aliensdontringdoorbells

aliensdontringdoorbells

Every once in a while, a band comes along that is truly out of this world! Aliensdontringdoorbells with their collective variety of music styles and genres, have created soundwaves (AKA,songs) that encompass rock, pop, jazz, swing and progressive music that are very relevant on their debut album ARRIVAL which was released October 2nd.

Catching up with two of the three extraordinarily talented Singer/Songwriters Adam King and Dorian Foyil, they explained how they, along with Christian Pearl came together, some details of their new music, their musical influences and what fans can look forward to.

SFL Music: Tell me about the new album. Is there a theme to it?
Adam King: No, I wouldn’t say there’s necessarily a theme to it. It’s one of those things. We got together, you know, we joined up and made this band. I mean, literally we let it naturally occur. We didn’t lay down any tracks specifically, any ideas. We went, come on guys, let’s have a bit of fun! Let’s write an album and see what happens, and we wrote twelve great tracks. We tried out different genres and everything because all of us love different music. Everybody does you know, so just a bit of technical mix in our music with different influences. We got together and had a bit if fun with it really, and what came out was a really great album, and of course, the name Arrival. We came up with that. Well Christian did actually because you know, we are bandmates, we arrived!

SFL Music: Very cool. How did you all come together?
Dorian Foyil: My family and I decided to move to Spain, to Costa Blanca because we wanted to be close to my wife’s family was based in Europe there, and I wanted my son to learn how to speak Spanish because I speak Spanish. So, that was the primary reason. Also, we wanted a location where it might be possible for me to play in a band there, and how the Costa Blanca is famous, you can imagine. There are absolutely mountains of clubs and a lot of people go there. It’s a big attraction for a lot of British people and Germans and Dutch what have you, that go there for their summer vacations. So, once I arrived into the Costa Blanca area, I was fortunate enough to be referred to Adam who had his own band, has his own band there in Spain. A cover band and it was luck because their guitar player was returning to the UK and I auditioned and I was lucky enough to make the audition, and we started playing. We played for about a little over a year and I realized that both Adam and Christian were great vocalists and keyboardists respectively, and we started to talk about perhaps trying to create an album. Write our own music, and the guys both agreed and once we did that, because we all have families, we decided that it might be best if we all just kind of went off on our own. Lock ourselves into a room or a condo so to speak, and crank out some music, and that’s what we did. We did it in two different, what we call creative weeks. Two ten-day sessions, and they were both done in the Bahamas where I came from. So, Adam and Christian and myself, we all flew to the Bahamas and there we were for ten days writing music like just in the condo and recording it. Two of my buddies who are studio musicians there in the Bahamas, Kevin Dean (drummer) and Earl Forbes (bassist) joined us as the rhythm section, bass and drums and it all came out. At the end of the second session, we went into the studio there in the Bahamas and we laid down the demo tracks and sent them to a number of producers that we were hoping would take a look at it ‘cause no one knew who we were or anything, and we were lucky enough to get hooked up with Jeff Kanan who worked with Madonna, No Doubt, Kelly Clarkson and Sting, and he listened to the demos and he said, well it needs some work, but you know, why not? Then we flew to Denver in September 2019 and again we rented a house there and we all moved in together. All five of us, and we spent a month in Denver recording the album. And that’s how it happened.
King: I remember many, many years ago I saw a film. It was sort of like a docky film about The Beatles with all these studies that it’s better in the alps, and them having a creative week. So, in my mind, it was going to be just like that, but obviously, it wasn’t. It was a bit more strait laced then they were, but I remember a great film as it was (he chuckled).

SFL Music: Are they your influences?
King: Not me personally influences. I mean, I grew up in Liverpool where my parents were too, singing and doing a club scene and stuff. So, I quite grew up with it really. I started off in musical theater more than anything, but then I moved on as solo act and some years touring the UK, and then cruise ships. My favorite artist is Prince, but I’m very eclectic. A little bit of jazz, Harry Connick (Jr.). So, my favorite two albums are Rumours by Fleetwood Mac and Simon & Garfunkel Bridge Over Troubled Water, and I’m a massive fan of Britt pop music as well. So yeah, my musicianship musical influence is very, very wide, I think.
Foyil: Music from my point of view is, I grew up in south Jersey, so I was a big Bruce Springsteen fan and I love bands like Toto and Yes. So, that’s kind of my, and The Police of course. Those are kind of my influences, and you can hear a lot of different kind of influences in the various songs because all three of us are singer songwriters.
King: Like Christian, he takes a miss a little bit because he knows I really like pop music, but like Dorian said you can hear a lot of influence, but for me one of the poppiest feel songs, English pop is “The Heart Is In Her Eyes.” It’s very poppy electric style, but there’s such a wide influence across the whole album.

SFL Music: What is that song about?
King: “The Heart Is In Her Eyes” it’s a bit self-indulgent I suppose. It’s about a lead singer in a band and he’s at a bar and he sees a girl walks in with her boyfriend, and she doesn’t really like him, but she likes the singer. The singer likes her and they get it on. That’s about it really to sum it up quickly (he laughed).

SFL Music: Are the bass player and drummer touring with you next year? You are touring next year, correct?
Foyil: Yeah, we fully expect to be. Yes, our idea for the band Lori, is that sometimes we anticipate changing up the rhythm section. Like for the album we used Earl and Kevin from the Bahamas, and they’re great musicians. We may change the rhythm section, just to get you know, new influences all the time. One of my favorite guitar players is Jeff Beck and he often changes musicians in his band so that he gets influenced by different sounds, and we’re all keen on that. However, those guys are so good that we’re probably going to be touring with both Earl and Kevin, and I don’t think they’re going to mind that.

SFL Music: Your first single was “Story”? What influenced that song? What is it about?
Foyil: That’s just an idea that I had the pleasure of bringing to Adam and Christian, our keyboard player, and that song is, it’s a story about our lifetimes as people. As a human species, and it’s just, I would say, it’s a celebration of life and to really grow as a person. It’s a series of journey’s you know, and each person has their own sort of free-spirited sides of it. Even a small child. Children they have their own spirit, and at some point, they have to be let free to grow on their own. Also, there’s another one about in last verse where the man is basically on his death bed surrounded by his family and the song is just saying that’s not necessarily where the journey ends, you know? You could go on from there and that the spirits inside all of us, we have to sort of celebrate. That’s what that songs about.
King: It’s an epic video as well. You can see all our videos on our YouTube channel aliensdontringdoorbells, but It’s a little quirky in the video. Well you see there’s a postman delivers a very important letter to the mum in the video and he’s the guy that actually owns the land that we filmed it on. A little trivia there for ya. I think that might have been his payment. If he lets you use your land or your horse, or your farm land you can be in the video. We don’t know. Maybe (he laughed).

SFL Music: Now the second single “It’s Your Night,” that one is a video too, correct?
Foyil: Yes. That’s correct. The second video is called “It’s Your Night” and that video is a 3D graphics video done by a team in Spain actually, and they did a great job. You’ll see that some of the videos that we’ve been releasing just in the current environment, that is the current music industry environment. It’s so important to have great music, tied in with a good video because people want to see and experience the music in different ways now, so any of your (readers) that go to aliensdontringdoorbells on YouTube will see that we have a bit if a sci-fi influence that shouldn’t be a surprise, but we think there’s lots of things to explore. A lot of topics and interesting aspects to explore about science fiction basically, and the second single called “It’s Your Night” has a science fiction type of theme to it. An astronaut is on some planet. We don’t know what it is, and he encounters another being which happens to be, we don’t know what it is, and at the end you see that it’s a beautiful other being, and that’s the story of that particular video.

SFL Music: What about your latest single release “Slipping Away?”
King: Great song! It’s all about treating your partner well and looking out for your loved ones and all that sort of stuff and not be a naughty boy basically, but the video is amazing. We went to a night club in Ukraine. I mean 100 cast in there, guys, girls, dancers, gangsters, and we basically filmed all day just singing and dancing around in this club. It was such a great video. It’s a love story. it’s a fill in. They’ve got this side kick. It’s a must watch video! It’s my favorite (he laughed).

SFL Music: I can tell. What influences you when you write? How do you come up with your ideas?
Foyil: Well, basically I would say that when we get together for these sort of creative weeks that we do when we just all living together, writing. Everybody brings their own bits of material, but I would say that very much so these songs are sort of half-baked when they’re first presented and they very much evolve as a trio, the three of us. So, we’ll get some ideas, like for example, like we were just talking about “Slipping Away” because I brought that to the band’s attention. I just kind of wanted to have a song that had a rhythmic variety in it and that was catchy. So, if you listen to that song for example, it has a certain rhythm in the beginning, but the tempo is exactly the same, but the rhythm doubles in the chorus and that contrast makes that song very interesting. So, I’m influenced by not only chord changes and notes, but also rhythmic changes, and you’ll hear rhythmic changes in this and probably quite some in the next album which we’re already starting to write for.
King: With me, definitely the way I write stuff is my phone will be on to use in the middle of the night. Like If a melody comes in my head, or even a sentence or a couple of words that could be a song to it. I just basically record it all in my phone and occasionally I’ll sit there and I’ll troll through it and put it together. Some songs like “Consummation” the opening track on the album Arrival by aliensdontringdoorbells, the whole song, the whole melody and the words just come into my head at 1 and I just sang it into my phone. I mean, a lot of it as well. I start writing something and then I will get, I write by the fact that I sing. I eventually picture it in my mind even when I’m singing, I can visually picture the whole song as a cinematic film in my head. So that’s how I do it. It’s quite exciting when I get these stories in my head because I watch them and I try to write them down.

SFL Music: Where you guys formally trained as musicians or did you teach yourselves?
Foyil: I would say that I took quite a few lessons and I’m a bit of a jazz buff. A jazz guitar guy, and I’m also mechanical, so I like figuring things out, and I enjoy the complexity of music and music theory. You know, a lot of people don’t talk about it, but for example The Beatles knew a heck of a lot about music theory and for example, one of the finest singer/songwriters that you may not know, but that it was Sting.
King: Hahum.

SFL Music: Besides Adam.
Foyil: Sorry Adam. I would say that Sting is a real fine music theory guy, and he knows how to do key changes and stuff, and all that stuff fascinates me. So, that’s what interests me in terms of bringing out music.
King: For me, I started off with, my very first show I ever did was at school. I was the mayor of the munchkins and basically the head master said to me you can either get the can or you can play the lead role in the play. So, I was sort of forced into it a little bit (he laughed). I did a lot of musical theater and cruise ships. I did West End and stuff like that, playing roles. I mean, I went off to be a bit player which is like an entertainer and I remember singing for the very first time. My very first ever song on stage was “Sealed with a Kiss,” and from there I just regretted it, and then went into just performing in clubs and pubs and everything. I didn’t get any formal training, but I think just from singing for the past thirty-five years you know, my voice is actually progressed to what it is now. I could sing songs now that I couldn’t sing five years ago. It’s progression over time, I think.

SFL Music: How did you guys come up with the name for the band?
King: (laughed) Now that’s a good story.
Foyil: Yes. That came to me by way of an experience we had just going somewhere in the subway of New York City. I was there with my two oldest boys who were quite young at the time, and my middle son, he was six years old at the time and old man, he was basically walking down the platform having a conversation with himself. Suddenly stopped and turned to my young son and he said, it’s because aliens don’t ring doorbells, and then he continued walking off. I was like, I’m not sure about that guy. I’m not sure if he’s an alien, but that’s an interesting thing he said and
King: (sang) doo doo, doodoo, doo doo doo,doo.
Foyil: you know, it just stuck in my head.

SFL Music: Oh, wow!
King: The guy disappeared into a cloud of midst and was never seen again.
Foyil: But if you think about it, there is some truth to it and I think that’s what kind of persuaded us all that this might be the right name for us.
King: I’ve got a story to tell you Dorian. That old man was me!
Foyil and SFL Music: (laughed)

SFL Music: You were there to put the idea in his head to start the band, right? You guys sound like a lot of fun, so tell me what people can look forward to with your live shows?
King: Dorian and myself, we’ve been doing this quite a long time. I mean, like we’re not old guys, but it’s what we’ve done. For me it’s been my main job and what we do when we perform, that’s where we are most powerful, I think because we did live gigs all the time and that’s all we’ve done. You know, we’ve heightened our skills. For us going onstage, that’s the easy bit, so we’re always looking forward to it because we have some great shows lined up. We’re professionals and that’s what we do. You know, we like being onstage showing of basically.
Foyil: Yeah, and I would say that given everything that we’ve all been through for the last year you know, it looks like we’re now at a point where we see some daylight, and hence our new single “Daylight”s out.
King: Nice, nice lead in.
Foyil: Thank you Adam. Actually, some major acts are booking for next year. We ourselves are actively looking to be a supporting act for another band, but that starts from the May/June 2021 time frame, which I think is completely achievable as we’re stepping through the situation now. You know, we’ve got a couple vaccines that look very, very promising. So, I think we’re in a situation that’s kind of like a mother giving birth to a child. It’s all really difficult and then once the baby comes, all is forgotten. I think we’re all going to forget about this and we’re all going to go out and party like never before.
King: Party like it’s 1999.
Foyil: Or like its 2021 and have a great party starting next year.
King: I think, I mean everybody’s talking about will it get back to normal like Dorian’s saying. It will get back to normal. If you look at the progression of our music. We’ve basically in the past five, ten years, we’ve gone back to the sixties where mainstream music is about festivals and live outside concerts. It’s gone back there massively, and I can’t see it turning around and not having that again. People will forget about it and we’ve all got troubles. There’s nothing better, you know, it’s great medicine in itself just going there and seeing a live band performing and jumping around like an idiot having a great time. That’s what we want to do.

SFL Music: Is that what inspired “Daylight”?
Foyil: No “Daylight” was written in the summer of 2019. It’s just coincidence Lori. Nothing really happened. We’re happy to release it now because I think we all need a little daylight, and we all need a little happiness in our lives. Our music has been described as somewhat happy, but that wasn’t intentional.

SFL Music: What would you guys recommend for a new band?
King: A good haircut. Nice t-shirt and some very shiny shoes.
Foyil: For my part I would say, music like any other, it’s a business at the end of the day and really to make it, you need to save your pennies and make sure you have enough capital to go to a good studio and hire the best producer that you can afford, and there are many available now. You know, they’re not tied to labels anymore. So, there are a number of great producers out there that can be hired. So, that would be my advice. Write the best songs you can. Learn as much about the industry as you can and for goodness sake, don’t do everything just singing on a computer. Learn to play an instrument or two and play some real music and you know, join us onstage because that’s where you want to be. So, for people that like real music and instrumentation, aliesdontringdoorbells is all about that.
King: Yeah, and I would say reasonably when you write music, write about something you know about. Something you feel about. I mean, like I was saying earlier, especially me as the singer, you’ve got to sing somewhat with passion. Look at like Frank Sinatra and Gershwin songs they used to sing. They’re such passionate lyrics, and that’s what we’ve done on our album. Every song has got a massive reason behind it. It’s got passion behind it. So, if you want to go out as a new artist, when you want to perform, you want to be performing something you’re really proud of. Something you believe in and something that stirs that passion inside you, so when you sing that onstage and perform that onstage, your audience is certainly going to see that and they’re going to love you for it. That’s the best advice I can give.

SFL Music: That’s great advice. Do you feel the producers you worked with brought out the very best of your band in the studio?
Foyil: Yeah, we had three producers work on the album with us. We had the gentleman I mentioned earlier, Jeff Kanan at The Keep Studios. We recorded everything at The Keep Studios in Denver and he had great experience and he was able to get the best out of us because I don’t know if it’s because he’s from Colorado or not, but he had such a great calm manner that it just relaxed us all in the studio. Then we had an L.A. producer by the name of Dan Konopka. He’s actually the drummer in the band OKGO. Grammy winning band, and he produced “Slipping Away” which is a very, very popular song on Spotify and YouTube. We talked about it, and then finally we had a gentleman named Matthew Tryba who was actually the engineer for One Republic which has their own studio there in Denver, and so he was a different kind of a guy. More of a modern producer. Super fast on Pro Tools and stuff. So, we got all these three producers, worked very well, and got the most out of us, but we had the whole studio, so we worked ‘til very, very late at night.
King: I mean, the good thing with “Slipping Away” for instance, he would set there and go, I can hear this bit. Let’s put that in. It’s a fresh pair of ears as well with these experienced people, but also, with people like Jeff as well. I’d go in and I’d sing a bit and he’d go no, it’s not quite right today. So, they have the skill and the knowledge to be able to say to you, that isn’t quite right. Let’s, come back to it. Let’s do it again or whatever, and you’ve got to listen to these guys cause one, it’s their job and secondly, they’re master experience as well. So, you know, anybody who can give you advice to help, you’ve got to take it. Bring it onboard.

SFL Music: That’s again, very good advice.
King: That’s why they call me Adam the advisor. No, they don’t call me that.
Foyil: We can’t say what we call him.
King: Now it’s coming out what they really think if me.
Foyil: You gotta be truthful Adam.
King: Yeah.

SFL Music: Is there anything else you want fans to know or look forward to?
King: Dorian can fill in as well, but I mean, Dorian’s got a massive schedule laid out for us as well with video releases, and the second album. We’re touring. So, what we’re trying to do and I’ll let Dorian elaborate, we’re trying to bring our fans in our new schedule, every single week you’ll get something from us either from Spotify or YouTube.
Foyil: I would say for my part, although that’s certainly the case, we at the end of the day Lori, we hope to be out playing in front of people, so people can be actually see us and hear us and come out and have good time.
King: And Dorian’s a good-looking chap. You’ve got to come out and see him.

SFL Music: Do look forward to seeing you all live.
King: I mean, hopefully this time he’s going to perform with clothes on. He’s a bit if a free spirit. Thank you, Lori, for giving us some time and spreading our music to the masses.
Foyil: Thanks a lot Lori. We appreciate it!

SFL Music fans, massively check out their amazing debut LP ARRIVAL. You will definitely appreciate aliensdontringdoorbells!
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