Been Stellar (Apr. 2019)
Inevitably, the human experience is a lonely and often harsh timeline that never seems to let up with its difficulties. Yet, we as individuals always find the light, whatever it may be for us. For one, a hobby. For another, a vice. For Been Stellar? Honest friendship. The New York-based band isn’t afraid to wear their hearts upon their sleeves, to tell a story of comradery throughout an era of disconnection. In many ways, Been Stellar is the antithesis to not only the modern music industry but to our instant gratification society that is, at times, inescapable.
It’s music that’s a slow burn while also a gut punch. Slow in the sense that with every project and string of releases, a new piece of marble is chiseled off their eventual statue of connectivity. A gut punch in the sense that every one of those individual songs is a splash of cold water on a July morning, in the best possible way. It holds little back in its instrumental honesty, allowing edges to be rough when needed to better express the depth of the varied, and deeply emotional, stories shared within every piece.
Even more so than their recordings, their bond is evident in the one in a lifetime live performances they put on. Putting their entire soul into every second, Been Stellar hold the desired skill of turning any and all locations into their own canvass. Their paint is positivity. And in that, their importance and beauty rest. Within Been Stellar, the human experience is no longer lonely, it is no longer harsh. Instead, it is free and hopeful in ways that are desperately needed and always appreciated.
This Interview was recorded live in New York.
Our first question as always, how are all your days going and how have you all been?
Skyler: Pretty good so far.
Sam: Skyler and I had a nice easy morning.
Skyler: A nice easy day in the city.
Sam: Grabbed some food at a dining hall before this as well.
Laila: Yeah, I’m doing pretty swell, I crammed some homework before this.
Nando: Not much today, but I just went to my mixing class and learned my professor mixed ‘I Just Had Sex’ by the Lonely Island, I have so much more respect for him now.
That’s actually a really great place to start, living in New York and having that new chapter in your lives. Part of that is that you’re all from different places, some from Michigan and some Miami and LA. How has the experience been coming together as a band in New York and how have you worked to make it a cohesive project?
Skyler: It’s interesting, Sam and I have had this band since high school and we had a different group of people we worked with back then. We were so lucky to meet this current group early because now our creative process can really be us working together and coming up with ideas as a unit. Sam and I have been challenged by working with people who have really talented musical minds and tons of creativity.
Laila: I also think as we’ve gotten closer as friends, we’ve become obviously closer as a band. We’ve found ways to work together better than before. We understand each other a lot better now.
Did you all feel having a wide range of locations is part of what makes it a unique project? As in the fact it’s not all LA or Michigan? It’s a multi-state project in a sense.
Skyler: It’s cool because Nando is from Brazil and Nico and Laila are from LA, and we all bring different elements. But it doesn’t feel like a band from different places because we got our footing in New York. It’s a new chapter in all our lives. The bonding factor is the city.
When you all were younger, what were some of the larger influences you found yourself to be resonating with? Both musically and environmentally?
Nando: I lived in Australia as well and I feel it was there that my taste was truly developed. It shaped my taste of indie rock and there’s some local there that I enjoyed like Hockey Dad and Dune Rats. When I got here, that was a big influence on me going into this project.
Laila: I don’t know if I was inspired by any of the LA indie stuff because I never went to that stuff until late high school, but I always loved Blink-182 and Avril Lavigne. At one point I got into the Strokes and that’s when I got into more indie music, before it was just Avril.
Skyler: For me, my dad’s a music journalist so he was hip to the Detroit scene during the White Stripes explosion. It’s a lot more garage style and it was cool having that foundation and you can really hear the industrial depression in our own work at times.
Sam: As far as where Skyler and I are from, not even talking about Detroit, but the suburbs that we lived in outside of Detroit. I felt like we were one of the few bands doing what we were doing and in high school, people didn’t care for it and that shaped a little how I look at it because it wasn’t growing up here or LA. There was no scene.
What do you think were the larger, original challenges you faced as a group and what are you learning to still work through as a team and collective musical mind?
Skyler: When we first met we weren’t really friends. We had started because I was browsing Facebook one day and saw an ad for someone putting on a show and I said yes without even asking Sam.
Sam: Mind you that we didn’t have a band, it was just us.
Skyler: We had a month to assemble a group so we for sure had to ask Nando because he was my roommate last year. Then we tried adding some other people, but it didn’t really work out
Sam: And then we met Laila at a concert over the last year and we met Nico because he was my roommate. Once we all hung out more we just realized we enjoyed each other’s companies. The truth is we’re all in different friend groups, but we had fun together and the obstacle was that we didn’t know each other and we have had to build the bond.
Laila: It’s honestly pretty crazy to me because we just did it. We met so randomly and even though we have lots of friends in our own lives, we keep getting closer.
Sam: Ever since this summer, and especially this year, all of us are family now.
One of the aspects of your year was also your increase in playing live and taking that more into consideration. How do you personally compared the live setting to that of the recorded one and why do you find importance in the different scenery?
Nico: I always hated when you hear a band live and either the recording or their live performance was worse. They should always have the same energy and when we play live we always could tell it was a level higher than what was on the recording. Then with ‘JFK’, even though we were still learning, we were finally able to capture the energy of what a live show should be like, especially with the escalation at the end. People always tell us after that song how positive it came out and how much power is packed into it. Recording now, for this next album, it’s super important to capture the within every aspect of ourselves. We don’t want to be good in one section of our career.
Skyler: It’s also very emblematic of the musical culture and times we live in. We really value our live performance and I do think it’s our best aspect. We often use them to supplement the recording because they’re art in their own right. In today’s day and age, which is stream-oriented and production heavy, this may be seen as an old fashioned approach, and it may be. But it is undeniable that when it hits you better live it’s a completely different experience than anything else.
Nico: I also feel that we’re honing in on the 70’s vibe on New York which was just going out and having fun whenever possible.
Sam: It felt like last year when we started in New York, we got a taste of when the scene was more performance-based. We would play a show and then the next one would grow purely off word of mouth and I think that’s been one of my favorite parts this whole thing. Sticking out and not having it be online. Just having it be organic. Instead of translating online presence to a real one, we are working to do the opposite.
When in the studio for this new project, how do you go about putting that live energy into everything you do and how have you found that that effort shift to be succeeding?
Laila: We started this new album ourselves at the school studios, but then we slowly realized the energy there and our production skills were not up to par to reflect what we wanted. So, we moved on to work with a producer, Lucas Carpenter whos really good at capturing our live energy and what we were doing in the studio.
Sam: You can really feel the music so much more within every recording ever since.
Skyler: And he’s very old fashioned, being someone who only uses reel to reel. I used to think it was pretty pointless, but once I heard it, I realized there was something people were doing at a certain point in time that people don’t do anymore. It’s truly magical and when you hear the song all together it feels truly alive.
It really sounds like above all he’s pushing you to be more professional and methodical in your approach.
Skyler: He’s pushing that and for it to sound more raw. Working with modern producers, everything has to be clean and neat and tidy, but he doesn’t force it into that box.
Sam: It’s little things like when the mics and bleeding into each other.
Within this last year as well, what were some of your favorite moments that stand out to each of you above the rest? Ones which either meant a lot or were immensely positive.
Nando: It was really fun to travel across America honesty. Nico and Laila were in Los Angeles and we were gonna tour in that area, but I live in Miami. So, I flew to Detroit and we drove all the way to Los Angeles and it was one of the best times ever. That was probably one of my favorite moments, realizing this project was doing something outside of school and that it’s really serious.
Laila: For me, it was the first show we played. So many things went wrong that it was insane. We got to the venue and they didn’t have a drum set, Skyler and I weren’t friends at the time but we decided to steal a drum set from NYU. We got on the train and with an hour to spare went all the way back to Manhattan and just took all the cymbals and everything with us. I remember the train ride back was so awkward because it was a moment of just constantly staring at each other. But it was also my first time playing in New York and everybody was there, it was really special.
Nando: I think we broke tables at that show.
Laila: Yeah, we did and people were crowd surfing in that small bar, there wasn’t even a stage.
Sam: In my eyes, it would be my time recording JFK with Harry Teardrop this year. It was actually unbelievable. Those last days of mixing were magical. Also, we had a meeting as a band about a month and a half ago, which sprung from Laila sending me a text about working with a producer and recording at a studio, which would force us to really sit and think about the songs a lot more. It felt like that step of going all in and the five of us sitting in our dorm was a feeling of love I’ve never had before for this band. There are moments in this group where I realize I’ve never been in love in this sense. It’s that butterflies in your stomach feeling.
Skyler: I have two, first, our show in December at this winery. We were the first and only concert ever there because they shut down pretty soon after, I think it was bought by Disney or something. And Lindsey, our manager, found it wasn’t charging much, so we trusted her. There was a wedding going on downstairs and when we got there they were like: ‘yeah so we can get started with catering now’. And they brought us this Cod and Wine, we were dining like kings. The show actually had a ton of people too. Something about us just eating and sitting back felt like things were happening and that we were really doing something worthwhile. The second time is when we were working with Harry on JFK and we just walked outside in Harry’s little backyard area and we felt very accomplished. Of course, a full moon was out that night too.
With this new project, what are you trying to improve all together? I know you mentioned the live energy, but are there shifts and is there something you’re honing in on as your goal?
Sam: I think with the songwriting, we’re starting to walk a line of being very critical, but not overthinking it. With these songs, I’m trying to treat it like an essay where you just need to sit with it and make it so it’s not new. You go over it and over it until it’s truly done. And working through them live while finishing the songs we’re able to practice and see what really translates.
Skyler: Another part of it is when Sam and I did our first album, it felt very organic and intuitive. But we felt there was some substance missing with those songs and it wasn’t always appealing to ourselves. I think with this it’s more something that matters and something that means and makes you feel a lot more. We want this to be the album.
Laila: The fact that with this one we’re working together is part of that too. Even though we have the same general direction we like to go in, we each listen differently and you can hear that in the music. Its small things that fit together, but it’s more heads working as one.
Sam: My philosophy compared to the past is to make a product that satisfies ourselves artistically because you can’t control how people react to it. So, if we try to make something people will like but we don’t and it flops, then we won’t be fulfilled. If we can make a product that we love and people don’t react to, at least we are fulfilled. That’s the only tangible feeling that matters. That’s the important part of making music.
Would you say as a whole it is just working to fulfill yourselves in an artistic sense? Meaning that It’s not for anyone one but you’re happy when it is something people enjoy?
Nando: People will always resonate with someone that’s authentic. The brain can be tricked by gimmicks, but authenticity is what makes a good band a good band.
Skyler: I’d be lying if I said we’re not caring about the reaction, because we do. But we realized the best way to have people care is to care ourselves.
Sam: There’s a niche for everything.
And do you feel with this new project that there’s a message that you’re trying to put forth and get out or, is it just working to have fun and be a team?
Skyler: The album has gone through a bunch of changes lyrically and sonically, but I realized that it comes from the fact we’re in such an odd social and political climate that it’s our effort to always stay authentic. It’s us trying to create something honest through a world that’s backward. It’s just our attempt to make sense of it.
Laila: Yeah and personally my mindset is that we’re trying to put something out that shows people that streams aren’t the only the thing that matters. We’re in this time where everybody’s so caught up and so much just sounds the same. There are entire genres where I can’t differentiate which band is which because everything is the same. It’s not like we don’t have influences, everybody does. But I feel like people need to take a step back and look within themselves because they aren’t putting themselves out in the world. I think you need to go within yourself and pull that out and show them who you truly are.
That’s so beautiful. Do you have anyone to shout out or promote? The floor is all yours.
Skyler: Obviously Harry Teardrop, taking over the world. Check out the Detroit band Moonwalks and here in New York the Britanys, The Muckers and check out the whole Bushwick scene.
Laila: All of our classmates, honestly.