New Release – Better Place by Electric Fuchsia
Indie pop-rock act Electric Fuchsia grew from an impromptu song writing project between Joe Kopecky and Socrates Kaitson. Long time co-writers, the duo soon found themselves writing weekly and amassed a variety of songs. As their songs evolved they soon enlisted former band-mate Keith Banaszak, lead guitarist and writer, to complete the songs and finalize the trio.
The challenge? They are separated by an ocean, with Joe in Dublin (Ireland) and Socrates and Keith in Milwaukee and Chicago (USA). Originally from the suburbs of Chicago, the trio gained local notoriety with their college rock band, Crete, playing numerous festivals and bars in Chicago and its surrounding areas. While they pursued separate professional careers, the trio worked together on the side, continuing to write and license original music. The trio records separately at their home studios in Chicago, Milwaukee, and Dublin. Although never in the same room while recording, they’ve utilized their songwriting instincts and musical landscapes to create a truly unique and inspired sound.
Their new single ‘Better Place’ is out 22nd September. A pre-save is available here.
“At it’s core the message of the song is about working with people to make the world better. Whether that’s in a relationship, or through a social cause, we’re all better off when we put aside our differences and work together.”
“We work fully remote! Though the bandmates all grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and have a long history of playing together in-person, our jobs have taken us to very different places. Socrates lives in Milwaukee, not too far from Keith in Chicago, while Joe lives in Dublin (Ireland). We’ve each got day jobs as a social worker (Keith), an ER doctor (Socrates), and a University professor (Joe) and so put this, and all of our songs, together by recording individual parts and sending them back and forth to each other.”
“As a group that writes and records all of our music remotely, with members on opposite sides of the globe, there’s a constant tension of trying to find new ways of doing things. We’re also constantly battling between our love for classic rock sounds and more modern inspiration. Keith uses all vintage analog gear, while Joe works completely with sampled instruments in the computer… these tensions are at the heart of what the song means for us, having differences and working towards finding a better world. We think it’s a message that applies to a broad range of people and places and hope that people will find their own meaning within it.”
“Once we have the music recorded and produced we make our own rough mix of the song. Depending on who’s taking the lead that could be any one of us, but for Better Place was Socrates working in Logic pro in Milwaukee (Joe prefers Reaper, while Keith mixes on a hardware console). Because we’re not pro mixers we then usually send the project off to someone else to do the final mix and master. For this track we used Francesco Scauzillo, who we’ve used in the past and who does incredible work for really good value. People can find him on SoundBetter. It’s usually a bit of back and forth in the mixing to make sure our vision is delivered, and Francesco is amazing at getting us there quickly!”
“We’re going to be releasing our music video on our YouTube channel on release day . Having no background in making videos, but working on a shoe-string budget, we decided to try our hand at putting something together. We were inspired by Vance Joy’s Riptide video which had such vivid imagery and eeriness. We don’t really have the ability at the moment to record much footage ourselves and we thought this was a style we could emulate using stock footage and some of our own video editing and effects. We found clips and imagery that spoke to us and tried to build something of a story together that has the same kind of progressing.”
“The lyrics of the song are all about trying to find a “Better Place” through the conflict that we face in our lives. While the song is one that’s hopeful we built something of a cautionary tale into the video, one where the tensions that we’re singing about aren’t necessarily resolved. Through imagery of both interpersonal conflicts and wars we wanted to paint a picture of what the stakes are (in an over-the-top way) of the message of the song that we think strikes an interesting tone. We hope people like it!”
“We just want to share our music with as many people as we can. We get really excited if even a handful of people are listening and are really lucky to be able to share it with the world.”
