The duo behind Slenderbodies will release their album, “Simpleshapes” on June 10. PHOTO CREDIT: The Wild Honey Pies
When Benji Cormack attended the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC), he was a psychology major with a neurology focus and becoming a musician was the last thing he thought he would do.
That is until he met Max Vehuni. Vehuni, a fellow student at UCSC, quickly bonded with Cormack over their love for music and in 2016, Slenderbodies was born.
With nearly 900,000 monthly Spotify listeners, Slenderbodies are much more than an underground college music duo, but rather, a full-fledged, well-established indie group.
Their new album, “Simpleshapes”, is scheduled to be released on June 10, followed by a tour all over the United States.
The band explained one of the things that makes their music different from other alternative and indie groups is the unique sound they are able to create by experimenting with different instruments and synthesizers.
“[Our music], it’s very floaty and spacious,” Vehuni said. “We try to world build with our sound, so it’s kind of descriptive, detailed and deep.”
The two members of the band are originally guitarists and said that they stick to playing those instruments during live shows, but have been trying out more instruments, particularly drums, to acquire the new sound for the upcoming album.
“Sonically, we started to incorporate way more of, you know, playing unique instruments, versus our original works, [which] were really heavily focused on playing guitar,” Vehuni said. “I feel like I’ve been experimenting personally with different vocal singing styles and expanding my voice and seeing, like, where I could take that as well.”
Vehuni said that he serves as the main vocalist of the group, while Cormack does a lot of backing vocals and harmonies on their tracks.
Even though both Vehuni and Cormack never expected to become musicians after college, they both shared a love for the craft from a young age.
“I grew up listening to a lot of music and my parents were really into listening to music so we kind of, you know, bonded through that and had a lot of long car trips and we would listen to a lot of music together,” Cormack said. “I used to take piano lessons when I was a kid and then eventually, shifted towards guitar lessons. So, it was kind of something that was somewhat part of my life growing up.”
Cormack also recounted practicing making electronic music with his friends as a kid, which equipped him with a skill set that would become crucial for the group.
He and Vehuni produced this album almost completely remotely through the use of Zoom starting at the end of 2020 and working into 2021. They said they had experience producing music virtually due to the fact that their last EP was produced completely online as well during 2020.
“I’m excited for people to get to listen to the entire album when it comes out in June,” Vehuni said. “We’ll have another set of singles coming out in the next couple of weeks here, which we’re really excited about.”
The album “Simpleshapes” will be available on all streaming platforms. For more information, listeners are encouraged to visit the band’s official website.