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Exclusive Interview: April And The Drift Talk New Single “Item For Sale”

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April and the Drift

There’s so much to talk about “Item For Sale” by April And The Drift. It has a sound so unique and captivating that, once you have started listening to it, you’ll realise it’s filled with pure emotions through intimate lyrics. Who would have imagined that this musical project would be born thanks to an online ad? Well, their music is inspired by so many different styles that it’s not easy to slot them into a genre box. Take a bit of your time to enjoy this exclusive interview.

1 — How are you feeling about the release of your latest single “Item For Sale”?

I feel like it turned out pretty well, it’s always a journey to be happy with the final sound and production of any song since there are so many ways you can do it, and also because we both like to keep a pretty free approach to it. In other words, we like to just keep the feeling as our guide to get us through to the ending, above everything else. If we feel like we’ve captured the feeling both Fidel and I usually end up pretty satisfied.

2 — I noticed there’s an eclectic approach to this song. Can you tell us more about your creative process?

One of my favourite musical quotes ever has always been one by Billie Holiday as she said it so perfectly I think “if it’s got no feeling to it, then, I don’t know what you’re doing but it isn’t music” that’s the main aim of both Fidel and I too, for me in terms of writing it and capturing it in a song, and secondly for Fidel to feel it too, and putting his creative spin on it as well.

He comes from a Jazz background and we both like to keep it as free as possible like good Jazz should be, like Billie said it too so well, I never try to sing a song in the exact same way every time, also when we practice, the main aim is just the feeling, if I tried to make it sound the same way every single time I do it, I feel it’s like Billie said again so well, you’ll be stepping into the danger zone of losing the feeling and if you lose that well, then we must be circus clowns or something because it can’t be music we’re doing anymore. We never really know what genre we’re really doing for that reason too, and I don’t care too much about what you call it really, it’s just a name anyway, we’re just happy when we feel that we’ve captured the feeling and for me as a songwriter, the message of the song I’m trying to convey as well, although the interpretation of it is of course always up to the mind of the individual listener.

3 — Do you plan to drop a music video?

No, not at the moment, although we’re planning on doing that with our next release “Let Your Hair Down” in May and definitely “Waves Brush In” in June. But I suppose nothing is set in stone. Do you think we should?

April And The Drift
4 — What about the lyrics? Is this song based on a personal experience?

Yes. All my songs are inspired by and based on my very real life. Many things inspired this song really, and it’s hard for me to explain apart from how it’s just a feeling. But one specific experience I might feel like adding is how I was sitting on a bench outside school one afternoon, having a herb cigarette, when two pretty young girls dressed in their gym clothes came out from the coffee shop and started taking photographs of one of their newborn babies and themselves, and I couldn’t help but feeling really unnerved by the scenario because it honestly looked like they were treating that baby more like an object than a little human being with its own individual soul to look good on Instagram or Facebook I’m assuming.

It’s again hard for me to explain what it was about their mannerism that gave me that a little bit disturbing feeling in my stomach, but I guess it was just the way they were tossing and throwing it around while doing different poses with their perfectly symmetrically shaped buttocks involved also of course. I think there is a big difference between consciously choosing to belong to someone compared with being born into the situation and being forced into those shoes, especially when you’re too small to understand what’s even happening or being done to you. It can be a really beautiful thing too though, and I think we all need to belong to something or someone we love, to feel happy and fulfilled in life.

5 — Was the making of this song different from others because of COVID-19?

No, not really I suppose if anything I wrote it with more ease than I usually do, as I’ve written songs now for quite a while too without getting too interrupted by a thousand other distractions of life, so I’m in that mindset, which makes it much easier for me to focus on getting inspired by something that attracts me, as well as painlessly completing it; and the COVID-19 kind of allowed us more space than ever to reach the end-product than I think we’ve ever been privileged enough to experience at any time before.

6 — After this pandemic, will you participate in festivals or do shows?

We hope to get there one day before we die. We haven’t really done it before because you need a pretty large repertoire to be able to deliver a live concert but I think we’re getting closer to that target than ever before.


7 — How did you meet each other?

On an online advertisement. Fidel was looking to get better at producing songs and was looking to find some practice dolls for it, and I always loved to write songs from a pretty early age and thought it sounded fun to get some of them recorded for free. I remember the first time I sang into a microphone what a scary strange experience it was compared with just singing to myself on the piano. Little did I know he was going to end up becoming my tutor in music, and some other things, but mainly in singing and songwriting too. I had to teach him to get back to his earlier roots of music though as well as he had been caught up a lot in doing robotica “modern music” I like to call it. It took me a year I think to convince him to do just a pure acoustic arrangement for one of my songs if not longer after we met up again two years later after I had finished a bachelor’s degree in psychology.

8 — What’s the funniest anecdote you have from producing music?

He once produced some dogs barking, cats meowing and some magpies chirping and put it together as an assemble for the animals.

9 — If you were not musicians what would you be?

Garbage police officers possibly. Or some humble servants of the animals of some kind.

10 — What else can we expect from April And The Drift for the next months?

Our next release is a Reggae release, it’s more classic Reggae this time than our previous stunts, although Fidel has of course put his own artistic spin on it. Then in June we’re hoping to finally get a Folky acoustic guitar song recorded to our liking, one I’ve written now a long long long time ago but we just can’t seem to get it right each time we try. We’re halfway there so there’s hope for the second part of it. In July, we’ve got some more Jazzy Reggae coming. And in August, surprise, we got some more Reggae coming as well, a little bit gypsy Fidel says it is. In September we’re hoping to get an old one I’ve written now almost a year ago, Paperback Station, finally completed to the liking of both of us as well. I think it’s Jazz but I’m not sure Fidel agrees with me.


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Hi, my name is Erick Ycaza. I have a BA in Advertising & Graphic Design. This blog is to provide you with daily music news and share my personal style.

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