The duo April+VISTA has released an album entitled “Pit of My Dreams” – the result of several years of work and a reflection of personal experiences. Bandcamp Daily describes the band’s style as experimental, borrowing from electronic music, hip-hop, neo-soul, rock, and topped with April George’s vintage-jazz-style vocals.
According to April (vocalist, composer, violinist, and pianist), one of the singles, written in October 2019, was the result of strange, stress-induced lucid dreams, which is an example of a phase state, a term that also includes out-of-body experiences. “I was stuck in sleep paralysis, and I saw a figure walk into the room and scream, and it freaked me out,” she says. She became interested in the psychology of dreams, and began reading books on the subject, diving into the realm of the unconscious: “It was looking inwards and figuring out what I was suppressing that was probably negative, and that I didn’t want to resolve.”
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the band was forced to take a break. They revised the project, eliminated six of the eight tracks, and recorded new ones. The result is a mixture of anger, confusion, and anxiety, as well as the heightened angst of 2020. According to the musicians, they abandoned any attempt to meet the expectations of the audience, presenting instead a deeply personal record of their own experiences.
The album is imbued with a spirit of defiance, although, as MattVISTA (real name Matthew Thompson: composer, producer and bassist) comments, it is not a “protest album”: there are no calls to action. The only purpose of their work, as April adds, was to excavate difficult emotions while being “totally vulnerable and honest.”
