ONE ON ONE: AN INTERVIEW WITH VOWWS!

HOW ARE WE GUYS

Arezo: Good, how are you?

I’M VERY WELL – HOW DID THE SET GO?

Matt: It was great!

GOOD RECEPTION?

Matt: Yeah!

Arezo: It was super good, yeah! I mean, not a lot of people know us, there’s always a few people there, but the goal is to draw them in. Start playing, play well and they gather.

I BET YOU ABSOLUTELY CONVERTED SOME PEOPLE WITH YOUR DARK GOODNESS. HOW DOES IT FEEL PLAYING A STAGE OF THAT SIZE? IT WAS THE OPUS STAGE RIGHT?

Arezo: Yeah it was, it was a little bit too big –

Matt: One of my cables wouldn’t reach my amp, we were having trouble with that.

Arezo: I mean it was fun, so much fun.

A LITTLE BIT MIND BLOWING THOUGH –

Arezo: Yeah, totally.

YOUR SOUND ENCAPSULATES THE JUXTAPOSED HEAVINESS AND ETHEREAL SO NATURALLY. HOW DO YOU GO ABOUT CONSTRUCTING YOUR SOUNDS?

Arezo: We’re super depressed, so our music comes from a place of angst, and angst can feel ethereal.

Matt: Well..

Arezo: No, that’s it, we’re depressed.

Matt: No, it's really organic. It’s organic between the two of us. We just spend as much time as we can writing whatever we feel. We try not to think about it too much, otherthinking is the enemy of creativity for us. So we just do stuff that we feel. Put it all out there. Then whatever we listen back to later and it triggers a feeling, it has to be a feeling, it can’t be intellectual. Like, oh this is so good for reasons A, B and C. It has to be something we feel. Once we get that then we can start working on it. And then we start editing it and start turning it into something like, … packaged. I mean packaged like commercial, like putting the clothes on something you know. But we have to feel something first, and then we can start.

PUTTING SKIN OVER THE SKELETON, IN A WAY – I SAW YOU SUPPORT CROSSES IN MANCHESTER, THAT WAS AN INCREDIBLE GIG. HOW DID THAT OPPORTUNITY HAPPEN?

Arezo: We toured with Deftones in 2022 and hit it off with them. I started doing some visual work, like visuals for Deftones. We did a track with– they’re sort of just in our orbit. We have a lot of the same friends. I think it made sense that those two bands, crosses and vowels together, that looks cool as well. We were really lucky to do that.

Matt: I’ve always wanted to visit there [Manchester], so that was the first time.

TICKED IT OFF THE BUCKET-LIST!

Arezo: I think we even bought a shirt! We finally get to a place we wanted to visit, go buy the shirt man. It’s like, touristy but worth it.

Matt: She’ll buy anything from a gas station, she doesn’t care.

Arezo: Even better!

TALKING ABOUT YOUR SOUND A LITTLE BIT MORE GENERALLY, YOU’VE COINED THE TERM DEATH POP. DESCRIBE YOUR SOUND, WHAT DOES THAT MEAN TO YOU BOTH?

Arezo: It’s sort of like the pop side of it comes from popular culture and pop music. It’s sort of structured a certain way, it’s timeless verses and choruses, it’s pretty simple. But then the death side of it is more about emotion and angst and darkness, sort of like, the contrast between those two worlds.

Matt: That’s it yeah. We’re making pop music, like in a way, you know? That’s how we see it. And then what we put inside of that is we can paint as many different pictures and create as many different feelings as we can. But it’s all in the format of pop music really. Yeah, that’s why we call it that.

Arezo: Like we’re not trying to be obscure, necessarily, but we do want to sort of, go deep in other ways. The expression, that side of things.

THAT’S WHAT I LIKE ABOUT YOUR MUSIC AS WELL, JUST HOW YOU PRESENT BOTH LIVE AND INTERVIEWS. IT’S VERY ORGANIC, IT DOESN’T FEEL LIKE A TICK BOX EXERCISE. TALK TO ME ABOUT YOUR COLLABORATIONS – YOU’VE BEEN HEAVILY INVOLVED IN THE FASHION INDUSTRY.

Arezo: So we have a friend, early on in our adventures in the United States. We met a director from, he actually lives here now, London – Jordan Hemingway. And he was doing a lot of big fashion stuff and producing fashion shows. And he just likes weird goth music. So he got us into.. We collaborated with Comme Des Garcons on and played at, I think it was Paris Men’s Fashion Week. And that’s sort of because Comme Des Garcons is so well known and so respected, especially in the sort of golf circles and avant-garde fashion, it opened up doors to more of those opportunities. And that could possibly be because our music is.. You know we lean into cinematic themes and I think fashion designers are trying to tell stories as well.

Matt: They’re also selling a feeling. Yeah, so for us we try and make sure that our music has a feeling at the core of it.

WHERE YOU’RE FROM, ARE THERE ANY KIND OF MUSIC COMMUNITY SPACES THAT YOU CAN THINK OF THAT REALLY HELPED TO ENABLE YOU TO FEEL SUPPORTED IN THE EARLY DAYS?

Arezo: Yeah we’ve always sort of been with the, not underdogs, maybe the underground sort of people that were sort of adventurous in their creativity. You know, and then when you see people, you sort of recognize each other and you stick together. And we’ve been lucky enough to, later in our career, be recognised by big artists such as Deftones, Juno and Billy Howardell who produced the record.

LOVE BILLY HOWARDELL – ANYTHING HE TOUCHES TURNS TO GOLD

Matt: He’s also an amazing person. For ages I was like.. This can’t be real. He can’t actually be this much of a good person. But he is!

Arezo: An angel!

SPEAKING OF OTHER BANDS, ARE THERE ANY UPCOMING ARTISTS YOU WOULD LIKE TO SHOUT OUT?

Matt: There’s an LA band, a friend of ours, called Chris Gibson who we first met years and years ago. And his band is called Posh. He’s just started it and it’s really like, fashion pop I suppose. But like in an orionic kind of way. He’s really good at writing songs.

Arezo: I’ve known this kid since he was like 20 years old and he’s just prolific. And he jumps and changes between a lot of things, but I think this is the one that he’s gonna stick with and he deserves, you know.

Matt: I feel like we’re gonna be missing some shit here but we can’t think, I’m sorry. – there’s a UK act that I think I heard a few years ago, and I don’t know what they’re doing now but they’re called The Overhead Bins. And when I went onto their spotify, it didn’t seem like they were doing too much. I’m not sure, but it was really cool. I can’t even describe it, it was just really well composed. Like electronic music I suppose. Be worth a listen.

BEFORE WE HEAD OUT, IF YOU WANT TO LET US KNOW WHAT VOWWS HAS GOT NEXT IN THE WORKS..

Matt: We are working on new music, we’ve got about fifty new song ideas. We are playing August 10th with Smashing Pumpkins, Skunk Anansie, White Lies.. Gunnersbury Park in London, we’re really excited about that. We’ve got about a third of this tour left, playing Hellfest, Resurrection Fest, we’re playing with Jerry Cantrell. I know there’s lots of stuff. We’re gonna get some sleep in the next couple of days though.

Arezo: A lot of eating and sleeping coming up.

WELL THAT’S IT FROM US, THANK YOU SO MUCH. IT’S BEEN LOVELY MEETING YOU BOTH.

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