Ahead of their Australian tour as part of Soundwave Festival later this month, I had the chance to catch up with Ciscandra Nostalghia of Nostalghia to talk about their new record, her background, touring with 30 Seconds to Mars and coming to Australia!
Hi Ciscandra how are you going?
I’m good thanks how are you?
Yeah I’m well. So you worked with Dave Fortman on the new record, how did that go?
He mixed the record for us. He did a wonderful job, it went really well. It is really amazing to work with someone who is so talented and yet also so humble, It’s a gifted combination that I happen to love so it was a good experience overall.
So with him having mixed the record, who produced it?
We self-produced the record ourselves.
Was this your first time self-producing or did you do the production on I Am The Robot Hear Me Glitch?
We self-produced that as well. It went well, I usually tend to run in the room and give a visual description on things of the entire song and Roy is really good at translating that into something that makes tangible sense. We work really well together in that regard.
Roy (Gnan) has a fair bit of experience from a production point of view being a multi-instrumental player, he’d be quite talented on the technical point of view.
Very much so he is a wonderful engineer he is really great at making sense of ideas.
Do you think it’s just his ability to make sense of your ideas or is there a genuine chemistry that understands the direction that you want to take on your songs and the feeling and emotion that you want to create through your art?
Completely we have a very intuitive friendship. We always have from the first time we met we have always understood were the other is coming from. He also has an incredible amount of patience and I think that helps with me when I can be kind of scatterbrained. So we definitely share a common intuitive vibe.
How did the two of you originally meet?
We met on this website called Craigslist.org, do you know what Craigslist is?
Yeah, though Australians may be more familiar with a similar site called Gumtree.
So I just had put out a, kind of a bitchy add about wanting to find a band mate, saying don’t waste my time. I said what I was looking for and didn’t put a photo or any music and he happened to respond along with some other people and I was surprised anybody would respond to that, but he responded and sent me some of his music which was beautiful and I sent him some of my music. I didn’t want to meet up until we had written a song. I sent him some ideas and he sent me some ideas and we just ended up creating this song online through email and then we met up and ever since then we have been creating music together.
That’s amazing, You come from a varied cultural background how much do you feel that has really fed into the direction you have taken your music.
Definitely I feel it’s in my blood, in my veins. I was lucky enough to be around many different cultures and many different languages. I was kind of castrated from society I didn’t really have many friends and didn’t really leave my house too much. All the music that I heard was very traditional music. I think that its definitely played a strong role in everything that I write and the way I speak and the way I sing and I’m thankful for it because I think that it gives me a unique perspective.
From what I understand your parents were quite conservative as well.
Fairly Yeah
They weren’t so excited about you perusing music as a career. How about now that you are having a bit of success, heading to Mexico to tour with 30 Seconds To Mars and coming to Australia for Soundwave?
I think that now they are very proud and probably extremely shocked, I know that my entire family is very shocked because it’s one thing to have your daughter or sister tell you what they’re going to do with their future but it’s another thing for them to follow through with it and I think that that’s a strange thing to watch happen especially when as an artist usually your family tends to think of you as a bit of a fuck up. When they start to realize that you actually mean what you said and you follow through, it’s a pretty magical experience for them. So they’re definitely proud and shocked and intrigued by it all.
Do you think the need to rebel, galvanized you to peruse the path even more than you might of otherwise?
Sure I think that I definitely have a bit of a war going on inside me. When something is told to me that it can’t be done sure I want to do it even more. I think even if they had of been supportive I think I would have been nearly just as hungry. I think I’d be just as hungry for it because I think it lived inside me before I even knew it was living inside of me. It didn’t even matter what was happening around me because it was something that needed to be done, that I needed to pursue.
Your live show has been described as cathartic and very powerful. How do you prepare for your live show? Catharsis implies that it would take a lot out of you is there any special way you prepare yourself for your shows?
Well spiritually speaking I’m definitely big on energy and meditation and I do have to release these things. I suppose it does leave me feeling kind of empty but I have so much inside of me that it is healing for me to perform so I don’t leave the stage feeling drained in a negative way I leave the stage feeling almost at peace for the first time if I haven’t performed for a while because I have all this bundled up energy and when I’m able to perform I’m able to get that out and make use of it in a positive way. So I’m not sure what I would do with that energy if I wasn’t an artist. I think it would probably be detrimental to my health.
Prior to shows I do meditate as well. I don’t like to rehearse too much because I think you lose the feeling of the music if you are constantly rehearsing it and I don’t really need to rehearse too much so I don’t do a ton of that, I do enough to get by I suppose.
This is your first trip out to Australia, how would you describe your live show to fans who are waiting to catch you?
I suppose I would describe it as transportive, especially at a festival like this it’s going to be wildly different from the other bands which I find even more exciting. People want to feel something and want to wake up and sometimes the only way to really wake someone up is to throw ice down their shirt or flames in the sky. I think that when you are seeing that’s something so different from what you have seen it does that. I would say it’s transportive and incredibly emotional from its inside out and it’s bound to make you feel something whether you love it or hate it and I love those two emotions love and hate are both very strong and very powerful and they change the frequency and energy of wherever you are.
You have a united image across all of your art. If I’m not mistaken you design your own dresses.
I design my dresses and I collaborate with Widow clothing.
You project a unified image across you music clothing and videos how much consideration went into developing this?
It’s more natural for me, I don’t consider anything I wear a costume. Whatever you see in a video is something you could see me in day to day. Sometimes I wake up in them, sometimes I go to sleep in them. I don’t really have what people would call pyjamas, that’s what I’m comfortable in so that’s what I wear. It’s not anything that’s calculated or thought through, in fact I would not be able to do that, I’m not very good at being calculated image wise. It just has to be whatever I’m feeling at the moment, sometimes I’ll wake up and feel like wearing an all-white gown and I’ll wear an all-white gown. It just has to reflect what I’m feeling on the inside.
So you have been described as post-apocalyptic gypsy punk. How do you feel about that description?
It’s an interesting title, you know people are going to label you many different things. We also got art rock. I don’t have many thoughts on being titled I suppose it come with being a musician you are always going to be boxed into something, It’s kind of a humorous title and I suppose I don’t hate it.
It’s definitely a unique title. I guess it’s always better to be unique then generic especially in art.
I suppose so.
Thank you for talking and looking forward to seeing you come out for Soundwave.
Thank you so much.
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Don't miss Nostalghia when they tour Australia as part of Soundwave 2014!
SOUNDWAVE FESTIVAL DATES & VENUES – FEBRUARY/MARCH 2014
SATURDAY 22 FEBRUARY - BRISBANE, RNA SHOWGROUNDS
SUNDAY 23 FEBRUARY - SYDNEY, OLYMPIC PARK
FRIDAY 28 FEBRUARY - MELBOURNE, FLEMINGTON RACECOURSE
SATURDAY 1 MARCH - ADELAIDE, BONYTHON PARK
MONDAY 3 MARCH - PERTH, CLAREMONT SHOWGROUNDS
TICKETS ON SALE NOW: http://soundwavefestival.com/
The new record You & I is available now on iTunes: http://d.nostalghiamusic.com/3
