If you are an explorer of the alternative, such as ourselves, you might find a certain joy in discovering Californian outfit Velour Academy. Known for their icy post-punk stylings and spacious dream pop flavours, the band is as eclectic as you’d expect them to be. Layering nostalgic guitar riffs with dark, arpeggiated synthetisers, Velour Academy manage to build a peculiar yet engaging sonic universe, one that’s further enriched by their two vocalists lineup, a feature that allows for some intricate and nuanced lyrical and harmonic work.
‘pulsar’ is a single they are particularly proud of, and possibly one of the best offerings contained in the group’s latest album, ‘CHISME’. Intrigued by the project, we caught up with Velour Academy’s Shannon Martinez to find out more about their artistry and future goals… Interview below!
Hey guys, how is it going? some of our readers might not be familiar with your project, how would you describe yourself, in a few words?
We’re a bass-heavy band with two female lead singers and a dream pop/punk sound.
I’ll jump straight to what matters. ‘Pulsar’! I am intrigued by it; an eclectic mix of new wave, punk and pop influences… where is such a rich identity coming from? Is there any band or artist that you can identify as an inspiration?
We have so many musical influences, including musicals, country music, Kurt Cobain, Madonna and other pop 80s music, No Doubt, Green Day and many Bay Area and other underground pop punk bands of the 1990s.
Your latest album, (CHISME), is certainly rich in its references, but I noticed that distortions are always under strict control, thus allowing the vocals to take over and give the record a more poppy/relatable outlook. That’s a good thing in terms of widening your target audience. Do you ever feel the need to write heavier material?
We just write what feels natural to us. Sometimes it seems fun to do some straightforward pop-punk music but we always figure there is plenty of that out there, so we try to do something a little different and hopefully a little more unique.
What do CHISME and Pulsar represent for you? Also, is there a particular way we should listen to it? As in, at a particular time during the day, or with a particular mood in mind, etc..
Chisme is the culmination of our band’s history in one album. It has some of our oldest and newest songs. It has been a work in progress for a long time and it’s something we are really proud of.
Speaking about your songwriting process, do you guys write individually or as a collective?
Individually – usually Jamil writes the music for a song in its entirety, and then I work on writing vocals over the music.
Props for having two singers, it’s a fairly unique feat and adds a vivid texture to the music. How do you go about deciding who sings what? Is there a formula you have come to consider your own?
Usually, I sing the melody that is written first and Itzel sings the harmonies that are written to go on top of that. We don’t have a formula other than to make the vocals as catchy as possible.
Artistically speaking, what challenges have the last two years presented you with?
Deciding to have a family and also the pandemic made it harder to spend time on creating and promoting our music, but we are trying to keep writing and performing to keep the band going.
What are the next steps for your project? Anything exciting on the horizon?
We’re working on some new music that’s more straightforward pop-punk than what we’ve done before, but with our own spin on it. In the meantime, we plan to keep promoting Chisme, with some new music videos and also maybe our first live shows in a while.
