Soul Monsters recently released a new single called ‘Dead Set’ and its currently streamable on Youtube and Bandcamp. It’s a self-recorded song mixed by the reputed Mike Bridavsky of Bloomington Indiana’s Russian Recording. IATU sits down with guitarist Tatsumi Suenaga of Soul Monsters for a brief QnA on Soul Monsters’s most recent offering. But first, a brief review.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK1TLAowPT0[/youtube]

Review

To describe ‘Dead Set’ to those who’ve never seen Soul Monsters, its ethereal indie rock with math influence, light and tight drums, fronted by a classic indie sounding vocalist.

‘Dead Set’ opens with soft/light drums and a single guitar riff drenched in reverb. A second guitar layer drenched in delay, relatively clean vocals. The sound is light, and builds up into faster sections. The rest of the song is a back and forth on riffy-but-open sections and chugging-but-full rock out sessions. Mike Bridavsky did a great job balancing Chris’s voice in the mix against the instrumentation. The effects heavy guitars and bass weave amongst themselves, as the drums ground the song, and vocals sit on top of the mix.

Overall my impression is positive, I don’t like certain dragging moments at times in the song. There’s a lot of momentum throughout, I just want more. If I could infuse this song with a bit more frenzy, I’d be happier. As is, I’m still happy with what I’m hearing. The guitar work stands out as ridiculously good (two guitars harmonizing taps), the drumming pleasantly mixed, the vocals laden on top of the mix expertly.

The album art is particularly nice, angular and modern with a beach vibe.

Interview

IATU: What’s the deal with the recording, was it self-recorded in a cabin in the woods?
TATSUMI: We made a demo (for internal purposes) prior to recording everything again at Russian Recording.

IATU: Is this song going to appear on a future disc?
TATSUMI: The single will probably appear on a LP or EP in the future. Really depends on how far along the line we decide to make our next album.

IATU: When are we going to see Soul Monsters on stage again?
TATSUMI: Hopefully we can start playing again sometime this summer. If not, we should be able to play in fall 2015.

IATU: What are all the members doing during the break?
TATSUMI: We’re nothing doing anything big at the moment. Some of us are playing around with the idea of starting solo projects, but we’ll most likely start jamming as a group soonish to have some ideas for new songs when our singer Chris comes back from Spain.

IATU: Who did the artwork for ‘Dead Set’?
TATSUMI: The artwork for ‘Dead Set’ was mostly done by our beautiful bassist, Joe Yamakawa. We basically took a license free stock photo and put some shapes on it at an attempt to look “edgy”.

IATU: And how did you guys connect with Russian Recording
TATSUMI: So far we’ve only had experience working with Oranjudio and it’s been great (Brandon MacLean is the bees knees), but we wanted to try out some other places before we settle on a studio for our next project. We originally reached out to a different studio in Indiana, but later found out it went defunct. So we searched for other studios within that vicinity and found Russian Recording. We honestly didn’t know it was affiliated with Lil Bub.

And there you have it. Stay tuned for the next update from Soul Monsters.
Written by Sandeep Sehbi