Opin On the Making Of ‘Embrace The Grift’
Can you talk about any specific themes or motifs that run throughout 'Embrace The Grift?'
Landis Wine (the lead in Opin): We started working on ideas once we moved to our new studio/practice space (Hospital Street) in mid-2020 after we had to cancel a run of Spring shows due to lockdown. Most of our initial jams during that period were done as a way to decompress from what was happening around us. We'd get to the space, set up our gear, play and record, and then dip. Not much conversation, just playing. So there's definitely a bit of dread and a healthy dose of catharsis in the mix. Musically, we all have a deep love of different types of electronic and dance music, and we pulled a lot of threads from various genres and tried to make them our own.
Can you share any interesting or unique musical elements or production techniques used in 'Embrace The Grift?'
Well, we recorded everything at our own studio/practice space, which was new for us. We tried to keep the kernel of the initial idea and/or jam in the final production, so there are layers that are fully improvised layered with synths, sound design, strings, etc. that came much later. We just kept nudging things until they began to gel. We recorded people's car keys, put amp cabinets in bathrooms, dragged in sound sculpting and synthesis elements from loads of different places. Almost everything was played or sequenced live, so it attempts to capture the feeling of a live band performing electronic instruments. Occasionally the path of most resistance, but it worked out alright.
Which song(s) from the album do you think best represents your artistic vision?
This is a tough one to answer. I don't know if there's a definitive thing that captures our vision for the record since so much of it was about exploring the boundaries of what we were used to doing. They all translate the chemistry between us in their own unique ways. “Esso Heir” is certainly a track that combines a lot of elements, and has multiple jams that were spliced together and refined, so on a technical level, that's a good vertical slice.
Can you tell us more about you as a band?
The three of us are from Richmond, and we've been playing together for almost a decade. We started out as more of a studio project based around a set of songs that I (Landis) wrote and Tori/myself began to expand on those with various collaborators in a studio setting. As we were mixing the record, we started to pull a band together and we immediately thought of asking Jon, who is an incredible musician/collaborator, to join us in translating that record live. From there, we've slowly moved from playing traditional songs with a drummer to deconstructing things and becoming a more fluid, improv-heavy unit as we've played together. We're lucky to have had the time and space to gel into something that feels unique to us and doesn't require one of us to be tied to any specific instrument or set of ideas. We thrive on the excitement of spontaneity.
How do you balance experimentation with accessibility and audience engagement?
We've actively tried to stop thinking too much about this. We all love hooks and pop music, and it bubbles up naturally in our work. Sometimes things feel like a pop song and we work in service to that idea, and at other times we naturally move into more abstract or atonal/arrhythmic spaces and we embrace it. It all springs from the same well. It's more about reacting to how we feel at the moment and synthesizing that as a group. We hope that the electricity of those moments, waves, whatever you want to call them reaches the audience.
