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1.) We’re very excited to be speaking today with acclaimed and genre-defying duo MISSIO; greetings and salutations, gang! Before we dive into the Q&A mosh-pit, could you both say ‘hi’ and introduce yourselves to our ever-inquisitive readers?
Hey there! It’s Matthew & David and we are an alternative/electronic duo called MISSIO, based in Austin, TX! We dropped our first album together called ‘Loner’ in 2017 on RCA Records which set us on a trajectory to currently have over 1 billion global streams. We are about to release our 5th album & we love art, writing songs, & helping people!
2.) Matthew, at the very top we described MISSIO as “genre-defying.” Listening to your indelible musical stylings, we hear sweet traces of rock, electronic, hip-hop and indie all rolled into one, and we love it! For someone new to MISSIO’s music, how would you opt to describe the band’s musical style?
We are a blank canvas when it comes to creating music. Rather than fearing what may come out when we’re writing, we try our best to embrace it. Some days we may feel slightly melancholic and other days we may feel anger. We do our very best to allow these changing emotions to be expressed in the work we create that day. If an R&B song like ‘I Don’t Like It When You’re Lonely’ comes out of the process…great. If a heavy song like ‘Aztec Death Whistle’ comes out, then we’re gonna rage!! But we always try to allow each song to be written without judgement – if something sounds too different from the rest, we don’t have to release it. Our message to other artists is always to allow the full experience of themselves to be expressed in their art or music even if it feels chaotic at times.
3.) David, major congratulations on the freshly-minted release of the new MISSIO single Aztec Death Whistle! What inspired this gem of a ditty?
This song started as an aggressive synth demo from Matthew which he passed over to me to work on. The stop fucking with my head lyric / guitar part came to me as a was tuning my guitar down to drop C to match the key the song was written in. LOL that’s low 🙂 From there the song began to form around that lyrical idea. Ultimately, the chorus is about Matthew’s personal struggle and how he’s dealt with the many times in his life he’s had to deal with outside forces attempting to control and manipulate his way of thinking. In the verses we discuss how hard it is to rise above the pain and struggle to truly think positive thoughts about ourselves.
4.) Matthew, in your humble opinion what differentiates Aztec Death Whistle from the Distinguished Competition on the 2024 music scene?
Modern music today, especially in the rock world, misses real feeling & energy unfortunately. Everything in the genre can feel a bit stale & like you’ve heard it a million times before. We tried our very best to create a uniqueness alongside the aggressiveness with things like the addition of a real Aztec Death Whistle scream. I feel like that’s something you’d hear System of a Down do back in the day.
5.) David, along with the new MISSIO single Aztec Death Whistle, the band has also announced the upcoming release of a massive 26 song LP entitled I Am Cincowhich is set for release this May 3; major kudos and accolades! Getting the ball rolling on this major music undertaking, can you take us behind the scenes and talk about how the idea for this new album came about?
At the core, MISSIO is just two best friends who genuinely love writing music together. We both wanted album 5 to not just be another album, but rather something significant, dare i say PROLIFIC! I have always loved the idea of albums that collectively say something beyond what the individual songs could say alone. We’ve always felt a strength of the band was our ability to write songs in so many different styles / genres, so I think larger amounts of songs allow us to dive deeper in each separate musical direction. The concept for I AM CINCO i.e. doing 5 EPs each having unique “emotional” themes / music genres, also gave us the chance to group our music in a way that allow people to ‘therapeutically’ choose what MISSIO music they want to listen to based on how they are emotionally feeling at the time. Listen to I Am Angry when you’re pissed and I Am Sad when you’re sad.. and so on 🙂
6.) Matthew, we’re particularly taken with the concept of collating I Am Cinco into 5 EP’s and 5 moods. Who hit upon this specific and very brilliant concept?
We both do a good job of coming together & brainstorming the vision of what we want artistically & musically. We had a big batch of songs done for this 26 song deluxe album & wanted to find a way to release the music in a way that our fans would best resonate & consume it without being too overwhelming. We began grouping each song into the emotions/vibe they fit under and this larger idea began to flow pretty naturally. People nowadays have an incredibly short attention span and we liked the idea of splitting the album up in case people didn’t have the time or ability to sit for 26 songs back to back. That’s a bit of a sad reality honestly, but it’s reality.
7.) Who inspires you musically? – ULTIMATE: Led Zeppelin – I started my first band in high school after reading a biography of Led Zeppelin and learning about a songwriting trip that Robert Plant and Jimmy Page took to the forest while writing Led Zeppelin 3. I knew then that I wanted to write songs and be in a band. That story still inspires me to this day.
– Early Influences: The Offspring, KORN, NIN, TOOL, Genesis, Muse, Incubus, Jay Z, Missy Elliott
– Modern: James Blake, Idles, Turnstile
8.) David, with the new single Aztec Death Whistle now out in the world and the new EP I Am Cinco set for a May 3 release, can fans look forward to catching MISSIO on the touring/performing circuit in the coming weeks and months?Yes, we have a bunch of stuff already announced. The next thing is two shows that we are doing in Colorado Spring and Denver May 2nd and 3rd to celebrate the album officially dropping. We’ll be playing a very unique set of songs from I AM CINCO for those two shows.After that we’ll be in Europe all of June playing festivals with some club headline shows mixed in as well. We do have more plans to continue playing in the US coming this fall, so keep an eye out for a more detailed announcement about that coming soon!
9.) Matthew, you and David hail from the beautiful state of Texas. How do those roots inform the sound and energy of the music which MISSIO creates?
There’s a bit of a “no fucks given” attitude here in the great state of TX that carries over into our music. There’s a general sense of a “mind your own business” mentality here that we love & appreciate compared to some other places in the United States. I think that comes out in our music – we do whatever the hell we want artistically and musically speaking and are very unapologetic about that.
10.) David, how is the forthcoming LP I Am Cinco similar to some of MISSIO’s past music such as 2017’s Loner? How is it different?
Similar To Loner: MISSIO has always been a creative outlet for us to express ourselves. So authenticity is a thread that runs through everything that we release. When I listen to Loner i can hear a band 1)Values great songwriting 2)Values creativity and uniqueness in both music production as well as lyric / melody 4) I can hear that we are having fun and taking risks in the creation of the songs 5) the songs come from the perspective of someone who doesn’t feel like that fit into the world — all these years later, I think we are still writing music with those main things still driving our creative process.
How Different: Loner musically was about finding new and different ways to make electronic music. We made up a lot of “rules” for ourselves when we made Loner… No Real Cymbals, no real Hi Hat, No Real Guitar, and no real Bass Guitar. The idea for me as an engineer was to use my punk rock instincts, but use them on synth drum samps and 808s. years later, after slowly adding real drum set live, then adding bass guitar live, then Matthew began to add some electric guitar live. Combine all of that with us naturally evolving as musicians / songwriters towards wanting to try new sounds. We ended up on this album having absolutely NO RULES. Literally we followed our production instincts on each song and used countless different instruments while making this album. I think the result is still very much still MISSIO but sonically more diverse.
LISTEN: https://missio.ffm.to/iamcinco
