Interceptor Beyond Podcast
Episode 01: Psychic Hit

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/06hvTJyAmvaoqnj4GYWGSO?si=e-6uHU2eRKqjLkXSwfL3WQ&dl_branch=1
Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/psychic-hit/1439958495
Bandcamp: https://psychichit.bandcamp.com

Psychic Hit shop: https://www.shop-psychic-hit.com/

Psychic Hit social links:
Bandsintown: https://www.bandsintown.com/a/15373934?came_from=257
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBpCo-AKNgwa0DZjoOgYPLA
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/psychichit/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/psychic_hit/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PsychicHit
Website: https://www.psychic-hit.com/

Transcript

Interceptor Beyond

Hey, good afternoon, I guess for you now in sunny California. Thanks for agreeing to do this. Could you please introduce yourself to our viewers and listeners?

Ariana

I’m Ari, I’m the singer of Psychic Hit.

Andrea

And I’m Andrea, or you can call me Dre. I play lead guitar in Psychic Hit.

Interceptor Beyond

Awesome. Yeah, it’s so awesome that you agreed to do this. I really like your music. And I know that you have an album coming out this Friday, right? It’ll be out worldwide. And that’s what I wanted to talk about. I want to talk about the album, your decisions regarding the album itself, because you made some interesting choices with it. So as a starting point, let’s maybe talk about before you formed the band of Psychic Hit, maybe what are the significant points that preceded it, you know, maybe like you moved to California to Oakland, a little bit of backstory of your journey, you as a hero going forward.

Andrea

So hero’s journey, right? We started conceptualising Psychic Hit all the way back. And I think it was 2017. Both of us, we live together, we’re partners, and we both have been in bands. Before Ari was most notably in Nik Turner’s Hawkwind. And also a band called Hedersleben, and I was in a band called Queen Crescent, and roughly around the same time, both of those bands ended. And, you know, at that point, I had been doing kind of more prog in space rock and mild band was more of like, international psych field. But we both started really talking about starting a band that was more was heavier, really influenced by late 70s, hard rock and early heavy metal and just like getting into, just like really revisiting old Scorpions records and old bass records in Rainbow. We don’t want to be a rip off retro band, but we’re so like, inspired by this era of music, […], a band that had that draws a lot of inspiration from this. And so we started writing together. And then from there, we started working with bassist and a friend of ours, Melanie, and then we started working with Justin or drummer, and I always tell the story very chronologically, maybe you can fill in the more fun parts about it.

Ariana

Yes, it’s all very correct. And when Dre and I got together, we both would talk to each other about what we really wanted out of our band, and she wanted more professionalism. I was in a situation where I was basically hired for touring and I stepped in professionalism and I wanted something where I got to have more control over the music. And Dre when she and I started the band was like, my angel of music because I didn’t really know how to sing in front of a band. I knew how to do backup singing, and I wrote folk music and did experimental violin music. But she really helped draw the energy, the front person energy, add me and inspire me to really just open up and sing, and trust my instincts. So I think I did some encouragement for her to be a guitar hero. We developed over the years, a really special, collaborative, creative relationship. And so when we decided that we wanted to take on band members. We were very intentional about it. We made lists, we lit candles, we made it. There was a lot of magic.It works. I mean, we’re all humans. We all have a ton of energy, and we’re always moving energy around, we just don’t realise it. So when you’re intentional about it, you can really make some shit happen. Yeah, I’ll just wrap it up by saying. Yeah, I think that we just wanted to, we felt very strongly that we had to work together. And we had to have a band together. And that was something we both really needed to do in our lives. Because if we didn’t combine forces and try to do this, that we would somehow be missing a big opportunity in life. So it really is our life’s dream to continue on making this music that we would want to buy, and that we would want to hear and be the musicians that we want to see, be the performers that we want to experience and travel the world playing our music and see the world. 

Andrea

Yeah, quickly, I want to say hello to all the friends who are watching. Hi.

Interceptor Beyond

I wanted to ask you about California, a little bit you know, for us. You’re so far away, exotic, sunny California. And for us, it’s all a dream, you know, California dreaming and stuff. So it means a lot of creative people and musicians come to that place. So I would imagine that there will be a lot of bands, a lot of creative people. And therefore there’s a bit of competition among musicians, you know, it’s really pretty, I don’t know, I’ve never been there. So I’m asking: how is it like?

Andrea

Well, it depends on where you are. Because we live in Oakland, and San Francisco, which is right across the Bay is technically, you know, Northern California. I think the vibe here. I mean, I don’t want to generalise but there’s a difference I think between northern and southern California in terms of not necessarily work ethic for musician, but like, your what your particular drive is, because I feel like a lot of people when they go down to LA, they’re looking for a particular type of lifestyle. And if you live in more Northern California, it’s slightly different. But there is a really strong work ethic out here as far as musicians and music goes, even though California is horrendously expensive. Where we live is one of the most expensive places in the world. It’s a struggle to live here, find housing. And on top of that, you know, they’re musicians, we all, most of us work full time jobs. So we’re doing this because we have so much passion for it. So I think that, in the Bay Area there, the music scene, although it’s changing, I feel, it is so vibrant, and there’s always new bands popping up. And it’s pretty exciting to be here, it is. Maybe 10-15 years ago, there was more going on. But I think, there is a lot of mystique here and I think a lot of it is well deserved. For sure.

Ariana

Just to put in my two cents. You can think about it this way. Southern California, LA, Hollywood. They’re really competitive there. You have to pay to play in a lot of venues. In the Bay Area, San Francisco, Oakland, it’s very community oriented. The venues, the bookers, the promoters, the artists who make flyers and posters and artwork and all these things, were all very familial. And yeah, when I first got here, I lived in San Francisco and then I came to Oakland. But the inspiration is palpable. I’m from the country, in Pennsylvania, I had no inspiration there. And I dropped out of college and just came here. And because I wanted to be a musician, and I knew that this was where the scene was good, and I was right. And it’s still good, even though it’s expensive and the techies are still kind of taking over. They’re still really really great. The scene here is pretty strong. I have to say.

Interceptor Beyond

I wanted to ask about the pay to play thing, because it still exists and it still exists even here.  I don’t want to name venues or names or promoters of course. Yeah, but that was my next question. Is it also happening at your place?

Andrea

It’s happening not really here in the Bay. As already mentioned, it’s very like, once you’re in the scene, once you’re in a band and you’re doing stuff and you get to know everybody. I’m friend, we’re friends with a lot most of the bigger booker’s in the Bay Area. It’s because people are approachable and friendly. Yeah, not to knock on Southern California, there’s quite a lot of amazing bands and things going on down there all the time. But it’s definitely more of that culture down there. If you want to get in front of people[…]

Ariana

When I was in playing with Nik Turner in his touring band in America. Whenever we went to LA the people who worked at the venues would treat us like, shit. They wouldn’t […] treat us like, royalty. But in LA they will not. They don’t kiss ass unless you are hot shit.

Andrea

LA, we love you. We want to come and play in LA. Oh, well, it depends on everyone. I don’t want to generalise an entire huge, huge city under this banner. But it just depends. It depends on who you know, it’s just like, anywhere. You know.

Interceptor Beyond

I know from the film industry from, the screenwriting industry, the people who, especially if you watch some interviews, like, there is a YouTube channel Film Courage. The writers that live in LA and went through the life of LA.  They’re all broken down and kind of depressed and yes, “I’m happy here. I’m really, I’m really happy”. But you know, you to get here, you need to sleep in the car for a couple nights, get beaten down a little bit, you know, mentally or physically. But it’s worth it. It’s definitely the place where you want to be if you want to be, yeah, for sure. I guess, you kind of need to do some grinds, whatever. But I wish it was easier. But what better way, it’s really hard. There’s so many people so many creative people coming there. Of course, there’s more competition. All right. Please tell me, I don’t want to talk all the time.

Ariana

Yeah, I was just gonna say we sometimes lament the fact that,  in other parts of the world, musicians can just live and exist and have a good quality of life just playing music as a career. But here, it’s so much harder to establish yourself as a professional musician when you’re starting from nothing. But I talked to someone about it once who is European and he said to me, well, the fact that you have to work harder, ultimately makes you stronger. So I think that even though we have to work our asses off and work full time jobs and all these things to get where we want to go at the opportunities that we want, of our dreams. Ultimately, we’re stronger for it anyway.

Andrea

I mean, the grass is always greener, right there’s, like, pluses and minuses to everything and you know.

Interceptor Beyond

What you say is, exactly what people think about California here, the United States you know, there people can live just by doing what they love, being a musician. But now we can hear that pretty much everywhere. I mean, it depends. It depends what kind of musician you are, in what music genre your classical, even sub genres, metal for example.
Is there some predominant music genre that dominates more in your area?

Andrea

Oakland is known for its metal. I feel, right now, especially more extreme metal. Would you agree?

Ariana

Yeah. When I first moved here, like nine years ago, it was a lot of stoner and lot of doom, a lot of sludge. Really good stuff. And now I feel that there’s still a lot of black metal and extreme metal and stuff. But there’s also more really good hard rock. And, 70s and 80s inspired rock. I think a there’s a good amount. I don’t know, there’s some. Yeah, there’s people are doing really interesting things with electronic music here, too. Really, really cool electronic music, really cool experimental music. There’s a whole range of other genres to appreciate. And I feel that the people here, they’re not just into one genre. So when I first moved here, it was, metal, metal metal. But now I see people getting into and appreciating and going to all different kinds of shows.

Andrea

Yeah, there’s lots of strong subcultures and seeing here is that you have like extreme metal and then more like traditional metal. You have a lot of great electronic music. And there’s a really strong punk scene here. Really huge punk scene. So there’s kind of something for everybody here. And all the scenes are pretty, pretty strong, I think. Yeah, that could be wrong. But from what I see from my, from my lens and perspective.

Interceptor Beyond

All right, cool. Let’s get back to your band. So you decided to form a band, right? And you released a demo in 2018. Right? 

Andrea

That’s right, we released a four song demo. 

Interceptor Beyond

And what’s interesting about it is that you released it as a tape, an audio cassette, right? 

Andrea

Yes. Originally cassette and you know, obviously digitally online, too. 

Interceptor Beyond

Yeah, but it’s a little bit of an odd choice, considering that it was in 2018. Right. So it was not as popular, as right now. Now it’s hotter. Probably. How was it actually?

Ariana

There were a lot of tapes flying around at least, I think, in the Bay Area. Tapes have been a thing.

Andrea

Yeah, tapes are definitely becoming a hotter and hotter commodity. I’ve noticed. I mean, I keep up a lot with music news and industry stuff. So I know in the past couple years it’s definitely cool and trendy again to do tapes. But you know, we were like pretty much officially sold out of those tapes. So we did pretty okay. Yeah, it was also cheaper, to put it out in cassette, then vinyl. And you know, just to have something physical to sell at shows was super fun. And it just sounds good. I think just things sound really good. 

Ariana

I think people are just really into all different kinds of mediums of throwback shit. Throwback fashion, throwback with tapes, and vinyl and all that kind of stuff. I feel like that there’s a growing culture of people just wanting all this old stuff.

Interceptor Beyond

And what people usually use to listen to those tapes?

Ariana

In a car, old cassette player or you find a boombox.

Andrea

We have a stereo that has a tape player. 

Interceptor Beyond

Why I’m asking is because I’ve been […] local community because I’m always researching music industry. And I’m checking out the United States, what’s hot there. And it usually comes here, but a couple years later, so cassette tapey, they exist here, but they’re not as hot as at your place. Here CDs still exist, still a big thing. I haven’t seen that you released any CDs before. You only did tapes and digital.

Andrea

We have CDs of our demo. And it was funny because it really depends on the community. And this is a trend that I noticed, I don’t have the data to back it up or anything. But I’ve noticed that in places that are not major cities, like I guess small cities, I guess if you’d call them v cities or whatever, that people ask for CDs more like will. Occasionally will go to this small city called Nevada city which is a great community up there and so many people asked us for CDs at the next time we went up there we pressed a bunch of CDs to sell. So it’s interesting. I’ve noticed other places too, where I don’t know what it is. And maybe I’m wrong. But like places that are smaller, smaller cities and towns, they want CDs and like bigger cities like Oakland, LA, wherever they want, you know, they want vinyl.

Interceptor Beyond

I started noticing a new trend, which comes from the Scandinavian countries, from Finland.  that CDs are becoming hotter, because it becomes a collectible item, especially if it’s like an old band. Some CDs from Japan or Germany have special pressing. So there is a future for CDs just saying like with tapes, oh, just depends, I guess, on your local community. What’s in demand?

Andrea

Yeah, that’s, that’s good for us to know, whenever we get to Europe will press a bunch of CDs.

Interceptor Beyond

I think in Austria, I think I checked last year, the statistics. Austria is big on CDs still, you know, among other European countries? Well, not sure. But CDs are still a thing, let’s say like this. So yes, definitely bring CDs. And so you released this demo version, and I read an interview that after that, you decided to keep it slowish, not rush into finding a label or something. Because you wanted to keep it slow. Can you expand on that? Why?

Andrea

Yeah,  it’s really important for us, whoever we’re going to be working with that we’re on the level with them. We’re the type of band that we like to make very intentional decisions, what we do, whom we work with. We don’t like rushing into things. That kind of contradicts my personal personality. But as a band, it’s true. As a band we like to process things and deliberate on things and things like that. Because ultimately, we want to make sure that our music is getting represented in a really true and honest and exciting way.

Ariana

I mean, ultimately, we, Dre knows so much about music marketing, and branding, and all these things that we felt that we were self-sufficient enough, and we didn’t need a label to do all those things for us, because we can do it well ourselves. So why should we kind of go out and try to negotiate? When we put so much energy into our art, we have a very clear vision of what we want the artwork to look like, what we are looking to look like, what we want our branding to be like, we didn’t need anybody else to do that for us, we figured we could do it better. So we wanted to wait and see if there was someone out there some label out there that was really, really hard working, shared our vision, really believed in us, was kind, considerate, nice to work with, a friend, and it takes time to find that.

Andrea

The label that we’re currently working with Seeing Red, run by this really great, great guy named Tommy, has been really wonderful, so far, fantastic to work with. And that I guess that would be my piece of advice for anybody and bands out there watching this or watch this in the future is that, really, honestly, the best thing that you want, the most important thing you want to do is really build your own voice, build your own story, figure out what you want to do what you want to say, not just musically and creatively, but just aesthetically in everything before you pursue trying to build relationships with a record label, or with whoever in the industry because the stronger your voices and the more that you know yourself, the better time you’re going to have more negotiating power and you’re just, you’re gonna feel more confident about your, your own your presentation, and, and all of that. And when you do, then you can start building like, you know, stronger and healthier relationships rather than doing it out of desperation or whatever.

Ariana

Ultimately, even if you’re working with a label, there’s a lot of work that you still have to do anyway. To get people to notice you and to get your people listening to your music and paying attention. Like you have to convince people consistently, on a consistent basis, why they should take the time to listen to your shit.

Andrea

Just because you could sign doesn’t mean you stop working. You’re working even harder.

Ariana

Labels, don’t labels don’t do a ton, ton ton of stuff that they used to do. They just don’t.

Andrea

They don’t have the money or the personnel. 

Ariana

Labels are not going to want to invest any money in your band unless they see that you work your asses off.

Interceptor Beyond

Exactly. That’s what I’ve been talking about for a long time. That’s why I’m asking you because you’ve been through this process by analysing how you like, how you were doing with the demo that you were touring, I knew that you will answer like that. So I don’t need to repeat myself. Exactly.

Andrea

So true. You gotta prove yourself a little bit before anybody’s like, wants to sink their energy, time and money into you. Because they want to make sure they get a return on investment. And that makes total sense. You know, like, 30 years ago, record labels for throwing money at bands. But the industry is so different. Now, you got to stand on your own two feet first, before somebody is really gonna want to push you up even further. 

Ariana

Yeah, it doesn’t matter how great your music is, you could be the best band in the world. But if you don’t have an Instagram, or you never post on it, and you don’t do photo shoots, and get your image out there, and interact with the world, then the world is not going to interact with you. And labels are not going to want to work with you. They’ll work with a different band that’s more motivated, that might not have as good of music, but they still have good energy.

Andrea

Yeah, you got to wear multiple hats these days. And a lot of people don’t want to hear that. But, honestly, that’s what you got to do. Again, it comes down to solid music and incredible work ethic. And if you have that, you could do whatever you want to do with music, honestly.

Ariana

And one last thing I’ll say about this is that we do approach our band as a business. And we are artists, we’re very creative people. And we want to be creative for our careers for our main crews for the rest of our lives. But we also have to be business minded. And there’s so so much we can do with every human walking around with a little computer in their hand and all kinds of apps to help you and support you. We can do this as creatives, whether you do art, or filmmaking or music, you have to be business minded if you want to reach people, and you want your art to be experienced. So I mean, you can’t just be an artist, you also have to learn this stuff. But it’s really easy to learn. You go to YouTube University, watch some videos and take the advice and just do it.

Andrea

Yeah, I don’t want to ruin the magic for anybody to talk about “bands talking about business, that’s so whatever”. 

Interceptor Beyond

No, no, no, no, no, no, you should, I should ruin the magic, you should ruin the magic because there’s too much bad magic. This is good magic, what you’re talking about. This is the real.

Ariana

In this world, at least in America, they’re not throwing money at artists, the way they used to. The arts and culture are not invested in. So you have to do it for yourself. We have to fight to keep the culture delicious and new and fresh and vibrant. Because civilizations have crumbled and died without art. We have to take the responsibility to keep creating and keep pushing it out there so that people have access to it. And they can relate to it and they can understand their world. Yeah, well, exactly.

Interceptor Beyond

Yes. People always forget that it’s the music industry. It’s show business. Half of this is business. Maybe you don’t like it. But it’s not that hard. As you said, you can figure it out. You can. And if there are four people in a band, at least or three for; each person can have responsibility for each platform, booking.  By the way, you did your booking yourself, right? I guess.

Andrea

Yeah. We were planning on doing more out of town shows and then the pandemic hit. So  we are next, our next step is to start playing more regionally. Once you know things are really back into full swing. And this is our personal intuition and the advice of our record label too is to start sort of building it out from the Bay Area. So right now as of now, we do our own booking. It’s really easy locally, though, because usually we get asked, we don’t have to. Usually we get invited to play things, which is really cool. And yeah, I think you know, obviously in the near future as we look out more regionally, we’ll probably do it ourselves unless somebody wants to hook it up. We can work out something but that’s just kind of how it goes. That’s just usually how it is. You do it yourself first and then a booking agent might take interest and start working on that relationship. So yeah, as of now it’s pretty DIY in our world.

Interceptor Beyond

Yeah, it’s a standard process for each band, you start you’re on your own, then you get to a certain point that you can’t physically be doing this, because you’re so busy. And then the booking agent comes in, the manager comes in, then the label comes in. And then you need the lawyer, always get a lawyer, if you need to sign a contract. That’s what we know from movies at least.

Andrea

We highly recommend having a lawyer, we work with one and it is so important to have, somebody look over your contracts for you because you want to protect your your music and your livelihood. And you want to make sure you’re getting the best deal and it’s business baby. That’s what business you know, at the end of the day.

Ariana

You’re putting so much energy and money and time into making music and making albums. You’ve got to make sure that you’re protecting yourself and protecting your art. Most people don’t know how to look at a contract and really understand it. So going over with the lawyers, pay the money, play a few shows, three shows put the money towards the end, that’s probably going to be enough for a lawyer to go over the goal of our contract with you a few times. So it’s worth it.

Interceptor Beyond

How did Seeing Red Records? Who approached Who?  How did you find it? A little bit about that. Because for many artists, they think about labels and labels. They don’t think about do it yourself. They want to get signed, but it’s just a next step. Can you expand on that a little bit?

Andrea

How we developed a relationship with seeing red records? 

Interceptor Beyond

Yeah.

Andrea

I don’t know exactly how it happened, but, or who fallen whom on social media, but it really started with just us seeing each other like game recognise game, as they say, like, seeing each other on social media. I was looking at Tommy’s roster and sort of the things that he was doing, and what the, where he was able to take bands in terms of, you know, good PR, and things like that. And I was like, Oh, this is cool. So after the initial stage of us liking each other’s posts, and commenting and that sort of thing started like, turn into having like a DM conversation. And at one point, I was just like “Hey, we have this record, you know, it’s already it’s done, it’s mixed and mastered, we’re looking for somebody to put it out.” And he was “Hell yeah, let me listen to it”. And he got really excited about it and immediately started having, we start having conversations about, like, this is these are the things that I can provide for you. And we’re like, that’s awesome. These are the things that we’ve done. And it was just this really awesome dialogue. And then we eventually had like a zoom call with him, we worked at a contract and since then, it’s just been really awesome premiere. He’s been able to get us on Brooklyn Vegan and Cult Nation. And we’re gonna have a premiere on Decibel Magazine this week, I think, fingers crossed. And so he’s been able to do some really cool things like that with us. And also just all around being really transparent. And hardworking person, like, this label is still pretty, you know, I guess compared to other a lot of other indie labels like pretty small, relatively new, but it just got a really strong drive. And I can definitely see his label just continuing to grow exponentially in the future. And that was exciting for us that where we’re at in the stage of our game is like, we’re excited to like grow with this label and kind of see where we can take it and how far we can take it on this particular platform. Yeah, it was very natural. It was very natural, how it all happened.

Interceptor Beyond

Key points there are that you establish a connection on social media. it’s all clicked together. I know this label because one of the bands I did an album cover for them and they’re also on that record label, the Scream of the Butterfly band. Yeah, I did the cover for them. So when I saw Seeing Red, like whoa, cool. We have a connection. And now let’s talk about the your new album that’s coming out on Friday, July 9th. As soon as I discovered you on social media, the first thing I saw was an Instagram. I saw the album cover, right? I was like “awesome!”. Totally awesome. I will check out out the music. I checked out the music. Freakin awesome. And then the rest is history. Can you please tell us more about the direction because there’s a history behind the cover, the whole characters that’s on the cover a little bit expand on that.

Ariana

Where do we begin, where we start, I think that it all originated because Melanie, our bass player, and Dre and I were the three original members of the band. And we were doing a lot of magic together, we were all getting into Shadow Work. So we were doing a lot of exploring our shadow sides individually. And there is an alchemical expressions solutio. Or it’s actually solvate at coagula, which is the idea that you take your shadow side, and your conscious side, your ego, and you combine them so that instead of rejecting parts of your ego and parts of yourself that you think are bad or naughty or unacceptable. You just own that shit. And you own your evil side and you own your dark side and you coagulate all of that together, psychologically, and then you become the whole person that you are because otherwise if you don’t incorporate your shadow, you’re really just half of a person filled with judgement of the other half of yourself. Right? Okay, so that being said, we were in conversation about this kind of thing in an ongoing way. And when we started writing music together, and all the three of us, we kind of had those ideas in the back of our minds. And so we decided that we wanted to call the album solutio because solutio has to do with the Solvay disillusion, or dissolve, dissolvement dissolving, and coagulum, which is that coagulation, your shadow and conscious self. So yeah, solutio has to do with that. And then when it came to the characters, we were working with Janiece Gonzalez, who is another amazing musician from the Bay Area. She’s a wonderful singer, she was in Wild Eyes for years. And she also is a brilliant artist, and sculptor, and she wanted to work with us and do a photoshoot with us where we were all came up with our own characters. So she brought her ideas. And we brought our ideas and just established basically archetypes, every member of the band had an archetype that they’re representing, because we’re shy about using our personal image all the time, but it is necessary, but we thought maybe if we can bring a character for each of us an archetype for each of us, then it’s kind of like an illustration of something otherworldly. And another way for us to be creative.

Andrea

We got to work with Janiece. Yeah. Like I mentioned, a really amazing artist, makeup artist, and a really amazing photographer in the Bay Area as well, Rob Williamson, and it was just like this really amazing experience, and the photos turned out really well. And it was like, well, we absolutely have to use this for the album. Like it goes together so well. So, as far as the aesthetic, like no artistic aspect of the album. I think Ari gave a really fantastic explanation.

Interceptor Beyond

You know, like the story behind the you know, how it was created, you know, the visuals, because it’s, it’s deep. That’s it comes from inside, you know, this inner stuff is really important. It’s a unique thing. That’s because when you see it, you already know that, alright, just a photo, you know, that something deep there, you know, I want to check it out. And that’s what’s really cool about it. And you wrote for each character a huge biography I think I saw on your social media, are you bringing this to the stage, also, you’re gonna play with this with a theatrical part?

Andrea

You know, I think it’d be just where we’re at in terms of like our band trajectory, it would be pretty difficult to be in costume, and I don’t think we’re necessarily a costume band or anything like this. This is like a concept for doing for this album. And I think by the next, you know, by our full length, we’re gonna have even different take on things and different sorts of things that we want to express. Maybe some elements of the, of the costuming, and future shows and stuff, but probably not all of the getups that says I would be quite a lot of prep work for us.

Interceptor Beyond

I want to ask about the album itself. The whole trend is to release singles, singles, singles, and then maybe collect them into an EP and you decided to go with the album. What was the decision behind that?

Andrea

Well, we did release two “living on” and “California”. So those are like two singles off of the record. I mean, we could have probably broken it down to having every single song in the record being the single, but a couple of the songs on the album are more lengthy, are pretty lengthy, they would be pretty long to be a single. And I know that rock and roll audiences have a slightly longer attention span. A lot of the songs are meant to be listened to one after the other. And I know that’s a little bit dated, in today’s streaming single world. But I mean, I’m personally open to that in the future of, you know, doing something where we release the singles and then have it presented as a full package. That’s definitely not off the table for me personally.

Ariana

Our idea with doing a six song EP, instead of a full length, was that we were doing incremental releases, instead of going from a four song demo to like a 10, or 12 song full length, so we thought we’ll do an EP. Will release a couple singles leading up to promote it. And in the meantime, we’re working on what our next album is going to be, is probably going to be a full length. 

Andrea

There is a certain single aspect to this album, and that we are doing a music video for every song on this. So we’ve really, we’ve really swell ready, and then when, soon after the EP is out on Friday, we’re going to be doing another release of another video on it. And then probably month later, video after that. So in that sense there’s like a video single aspect to this album. And each video is kind of has its own flavour. We thought about doing that a long time ago, but especially with pandemic, “we don’t know when we’re gonna play shows. So let’s just do a bunch of videos.” And so we’ve been filming those for I don’t even know how at this point. We’ve been working on it for almost a year.

Interceptor Beyond

So you have all those videos Ready? Ready to go?

Ariana

Yeah, most of them are done.

Interceptor Beyond

So you kind of know already what you’re going to do after the release on Friday, you know, you have kind of a plan?

Ariana

We used a content calendar too. All these things I’m talking about. I learned from her by the way, but if you want to learn more about stuff, definitely follow her on social media. But

Interceptor Beyond

Give the name of the Instagram if you want people to follow on instagram.

Andrea

Shout out of that. I appreciate that. hesherhustle. It’s like DIY branding stuff from that perspective of a DIY artist.

Interceptor Beyond

Everybody follow!

Oh, that’s so sweet. Thanks, guys. Thank you, specifically, Arthur. Appreciate that. By the way, I would love to chat with you more one on one about this because we have a lot of tough stuff.

Interceptor Beyond

Absolutely

Ariana

What I wanted to say is that, because if you want to be business oriented and business minded with your music and your art, creating more content is the best thing to do. So we knew that even though we couldn’t get out and promote the new music live, we would have videos which I love. Everybody loves watching videos. And Instagram really has become, according to Instagram, a video platform instead of a picture platform now. Keep things are very video oriented these days. So we thought, okay, let’s make videos. And then we’ll have lots of content to ride out throughout the promotion of the record. And after we release the record too. So we just have this, we’re just like riding the wave of content. It’s like a whole, it’s like a whole plan. It’s definitely part of like a big overarching plan. And then by the time we’re done writing out all of the content and videos and everything from the EP, we’re already going to be ready to go into the studio and record the new album and come up with all new ideas for that, too.

Andrea

Yeah. Which we will be releasing singles off of that one first. For sure.

Interceptor Beyond

That’s awesome. What’s your experience with TikTok?

Andrea

I am, you know what, I have been thinking about it for so long. And I’m just like, oh my god, I’m still trying to get it. LIke to focus on doing a release for us. And then also, YouTube shorts, too. Those are the things right now that I’m focusing on. I would love to get into the TikTok world. I would need more time in my day. I think eventually, when that sits somewhere we’re going to need to be. But yeah, it’s just all these platforms. It’s just I feel like just choosing just choosing a couple and going for it and building your following there. 

Interceptor Beyond

Jumping over what I’m planning to do right now, for example, with interviews that we’re having right now, I’m going to chop it into clips and pieces, I’m going to take it everywhere. And I’ll upload it to YouTube, and then upload clips of you talking about the music industry, to places like TikTok and Instagram stories and stuff. We’ll see how it goes. Should go fine. From what I know. It’s a way to make content if you don’t have any, have an interview, talk to your band members, interview other band members, chop it up, posting everywhere.

Ariana

It’s kind of fun to come up with ways to create content, because I see bands, for example, band Lucifer. They did. 

Interceptor Beyond

Yeah. Love them!

Ariana

Yes, love them too.

Andrea

They just got it down. Just like, perfect. Yeah, I really respect that. I really respect that.

Ariana

Yeah, like, they did a series of Instagram posts where each band member was talking about one of their favourite record. And it was like, I think they did videos too corresponding videos where they would talk about what they liked about and stuff like that, and what, how it came into influence their music and stuff. And I thought that was so cool. I was like, we should do that.

Andrea

There’s so many things you can do. It does take work. And I understand that a lot of expressions, you know, in bands are like, “we’re trying to write an album, and we don’t want to have to do this”. You can do both, make sure the cameras are around, let them roll and and figure out what you want to do stuff later. I think now it’s a band, you have to, like resign yourself to the fact that you’re actually a multimedia artist, you want to be like, like doing stuff these days, just gonna be like, right, we’re a band, but we’re making videos.

Interceptor Beyond

Exactly. You need to be doing everything. You have limitations, of course, but there are like several people in a band so you can figure it out. And each platform requires its own content, so you can’t put videos into Twitter. It doesn’t work like that. But for example, what we discussed today, some phrases can be quoted as tweets and you can tweet them like that. Or it can go into TikTok. I wanted to say that I really like the merch that you have, the T-shirt design that’s really cool.

Andrea

Yeah, we want to step up our game a little bit with this merch. You know, we have stuff from the first release and definitely on my mind is ti being immersed. We have a new t-shirt design that our awesome bandmate Justin actually did for our album cover. And so we’re really excited to have that be available to everybody.

Ariana

Also, if you create a Shopify account, and then you can create a design. So you can take your logo, your artwork. We put it on a pink sweatshirt and people love them. Or like on a white sweater, and I just keep vintage, you’d like to keep vintage in mind. But there’s a lot of options that you can work with on there where you don’t have to actually get screen printed, and buy a bulk amount.

Andrea

It’s a print on demand. 

Ariana

Yeah. And like we want to support our screen printers, but when you’re short on cash, and you want to get more diversity with your designs, like a print on demand things, just kind of cool.

Interceptor Beyond

Yeah, that’s what I’ve been telling up-and-coming bands is that in the beginning, everybody wants to be, like, super awesome musician had their own merch and get to tour and see all the cool stuff. But in the beginning, it’s highly likely that nobody can, nobody will buy the merch because nobody knows you. So don’t spend your money on merch, better spend it on the music or something else. But have the print on demand service ready with your logo, something basic, or maybe a design? And when there are enough people who will be asking you about this really cool merch, then you can print hundreds of T-shirts, if you want, then it becomes economically feasible for the long term.

Andrea

It’s a good way to do it. You can also test out designs, like you might have like three or four things that you’ve come up with, or and you’re just not sure. And then you can see which ones sell the best. And then the ones that sell the best you can actually print out and then sell those on tour. And it’s just like, you’re more likely to sell them because they were more popular.

Interceptor Beyond

You need to test everything. If you don’t know, which colour is that or this, you know, just ask people use those communications. That’s really important.

Andrea

Your audience feels like it’s participating. And it’s like, it’s fun for them, because people love to share their opinions.

Ariana

Surveys on Instagram stories, people love those. I love those. So getting a little bit of market research is kind of fun, and you get interaction.

Interceptor Beyond

For example, we’re talking about data, for example, I know a band, What’s the name? Well, I don’t know the name, maybe I’ll figure it out. completely blank as usual, from Switzerland, right. [The Jackets] And one year ago, I was checking on Spotify, their most popular places where the music is played. And they are from Switzerland and their city what that the most listened city was Mexico, right? Somewhere in Mexico, right? I was like, Okay, cool. Maybe they should, based on the data. And there are a lot of cities in Mexico, maybe they should go on tour there. It was a couple years ago. And then literally one week later, I checked their Facebook account, and they’re on tour somewhere in that region. Probably checking out the data, right?

Andrea

That works. Yeah, it’s good to look at all that stuff. Because then it’s like, “oh, shoot, we have fans”. And this, this is totally random. But we have fans here and then you go. It makes sense. It totally makes sense. It’s good to make decisions that way, or at least have that big part of your consideration of how you tour with all of that.

Interceptor Beyond

I wanted to ask quickly before we run out of time, just two things that people talk about always, you know, it’s Facebook ads. Did you do some Facebook magic and then became famous, right? Do you have experience with those?

Andrea

I have done a little bit of Facebook advertising with this band and I definitely want to do more in the future but there’s been some changes and and the business platforms or whatever they call it down the Facebook so I have to like look for that. But I think that’s it’s a good thing to do if you already have a little bit of hype underneath your band first. Because you like people who are checking you out for the first time. They want to see some social proof that your an actual band or music artist doing something. And then I think you can have more effective as when they have some – I hate to sound so marketing right now – organic heat underneath them from people actually like […] music and supporting them. But I’m for sure, exploring that option for the future. Just If nothing else, just for fun to experiment to see if like it really impacts like our listenership.

Interceptor Beyond

Exactly. And you should. Well, you should sound marketing, because it’s important for people to get used to those terms. Because I don’t want to hear again when somebody saying “I don’t get it. I don’t know how you do this”. Everybody should understand because they will just, I’m just afraid that bands will find some weirdo guy and he says, “Yeah, okay, I’ll give you so many views or followers or whatever. And you just give me your money.” They do this and then nothing happens. Because like, “I don’t know what’s wrong with you. I’m not my problem”. 

Andrea

Yeah, there’s a lot of scammers out there too, I agree. Especially younger, newer fans are like, we just want people to hear us. Okay, that sounds cool. We’ll just like give this person $1,000. And then it’s like, you’re getting kicked off to Spotify or whatever, because you only have bots, listening to your music, you know, and just like stuff like that. So I agree, I think It is important for musicians to educate ourselves about this industry. Good, smart, informed decisions about like, who you know, how, where we put our energy into. And, you know, if we want to hire somebody like all of us, like it’s just so important. 

Interceptor Beyond

I believe that people, they need to slowly educate themselves, even though you don’t need it right now, but at least you need to get the hang of it when the time comes. Because there’s a certain point, later in the development of the band. For example, like the new hot topic is NFT’s, right? Everybody’s talking about the NFTs, NFTs technology and all this stuff. Alright, cool. But what’s important is that, you need to understand a little bit of it so that when the time comes, and you when you sign the contract with the label, and more, maybe, buried inside there will be like some kind of NFT because they already know it. Maybe you don’t understand it, which happened before with streamings. And everything, it’s the same story. But you need to understand a little bit about it. But don’t get too much into it, just keep an eye on everything. Usually, for upcoming events, I just say that. You just need to send messages, not messages, but contact each person or family members, friends. If you want to get followers or whatever, do it in person, establish a connection, and a relationship. Yeah, way, way more authentic. Save your money in the beginning, and then just you know, grind and then you get to the point where you can spend money without thinking too much about it? Yes, I think we’re almost out of time. Where can people reach you? Where should they follow the band Psychic Hit.

Andrea

We are the most active on Instagram. So right here, if you are watching this, and you’re not following us, and you are intrigued, follow us here. We also have a YouTube channel too, that we’re sort of building on slowly. So if you’re in the YouTube world, feel free to follow us there. We’re also on Facebook and Twitter, although a little bit less active there. So if you really want to, like get to know us, follow us here and we post pretty frequently. And we would love to get to know you too. You guys drop us a DM. We are really friendly ban and I’m not just saying that like we are so open to like building awesome, you know, connections with our fans and followers and stuff. So we’re very approachable. And yeah, hit us up whenever, thank you again for the chat today.

Interceptor Beyond

Thank you very much for coming. And I want to need to mention that the name of the Psychic Hit on Instagram is psychic hit psychic underscore hit, right? That’s correct. Yeah. It’s for people who are listening. So you always need to spell it out. And the album is coming out on Friday. And everybody should pre save and follow.

Andrea

Please do and you’re gonna have a chance to win a T shirt. If you go to our link in our bio right now.

Interceptor Beyond

What do people need to do? 

Ariana

Sure. You just go to the link in our bio and follow us on Spotify. If you don’t have Spotify, you can still get into the contest. And then we will pick a winner the day after the release on July 10th.

Interceptor Beyond

Excellent. Thank you very much for coming. Hopefully, see you in Europe. Thank you very much. Have a nice day. Bye.

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