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Meet Santamonica, a nice indiepop band from Indonesia.

How are you today?

Fantastic, thanks for asking

The band is actually made up of people who’ve previously been in other bands. How do you think the members’ previous experience influence the music of Santamonica?

Do you mean Iyub? Because I (dita) have never been in a band before. Iyub’s other band Sugarstar (now Direct Action Group) is very different to Santamonica, music wise. He approaches to the songs very differently with Sugarstar, and as far as I know it doesn’t have any major influence to Santamonica music. I could say that those two bands are like two peas in different pods. :)

What are you approaching differently in Santamonica than your other projects?

I think Santamonica music is very intimate, it’s very personal and has feminine touch compared to Sugarstar, as there are only two people involved in the song writing process.

Your last E.P was, in our opinion, one of the best releases last year. Were you satisfied with the E.P? or were there some ideas you couldn’t put on the album?

We never thought of it as one of the best releases, but thank you for saying so. Of course we’re quite satisfied with it, although it only has three songs in it, and yes sometimes we’d criticize ourselves too hard when listening to the materials again and again, like the mixing of the first and second songs are not up to our standard as we did them only in a day. Initially, the E.P was intended as the gifts for our wedding guests, but there’re many people asking us to publish our songs, so we decided to make the e.p as our first release. As for the quantity of the songs, those 3 songs are enough for the e.p because they show how our music is; tad bit bossa nova, tad bit electronic, tad bit pop-ish, and most importantly albeit a little bit personal, the three of them have certain meanings for us; Serenade of Yellow Park is the first song we made together, Please Say Yes was the song that Iyub gave me when he proposed, and Sought and Found is about us together as a couple. So I don’t think we’d want to add more songs to the e.p.

How does the writing process in the band go?

It’s never the same, all depend on our moods. Usually I would ask Iyub to compose a music that has certain ambience or feeling; it could be cheerful, seductive or sad. Then we’d record it in our studio, when the music is done, I’d write the lyrics for it, sometimes the writing process would occur instantly when I listen to the song, and sometimes I could just get my old poems and re-write it to make it fit to the music.

Musically, which bands would you say influence you?

Antonio Jobim, Stereolab, classic Disney soundtracks, well I lost counts on our influences. There’re too many of them. Other than band I would say we got our influences from surrealist arts, film noir, and Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Caroll.

Where did the name Santamonica came from?

Iyub told me he’s been a fan of some Monika records’ bands, like Contriva. So I guess that’s where he got the name from.

Which do you enjoy more, playing live or recording?

Both have different sensation, but for me I’d say recording because there’s where it all started. Playing live is nice too though, as we can interact with the audience and coping with different stage experiences.

What do you think is the benefit from having a female vocalist, who is indeed your wife?

Hahha, this is a tough question. I think because we’re a couple we tend to like the same things; music wise, we like the same bands, and our ideas are very similar. Iyub is a perfectionist and he could be tough to me sometimes during recording, but I wouldn’t get cross to him because I know that it’s for my own benefit, that’d be a different situation if the vocalist is not someone who knows him well. And as for him I think having his wife as a vocalist saves him some troubles, you know like not having to worry that your vocalist’s boyfriend getting jealous to you and forbid her to stay late for recording in the studio, you know all those hassles.

Any last words?

Our full length album will be released this year, and the title is Survivors of the Disco, so please wait! :)

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