Absent Sounds: If you guys wanna go around and say your names and what you play, that would be great.

Gustavo Nome: Sick. I'm Gustavo. Live, I play guitar and I sing.

Dani Giguere: I'm Dani, I scream on recordings and live.

Jacob West: I'm Jacob. I played bass today, but I played cello on Apiary.

James Witte-Cook: I am James. I play saxophone and other woodwinds.

Nicholas Garza: Hi, I am Nick and I play violin.

Melody Sohani: I'm Melody and I play drums, and do, synths on records.

Absent Sounds: Awesome. Alright, so first, I think the biggest question that maybe most people have when they hear Gingerbee- the internet emo band is oh, it's so fragile 'cause it's online. You never know. Like for me, when I have a lot of online friends, they come and go and things don't really stick. But do you guys feel like it becomes almost like an indestructible force of gingerbee or it's like sometimes you gotta be precautious, careful with Gingerbee. I dunno. How would you look at it? In general I feel like internet dynamics can be different than in real life. And sometimes it feels like it's stronger. Sometimes it feels like it's more fragile.

Gustavo Nome: yeah, there's undulations, like any sort of unit, but I think the music really brings us together. I think we all are here together because we like to perform and play and record stuff.

Nicholas Garza: I'll say this, I've never felt more comfortable to express my musical interest than any other project, than this one.

Melody Sohani: Yeah I think it was very lucky that we all get along very well. It's like we can hang out in real life and all get along and we can also just make music online and it like works out for us. So I'm very grateful and very lucky to have these people in my life and make music with them.

Absent Sounds: Yeah. I guess for context, for those of people who are just hearing your music for the first time, as we will play this for people who aren't familiar with your work, do you wanna explain a little bit of how you guys got together and the origin story?

Nicholas Garza: Yeah, absolutely. Me and Gustavo first met. Through an a discord server called BSDJ, which is run by our good friend Jordan. I just randomly posted like a, your arms are my cocoon, like a ripoff demo, and was like- Hey, this is cool. And then Gustavo randomly was like, I put guitar on this and I thought it was crazy good. And I'm like, we could like do something with this. So me and Gustavo started talking more, and then eventually we were just like, we should make more stuff. And then we found Dani, who was also on the same server. I, listened to one of their demos. I'm like, oh, I need that screaming on me and Gustavo's stuff. And it just fleshed out from there. And so yeah we just all worked out through that server and just meeting mutual friends and people in the scene and yeah, that's how it came to be.

Gustavo Nome: And after our first record, we added Nick and James to fill it out with Sax and Violin.

Absent Sounds: Yeah, I really do have a special place in my heart for emo songs with horns or anything s so I love just unorthodox instruments. But I think it's also really interesting coming back to the album listening to it, I noticed that there was a lot of themes for me that felt like it was between being held, holding, I don't know, like the complicated relationship of love, but also just a really love loving, love lovely album. What was it that pushed you guys towards the themes? And I know it's like a very vulnerable place to be in. How do you guys like navigate that as a group, as a collective rather than just I dunno if you're working through it together at the same time.

Gustavo Nome: Yeah. It's me and Dani writing the lyrics mostly. Mostly it was I write the sort of the chord progressions and the structures, like starting them off and then so the lyrics, a lot of them are like very loving. They're about relationships basically. Yeah, basically it's about relationships. I don't know why I don't think we chose this. It's the only thing I can seem to write about. It just happens. They're very personal. Very personal. Very personal.

Absent Sounds: Despite the fact that it was so personal, there was one lyric that I don't know how much I guess emphasis you put on your lyrics. 'cause sometimes people will just scream and they don't really care what the lyrics are. But there was like one specific line I was looking through that I was like, whoa. I literally wrote that exact thing in a poem that I wrote for myself. It was closer for Honey, where you said "I turned into the sun yesterday." But for me, when I was writing it was more angry at someone, like anger towards a bit of anguish. 'cause you want me to be happy? Look, I'm happy now. Like there we go. I'm walking to the sun. But I was curious. Where is that coming from for you guys?

Gustavo Nome: So that's a song I wrote almost three years ago. I was 18 and that was the week I went on my first date ever

Absent Sounds: Really.

Gustavo Nome: And I was on a call with someone, the person I went on this date with, and they read me a poem that they wrote about me. And I said to them after hearing it, I was like, I feel like I just turned into the sun. And then that stayed.

Absent Sounds: Wow. That is- I love that.

Gustavo Nome: That's awesome.

Absent Sounds: I guess I'll go backwards from the bottom now. Bottom up since I said Honey, we'll go to,

Gustavo Nome: Samba do Nosso Céu.

Absent Sounds: There you go. And I thought it was cool how you guys tie that back into feeling like children, at least at the last part.

Gustavo Nome: Yeah the lyrics.

Absent Sounds: Yeah. I wanted to hear a little bit more about that track too, and just what brought it together

Nicholas Garza: That one is our most hectic song in a way. It like, has a lot of weird moving parts to it and like parts that like sound so different, there's like a straight up samba at the beginning and then turns into this like weird, like fast screamo SAS core thing, and then it goes into this really chill part and then this like weird, like shoe gazy. I don't even know. And it was it was a process to like get it all together. 'cause there a lot of times in our writing process we're like, we don't even know what to put in songs next. We're just like, we have this song and we're like, oh, what do we do after that? And we just sometimes we like look in our old demo archives and are like, oh, this might fit. Or oh, this old thing that I made, like before the project might work and that kind of thing. So a lot of our songs, especially this one, came together like building blocks and they just kinda like fit together.

Gustavo Nome: We wrote the first 40 seconds and then we randomly took a Yeah, we just every 30 seconds.

James Witte-Cook: I think I wrote that in like a real book. I remember writing the chord changes to that one. 'cause I was like, I have like I jazz idea for this. Yeah.

Gustavo Nome: And then you wrote the ending. Yeah

James Witte-Cook: I did write the ending, the little the sax, I dunno what you'd call that. Yeah. What do you call that- ostinato? Is that the right, the fancy is the fancy term for a repeated short idea? Yeah.

Gustavo Nome: Basically we just made six different songs and then bridge them together. That song is really, a complete, like scrapbook, hob, podge

Gustavo Nome: Garbage.

Nicholas Garza: I'll never forget when you wrote the -garbage? I'll never forget when you wrote the screaming part. And I remember we were just using that as like a sound check thing on our second tour, which was the first time I joined them. And then I dunno when it was, I just remember he was like, yo, I have an idea. And then he sent it and it was like fully fleshed out with like program drums. And I was like, okay, that's the, I didn't know this song could be any cooler. So yeah. Building blocks. Yeah, a hundred percent.

Absent Sounds: I know you guys went on tour to Japan, and I always feel like for a lot of DIY whatever bands, it's like a bookmark. It's like a point in the sand when you go to Japan, that's it, but I'm curious how the songs not only like the soundcheck song, but also how they transformed into their own thing when you guys were on tour or singing them live maybe for the first time together

Jacob West: In keeping theme with the going in reverse order through the album. The fourth song- say the rest, has a insane solo section at the end that was like. Okay. A piece together, each person, like just in their room. And then when we tried to do it live it was just too much. So we decided Nick and I would just trade off and it led to some funny, I dunno, this doesn't mean a micro change, but I guess that is, that still is the answer to the question, right? Our stuff is pretty- it's not really that improv. It's all very composed. Like very composed. I think people maybe because it's jazzy, think there's more improvisation or it's yeah. That kind of thing going on. But it's really not. Ideally we all play exactly what we think is gonna happen.

Gustavo Nome: We do have to change the arrangements to play live just because the arrangements that we write have 15, like we need 20 people to play these songs. Like to the record.

Nicholas Garza: Somebody on Lonely Ghost Records by the name of Dalton, he did a review of of Apiary and in the beginning paragraph he talked about seeing us being a Ginger Bee fan, was seeing through our EPs and all that, or our first ep and then seeing us live for the first time and how it was a different experience. And I guess I never realized that. I don't think any of us have seen Gingerbee before being a part of it, right? You forget that it's a whole nother different experience, especially 'cause we're working on online versus to playing in real life.

James Witte-Cook: I guess the Our Skies Smile stuff is quite a bit different, just 'cause that's- you [Nick] and me aren't even on that record.

Gustavo Nome: It's very like electronic sort of, yeah. More lo-fi and then bringing that to the new way more lush.

James Witte-Cook: The new stuff is pretty, pretty accurate to the record, I would say. But yeah, Our Skies Smile, the stuff on that EP is pretty different. Sorry. I know.

Absent Sounds: I was watching this mini music documentary on the weekend. For Flyte. And I think he touches on some of the same things that you guys talk about too, about like love- actually it's a heartbreak record, but I think for them what they wanted to do was make it where it sounds like there's nothing extra that wouldn't be played live, even though they were recording in different pieces and there were other people coming in. The reason I brought up Flyte was 'cause it also comes up with- Say the rest, where there's a part where you say "Every time in new arm's scared of how I can hurt them." And that line I think was interesting. I just wanted to touch a bit on that. Do you wanna talk about that at all?

Gustavo Nome: I wrote that lyric. And like literally a week ago when I was typing it into Bandcamp, I was like, this is not a good look, man. This is not... I seem like an abuser. Not really

James Witte-Cook: Seem like? I'm just, I'm joking.

Gustavo Nome: It's it's how I felt in a very dark moment and then putting that out there. Every time I'm in new arms, scared of how I can hurt them. I don't know. It's a real thing.

Absent Sounds: I was thinking of it because it's like the line from Flyte "I won't stop trying to break your heart" And it's like. Yeah, I'm just gonna keep doing it on purpose maybe, or I don't know. But I thought it was like a very vulnerable place, which once again I think is really cool being on like being able to share that with such a wide group. Back up to feeling like children, I'm skipping, [track 2- Pinhole Blanket Sun] Feeling like children- is there a memory that you guys each have from your childhood that you love or that you'd keep in a bottle and hold to the rest of your lives forever and ever in its purity?

Gustavo Nome: Going surfing with my dad as a kid, 10 years old. Super much. See a lot of fun back in Brazil.

Dani Giguere: That's a tough one. I don't know. Yeah, when my dad was still alive and. My brothers were still young. We'd go on golf cart trips around Florida, our neighborhood. That was a good time. I was always scared that I'd fall out of the golf cart. Because golf carts don't have doors. But looking back on it, that was a good time. I like Florida. I miss Florida. Yeah.

Jacob West: I'm trying. I've been, yeah, I was nervously waiting for the microphone to come to me. Trying to think of something. It's really hard, but yeah, lots of I feel like a lot more being outside than I do nowadays, which is sad. I feel like I should be outside more. But hanging out in the power lines behind my backyard and doing ama playing guest imaginary using my imagination a lot more, not to say that we, I don't anymore, but yeah.

James Witte-Cook: Yeah, I dunno. I'm trying to get back there to like kid creativity. So I'm gonna say like drawing, I used to draw a lot more than I do now. Yeah. I'm gonna say probably drawing in my childhood house, it was fun

Dani Giguere: whenever I guess my freshman year of high school I really met one of my best friends for life and just every day after high school. After freshman year, he would come over and my mom would pick us up and we'd go eat, and we were just like the worst behaved kids you can imagine for 14 years old. We caused so much trouble in all the restaurants and stores and my mother, bless her heart she could just do nothing but laugh with us and somehow encouraging it and. Yeah those times are really awesome, man.

Nicholas Garza: For some reason, what came to mind for me was like a random memory of me and my friend Caleb in elementary school. Cosplaying, like OC Sonic characters on the fields. We did like Naruto running and I remember that. I was like, cosplaying a girl character. And I'm like looking back at that, I'm like, oh, I was I was such an egg. Like I'm so trans. It was just like very funny. I hope Caleb's doing well wherever you are. You're cool. Reach out.

Absent Sounds: I guess to bring it to a wrap a little bit with New Friends Fest. That's where we are recording this. I wanna know what's been on your mind here. How's the energy been? Just tell me a little bit about that.

Melody Sohani: Being from Toronto and like growing up here, being born here. I said this as a little speech after our set ended. But ever since like elementary school and middle school, it was just always my dream to play on a stage here in my hometown. And having that finally happen is like such a dream come true. And it's like such an honor and a pleasure for that to happen. If I was to tell my like, kid self that yeah, you're gonna be playing in like in front of a huge crowd at this big venue like. My kid self would like not believe me, but also be like, if that's true, that's all I want in life. So having that happen, it's like very special and I think New Friends Fest in and of itself is very special. It really showcases the community here and, yeah, it's just, it's mind blowing to me that this was able to happen for us. I'm very happy about it.

Nicholas Garza: It's so comforting knowing, I think this is my third or fourth screamo festival that I've been to, and it's just, it's so comforting knowing that I. I always feel the same no matter where it is. I just, I have a blast the entire time. I love moshing, whether I'm playing or not playing. It's just the best feeling ever. My girlfriend's currently on the other side of Canada right now on a cruise with her dad. We're both from Texas, so it's funny that we're in the same country at the same time, just on opposite sides, and I miss her a lot. But it's it's being with my band and it's meeting new people and talking to new people that's really helping this make be an awesome experience.

James Witte-Cook: Yeah, I guess just trying to be present seems like a very cool community. The venue seems cool, the festival's cool. I don't know, I'm going through it. I'm growing up a lot this year. I just turned 27 so that everything that comes with that is on the mind, but yeah, I'm trying to be less introspective, which is why I'm saying everything is cool. 'cause I'm just trying to get out, trying to get outta my own head and succeeding somewhat.

Jacob West: Yeah, this is my first time in Toronto and I am a really big fan of the city. I was telling my wife how much I enjoy Toronto and just, yeah coming and finding people who love music. And regardless of where you go, even if you're in another country, you'll find people that can, you can talk about the same bands that you grew up listening to, and yeah.

Dani Giguere: Yeah, I echo that for sure. Like we've been all over North America and, I was raised in the south, didn't really, go anywhere. But with all the changes in the scenery and the environments and all that definitely the through line was the communities and the people that show up. They're just there to have fun. That's why we're here. We're here to make money. We're here to make screamo money. So that's that's what differentiates us [laughs]. We're both in proximity. That's the only thing

Gustavo Nome: Yeah. I've really just been thinking about how much money we're losing. Yeah no it is been super great. Everyone here has been super nice. Toronto is chill. It's been fun to hang out with the friends and see other homey bands like Your Arms and My Cocoon. idialedyournumber was sick, PIRE great stuff. It's been a blast.

Absent Sounds: Awesome. I appreciate that so much and I'm so glad I got to spend at least like 20 minutes with you guys that was great. Thank you.