Interview: SLMBR
New York based band, SLMBR, is the brainchild of Nick Sossi Romano, John Africano and Kristian White. After being in various bands, the three came together to form SLMBR. With their sound being rooted in alternative rock, they tend to break from that mold to include influences of jazz, pop and emo. A lot of the band’ songs tackle themes of mental health, reflection of self and the human experience.
With their debut EP, Endless Daydream, the band investigates these themes further. Through six tracks, SLMBR addresses the cyclical state of ego, the value of relationships, and the pressure to be perfect, ultimately leading to self-acceptance. The EP showcases a variety of styles ranging from pop-like lead single “Waking Nightmare” to the jazz-influenced rhythms in “Shapeshifter”.
SLMBR is not your average band, and continues to push their sound further and further venturing into different genres and soundscapes.
Read below to read more about them and their music!
So guys take a lot of inspiration from jazz, pop and emo. is there anything specific from those genres that stick out to you to help with your music?
Nick - “before the other 2 answer, I think we try to draw on as many things as possible and I think that's why we work so well as a band. When I met John, I realized he has his own influences and when Kristian joined the band he had his own separate set of things that he's inspired by. That’s one of the reasons I think we gel so well. I'm influenced by alternative rock, indie pop. I have some very strong love for classic folk albums and classic jazz rock”
Kristian -”Even joining the band itself, has switched up my sound, just from dealing with John coming from his way, knowing how to jam and the technical ques he would give me, so like if he’s saying somethings like a triplet or counting the beats, catching the vibe that nick is going for with his songs and trying to gel with his voice”
John -”Yeah, I'm pretty influenced by rock and a little bit of metal, I don't go too hard you know. But also, I'm in school to be a music teacher, so I’ve also been studying history, music history, that's why Kristian brought up the terminology, I’m nothing more than a dictionary honestly, but yeah, I’m influenced by just as many things as my band mates and its like nick was saying, it's almost like the words that we come up with to describe our sound, is like we are using words that people already know, since we are really an upcoming band, like we are no Justin Bieber. We have our own words to describe our sounds. Its very interesting”
You guys moved around bands a time or two, and being all from New York, how did you guys first meet?
Nick - “John and I started, well we met in college, the first college class i ever took, the first day of school, we were both taking the music history class and I happened to sit next to him in a room full of 45-60 people. We started talking about stuff, I had come off the back of being solo for a while after being in other bands so I was kind of looking for whatever was next. I talked to John after a little while and we were like, ‘Hey you're a bassist? I'm a kind of guitarist and a vocalist, let's figure something out, I think it would be fun’
John -“ We had a friend named David, he was in the band for a little bit before it took off but then he decided it wasn’t his thing, so I was friends with him from high school and little to my knowledge, Nick also knew this kid. So nick said to me ‘oh well I got a house in Howard beach and I met this other kid from my other classes who plays guitar so we should all get to together and jam’ and I’m like yeah sure college jam session and he’s like lets all meet up after our music class we are in together, so we are waiting for this kid and the kid that comes up is my friend from high school and I’m like ‘oh! I know you!’ We all hung out and introduced us to his other friend who played the drums and then me and Nick kind of took off from that little group and that’s how this started’
John - “And how the name became a thing, just me being stupid, it was uh, nick said he had his house in Howard beach and goes, you guys are more then welcome to stay the night if you want, and I said ‘Oh it’ll just be like a little slumber party’ “
Nick -“ And instantly as he said it, I had Spotify open, checking if the name was taken because I was like that’s good enough. It was one of the very few times where I ever had a name, like of a song, album band, ever, something so instantaneous, and realized that it worked.
Kristian - “ So I met nick at ‘Sip this’ , one of the local coffee shops, it was 2019. I didn’t know he played music, he didn’t know that I played music. I happened to tell someone else there that’s how he found out and a show was coming up and he basically just asked ‘hey do you want to play this show? I said ‘Alright, cool I’m down!’ and then played the show, went awesome. and then pandemic hits, kind of slows down the rest of the momentum we had, and then you know, I just , everything gelled with us so that’s when we decided to just make it solidified and they brought me under their wing”
Nick - “It’s been a happy accident!”
So many people are fighting mental health issues nowadays . A lot of your music seems to be based around mental health. What does mental health mean to you guys?
Kristian - “Mental health is super extremely important because before you can do anything or start any job or pursue anything, career dream goal… It all starts with mind set, because if you just go without making sure your mental self is in check, you’ll just be going through the motions and you won't produce results at your full potential. having a good key on where your head is at or even if it's not so solution based, if your just expressing yourself, it would help take some of the weight off your shoulders.
John - “Definitely. I feel like mental health is so often overlooked, its kind of been a generational thing I’d say, like pour generation of humanity is kind of starting to shed light onto it and address it more and I feel like because of that, everyone is so aware of it now with social media and all these outlets that people can use, like we have music, we have music on Spotify that addresses it, touches on these ideologies and I think that is a driving factor for the global realization that mental heath is an issue, and it should not be overlooked and there is a positive aspect to us and so many other people making this music, and our generation, I’m optimistic I’m trying to say”
Nick - “I think John said it really well with it being overlooked. I don’t necessarily always write music for, this sounds selfish, but I don’t really write music for other people, like what comes out at the end is like ‘Hey this is cool! like its actually super positive’ its really like a therapeutic thing for me, it’s a more personal thing, writing the lyrics. You know I’ve struggled with a lot of mental health issues, I’ve been in dark places and I’ve been in more positive places, the last couple of months I felt super awesome. It's been a really nice feeling. The places that we’ve put some of the other songs out, came From a range of different sources so it is a personal thing, a therapeutic thing. I always find that writing music helps me kind of get out something I would never even want, be able to verbalize. Sometimes I write lines that I don’t even think I could actually put into real words, but I can sing them and they sound more like what I can say to someone. It’s an interesting experience and when people come up to me and say like ‘hey I felt that song super relatable’ I’m like I never wrote it to be that way, its not like I Intended that but the fact that it is is super powerful to me and that’s one of the best compliments people can give me as a songwriter and us as a band and that they can really connect with the songs and I think that’s the whole point of writing music is to have an emotional response”
If you could play one iconic place anywhere in the world, where would you play?
John - “I’m gonna pass”
Nick - “ I have one that just comes to mind because , I earlier right before the pandemic, like in January, I did a film in Utah, right near were salt lake city is, and I would love to travel the whole country, but specifically because I went there I would love to go back. It was so nice and I feel like I could be there and write a whole album there, so I would love to just do a show back over there would such a cool creative space”
What is your get away from the world?
Kristian - “ I would say journaling. that’s been a huge, I’ve always been into writing that’s makes me very excited about the band in general because, we all have like other hidden talents that we really didn’t cultivate all together yet and its like every rehearsals literally growing and growing , but writing shams always been a thing of mine, just not so so much a form of poetry but I haven't journaled since like elementary school and I remember I use to do that a lot and I see that going back to mental health, because when we wanna see how we look physically, we look in the mirror but there’s not really a mirror for what’s going on in your head so journaling has been a form of that. After a course of a week of journaling, I look back and I can basically track my thoughts throughout the week and see where my headset is at and you know, every time its not a quick fix as far as getting yourself in that peaceful state but continuously working on it in the long run you see how much you grow into having a positive mindset going forward”
Nick - “Yo Kristian I wrote that one down. That no mirror in your head, that’s going in a song hahah”
John - “I feel like, I don’t know, I don’t really know what my escape is. I just kind of relax and do what I like, play a video game. I guess if I really had to pinpoint one thing it would just be playing an instrument, you know play guitar. I played the double bass right there (behind him). it’s fun to pick up an instrument and just kind of make sounds on it you know, and granted I know how to play them so I know what I’m doing but it’s just that’s kind of therapeutic to me finding a discovery of new ways to move around the fretboard music board whatever on the instrument and finding new Harmony, the new melodies, it’s kind of takes me away from everything that that’s bothering me and just puts My mind in the ether and I can just hear all these different sounds experience and experience relationships between frequencies of waves. So that’s probably my escape. Just picking up an instrument and playing it. Having fun.
What do you hope fans take away from your music?
Nick - “ That's a hard one because I think everything's a little different as far as the approach, I hope in a more general sense that people just take care. This is maybe a little bit judgmental but I feel like there are a lot of people who don't put the care into the songwriting as much as they can but the barrier entry to writing music is so low, in a good way! Actually I really appreciate that, really anyone can make a song, like garage band is an app you can buy for $10 and you can make any solid track off of that for almost nothing. But because of that, sometimes people think that you know, songwriting is just a ticket to fame and I feel like song and music is such a powerful tool of communication that I, I’m very critical of just songwriting and lyric writing in general and I hope that people see that when we put a song out and when we say like ‘hey this is a SLMBR song’ that there is a lot of care and attention to detail when we do that”
John - “Couldn’t agree more. Being a person that’s studying music and is going to do that for a living, not just in SLMBR but you know like I hope to teach it. It’s something that comes up in every single music class, theory music, history even the keyboard lessons. The barrier to entry is so low and that yields a lot of things. But when it comes to our music, I definitely hope that people see that we are making music because we are passionate about it and we want other people to experience that same passion. My passion is music, and the reason why I want to teach personally, It’s so that I can share that passion with other people and hopefully create more music teachers or more people that are interested in music. I thought I saw this somewhere hung up in a classroom, ‘The best teachers create more teachers’. and that’s sort of a philosophy I wanna live by not only in my personal career but here, the music I, a well I speak for all of us but the music we make, When I write my baselines I’ll make sure that they’re not just *beat sounds* because there is so many bases that are just like ‘this is so good dude we’re going to get famous now’ but there’s not fun in that, there’s no passion in that, and it goes back to what I said earlier, playing around, knowing what the relationships between these notes and how it fits in with the rest of the song, that’s fun to me. so I hope that people can take away our passion for what we do”
Kristian - “To add in, I would just say, people should take out of it just to express themselves. Like what I was saying with barrier entry level to music is so low, buy its a good thing because ever has their own ways on how to express themselves Even when I get together to jam with them at practice like everything that’s been going on throughout the week or whatever, I get to express everything in another form or translate my emotions to another form it’s another way to release penned up feelings. Just get it out”
Which song for you guys has the deepest meaning and was the hardest to write?
Nick - “I handle most of the lyrics In terms of lyrical content I’m gonna have a very different answer but it’s interesting because I think I have two answers here the one that’s the deepest to write for me was waking nightmare I think despite it up actually relatively quick option time to actually write that song I had to go pretty far in myself to kind of understand what I wanted to get out of that. and what I wanted to say and die landed on this idea that high I was kind of afraid of myself I was afraid of this person that I could be, the potential of what I could do to myself and to other people and that was a compounding issue that went to kind of the song, it’s kind of a therapeutic but I took a step back and was like wow. yeah that one was one of the most deep songs that I’ve ever written, waking nightmare. But gravity was probably the hardest to write, just in terms of the amount of lyrics but also because of what is eventually set and a song song idea of memories and the same thing just delving into psyche.
Kristian - “I can say one night since I wasn’t there for the writing process, but the one that always gets me is, gravity just the vibe of it, I don’t know if you would say the key is that it's in, the tonation in place. One of the lines that always hits me, ‘I had a dream that my brother died it was just a dream but I still cried’. That hits me a lot because that song. Just talks about being vulnerable and that’s just him expressing himself, but one thing is that I can relate to that. I’ve had like I’ve had multiple dreams were like not multiple, but everyone has that unfortunate one, I’ve had a dream where something happened to my brother and I woke up literally in tears enjoy that song even though I enjoy that song it brings me to a weak space, but it's good to touch on that because you are still human at the end of the day”
John -“Uh I guess, I mean I agree what you guys are saying because I feel the same. Not writing the lyrics makes it difficult for me to answer. But nonetheless, I still think that if I had to look at the lyrics, and from what I understand about them, one of the newer songs that we have not put out yet kind of makes me feel that way. The song is, ‘Someone I’m not used to’ and that song kind of, for me and I hate to use this terminology, but it's good wording right now, hits different. It just kind of reminds me the way I experienced emotions. Things don’t hit me at first but then it all comes out at once and then afterwards I’m left to kind of suffer nd live with the aftermath of everything that just happened to me. The way the song structure kind of follows that so it’s very interesting. I like the song a lot in a wow I cannot wait to eventually put it out. That’s definitely the song. It’s not difficult to play and I love to do it, but it's the song that kind of takes me away and how I deal with things. I’m excited for everyone to eventually hear it!”
Watch their video for 'Waking Nightmare’ below!