Starbenders: Evolving Through Music Communication
A band’s change in sound and style can spark for any reason within the group. Sometimes it’s the influences around the members and what music they like to listen to. Other times, external circumstances can influence the change, either trends, political climate, or otherwise. For Atlanta glam rockers STARBENDERS, a multitude of circumstances evolved their retro sound from the 70s into the 80s, bringing more synth and goth influences from that decade into their new album, The Beast Goes On. In addition, a new drummer in Qi Wei joined the band back in early 2024, bringing new tastes and perspectives on board with the new record. As vocalist and guitarist Kimi Shelter explains, humour helped ease Wei’s introduction into the band during the early days.
“We’ve really grown a lot in the last two years, in both understanding one another, culturally and linguistically.” Kimi explains about their new drummer. “We did use the translator apps a lot and all that kind of stuff at the beginning. But we’re not having to lean on them at half as much anymore, and she’s learning super fast. She’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, very smart, very brave, very fucking funny. What’s interesting, as well, is that humour can break that boundary too, even if you don’t speak the same language, sometimes the same things are funny. That was something that allowed us to trust one another early on, which was the fact that everybody had a sense of humour. So when we didn’t understand one another, everybody had the capacity to laugh at ourselves about it. It’s something that we don’t take for granted, and it’s not easy, especially with the political climate and all that kind of stuff. But we’re doing our best and hanging in there. Everybody wants to do this, and like, the gravitas of the fact that something so impossible was made actually relatively easy for her to come here from China and do this. So we don’t take any of that for granted, that the path was cleared for us to pull off this insane thing.”
“It’s something that wouldn’t be able to be accomplished in any other time,” she continues. “But now, because of technology, we found her through socials and reached out to her and built a bridge and all of that stuff. [Qi] had been to the States once before. But there’s not like the best bridge back and forth between the two countries, obviously. I found her on this database for different female drummers because we knew we wanted to uphold that balance within the band, and that was something that was important to us. They were big platforms to fill, as I always say. We had another mutual friend that’s a Chinese promoter that brings lots of bands over there and stuff like that, so he was able to vouch for us and translate for us back and forth, because she didn’t speak any English back then, just basically, “Hi, how are you”, so when she came, it was a trip, because we had to learn to communicate, and it forced us to rely on the music to communicate. The first songs that we recorded with her were Saturday, Somebody Else and Tokyo, they were actually tracked a couple years ago, pretty much right when she came over. That was like the beginning of the whole thing with Qi.”
The Beast Goes On is the band’s fourth studio album, and as mentioned, the first with Qi as their drummer. In addition, the new album furthers the STARBENDERS sound and develops further by increasing the synth sound in their music and expands their glam rock style into the realms of goth and new wave. As Kimi describes, “we’ve done a lot of synth, but we’ve just become more experimental. We’ve wanted to open it up, and let in all the elements that get us off and not be such traditionalists. So everybody in the band is goth rockers and all this kind of stuff, and we all grew up listening to SISTERS OF MERCY and THE CURE and all that kind of stuff. It was the evolution of us, like how the pen evolved, as we created this broody, cinematic Tron-esque record. When we did Tokyo, we did that with our original producer, Nico Constantine, so they all had so much fun running everything through the vintage synths, and just nerded out with it, which was cool. Then the new producer [Matthew Pauling] was brought in by the label for the remainder of the record, he is also really into all that stuff, and so all those other songs off the record have that element too.”
“I’ve always enjoyed that moment of release where it’s no longer mine and it becomes someone else’s, and it’s open to their interpretation.” she expands when asked about the release of their new album in February. “For me, a really important part of the artistic exchange is not telling people how to think and how to handle it. I guess the one thing that I hope people really like hearing in it is just perseverance and resilience. Everybody’s story is different, everyone’s path is different. Success has multiple different definitions, and sometimes just continuing on, even if the odds are stacked against you, that’s sometimes more successful than what some people might consider traditional success. Though mansions would be nice, we would take a living wage at this point. But you know,we’re still out here, we’re still doing it, and I hope that there’s that camaraderie with our listeners, like togetherness, coming back to what we love and all that.”
Along with a new album, STARBENDERS plan to tour the UK and mainland Europe throughout the summer in promotion of The Beast Goes On. As the interview wraps up, Kimi speaks of her excitement to play across the pond once more. “We’re very excited, and we love it over there. I think that it’s going to be a nice breath of fresh air to be back on that side of the pond, and we’re super stoked. Being over there in summer and all that stuff is going to be super cool, there’s lots of places that we haven’t been to since the tour that we did with PALAYE ROYALE. I think in 2022 was when that was or maybe 2023, I can’t remember, but there’s a few spots that we haven’t gone to since then, so it’s gonna be nice to run back through all the cities.”
The Beast Goes On is out now via Sumerian Records. View this interview, alongside dozens of other killer bands, in glorious print magazine fashion in DS128 here:
[purchase_link id=”227969″ style=”button” color=”red” text=”Buy DS128!” direct=”true”]
Like STARBENDERS on Facebook.