CONCEPT BACKGROUNDIn the late summer of 2009, front woman Justina Carubia (vocals) and Avinash Patel (guitar) joined forces to create the ultimate songwriting duo. Avinash also known as “Avi” had an instrumental song, titled “The Chase”, that he showed to Justina during one of their early on jam sessions. He had the song under his belt for a very long time, and not being much of a lyricist, he had never done anything with it. Justina had heard the instrumental piece, and fell in love with it. They scratched the track immediately per her request, and he had left it up to her to come up with something worthy of his masterpiece. It wasn’t much long after he had given her the track , that she had a whole song written. The process of writing the song was a very different one for her. It was her first time delving into a realm of fantasy and fiction in contrast to her solo material, which she had written from more personal experiences.
She painted a lyrical picture of two characters who are lovers. She had no idea who these characters were, but they came to her in a vision, and she felt like she had to tell a story with them. She placed them in a hot air balloon, on a ride to view the world from above. The woman puts a note into the man’s pocket, and upon some miscommunication, the man throws his lover out of the balloon as she falls to her death. After realizing what he had done, he has to deal with the feelings of loss and regret. She showed Avi her creation, and he was so impressed that they immediately started writing more songs together. They came up with other songs, “Free Will”, “Clockwork”, “Goodbye August”, and “The Deep End” and started scratching the tracks as a duo. Eventually they became frustrated with the lack of options they had, that came with not having other band members. They starting searching right away, posting ads on public forums, and caught the attention of bassist Ryan Wilson. After a few auditions, he had joined the band and helped the duo sculpt the few songs they had so far. Upon acknowledging the fictional nature of “Magnetic Poetry”, he suggested that Justina keep going with it. She loved the idea, so she searched for a common thread through all of the songs they already had, to tie them all together to try to form one story. From that point on, she was more specific with her songwriting approach, gearing the lyrics toward the events that took place in the story, whereas the earlier songs she had written took on a more symbolic meaning. The band finished off their lineup when they finally found their drummer, Mike Lyon in 2011. He gave the band the epic sound that they had so long been searching for. They had arranged additional tunes “My Mistake”, “Aerborne”, and “Relic”. Anxious to get some music out into the world, they decided to record an EP even thought the story was still not fully developed. Ryan decided to leave the band toward the end of the recording process to focus on other things. The band still pressed on, looking forward to releasing the creation they had been nurturing for a good part of a year. They decided to title the EP “A Dosage From Delusional” (a lyric in “Magnetic Poetry”), because it just made sense to call something that was incomplete, “a small dosage” of the rest of the story to come. Each song on this EP, produced by Michael Lisa (My Arcadia, BeAware) serve as little vignettes, peeking into the world of protagonist Aeron and his unrequited love for August. The story touches on themes of unrequited love, betrayal, loss, regret, and learning to deal with the things one cannot control. The band added two instrumental tracks “System Failure” and “Mourning Waves”, and released the 9 song EP in June of 2012. Neil Brown joined the band the same summer, and helped pick up the pieces. The band is currently working on new music for a second EP, which will focus on filling some gaps in their story… |
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