ARCANE GHOSTS RELEASE NEW EP “DISTANT YOUTH”

This week I sat down with the guys from Arcane Ghosts and we took a deep dive into their background, the influences on their latest EP “Distant Youth” and the struggles associated with navigating a high energy creative flow during the global pandemic.

If you love pop punk, experimental alternative music and overall good vibes- you can check out “Distant Youth” on all streaming sites on March 31st, including their brand new music videos paired with each song on the EP, streaming on YouTube now!

Let’s dive into some background knowledge for the viewers. How long have you all been

releasing music together and where did the name Arcane Ghosts come from?

Steven and I (Jason) have been in a couple of bands together; pretty much almost the same line up with different people. “Distant Youth” will be our first release with Spas as a three man unit. We’ve been playing shows together for over a year and a half, but this will be the first EP he tracked with us. It’s exciting and we’re looking forward to releasing more music together as a cohesive unit. Arcane Ghosts came from us trying to use a naming generator to make a band name, but we wanted something very interesting and something that relates to us. We were looking for a word that kind of means unknown or invisible to people, and we found the word Arcane from a synonym generator. We knew we needed a second part, so we added ghosts because we feel like we are the ghosts in the scene of our town. No one really knows who we are and we are popping up in the local area more often. Sometimes we get the occasional “Is your name Arcade Ghosts?” and it does crack us up every time.

So, we’re here today to have a lil chat and review the release of your latest EP “Distant Youth,” what would you say is different in this EP compared to your other released projects like “Rollercoaster” or “Human interference,” did you find the creative process gets easier with time and experience in the industry?

Personally speaking, I don’t think it gets easier. I feel like you always want to challenge yourself with new creative ideas. I feel like with this record compared to “Human Interference” there was a lot more going back and forth with parts because everyone had a different play in the album. So even if I wrote a cool vocal hook I would pass it along to Steven or Spas, and if they felt a certain way about it we would just go back to the drawing board. With “Human Interference” it was more like, “I wrote this vocal, let's use this,” there wasn’t as much collaboration. I think with having so many different ears and new input from people it enhanced the writing process it just made these songs 20x better. There's so many cool ideas that we tried that really panned out, they gave this EP such a widespread sound and genre in my opinion. Creatively they’re very different, even just listening to it without being a part of the recording, it’s just generally heavier stuff. We had a little bit of a more mainstream sound, a little easier on the ears while staying true to our sound. We still have intricate riffs, technical parts but keeping it easy so we can gain more listeners. That is the goal....right?

It’s been stated that the band feels very connected to this EP, as it was completed during COVID which created a space where you could truly experiment with your writing and creativity processes, could you possibly dive a bit deeper into your creative process? How was it navigating such a high energy flow, while simultaneously living through a global pandemic?

Good question, I think it definitely made us look into the parts we were writing more critically for sure. I think in terms of navigating the global pandemic, it was hard. We couldn’t sit in the same room at the time, right? We tried to do a lot of online writing, but without the proper tools it's really hard to collaborate. Everyone would have to be properly trained to use those interfaces or use those certain programs that would allow you to record something at home. In terms of writing a song, you really need to have the temp outs and everything to a so that when you start adding parts to it, it doesn’t sound like a conjungled mess. We had to social distance and wear masks in order to record and write in person. The only option you had was to strip everything down to its core and start at the base line. When you wanted to record drums, just the drummer would go into the room and record. It was challenging but very intimate and helped us open our eyes to how critical we should be writing. We’ve worked with the producer Anton DeLost for a while now, and he has given us a lot of insight on how to perfect melodies and how to look at everything from the right perspective. We’re hoping that people in the pop punk scene are listening to the quality of our music as we go for a more polished look. Eventually we want these steps to help catch interest from a label that is fully established.

“Paralyzed,” the fourth song on “Distant Youth” what was the inspiration behind the harmonious opening guitar notes? The entire song is beautiful, but there is something so enticing and clean that is emitted through the guitar solo in the beginning.

Thank you, this is a very personal song. When it came to writing the guitars, I’ve always had a liking to building a soundwall in a sense. It's kind of like doing a lot of layering, because this album was written as a three piece, this was added towards the end of the EP. I wanted to add a different writing technique compared to the others. Pretty much creating an ambient feel for the song, almost like having two guitars speaking to each other, and you can hear it right in the intro. We added a tapping riff and they work in conjunction to create an ambiance for the rest of the song. We wanted the listeners to feel that this is a serious song that has a more of a personality, the other songs are more upbeat compared to “Paralyzed.” We added the tapping lead very late into the song. The main guitar and strong structure was completed, but we felt we wanted something more in our last writing session. We also really enjoyed shooting the music video for this song, it captures the essence of the writing. This EP means a lot to us because we were able to shoot a music video for all four of the songs.

Would you say writing lyrics comes before the music, or does the music inspire the lyrics written? What advice would you give to anyone longing to write their own songs or potentially create their own subculture within pop punk like Arcane Ghosts has seamlessly achieved over the years?

I think with us, lyrics usually come after the riffs. The only one where lyrics came first was “Paralyzed” which was written in a different aspect compared to the other four songs.Usually for us it's riffs, or we kind of create the sound first. For lyrics, we kind of base it off the sound of the song so we know kind of which direction we want to put the lyrics. The vocal melodies are written first with gibberish, that's the honest truth. It's always easier to make a melody than writing lyrics, it's something I’ve always done. It's one of those things I'm trying to work harder to catch a listener's attention. I’m really happy you connected with paralyzed because that was the last song i've written lyrically. I feel like every song lyrically fits. For example, “Rollercoaster” vs. “Fever Dreams” is the latter with a more playful, summer vibe,while “Rollercoaster” is more serious. I think anyone who wants to write songs, they should just do it. I feel like there's a lot of stimulation with songs having to be fully produced with huge releases, but you kind of just have to do it. Whatever thoughts are in your head, just write it down. When you want to write a song this is where melody comes into play. You think, “How do I want to deliver these lyrics or interpret this song?” Anyone who wants to write, go ahead and do it. Whether it's a piano or a guitar, you can’t go wrong.

Overall, why release this EP? What thought patterns are you trying to invoke onto your listeners, what are you inspiring the fans to feel? Lastly, why is it important that everyone takes the time to check out Arcane Ghosts on all streaming sites?

It comes down to getting older and seeing the influence that being a supporter to scene bands has when they are starting out. For us, we feel like we’ve been playing in bands for what feels like years, but we’re slowly going into a sound that really captures listeners and also musically technically inclined people. We’re trying to create a separate bracket from the normal pop punk genre, we’re slowly trying to break a mold there. We always tried to stand out from the average pop punk bands, but we knew we were different and we wanted to experiment. We felt like there's something bigger that we should be creating here. We would love for everyone to check it out, obviously we can't force anyone, but we are proud of this. I think that if we keep pushing at this rate, people should jump on the wagon now. You never know when you could make it big and start getting up to the bigger stages. There's a cool history to it, when you talk about some of the bigger Toronto bands, we saw them before they blew up and it's a nostalgic feeling. Overall we want people to feel happy. Like when you hear a song and you automatically feel good, there's nothing wrong with listening to sad songs to make you happy, right? Instrumentally you can bang your head and still vibe to it. We really want this EP to branch out to people who haven’t heard us before. These five songs really encapsulate the Arcane Ghost sound to a T.

You can listen to their new music HERE