Hello everyone! Drigo here from Music to Open Another Door about to share some words I had with Riley.
As you may know Malibu Soma is our band of the week and I couldn't stop myself (again) from asking some questions to know more about them.
Hi Riley! Thanks for taking your time to answer some questions and I hope you would enjoy this time too. To begin, can you tell us more about your story guys, how did you land on this project? what were your previous projects (together or not)?
“Drew and I have been friends since freshman year of high school and played in a couple different band set ups involving mostly the same people. I started doing this Malibu Soma project just under my name about 9 months ago and then since Drew was on a lull in school he told me he was interested in really going in on this project so we changed the name to Malibu Soma and went from there.”
This is one of the questions I love to ask. As part of the audience, I can feel a solid sound building up and makes me want more from it. As the artist, How do you guys feel about Malibu Soma?
“Thank you! I worked really hard on trying to find a sort of cohesive sound and I think the next record will be even more of a unified sound -- I love lots of different genres of music so it was hard to kind of settle on one, but I think it ended up more of a fusion than anything which I'm happy about.”
I love that answer which takes me to my second favourite question on my interviews. On your submission and also before this interview, we talked about your influences. I perceive your sound quite original, but with the great feature of accentuating some of the styles of the people you admire. Actually, I don't feel "accentuating" is the word, it's more adding a bit of tribute in your sound. How do you guys feel this? tell us more about your idols
Yes a tribute is very real, especially with "You & Me". Daft Punk, Tame Impala, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Marvin Gaye... all of these artists have sounds that to me are like seriously unparalleled and I wanted to like show my love for them by writing what I would think of as like "my version" of some of their songs. I read in a book somewhere that something to the effect of "if you take inspiration from one person, everyone will say that you're the next whoever. but if you take inspiration from a hundred people, everyone will say you're so original" which is something I try to create by.
Just Fascinating, I really love this answers as we now we can listen again to your music and get a new feeling. Loved it!
Now this are the easy questions for me to ask, What is your goal for the rest of 2018? New Album coming soon?
“Goal for the rest of 2018 is to play shows! Drew has been on tour for the last few months with up and coming punk rock band The Regrettes and I'm just starting a US tour with bedroom pop band No Vacation so we've been really busy but are both dying to start playing our own live shows. Also yes new music is for sure coming soon, I have like 4 or 5 songs already that I've been working on that I'm really excited to share soon.”
Any gigs date you might want to share? Album shop? What’s the on this?
“Our music is just available to stream/buy on all the major streaming sites so that's kind of all we have right now.. I'm not really focused on making any money on it all now, I just want people to hear it and want to come to our shows once we book some.”
And finally, Riley thanks again for this time and I would like you to close this interview with some words for the audience.
“To whoever is reading this, I implore you to look for music that goes beyond what is mainstream. Find artists who are really making things because they're passionate about the music and the creation process, not because they want clout or money or whatever. There are so many amazing artists out there that are struggling to make ends meet because the big blogs or labels aren't giving them a chance because they're not a surefire money maker like these trashy money-machine artists. I'm not saying there isn't any value in these artists because I think every artist has some value in them but all I'm saying is sometimes give the little guys a chance and go out of your way to support indie or non-industry music because I think you might be pleasantly surprised with what you find.”