It's been a couple of months since Miami band Astari Nite last played north of its county line, but the wait was on purpose. When the group hits favorite stomping grounds Respectable Street on Saturday, it'll have a little more new material to air out. After several years as a band and two EPs, the group is finally recording a proper full-length debut. "An album should be created when you're at peace with the songs that are on it," says frontman Mychael Ghost. He and the rest of his Brit-influenced postpunk outfit have had plenty of time to get comfortable with the material over the past year.
Thanks to a deal with Creator Management, a new venture by one of the founders of Ultra, Astari Nite took the stage at the festival and embarked on a run of minitours during which it nailed down the evolution of its sound. Ghost says that, overall, the new songs are about evoking a certain mood more than a particular subgenre. "The songs take you through a morbid sense of happiness," he says, "with the hope of reliving that one moment when it felt natural to love or easy to be innocent."
