Hiya Plasma Chasms, thanks for joining us in the virtual RGM lounge today, grab a brew and take a seat.
(Jane): Hey everyone, glad to be here, and thank you so much for having us. A cup of tea even sounds good to me.
Introduce us to you all and your musical history.
(Adrian): Well, as you know, we’re Plasma Chasms. Composed of myself, Adrian Guerrero and Jane Drewett. We write, arrange, perform, record and engineer everything from start to finish. When playing live, we have a band to help us get it sounding as close to the recording as possible.
I started on Cello and quickly moved to guitar where I began writing and arranging songs. I quickly found myself in bands and playing the live local circuit. Got tired of it and wrote it off. At some point I met Jane and decided to give it another go. We happend to work at the same place and my team got picked up by hers and I became their foster child. We talked about music and I showed her an early version of Echoes and she chimed in and that’s when Plasma Chasms was incepted into reality.
For the band I do vocals, guitars, bass, drums, engineering and assorted sounds.
(Jane): I started out very young on piano at my family’s request, I picked up Alto Sax at school and later ended up playing guitar. Songwriting was really a result of meeting Adrian. We started challenging each other on some things musically and we released the EP where we were first really dipping our toes in the water to work collaboratively. The songs on the EP were very separate with input on each but the album is involved in these intricate blends of different input from both of us. For the project I primarily play synths as I feel mostly comfortable on piano but I also play guitar on some of the songs and we both do vocals. We both produced, engineered and mastered the album also. Also, we started our own mixing & mastering studio – Electric Rabbit Studios for the record.
What made you decide that music is a thing for you?
(Adrian): My junior high had an orchestra elective and I picked up on Cello. My older brother played guitar at the time and I swore I’d never do that. Eventually, I came across Smell’s like teen spirit and thought ‘ Those guys are fucking cool. I want that.’ Kurt really made an impression on younger me.
(Jane): You don’t choose music. You do it because you have to. When the need to express something is so strong that you just need to dig into it and keep pulling and pulling and turning it into something tangible. Something you can experience externally and hopefully share it with someone that likes it too.
What’s the live music scene like in Los Angeles right now? Anyone we should be looking out for (Bar you of course)
(Adrian): It’s L.A so it’s bustling. The local circuit seems healthy but more gatekept than I remember it. There aren’t a lot of venues that cater to psychedelic music by default. So it’s somewhat challenging. There’s so many great acts locally, it’s really hard to say.
(Jane): We worked on the EP during COVID lockdown, so we’ve been working on the album primarily since things have reopened, but it’s clear that the live music scene has suffered from COVID, but it exists. We will be playing the IPO Festival on the 4th August at the Redwood in Los Angeles.
I’ve seen a lot of people struggling for support recently online. What’s your view on the industry?
(Adrian): oof that’s a loaded question, haha. I’ll try to stay on target. I see two distinct things. On one side, artists have never had this amount of technology at their fingertips. They can create like never before with the same or comparable tools as the masters. They have full creative control from start to finish. On the other hand, the business is broken.
The technology is moving faster than the business can adapt. This creates massive gaps in support for emerging artists. They can’t monetize like they used to and take less risk on new talent. The other problem is the mass production of inoffensive music. The safe, bland and generic template they’ve been using to death the last 5 years. Sometimes you’ve got to ruffle a few feathers, ya know?
(Jane): With AI coming into the scene we really need to revisit the rights of Artists and work together to ensure that artists can get paid for their work. Online everything works so long as you can monetize it. Spotify has been under fire a lot because it seeks to pay nothing or very little to artists and this has to change.
The same as video streaming had to come under review with netflix and streaming platforms coming into play, we need to adapt and put laws in place to protect our art. Art can seem unnecessary within society until you lose someone you love, you get your heart broken or you fall in love, you go to your favorite place, you remember your favorite summer. Then art is essential. We need to protect its place in the world.
Where do you feel you currently sit within the music industry?
(Adrian): We sit at a crossroads. The industry is shifting and changing around technology. New forms of writing are emerging based on the tools and creative control available. I feel we are in a great place to move with the shifting times. Nonetheless, we sit at the beginning but we are rising in awareness.
(Jane): It’s an interesting time where digital tools are becoming difficult to tell from analogue tools. We’re working our way up with a debut album at a time where how people consume music is changing and no one’s quite sure what the future looks like for music. We’re at the start of the journey for this project with this album but finding it’s widely received with the availability of the internet as a medium for sharing.
Tell us Two truths and a lie about you.
(Adrian): I was once at a rave at Berkeley University when the cops raided it, I was harassed by a former hair metal front man for playing grunge tunes at our own show, I walked out with 2 bottles of tequila from a local convenience store while no one was looking.
(Jane): Stan Lee kissed me on the forehead. I’m related to Russell Crowe. I worked on the crew of a porn movie.
Do you ever worry about people taking things the wrong way or cancel culture? Discuss….
(Adrian): I’m personally tired of everything becoming a political point or an issue to vye for more power. People like what they like and dislike what they dislike, nothing has changed. Only the medium by which you express that discontent has changed.
Before, it was a walkout, a protest and then boycotts and now “cancel”. It’s all the same thing. If you spend your life focusing on “the cancel” culture then that’s all you’ll see. Some nefarious plot to take the things you love away. It’s not. It’s a voice in the void expressing its discontent. If we want to evolve and grow together then those complaints should be considered and acknowledged.
That being said, I’m of the opinion that you can’t spend your whole existence tiptoeing over what you say in fear of possibly offending someone. We have the freedom to exist and the freedom to express. Expression, however, does not mean exclusion from consequences of what you put out into the universe. Just don’t be a proper cunt about it is all I say.
(Jane): Luckily I think we’re on the right side of things. Neither of us are strangers to harassment. We are operating from a stance that we are all one which means that the essence which underlies our consciousness including yours and mine is the same.
We should make an effort to have kindness and come from a place of love with what we put out into the world. God knows the world needs more of that at this time. Everyone is going through their own struggle. Most of the reactions for anyone that’s been “cancelled” have involved pretty serious allegations or comments that I think common sense should tell them to keep it to themselves. For any public figureheads that are using their reach to spread hate and dissemination of harmful content there should be consequences.
Do you sign up to any conspiracy theories? If not why not?
(Adrian): Is it a conspiracy if you feel it’s true in your bones? Haha. Sasquatch. I totally believe the hairy homeboy is out in the woods laughing at us as we fret over our lattes. Also the Hadron collider creating ruptures in the fabric of spacetime causing multiverses to crash into one another. Do I sound crazy?
(Jane): The term “Conspirary Theory” was originally coined by the CIA to discredit anyone spreading information on them that they disliked, which says a lot. We’re in the age of misinformation but you absolutely have to think for yourself and not accept everything you’re told. Believe none of what you’re told and half of what you see. But you have to do your own research, look at multiple credible sources. I have a lot of questions! haha.
What was your best experience on stage?
(Adrian): Playing a gig and everyone dancing and running to the stage enjoying the music. I love moving the soul.
(Jane): There’s a euphoria with enjoying a live show and being able to share your own art and have people rocking out to it is amazing, every time.
What was your worst experience on stage?
(Adrian): Whenever I get too drunk to know better. Watching back video of said performances fills me with ick and cringe.
(Jane:) Ahh Technical Issues. I had a gig where my synth wasn’t available for the show. You can plan for the worst but sometimes life throws you a curveball, as long as you can rock out and have a good time then it works!
Tell us something about each member that you think people would be surprised about.
(Adrian): I fully intended to study to be a psychiatrist and went to college with that intention. Sadly, I met the wrong crowd and got into some heinous stuff. Nothing unsavory, just drugs.
(Jane): I worked in production for awhile mostly in Grip & Electric! It involved a lot of lugging around heavy equipment in crazy conditions.
What are the next steps you plan to take as a band to reach the next level?
(Adrian): We’d like to move things to the next level sooner rather than later. We’re reaching the point where it’s just too many things for me and Jane to handle. Non- music and more business things of course. We’d like to get some management support as well as inclusion into the spinning top family. We’d love to play in the UK and Australia. There’s plans to do a few shows in the UK next year but we’re still sussing it out.
(Jane): I would love for us to be able to jump in on the psychedelic festival scene, Desert Daze and Levitation especially. I love those festivals and if we can be a part of it and deliver our flavour of psych rock that would be pretty mad. We’re definitely going to be working on more live shows now that the album is released. Like Adrian said we’re also looking at expanding this outside of the local area.
I hear you have new music, what can you tell us about it.
(Adrian): Plug time! Haha. We’ve got “Interstellar Baby” releasing next Friday July 19th. It’s a psychedelic, motown , RnB track with an intergalactic love at first sight story. The place we worked at had this early Friday policy during the summer and we all looked forward to those days. It created a certain magic in the air. When Covid came along we all lost that and we wanted to create a song that was infused with that magic vibe. It was originally titled ‘Summer Friday’ but when I was writing the hook I sang “You are my interstellar baby” and that was that.
(Jane): Our debut album is coming on August 30th. This is a concept album in which we have created a sonic landscape with different worlds of psychedelia to explore and immerse yourself in. We took the stance on that there are no rules and really went in there as creatively as possible, there’s some seamless genre bending elements that were fun for us to write.
What was the recording process like?
(Adrian): Incredibly fun. We’ve built a home studio where we can pop in at any time and do recordings when inspiration hits. It’s very liberating and conducive to creativity. It makes scheduling easier like ”hey i’ve got an idea, can I pop in and do some tracking?”. No need to worry about budget, schedules or time constraints. It’s creatively freeing.
(Jane): Our process varied slightly for each song depending on which one of us initially started it but it kind of lays down whether it starts off with a drum beat, a guitar riff or a synth melody. From there we jump back and forth with the track layering the rhythmic layers and then introducing atmospheric sounds and melodies. Our process is really fundamental to our sound as we develop the layers to interplay with each other.
What was the biggest learning curve in writing the new tunes?
(Adrian): We learned a lot of lessons with the E.P that we wanted to address on this record. Namely, the songs on the E.P were created prior to presenting it to each other. So the parts that we added to each other’s songs felt more like afterthoughts. For the record, we decided that we’d be embedded throughout the whole process. So, she’d have a riff or synth line, I’d have some chord change and we’d sit together and work out the next movement.
Arrange the whole song together, often times challenging the conventional way of arrangement. We’d work out the tones to complement and blend together seamlessly. We constructed melodies and co-wrote all the lyrics.This was more of an effort to blend ourselves into one bigger entity. Naturally, this leads to a lot of tense moments as we learn each other’s nuances and abilities. In the end I feel we created something bigger than us and that’s incredibly satisfying.
(Jane): For me, because we had such specific ideas in our minds of how we wanted things to sound, a good amount of the art is developed during the mixing process. It was really important to us to have the freedom to experiment and play with different soundscapes and quirky, whimsical elements so that we wanted to work on the mix ourselves. We dedicated ourselves to a year+ mentoring with some industry mixing and mastering engineers to focus on this process. All while writing and recording the album. Engineering is such an art in itself.
Would you change anything now it’s finished?
(Adrian:) Oh god, haha. There’s always the desire to tinker. I’ve tried to avoid the famous meme of Tame Impala mixing borderline for the 47th time but I found myself doing it as well. However, at some point we have to let go and let it fly. We’ve got 2-3 albums worth of ideas waiting in the wings. I just hope that the songs resonate with people and they get what we are trying to do.
(Jane): All art is a strange thing because you put yourself into it, where you are in that moment. What you’re experiencing, what you’re listening to, it all goes into the tapestry you are creating. By the time you finish it you look back and you’re in a different place so there’s a new version of you thinking of how you would do it differently – would it be heavier, darker, brighter, happier. Like any true artist, it’s never really finished and there’s a desire to burn it all and start over.
Is there anything else you would like to share with the world?
(Adrian): To reiterate what Jane said, our debut record, Chrysalis, releases August 30th with our 4th single (Already Waiting) coming Aug 14th. We have a record release party the week prior to release, so if you’re in the Los Angeles area that week , send us a message and come on down and party with us.
(Jane): Chrysalis is ultimately about transformation. What are we while we are in the Chrysalis? In the in-between time. In the space where one chapter of our lives has ended but the next has not yet come into being? We shed and purge the representation of ourselves that we no longer identify with and we can’t quite comprehend what we can become. There are a lot of worries in the world at these times, for the planet but also as a society. We all have the ability for growth, to come out the other side something magnificent. I believe we can rise like a phoenix from the ashes. I hope the album can help represent the journey we’re all going through.
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