Hey Satin, How have you been?
Been well, been busy, been productive! As I’ll get into below, we’ve been writing, recording and playing out live quite a bit throughout 2023 and now 2024.
For those new to your music give us a small bio about the band, genre and naming of it.
Satin is an alternative rock band from Los Angeles, California that features myself on vocals/guitar, David Bucci on lead guitar, Scott Wintermute on bass and Tim Frantz on drums. Our first album, ‘Drop Dead Gorgeous’ came out in 2019 followed by ‘Origami Heart’ in 2021. The name Satin came from a lyric in the Kiss song “Strutter”. I liked the word because it was short and had a sense of sexuality to it that you don’t see much in band names these days.
You have your brand new album ‘Shockwaves’, tell us more about the album, meaning and making.
Work on ‘Shockwaves’ began in late 2021 right after we finished our previous album ‘Origami Heart’. This was during the pandemic and since California had some of the strictest, most draconian rules in place at that time we really couldn’t go anywhere or do any live performances. While the state was slowly reopening I took advantage of the down time to work on writing and recording new music. Coming up with the album title was actually the hardest part of this project. I’d been reading a lot of works by American social commentator and economist Thomas Sowell during the writing and recording of this album, and had hoped to use a quote or phrase of his to use for the album title. While his works did help inspire the lyrics to the songs “Brutal” and “Only a Fool”, I struggled to find a phrase by him that I felt fit the album as a whole. To find an appropriate title, I went through the lyrics of the songs and found a line from “Butterfly Effect” that goes: “Cuz there’s a moment I regret/That caused a butterfly effect/And sent shockwaves through my life”, and felt the word “shockwaves” fit as all of our actions have an effect on others, whether we’re directly or indirectly involved.
Describe each track in two words.
“Requiem” – Letting go
“Butterfly Effect” – Everything’s connected
“Unicorn” – A figment
“Morning Star” – Missing someone
“Invisible” – Lost opportunities
“Brutal” – The truth
“Only a Fool” – Disingenuous mountebanks
“Country Girl” – Soul searching
“Fragments” – Broken bits
“Undertow” – Continuing on
“It’s Not Too Late” – Wasted potential
“The Exiled” – Complete isolation
“Citrus Road” – Perryville Prison
“White Horse” – Sci-Fi Lullaby
What was the writing and recording process like?
Writing began when I was staying at Scott’s house in late 2021. While I was there I wrote both “Invisible” and “The Exiled”, where Scott helped with the arrangement of the guitar solo for the latter song. Unlike our other albums which were mostly written and arranged by the time we started recording, ‘Shockwaves’ was almost entirely written while we were recording. Only “Fragments” and “Requiem” were completed works going in, and “Morning Star” was a re-write of a song that David and I had previously written together. I’m very passionate about songwriting and am always striving to learn new skills and incorporate new ideas and techniques to improve my craft, and pretty much each song for ‘Shockwaves’ was written in a different way. For example, the song “Undertow” came to me in a sudden flash of inspiration, with the music, melody and lyrics all coming to me very quickly right after I got off the phone with a friend, while “Unicorn” was pieced together by putting various riffs and melodic chord changes I had lying around that all coincidently (and conveniently) fit and sounded good together. The finger-picking guitar part for “Country Girl” popped in my head out of nowhere one morning shortly after I got back from a trip to Arizona. I had to sit with my guitar to slowly and painstakingly figure it out, and practiced it over several days before it finally sounded like how I had heard it in my head. Most of the songs were written on guitar, except for “It’s Not Too Late”, which was written on my Korg synthesizer. Due to it having a different feel than the other songs, I almost chose to leave it off the album, but decided to keep it in since I felt the lyrical theme, which is about a friend who’s wasting his life away, was too important of a message to not include it.
Who did you work with on the album?
This album was worked on and recorded with the usual team I’ve worked with. Scott Wintermute plays bass, David Bucci plays lead guitar and backing vocals and Tim Frantz on drums and some additional keyboard work. Recording mostly took place at Mountain Dog MusicWorks in Oak View, California, starting at the end of 2021 and then off-and-on through early 2024.
How is this album different from your previous releases?
The songs “Citrus Road”, “Country Girl” and “The Exiled” each feature finger picking guitar playing by me, which is something I hadn’t incorporated previously. “Morning Star” was co-written with David, marking his first writing contribution on a Satin album. While we’ve written several songs together in the past, until now they had all been featured on his solo releases. “Unicorn” is a unique song in the Satin catalogue in that it features lead guitar playing from both David and myself, where I play the first solo during the bridge that leads into the outro guitar solo that David plays at the end of the song. While I do strive to keep Satin apolitical, the lyrical themes of the songs “Brutal” and “Only a Fool” do dabble into social commentary based off of what I’ve read in Sowell’s works, as well as my own life experiences and observations.
Can we expect a music video and if so tell us more about the making.
No plans currently on making any music videos. I’ve always shied away from the idea of making videos, though David has shot a few for his solo work and has tried to get me to shoot one as well. I’m not totally against it, but I just don’t feel the need to shake my butt on screen at this point, though I might change my mind in the future.
Do you have any live shows coming up?
I’ll be recording a solo acoustic performance at WildCat Guitars in Escondido, CA for their “Sunday Sessions” series soon to help promote their guitar shop in southern California.
Let us know where we can get tickets if so.
All of our gigs and live performances are posted on our ReverbNation page: https://www.reverbnation.com/satinsounds
What else can we expect in 2024?
Definitely more live performances to come in 2024. A major priority of mine over the past several years has been to get out and perform live as much as possible. As I write this I’m looking into playing in northern California, as well as out of state including Nevada and Arizona again.
I’ll continue developing the band’s YouTube channel as well, as I’ve been posting videos of our live performances there. I’ve been looking into doing some short form videos about each song, going into its background, how it was written and recorded as well as any anecdotes that might make for an interesting story that I hope to get produced this year.
Though I doubt any new music will be coming in 2024, I do want to record an album using my Marshall half-stack to get a more live/raw sound and I also want to do an album of synth/darkwave material too, as I do like that style and I occasionally write on keyboard and synthesizer.
Doing an album based on the history of California and its broken policies and ideologies is something that I’m very interested in doing as well. A project like that will take time though, as I need to do more studying and research into the history of the state and the reasons why such policies, however well intended, have lead to the disastrous results that I see all around me here every day.
Do you have social media accounts so your fans can follow you?
