THE SURREALISTS
It would be easy and convenient to label The Surrealists as an art-rock trio with psychedelic influences, but not nearly expansive enough to describe the true nature of their sound. The Surrealists are a project beyond definition.
With an ethos of improvisation and experimentation, The Surrealists capture the free-form, full-bodied sound that can be compared to classic powerhouses such as Rush and Pink Floyd. Founding members Will Feeney, Alejandro Quiles, and Tillio DeBernardi bring a diverse array of influences to their collective drawing board. With inspirations as varying as Herbie Hancock, Björk, Radiohead, and Funkadelic, The Surrealists’s sound is effortlessly transcendent.
Their debut album Vices is streaming tomorrow April 1st.
It started with a text from Will: “You guys are cool, we should make music.” After meeting in high school, Will, Alejandro, and Tillio struck up a creative chemistry that has evolved into a refined, while simultaneously haphazard and improvisational recording process.
Will’s theory-driven melodies kick off the songwriting process. Bringing in fractions of melodies, each song becomes a “Frankenstein” of evolving ideas. Showing up with his guitar, Tillio jams over the beginnings of melodies, explaining that he has to then go back and learn his own parts. Rolling with the flukes, the trio finds their sonic gold when they least expect it- hoping that the tape was rolling to catch it. With Tillio and Will trading ideas and building off of each other, Alejandro sifts through hours of color-coded sounds on recording software. Alejandro, now tasked with decoding the rainbow, brings the magic together in his “half creepy half vibey” basement studio. Alejandro’s experimental production style aims to “connect things that aren’t usually at all related.” Through a combination of Tillio’s improvised guitar lines, Will’s carefully crafted melodies, and Alejandro’s production wizardry, the band aims to create compositions that sound as though they “could’ve been written by a computer program.”
Exploring themes of time, technology, and absurdism, The Surrealists name accurately describes the narratives realized in their music. Their debut album Vices tells a story of “rejecting the need to be loved” through abstract depictions of time in a non-human form. Struck by the words of renowned philosophers, Will speaks about the narrative of “Vallée de l’étrange” being an exploration of the idea that “A broken clock is still right twice a day.”
“This narrative begins in one of those moments, when the broken clock in question has the “right time.” So it essentially kids itself into believing that it has intelligence, that it has agency, and therefore sentience. The narrator of the song acknowledges that the clock is right in this moment, but not about its true nature (“giving out its precious time, and lying to himself about what he can provide”). At this time, the clock is fully immersed in questioning its humanity, addressing the narrator (“Though I don’t know what you are, what keeps me on the wall and keeps us so far apart, or do I just exist on borrowed time?”). In the final verse, however, the hour passes and the clock is once again incorrect, leading it to conclude that it is not, in fact, living. It was created solely to serve one purpose, and it has failed. However, rather than be depressed about this, the clock accepts its flawed reality as simply a broken piece of machinery and continues to be an inanimate object.”
“Everything is totally experimental… even if all i’m saying is fucking stupid.”
Though counterintuitive, The Surrealist’s narrative connection between technology and human nature is spot on. Computers comfortably sit with their complexity, while humans are constantly at war with their existence. In Will’s words, “that’s sort of the beauty I see in computers—they don’t question their nature (for now, at least).” Despite the heady existential themes that The Surrealists explore, their sound can just as easily be enjoyed while staring into space as it can be dissected and analysed. Their spontaneous, spur of the moment approach to music somehow yields complex compositions that sound effortless- a combination most musicians agonize over. And while we don’t know exactly what’s in the secret sauce of The Surrealist’s sound, for now we can sink into our bean bags, dim the lights, and enjoy the sonic view.