lot of songs.

Was it hard narrowing it down to just six? 

DP: Not towards the end. I think the songs we ended up going with were the ones we had put together recently, at the time. We’re still finding our style and our groove and our niche; we’re still trying to figure out what we want to accomplish and we had a lot of ideas going in. It was just about executing them the right way.

ASR: It was definitely trial and error for awhile with a lot of songs, where we tried new things that we didn’t really love and it led us to trying something else. We had a bunch of talks until something finally just clicked with the last bunch of songs and everything just made sense. I definitely don’t think we have a specific date in mind for release, but it’s coming. Slowly but surely, it’s coming.

DP: Everyone knows we like to tease them.

ASR: We can say there will definitely be a music vide for each song!

What’s your dream line-up for a future tour including Heirsound?

DP: I’d say Death Cab, Coldpaly, Now, Now…

ASR: Beautiful. Love it.

DP: We love Death Cab and Now, Now are the homies.

ASR: I think I would add Explosions In The Sky on there too, though.

 What do you picture 2016 bringing Heirsound? Any hopes?

ASR: Team building. I want to get a bunch of people on board with us and our sound and our vision that are going to benefit us and benefit from us. That’s the biggest thing, whether it be a label or a publicist, stuff like that. I just want to get everyone together.

DP: Yeah, definitely a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff.

ASR: Playing shows too! We want to starting playing a ton of shows. It’s time to play shows. The reality is now here.

Any last words?

DP: We love the squad. That’s for sure. 

ASR: Yeah, we definitely love our Heirsquad.

DP: The Heirheads.

ASR: Dane’s fans are the Heirheads. My fans are the Heirsquad. That’s all I’ve got for right now.

Heirsound just released the music video for their single, “My Own”. Those wishing to keep up-to-date with the band can do so via Facebook and Twitter.

Be sure to check out our photoset from the band’s first show!

By Vanessa Ruiz

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