wordplay by orange peel moses
images by Sean Hartgrove
Even though starlight is technically traversing the universe at light speed, the universe is a ginormous place--bigger than we puny mortals can possibly fathom--and it can take hundreds, if not thousands of years just to become finally visible to our naked eyes. Often, a star dies off or implodes into itself before its luminescence even reaches us. Making an album can seem to take almost as long, sometimes.
Between manifesting cash, acquiring gear, writing songs, testing them in the live context, coordinating studio schedules, cutting tracks, rewriting songs, acquiring new gear, manifesting cash to continue financing the project, mixing, engineering, fine-tuning, re-mixing, re-engineering, writing liner notes, designing or supervising the design of insert artwork, mastering and finally manufacturing, following all the way through to the finished product is never a simple process. Nature and Sasha should know.
As the driving forces behind local live electronica act Andramada, they have been at it for the better part of two and a half years. And, if you’re measuring from project conception, the realization took nearly an entire decade. The end is finally in sight, though. The Enchanted Experiment is set to be released at Kevin Larson’s Victorian Fetish Ball--the Saturday before Halloween at Tabu. Fortunately, neither has suffered the aforementioned star’s fate yet.
Nature is everywhere. Just like his namesake, Nature is practically omnipresent in our mile high club scene. A staple. Even before his band landed on the bills of many of the city’s “don’t miss” dance events, Nature could be found hocking hematite jewelry at the now-defunct underground after hours club Enigma (as well as at a grip of other one-offs) or choreographing fashion shows for a once Colorado-based designer known as Frog. Between the ever-evolving face paint and sideburns, not to mention the attention-grabbing dance moves, you can’t help but notice him. Sasha hasn’t been around quite as long, as she migrated from the U.K. about six or seven years ago, but she is just as impossible to miss. A drop dead gorgeous dancer, she has go-goed professionally at clubs from Rise to Vinyl for years now. Ever since the pair first hooked up at a model call at Maximillian’s, they have been bona-fide local celebrities--scenester royalty. And their pad? After party central. Considering their respective public school experiences, their karmic bank account was probably due for a rebound.
Nature: “I only had two good teachers, in all the years I went to school, teachers who inspired me to learn about something that I didn’t already like. It’s really tough to go through school and not be inspired. I was definitely hugely into sports, and all the activities. I loved Greek mythology, Shakespeare and astronomy. I excelled at math, but when I got to high school my teacher was awful. I was four years ahead in math, but I lost all inspiration for it. Ironically enough, I took drama and theater all through high school but the teacher that I had had no love for me whatsoever. He didn’t really teach me and he didn’t put me in any presentation of any kind. He didn’t see my passion and he definitely never saw my character.”
Sasha: “I had a particularly hard time. I was very bullied. My step mom used to dress me up in the worst clothes ever in the world. I had glasses that were really thick, everything was wrong. I was a geek, ‘cause I was a goofball, always having fun, took nothing serious. But once I hit 14, I went and bought my own clothes, died my hair blonde, got contact lenses, all in a summer. I went back to school and things started to change, but the bullying never completely stopped.”
On the extra-curricular front, though, the extra-terrestrials excelled. Sasha immersed herself in the study of ballet, tap, jazz, hip hop and modern dance five to six days a week from the pre-pubescent age of nine, competing at an international level by ten. Similarly, Nature’s devotion to sports throughout public school paid off handsomely with a successful pro beach volleyball career in Florida. Even though they each tinkered around with manmade musical instruments—Sasha with an organ and Nature with an axe, both consider the human body their first real vehicle for artistic expression. Serious injuries—Sasha’s knee and Nature’s back--forced both to reevaluate their career possibilities, though. Nature returned to Colorado, already sufficiently inspired by Dream Theater, the exploding electronic music scene and his buddy Ricky, and Sasha, already singing along to the likes of Kylie Minogue and Sarah Brightman, crossed the pond for a fresh start here with her real mom, formerly a bona-fide pop singer with Virgin Records’ duo Scarlett & Black. Apparently, their influences were impossible to resist.
Nature: “I was dreaming about this new kind of music, and I called it the ‘Andramada Synergy.’ I used to take little bits and pieces of songs from Yaz, New Order, Depeche Mode and other cutting-edge groups and I used to take little slices of it and I used to record it and I used to put it in these little tape carriers and I used to call it the ‘Andramada Synergy.’ I used to tell people, ‘This is gonna be the future of music. Dance music.’ Honestly, I’ve been waiting my whole life for electronic music. When it came out, I couldn’t have been more thrilled. It was like it was made for me.”
“I lived in Florida from about ‘93 to ‘98, when I was playing pro beach volleyball. My two best friends in the whole world came out and lived with me out there. And they’re both artists. So when I came home from working out every day and training on the beach for eight hours, I came home to musicians and artists. The people who we attracted were artists. Jam sessions were happening. Ricky was writing music constantly, he’s a very hard-working musician. I came back here to Denver. Melanie was going to be our head girl: dancer, singer, all that stuff. I’d been back here for two years. We were writing Andramada. We were actually a couple of months away from playing at Rock Island, stuff like that. We had a huge falling out, to say the least. I’ve not spoken to Ricky or seen him in six years. I knew the responsibility was mine. We got really close to doing Andramada before. When the music was gone, I had to decide whether I was going to continue this dream, and so I did.”
Unfortunately, making a decision and manifesting a vision are not quite mutually exclusive. Plenty of obstacles dotted the path. In some cases, “obstacle” is probably an understatement.
“There’s always something that goes wrong. Always with sound. Nightclubs are not catered at all for live PAs, they’re catered for DJs. No matter what, the show must go on. As the Philip Henslowe character in Shakespeare in Love says, ‘Allow me to explain the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.’ You just have to persevere.”
Fortunately, they weren’t exactly alone in their quest. Not only did they obviously have each other, but Nature’s parents, Sammy & John Huntington, were absolutely essential, as financing the entire project would not have been possible without their assistance. Fittingly enough, the album is dedicated to them. Other notable contributors include programmer James Holly, guitarist Ben Hook, prop artist Diggity Doug, graphic designers Jacob Eickstaedt and Vance Hatfield and DJ Gift, born Kevin Alves, who engineered the album. Although Experiment is, without question, a worthwhile achievement, laurels will not be rested on just yet. Producing and releasing a comprehensive DVD is the next goal on the horizon. Finding management would be nice, too…
“We are complete and utter freak children. The most important thing in your life, though, is to be yourself, and to find out what that is. The city of Denver, specifically, has both allowed me to be the person that I am and somehow embraced it as well. I never thought it was ever gonna be as wonderful as it is. I could’ve never ever been this person if I had not thrown away the cage of mysteriousness for the beauty of being and expressing myself truly as a person.”
Just as the similarly named neighboring galaxy is light years away from our own Milky Way, these mile high stars are definitely out there...in a good way.
October 28th @ Victorian Fetish Ball (Tabu)
KevinLarsonPresents.com
Andramada.com