Following the release of their uniquely creative new EP To Genesis, we caught an interview with songwriter and artist duo Event Horizon, to find out more about the project, their composing process, their journey so far, and their plans for the future. Here’s the conversation in full.
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Hi guys, thanks for the chat! How are things where you are right now?
Sandro : Hi, thanks for having us. Well, now we are on our second quarantine here in France so we have a lot of free time that we use to work on our instruments and promote the release of our very first project together.
Greg : Currently locked, looking forward to perform our songs in front of
people !
Congrats on the new EP. Brilliant music from clearly talented musicians and composers – is this your debut release, and what first prompted you to start making music together?
G : Well, we met during our first year of graduate school and it seems that we were more interested on talking about our favourite bands than in paying attention in class. So we started our first band with 4 members but we really sucked in song-writing at the time, so we just played what our bass player wrote for us.
S : Our very first demo as a two-man band was quite disappointing. It would be safer for everyone to keep it secret and unreleased. So, yes, this is our debut EP and hopefully not the last.
How did you decide upon the band name?
S : The event horizon is a boundary beyond which nothing can escape a black hole. It’s similar to the commitment we’ve made in the band, we’re investing a lot of time to make it work and I feel like it would be impossible to take back those efforts today.
G : I think that we enjoy space related things too much..
What’s the project all about – what does To Genesis mean for you, and what are the threads between tracks?
S : Like countless bands, our musical journey has not been easy and we decided to use all our experiences to write a story. This EP talks about the struggles a person have to fight to achieve his or her goals.
G : We had a lot of doubts about our ability to make good music one day but the EP managed to evolve along with our confidence in song-writing.
Given the multi-layered, sci-fi-esque style of certain songs, and then the
sudden hard-rock core and dash of rap from ones like Pointless, SOS, Secret of Bliss, how do you work as a duo – who plays what, and how do you overcome creative disagreements?
G : That’s what happens when you’re not capable of taking any decision..
No, more seriously, even though we like to exchange instruments on stage and in the studio, we each have our own specialties. This allows us to bring out our individualities in our songs, which we then merge to create something different. It’s kind of a miracle that we managed not to kill each other in the process (we already killed each other twice, literally).
S : Greg is the drummer and pianist of the band but he has more electronic influences than me. We often write songs using what he finds while exploring synths and noises. I personally add the heavy part with the bass and the guitar, but we write the lyrics and work on the melody together.
There’s a very selective use of voice or lyrics on this project – how do you decide when to include lyrical guidance, if at all?
S : We really enjoy the use of vocals in our songs, whether it’s singing or rap, but I personally believe that it doesn’t necessarily have to be the most important part in transmitting musical emotion. The instrumental parts can be just as emotionally charged as in movies scores for example.
G : Look at progressive-rock bands, most of their songs have no lyrics and yet, they’re great. Unfortunately, you need some serious skills to be able to do that and succeed..
On Beyond The Limits you talk quite openly, in an upfront, spoken segment, about happiness and longing. Was the creative process therapeutic for you, and what do you hope listeners take away from this?
G : Therapeutic, not really.. I always try to convince myself that the world can be a lot of fun and full of possibilities, but I’m also realistic and I’d like people to realize that whatever their problems with the world, you can always overcome them by changing the way you look at it.
I’m no fool and I know that no one can change the world (not without a large amount of money anyway), but we can each choose to change the way we look at it.
S : This song is really based on the piano and I like the idea of keeping it simple. This is a great turning point in the EP protagonist’s mind, there’s a lot of positivity in the message. We used a lot of tracks to create this huge choir with my vocals at the end too !
Who or what would you say first inspired you to create in this way?
G : Personally my taste for music evolves around metal bands (Porcupine Trees, Rammstein, ..) and electronic music. I discovered the synthesizers and their huge potency recently so now I tend to get bored easily when there’s only drums and guitar, I think our songs needed to be more than that.
S : Twenty One Pilots and others bands like Royal Blood showed us that it was possible to create great music as a « two-man-band ». And even though they influence us in our work, we wanted to create something that was inspired by them but on a different path, our own. This was really important to us in our creative process.
I, for example, usually rely on the music of Linkin Park or Muse to create the guitar riffs and sounds.
Have you performed live much, and how does the live experience compare to that of sharing fully produced music that people can listen to instantaneously, across the globe?
S : We started to work together two years ago and we still managed to get the best idea in the world at the worst time : to be ready for live shows in 2020 during the epidemic. So, obviously, we haven’t been able to do a show yet. These two years have been rich in studio experience, as we built one at home to record our EP, and it’s still nice to know that our music is now accessible worldwide.
G : We still believe that the full potential of our band will be revealed live though, can’t wait.
What’s your plan of action going forwards as an indie act?
S : During the first French quarantine, we tried to read as much as possible about musical marketing and how social media works. This has helped us understand and find the best ways to share our music online but we are still very eager to perform on stage.
Is there anything else we should know?
G : Maybe we didn’t talk enough about wine in this interview..
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Download or stream the EP To Genesis vis Bandcamp or here. Check out Event Horizon on Facebook, YouTube & Instagram.
