Listen to the live interview Episode #483: A.V.A Live Radio Behind The Music with Jacqueline Jax : http://tobtr.com/10085193
GETTING TO KNOW ALBVS
by Jacqueline Jax host of A.V.A Live Radio
Band Name: ALBVS (pronounced “Albus” or “Owl – bus”
Members: Joey Albus and Ralph Parissi
Music business…
I feel like it’s the easiest and hardest time to be a musician. It’s amazing how much technology we have at our fingertips and the opportunities to promote yourself without relying on a label or a PR firm are seemingly endless. However, because of that reason, there’s so much music out there now that you start to feel like white noise. Everyone is promoting something and you start to worry you’re just annoying your friends and fans with constant tweets and Facebook posts.
I will say that being able to connect with other artists on Twitter and Instagram has gotten us several opportunities to play with and open for several national touring bands that we otherwise never would have been able to contact. We had the honor of opening once for Metro Station in Pittsburgh last year and will be on their show again when they come back through in October. We opened for early 2000’s boy band O-Town, whose new album is phenomenal and I hope it gets them the comeback they deserve. We will also get to open for LFO at the Hard Rock Cafe in Pittsburgh this August. So we definitely have experienced more pros than cons.
Song name: Lockdown
Music Genre/ category : Pop/Electronic
Lockdown is about being stuck in a relationship that started promising but the other person turned cold and controlling. I think we’ve all been with someone that we felt like they cast a spell over us. We know that we should leave and it would be healthier to get away, but we just can’t seem to do it no matter how much we try.
The drums at the end of the song are a combination of actual drums mixed with us making noise in Joey’s home studio. We stomped on the floor, clapped, slammed cabinets and a refrigerator door, and at one point, our producer Chris Vogagis tripped over one of Joey’s steps and his whole body hit the wall at the top of the stairs. It got recorded and used on the track!
Link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/albvs/id1152751755
https://play.google.com/store/music/artist/ALBVS?id=Aojstevan55y2o7ifhrvtyabnr4
Last fall, we released an EP of 6 songs…
that was really only meant to be a demo. People liked it and encouraged us to put it out. If anyone heard that, our new full-length album “Beautiful/Chaos” takes that dynamic and turns it on it’s head. The production is bigger, our voices and harmonies are stronger, we put more of a pop and top 40 sound in this album and focused more on song structure and storytelling than just writing something that sounded pretty.
“Beautiful/Chaos” is split into two sides with six songs each. “Beautiful,” the first six songs, have more of a pop sensibility and are written about more positive or clear cut situations at different times in relationships. The next six songs, the “Chaos” side, are more electronic and bass heavy while the stories the lyrics convey are about more tumultuous relationships with people you know you probably shouldn’t be with but you just get caught up in the excitement and craziness they bring.
Both of us remember what it was like to buy a physical album, whether it was on vinyl, cassette or CD. There was something so wonderful and amazing about the care an artist took to craft the perfect track listing, getting the songs in just the right order. That doesn’t happen as much now with the way people consume music. Could you get our record and enjoy the album on shuffle? Absolutely! But it’ll be much more enjoyable, we feel, if you played it in the order we put it on the album. By the end, you should feel like you’ve been through the ups and downs of a relationship and you might even notice that the final song “Hourglass” bleeds right back into our first track “Look Away” if you put the record on repeat.
We live just outside of Pittsburgh, PA in southeast Ohio…
The music scene in our actual town is very dive bar-esque, but we have many friends that are musicians and play in bands that we’ve formed a tightly knit circle with. In the actual city of Pittsburgh, where we play most of our shows, the scene is very vibrant. There does seem to be a focus on hard rock and more guitar driven bands, but the scene around here has been very accepting of the pop/top 40 vibe we’ve brought over the last year. It’s very nice to play with bands that aren’t necessarily like you because at these shows you meet a lot of people that have eclectic tastes and you may not have found these fans if you stayed in your own genre.
I would love to have 5 minutes alone with…
Joey Albus: I would love five minutes alone with Bruno Mars. Not only does he have one of the best voices of our generation, but he’s such a talented writer and producer for others. He’s written so many songs that no one knows he was even behind. His showmanship, songwriting, and stage presence alone put him in the same category as Michael Jackson and Prince.
Ralph Parissi: Freddie Mercury from Queen, hands down. Not only is Queen my favorite band of all time, but there will never be another front man like Freddie in my eyes. He could sing with more emotion and more passion than anyone I’ve ever heard. Queen wrote so many songs in just about every genre of music and had more hit songs than a lot of people give them credit for. It’s sad that he’s gone, but if there was ever a legend that left behind an immortal body of work, it’s Freddie Mercury!
Website and social media links: :
http://www.ALBVS.com
http://www.facebook.com/ALBVSmusic
http://www.twitter.com/ALBVSmusic
http://www.instagram.com/ALBVSmusic
http://www.reverbnation.com/ALBVS
http://www.soundcloud.com/ALBVSpa