Daniel Mugruza-Ocampo and Doug Weber met, interestingly, on an online shoegaze forum -- a testament to their genuine love of making music (and music geekdom). Why a forum? Explains Mugruza-Ocampo: "In a city like Miami, it's a bit difficult to find others to play music with that aren't in four or five other projects... At that point, I had just picked up the guitar after a 13-year hiatus, so it was pleasant to meet someone who was more musically inclined than I was. A shoegaze forum was a good start but far from the sound I hoped to achieve with music. Reverb was a good start."
The aforementioned guitar hiatus was rough on their early recordings, Mugruza-Ocampo admits. "I suppose we wanted to convey a sound that was primitive in sound, minimal in structure, while still giving off a psychedelic vibe. When we started, I was so bad at guitar that I'd joke around and mention to close friends that it was as if we'd taken a 45 of the Troggs' 'I Want You' single, played it on 33 rpm, and compressed the shit out of the record. Truly an ugly sound."
Not anymore. If that was true, they've learned to mask it exceptionally well. "The vocals have loads of reverb on the recordings, and the main reason for that is simple: We are both terrible vocalists. But it's all just rock 'n' roll, the bastard child of the rhythm and blues. So the tortured vocals come show complemented the noisy, compressed recordings we made."
Their upcoming Churchill's show is part of artist and Holly Hunt drummer Beatriz Monteavaro's birthday celebration, and their first with a full band -- Holly Hunt's Gavin Perry on drums, This Heart Electric's Ricardo Guerrero on bass. This will undoubtedly make things richer; the live drums will have to follow the drum machine-based metronomic patterns in their songs that helped make everything so heavy and dark.
