Interview: re edition: STEREOSPREAD

1-Where are you from?

Sara Snyder is originally from North Carolina, but she has traveled around the US and Europe and lived in New York City for several years for Graduate school at Columbia University (Manhattan). James Hopkins was born in Connecticut and has lived and travelled all over the world to South America, Central America, the USA and elsewhere. His mother and her family are from Peru. For much of his life, he hailed from Florida.

2-Could you describe the musical project ?

Stereospread is the collaboration of Sara and James. We sometimes collaborate with other artists throughout the world, most notably guitarist Paul Seegers of Assemblage 23. We channel our feelings, thoughts, life histories, and inspirations into this music. With the exception of our concept EP The Ghost and The Grave, we try to write beautiful, “shimmering” music. Sara likes to think of it as creating songs that haunt you.

3-How many albums do you have and what are your influences? Where did you record your Music?

We have 2 EPs released and about two albums worth of material we haven’t officially released yet or have released for free via various avenues (Noisetrade, streaming sites, etc.) Some of our most-played tracks haven’t been released via iTunes yet. They should be within a couple of months though. The first EP is The Ghost and the Grave and the second is The Heart and The Thief. We also have the single, Frozen, which was released via DAGA records in Australia. Our influences are very diverse. A lot of James’s previous work was in the trip-hop, ambient, and shoe-gazer genres. He listened to a lot of Slow Dive, Bel Canto, Archive, and m83. Really though, he listens to every kind of music and studies music production, always looking for things to add to our sound. Sara grew listening to Classic Rock ’n’ Roll and singer-songwriter albums. She studied classical music and jazz extensively in college, where she sang and played trumpet. We record in our project studio at our home in Waynesville, NC, which is near Asheville. 

4-Do interact with other musicians on stage?

We occasionally perform with other musicians, including a cellist, drummers, and guitarists. But typically, we prefer to perform with just the two of us, pairing electronic sequencing with vocals similar to Sbtrkt, Purity Ring, or Royksopp.

5-How this project was born ?

This project was born because Sara and James started dating! We met each other because we were talking about music to a mutual friend online. We’ve made music together since we first starting hanging out.

6- Do you work in the independently way ?

James produces and remixes for other artists around the world. Sara is a teacher for the Cherokee Indians and is working on her doctorate in Ethnomusicology.

7-What are your goals in a short and long term?

We want to finish our new album then go on tour. We also hope to get married in the next year or two — mostly because we want to have a family in a few years.

8-What is your opinion regarding the global economic situation?

It’s hard for us to speak to this question globally. In the United States, we see a huge income disparity between the very rich and the rest of the people. Sara feels it’s because most of the U.S. manufacturing jobs are no longer in the United States. There’s this myth that North Americans believe — that their way of life is better than anywhere else — but that is simply not true. Our citizens too often don’t know the histories that have created the world in which they live, and as a nation we are not very well traveled and exposed to other ways of life. We have loved seeing firsthand how much more efficiently and conscientiously many South Americans and Europeans live. It’s one thing to see it on TV, but another to live elsewhere for a while and experience it firsthand.

Both of us would like to see communities work to strengthen their local economies (as opposed to massive international corporations such as a Walmart). We believe this would greatly increase health and happiness and allow for a more equal distribution of wealth. But it’s hard to navigate and change the worldwide economic system — these structures came out of colonialism and have long histories of inequality and oppression. It often seems impossible to make a difference from the bottom up, but raising awareness is the first step. There are many things that go around social media about inequality and the world’s problems, and I do think that saturating people with information will encourage change.

9-Is this economic bad moment affecting your Project?

We don’t think that the economy is impacting ours or other musical projects. The problem started before the economic downturn. The biggest hurdle for musicians nowadays is that very, very few people actually purchase music any more. It’s simply too easy to stream music for free on Youtube, Soundcloud, and elsewhere. And as an independent artist, you must have your music out there in order to be heard, so you have to accept that hardly anyone is buying it. We remember growing up going to the record store and buying a tape or CD based on the artwork and genre and just hoping we liked it. The discovery was part of it. Now the market is saturated and the value of music is at an all-time low because digital music can be endlessly duplicated - there is no physical value to the music itself. You might purchase an album or song if you really, really love it or want to support the artist, but on the whole, musicians can’t make money from album sales anymore. So, what can we do? We work other jobs and make music when we can. We attempt to get music placed in films, commercials, and TV shows. We try to book great shows and sell merchandise. We team up with visual artists and do multi-media events. We try to think of interesting, bizarre, and absurd ways to get people to listen to our music. It’s a difficult time to be a musician. Just like everyone with a digital camera thinks they are a photographer, everyone with a laptop and some software think they are the next best thing in EDM. But we’ve spent decades training, practicing, and working in music to create the music we make. We hope it shows!

10-This interview, will be read it by people from many countries. What can you say about your self?

Live and let live! We don’t judge anyone else for how they choose to live their life. We are all here on this beautiful earth. We live; we love; we suffer; and we die. We hope our music will invoke a feeling — joy, happiness, sadness, melancholy, nostalgia, etc. — that will connect the listener to a memory, a moment in time. If the sounds we make are one drop in the ocean of human experience, we have joined in the chorus of life.

Interview by: Ariel Fernandez

Foto: Band