INTERVIEW ~ THE SILK WAR

The Silk War.

Who or what is The Silk War?

The Silk War soundtracks nighttime with their patented post-wave sound, threading together transmissions of nocturnal alternative, gothic electro, punk energy, and cinematic production. The electrifying five-piece band — Alexandra Blair [singer, lyricist], James Mullen [guitar, songwriter, producer], Angelo Miliano [keyboards], Josh O’Guinn [bass], and Andrew Mega [drums] — dive into the dark on Come Evening. The thought-provoking 11-track collection – produced, engineered, and mixed by James – is inspired by the band’s love for the arts and New York that touches upon deep topics ranging from bullying and self-worth to gun control and empowerment and so much more. The band is amplifying its voice on Come Evening, creating music for the disaffected, those who feel different or alienated, with a message of hope. Full track listing for Come Evening below.

In 2017, serendipity brought Alexandra and James together. In between engineering for bands such as Nine Inch Nails and Interpol, James simultaneously formulated the concept of a band in his mind over the years. Introduced to Alexandra by a mutual friend, they unlocked immediate chemistry. Bonding over an inherent darkness, Sylvia Plath’s diaries and The Bell Jar, the two were instantly glued together in the studio working on what would become The Silk War.

“I had an idea in my mind sonically,” James recalls. “When I heard Alexandra’s voice, I was like, ‘Holy shit, she’s the perfect person for this’. From then on, we were glued together in the studio.”

“There was an inherent darkness we both shared,” Alexandra says. “A lot of people hide behind the veils, whereas James and I were able to talk on a serious, vulnerable level right away.”

Fusing together anesthetized synths with glassy guitars and shadowy ponderances, they unlocked a signature sound. The Silk War first teased their original music in 2019 with the release of “Velvet.” After building buzz throughout NYC with packed shows at Baby’s All Right, Mercury Lounge, The Vinyl Room at Soho House, and more, the quintet carefully tweaked and tinkered with what would become Come Evening.

“When it gets dark out, you rid yourself of distractions,” explains Alexandra of The Silk War. “You can break the chains that bind and allow yourself to be who you want to be. I find the most clarity at night. It’s like I’m seemingly clawing at any and everything just to try it, to unleash something, to shatter something. That’s what the entire album is about.”

“Blue Hour” was the song that the universe used when tapping me on the shoulder and whispering “listen to this.” I was quite intrigued by the musical arrangement and by Alexandra’s vocals. As I started to explore to find out more about the band, I found myself slowly falling down the rabbit hole and being consumed by what I found. The next thing I knew, I had a pre-release copy of their debut independent full-length studio album Come Evening in my hands.

I thought I was prepared.

Press play.

Mind blown.

It’s moving, it’s compelling, it’s happy, it’s dark, it makes you want to move, it makes you want to sit and think. It’s a beautiful piece of work with some rather amazing words that have been painted over a lavish tapestry of sound.

I felt rather privileged to have a chance to sit down and talk with Alexandra Blair and James Mullen, the founders of The Silk War.

James Mullen/The Silk War- Hey Johnny, how are you?

I’m Music Magazine: I’m tired, but doing ok. How are you?

James- It’s Monday.

Monday…yes it has been a Monday!

James- So where are you?

I’m in North Carolina, in Raleigh, North Carolina. Lots of cool music venues. We have a couple that just bit the dust due to COVID.

James- Yeah, I’ve heard good things about Raleigh, but I’ve never been there.

We’ve got everything from little dive bars to the massive 20,000+ seat amphitheater to an indoor arena. We’ve got a little bit of everything.

James- Nice, I hope they’re back soon.

Yeah. We’re starting to see some signs of life, which is great. I’m excited.

James- Yeah, I’m with ya.

Did both of you have a vision for this on your own before you came together? Then, you came together and it’s like the parts of the puzzle connected?

James- Well, musically, yes. I mean, some of the stuff I had before I’d even met Alexandra, for the direction of it. But then once we met, it kind of merged into one cohesive thought, you know. We kind of met in the middle. We have very similar musical tastes anyway, so we were going to land in the same place no matter what.

Alexandra Blair/The Silk War- For me, really musically. He had a bunch of cool ideas beforehand that he had been working through. And me, I write every single day. I really don’t use a lot of that material until I hear the music that Jimmy composes. Like, whether it’s a cord progression, guitar lick, or something like that. That completely inspires me to write those lyrics. I use everything from before, just as a prep basically, but I hardly ever have any of those lyrics that I write just like, on my own. They never really reach the surface. So, in that way, it’s like a real collaboration for us. It’s really just about like what the music means to me. What it sounds like or what we’re going through.

That’s was part of what I was going to ask you, as far as like, this song writing. Which came first, the music or the lyrics, or is different every time?

James- The music sets the mood for it. You know, you might have lyrics that are great lyrics, but they don’t fit the music of it.

So I know “Velvet” came out in 2019. So has this thing been a work in production, I guess you could say all your life? The past few years, you guys have been putting this together.

James- Yeah, I think because I have my own recording studio, we really kind of had unlimited studio time. So we really took our time and went back over things. We’re definitely over the two-year point of writing and rewriting and tweaking, re-producing, and re-recording. So it’s been a pretty long process.

Alexandra- Yeah, it took us a while to really figure out our sound. We’re total perfectionists, both of us and so even though we do a lot of our work outside of each other, a lot of it is just like spending hours and hours and hours together. And we never fight, I’m pretending! (laughter)

Oh, I believe that.

Alexandra- With “Velvet” in particular, it is a really difficult subject and I think for both of us, you know, it’s like we connect that part of the mind that a lot of people try to suppress, all of these, darker materials. Those things for us, when you really start to dive deep into them and talk to each other about it, it brings up a like a lot of pain. But it’s brought us like that much closer. We really take our time.

I think I read something that said “The more scars. The better.”

Alexandra- That sounds like me.

I love that. I don’t know if it’s good for me to say that I love that. It’s so true, in life in general. The things we learn from those scars, they’re life lessons. We all have that in common.

James- Yeah.

So, how much is New York an inspiration for you guys?

Alexandra- Oh man, it’s everything for us. New York is a never-ending source of inspiration. The chaos, the always being late. I mean, just imagine how many windows are here and how many people looking out of those windows and how many different pockets of New York there are. Specifically the music scene for us, is like a huge inspiration. We would tweak songs all the time based off of how a New York audience would react, which is really quite dangerous. Because a New York audience is can be super jaded, but the music scene in general, in New York is like really close knit. So it really is everything to us.

Do you think the music would’ve evolved differently if you would have been somewhere else like Nashville or LA?

James- Well, not that it’s not that, as far as where we’re recording it, as we spent so many years here. At this point, it becomes part of your soul, part of who you are. Sure we could go to Nashville tomorrow and record a record, but it will still have New York in it, because New York is the message at this point right? It’s not the physical place where the recording was at this point.

Alexandra- Yeah. And I think also just, New York in general, even though it’s so congested; Man, I’ve never felt more alone than being in solitude, in direct comparison to, just how wild it is here. It really makes you that much more introspective, and, it takes you to a dark place, man. I’m not going to lie. I mean, you can meet the greatest people here, you know, it’s the best and the worst of life here.

How about the pandemic coming? How did that affect making the album?

James- Well, we planned for the album to come out much earlier. We were kind of just kind of confused for a minute. Right before lockdown we had a lot of momentum going live. Our shows were getting bigger and bigger and better and better. So we were just kind of concentrating on just planning shows, we figured we were going to put out the record pretty soon, then everything was shut down for a few months. We just kind of didn’t know what to do at all. After a while we realized, you know, this record, we were now sitting on it.

We didn’t know how long it was going to last. We figured we’re just going to have to put it out and then see what happens. We were trying to time it, which was a difficult thing to accomplish. Now everything is coming out since it’s opened back up now, like you said. Hopefully the timing works out great.

Alexandra- Exactly and I think also, the subject matter in and of itself, of the record, I think it’s really a perfect time for music like ours to come out. Because you know, we talk all about the solace, being self aware, listening to yourself, and that loneliness is actually really quite extraordinary, because you’re able to figure out who you are. I think now, because of the pandemic, people are maybe attuned to that idea.

Speaking of the live shows, Alexandra, I’ve watched online because I had haven’t been fortunate enough to see you guys live yet. I have to throw “yet” in there because it’s going to happen.

Alexandra- Oh my gosh, please Johnny! I’d love that!

Even if I have to do a road trip, it’s just another excuse to go back to New York. Your stage persona Alexandra? Compare and contrast to that to you off the stage.

Alexandra- That’s a really good question, actually. I’d say I completely let go. My stage presence is super dynamic. I mean, it really depends on which song it is. The most important thing for me is to connect with the audience and if that means, like, running into the audience and pushing people and writhing on the floor, you know, if that’s if that’s what I’m feeling at the time, that’s what it is. You know, at the end of the day, it’s a performance. It is obviously, an aural experience, but I also wanted to be a visual experience as well. It’s not like we have like fucking fire or anything like that, you know. It really is more just about connecting person to person. In terms of that, in comparison to how I am in real life? I think they’re pretty much the same. As much time as I spend alone which I do spend a lot of time alone. When I’m not alone, I’m completely…I’m wild, man. You know, I love to find inspiration in the chaos like I was talking about before. I make a lot of mistakes and but I don’t plan anything. Same thing, like, on stage, it’s all just about like going with the motions and just trying to connect with people.

So what are we looking at? I know we’re opening back up, so maybe we will get some live shows coming up soon, maybe not very soon but hopefully soon. What are you guys looking at, going down the road, as far as promoting this and doing things? What’s on your radar for the next couple of months?

James- Obviously, the main thing is to get playing again. It’s so hard to kind of predict right now but if we could get out, maybe like to some colleges and things like that, that are opening back up? We’re actually already, probably halfway into our next record. It’s a hard question to answer right now. I feel like it’s uncharted territory right now, so everyone is going to kind of come crawling out of their caves and decide what to do. We’re open.

Alexandra- Yeah and we’re self-releasing, you know. We’re packing up envelopes and sending it to blogs and radio stations like every single day. Every single day we are making sure that, we can do whatever we can. But like Jimmy said, it’s kind of hard to gauge. I’m really excited about all the new material that we’re writing and yeah, I just want to play live. Really, that’s all I want.

Speaking of self-producing you guys have done, I don’t know if elaborate is the right word for it, but your music videos, they aren’t straight up lyric videos or just performance clips. These are videos where the visuals are very important.

James- We are lucky enough to have some very talented friends that are in that world. A lot of stuff, we’ve had in our head, what we want it to look like when we wrote the song. So it’s kind of a combination of us having a clear idea of what we want to see; having friends willing to pull out a lot of favors and swing a little bit of money. It really comes down to the music. The music really calls for visions, and you kind of appreciate the songs more, because is so cinematic already.

Alexandra- That’s where my stimulus checks went! You know what I mean! (Laughter) That was really important to us, for the music videos to be really vibrant, because we can’t play live. We wanted to show, like a range. The subject matters of “Slender Slander,” “Barcelona,” and “Blue Hour,” those are subject matters that are not touched upon that often, in that way. We just really wanted to find a way to connect without the live shows.

I see our time is about up. Is there anything else you’d like to wrap this up with?

James: No, I think we’ve touched on a lot. Thanks for wanting to talk to us.

Alexandra: Yes, please check out the new album and come see us!

Well I want to say, on a personal note, before we wrap this up that I’m a huge music nerd. I used to manage music stores back in the day when they existed. I had a mentor back then who taught me to be open minded and have a broad appreciation of the arts. This is one of those albums where on my initial listen, I couldn’t just listen to it. I had to get lost in it to truly appreciate it. So I cut off all the lights, I lit some candles, put the headphones on, hit play, shut my eyes and got lost in the music. It’s such a beautiful thing because there are so many different flavors on here. You guys paint with a lot of colors. You’ve got a lot of musical colors on your palate and it’s just, it’s, it’s really,…. I just love it. This is one of those things where, I find music and sometimes music finds me and I thank the universe that you guys have run across my musical radar.

James- This is such a meaningful compliment because it’s really exactly what we’re going for. Trying to be more immersive and trying to not be one of those templates of sound. Thank you very much for that.

Alexandra- I mean, really that means that means so much, you know. I think I can speak for Jimmy when I say that, easy listening is not part of our M.O. at all. Like, we really take the time so to hear something like that from someone like you really means a lot to us.

Interview by I’m Music Magazine Owner/Editor Johnny Price