Over the past month I’ve seen something I never thought could be possible. We’re a mostly instrumental band with no label, no industry manager, no business force to speak of, a small group of best friends doing everything we can to make something we believe in.
Together, we’ve raised over $250,000 in 28 days, and we have about 40 hours left to go.
Our engineer and my former roommate Gabe Liberti mixed our album night after night and weekend after weekend. He’d come home directly from his job where he restores audio for films, only to come home & stare at pro tools until he slept. On top of that, he had to deal with our frustrating visions of what the songs should sound like - and instead of saying “you’re wrong”, he worked unstoppably on ways to make it right.
Ary & I sat in coffeeshops excitedly talking about the music videos we want to see come out of these songs. Whenever we showed each other new tracks we’d written, there’d always be a seed of a tiny backstory (this songs about waking up with my cat, this songs about a snowy swedish village etc etc.). It drove the production of the record to make it so a song wasn’t finished until we could see that final picture in our heads.
Luke recorded drums for 22 tracks in a two day period. Then we played a show that final night. I think he slept a while after that.
James was up night after night in his basement soldering his custom lighting setup for our first ever headlining tour. Luke sat with him and programmed patterns for the lights too - they also both had jobs to go to in the morning. We’re on tour with the fantastic Chrome Sparks right now, and we’ve used the new lights at every show (I’m writing this in the green room of the Marquis Theater in Denver). They look incredible and I can’t believe it.
Leia Jospe & Alon Shapiro (though he’s no longer working with us) were friends of ours who were taken to managerial tasks; answering emails we didn’t know how to respond to - making sure we were at the right place at the right time, and keeping our best interests in mind. Over the years they’ve been pushing us up and keeping us from falling, whether it’s making sure we have proper distribution for the album, getting press out for videos, or even holding onto a massive balloon in the wind to prevent it from popping so it could bring our slice of Brooklyn pizza through the atmosphere. leiaj we <3 you (also follow her on twitter). It’s been incredibly inspiring to see our friends be so forceful and determined… and even more humbling to have them be using those talents to help us along the way.
What we didn’t know is that this whole time we’ve had an unbelievable amount of support from people we’d never met, or met once at a show, maybe tweeted jokes with, and even people who’d never heard of us at all. The fact there’s been a connection with our weird style of digital pop music at all is absolutely mindblowing. I remember my biggest moment of inspiration was discovering artists like Paper Rad, Nullsleep & Cory Arcangel in high school - people who were using technology to make something both magic and human (though maybe ‘alive’ is a better word). It is a very overwhelming & humbling sensation to feel like we’re a part of it in even the smallest way.
I don’t know exactly the point of what I’m trying to say here is, but we thank you infinitely for your support. Without you, this project would be nothing. Thanks for making our dreams come true.
Also thanks Nate for doing our live sound helping us move stuff and letting me us your laptop to write this <3
with love,
Anamanaguchi
