In this interview spotlight, we chat with guitarist, producer and a founding member of Aisles, German Vergara, about influences, the newest project, navigating the digital world and more.
Full Q&A along with links and streams below.
Where are you from and what style of music do you create? (In your own words, not necessarily in marketing terms or by popular genre classifications.)
We are from Chile, the band is based in Santiago, the capital. The style of music we create is very atmospheric and eclectic. We focus on emotivity above everything else. For us music must have content and we put a great effort into the creation of lyrics. There is a lot of fusion in the broad sense of the word, there are some jazz elements, some South American flavours, some classic rock, post rock, even some electronic elements, I believe we are a Prog band because we make music that is trying to be innovative and because we don’t restrain ourselves to a specific sound. Again I think emotivity is the key for everything we create, if we write a song it generally is about something we feel and we want to share that feeling with the world.
What led you down this path of music and what motivates you to stay the course?
In a way we always thought music must convey our view of the world and we saw the band as a vehicle to express ourselves. Probably also our interest in theatre, movies and literature. When we began this project in 2003 we always wanted to integrate visuals into our shows. I think that with our latest record ‘Hawaii’ we started to fulfill this dream. I think we are sensitive people and that defines our art.
Musically I think that the diversity of music influences that we had led us to a style of music that sounds very rich in arrangements, details and layers.
The reason we’re still doing this is because we really love doing it and to put it in different words we could not live otherwise.
The path of music we followed is very free and rewarding artistically. We haven’t chained ourselves to any particular sound, and that has allowed us to evolve without restrictions. We can experiment and we think our fans value that. In every record we make we don’t necessarily stick to what we did on our previous work.
How is your new release different than previous ones? Did you set out to accomplish anything specific?
In the first place “Hawaii” is our first double album, it is also our first conceptual album, with songs that are completely connected and that only together and listened from beginning to end, accomplish their purpose.
“Hawaii” is a science fiction story with a strong message about our vision of the world and humanity.
Our goal was to make the best record in the world, it really was, of course we are not the ones to judge whether we made it or not, but we gave the best from us to make it happen. Music and art are not something objective of course but we wanted to make the most beautiful record for us. We are very proud of what we did regardless of how far this record takes us.
Do you face any challenges as an indie musician in a digital age? On the flip side, how has technology helped you (if it has)
Nowadays it’s a lot cheaper to produce an album and while that is an advantage it is also a disadvantage because there is so much music made every year. The challenge here is to make incredible music, average won’t get you anywhere, you have to be exceptional to stand out because there are too many bands and artists creating music.
It is also a real challenge to sell records in a digital age where especially young people get things for free from the internet.
One of the challenges was to create a beautiful CD and vinyl edition. The information contained in these formats is what you need to fully understand this album, with the lyrics, the beautiful artwork and some clues and additional information found in the booklet. The digital download should be complemented with the physical format.
Where can we follow you online and hear more music?
You can follow us on our official website www.aislesproject.com, check out our You Tube Channel www.youtube.com/aislesproject and these are some of our social networks:
- http://www.facebook.com/aislesproject
- http://twitter.com/aislesproject
- http://soundcloud.com/aislesproject
- https://www.instagram.com/aislesproject/
- https://play.spotify.com/artist/1aHj1tpKsDAUDDOMZXcjQg
Anything else before we sign off?
I’d like to thank MTM Music for this opportunity to talk about our work and I want to invite people to hear our music, if you are reading this and you haven’t, set the volume and do it now!!
