It started with a broken Juno-106 and an unexpected thunderstorm. The making of *Neon Cathedral* was never supposed to be a smooth ride — and that's exactly why it ended up being our most honest record yet.
We locked ourselves into a converted warehouse on Sunset for six weeks. The plan was simple: write ten songs, track them live, and leave with an album. Reality had other ideas. A power outage on night three forced us to record the title track's bass line on a battery‑powered cassette recorder — you can still hear the faint hum in the final mix. We kept it because it felt real.
"We kept the cassette hum because it felt real. Perfection is overrated."
— Alex Vega, on the recording of "Neon Cathedral"
The synths were a nightmare. Our beloved Juno decided to stop holding a tune on day five, so we switched to an old Korg MS-20 that had been collecting dust in the corner. That gritty, snarling lead on *Riot Bloom*? That's the MS-20 screaming through a blown speaker. We didn't fix it. We turned it up.
Lyrically, the album is a conversation between hope and exhaustion. Tracks like *Velvet Static* came out of a 3 AM jam session where nobody spoke for an hour — we just played. The words came later, scribbled on a pizza box. By the time the rain stopped and the city woke up, the song was finished.
⚡ Fun Fact
The album was mixed entirely on headphones because the studio monitors blew out during playback of an early version of "Riot Bloom". No regrets.
🎧 Gear Highlight
Korg MS-20, Roland Juno-106 (briefly), and a 1978 Fender Rhodes that never once went out of tune.
We finished the final mix on a Tuesday morning. The sun came through the warehouse windows for the first time in weeks. Someone opened a bottle of cheap champagne. We listened to the whole record from start to finish without saying a word. Then we played it again, louder.
*Neon Cathedral* is out now on all streaming platforms. Turn it up — and if you listen closely, you might just hear the thunder.