Let’s break the ice. Who are you? Where are you from? What style of music do you create?
Angelina: Citris is basically Me and Chris. It used to be Me, Chris, Jake, and Alex but right now we’re in the middle of changing up the rhythm section members which used to be Alex and Jake. I think the kind of style of music I write is along the grunge rock/psychedelic side but with Chris’ guitars, there’s a bit of progressive/hard rock influence as well.
Chris: NYC born and raised. I try to give an edge to the music when it’s needed but try to stay in the vein of psychedelic and grunge, like Angelina said.
How did the group initially come together? What led you to choose the name CITRIS?
Angelina: The group came together sophomore year at Purchase college (2012). I finally decided I needed to get a band together for the songs I was writing and I knew Alex because he lived across my dorm. We became better friends when our mutual friend Claire introduced us. He heard the music and offered to the drummer and along with that, he had a friend who could play bass who had just recently transferred to Purchase and was willing to be apart of it. Alas, Chris was introduced when I decided I wanted a lead guitarist. Chris and Alex knew each other through the Jazz program at Purchase. Citris was an idea I had because I had been eating lots of Citrus fruits like oranges, lemons, etc. I’ve always liked those kinds of fruits and then I thought the name would work the music style. Sort of “bittersweet” I guess. Kind of comical. But we changed the name from Citrus to CITRIS.
Who or what influenced you to walk down this road known as music?
Angelina: Along time ago, my mom married a guy named, Billy Roues. I always have had an interest music but he was the one that bought me my first danelectro guitar when I was 11 years old because he saw that I was enthusiastic about writing but didn’t have any tools and since he was very into guitar, he thought he would pay it forward. Ever since, he’s taught me almost everything I know. And songwriting,specifically, has been a passion ever since discovering the guitar. Especially when I was listening to Nirvana in 7th grade. That was where everything began.
Chris: I’ve been doing music as my main thing since I was extremely young, I always knew I wouldn’t do anything else. I started playing in bands in middle school and had developed new groups in each progressing school, so meeting Angelina and starting CITRIS was only a matter of time.
Is the Internet a useful tool for promoting your music and connecting with fans? Are there any challenges you have faced?
Angelina: Yeah, it’s been helpful when it comes to releasing things and getting your friends to listen/buy/share the music via various social media websites. I’m not sure if that would have happened several years ago if it weren’t for sites like that. Of course, there are pros and cons to everything. Now you have to have a certain number of “likes” and “reviews” for people to consider you. You have to persuade people to listen to your music when promoting because most people just wanna do what they wanna do. But it’s really great when people take the time out to really appreciate and listen to new up and coming local artists. I always appreciate when people compliment our band and take the time out of their day to tell us that they like what we do and hope to hear more.
Chris: Fortunately, being able to release music on soundcloud, bandcamp, etc. has really saved everybody a tremendous amount of money without the need to press CDs or cut Vinyl and have given us the ability to reach a lot more people than we would have by word of mouth or shows alone. I can see how people would rather stream music for free than buy a $5 CD at a show, but we still plan on pressing CDs in the future and hope all goes well.
I read that it took you almost 2 years to complete this album. Is the result and the response worth it?
Angelina: I think so. We worked hard, people noticed. Not the whole world. But that wasn’t what was expected. It was a different kind of sound from our original album and I think people recognized the new direction, I’ve gotten great feedback. Besides, Chris took this album into his own hands, recording/mixing everything and I think that was a cool experience for him to do as well. We had a view reviews of our single and the album it’s self from some small but very cool blogs and hopefully next time, we’ll reach a new plateau. We’re thinking of getting together a music video.
Chris: The two years was because we had recorded a version of the album under time constraints and a different direction, and when the product was finished, we realized it was good but it didn’t hit us like we wanted it to. One of our friends suggested we scrap it and completely start over. We decided to record it with my gear, in the rooms I wanted so it could be a completely internal affair and I believe the result accurately depicts what we wanted to release.
How important was it for you guys to get the sound exactly how you wanted it before releasing Half Smile?
Angelina: It was important to get across all different aspects of the music and what everyone individually was contributing. Not only that, but how the music was executed. I had been listening to a lot of Elliot Smith, so when I was writing the songs, they were all originally on acoustic guitar so the sound was a bit different from when I added the band to it. When I added the band, we still had the same driving “rock n roll” edge to it which was originally not how the songs were sounding when I wrote them. They were supposed to be kind of mellowed out / 60s inspired /Elliot Smith inspired songs. The band added this whole other dimension. And then Chris recorded/mixed the album trying to make it sound like early nirvana.
Chris: Haha whoops, but yeah. I had been listening to a lot of albums that Steve Albini had recorded like Shellac, In Utero, Dazzling Killmen, Neurosis, so I was feeling a lot of raw sounds and energy and I guess it sort of mixed with her mellowed and psychedelic song writing. Almost all of the drums, with the exception of one or two edits are completely live and one take, A lot of Angelina’s guitars are straight through and there wasn’t a lot of internal processing on my guitars, everything you’re hearing is coming out of an amp, with the exception of a little compression. That sounds like the 60’s to me…
Where can we connect with you online? Stream your music?
Angelina: Best way to connect with us is through our bandcamp-citrismusic.bandcamp.com or add us on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Citris/198602913526320
Any last thoughts? Shout outs?
That’s all! Stay tuned for our next video/single as well as shows in NYC!
