“Stranger Things opened a door for us, now we want to go through many others”

After the mourning of “Stranger Things”many may wonder what to expect from now on from the duo that gave life to the sound universe of the popular Netflix series for five seasons. The answer comes through “March 22” (Hourglass Recordings, 26), a project that confirms that Kyle Dixon & Michael Stein They have a very promising future beyond Hawkins.

We will be able to see them developing between synthesizers and electronic sounds in Barcelona (September 5, Sala Paral·lel 62) and Madrid (September 8, The Music Station Principe Pío).

Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein have captured in a nine-track compact one of their most special professional experiences: the visit to the Museo del Synth Marchigiano in Macerata (Italy), a space where they could feel like real children in a toy store tinkering with a very rare collection of primitive keyboards. “At no time did we consider leaving there with an album,” Dixon begins pointing out. “The idea was simply to enjoy the place, but, with such a number of rare instruments at your disposal, the ideas began to come by themselves and we ended up with a good handful of recordings in our pockets.”

Infected by the slow rhythm of the transalpine municipality, and with the excuse of playing those days at the Acusmatiq festival, the result of their experiment was an assortment of pieces lasting between four and ten minutes that they later compiled into an album that would allow them to return to the event the following year. “We compromised with them. We would play the festival again in exchange for making an album with our previous experience there. But to be honest, we ended up giving them the project just a day before the festival… By the skin of our teeth.”

“We’ve been doing this show for like ten years and we’ll probably never do it again.”

With hardly any time to experiment or get used to new instruments, but also with the sweet feeling of composing again without being subject to any audiovisual product, Dixon and Stein felt that this took them back to their beginnings, almost twenty years ago. “Even then we did things that were very delirious and poorly prepared in advance,” adds Stein. “If to get a recording with a little more quality we had to cross the studio with a twelve-meter cable, then we did it. It was all more artisanal and, precisely for that reason, also more fun. We went to the museum a little with that idea in mind. Without demos or pre-structured songs, just for the pleasure of improvising.”

They say that the result reminds them of the soundtrack of a film from the seventies. After listening to it, I mention names ranging from Isao Tomita to Kraftwerk or prehistoric dub. They nod pleased, although they recognize that “They didn’t have time to think about specific references” and that the vast majority of the tracks “they share the same bass line.” Although, if deep down we perceive a certain diversity in the sound of “March 22”will be a consequence of blessed indecision. “We had really advanced tracks when suddenly Ricardo, one of the museum’s main coordinators, arrived and told us ‘Ah, but you haven’t seen this little toy yet!’, and we automatically hallucinated that other synthesizer, wanting like crazy to incorporate it into what we had already done. This happened to us several times, so maybe that’s why the listener will have the sensation of hearing different eras of electronic music on the same record.”

This comes, in fact, months after the spectacular closing of “Stranger Things” and with the promise of being able to see them live again, with shows in Barcelona and Madrid and accompanied by the lighting engineering of Marcel Weber (who has been with them since the first time they played the music from the series for the general public, a decade ago). “We’ve been doing this show for like ten years and we’ll probably never do it again, so doing this tour was a matter of now or never,” says Kyle, who cites the end of the series as the main reason for shelving his founding show. “In addition, we will soon release a box with all the music from the series, so these shows are our particular way of putting a tie to this stage.” Michael underlines the words of his keyboard partner, stating that they are both “very excited about what is to come”, even though they are aware of the influence that this time in the upside down has left on their professional and personal lives. “There are a lot of ideas about the kinds of things we want to do within the world of film and television scoring from now on. We just need the time to figure out how to align our aesthetic with the right people and projects.”

“We have also created a new record label,” concludes Dixon on the role Hourglass Recordings will play in his near future. “It is the label with which we have released this album and with which we plan to publish other unreleased soundtracks and some parallel projects. The thing is that we are clear that we owe a lot to the series. It was our first big project in this circuit and it allowed us to leave our previous works. But we also want to show the world that our music can go further. ‘Stranger Things’ opened a door for us, now we want to go through many others.”

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